’Tis strange, very strange, that a man’s conscience should be able to force his fingers to write whether he will or not; and to run him into a subject he more than once, at the very time, resolved not to think of.

Nor is it less strange, that (no new reason occurring) he should, in a day or two more, so totally change his mind; have his mind, I should rather say, so wholly illuminated by gay hopes and rising prospects, as to be ashamed of what he had written.

For, on reperusal of a copy of my letter, which fell into my hands by accident, in the hand-writing of my cousin Charlotte, who, unknown to me, had transcribed it, I find it to be such a letter as an enemy would rejoice to see.

This I know, that were I to have continued but one week more in the way I was in when I wrote the latter part of it, I should have been confined, and in straw, the next; for I now recollect, that all my distemper was returning upon me with irresistible violence—­and that in spite of water-gruel and soup-meagre.

I own I am still excessively grieved at the disappointment this admirable woman made it so much her whimsical choice to give me.

But, since it has thus fallen out; since she was determined to leave the world; and since she actually ceases to be; ought I, who have such a share of life and health in hand, to indulge gloomy reflections upon an event that is passed; and being passed, cannot be recalled?—­Have I not had a specimen of what will be my case, if I do.

For, Belford, (’tis a folly to deny it,) I have been, to use an old word, quite bestraught.

Why, why did my mother bring me up to bear no controul?  Why was I so enabled, as that to my very tutors it was a request that I should not know what contradiction or disappointment was?—­Ought she not to have known what cruelty there was in her kindness?

What a punishment, to have my first very great disappointment touch my intellect!—­And intellects, once touched—­but that I cannot bear to think of—­only thus far; the very repentance and amendment, wished me so heartily by my kind and cross dear, have been invalidated and postponed, and who knows for how long?—­the amendment at least; can a madman be capable of either?

Once touched, therefore, I must endeavour to banish those gloomy reflections, which might otherwise have brought on the right turn of mind:  and this, to express myself in Lord M.’s style, that my wits may not be sent a wool-gathering.

For, let me moreover own to thee, that Dr. Hale, who was my good Astolfo, [you read Ariosto, Jack,] and has brought me back my wit-jar, had much ado, by starving, diet, by profuse phlebotomy, by flaying-blisters, eyelet-hole-cupping, a dark room, a midnight solitude in a midday sun, to effect my recovery.  And now, for my comfort, he tells me, that I may still have returns upon full moons—­horrible! most horrible!—­and must be as careful of myself at both equinoctials, as Caesar was warned to be of the Ides of March.