—­many an holy lay
  That, mourning, soothed the mourner on his way;

I had ears of sympathy to drink them in, and they yet vibrate pleasant on the sense.  When I read in your little volume your nineteenth effusion, or the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth, or what you call the Sigh, I think I hear you again.  I image to myself the little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together through the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy.  When you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart.  I found myself cut off, at one and the same time, from two most dear to me.  ’How blest with ye the path could I have trod of quiet life!’ In your conversation you had blended so many pleasant fancies that they cheated me of my grief.  But in your absence the tide of melancholy rushed in again, and did its worst mischief by overwhelming my reason.  I have recovered, but feel a stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life.  I sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are strong things, and my religious fervours are confined, alas! to some fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion.  A correspondence, opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me conscious of existence.  Indulge me in it:  I will not be very troublesome!  At some future time I will amuse you with an account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turn my frenzy took.  I look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of envy:  for, while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness.  Dream not, Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till you have gone mad!  All now seems to me vapid, comparatively so.

TO THE SAME

The tragedy

27 Sept. 1796.

MY DEAREST FRIEND,

White, or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time may have informed you of the terrible calamities that have fallen on our family.  I will only give you the outlines:  My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, has been the death of our own mother.  I was at hand only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp.  She is at present in a madhouse, from whence I fear she must be moved to an hospital.  God has preserved to me my senses; I eat, and drink, and sleep, and have my judgement, I believe, very sound.  My poor father was slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and my aunt.  Mr. Norris, of the Bluecoat School, has been very kind to us, and we have no other friend; but, thank God, I am very calm and composed, and able to do the best that remains to do.  Write as religious a letter as possible, but no mention of what is gone and done with.  With me ’the former things are passed away’, and I have something more to do than to feel.

God Almighty have us in His keeping!

Mention nothing of poetry.  I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities of that kind.  Do as you please, but if you publish, publish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and never send me a book, I charge you.