Chapter 18

"Newstead Abbey, Oct. 11. 1811.

"I have returned from Lancs., and ascertained that my property there may be made very valuable, but various circumstances very much circumscribe my exertions at present. I shall be in town on business in the beginning of November, and perhaps at Cambridge before the end of this month; but of my movements you shall be regularly apprised. Your objections I have in part done away by alterations, which I hope will suffice; and I have sent two or three additional stanzas for both '_Fyttas_' I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to me in happier times; but 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and 'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. Other men can always take refuge in their families; I have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of surviving my betters. I am indeed very wretched, and you will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant of sensibility.

"Instead of tiring yourself with _my_ concerns, I should be glad to hear _your_ plans of retirement. I suppose you would not like to be wholly shut out of society? Now I know a large village, or small town, about twelve miles off, where your family would have the advantage of very genteel society, without the hazard of being annoyed by mercantile affluence; where _you_ would meet with men of information and independence; and where I have friends to whom I should be proud to introduce you. There are, besides, a coffee-room, assemblies, &c. &c., which bring people together. My mother had a house there some years, and I am well acquainted with the economy of Southwell, the name of this little commonwealth. Lastly, you will not be very remote from me; and though I am the very worst companion for young people in the world, this objection would not apply to _you_, whom I could see frequently. Your expenses, too, would be such as best suit your inclinations, more or less, as you thought proper; but very little would be requisite to enable you to enter into all the gaieties of a country life. You could be as quiet or bustling as you liked, and certainly as well situated as on the lakes of Cumberland, unless you have a particular wish to be _picturesque_.

"Pray, is your Ionian friend in town? You have promised me an introduction.--You mention having consulted some friend on the MSS.--Is not this contrary to our usual way? Instruct Mr. Murray not to allow his shopman to call the work 'Child of Harrow's Pilgrimage!!!!!' as he has done to some of my astonished friends, who wrote to enquire after my sanity on the occasion, as well they might. I have heard nothing of Murray, whom I scolded heartily. Must I write more notes?--Are there not enough?--Cawthorn must be kept back with the 'Hints.'--I hope he is getting on with Hobhouse's quarto. Good evening. Yours ever," &c.

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Of the same date with this melancholy letter are the following verses, never before printed, which he wrote in answer to some lines received from a friend, exhorting him to be cheerful, and to "banish care." They will show with what gloomy fidelity, even while under the pressure of recent sorrow, he reverted to the disappointment of his early affection, as the chief source of all his sufferings and errors, present and to come.

"Newstead Abbey, October 11. 1811.

"'Oh! banish care'--such ever be The motto of _thy_ revelry! Perchance of _mine_, when wassail nights Renew those riotous delights, Wherewith the children of Despair Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care.' But not in morn's reflecting hour, When present, past, and future lower, When all I loved is changed or gone, Mock with such taunts the woes of one, Whose every thought--but let them pass-- Thou know'st I am not what I was. But, above all, if thou wouldst hold Place in a heart that ne'er was cold, By all the powers that men revere, By all unto thy bosom dear, Thy joys below, thy hopes above, Speak--speak of any thing but love.

"'Twere long to tell, and vain to hear The tale of one who scorns a tear; And there is little in that tale Which better bosoms would bewail. But mine has suffer'd more than well 'Twould suit Philosophy to tell. I've seen my bride another's bride,-- Have seen her seated by his side,-- Have seen the infant which she bore, Wear the sweet smile the mother wore, When she and I in youth have smiled As fond and faultless as her child;-- Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain, Ask if I felt no secret pain. And I have acted well my part, And made my cheek belie my heart, Return'd the freezing glance she gave, Yet felt the while _that_ woman's slave;-- Have kiss'd, as if without design, The babe which ought to have been mine, And show'd, alas! in each caress Time had not made me love the less.

"But let this pass--I'll whine no more. Nor seek again an eastern shore; The world befits a busy brain,-- I'll hie me to its haunts again. But if, in some succeeding year, When Britain's 'May is in the sere,' Thou hear'st of one, whose deepening crimes Suit with the sablest of the times, Of one, whom Love nor Pity sways, Nor hope of fame, nor good men's praise, One, who in stern Ambition's pride, Perchance not Blood shall turn aside, One rank'd in some recording page With the worst anarchs of the age, Him wilt thou _know_--and, _knowing_, pause, Nor with the _effect_ forget the cause."

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The anticipations of his own future career in these concluding lines are of a nature, it must be owned, to awaken more of horror than of interest, were we not prepared, by so many instances of his exaggeration in this respect, not to be startled at any lengths to which the spirit of self-libelling would carry him. It seemed as if, with the power of painting fierce and gloomy personages, he had also the ambition to be, himself, the dark "sublime he drew," and that, in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeavoured to fancy, where he could not find, in his own character, fit subjects for his pencil.

It was about the time when he was thus bitterly feeling and expressing the blight which his heart had suffered from a _real_ object of affection, that his poems on the death of an _imaginary_ one, "Thyrza," were written;--nor is it any wonder, when we consider the peculiar circumstances under which these beautiful effusions flowed from his fancy, that of all his strains of pathos, they should be the most touching and most pure. They were, indeed, the essence, the abstract spirit, as it were, of many griefs;--a confluence of sad thoughts from many sources of sorrow, refined and warmed in their passage through his fancy, and forming thus one deep reservoir of mournful feeling. In retracing the happy hours he had known with the friends now lost, all the ardent tenderness of his youth came back upon him. His school-sports with the favourites of his boyhood, Wingfield and Tattersall,--his summer days with Long[28], and those evenings of music and romance which he had dreamed away in the society of his adopted brother, Eddlestone,--all these recollections of the young and dead now came to mingle themselves in his mind with the image of her who, though living, was, for him, as much lost as they, and diffused that general feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a vent in these poems. No friendship, however warm, could have inspired sorrow so passionate; as no love, however pure, could have kept passion so chastened. It was the blending of the two affections, in his memory and imagination, that thus gave birth to an ideal object combining the best features of both, and drew from him these saddest and tenderest of love-poems, in which we find all the depth and intensity of real feeling touched over with such a light as no reality ever wore.

The following letter gives some further account of the course of his thoughts and pursuits at this period:--