LIBER AMORIS 
 
 Or the New Pygmalion 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT 
 
 With an Introduction by 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 
 LOMDON . 
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS <Sr* JOHN LANE 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE BODLEY HEAD 
 
 IN VIGO STREET 
 
THE RIGHT OF EDITORIAL DEDICATION 
 HAS RECENTLY BEEN CALLED IN QUESTION. 
 ALL THE SAME, IT HAS MUCH SUPPORT OF 
 NOTABLE EXAMPLE, ANCIENT AND MODERN ; 
 AND, THEREFORE, AFTER THE FIRST OFFER- 
 ING OF THIS NEW EDITION OF THE "LIBER 
 AMORIS" TO THE HONOURED SHADE OF 
 HIM WHO MADE IT, I DESIRE TO ASSOCIATE 
 MY UNIMPORTANT SHARE IN ITS ISSUE 
 WITH THE NAME OF LORD DE TABLEY, IN 
 RESPECTFUL ADMIRATION OF HIS FINE 
 GIFTS AS A POET, AND EMBOLDENED BY A 
 FELLOWSHIP OF REGARD FOR THE GENIUS 
 OF WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 R. LE G. 
 
 MAY 10, 1893. 
 
 871766 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 If the reading of the "Liber Amoris" is not 
 exactly a disappointment, at least it gives 
 -one a different kind of pleasure from that 
 which we very probably expected. One 
 looked, may be, for a beautiful garden of 
 fancy, but soon found that the appeal was not 
 so much to one's sense of beauty, as to one's 
 curiosity, one's sense of humour, one's pity, 
 sometimes even one's contempt. A few fine 
 sentences are to be met with, but singularly 
 few, and it is in fact not as literature, but 
 as a document, V" a document in madness," 
 that the book has its value. Even had it 
 not been written by Hazlitt it would have 
 possessed this value, but in relation to him 
 it becomes doubly interesting : for, at first 
 sight, it seems that no aberration could have 
 
11. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 been less characteristic of his morose and 
 unsympathetic nature. De Quincey tells us 
 that the book greatly raised Hazlitt in his 
 opinion, for this very reason " by shewing 
 him to be capable of stronger and more 
 agitating passions than " he " believed to be 
 within the range of his nature/' All the 
 same, though erotic passion may have 
 seemed foreign to Hazlitt, he had passions 
 vehement enough in other directions. The 
 vehemence of his political passions was 
 notorious, his letter to Gifford was as fine 
 a burst of anger as can be imagined, and 
 he had a gift for misunderstanding his 
 friends, of taking petty slights, which was 
 continually hurrying him into ungovernable 
 rage. 
 
 He seems to have been incapable, in his 
 daily life, of taking broad views, and he 
 was as irritably alive to every little " insult," 
 or semblance of it, as the most ignorant 
 young miss. When he imagined such, even 
 in the case of friends of proved loyalty, 
 he never stopped to think, never allowed 
 any sense of affection or gratitude to suggest 
 
INTRODUCTION. ill. 
 
 that he might be mistaken, but flew at once 
 into absurd passion, and proceeded, if pos- 
 sible, to pillory the offender in his next 
 essay. Mr. P. G. Patmore, in " My Friends 
 and Acquaintance," gives several examples 
 of this curious failing. You had only to < 
 accidentally pass him in the street, without 
 having seen him, and he would at once 
 decide that you had cut him, and go about 
 seeking your scalp. 
 
 The persistent attacks upon him in Black- 
 wood's Magazine, low and personal to a degree 
 hardly realisable in our day, when we have 
 seldom the excitement of a really spirited set- 
 to among men of letters, and " knuckle- 
 dusters" are forbidden, doubtless, aggravated 
 this irritable self-consciousness. He could 
 never forget that he was " pimpled Hazlitt," 
 and the epithet made him skulk through the 
 streets like a criminal, and made him especi- 
 ally sensitive in the presence of women, who, 
 he felt sure, were always saying it over to 
 . themselves. It is impossible without a long 
 quotation from Mr. Patmore, to give the 
 reader any idea of the painful extremes of 
 
IV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 feeling to which this morbid sensitiveness 
 subjected him. 
 
 For instance, during the first week or fortnight 
 after the appearance of (let us suppose) one of 
 Blackwood's articles about him, if he entered a 
 coffee-house where he was known, to get his dinner, 
 it was impossible (he thought) that the waiters could 
 be doing anything else all the time he was there, but 
 pointing him out to guests as "the gentleman who was 
 so abused last mouth in Blackwood's Magazine".' 
 If he knocked at the door of a friend, the look and 
 reply of the servant (whatever they might be), made it 
 evident to him that he had been reading Black- 
 wood's Magazine before the family were up in the 
 morning ! If he had occasion to call at any of the 
 publishers for whom he might be writing at the time, 
 the case was still worse, inasmuch as there his bread 
 was at stake, as well as that personal civility, which he 
 valued no less. Mr. Colburn would be " not within," 
 as a matter of course ; for his clerks to even ascertain 
 his pleasure on that point beforehand would be wholly 
 superfluous : had they not all chuckled over the 
 article at their tea the evening before ? Even the 
 instinct of the shop-boys would catch the cue from 
 the significant looks of those above them, and refuse 
 to take his name to Mr. Oilier. They would "be- 
 lieve he was gone to dinner." He could not, they 
 thought, want to have anything to say to a person 
 who, as it were, went about with a sheet of Black- 
 
INTRODUCTION. V. 
 
 wood's pinned to his coat-tail like a dish-clout ! 
 
 Then at home at his lodgings, if the servant who 
 waited upon him did not answer his bell the first 
 time Ah ! 'twas clear She had read Black- 
 wood's, or heard talk of it at the bar of the public- 
 house when she went for the beer ! Did the landlady 
 send up his bill a clay earlier than usual, or ask for 
 payment of it less civilly than was her custom how 
 could he wonder at it ? It was Blackwood*s 
 doing. But if she gave him notice to quit (on the 
 score, perhaps, of his inordinately late hours) he was 
 a lost man ! for would anybody take him in after 
 having read Black-wood's ? Even the strangers 
 that he met in the streets seemed to look at him 
 askance, "with jealous leer malignant," as if they 
 knew him by intuition for a man en whom was set 
 the double seal of public and private infamy ; the 
 doomed and denounced of Blackwood's Magazine. 
 x" 
 An inherent lack of humour was pro- 
 
 fly the spring- of Hazlitt's defectsj Mr. 
 Patmore says too that " an ingrained sel- 
 fishness, more or less influenced or modified 
 all the other points of his nature,'* and 
 certainly the general complexion of Hazlitt's 
 life seems at least to have been that of 
 gloomy self-absorption. However, it will 
 be fair here to recall Barry Cornwall's more 
 
VI. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 complete and certainly more generous view 
 of his character : 
 
 Hazlitt himself had strong passions, and a few 
 prejudices ; and his free manifestations of these were 
 adduced as an excuse for the slander and animosity 
 \vith which he was perpetually assailed. He attacked 
 others, indeed (a few only), and of these he expressed 
 his dislike in terms sometimes too violent perhaps, 
 and at no time to be mistaken. Yet, when an 
 opportunity arose to require from him an unbiassed 
 opinion, he was always just. He did not carry 
 poisoned arrows into civil conflict. Subject to the 
 faults arising out of this, his warm temperament, he 
 possessed qualities worthy of affection and respect. 
 He was a simple, unselfish man, void of all deception 
 and pretence ; and he had a clear, acute intellect, 
 when not traversed by some temporary passion or 
 confused by a strong prejudice. . . .Like many others, 
 he was sometimes swayed by his affections. He loved 
 the first Napoleon beyond the bounds of reason. He 
 loved the worker better than the idler. He hated 
 pretensions supported merely by rank or wealth or 
 repute, or by the clamour of factions. And he felt 
 love and hatred in an intense degree. But he was 
 never dishonest. He never struck down the weak, 
 nor trod on the prostrate. He was never treacherous, 
 never tyrannical, never cruel 
 
 My first meeting with Mr. Hazlitt took place at the 
 
INTRODUCTION. Vll. 
 
 house of Leigh Hunt, where I met him at supper. 
 I expected to see a severe, defiant-looking being. I met 
 a grave man, diffident, almost awkward in manner, 
 whose appearance did not impress me with much 
 respect. He had a quick, restless eye, however, 
 which opened eagerly when any good or bright obser- 
 vation was made ; and I found at the conclusion of 
 the evening, that when any question arose, the most 
 sensible reply always came from him. Although the 
 process was not too obvious, he always seemed to 
 have reasoned with himself before he uttered a 
 sentence. 
 
 There is no doubt that his strong passions and 
 determined likings often interfered with his better 
 reason. His admiration of Napoleon would not allow 
 of any qualification. 
 
 And then Barry Cornwall refers to the 
 frenzy which was the raison d'etre of the 
 following pages, a reference which will be 
 of interest to us later on. 
 
 The following sonnet by Sheridan Knowles 
 printed, a propos of Bewick's chalk drawing 
 of Hazlitt, reproduced in front of his son's 
 edition of his " Literary Remains," is of 
 value as the testimony of a man who. 
 knew him intimately, and was, indeed, with 
 Patmore, the sharer of his confidences in 
 
Vll 1. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 regard to that divine impossible she, Sarah 
 Walker : 
 
 Thus Hazlitt looked ! There's life in every line ! 
 
 Soul language fire that colour could not give, 
 See ! on that brow how pale-robed thought divine, 
 
 In an embodied radiance seems to live ! 
 Ah ! in the gaze of that entranced eye, 
 
 Humid, yet burning, there beams passion's flame, 
 
 Lighting the cheek, and quivering through the 
 
 frame ; 
 While round the lips, the odour of a sigh 
 
 Yet hovers fondly, and its shadow sits 
 Beneath the channel of the glowing thought 
 
 And fire-clothed eloquence, which comes in fits 
 Like Pythiac inspiration ! Bewick taught 
 
 By thee, in vain doth slander's venom'd dart 
 
 Do its foul work 'gainst him. This head must own 
 a heart. 
 
 Hazlitt's face in this portrait wears certainly 
 a sensibility of expression, almost amounting 
 to voluptuousness, such as appears but little 
 if at all in his portrait by his brother. Be- 
 wick thus helps us the better to understand 
 the " Liber Amoris." 
 
 We have seen that Hazlitt was in other 
 directions a man of strong passions, an.d 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX. 
 
 the man who is passionate in one thing 
 may be passionate in any when the spark 
 falls. But, actually, Hazlitt had always been 
 susceptible to woman. Patmore, giving an 
 account of his curious daily habits, tells 
 us how, rising at one or two, he would sit 
 over his breakfast of black tea and toast 
 (his slavery to black tea had, doubtless^ 
 much to do with his misanthropy) " silent, 
 motionless, and self-absorbed,'* till the 
 evening, oppressed by a vis inertia, which 
 he was incapable of resisting, unless at the 
 prospect of absolute destitution (for he never 
 wrote till necessity actually forced it upon 
 him) or "moved to do so by some induce- 
 ment in which female attraction had a 
 chief share." Patmore also makes a 
 mysterious reference to a walk home one 
 evening with Hazlitt, during which, in the 
 " broad part of Parliament Street, opposite 
 to the Admiralty and the Horse Guards/' 
 Hazlitt was addressed by "sundry petition- 
 ers,"^//^ dejoie in fact, apparently acquainted 
 with him, and whose acquaintance he did 
 not affect to disown. 
 
X. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Again, in writing of the evenings spent 
 at the Southampton Coffee-house, Patmore, 
 dwelling on Barry Cornwall's share in them, 
 says : 
 
 And, above all other themes, to P[rocte]r, and to 
 him alone (except myself) Hazlitt could venture to 
 relate, in all their endless details those " affairs of the 
 heart " in one of which his head was always engaged, 
 and which happily always (with one fatal exception) 
 evaporated in that interminable talk about them of 
 which he was so strangely fond. 
 
 Not that Hazlitt confined his confidences on this 
 head to P[rocte]r and myself. On the contrary, he 
 extended them to almost every individual with whom 
 he had occasion to speak, if he could, by hook or 
 crook, find or make the occasion of bringing in the 
 topic. But, in general, he did this from a sort of 
 physical incapacity to avoid the favourite yet dreaded 
 theme of his thoughts ; and he did it with a perfect 
 knowledge that his confidential communications were 
 a bore to nine-tenths of those who listened to them, 
 and consequently that the pleasure of the communi- 
 cation was anything but mutual. . . .The truth is that 
 Hazlitt was a child in this matter ; yet at the same 
 time he was a metaphysician, a philosopher, and a 
 poet ; and hence the (in my mind) curious and unique 
 interest which attached to his mingled details and 
 dissertations on this the most favourite of all his 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI. 
 
 themes of converse, at least in a tete a tete ; for he 
 rarely, if ever, brought up the subject under any other 
 circumstances. 
 
 But long before the days of " The South- 
 ampton," Hazlitt appears to have had an 
 experience no less violent in its excess than 
 that "one fatal exception," which is, of 
 course, that celebrated in the present volume. 
 He was then, however, more of an age for 
 such experience, being, apparently, about 
 twenty. The affair happened up at the 
 lakes, during a visit to Wordsworth, whose 
 friendship, as also Southey's, and perhaps 
 Coleridge's too, it cost him. Patmore gives 
 the most significant account of it, and I 
 cannot do better than quote him once 
 more : 
 
 I allude, he says, to a story relating to Hazlitt's 
 alleged treatment of some petty village jilt, who, 
 when he was on a visit to Wordsworth, had led him 
 (Hazlitt) to believe that she was not insensible to his 
 attractions; and then, having induced him to "com- 
 mit " himself to her in some ridiculous manner, 
 turned round upon him, and made him the laughing- 
 stock of the village. There is, I believe, too much 
 truth in the statement of his enemies, that the 
 
XU. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mingled disappointment and rage of Hnzlitt on this 
 occasion led him, during the madness of the moment 
 (for it must have been nothing less), to acts which 
 nothing but the supposition of insanity could account 
 for, much less excuse, And his conduct on this 
 occasion is. understood to have been the immediate 
 cause of that breach between him and his friends 
 above-named (at least Wordsworth and Southey), 
 which was never afterwards healed, 
 
 Here we catch a glimpse of that daemonic 
 frenzy which later on seems, and no wonder, 
 to have agitated even the phlegmatic nerves 
 of Sarah Walker. Lamb makes a waggish 
 allusion to the incident in a letter to Words- 
 worth during 1814, from which we gather 
 that Hazlitt narrowly missed a ducking 
 in the horse-pond for his eccentricities. 
 Wordsworth had evidently been writing 
 Lamb on the subject. 
 
 The " scapes " of the great god Pan, who appeared 
 among your mountains some dozen years since, and 
 his narrow chance of being submerged by the swains, 
 afforded me much pleasure. I can conceive the 
 water-nymphs pulling for him. He would have 
 been another Hylas W. Hylas. In a mad letter 
 which Capel Lofft wrote to M\onthly\ M[agazine] t 
 Philips (now Sir Richard), I remember his noticing 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlll. 
 
 a metaphysical article of Pan, signed H., and adding 
 " I take your correspondent to be tbe same with 
 Hylas." Hylas had put forth a pastoral just before. 
 How near the unfounded conjecture of the certainly 
 inspired Lofft (unfounded as \ve thought) was to 
 being realised ! I can conceive him being "good 
 to all that wonder in that perilous flood !" 
 
 De Quincey used to hint also that Hazlitt 
 was attached to Miss Wordsworth, the poet's 
 sister, Dorothy, but Mr. W. C. Hazlitt thinks 
 that very little stress must be laid on the 
 conjecture. 
 
 The next authentic name in the legend of 
 Hazlitt's loves is that of Miss Railton, of 
 Liverpool. Her father was a friend of 
 Ilazlitt's father, and when William went 
 touring as a roving portrait painter through 
 the provinces, he gave him one or two com- 
 missions. It was not William, however, but 
 his brother John, the miniature-painter, who 
 has preserved for us the "very dark danger- 
 ous eyes " of Miss Railton. She was about 
 twenty-five when Hazlitt first met her 
 about his own age and he seems to have 
 been very much in love. But a match with 
 a struggling artist did not commend itself 
 
XIV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to the parents of the lady, and so the affair 
 came to nothing. 
 
 Another name, presented to us merely by 
 a bantering allusion of his wife, was "Sally 
 Shepherd." Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that 
 Mrs. Hazlitt would " tax him from time to 
 time with having had a sweetness once for 
 Sally Shepherd," and that the only conjecture 
 as to the owner of this pretty name is that 
 she was perhaps the daughter of Dr. Shep- 
 herd of Gateacre, whose portrait he painted 
 in 1803. 
 
 Still another lady seems to have swayed 
 the ardent soul of William Hazlitt : Miss 
 Windham, only daughter of the Hon. Charles 
 Windham, of Norman Court, near Salisbury. 
 She is described as having been very hand- 
 some, though pitted with smallpox, and we 
 are told that a lady once remarking to Haz- 
 litt what a terrible disfigurement smallpox 
 was, he had replied that the most beautiful 
 woman he ever knew was so marked, and, 
 lowering his voice, he mentioned the name 
 of Miss Windham. Miss Windham, how- 
 ever, married otherwhere, and, curiously 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV. 
 
 enough, when Hazlitt came to live at Winter- 
 slow, in their near neighbourhood, her 
 husband offered him the free use of apart- 
 ments in Norman Court an offer such 
 as Hazlitt's (somewhat small) pride could, 
 under no circumstances, have entertained. 
 In one of his essays he has a pathetic 
 apostrophe beginning: "Ye woods, that 
 crown the clear low brow of Norman Court," 
 in which he speaks of " that face, pale as 
 the primrose, with hyacinthine locks, for 
 ever shunning and for ever haunting me. ." 
 However, Hazlitt's fate, as the gipsies 
 say, seemed to lie about Winterslow. A 
 certain Dr. Stoddart and his sister Sarah 
 lived in retirement on a small property there. 
 Dr. Stoddart was a friend of John Hazlitt's, 
 and he and Miss Stoddart were also friends 
 of the Lambs. William would thus naturally 
 become acquainted with Sarah, though we 
 have no record of his first introduction to 
 her. Mary Lamb and Sarah Stoddart seem 
 indeed to have been quite intimate friends, 
 and it is only through Mary's letters to Sarah 
 that we catch any glimpses of the develop- 
 
XVI. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ment of relations between Sarah and William. 
 Indeed, one cannot quite absolve Mary from 
 indulgence in that alluring game of match- 
 making. Could it have been of the gentle 
 Mary that Hazlitt was thinking when in his 
 " Advice to a Schoolboy," he bids his son 
 beware, in the choice of a wife, of meddle- 
 some friends ? 
 
 We gather from a letter of hers, dated 
 2ist September, 1803, that Sarah was then 
 engaged to another, but that she was of 
 two minds whether or not to jilt him for 
 William. Mary begins by advising her " to 
 drop all correspondence with William," 
 but ends in this strain : " God bless you, 
 and grant you may preserve your integrity, 
 and remain unmarried and penniless, and 
 make William a good and happy wife." 
 Early in 1804, we find the good Mary slyly 
 hinting at the subject again : " Rickman 
 wants to know if you are going to be 
 married yet. Satisfy him in that little par- 
 ticular when you write." 
 
 I should say that towards the end of 1803 
 Dr. Stoddart had, as a professional specu- 
 
fcKMJBM. 
 
 ^ 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV11. 
 
 lation, settled, with his sister, in Malta, at 
 the time Coleridge made his ill-fated ex- 
 pedition there. In thanking Sarah for news 
 of Coleridge's safe arrival, Mary cannot 
 resist further allusions to what would really 
 seem to have been a pet project with her. 
 Dr. Stoddart's venture apparently had not 
 been successful. " I cannot condole with 
 you very sincerely/* writes Mary, "upon 
 your little failure in the fortune - making 
 way. If you regret it, so do I. But I hope 
 to see you a comfortable English wife, and 
 the forsaken, forgotten William, of English 
 partridge memory, I have still a hankering 
 
 after I trust you will at last find some 
 
 man who has sense enough to know you are 
 well worth risking a probable life of poverty 
 for. I shall yet live to see you a poor, but 
 happy English wife." The allusion to 
 partridges is an extinct joke to-day, but it 
 had evidently tickled Mary, for in September 
 1805 it was still alive. " Has the partridge 
 season opened any communication between 
 you and William ?" wrote Mary. "As I allow 
 you to be imprudent till I see you, I shall 
 
XV111. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 expect to hear you have invited him to taste 
 his own birds. Have you scratched him out 
 of your will yet ? " 
 
 A month or two later we read : " I .want 
 to know if you have seen William, and if 
 there is any prospect in future there. All 
 you said in your letter from Portsmouth that 
 related to him was burnt so in the fumiga- 
 ting" [for disinfecting purposes] "that we 
 could only make out that it was unfavour- 
 able, but not the particulars. Tell us again 
 how you go on, and if you have seen him. 
 I conceit affairs will somehow he made up 
 between you at last." 
 
 Space forbids that we follow Miss Stoddart 
 through all the ups and downs of her variable 
 affections. Her vacillations continued for 
 another three years, a Mr. \yhite and a Mr. 
 Dowling being added to the game, or ever 
 the tale was told. However, in the long run 
 Mary Lamb was to have her wish, though, 
 like many who have contributed to an event, 
 she seems to have grown a little anxious as 
 it really approached. Toward the end of 
 1807 she writes: "Farewell! Determine 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX. 
 
 as wisely as you can in regard to Hazlitt ; 
 and if your determination is to have him, 
 heaven send you many happy years together, 
 ... .if I were sure you would not be quite 
 starved to death, nor beaten to a mummy^ 
 I should like to see Hazlitt and you come 
 together, if (as Charles observes) it were 
 only for the joke sake." 
 
 The joke came off on the ist of May, 
 1808, at St. Andrew's Church, Holborn. 
 The Lambs were at the marriage, and, 
 writing to Southey seven years after, Lamb 
 thus alludes to it : " I was at Hazlitt's 
 marriage, and had like to have been turned 
 out several times during the ceremony. 
 Anything awful makes me laugh." 
 
 The first and only fruits of their union 
 was the birth on the 26 September, 1811, of 
 their son William, who was soon to be the 
 only bond between them. 
 
 It was necessary thus to sketch the story 
 of Hazlitt's heart prior to his meeting the 
 heroine of Liber Amoris because of the light 
 it throws upon his temperament, and also 
 upon his relations with his wife. 
 
XX. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 We have seen that Miss Stoddart did not 
 accept him before she had flirted consider- 
 ably with others, and one is bound to feel 
 in reading Mr. W. C. Hazlitt's " Memoirs," 
 that these flirtations were not the attractions 
 of an ardent temperament, but merely the 
 experiments of a worldly one. She seems 
 to have been a woman of amiable enough 
 disposition and even exceptionally cultured 
 though she does not seem to have 
 sympathised with her husband's work but 
 utterly matter-of-fact and devoid of poetic 
 sensibility. She hadn't a half-pennyworth 
 of romantic love in her. An extra thousand 
 a year, apparently, would have moved her 
 heart beyond the most heroic devotion ; and 
 we can but conclude that she accepted 
 Hazlitt as a forlorn hope. , Yet she was a 
 good wife, so far as wifely duty goes, and 
 especially a good mother. The rift between 
 them was in the absolute lack of tempera- 
 mental sympathy. So far as one can make 
 out she was a better wife than Hazlitt was a 
 husband ; for Hazlitt must have been very 
 difficult to live with, and though of actual 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI. 
 
 inconstancy we have no hint, it was against 
 his nature to remain long constant to one 
 affection. 
 
 In his edition of his father's literary re- 
 mains, young William Hazlitt speaks of the 
 failure of mutual happiness between his 
 father and mother, " owing in great measure 
 to an imagined and most unfounded idea, 
 on my father's part, of a want of sympathy 
 on that of my mother." 
 
 Whosever the fault mostly was, the fact 
 remains that Hazlitt and his wife were an 
 uncomfortable pair, and before the autumn of 
 1819 we find them living apart. 
 
 And here we at last arrive at the print- 
 dress divinity celebrated in the following 
 pages. 
 
 In letter IV. one reads of "the time I 
 first saw the sweet apparition, August 16, 
 1820." The "sweet apparition" was Sarah 
 Walker, daughter of a Mr. Walker, tailor and 
 lodging-house keeper at No. 9, Southamp- 
 ton Buildings, Chancery Lane, where Hazlitt 
 had come to take up his solitary abode. 
 The superstitious reader may notice that the 
 
XX11. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 name Sarah seems to have been of sinister 
 significance to Hazlitt' s fate : Sarah Shep- 
 herd, Sarah Stoddart, and now Sarah Walker. 
 Mr. W. C. Hazlitt says that Mr. Walker had 
 two daughters, but surely he had three, for 
 in "The Quarrel" (p. 18), arising out of 
 Sarah's little sister Betsey playing eaves- 
 dropper to the embraces of the fond lovers, 
 Sarah speaks of an eldest sister, and implies 
 
 her marriage to "Mr. M ." De Quincey, 
 
 too, says that " her sister had married very 
 much above her rank." Obviously he could 
 not have been referring to little Betsey, but 
 
 to the wife of " Mr. M ." Mr. W. C. 
 
 Hazlitt says that Betsey Walker afterwards 
 married a gentleman named Roscoe, whom, 
 
 however, he identifies with " Mr. M. ." 
 
 In 1822 Hazlitt writes to his friend (Letter 
 
 XII. p. 99) asking him "to call on M 
 
 in confidence." In the original MS. of this 
 in "Memoirs" the blank reads "to call on 
 Roscoe in confidence," and Mr. W. C. Haz- 
 litt remarks in a foot-note : " the gentleman 
 who had married the sister, and was said to 
 be very happy in his choice " the " sister " 
 
INTRODUCTION. XX111. 
 
 being apparently Betsey, who, according to 
 the Liber Amoris, was still a little girl ! 
 Evidently there is some confusion here, 
 which can only be explained by Sarah having 
 two sisters, or on the supposition that Haz- 
 litt invented the Flibbertigget little sister for 
 dramatic purposes. But that seems very im- 
 probable, and quite out of keeping with the 
 general treatment of his confession, which 
 is all through marked with a quite sordid 
 adherence to fact. Besides , the petty humili- 
 ation of the child's running out of hiding, 
 and saying " He thought I did not see him !" 
 is too lifelike for invention. It makes one 
 blush with pity for the poor nympholepht, 
 reduced by his passion to such degrading 
 familiarities. 
 
 For descriptions of Sarah Walker, pro- 
 bably the most absurdly idealised of all 
 literary goddesses which is saying much 
 we are not entirely dependent on Hazlitt's 
 raptures. Barry Cornwall describes her with 
 some care, and I cannot do better than quote 
 the whole passage, as it gives the completest 
 and most circumstantial account of Hazlitt's 
 
XXIV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 frenzy left by his contemporaries : 
 
 His intellect was completely subdued by an insane 
 passion. He was, for a time, unable to think or talk 
 of anything else. He abandoned criticism and books 
 as idle matters, and fatigued every person whom he 
 met by expressions of her love, of her deceit, and of 
 his own vehement disappointment. This was when 
 he lived in Southampton Buildings, Holborn. Upon 
 one occasion I know that he told the story of his 
 attachment to five different persons in the same day. 
 And at each time entered into minute details of his 
 love-story. " I am a cursed fool," said he to me. "I 
 
 saw I going into Wills' Coffee-house yesterday 
 
 morning ; he spoke to me. I followed him into the 
 house, and whilst he lunched I told him the whole 
 story. Then I wandered into the Regent's Park, 
 
 where I met one of M 's sons. I walked with 
 
 him some time, and on his using some civil expressions, 
 by Jove, Sir, I told him the whole story ! " [Here 
 he mentioned another instance which I forget.] 
 " Well, sir " (he went on), " I then went and called 
 on Hayden, but he was out. There was only his man, 
 Salmon, there ; but by Jove ! I could not help myself. 
 It all came out ; the whole cursed story. Afterwards 
 I went to look at some lodgings at Pimlico. The 
 landlady at one place, after some explanations as to 
 rent, &c., said to me very kindly, "I am afraid you 
 are not well Sir?" " No, Ma'am," said I, "lam 
 not well ; " and on enquiring further, the devil take 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV. 
 
 me if I did not let out the whole story from beginning 
 to end." I used to see this girl, Sarah Walker, at 
 his lodgings, and could not account for the extravagant 
 passion of her admirer. She was the daughter of the 
 lodging-house-keeper. Her face was round and small, 
 and her eyes were motionless, glassy, and without 
 any speculation (apparently) in them. Her move- 
 ments in walking were very remarkable, for I never 
 observed her to make a step. She went onwards in 
 a sort of wavy, sinuous manner, like the movements 
 of a snake. She was silent, or uttered monosyllables 
 only, and was very demure. Her steady, unmoving 
 gaze upon the person whom she was addressing was ex- 
 ceedingly unpleasant. The Germans would have ex- 
 tracted a romance from her, enduing her perhaps with 
 some diabolic attribute. To this girl he gave all his 
 valuable time, all his wealth of thought, and all the 
 loving frenzy of his heart. For a time I think that 
 on this point he was substantially insane certainly 
 beyond self-control. To him she was a being full of 
 witching, full of grace, with all the capacity of 
 tenderness. The retiring coquetry, which had also 
 brought others to her, invested her in his sight with 
 the attractions of a divinity. 
 
 Making allowance for the fact that in 
 almost every passion, 
 
 "some hidden hand 
 Reveals to him that loveliness 
 
 Which others cannot understand," 
 
XXVI. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it seems to me from this description, 
 written, one must not forget, in cold blood, 
 that Sarah Walker was physically by no 
 means unattractive. She was evidently a 
 sensuous creature, not unskilled in the arts 
 of the body. That sinuous movement, that 
 gliding walk, that general suggestion of 
 Melusine, may well have appealed to a man 
 so predisposed to erotomania as Hazlitt, and 
 before we dismiss Hazlitt's conception of 
 her charms as entirely hallucination De Quin- 
 cey does well to remind us that Hazlitt's 
 " eye had been long familiar with the beauty 
 (real and ideal) of the painters." De Quin- 
 cey also adds another touch to her portrait. 
 jHazlitt had confessed, he said, in conversa- 
 tion that one characteristic of her complexion 
 made somewhat against her charm, " that 
 she had a look of being somewhat jaded, 
 as if she were unwell, or the freshness of 
 the animal sensibilities gone by." May not 
 this have been the passion-pallor, so much 
 in evidence in aesthetic poetry another 
 mark of a strongly sexual nature. \ 
 
 Whatever may have been the truth about 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV11. 
 
 her physical charms, Hazlitt certainly at- 
 tributed to her spiritual, moral and mental 
 qualities which she was far from possessing. 
 For us, who have no opportunity of appreci- 
 ating the glamour of her walk, and can only 
 judge her by her talk, she seems the very 
 type of a servant girl. Predisposed to im- 
 morality, yet she is full of petty convention- 
 ality, of sententious propriety, very nice of 
 her " honour," studiously sensitive of " in- 
 sult," "has no secrets from her mother," and 
 cannot be more to him than a friend, al- 
 lows no " liberties," and yet has no scruples 
 about sitting by the hour on lodgers' knees. 
 She is lumpish, unresponsive, full of ignorant 
 pride, and is, of course, no little pious. 
 
 Towards the end Hazlitt began to see her 
 more in this light. He calls her "little 
 yes and no," and even so early as Letter II., 
 in a fit of pique, he is impious enough to 
 exclaim : "After all, what is there in her but 
 a pretty figure, and that you can't get a word 
 out of her ? " A momentary gleam of sane 
 criticism. On one occasion even a gleam 
 of humour breaks from his owlish absorption. 
 
XXV111. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 " I have high ideas of the married state !" 
 says the sententious little hussey. 
 
 " Higher than of the maiden state ?" asks 
 Hazlitt slyly, irony which nearly lost him his 
 parting kiss. 
 
 If she was a tradesman's daughter, she 
 had as nice a sense of honour, &c. " Talk 
 of a tradesman's daughter," cries the en- 
 amoured essayist, with a confusion of pro- 
 nouns often observable in emotion of the 
 kind "you would ennoble any family, thou 
 glorious girl by true nobility of mind/' 
 
 Hazlitt had met Sarah Walker, August 1 6, 
 
 1820. Later in the same year, or early in 
 
 1821, the idea of a formal separation between 
 him and his wife seems first to have been 
 mentioned, but no steps seem to have been 
 taken till early in 1822, when we find Hazlitt 
 in Scotland. The original MS of the " Liber 
 Amoris," in the possession of Mr. W. C. 
 Hazlitt, is dated Stamford, January 29, 1822. 
 " I was detained at Stamford," he says in his 
 first letter, "and found myself dull, and could 
 hit upon no other way of employing my 
 time so agreeably." Hazlitt remained in 
 
 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXIX. 
 
 Scotland, with the exception of a freakish 
 journey Londonwards (see Letter to J. S. K.) 
 till about July 18. Meanwhile he had lived 
 partly at Edinburgh, partly at Renton Inn 
 (the "Bees Inn" of the "Liber Amoris") 
 in Berwickshire. At Renton Inn he wrote 
 a whole volume of his ''Table Talk" (see 
 Letter X.). Mrs. Hazlitt landed at Leith on 
 April 21, and with her coming the arrange- 
 ments for divorce seem to have been acceler- 
 ated. On May 6, Hazlitt lectured at Glasgow 
 on Milton and Shakespeare, and on May 13 
 on Thomson and Burns. On June 17 Mrs. 
 Hazlitt went for a short tour in the High- 
 lands, returning to Edinburgh on June 28. 
 The divorce seems to have been settled on 
 July 17, as Hazlitt sailed for London on the 
 1 8th, and Mrs. Hazlitt on the igth of that 
 month. 
 
 It is unnecessary for me to dwell on the 
 details of the divorce, or of the time spent 
 in Edinburgh pending it, as (owing to the 
 kindness of Mr. W. C. Hazlitt), I have been 
 able to reprint the whole of the extracts 
 from Mrs. Hazlitt' s diary of the time, first 
 
XXX. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 printed in "The Memoirs." This will enable 
 the reader to fill in for himself the back- 
 ground to certain allusions to Hazlitt's Edin- 
 burgh exile in the " Liber Amoris." 
 
 It is surely one of the most curious 
 documents in the history of " love." The 
 whole affair is seen to have been so purely 
 a matter of business with them. It certainly 
 throws a light on the incompatibility of 
 their union. Mrs. Hazlitt had, doubtless, 
 many good qualities, but this diary reveals 
 a coldness of temperament which, when we 
 remember Hazlitt's subterranean volcanoes, 
 goes far to explain their want of sympathy. 
 A little temper would have been a hopeful 
 sign. But, no ! they are each evidently 
 too pleased at the prospect of release for 
 that. So they talk pictures and take tea 
 together like old friends, and, one must add, 
 like sensible people. The only touch of 
 feeling is in reference to their child. What- 
 ever love they ever had for each other 
 centres in it. 
 
 One quaint incident of the affair, not 
 mentioned either in Mrs. Hazlitt's diary or 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXI. 
 
 " The Memoirs," is to be found in Forster's 
 " Life of Landor." The anecdote was related 
 in a letter from Seymour Kirkup to John 
 Forster. Hazlitt, on his second wedding 
 tour, paid a visit to Landor at the Palazzo 
 Medici, in the spring of 1825. 
 
 "As Hazlitt's present continental journey," wrote 
 Kirkup, " was in the nature of a holiday wedding-trip 
 with his second wife, whose small independence had 
 enabled him to give himself that unusual enjoyment, 
 he appears to have had no scruple in dilating to his 
 friends on those facilities of Scottish law which had 
 opened to him such advantages." 
 
 " He related to Landor, Brown and myself one day 
 the history of his own divorce. He told us that he 
 and his wife, having always some quarrel going on, 
 determined at last, from incompatibility of temper, to 
 get separated. So, to save Mrs. H.'s honour, and 
 have all their proceedings legal, they went to work in 
 this way. They took the steamboat to Leith, pro- 
 vided themselves each with good law advice, and 
 continued on the most friendly terms in Edinburgh 
 till everything was ready ; when Hazlitt described 
 himself calling in from the streets a not very respect- 
 able female confederate, and for form's sake, putting 
 her in his bed and lying down beside her. * Well, 
 sir,' said Hazlitt, turning more particularly to Landor, 
 who had by this time thrown out signs of the most 
 
XXX11. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 lively interest, down I lay, and the folding-doors 
 opened, and in walked Mrs. H., accompanied by two 
 gentlemen. She turned to them and said : Gentle- 
 men, do you know who that person is in that bed 
 along with that woman ? Yes, madam, they politely 
 replied, 'tis Mr. William Hazlitt. On which, sir, she 
 made a courtesy, and they went out of the room, and 
 left me and my companion in statu quo. She and 
 her witnesses then accused me of adultery, sir, and 
 obtained a divorce against me, which, by gad, sir, 
 was a benefit to both.'* 
 
 We are told that Landor listened to this 
 story with " eager anxiety," and hailed its 
 conclusion with " irrepressible delight." 
 " On other points, too," adds Kirkup, 
 " Hazlitt and his host found themselves in 
 unaccustomed yet perfect sympathy; and so 
 heartily did each enjoy the other's wilfulness 
 and caprice, that a strong personal liking 
 characterised their brief acquaintance." 
 
 Does this odd story mean that these 
 business-like people had or had not a sense 
 of humour ? While these legalities were 
 trailing their slow length along, Hazlitt' s soul 
 was pouring out his fiery love for Sarah Walker 
 in the letters which chiefly compose the 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXX111. 
 
 following pages. The majority of them were 
 written to Mr. P. G. Patmore, who is the 
 " C.P." of the series. Mr. Patmore published 
 a selection from the original versions in "My 
 Friends and Acquaintance^," and that I am 
 fortunately able to reprint here, so that the 
 reader may compare the two versions for 
 himself. He will remark that two or three 
 of the letters in the ** Liber Amoris " are 
 out of their proper order. 
 
 The two final letters to "J.S.K " were 
 written to James Sheridan Knowles, the 
 dramatist, who regarded Hazlitt with some- 
 thing like hero-worship. In a letter to Mr. 
 Patmore not included either in " My Friends 
 and Acquaintances," or the " Liber Amoris" 
 (see Appendix, p. Ixxxix.) and probably 
 written between June 3rd and 9th, Hazlitt 
 
 says " I am going to see K , to get him 
 
 to go with me to the Highlands, and talk 
 about her." A cheerful prospect for poor 
 
 Knowles ! However, " K " seems to 
 
 have proved himself a friend in a thousand, 
 and to have suffered his friend's maunderings 
 with an unexampled fortitude. The reader 
 
XXXIV. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 will find references to their Highland walks 
 and talks on pages 121 125, pages too 
 in which one gains grateful glimpses of 
 the more robust Hazlitt, who wrote so finely 
 on walking tours. With the bracing in- 
 fluences of Highland scenery around him, 
 Sarah Walker was not quite without a rival, 
 and Hazlitt seems to have been not so 
 trying a companion after all. 
 
 This letter to "J.S.K." gives so literal a 
 version of the conclusion of Hazlitt's 
 passion that there is no necessity for me to 
 recapitulate it here. Suffice it that on his 
 return to London, he humiliated himself 
 before her to a still more ludicrous degree, 
 and on her still remaining a Galatea no 
 prayers could warm to life, gave way to 
 frenzies of passion that , very naturally 
 alarmed the whole Walker household. This 
 seems to have been the final flare-up of his 
 feelings, for on his suddenly discovering 
 that his old fellow lodger, had, as he sus- 
 pected, been her lover all the time, he gives 
 up the game as suddenly as he took it up, 
 and we leave him talking the calmest philo- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXV. 
 
 sophy, with an eye that is already beginning 
 to suspect a humorous side to the whole 
 absurd drama. " Her image," he says, 
 "seems fast * going into the wastes of time' 
 like a weed that the wave bears farther and 
 farther from me." 
 
 How, after so much illumination, he came 
 to publish the story, how it was that his 
 friends did not combine to dissuade him, 
 seems hard to understand. He had already, 
 in an essay on " Great and little Things," 
 published in the New Monthly Magazine 
 early in 1822 (and reprinted in " Table 
 Talk"), committed himself by a rhapso- 
 dical reference to his "Infelice" dragged 
 in head and shoulders. Mrs. Hazlitt refers 
 to the indiscretion in her diary for July 
 iyth. "I told him," she writes, "he had 
 done a most injudicious thing publishing 
 what he did in the Magazine about Sarah 
 Walker, particularly at this time, and that 
 he might be sure it would be made use 
 of against him, and that everybody in 
 London had thought it a most improper 
 thing, and Mr. John Hunt was quite sorry 
 
XXXVI. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 that he had so committed himself." I have 
 quoted the passage in question in a note to 
 Mrs. Hazlitt's Journal, pp. Ixx. Ixxiv. 
 
 John Hunt's regret at the indiscretion 
 seems to have been short-lived, for it did 
 not prevent his publishing the still greater 
 indiscretion of the " Liber Amoris," within 
 a few months afterwards. Though Hunt 
 published it, Mr. C. H. Reynell was, for 
 ;ioo, the purchaser of the copyright. Was 
 it that Hazlitt had one of his periodical 
 fits of impecuniosity on him, and could not 
 resist this opportunity of coining his heart 
 in guineas ? However it happened, a man 
 could hardly have done a more deliberately 
 stupid injury to his fame. He had thus 
 freely given his " Blackwood's" enemies an 
 opportunity for which they, had thirsted for 
 years, and for which they would have gladly 
 paid any price. And you may be sure they 
 did not miss the opportunity. He was no 
 longer to be "pimpled Hazlitt," but "the 
 new Pygmalion ! " 
 
 In the number for June, 1823, appeared 
 a long review in their most cut-throat style, 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXXV11. 
 
 garnished with long quotations of the most 
 outspoken passages, which lost none of 
 their piquancy by the aid of copious capitals 
 and italics. As this seems a more than 
 usually interesting " cobweb of criticism," 
 I venture to make a somewhat lengthy 
 extract. 
 
 After some preliminary banter, the re- 
 viewer thus settles down to his scalping in 
 real earnest : 
 
 "To be serious : we have long wished that some 
 of this precious brotherhood would embody in a plain 
 English narrative, concerning plain English trans- 
 actions, the ideas of their school concerning morality, 
 and the plain household relations of society. We 
 now have our wish ; and it is certainly not the less 
 desirably accomplished, because the work is not a 
 novel, but a history ; not a creation of mere Cockney 
 imagination^, but a 'veritable transcript of the feelings 
 and doings of an individual living LiBER^xA We 
 shall make a few extracts, and leave our readers to 
 form their opinion of this H ." 
 
 " The following fragments are extracted from the 
 
 correspondence of our romantic H , who, it will 
 
 be seen, is an active gentleman of the press, and 
 writes lustily at the rate of five pounds odd a sheet 
 (for the Liberal ? or the Examiner ?} in the midst of 
 his calamities." 
 
XXXV111. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The reviewer then proceeds to extract 
 some of those passages referring to what 
 Sarah Walker described as "liberties" not 
 forgetting to draw eloquent attention to the 
 reference to "Endymion" also the conver- 
 sation between Hazlitt and her father (see 
 pp. 137 142) which, somewhat incompre- 
 hensibly, winds him up to a perfect moral 
 fury : 
 
 " ' Would she have me, or would she not ? * HE 
 
 SAID HE COULD NOT TELL. 
 
 Reader, this scene passes between H and the 
 
 father of the young woman he wishes to make his 
 wife ! What delicacy ! what manliness ! what a veil 
 is here rent away ! what abomination is disclosed ! 
 What, after this, is a COCKNEY and A LIBERAL ? * " 
 
 Then in his most impressive manner : 
 
 "Good public, since we first took pen in hand, nothing 
 so disgusting as this has ever fallen in our way. We 
 have gone through with it, because we conceived that 
 not to do so would be a most serious breach of public 
 duty in a journal which may trace five-sixths of all 
 the vulgar abuse that has been heaped upon its 
 character and conduct to this one single fact, that 
 
 IT HAS EXPOSED AND RUINED THE COCKNEY 
 
 SCHOOL. So long as examples were to be drawn 
 
INTRODUCTION, XXXIX. 
 
 from Italianized poetasterisms, and unintelligible 
 essays, it might be that some should hesitate about 
 adopting all our conclusions. We now bid them 
 farewell : we now leave them for once and for ever in 
 the hands of every single individual, however humble 
 in station, however limited in knowledge and acquire- 
 ment, who has elevation enough to form the least 
 notion of what 'virtue,' 'honour' and 'manliness,' 
 and, we may add, 'love,' mean and penetration 
 enough to understand a plain English story told in 
 plain English. 
 
 This book is printed for the same JOHN HUNT 
 who is the publisher of the Liberal and the Examiner, 
 and the brother of Leigh Hunt, the author of 
 'Rimini,' and the 'Letters from Abroad.' The 
 elegant, polite, chivalrous, pure, high-spirited, five- 
 guinea-per-sheet gentleman of the press, who writes 
 this book, and tells this story, is a fair specimen of the 
 tribe of authors to which he belongs (at this moment 
 they are all busy in puffing him as a new Rousseau), 
 and he speaks in the course of his work elegantly, 
 kindly, and familiarly, of ' CRAIGCROOK, WHERE 
 
 LIVES THE FIRST OF CRITICS, AND THE KlNG OF 
 
 MEN.' So then it seems H is a friend of 
 
 Mr. Jeffrey's ! well, we wish Mr. H much joy 
 
 of the acquaintance but no we correct ourselves 
 Mr. Jeffrey could not then have known the story of 
 
 ' Sally in our Alley ! ' and Mr. H will not 
 
 speedily nestle again at Craigcrook ! " 
 
 We leave ' H ' in the hands not of the ' First 
 
Xl. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of Critics and the King of Men,* but of the British 
 public ; and we call down upon his head, and upon 
 the heads of those accomplished reformers in ethics, 
 religion and politics, who are now enjoying his chef 
 d'ceuvre, the scorn and loathing of every thing that 
 bears the name of MAN. Woman ! But it would 
 be insult to go farther." 
 
 It will no doubt interest the reader to 
 know what " those accomplished reformers 
 in ethics, &c.," actually had to say of the 
 "Liber Amoris." The Blackwoodsman evi- 
 dently refers to a review which had appeared 
 in the Examiner of May nth. It is a sly 
 and witty piece of writing, and one still 
 smiles at the way in which the critic, while 
 assuming with much seriousness that the 
 author was dead, as stated in the advertise- 
 ment, keeps significantly referring to "the 
 unhappy person deceased in the Nether- 
 lands," " the gentleman who died in the 
 Netherlands " as with an " ahem ! " in the 
 voice. The reader, too, will notice the 
 clever application of the Berkeleyan theory : 
 
 "The lover, the poet, and another sort of person, 
 we are told by Shakespeare," begins * the Examiner * 
 reviewer : 
 
INTRODUCTION. xli. 
 
 " ' Are of imagination all compact ; ' 
 
 and if so, singly considered, what must be the state 
 of the case when two or more of them are united in 
 the same person ? In the common acceptation of 
 the term, we have no evidence to prove that the 
 St. Preux of this little book is a poet, but in its 
 higher and more enlarged sense he is clearly so ; and 
 admitting the two former characteristics to be self- 
 existent, and the last ' proceeding,' we have an 
 exemplification of the imaginative trio of Shakes- 
 peare in the single author of Liber Amoris. We are 
 not aware indeed of the publication of anything so 
 indicative of the Ideal theory of Bishop Berkeley, 
 since the publication of ' The Academical Questions * 
 of Sir William Drummond nothing so approaching 
 to a demonstration that mind is the great creator, 
 and matter a fable. ... Its essence consists in 
 the eloquence of soul and of passion which these 
 trite and by no means exalted events indicate. What- 
 ever Werter may be in the original garb of Goethe, 
 we have always thought him a somewhat spiritless 
 personage in his English dress ; but whether this be 
 so or no, the incident of that German production 
 is by no means of the first order. The St. Preux of 
 Rousseau is a very different creation, and with a 
 somewhat stronger breathing of physical ardour 
 V amour physique, as Gil Bias calls it the gentle- 
 man who died' in the Netherlands in some degree 
 resembles him. . . . 
 
X. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 We regret exceedingly the death of the impassioned 
 author, because we are of opinion, from the close of 
 the book, that if he had lived for some time longer 
 he would have survived his passion. . . . 
 
 At all events, Liber Amoris ' is a novelty in the 
 English language, and we doubt not will be received 
 as a rara avis in this land of phlegm and sea-coal." 
 
 The modern reader will hardly take the 
 " Liber Amoris" as seriously as either of these 
 critics. It will not on the one hand seem so 
 dangerously immoral, or on the other so 
 finely artistic a piece of work here at the 
 end as it did there at the beginning of the 
 century. Perhaps that highly proper Black- 
 woodsman was not really quite so shocked as 
 he felt it necessary to appear. More recent 
 examples have proved that the sins of one's 
 political adversaries are as scarlet. Far from 
 taking so grave a view of Hazlitt's amour, we 
 are more likely to see in the very violence of 
 the aberration a witness to the essential 
 innocence of his nature at the time. It seems 
 to say that, despite those confidences with 
 Patmore and others at " The Southampton," 
 Hazlitt's life had actually been freer from 
 taint than the lives of most men. Few men 
 
INTRODUCTION. xliii. 
 
 of his years remain capable of taking any 
 woman so seriously, not to speak of a little 
 servant-girl. Possibly Sarah Walker's station 
 a serving-maid, "out of thy star " will 
 seem the least forgivable part of the affair to 
 certain natures, to whom the charm of print- 
 stuff, save in the authorised forms of blouse 
 or boating costume, has not been revealed. 
 Some will perhaps be able to forgive Hazlitt 
 all the easier on that account. Cophetua's 
 was a true story. For Hazlitt, the reader 
 must make sure not to forget, meant honour- 
 ably by his beggar-maid. It is a pity his 
 assurances of those honourable intentions 
 make such ludicrous reading. Indeed, the 
 one sin which we find in his book to-day 
 is the sin against humour. Though, as we 
 have said, the illusion did credit to Hazlitt's 
 heart, it is impossible not to feel that no 
 man of forty should be able to mistake a 
 woman for a goddess or an angel, and he 
 should certainly never quote Milton or any 
 good poet to her. It is unnatural, uncanny, 
 in the bearded man. Nai'vet6 is charming 
 up to twenty, but the naivete* of middle -age 
 
Xliv. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 is unattractive, and the " Liber Amoris " is 
 full of that unattractive quality, much like 
 the naivete we sometimes find in the poetical 
 effusions of criminals. 
 
 To think of poor Hazlitt gravely lavishing 
 his choice Elizabethan quotations on the 
 hussey, not sparing even to lay at her feet 
 his sacred passion for Napoleon ! Was ever 
 in the history of amorous sentiment any- 
 thing more ludicrous than the tiresome 
 nonsense about " the little image " ! There 
 is indeed, as Hazlitt himself says, something 
 in it all " discordant to honest ears." 
 
 Viewed as literature, it is impossible to 
 agree with the reviewer in "The Examiner" 
 that "the gentleman who died in the Nether- 
 lands" is worthy to be mentioned in the 
 same day as Rousseau. Remembering Haz- 
 litt' s devotion to The New Helo'ise, it seems 
 strange that he should not have succeeded 
 better. The reader will remember how he 
 used to carry it in his pocket during his 
 walking-tours, and will recall especially that 
 passage where he tells us : " It was on the 
 loth of April, 1798, that I sat down to a 
 
INTRODUCTION. xlv. 
 
 volume of the New Elo'ise, at the Inn at 
 Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold 
 chicken/' It is not inappropriate that we have 
 thus recalled that other robuster Hazlitt, who 
 in his other writings, so full of bracing man- 
 liness, seems so little related to the maudlin 
 sentimentalist of the book before us. Un- 
 likely as it seems, should any reader encounter 
 this book who has not previously made 
 Hazlitt's acquaintance, I must beg him 
 in justice to a fine writer to acquire his 
 other books at once. To those who know 
 the Hazlitt of the glorious essays " On 
 Going a Journey," "My First Acquaintance 
 with Poets," " On the Fear of Death," the 
 " Liber Amoris" may be entrusted without 
 fear. They will know where to place it, in 
 a very subsidiary relation indeed to the 
 Hazlitt beloved of Mr. Stevenson and all 
 honest men who love virile English. It is 
 but as a literary curiosity, a document of 
 nympholepsy, a biographical appendix, that 
 tffe "TLiber Amoris " has any value unless 
 one sees in the literal tone of its opening 
 conversations a naive promise of modern 
 
Xlvi. INTRODUCTION. 
 
 realism, a prophecy of Mr. George Moore. 
 Properly speaking, it is necessary to the 
 understanding of Hazlitt's curious dis- 
 position. Many critics now-a-days advo- 
 cate doctored biography. In view of a 
 public which is far too inclined to magnify 
 all the warts of its great men, there is, 
 doubtless, something to be said for such 
 a theory. Truth of presentation, under 
 the most favourable circumstances, is so 
 hopeless a quest, that we might as well, per- 
 haps, frankly regard biography as a form of 
 fiction, founded upon fact. But, so long as 
 we keep up the pretence of truth-telling, I 
 cannot see how we can logically hush up any 
 side of our great men. It is only a very 
 childish, incomplete view of human nature 
 that would ask it. Surely a great man hangs 
 together like any other organism, and to 
 ignore any one element in him is to stultify 
 the rest. To pretend to know Hazlitt and 
 to ignore the *' Liber Amoris " is, in a less 
 degree, as though you should write a life of 
 Coleridge and never even whisper " opium." 
 But, whereas Coleridge's weakness was dis- 
 
INTRODUCTION. xlvii. 
 
 astrous, Hazlitt's was only silly. It did no 
 one any harm but himself. 
 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 
 
 NOTE. In the following reprint of the "Liber 
 Amoris " the text of the original edition (1823) has 
 been scrupulously followed. There has been but one 
 other reprint, that in the " Bibliotheca Curiosa " 
 [? 1884]. My best thanks are due: to Mr. W. C. Hazlitt 
 for his kindness in allowing me to print the extrac t 
 from Mr. Hazlitfs diary, and to make other use of 
 his "Memoirs" of his illustrious grandfather ; also 
 to Mr. Coventry Pat more for a similar permission in 
 the case of Mr. P. G. Patmore's "My Friends and 
 Acquaintances"; also to Mr. Alexander Ireland and 
 Mr. William Watson for one or two references. 
 Among the few accounts of the "Liber Amoris," / 
 desire to mention a pleasant paper in an old "Fraser," 
 which, I understand, was written by Mr. Ashcroft 
 Noble. 
 
APPENDICES. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM MRS. HAZLITT'S DIARY, ENTITLED 
 "JOURNAL OF MY TRIP TO SCOTLAND." 
 
 Sunday, 2ist [April]. At 5 a.m. calm. At I p.m. 
 landed safe at Leith. A laddie brought my luggage 
 with me to the Black Bull, Catherine Street, 
 Edinburgh. Dined at three on mutton chops. Met 
 Mr. Bell at the door, as I was going to take a walk 
 after dinner. He had been on board the vessel to 
 inquire for me. After he went, I walked up to Edin- 
 burgh. . . . Returned to tea. . . . Went 
 to bed at half-past twelve. 
 
 Monday, 22nd [April]. . . . Mr. Bell called 
 about twelve, and I went with him to Mr. Cranstoun, 
 the barrister, to consult him on the practicability and 
 safety of procuring a divorce, and informed him that 
 my friends in England had rather alarmed me by 
 asserting that, if I took the oath of calumny, and 
 swore that there was no collusion between Mr. Hazlitt 
 and myself to procure the divorce, I should be liable 
 to a prosecution and transportation for perjury. Mr. 
 Hazlitt having certainly told me that he should never 
 live with me again, and as my situation must have 
 long been uncomfortable, he thought for both our 
 sakes it would be better to obtain a divorce, and put 
 an end to it. . . 
 
Hi. APPENDIX I. 
 
 Tuesday 23rd. Consulted Mr. Gray [a solicitor]. 
 
 The case must be submitted to the 
 
 procurators to decide whether I may be admitted to 
 the oath of calumny. If they agree to it, the oath 
 to be administered, then Mr. Hazlitt to be cited in 
 answer to the charge, and if not defended [I told 
 him I was sure Mr. Hazlitt had no such intention, as 
 he was quite as desirous of obtaining the divorce as 
 me], he said then, if no demur or difficulty arose 
 about proofs, the cause would probably occupy two 
 months, and cost 50, but that I should have to send 
 to England for the testimony of two witnesses who 
 were present at the marriage, and also to testify that 
 we acknowledged each other as husband and wife, 
 and were so esteemed by our friends, neighbours, 
 acquaintances, &c. He said it was fortunate that 
 Mr. and Mrs. Bell were here to bear testimony to the 
 latter part. And that I must also procure a certifi- 
 cate of my marriage from St. Andrew's Church, 
 Holborn. I took the questions which Mr. Gray 
 
 wrote to Mr. Bell, who added a note, 
 
 and I put it in the penny post. ' Sent also the paper 
 signed by Mr. Hazlitt securing the reversion of my 
 money to the child, which Mr. Bell had given me, by 
 the mail to Coulson, requesting him to get it properly 
 stamped and return it to me, together with the cer- 
 tificate of my marriage 
 
 Thursday, 2$th April [1822]. Mr. Bell called to 
 ask if he could be of any assistance to me. I had 
 just sent a note to Mr. Hazlitt to say that I demurred 
 
APPENDIX I. hii. 
 
 to the oath, so there was no occasion to trouble Mr. 
 Bell. In the afternoon Mr. Ritchie, of the Scotsman 
 newspaper, called to beg me, as a friend to both (I 
 had never seen or heard of him before), to proceed in 
 the divorce, and relieve all parties from an unpleasant 
 situation, Said that with my appearance it was 
 highly probable that I might marry again, and meet 
 with a person more congenial to me than Mr. Hazlitt 
 had unfortunately proved. That Mr. Hazlitt was in 
 such a state of nervous irritability that he could not 
 work or apply to anything, and that he thought that 
 he would not live very long if he was not easier in 
 his mind. I told him I did not myself think that he 
 
 would survive me In the evening Mr. 
 
 Bell called I then told him of Mr. 
 
 Ritchie's visit, at which he seemed much surprised, 
 and said if Mr. Hazlitt had sent him, as I supposed, 
 he acted with great want of judgment and prudence. 
 
 Saturday, 27 th April. Gave Mr. Bell the stamp 
 for the 5<3/. bill, and the following paper of memo- 
 randum for Mr. Hazlitt to sign : 
 
 "I. William Hazlitt to pay the whole expense of 
 board, clothing, and education, for his son, William 
 Hazlitt, by his wife, Sarah Hazlitt (late Stoddart), 
 and she to be allowed free access to him at all times, 
 and occasional visits from him. 
 
 " 2. William Hazlitt to pay board, lodging, law, 
 and all other expenses incurred by his said wife 
 during her stay in Scotland on this divorce business, 
 
v. APPENDIX I. 
 
 together with travelling expenses. 
 
 "3. William Hazlitt to give a note-of-hand for 
 fifty pounds at six months, payable to William 
 Netherfold or order. Value Received." 
 
 Mr. Bell said he would go that day to Mr. Gray 
 
 then go oil to Mr. Hazlitt's, and call 
 
 on me afterwards ; but I saw no more of him. 
 
 Sunday, 2%th April, 1822. Wrote to Mr. Hazlitt 
 to inform him I had only between five and six pounds 
 of my quarter's money left, and therefore, if he did 
 not send me some immediately, and fulfil his agree- 
 ment for the rest, I should be obliged to return on 
 Tuesday, while I had enough to take me back. Sent 
 the letter by a laddie. Called on Mr. Bell, who said 
 that Mr. Gray was not at home when he called, but 
 that he had seen his son, and appointed to be with 
 him at ten o'clock on Monday morning. Told him 
 that Mr. Hazlitt said he would give the draft to fifty 
 pounds at three months instead of six, when the pro- 
 ceedings had commenced (meaning, I suppose, when 
 the oath was taken, for they had already commenced) 
 but would do nothing before. Told me he was gone 
 to Lanark, but would be back on Monday morning. 
 
 Tuesday, y>th April. Went to Mr. Bell after 
 dinner, who did not know whether Mr. Hazlitt was 
 
 returned or not In the evening, after 
 
 some hesitation, went to Mr. Hazlitt myself for an 
 answer. He told me he expected thirty pounds from 
 Colburn on Thursday, and then he would let me 
 
APPENDIX I. Iv. 
 
 have five pounds for present expenses ; that he had 
 but one pound in his pocket, but if I wanted it, I 
 should have that. That he was going to give two 
 lectures at Glasgow next week, for which he was to 
 have ioo/., and he had eighty pounds beside to 
 receive for the 'Table Talk' in a fortnight, out of 
 which sums he pledged himself to fulfil his engage- 
 ments relative to my expenses : and also to make me 
 a handsome present, when it was over (2o/.), as I 
 seemed to love money. Or it would enable me to 
 travel back by land, as I said I should prefer seeing 
 something of the country to going back in the steam- 
 boat, which he proposed. Said he would give the 
 note-of-hand for fifty pounds to Mr. Ritchie for me, 
 payable to whoever I pleased : if he could con- 
 veniently at the time, it should be for three months 
 instead of six, but he was not certain of that. . . . 
 Inquired if I had taken the oath. I told him I only 
 waited a summons from Mr. Gray, if I could depend 
 upon the money, but I could not live in a strange 
 place without : and I had no friends or means of 
 earning money here as he had ; though as I had still 
 four pounds, I could wait a few days. I asked him 
 how the expenses, or my draught, were to be paid, 
 if he went abroad, and he answered that, if he suc- 
 ceeded in the divorce, he should be easy in his mind, 
 and able to work, and then he should probably be 
 back in three months ; but otherwise, he might leave 
 England for ever. He said that as soon as I had got 
 him to sign a paper giving away a ISO/, a year from 
 
Ivi. APPENDIX I. 
 
 himself, I talked of going back, and leaving every- 
 thing I told him to recollect that it was 
 
 no advantage for myself that I sought .... it 
 was only to secure something to his child as well as 
 mine. He said he could do very well for the child 
 himself; and that he was allowed to be a very indul- 
 gent, kind father some people thought too much so. 
 I said I did not dispute his fondness for him, but I 
 must observe that though he got a great deal of 
 money, he never saved or had any by him, or was 
 likely to make much provision for the child ; neither 
 could I think it was proper, or for his welfare that he 
 should take him to the Fives Court, and such places 
 . . . . it was likely to corrnpt and vitiate him. 
 . . . . He said perhaps it was wrong, but that 
 he did not know that it was any good to bring up 
 
 children in ignorance of the world He 
 
 said I had always despised him and his abilities. 
 . . . . He said that a paper had been brought to 
 him from Mr. Gray that day, but that he was only 
 just come in from Lanark, after walking thirty miles, 
 and was getting his tea 
 
 Thursday, 2nd May [1822].- -Mr. Bell called to say 
 Mr. Hazlitt would sign the papers to-morrow and 
 leave [them] in his hand. And that he should bring 
 me the first five pounds. When he was gone, I 
 wrote to Mr. Hazlitt, requesting him to leave the 
 papers in Mr. Ritchie's hands, as he had before pro- 
 posed. 
 
 Friday, $rd May. Received the certificate of my 
 
APPENDIX T. Ivii. 
 
 marriage, and the stamped paper transferring my 
 money to the child after my death, from Coulsou, 
 the carnage of which cost seven shillings. Called on 
 Mr. Gray, who said, on my asking him when my 
 presence would be necessary in the business, that he 
 should not call on me till this day three weeks. 
 
 Saturday, ^th May, 1822. Mr. Ritchie called, 
 and gave me 4/., said Mr. Hazlitt could not spare 
 more then, as he was just setting off for Glasgow. 
 
 Tuesday, *]th May. Wrote to my little son. . . 
 
 Tuesday, 2ist May. Wrote to Mr. Hazlitt for 
 money. The note was returned with a message that 
 he was gone to London, and would not be back for a 
 fortnight. 
 
 Wednesday, 22nd. Called on Mr. Ritchie to 
 inquire what I was to do for money, as Mr. Hazlitt 
 had gone off without sending me any : he seemed 
 surprised to hear he was in London, but conjectured 
 he was gone about the publication of his book, took 
 his address, and said he would write to him in the 
 evening. 
 
 Sunday, qth June, 1822. Sent a letter to Mr. 
 Hazlitt to remit the money he had promised. 
 
 Monday, loth June. .... Received a 
 note from Mr. Ritchie, to say he would come the 
 next day and explain about money matters to me. 
 Had also a letter from the child 
 
 Tuesday, nth June. .... Mr. Ritchie 
 
Iviii. APPENDIX i. 
 
 came Told me that Mr. Hazlitt only 
 
 got 56^. from Glasgow, and nothing from Colburn, 
 so that he could not give me the money I asked, but 
 that he had told him whatever small sums of money 
 I wanted to go on with, he would let me have by 
 some means or other. 
 
 Thursday, i$th June [1822]. Mr. Bell called, 
 and said that Mr. Hazlitt had gone to Renton Inn, 
 but that he would remit me some money, which he 
 showed him he had for the purpose, as soon as the 
 oath was taken, which he said he was to give him 
 due notice of. .... Asked if I did not take 
 the oath to-morrow ? I said I had not heard from 
 Mr. Gray, but was in hourly expectation of it. ... 
 The note came soon after, appointing the next day. 
 
 Friday, i^th June. Mr. Bell called, and said he 
 was going to Mr. Gray's, and would come back for 
 me. Returned, and said Mr. Gray informed him he 
 could not be admitted, as he would be called on with 
 Mrs. Bell the next Friday as witnesses. So I under- 
 took to let him know when the ceremony was over. 
 [Here follows the description of the taking of the 
 oath.] .... On the whole, with the utmost 
 expedition they can use, and supposing no impedi- 
 ments, it will be five weeks from this day before all is 
 finished. Went down and reported this to Mr. and 
 Mrs. Bell : dined there. They told me that Mr. 
 Hazlitt took gol. to the Renton Inn with him. . . . 
 Mr. Bell undertook to send him a parcel that night 
 
APPENDIX I. Hx. 
 
 with the joyful intelligence of the oath being taken, 
 as he would get it sooner that way than by the post. 
 
 Saturday, i$th June. Mr. Bell called, and wrote 
 a letter to Mr. Hazlitt here, and made it into a 
 parcel, not having sent to him last night, as he 
 promised. Wrote to Peggy. Feel very faint to-day. 
 
 Sunday, i6t/i June [1822]. .... Adam 
 Bell called, while I was at breakfast, to say that Mr. 
 Hazlitt was come back, and had been at their house 
 the night before 
 
 Monday, I'jth June. Went to Mr. Bell as soon 
 as I had breakfasted. He told me that Mr. Ritchie 
 was to bring me 2ol. that day in part of payment, 
 and that the rest would he paid me as Mr. Hazlitt 
 could get it. That he had proposed only ten now, 
 but that Mr. Bell had told him that that would not 
 do, as I proposed taking some journey, and had no 
 money. Said he did not know anything about the 
 child. Went home very uneasy about him, as his 
 holidays were to begin this day ; and I fretted that 
 he should be left there, and thought he would be 
 very uneasy if they had not sent him to Winterslow, 
 and feel quite unhappy and forsaken ; and thought 
 on his father's refusing to tell me where he was to 
 be, till I was so nervous and hysterical I could not 
 stay in the house. 
 
 Went down to Mr. Bell's again at one, as they 
 told me he [Mr. H.] would be there about that time, 
 that I might see him myself, and know where the 
 
x. APPENDIX T. 
 
 child was. He was not come, and Mr. Bell did not 
 like my meeting him there. I told him if I could 
 not gain information of the child, I would set off to 
 London directly, and find him out, and leave the 
 business here just as it was. He then gave me a 
 note to send him [Mr. H.] about it, but I carried it 
 myself, and asked to see him. 
 
 They said he was out, but would return at three 
 
 o'clock. I left the note, and went at three. They 
 
 then said he would be back to dinner at four. I 
 
 wandered about between that and Mr. Bell's till 
 
 four ; then, going again, I met him by the way : he 
 
 gave me io/., and said I should have more soon by 
 
 V" Mr. Bell. I said I did not like Mr. Bell ; I had 
 
 ' rather he sent by Mr. Ritchie, which he said he 
 
 \ _would. 
 
 I asked about the child, and he said he was going 
 to write that night to Mr. John Hunt about him ; so 
 that the poor little fellow is really fretting, and think- 
 ing himself neglected 
 
 Mr. Bell said that he seemed quite enamoured of 
 a letter he had been writing to Patmore ; that in 
 their walk the day before he pulled it out of his 
 pocket twenty times, and wanted to read it to them ; 
 that he talked so loud, and acted so extravagantly, 
 that the people stood and stared at them as they 
 passed, and seemed to take him for a madman. . . 
 
 [The next twelve days were spent by Mrs. H. in 
 the tour to the Highlands and to Dublin. She. 
 returned on the 28th June.] 
 
APPENDIX I. Ixi. 
 
 Saturday, 2<)th June, 1822. Sent the child's 
 letter to his father with a note, telling him that I 
 was just returned from Dublin with four shillings and 
 sixpence in my pocket, and I wanted more money. 
 He came about two o'clock, and brought me ten 
 pounds, and said he did not think he was indebted to 
 me my quarter's money, as he had supplied me with 
 
 more than was necessary to keep me He 
 
 had been uneasy at not hearing from the child, 
 though he had sent him a pound and ordered him to 
 write. I remarked that the letter I sent him was 
 addressed to him, and I supposed the child did not 
 know how to direct to him. He said he would if he 
 had attended to what he told him. That he wrote 
 to Patmore, and desired him to see for the child, and 
 convey him to Mr. John Hunt's, and that in his 
 answer he said, " I have been to the school, and 
 rejoiced the poor little fellow's heart by bringing him 
 away with me, and in the afternoon he is going by 
 the stage to Mr. Hunt's* He has only been detained 
 two days after the holidays begun." . . . That 
 Mr. Prentice had told him last night it [the business] 
 was again put off another fortnight ; requested me to 
 write to Mr. Gray, to know whether I should be 
 called on next Friday, and if it would be necessary 
 for me to remain in Scotland after that time ; if not, 
 he thought I had better go on the Saturday by the 
 steamboat, as the accommodation was excellent, and 
 
 * At Taunton. 
 
Ixii. APPENDIX I. 
 
 it was very pleasant aud good company. That he 
 intended going by it himself, as soon as he could, 
 when the affair was over, and therefore I had better 
 set out first, as our being seen there together would 
 be awkward, and would look like making a mockery 
 of the lawyers here. Wished I would also write to 
 the child in the evening, as his nerves were in. such 
 an irritable state he was unable to do so. Both 
 which requests I complied with. 
 
 Monday, 1st July. Received a note from Mr. 
 Gray, to say I should not be called on for two or 
 three weeks, but without telling me how long I must 
 remain in Scotland. 
 
 Saturday, 6th July [1822].. . . . Met Mr. 
 Hazlitt and Mr. Henderson, who had just arrived [at 
 Dalkeith Palace] in a gig. Mr. H. said he had heard 
 again from Patmore, who saw the child last Tuesday, 
 and that he was well and happy. I told him of my 
 
 last letter and its contents [He] adverted 
 
 again to the awkwardness of our going back in the 
 same boat. I told him I had some thoughts of going 
 by boat to Liverpool and the rest by land, as I should 
 see more of the country that way ; which he seemed 
 to like. Asked me if I meant to go to Winterslow ? 
 Said, yes, but that I should be a week or two in 
 London first. He said he meant to go to Winter- 
 slow, aud try if he could write,* for he had been so 
 distracted the last five months he could do nothing. 
 
 * Mrs. H. had a house in the village, but Mr. H. put up at 
 the Hut. A strangely close juxtaposition I 
 
APPENDIX 1. Ixiii. 
 
 That he might also go to his mother's f for a short 
 time, and that he meant to take the child from school 
 at the half-quarter, and take him with him ; and that 
 after the holidays at Christmas he should return to 
 Mr. Dawson's again. Said he had not been to town 
 [London], and that we had better have no communi- 
 cation at present, but that when it was over he would 
 let me have the money as he could get it. Asked if 
 I had seen Roslin Castle, and said he was there last 
 Tuesday with Bell, and thought it a fine place. Mr. 
 Henderson shook hands, and made many apologies 
 for not recollecting me, and said I looked very well, 
 but that from my speaking to Mr. H. about the 
 
 pictures, he had taken me for an artist 
 
 The two gentlemen passed me in their gig as I was 
 returning. 
 
 Wednesday, loth July [1822]. Called on Mr. 
 Ritchie, to ask if he thought I should finish the 
 business on Monday ? I told him that I wanted to 
 know what was to be done about my own payment, 
 as Mr. Hazlitt now seemed to demur to the one 
 quarter that he had all along agreed to, and there 
 was also the 2ol. that I was to have as a present. He 
 said that he was at present very much engaged in 
 some business which would end in two days more, 
 and that then, if I was at all apprehensive about it, 
 he would write to, or see, Mr. Hazlitt on the subject. 
 
 Thursday, 1 1 th July. Met Mr. Hazlitt in 
 
 + At Alphington, near Exeter. 
 
Ixiv. APPENDIX I. 
 
 Catherine Street, and asked him what I was to do if 
 Mr. Gray sent in my bill to me, and he said I had 
 nothing to do with it, for that he had paid Mr. 
 Prentice 4O/., which was nearly the whole expense for 
 both of them. I said that was what Mr. Ritchie, to 
 whom I had spoken about it, thought. He said Mr. 
 Ritchie had nothing at all to do with it, and I 
 remarked that he was the person he had sent to me 
 about it, and that he did not think it would finish on 
 Monday; and [I] asked if he had heard anything 
 more ? He said no, but he thought it would be 
 Monday or Tuesday ; and as soon as it was done, he 
 wished I would come to him to finally settle matters, 
 as he had some things to say, and I told him I 
 would. I was rather flurried at meeting him, and 
 totally forgot many things I wished to have said, 
 which vexed me afterwards. 
 
 Friday -, \2th July. On my return [from a walk to 
 Holyrood House] I found a note from Mr. Gray, 
 appointing next Wednesday for my attendance, and 
 desiring a " payment of 2Ol. towards the expense. 
 I took it to Mr. Bell's ; he and Mr. Hazlitt went out 
 at the back door as I went in at the front. I gave 
 the message to Mrs. Bell, who told me Mr. Hazlitt 
 had been to Mr. Gray's. . . 
 
 Saturday, i$th July. Met Mr. Hazlitt at the foot 
 of my stairs, coming to me. He said that Mr. Gray 
 was to have the money out of what he had paid Mr. 
 
 Prentice I told him he need not be" 
 
 uneasy about meeting me in the steamboat, for I did 
 
APPENDIX I. 1XV. 
 
 not intend to go that way. Asked him if he thought 
 it a good collection of pictures at Dalkeith House 
 [this is so characteristic!]; he said no, very poor. 
 
 Wednesday, i^th July. Mr. Bell called between 
 
 ten and eleven He had come, by Mr. 
 
 Gray's desire, to accompany me to the court, and was 
 himself cited as a witness. [Mrs. H. then describes 
 going to the court, but the proceedings were pro 
 formd, as the depositions had been arranged to be 
 taken at Mr. Bell's private residence.] Returned, 
 and wrote a note to Mr. Hazlitt, to have in case he 
 was out, saying that I would call on him at two 
 
 o'clock. I left it Saw Mr. Hazlitt at 
 
 four o'clock ; he was at dinner ; but I stopped and 
 drank tea with him. [ ! ] He told me that all was 
 done now, unless Mrs. Bell should make any demur 
 
 in the part required of her Said he 
 
 would set off to London by the mail that night, 
 though he thought he should be detained by illness 
 or die on the road, for he had been penned up in that 
 house for five months .... unable to do any 
 work ; and he thought he had lost the job to Italy, 
 but to get out of Scotland would seem like the road 
 to Paradise. / fold him* he Jmd done a most in- 
 
 * The italics are mine. This passage must find room here 
 in spite of my scruples. The affair was well known, and was 
 soon in print in the ' Liber Amoris.' To conceal it would be 
 useless ; and all that I can do is to place it in its true light 
 before the world. Mrs. H. was a plaia - spoken woman, 
 without any false delicacy about her. She was perfect ij 
 acquainted with the whole history of the matter. --[J/r, W- 
 C. Hazlitfs note,] 
 
Ixvi. APPENDIX I. 
 
 judicious thing in publishing what he did in the 
 [New Monthly] Magazine about Sarah Walker, par- 
 ticularly at this time, and that he might be sure it 
 would be made use of against him, and that every" 
 body in London had thought it a most improper 
 thing, and Mr. John Hunt was quite sorry that he 
 had so committed himself* 
 
 He said that he was sorry for [it], but that it was 
 done without his knowledge or consent. That Colburn 
 had got hold of it by mistake, with other papers, and 
 published it without sending him the proofs. He 
 asked me where I should be in town, and I told him 
 at Christie's. He inquired what kind of people they 
 were. I told him a very respectable quiet young 
 couple lately married. He desired me to take care of 
 rrryself, and keep up a respectable appearance, as I 
 had money enough to do so. He\ wished he could 
 marry some woman with a good fortune, that he 
 might not be under the necessity of writing another 
 line ; and be enabled to provide for the child, and do 
 something for John ; and that now his name was 
 known in the literary world, he thought there was a 
 chance for it, though he could not pretend to any- 
 thing of the kind before I left Mr. 
 
 Henderson with him, pressing him to accompany him 
 
 to the Highlands ; but he seemed, after some hesita- 
 
 * See note at end. 
 
 + The italics are mine. The John referred to presently 
 was, of course, his brother. This passage is very remarkable. 
 {Mr. W. C. HazliWs note.] 
 
APPENDIX I. Ixvii. 
 
 tion, to prefer going to London, though I left the 
 matter uncertain. He [Mr. Henderson] had been 
 dawdling backward and forward about it for three 
 weeks, wishing to have the credit of taking him 
 there, but grudging the money, though he was living 
 upon us for a week together in London. 
 
 Mr. Hazlitt said that, if he went to Winterslow, he 
 would take the child, as he wished to have him a 
 little with him ; so I thought he had better go with 
 the first that went, as I did not think of staying in 
 town more than two or three weeks, and then making 
 some stay at Winterslow, and proceeding afterwards 
 to Crediton.* He said we could settle that best in 
 town. 
 
 Mrs. Dow [Mr. H.'s landlady] brought in the bill, 
 which he just looked at and said, " Is that the 
 whole, ma'am ? " " Yes, sir ; you had better look 
 over it, and see that it is correct, if you please." 
 "That, ma'am," he said, "is one of the troubles I 
 get rid of. I never do it." "You are a very indolent 
 man, sir." " There is a balance of twenty-four 
 shillings, ma'am ; can you have so much confidence 
 in me as to let me have that ?" "No, sir, I can't do 
 that, for I have not the money." "I shall be glad 
 then, ma'am, if you will let me have the four 
 shillings, and you may pay the pound to Mrs. Hazlitt 
 
 * Where Mr. H.'s relations were settled I This is also a 
 curious part of the business. My grandmother was intimate 
 and friendly with the Hazlitts to the last, and frequently 
 visited them here. [Mr. W. C. Hazlitfs note.] 
 
Ixviii. APPENDIX i. 
 
 on Saturday, as when it comes, she will be here." 
 " Yes, sir, and Mrs. Hazlitt may look over the bill, if 
 she pleases." 
 
 Thursday, iSfk July [1822]. She returned with 
 the four shillings, saying she had been to two or 
 
 three places to get that Went to Mr. 
 
 Ritchie, who gave me the note-of-hand for fifty 
 pounds at six months, dated 6th May, and the copy 
 
 of memorandums signed by Mr. Hazlitt 
 
 He said he had expected him and Mr. Henderson to 
 supper last night, but they did not come. I told 
 him he wished to go to London by the mail, and 
 
 probably had done so He said he must 
 
 repeat that he thought we had taken the step most 
 
 advisable for both parties Called at his 
 
 [Mr. H.'s] lodgings to inquire if he went by the mail. 
 Mrs. Dow said yes ; he left there about eight o'clock. 
 . . . . Called at the coach-office, and they said 
 Mr. Hazlitt did not go by the mail. Saw the waiter 
 at the inn door, who said he went by the steamboat 
 at eight o'clock this morning. . , . . . 
 
 Carried back Mrs. Bell's book. Mr. Bell said I 
 was a great fool to have acceded to his wish for a 
 divorce, but that it was now done, and he thought I 
 had better get some old rich Scotch lord, and marry 
 here. "I was now Miss Stoddart, and was I not 
 glad of that ? " " No ; I had no intention of marry- 
 ing, and should not do what he talked of." He said 
 I must needs marry ; and I told him I saw no such 
 necessity " 
 
APPBNDIX I. Ixix. 
 
 This is the conclusion. Mrs. Hazlitt sailed on the 
 following day, at 2 p.m., in the smack Favourite 
 from Leith. 
 
PASSAGE IN ESSAY "ON GREAT AND LITTLE 
 THINGS" (WRITTEN JANUARY, 1821, PRINTED IN 
 NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE, N.S. VOL. iv. 1822 ; 
 
 AND REPRINTED IN "TABLE TALK") REFERRED 
 
 TO IN MRS. HAZLITT'S DIARY, PP. LXV. AND LXVI. 
 
 "This is the misery of unequal matches. The woman 
 cannot easily forget, or think that others forget, her 
 origin ; and with perhaps superior sense and beauty, 
 keeps painfully in the back-ground. It is worse 
 when she braves this conscious feeling, and displays 
 all the insolence of the upstart and affected fine lady. 
 But shouldst thou ever, my Infelice, grace my home 
 with thy loved presence, as thou hast cheered my 
 hopes with thy smile, thou wilt conquer all hearts 
 with thy prevailing gentleness, arid I will show the 
 world what Shakespear's women were ! Some 
 gallants set their hearts on princesses; others descend 
 in imagination to women of quality ; others are mad 
 after opera-singers. For my part, I am shy even of 
 actresses, and should not think of leaving my card 
 with Madame Vestris. I am for none of these bonnes 
 fortunes ; but for a list of humble beauties, servant- 
 maids and shepherd-girls, with their red elbows, hard 
 
APPENDIX i. 'Ixxi. 
 
 hands, black stockings and mob-caps, I could furnish 
 out a gallery equal to Cowley's, and paint them half 
 as well. Oh ! might I but attempt a description of 
 some of them in poetic prose, Don Juan would forget 
 his Julia, and Mr. Davison might both print and 
 publish this volume. I agree so far with Horace, and 
 differ with Montaigne. I admire the Clementinas 
 and Clarissas at a distance : the Pamelas and Fannys 
 of Richardson and Fielding make my blood tingle. 
 I have written love-letters to such in my time, d^un 
 pathetique a faire fendre les rochers, and with about 
 as much effect as if they had been addressed to 
 stone. The simpletons only laughed, and said, that 
 " those were not the sort of things to gain the 
 affections." I wish I had kept copies in my own 
 justification. What is worse, I have an utter aversion 
 to blue stockings. I do not care a fig for any woman 
 .-4hat knows even what an author means. If I know 
 C that she has read anything I have written, I cut her 
 V acquaintance immediately. This sort of literary inter- 
 course with me passes for nothing. Her critical and 
 scientific acquirements are carrying coals to New- 
 castle. I do not want to be told that I have published 
 such or such a work. I knew all this before. It 
 makes no addition to my sense of power. I do not 
 wish the affair to be brought about in that way. I 
 would have her read my soul : she should understand 
 the language of the heart : she should know what I 
 am, as if she were another self ! She should love me 
 for myself alone. I like myself without any reason : 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 I*would have her do so too. This is not very reason- 
 able. I abstract from my temptations to admire all 
 the circumstances of dress, birth, breeding, fortune ; 
 and I would not willingly put forward my own pre- 
 tensions, whatever they may be. The image of some 
 fair creature is engraven on my inmost soul ; it is on 
 that I build my claim to her regard, and expect her to 
 see into my heart, as I see her form always before me. 
 Wherever she treads, pale primroses, like her face, 
 vernal hyacinths, like her brow, spring up beneath her 
 feet, and music hangs on every bough : but all is cold, 
 barren, and desolate without her. Thus I feel, and 
 thus I think. But have I ever told her so ? No. Or 
 if I did, would she understand it ? No. I " hunt the 
 wind, I worship a statue, cry aloud to the desert." 
 To see beauty is not to be beautiful, to pine in love is 
 not to be loved again. I always was inclined to raise 
 and magnify the power of Love. I thought that his 
 sweet power should only be exerted to join together 
 the loveliest forms and fondest hearts ; that none but 
 those in whom his godhead shone putwardly, and was 
 inly felt, should ever partake of his triumphs ; and I 
 stood and gazed at a distance, as unworthy to mingle 
 in so bright a throng, and did not (even for a moment) 
 wish to tarnish the glory of so fair a vision by being 
 myself admitted into it. I say this was my notion 
 once, but God knows it was one of the errors of my 
 youth. For coming nearer to look, I saw the maimed, 
 the blind, and the halt enter in, the crooked and the 
 dwarf, the ugly, the old and impotent, the man of 
 
APPENDIX i. Ixxiii. 
 
 pleasure and the man of the world, the dapper and the 
 pert, the vain and shallow boaster, the fool and the 
 pedant, the ignorant and brutal, and all that is farthest 
 removed from earth's fairest-born, and the pride of 
 human life. Seeing all these enter the courts of Love, 
 and thinking that I also might venture in under favour 
 of the crowd, but finding myself rejected, I fancied 
 (I might be wrong) that it was not so much because I 
 was below, as above the common standard. I did 
 feel, but I was ashamed to feel, mortified at my repulse, 
 when I saw the meanest of mankind, the very scum 
 and refuse, all creeping things and every obscene 
 creature, enter in before me. I seemed a species by 
 myself. I took a pride even in my disgrace : and 
 concluded I had elsewhere my inheritance ! The only 
 thing I ever piqued myself upon was the writing the 
 1 ' Essay on the Principles of Human Action ' ' * a work 
 that no woman ever read, or would ever comprehend 
 the meaning of. But if I do not build my claim to 
 regard on the pretensions I have, how can I build it 
 on those I am totally without ? Or why do I complain 
 and expect to gather grapes of thorns, or figs of 
 thistles ? Thought has in me cancelled pleasure ; and 
 this dark forehead, bent upon truth, is the rock on 
 which all affection has split. And thus I waste my 
 life in one long sigh ; nor ever (till too late) beheld a 
 gentle face turned gently upon mine ; . . . . But no ! not 
 
 * Published in 1805, but the composition of the work, though 
 a thin octavo, cost the author seven or eight years' labour. 
 
 [ED.] 
 
Ixxiv. APPENDIX I. 
 
 too late, if that face, pure, modest, downcast, tender, 
 with angel sweetness, not only gladdens the prospect 
 of the future, but sheds its radiance on the past, 
 smiling in tears. A purple light hovers round my 
 head. The air of love is in the room. As I look at 
 my long-neglected copy of the Death of Clorinda,* 
 golden gleams play upon the canvas, as they used 
 when I painted it. The flowers of Hope and Joy 
 springing up in my mind, recal the time when they 
 first bloomed there. The years that are fled knock at 
 the door and enter. I am in the Louvre once more. 
 The sun of Austerlitz has not set. It still shines 
 here in my heart ; and he, the son of glory, is not 
 dead, nor ever shall, to me. I am as when my life 
 began. The rainbow is in the sky again. I see the 
 skirts of the departed years. All that I have thought 
 and felt has not been in vain. I am not utterly 
 worthless, unregarded ; nor shall I die and wither of 
 pure scorn. Now could I sit on the tomb of Liberty, 
 and write a Hymn to Love. Oh ! if I am deceived, 
 let me be deceived still. Let me live in the Elysium 
 of those soft looks ; poison me with kisses, kill me 
 with smiles ; but still mock me with thy love ! f 
 
 , By Lana, Titian's contemporary. It was copied by the 
 writer in 1802, and is still in good preservation. [En.] 
 
 + I beg the reader to consider this passage merely as a 
 specimen of the mock-heroic style, and as having nothing to 
 do with any real facts or feelings. 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 EXTRACTS OF LETTERS FROM W. HAZLITT TO 
 P. G. PATMORE (DATED BETWEEN MARCH AND 
 JULY, 1822). 
 
 "What have I suffered since I parted with you! 
 A raging fire in my heart and in my brain, that I 
 thought would drive me mad. The steam-boat 
 seemed a prison a hell and the everlasting waters 
 an unendurable repetition of the same idea my woes. 
 The abyss was before me, and her face, where all my 
 peace was centred all lost ! I felt the eternity of 
 punishment in this world. Mocked, mocked by her 
 in whom I placed my hope writhing, withering in 
 misery and despair, caused by one who hardens 
 herself against me. I wished for courage to throw 
 myself into the waters ; but I could not even do that 
 and my little boy, too, prevented me, when I 
 thought of his face at hearing of his father's death, 
 and his desolation in life. 
 
 " You see she all along hated me (< I always told 
 you I had no affection for you '), and only played with 
 
Ixxvi. APPENDIX II. 
 
 " I am a little, a very little, better to-day. Would 
 it were quietly over, and that this form, made to be 
 loathed, were hid out of sight of cold, sullen eyes. 
 I thought of the breakfasts I had promised myself 
 with her, of those I had had with her, standing and 
 listening to my true vows ; and compared them to the 
 one I had this morning. The thought choked me. 
 The people even take notice of my dumb despair, and 
 pity me. What can be done ? I cannot forget her, 
 and I can find no other like what she seemed. I 
 should like you to see her, and learn whether I 
 may come back again as before, and whether she will 
 see and talk to me as an old friend. Do as you think 
 best." 
 
 "I got your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod, 
 not only with submission, but with gratitude. Your 
 rebukes of me and your defence of her are the only 
 things that save my soul from hell. She is rny 
 soul's idol, and, believe me, those words of yours 
 applied to the dear creature (' to lip a chaste one and 
 suppose her wanton ') were balm and rapture to me. 
 
 "Be it known to you, that while I write this, I am 
 drinking ale* at the Black Bull, celebrated in Black- 
 wood's. It is owing to your letter. Could I think 
 her ' honest,' I am proof even against Edinburgh ale ! 
 
 He had not for years previously touched anything but 
 water, except his beloved tea, nor did he afterwards, up to th 
 period of his last illness. 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 She, by her silence, makes my ' dark hour,' and you 
 dissipate it for four-and-twenty hours. 
 
 ****** 
 
 " I have seen the great little man,f and he is very 
 gracious to me. I tell him I am dull and out of 
 spirits, but he says he cannot perceive it. He is a 
 person of infinite vivacity. My Sardanapalus is to 
 be in.}: 
 
 " In my judgment, Myrrha is just like , 
 
 only I am not like Sardanapalus. 
 
 " Do you think if she knew how I love her, my 
 depressions and my altitudes, my wanderings and my 
 pertinacity, it would not melt her ? She knows it all ! 
 I don't believe that any human being was ever courted 
 more passionately than she has been by me. As 
 Rousseau said of Madame d'Houdetot (forgive the 
 allusion), my soul has found a tongue in speaking to 
 her, and I have talked to her in the divine language 
 of love. Yet she says she is insensible to it. Am I 
 to believe her or you ? You ; for I wish it to mad- 
 ness." 
 
 " The deed is done, and I am virtually a free man. 
 
 * * * What had I better do in these 
 
 circumstances ? I dare not write to her I dare not 
 
 write to her father. She has shot me through with 
 
 t Jeffrey. 
 
 t An article in the Edinburgh Review on Byron's tragedy 
 so called. 
 
Ixxviii. APPENDIX II. 
 
 poisoned arrows, and I think another 'winged wound ' 
 would finish me. It is a pleasant sort of balm she 
 has left in my heart. One thing I agree with you in 
 it will remain there for ever but yet not long. It 
 festers and consumes me. If it were not for my little 
 boy, whose face I see struck blank at the news, and 
 looking through the world for pity, and meeting with 
 contempt, I should soon settle the question by my 
 death. That is the only thought that brings my 
 wandering reason to an anchor that excites the least 
 interest, or gives me fortitude to bear up against what 
 I am doomed to feel for the ungrateful. Otherwise, 
 I am dead to all but the agony of what I have lost. 
 She was my life it is gone from me, and I am grown 
 spectral. If it is a place I know, it reminds me of 
 her of the way in which my fond heart brooded over 
 her. If it is a strange place, it is desolate, hateful, 
 barren of all interest for nothing touches me but what 
 has a reference to her. There is only she in the world 
 1 the false, the fair, the inexpressive she.' If the 
 clock strikes, the sound jars me, for a million of hours 
 will never bring peace to my breast. The light 
 startles me, the darkness terrifies me I seem falling 
 into a pit, without a hand to help me. She came (I 
 knew not how) and sat by my side, and was folded in 
 my arms, a vision of love and joy as if she had 
 dropped from the heavens, to bless me by some 
 special dispensation of a favouring Providence to 
 make me amends for all. And now, without 
 any fault of mine but too much love, she has vanished 
 
APPENDIX II. Ixxix. 
 
 from me, and I am left to wither. My heart is torn 
 out of me, and every feeling for which I wished to 
 live. It is like a dream, an enchantment it torments 
 me, and makes me mad. I lie down with it I rise 
 up with it and I see no chance of repose. I grasp 
 at a shadow I try to undo the past, or to make that 
 mockery real and weep with rage and pity over my 
 own weakness and misery. * * 
 
 "I had hopes, I had prospects to come the 
 flattering of something like fame a pleasure in 
 writing health even would have come back to me 
 with her smile. She has blighted all turned all to 
 poison and drivelling tears. Yet the barbed arrow 
 is in my heart I can neither endure it nor draw it out, 
 for with it flows my life's blood. I had dwelt too 
 long upon Truth to trust myself with the immortal 
 
 thoughts of love. That might have 
 
 been mine and now never can : these are the two 
 sole propositions that for ever stare me in the face, 
 and look ghastly in at my poor brain. I am in some 
 i /"sense proud that I can feel this dreadful passion. It 
 \ makes me a kind of peer in the kingdom of love. 
 !But I could have wished it had been for an object 
 that, at least, could have understood its value and 
 pitied its excess. * * * The gates of 
 Paradise were once open to me, and I blushed to 
 enter but with the golden keys of love ! I would die 
 but her lover my love of her ought not to die. 
 When I am dead, who will love her as I have done ? 
 If she should be in misfortune, who will comfort her ? 
 
1XXX. APPENDIX II. 
 
 When she is old, who will look in her face and bless 
 her ? * * * Oh, answer me, to save me 
 if possible for her and from myself ! 
 
 " Will you call at Mr. 's school, and tell my 
 
 little boy I'll write to him or see him on Saturday 
 morning. Poor little fellow ! " 
 
 " Your letter raised me a moment from the depths 
 of despair ; but, not hearing from you yesterday or 
 to-day (as I hoped), I am gone back again. You say 
 I want to get rid of her. I hope you are more right 
 in your conjectures about her than in this about me. 
 Oh, no ! believe it, I love her as I do my own soul : 
 my heart is wedded to her, be she what she may ; 
 and I would not hesitate a moment between her and 
 an angel from heaven. I grant all you say about my 
 self-tormenting madness; but has it been without 
 cause ? Has she not refused me again and again with 
 scorn and abhorence ? * * * ' She can 
 make no more confidences ! ' These words ring for 
 ever in my ears, and will be my deathwatch. My 
 poor fond heart, that brood.ed over her, and the 
 remains of her affections, as my only hope of comfort 
 upon earth, cannot brook or survive this vulgar 
 degradation. Who is there so low as 1 ? Who is 
 there besides, after the homage I have paid her, and 
 the caresses she has lavished on me, so vile, so filthy, 
 so abhorrent to love, to whom such an indignity could 
 have happened ? When I think of this (and I think 
 
APPENDIX II. Ixxxi. 
 
 of it for ever, except when I read your letters), the 
 air I breathe stifles me. I am pent up in burning 
 impotent desires, which can find no vent or object. 
 I am hated, repulsed, bemocked, by all I love. I 
 cannot stay in any place, and find no rest or 
 interruption from the thought of her contempt, and 
 her ingratitude. I can do nothing. What is the use 
 of all I have done ? Is it not that my thinking beyond 
 my strength, my feeling more than I ought about 
 so many things, has withered me up, and made me 
 a thing for love to shrink from and wonder at ? Who 
 could ever feel that peace from the touch of her hand 
 that I have done ; and is it not torn for ever from me ? 
 My state is, that I feel I shall never lie down again 
 at night, nor rise up of a morning in peace, nor ever 
 behold my little boy's face with pleasure while I live, 
 unless I am restored to her favour. Instead of that 
 delicious feeling I had when she was heavenly kind to 
 me, and my heart softened and melted in its own 
 tenderness and her sweetuess, I am now enclosed in 
 a dungeon of despair. The sky is marble, like my 
 thoughts; nature is dead without me, as hope is 
 within me ; no object can give me one gleam of 
 satisfaction now, or the prospect of it in time to come. 
 I wander, or rather crawl, by the seaside; and the 
 eternal ocean, and lasting despair, and her face, are 
 before me. Hated, mocked by her on whom my 
 heart by its last fibre hung. I wake with her by my 
 side, not as my sweet companion, but as the corpse 
 of my love, without a heart in her cold, insensible, 
 
Ixxxii. APPENDIX II. 
 
 or struggling from me ; and the worm gnaws me, and 
 the sting of unrequited love, and the canker of a 
 hopeless, endless sorrow. I have lost the taste of my 
 food by feverish anxiety ; and my tea, which used to 
 refresh me when I got up, has no moisture in it. Oh ? 
 cold, solitary, sepulchral breakfasts, compared to 
 those which I made when she was standing by my side ; 
 my Eve, my guardian angel, my wife, my sister, my 
 sweet friend, my all. * * * Ah ! what I suffer 
 now, shows only what I have felt before. 
 
 " But you say, ' The girl is a good girl, if there is 
 goodness in human nature.' I thank you for those 
 words, and I will fall down and worship you, if you 
 can prove them true ; and I would not do much less 
 to him that proves her a demon. 
 
 " Do let me know if anything has passed ; suspense 
 is my greatest torment. I am going to Renton Inn, 
 to see if I can work a little." 
 
 " I ought to have written you before ; but since I 
 received your letter I have been in a sort of hell. I 
 would put an end to my torments at once, but that I 
 am as great a coward as I am a fool. Do you know 
 that I have not had a word of answer from her since ? 
 What can be the reason? Is she offended at my 
 letting you know she wrote to me ? or is it some new 
 amour? I wrote to her in the tenderest, most 
 respectful manner poured my soul at her feet and 
 this is the way she serves me ! Can you account for 
 
APPENDIX ii. Ixxxiii. 
 
 it, except on the admission of my worst suspicion ? 
 God ! can I bear to think of her so or that I am 
 scorned and made sport of by the creature to whom I 
 have given my very heart ? I feel like one of the 
 damned. To be hated, loathed as I have been all my 
 life, and to feel the utter impossibility of its ever being 
 otherwise while I live, take what pains I may ! I sit 
 and cry my eyes out. My weakness grows upon me, 
 and I have no hope left, unless I could lose my senses 
 quite. I think I should like this. To forget ah ! to 
 forget there would be something in that to be an--'' 
 idiot for some few years, and then wake up a poor, 
 wretched, old man, to recollect my misery as past, 
 and die ! Yet, oh ! with her, only a little while ago, 
 I had different hopes forfeited for nothing that I 
 know of." 
 
 " I was in hopes to have got away by the steam- 
 boat to-morrow, but owing to * * * I 
 cannot, and may not be in town till another week, 
 unless I come by the mail, which I am strongly 
 tempted to do. In the latter case, I shall be there on 
 Saturday evening. Will you look in and see, about 
 eight o'clock ? I wish much to see you, and her, and 
 John Hunt, and my little boy, once more ; and then, 
 if she is not what she once was to me, I care not if I 
 die that instant.' ' 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 Many of the letters in the " Nouvelle Heloise " are 
 among the most beautiful and affecting effusions 
 which exist in those works of fiction that concern 
 themselves with sentiment and passion, rather than 
 with incident and action. But, I venture to say, that 
 there is nothing in the "Nouvelle Heloise " equal in 
 passion and pathos to the foregoing extracts. And 
 the reason is, that the latter are actual and immediate 
 transcripts from the human heart. In this respect 
 the letters from which these extracts are taken are, 
 perhaps, more beautiful and touching than anything 
 of their kind that was ever given to the world. But 
 I am far from doubting that innumerable others exist, 
 equalling them in all the qualities in which they excel ; 
 for real and intense passion levels all ranks of intellect, 
 laughs learning and worldly wisdom to scorn, and 
 invests the common-places of life with the highest 
 attributes of poetry and eloquence. 
 
 Perhaps the published writings most resembling 
 these letters in the depth and intensity of the passion 
 they embody and convey, are the celebrated letters 
 addressed by Mary Woolstoncraft fo Imlay. 
 
 [P. G. PATMORE]. 
 
APPENDIX III. 
 
 LETTERS IN "MEMOIRS" ONLY PARTIALLY IN- 
 CLUDED IN THE " LIBER AMORIS," AND MR. PAT- 
 MORE'S "MY FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES." 
 
 "London, January lyth [1822]. 
 " SIR, 
 
 "Dr. Read sent the "London Magazine," with 
 compliments and thanks; no letters or parcels, except 
 the one which I have sent with the * Magazine," 
 according to your directions. Mr. Lamb sent for the 
 things which you left in our care, likewise a cravat 
 which was sent with them. I send my thanks for 
 your kind offer, but must decline accepting it. Baby 
 is quite well. The first floor is occupied at present ; 
 it is quite uncertain when it will be disengaged. 
 
 "My family send their best respects to you. I 
 hope, sir, your little son is quite well. 
 
 " From yours respectfully, 
 
 "S. WALKER. 
 "W. Hazlitt, Esq." 
 
 "It is well I had finished Colburn's work* before 
 all this came upon me. It is one comfort I have 
 * The second volume of "Table Talk." 
 
IXXXVI. APPENDIX III. 
 
 done that. ... I write this on the supposition 
 that Mrs. H. may still come here, and that I may be 
 left in suspense a week or two longer. But, for 
 God's sake, don't go near the place on my account. 
 Direct to me at the post-office, and if I return to 
 town directly, as I fear, I will leave word for them to 
 forward the letter to me in London not in S. B. 
 . . . . I have finished the book of my conversa- 
 tions with her, which I call * Liber Amoris.' 
 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 "W. H.* 
 " Edinburgh, March 30. 
 
 "P.S. I have seen the great little man,f and he 
 is very gracious to me. Et sa femme aussi ! I tell 
 him I am dull and out of spirits. He says he cannot 
 perceive it. He is a person of an infinite vivacity. 
 My Sardanapalus J is to be in. In my judgment 
 Myrrha is most like S.W., only I am not like Sar- 
 danapalus. 
 
 " P. G. Patmore, Esq., 
 
 u 12, Greek Street, Soho, London." 
 
 * I am quoting from the original autograph letter : in the 
 printed copy the text differs. 
 
 + Jeffrey. 
 
 t The review of Byron's "Sardanapalus " in the 
 "Edinburgh." 
 
APPENDIX III. IxXXVli. 
 
 [April 7, 1822.] 
 "MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 " I received your letter this morning with grati- 
 tude. I have felt somewhat easier since. It showed 
 your interest in my vexations, and also that you knew 
 nothing worse than I did. I cannot describe the 
 weakness of mind to which she has reduced me. I 
 am come back to Edinburgh about this cursed busi- 
 ness, and Mrs. H. is coming down next week. . . . 
 A thought has struck me. Her father has a bill of 
 mine for lol. unhonoured, about which I tipped her a 
 cavalier epistle ten days ago, saying I should be in 
 town this week, and 'would call and take it up,' but 
 nothing reproachful. Now if you can get Colburn, 
 who has a deposit of 220 pp. of the new volume, to 
 come down with io/., you might call and take up the 
 aforesaid bill, saying that I am prevented from 
 coming to town, as I expected, by the business I 
 
 came about 
 
 "W. H. 
 
 "P.S. Could you fill up two blanks for me in 
 an essay on Burleigh House in Colburn's hands, 
 one, Lamb's Description of the Sports in the Forest : 
 see John Woodvil, 
 
 To see the sun to bed, and to arise, &c.; 
 
 the other, Northcote's account of Claude Lorraine in 
 his Vision of a Painter at the end of his life of Sir 
 Joshua ? . . . . 
 
Ixxxviii. APPENDIX in. 
 
 "FINAL. Don't go at all To think 
 
 that I should feel as I have done for such a monster ! 
 "P. G. Patmore, Esq., 
 
 "12, Greek Street, Soho, London." 
 
 [Edinburgh, April 21, 1822.] 
 " MY DEAR PATMORE, 
 
 "I got your letter this morning, and I kiss the rod 
 not only with submission but gratitude. Your re- 
 bukes of me and your defences of her are the only 
 things that save me .... Be it known to you that while 
 I write this I am drinking ale at the Black Bull, 
 celebrated in Blackwood. It is owing to your letter. 
 Could I think the love honest, I am proof against 
 Edinburgh ale .... Mrs. H. is actually on her way 
 here. I was going to set off home .... when coming 
 up Leith Walk I met an old friend come down here 
 to settle, who said, * I saw your wife at the wharf. 
 
 She had just paid passage by the <Supcrl? This 
 
 Bell whom I met is the very man to negotiate the 
 business between us. Should the business succeed, 
 and I should be free, do you think S. W. will be 
 
 Mrs. ? If she "will she shall ; and to call her so 
 
 to you, or to hear her called so by others, will be 
 
 music to my ears such as they never heard [!] 
 
 How I sometimes think of the time I first saw the 
 
 sweet apparition, August 16, 1820! I am glad 
 
 you go on swimmingly with the N[ew] M[onthly] 
 
APPENDIX III. Ixxxix. 
 
 M[agazine]. I shall be back in a week or a month. 
 I won't write to her. 
 
 [No signature]. 
 
 " I wish Colburn would send me word what he is 
 about. Tell him what I am about, if you think it 
 wise to do so. 
 
 "P. G. Patmore, Esq., 
 
 "12, Greek Street, Soho, London." 
 
 [Between June 3 and June 9, 1822, but undated]. 
 
 " MY ONLY FRIEND, 
 
 " I should like you to fetch the MS S., and then to 
 ascertain for me whether I had better return there or 
 not, as soon as this affair is over. I cannot give her up 
 without an absolute certainty. Only, however, sound 
 the matter by saying, for instance, that you are 
 desired to get me a lodging, and that you believe 
 I should prefer being there to being anywhere else. 
 You may say that the affair of the divorce is over, 
 
 and that I am gone a tour in the Highlands 
 
 Ours was the sweetest friendship. Oh ! might the 
 delusion be renewed, that I might die in it ! Test 
 her through some one who will satisfy my soul I 
 have lost only a lonely frail one that I was not likely 
 
 to gain by true love. I am going to see K , to 
 
 get him to go with me to the Highlands, and talk 
 about her. I shall be back Thursday week, to 
 
XC. APPENDIX III. 
 
 appear in court pro forma the next day 
 
 " Send me a line about my little boy. 
 
 " W.H. 
 " 10, George Street, 
 
 "Edinburgh." 
 
 "Renton Inn, Berwickshire, 
 
 [June 9, 1822]. 
 "MY DEAR PATMORE, 
 
 "Your letter raised me for a moment from the 
 depths of despair, but not hearing from you yesterday 
 or to-day, as I hoped, I am gone back again. . . . 
 I grant all you say about my self- tormenting mad- 
 ness, but has it been without cause ? When I think 
 of this, and I think of it for ever (except when I 
 read your letters), the air I breathe stifles me. . . 
 I can do nothing. What is the use of all I have 
 done ? Is it not this thinking beyond my strength, 
 my feeling more than I ought about so many things, 
 that has withered me up, and made me a thing for 
 love to shrink from and wonder at ? .... My 
 state is that I feel I shall never lie down again at 
 night nor rise up of a morning in peace, nor ever 
 behold my little boy's face with pleasure, while I 
 live, unless I am restored to her favour. ... I 
 wander, or rather crawl, by the sea-side, and the 
 eternal ocean, and lasting despair, and her face are 
 
 before me Do let me know if anything 
 
 has passed : suspense is my greatest torment. Jeffrey 
 
APPENDIX III. XC1. 
 
 (to whom I did a little unfold) came down with 
 ioo/., to give me time to recover, and I am going to 
 Renton Inn to see if I can work a little in the three 
 weeks before it will be over, if all goes well. Tell 
 Colburn to send the 'Table Talk' to him, 92, George 
 Street, Edinburgh, unless he is mad, and wants to 
 ruin me. . . . Write on the receipt of this, and 
 believe me yours unspeakably obliged, 
 
 W.H." 
 
 [Renton Inn, Berwickshire, 
 
 June 18, 1822.] 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 "Here I am at Renton, amid the hills and groves 
 which I greeted in their barrenness in winter, but 
 which have now put on their full green attire, that 
 shows lovely in this northern twilight, but speaks a 
 tale of sadness to this heart, widowed of its last and 
 / its dearest, its only hope. For a man who writes 
 v .. such nonsense I write a good hand. Musing over 
 my only subject (Othello's occupation, alas! is gone). 
 I have at last hit upon a truth that, if true, explains 
 all, and satisfies me. You will by this time probably 
 know something, from having called and seen how 
 the land lies, that will make you a judge how far I 
 have stepped into madness in my conjectures. If I 
 am right, all engines set at work at once that punish 
 ungrateful woman ! Oh, lovely Renton Inn ! here I 
 wrote a volume of Essays; here I wrote my enamoured 
 
XC11. APPENDIX III. 
 
 follies to her, thinking her human, and that below 
 was not all the fiends. ... By this time you 
 probably know enough, and know whether this 
 following solution is in rerum naturd at No. 9, S. 
 B. . . . Say that I shall want it [the lodging] very 
 little the next year, as I shall be abroad for some 
 months, but that I wish to keep it on, to have a 
 place to come to when I am in London ... If you 
 get a civil answer to this, take it for me, and send 
 me word. . . . Learn first if the great man of Pen- 
 maen-Mawr is still there. You may do this by 
 asking after my hamper of books which was in 
 the back parlour. . . . Tell her that I am free 
 and that I have had a severe illness. 
 
 "W.H. 
 
 "I would give a thousand worlds to believe her 
 anything but what I suppose. . . . 
 
 "P. G. Patmore, Esq., 
 
 " 12, Greek Street, Soho, London." 
 
 [Edinburgh, June 25, 1822]. 
 
 " MY DEAR AND GOOD FRIEND, 
 
 " I am afraid that I trouble you with my querulous 
 epistles ; but this is probably the last. To-morrow 
 decides my fate with respect to her\ and the next 
 day I expect to be a free man. There has been a 
 delay pro forma of ten days. In vain ! Was it not 
 for her, and to lay my freedom at her feet, that I 
 
APPENDIX III. XClii. 
 
 took this step that has cost me infinite wretchedness ? 
 . . . . You, who have been a favourite with 
 women, do not know what it is to be deprived of 
 one's only hope, and to have it turned to a mockery 
 and a scorn. There is nothing in the world left that 
 can give me one drop of comfort that I feel more 
 and more. . . . The breeze does not cool me, 
 and tjie blue sky does not allure my eye. I gaze 
 only on her face like a marble image averted from 
 me. Ah ! the only face that ever was turned fondly 
 to me f ~ 
 
 """T^shall, I hope, be in town next Friday at 
 
 furthest Not till Friday week. Write, 
 
 for God's sake, and let me know the worst. 
 
 " I have no answer from her. I wish you to call 
 on Roscoe* in confidence, to say that I intend to 
 make her an offer of marriage, and that I will write 
 to her father the moment I am free (next Friday 
 week), and to ask him whether he thinks it will be to 
 any purpose, and what he would advise me to do. 
 . . . . You don't know what I suffer, or you 
 would not be so severe upon me. My death will, I 
 hope, satisfy everyone before long. 
 
 W. H." 
 
 * The gentleman who had married the sister, and was said 
 to be very happy in his choice. 
 
LIBER AMORIS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
N^A* 
 
 f 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The circumstances, an outline of which is given 
 in these pages, happened a very short time ago to a 
 native of North Britain, who left his own country 
 early in life, in consequence of political animosities 
 and an ill-advised connection in marriage. It was 
 some years after that he formed the fatal attachment 
 which is the subject of the following narrative. The 
 whole was transcribed very carefully with his own 
 hand, a little before he set out for the Continent in 
 hopes of benefiting by a change of scene, but he 
 died soon after in the Netherlands it is supposed, 
 of disappointment preying on a sickly frame and 
 morbid state of mind. It was his wish that what 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 had been his strongest feeling while living, should 
 be preserved in this shape when he was no more. It 
 has been suggested to the friend, into whose hands 
 the manuscript was entrusted, that many things 
 (particularly in the Conversations in the first Part) 
 either childish or redundant, might have been 
 omitted ; but a promise was given that not a word 
 should be altered, and the pledge was held sacred. 
 The names and circumstances are so far disguised, 
 it is presumed, as to prevent any consequences result- 
 ing from the publication, farther than the amuse- 
 ment or sympathy of the reader. 
 
THE PICTURE. 
 
 H. OH ! is it you ? I had something 
 to shew you I have got a picture here. 
 Do you know any one it's like ? 
 
 S. No, Sir. 
 
 H. Don't you think it like yourself ? 
 
 S. No : it's much handsomer than I 
 can pretend to be. 
 
 H. That's because you don't see your- 
 self with the same eyes that others do. 
 / don't think it handsomer, and the ex- 
 pression is hardly so fine as your's some- 
 times is. 
 
 S. Now you flatter me. Besides, the 
 complexion is fair, and mine is dark. 
 
 H. Thine is pale and beautiful, my love, 
 not dark ! But if your colour were a little 
 heightened, and you wore the same dress, 
 
2 THE PICTURE. 
 
 and ,your hah were let down over your 
 
 , shoulders, as it 13 here, it might be taken 
 
 . for a picture of* you. Look here, only 
 
 see how like it is. The forehead is like, 
 
 with that little obstinate protrusion in the 
 
 middle ; the eyebrows are like, and the 
 
 eyes are just like yours, when you look 
 
 up and say " No never ! " 
 
 S. What then, do I always say " No- 
 never ! " when I look up ? 
 
 H. I don't know about that I never 
 heard you say so but once : but that was 
 once too often for my peace. It was when 
 you told me, "you could never be mine.'' 
 Ah ! if you are never to be mine, I shall 
 not long be myself. I cannot go on as I 
 am. My faculties leave me : I think of 
 nothing, I have no feeling about any thing 
 but thee : thy sweet image has taken pos- 
 session of me, haunts me, and will drive 
 me to distraction. Yet I could almost 
 wish to go mad for thy sake : for then 
 I might fancy that I had thy love in 
 return, which I cannot live without ! 
 
 S. Do not, I beg, talk in that manner, 
 
THE PICTURE. 3 
 
 but tell me what this is a picture of. 
 
 H. I hardly know ; but it is a very 
 small and delicate copy (painted in oil 
 on a gold ground) of some fine old Italian 
 picture, Guide's or Raphael's, but I think 
 Raphael's. Some say it is a Madona ; 
 others call it a Magdalen, and say you may 
 distinguish the tear upon the cheek, though 
 no tear is there. But it seems to me more 
 like Raphael's St. Cecilia, " with looks 
 commercing with the skies," than anything 
 else. See, Sarah, how beautiful it is ! Ah ! 
 dear girl, these are the ideas I have 
 cherished in my heart, and in my brain ; 
 and I never found any thing to realize 
 them on earth till I met with thee, my 
 love ! While thou didst seem sensible of 
 my kindness, I was but too happy : but now 
 thou hast cruelly cast me off. 
 
 S. You have no reason to say so : you 
 are the same to me as ever. 
 
 H. That is, nothing. You are to me 
 every thing, and I am nothing to you. Is 
 it not too true ? 
 
 S. No. 
 
4 THE PICTURE. 
 
 H. Then kiss me, my sweetest. Oh ! 
 could you see your face now your mouth 
 full of suppressed sensibility, your down- 
 cast eyes, the soft blush upon that cheek, 
 you would not say the picture is not like 
 because it is too handsome, or because you 
 want complexion. Thou art heavenly-fair, 
 my love like her from whom the picture 
 was taken the idol of the painter's heart, 
 as thou art of mine ! Shall I make a 
 drawing of it, altering the dress a little, to 
 shew you how like it is ? 
 
 S. As you please. 
 
THE INVITATION. 
 
 H. But I am afraid I tire you with this 
 prosing description of the French character 
 and abuse of the English ? You know 
 there is but one subject on which I should 
 ever wish to talk, if you would let me. 
 
 S. I must say, you don't seem to have a 
 very high opinion of this country. 
 
 H. Yes, it is the place that gave you 
 birth. 
 
 S. Do you like the French women 
 better than the English ? 
 
 H. No : though they have finer eyes, 
 talk better, and are better made. But they 
 none of them look like you. I like the 
 Italian women I have seen, much better 
 than the French : they have darker eyes, 
 darker hair, and the accents of their native 
 
6 THE INVITATION. 
 
 tongue are much richer and more melodious. 
 But I will give you a better account of them 
 when I come back from Italy, if you would 
 like to hear it. 
 
 S. I should much. It is for that I have 
 sometimes had a wish for travelling abroad, 
 to understand something of the manners 
 and characters of different people. 
 
 H. My sweet girl ! I will give you the 
 best account I can unless you would rather 
 go and judge for yourself. 
 
 S. I cannot. 
 
 H. Yes, you shall go with me, and you 
 shall go with honour you know what I 
 mean. 
 
 S. You know it is not in your power to 
 take me so. 
 
 H. But it soon may : and if you would 
 consent to bear me company, I would swear 
 never to think of an Italian woman while I 
 am abroad, nor of an English one after I 
 return home. Thou art to me more than 
 thy whole sex. 
 
 S. I require no such sacrifices. 
 
 H. Is that what you thought I meant by 
 
THE INVITATION. 7 
 
 sacrifices last night ? But sacrifices are no 
 sacrifices when they are repaid a thousand 
 fold. 
 
 S. I have no way of doing it. 
 
 H. You have not the will. 
 
 S. I must go now. 
 
 H. Stay, and hear me a little. I shall 
 soon be where I can no more hear thy 
 voice, far distant from her I love, to see 
 what change of climate and bright skies 
 will do for a sad heart. I shall perhaps 
 see thee no more, but I shall still think of 
 thee the same as ever I shall say to myself, 
 "Where is she now ? what is she doing ?" 
 But I shall hardly wish you to think of me, 
 unless you could do so more favourably 
 than I am afraid you will. Ah ! dearest 
 creature, I shall be " far distant from you," 
 as you once said of another, but you will 
 not think of me as of him, " with the 
 sincerest affection." The smallest share of 
 thy tenderness would make me blest ; but 
 couldst thou ever love me as thou didst 
 him, I should feel like a God ! My face 
 would change to a different expression : my 
 
8 THE INVITATION. 
 
 whole form would undergo alteration. I 
 was getting well, I was growing young in 
 the sweet proofs of your friendship : you 
 see how I droop and wither under your 
 displeasure ! Thou art divine, my love, and 
 canst make me either more or less than 
 mortal. Indeed I am thy creature, thy * 
 slave I only wish to live for your sake I 
 would gladly die for you 
 
 S. That would give me no pleasure. 
 But indeed you greatly over-rate my power. 
 
 H. Your power over me is that of 
 sovereign grace and beauty. When I am 
 near thee, nothing can harm me. Thou art 
 an angel of light, shadowing me with thy 
 softness. But when I let go thy hand, I 
 stagger on a precipice : out of thy sight 
 the world is dark to me and comfortless. 
 There is no breathing out of this house : 
 the air of Italy will stifle me. Go with me 
 and lighten it. I can know no pleasure 
 away from thee 
 
 "But I will come again, my love, 
 "An it were ten thousand mile !" 
 
THE MESSAGE. 
 
 S. MRS. E has called for the book, 
 
 Sir. 
 
 H. Oh ! it is there. Let her wait a 
 minute or two. I see this is a busy-day 
 with you. How beautiful your arms look in 
 those short sleeves ! 
 
 S. I do not like to wear them. 
 
 H. Then that is because you are merci- 
 ful, and would spare frail mortals who might 
 die with gazing. 
 
 S. I have no power to kill. 
 
 H. You have, you have Your charms 
 are irresistible as your will is inexorable. I 
 wish I could see you always thus. But I 
 would have no one else see you so. I am 
 jealous of all eyes but my own. I should 
 almost like you to wear a veil, and to be 
 
10 THE MESSAGE. 
 
 muffled up from head to foot ; but even if 
 you were, and not a glimpse of you could 
 be seen, it would be to no purpose you 
 would only have to move, and you would be 
 admired as the most graceful creature in the 
 world. You smile Well, if you were to be 
 won by fine speeches 
 
 S. You could supply them ! 
 
 H. It is however no laughing matter with 
 me ; thy beauty kills me daily, and I shall 
 think of nothing but thy charms, till the 
 last word trembles on my tongue, and that 
 will be thy name, my love the name of my 
 Infelice ! You will live by that name, you 
 rogue, fifty years after you are dead. Don't 
 you thank me for that ? 
 
 S. I have no such ambition, Sir. But 
 Mrs. E is waiting. 
 
 H. She is not in love, like me. You 
 look so handsome to-day, I cannot let you 
 go. You have got a colour. 
 
 S. But you say I look best when I am 
 pale. 
 
 H. When you are pale, I think so ; but 
 when you have a colour, I then think you 
 
THE MESSAGE. II 
 
 still more beautiful. It is you that I 
 admire ; and whatever you are, I like best. 
 
 I like you as Miss L , I should like you 
 
 still more as Mrs. . I once thought you 
 
 were half-inclined to be a prude, and I 
 admired you as a " pensive nun, devout and 
 pure." I now think you are more than half 
 a coquet, and I like you for your roguery. 
 The truth is, I am in love with you, my 
 angel ; and whatever you are, is to me the 
 perfection of thy sex. I care not what thou 
 art, while thou art still thyself. Smile 
 but so, and turn my heart to what shape 
 you please ! 
 
 S. I am afraid, Sir, Mrs. E will 
 
 think you have forgotten her. 
 
 H. I had, my charmer. But go, and 
 make her a sweet apology, all graceful as 
 thou art. One kiss ! Ah ! ought I not to 
 think myself the happiest of men ? 
 
THE FLAGEOLET. 
 
 H. WHERE have you been, my love ! 
 
 S. I have been down to see my aunt, Sir. 
 
 H. And I hope she has been giving you 
 good advice. 
 
 S. I did not go to ask her opinion about 
 any thing. 
 
 H. And yet you seem anxious and agi- 
 tated. You appear pale and dejected, as 
 if your refusal of me had touched your own 
 breast with pity. Cruel girl ! you look at 
 this moment heavenly- so ft, saint-like, or 
 resemble some graceful marble statue, in the 
 moon's pale ray ! Sadness only heightens 
 the elegance of your features. How can I 
 escape from you, when every new occasion, 
 even your cruelty and scorn, brings out some 
 new charm. Nay, your rejection of me, by 
 
THE FLAGEOLET. 13 
 
 the way in which you do it, is only a new 
 link added to my chain. Raise those down- 
 cast eyes, bend as if an angel stooped, and 
 kiss me. . . .Ah ! enchanting little trembler ! 
 if such is thy sweetness where thou dost not 
 love, what must thy love have been ? I 
 cannot think how any man, having the 
 heart of one, could go and leave it. 
 
 S. No one did, that I know of. 
 
 H. Yes, you told me yourself he left you 
 (though he liked you, and though he knew 
 Oh ! gracious God ! that you loved him) 
 he left you because "the pride of birth 
 would not permit a union." For myself, I 
 would leave a throne to ascend to the 
 heaven of thy charms. I live but for thee, 
 here I only wish to live again to pass all 
 eternity with thee. But even in another 
 world, I suppose you would turn from me to 
 seek him out, who scorned you here. 
 
 S. If the proud scorn us here, in that 
 place we shall all be equal. 
 
 H. Do not look so do not talk so 
 unless you would drive me mad. I could 
 worship you at this moment. Can I witness 
 
14 THE FLAGEOLET. 
 
 such perfection, and bear to think I have 
 lost you for ever ? Oh ! let me hope ! 
 You see you can mould me as you like. 
 You can lead me by the hand, like a little 
 child ; and with you my way would be like 
 a little child's : you could strew flowers in 
 my path, and pour new life and hope into 
 me. I should then indeed hail the return 
 of spring with joy, could I indulge the 
 faintest hope would you but let me try 
 to please you ! 
 
 S. Nothing can alter my resolution, Sir. 
 
 H. Will you go and leave me so ? 
 
 S. It is late, and my father will be 
 getting impatient at my stopping so long. 
 
 H. You know he has nothing to fear for 
 you it is poor I that am alone in danger. 
 But I wanted to ask about buying you a 
 flageolet. Could I see that which you 
 have ? If it is a pretty one, it would hardly 
 be worth while ; but if it isn't, I thought of 
 bespeaking an ivory one for you. Can't 
 you bring up your own to shew me ? 
 
 S. Not to-night, Sir. 
 
 H. I wish you could. 
 
THE FLAGEOLET. 15 
 
 S. I cannot but I will in the morning. 
 -> H. Whatever you determine, I must 
 submit to. Good night, and bless thee ! 
 
 \_The next morning, S. brought up the tea- 
 kettle as usual ; and looking towards the 
 tea-tray, she said, " Oh ! I see my sister 
 has forgot the tea-pot" It was not there, 
 sure enough ; and tripping dozun stairs, 
 she came up in a minute, with the tea-pot 
 in one hand, and the flageolet in the other, 
 balanced so sweetly and gracefully. It 
 would have been awkward to have brought 
 up the flageolet in the tea-tray, and she 
 could not well have gone down again on 
 purpose to fetch it. Something therefore 
 was to be omitted as an excuse. Exqui- 
 site witch ! But do I love her the less 
 dearly for it ? I cannot.~] 
 
THE CONFESSION. 
 
 H. You say you cannot love. Is there 
 not a prior attachment in the case ? Was 
 there any one else that you did like ? 
 
 S. Yes, there was another. 
 
 H. Ah ! I thought as much. Is it long 
 ago then ? 
 
 S. It is two years, Sir. 
 
 H. And has time made no alteration ? 
 Or do you still see him sometimes ? 
 
 S. No, Sir ! But he is one to whom I 
 feel the sincerest affection, and ever shall, 
 though he is far distant. 
 
 H. And did he return your regard ? 
 
 S. I had every reason to think so. 
 
 H. What then broke off your intimacy ? 
 
 S. It was the pride of birth, Sir, that 
 would not permit him to think of an union. 
 
THE CONFESSION. 17 
 
 H. Was he a young man of rank, then ? 
 
 S. His connections were high. 
 
 H. And did he never attempt to persuade 
 you to any other step ? 
 
 S. No he had too great a regard for 
 me. 
 
 H. Tell me, my angel, how was it ? 
 Was he so very handsome ? Or was it the 
 fineness of his manners ? 
 
 S. It was more his manner : but I can't 
 tell how it was. It was chiefly my own 
 fault. I was foolish to suppose he could 
 ever think seriously of me. But he used to 
 make me read with him and I used to be 
 with him a good deal, though not much 
 neither and I found my affections en- 
 tangled before I was aware of it. 
 
 H. And did your mother and family 
 know of it ? 
 
 S. No I have never told any one but 
 you ; nor I should not have mentioned it 
 now, but I thought it might give you some 
 satisfaction. 
 
 H. Why did he go at last ? 
 
 S. We thought it better to part. 
 c 
 
J8 THE CONFESSION. 
 
 H. And do you correspond ? 
 
 S. No, Sir. But perhaps I may see him 
 again some time or other, though it will 
 be only in the way of friendship. 
 
 H. My God ! what a heart is thine, to 
 live for years upon that bare hope ! 
 
 S. 1 did not wish to live always, Sir I 
 wished to die for a long time after, till I 
 thought it not right ; and since then I 
 have endeavoured to be as resigned as I can. 
 
 H. And do you think the impression will 
 never wear out ? 
 
 S. Not if I can judge from my feelings 
 hitherto. It is now some time since, and 
 and I find no difference. 
 
 H. May God for ever bless you ! How 
 can I thank you for your condescension in 
 letting me know your sweet sentiments ? 
 You have changed my esteem into adora- 
 tion. Never can I harbour a thought of ill 
 in thee again. 
 
 S. Indeed, Sir, I wish for your good 
 opinion and your friendship. 
 
 H. And can you return them ? 
 
 S. Yes. 
 
THE CONFESSION. 19 
 
 H. And nothing more ? 
 
 S. No, Sir. 
 
 H. You are an angel, and I will spend 
 my life, if you will let me, in paying you 
 the homage that my heart feels towards you. 
 
THE QUARREL. 
 
 H. You are angry with me ? 
 
 S. Have I not reason ? 
 
 H. I hope you have ; for I would give 
 the world to believe my suspicions unjust. 
 But, oh ! my God ! after what I have 
 thought of you and felt towards you, as 
 little less than an angel, to have but a doubt 
 cross my mind for an instant that you were 
 what I dare not name a common lodging- 
 house decoy, a kissing convenience, that 
 your lips were as common as the stairs 
 
 S. Let me go, Sir ! 
 
 H. Nay prove to me that you are not 
 so, and I will fall down and worship you. 
 You were the only creature that ever seemed 
 to love me ; and to have my hopes, and all 
 my fondness for you, thus turned to a 
 
THE QUARREL. 21 
 
 mockery it is too much ! Tell me why 
 you have deceived me, and singled me out 
 as your victim ? 
 
 S. I never have, Sir. I always said I 
 could not love. 
 
 H. There is a difference between love 
 and making me a laughing-stock. Yet what 
 else could be the meaning of your little 
 sister's running out to you, and saying, "He 
 thought I did not see him ! " when I had 
 followed you into the other room ? Is it a 
 joke upon me that I make free with you ? 
 Or is not the joke rather against her sister, 
 unless you make my courtship of you a jest 
 to the whole house ? Indeed I do not well 
 see how you can come and stay with me as 
 you do, by the hour together, and day after 
 day, as openly as you do, unless you give it 
 some such turn with your family. Or do 
 you deceive them as well as me ? 
 
 S. I deceive no one, Sir. But my sister 
 Betsey was always watching and listening 
 
 when Mr. M wj.s courting my eldest 
 
 sister, till he was obliged to complain of it. 
 
 H. That I can understand, but not the 
 
22 THE QUARREL. 
 
 other. You may remember, when your 
 servant Maria looked in and found you 
 sitting in my lap one day, and I was afraid 
 she might tell your mother, you said " You 
 did not care, for you had no secrets from 
 your mother." This seemed to me odd at 
 the time, but I thought no more of it, till 
 other things brought it to my mind. Am I 
 to suppose, then, that you are acting a part, 
 a vile part, all this time, and that you come 
 up here, and stay as long as I like, that you 
 sit on my knee and put your arms round my 
 neck, and feed me with kisses, and let me 
 take other liberties with you, and that for a 
 year together ; and that you do all this not 
 out of love, or liking, or regard, but go 
 through your regular task, like some young 
 witch, without one natural feeling, to shew 
 your cleverness, and get a few presents out 
 of me, and go down into the kitchen to 
 make a fine laugh of it ? There is some- 
 thing monstrous in it, that I cannot believe 
 of you. 
 
 S. Sir, you have no right to harass my 
 feelings in the manner you do. I have 
 
THE QUARREL. 23 
 
 never made a jest of you to any one, but 
 always felt and expressed the greatest 
 esteem for you. You have no ground for 
 complaint in my conduct ; and I cannot 
 help what Betsey or others do. I have 
 always been consistent from the first. I 
 told you my regard could amount to no 
 more than friendship. 
 
 H. Nay, Sarah, it was more than half a 
 year before I knew that there was an insur- 
 mountable obstacle in the way. You say 
 your regard is merely friendship, and that 
 you are sorry I have ever felt any thing 
 more for you. Yet the first time I ever 
 asked you, you let me kiss you : the first 
 time I ever saw you, as you went out of the 
 room, you turned full round at the door, 
 with that inimitable grace with which you 
 do every thing, and fixed your eyes full 
 upon me, as much as to say, " Is he 
 caught ? " that very week you sat upon my 
 knee, twined your arms round me, caressed 
 me with every mark of tenderness consis- 
 tent with modesty ; and I have not got 
 much farther since. Now if you did all 
 
24 THE QUARREL. 
 
 this with me, a perfect stranger to you, and 
 without any particular liking to me, must I 
 not conclude you do so as a matter of 
 course with every one ? Or if you do not 
 do so with others, it was because you took 
 a liking to me for some reason or other. 
 
 S. It was gratitude, Sir, for different ob- 
 ligations. 
 
 H. If you mean by obligations the pre- 
 sents I made you, I had given you none the 
 first day I came. You do not consider 
 yourself obliged to every one who asks you 
 for a kiss ? 
 
 S. No, Sir. 
 
 H. I should not have thought any thing 
 of it in any one but you. But you seemed 
 so reserved and modest, so soft, so timid, 
 you spoke so low, you looked so innocent 
 I thought it impossible you could deceive 
 me. Whatever favors you granted must 
 proceed from pure regard. No betrothed 
 virgin ever gave the object of her choice 
 kisses, caresses more modest or more be- 
 witching than those you have given me a 
 thousand and a thousand times. Could I 
 
THE QUARREL. 25 
 
 have thought I should ever live to believe 
 them an inhuman mockery of one who had 
 the sincerest regard for you ? Do you think 
 they will not now turn to rank poison in my 
 veins, and kill me, soul and body ? You 
 say it is friendship but if this is friendship, 
 I'll forswear love. Ah ! Sarah ! it must be 
 something more or less than friendship. If 
 your caresses are sincere, they shew fond- 
 ness if they are not, I must be more than 
 indifferent to you. Indeed you once let 
 some words drop, as if I were out of the 
 question in such matters, and you could 
 trifle with me with impunity. Yet you 
 complain at other times that no one ever 
 took such liberties with you as I have done. 
 I remember once in particular your saying, 
 as you went out at the door in anger " I 
 had an attachment before, but that person 
 never attempted any thing of the kind." 
 Good God ! How did I dwell on that word 
 before, thinking it implied an attachment to 
 rne also ; but you have since disclaimed 
 any such meaning. You say you have 
 never professed more than esteem. Yet 
 
26 THE QUARREL. 
 
 once, when you were sitting in your old 
 place, on my knee, embracing and fondly 
 embraced, and I asked you if you could not 
 love, you made answer, " I could easily say 
 so, whether I did or not YOU SHOULD 
 JUDGE BY MY ACTIONS ! "And another time, 
 when you were in the same posture, and I 
 reproached you with indifference, you re- 
 plied in these words, " Do I SEEM INDIFF- 
 ERENT?" Was I to blame after this to 
 indulge my passion for the loveliest of her 
 sex ? Or what can I think ? 
 
 S. I am no prude, Sir. 
 
 H. Yet you might be taken for one. So 
 your mother said, "It was hard if you might 
 not indulge in a little levity." She has 
 strange notions of levity. But levity, my 
 dear, is quite out of character in you. Your 
 ordinary walk is as if you were performing 
 some religious ceremony : you come up to 
 my table of a morning, when you merely 
 bring in the tea-things, as if you were ad- 
 vancing to the altar. You move in minuet- 
 time : you measure every step, as if you were 
 afraid of offending in the smallest things. 
 
THE QUARREL. 2J 
 
 I never heard your approach on the stairs, 
 but by a sort of hushed silence. When you 
 enter the room, the Graces wait on you, and 
 Love waves round your person in gentle 
 undulations, breathing balm into the soul ! 
 By Heaven, you are an angel ! You look 
 like one at this instant ! Do I not adore 
 you and have I merited this return ? 
 
 S. I have repeatedly answered that ques- 
 tion. You sit and fancy things out of your 
 own head, and then lay them to my charge. 
 There is not a word of truth in your sus- 
 picions. 
 
 H. Did I not overhear the conversation 
 down-stairs last night, to which you were a 
 party ? Shall I repeat it ? 
 
 S. I had rather not hear it ! 
 
 H. Or what am I to think of this story 
 of the footman ? 
 
 S. It is false, Sir, I never did any thing 
 of the sort. 
 
 H. Nay, when I told your mother I 
 wished she would'nt * * * * # # * * * * 
 ********** ( as i heard she did) she 
 said " Oh, there's nothing in that, for Sarah 
 
28 THE QUARREL. 
 
 very often ***** * * * * * * and 
 your doing so before company is only a 
 trifling addition to the sport. 
 
 S. I'll call my mother, Sir, and she shall 
 contradict you. 
 
 H. Then she'll contradict herself. But 
 did not you boast you were " very persever- 
 ing in your resistance to gay young men," 
 and had been "several times obliged to 
 ring the bell ? " Did you always ring it ? 
 Or did you get into these dilemmas that 
 made it necessary, merely by the demureness 
 of your looks and ways ? Or had nothing 
 else passed ? Or have you two characters, 
 one that you palm off upon me, and another, 
 your natural one, that you resume when you 
 get out of the room, like an actress who 
 throws aside her artificial 'part behind the 
 scenes ? Did you not, when I was courting 
 you on the staircase the first night Mr. 
 
 C came, beg me to desist, for if the 
 
 new lodger heard us, he'd take you for a 
 light character ? Was that all ? Were you 
 only afraid of being taken for a light char- 
 acter? Oh! Sarah! 
 
THE QUARREL. 29 
 
 S. I'll stay and hear this no longer. 
 
 H. Yes, one word more. Did you not 
 love another ? 
 
 S. Yes, and ever shall most sincerely. 
 
 H. Then, that is my only hope. If you 
 could feel this sentiment for him, you can- 
 not be what you seem to me of late. But 
 there is another thing I had to say be 
 what you will, I love you to distraction ! 
 You are the only woman that ever made me 
 think she loved me, and that feeling was so 
 new to me, and so delicious, that it "will 
 never from my heart." Thou wert to me a 
 little tender flower, blooming in the wilder- 
 ness of my life ; and though thou should'st 
 turn out a weed, I'll not fling thee from me, 
 while I can help it. Wert thou all that I 
 dread to think wert thou a wretched wan- 
 derer in the street, covered with rags, dis- 
 ease, and infamy, I'd clasp thee to my 
 bosom, and live and die with thee, my love. 
 Kiss me, thou little sorceress ! 
 
 S. NEVER ! 
 
 H. Then go : but remember I cannot 
 live without you nor I will not. 
 
THE RECONCILIATION. 
 
 H. I HAVE then lost your friendship ? 
 
 S. Nothing tends more to alienate friend- 
 ship than insult. 
 
 H. The words I uttered hurt me more 
 than they did you. 
 
 S. It was not words merely, but actions 
 as well. 
 
 H. Nothing I can say or do can ever alter 
 my fondness for you Ah, Sarah ! I am un- 
 worthy of your love : I hardly dare ask for 
 your pity ; but oh ! save me save me from 
 your scorn : I cannot bear it it withers me 
 like lightning. 
 
 S. I bear no malice, Sir ; but my brother, 
 who would scorn to tell a lie for his sister, 
 can bear witness for me that there was no 
 truth in what you were told. 
 
THE RECONCILIATION. 31 
 
 H. I believe it ; or there is no truth in 
 woman. It is enough for me to know that 
 you do not return my regard ; it would 
 be too much for me to think that you did 
 not deserve it. But cannot you forgive the 
 agony of the moment ? 
 
 S. I can forgive ; but it is not easy to 
 forget some things ! 
 
 H. Nay, my sweet Sarah (frown if you 
 will, I can bear your resentment for my ill 
 behaviour, it is only your scorn and indif- 
 ference that harrow up my soul) but I was 
 going to ask, if you had been engaged 
 to be married to any one, and the day was 
 fixed, and he had heard ^what I did, whether 
 he could have felt any true regard for the 
 character of his bride, his wife, if he had 
 not been hurt and alarmed as I was ? 
 
 S. I believe, actual contracts of marriage 
 have sometimes been broken off by unjust 
 suspicions. 
 
 H. Or had it been your old friend, what 
 do you think he would have said in my case ? 
 
 S. He would never have listened to any 
 thing of the sort. 
 
32 THE RECONCILIATION. 
 
 H. He had greater reasons for confidence 
 than I have. But it is your repeated cruel 
 rejection of me that drives me almost to 
 madness. Tell me, love, is there not, be- 
 sides your attachment to him, a repugnance 
 to me ? 
 
 S. No, none whatever. 
 
 H. I fear there is an original dislike, 
 which no efforts of mine can overcome. 
 
 S. It is not you it is my feelings with 
 respect to another, which are unalterable. 
 
 H. And yet you have no hope of ever 
 being his ? And yet you accuse me of 
 being romantic in my sentiments. 
 
 S. I have indeed long ceased to hope ; 
 but yet 1 sometimes hope against hope. 
 
 H, My love ! were it in my power, thy 
 hopes should be fulfilled to-morrow. Next 
 to my own, there is nothing that could give 
 me so much satisfaction as to see thine 
 realized ! Do I not love thee, when I can 
 feel such an interest in thy love for another ? 
 It was that which first wedded my very soul 
 to you. I would give worlds for a share in 
 a heart so rich in pure affection ! 
 
THE RECONCILIATION. 33 
 
 S. And yet I did not tell you of the cir- 
 cumstance to raise myself in your opinion. 
 
 H. You are a sublime little thing ! And 
 yet, as you have no prospects there, I 
 cannot help thinking, the best thing would 
 be to do as I have said. 
 
 S. I would never marry a man I did not 
 love beyond all the world. 
 
 H. I should be satisfied with less than 
 that with the love, or regard, or whatever 
 you call it, you have shown me before mar- 
 riage, if that has only been sincere. You 
 would hardly like me less afterwards. 
 
 S. Endearments would, I should think, 
 increase regard, where there was love before- 
 hand ; but that is not exactly my case. 
 
 H. But I think you would be happier than 
 you are at present. You take pleasure in 
 my conversation, and you say you have an 
 esteem for me ; and it is upon this, after 
 the honey-moon, that marriage chiefly turns. 
 
 S. Do you think there is no pleasure in 
 a single life ? 
 
 H. Do you mean on account of its 
 liberty ? 
 
34 THE RECONCILIATION. 
 
 S. No, but I feel that forced duty is no 
 duty. I have high ideas of the married 
 state ! 
 
 H. Higher than of the maiden state ? 
 
 S. I understand you, Sir. 
 
 H. I meant nothing ; but you have some- 
 times spoken of any serious attachment as 
 a tie upon you. It is not that you prefer 
 flirting with "gay young men" to becoming 
 a mere dull domestic wife ? 
 
 S. You have no right to throw out such 
 insinuations : for though I am but a trades- 
 man's daughter, I have as nice a sense of 
 honour as any one can have. 
 
 H. Talk of a tradesman's daughter ! 
 you would ennoble any family, thou glorious 
 girl, by true nobility of mind. 
 
 S. Oh! Sir, you flatter -me. I know my 
 own inferiority to most. 
 
 H. To none ; there is no one above 
 thee, man nor woman either. You are 
 above your situation, which is not fit for you. 
 
 S. I am contented with my lot, and do 
 my duty as cheerfully as I can. 
 
 H. Have you not told me your spirits 
 
THE RECONCILIATION. 35 
 
 grow worse every year ? 
 
 S. Not on that account : but some dis- 
 appointments are hard to bear up against. 
 
 H. If you talk about that, you'll unman 
 me. But tell me, my love, I have thought 
 of it as something that might account for 
 some circumstances ; that is, as a mere pos- 
 sibility. But tell me, there was not a like- 
 ness between me and your old lover that 
 struck you at first sight ? Was there ? 
 
 S. No, Sir, none. 
 
 H. Well, I didn't think it likely there 
 should. 
 
 S. But there was a likeness. 
 
 H. To whom ? 
 
 S. To that little image ! (looking intently 
 on a small bronze figure of Buonaparte on the 
 mantle-piece.) 
 
 H. What, do you mean to Buonaparte ? 
 
 S. Yes, all but the nose was just like. 
 
 II. And was his figure the same ? 
 
 S. He was taller ! 
 
 [/ got up and gave her the image, and told 
 her it was her^s by every right that was 
 sacred. She refused at first to take so 
 
36 THE RECONCILIATION. 
 
 valuable a curiosity, and said she would 
 keep it for me. But I pressed it eagerly, 
 and she took it. She immediately came 
 and sat down, and put her arm round my 
 neck, and kissed me, and I said "Is it not 
 plain we are the best friends in the world, 
 since we are always so glad to make it 
 up?" And then I added "How odd it 
 was that the God of my idolatry should 
 turn out to be like her Idol, and said it 
 was no wonder that the same face which 
 awed the world should conquer the sweetest 
 creature in it !" How I loved her at that 
 moment ! Is it possible that the wretch 
 who writes this could ever have been so 
 blest ! Heavenly delicious creature ! Can 
 I live without her ? Oh ! no never 
 never. 
 
 "What is this world? What ask en men to have, 
 " Now with his love, now in the cold grave, 
 " Alone withouten any compagnie ! " 
 
 Let me but see her again ! She cannot 
 hate the man who loves her as I do.~\ 
 
LETTERS TO THE SAME. 
 
 Feb. 1822. 
 
 You will scold me for this, and ask me 
 if this is keeping my promise to mind my 
 work. One half of it was to think of Sarah : 
 and besides, I do not neglect my work 
 either, I assure you. I regularly do ten 
 pages a day, which mounts up to thirty 
 guineas' worth a week, so that you see I 
 should grow rich at this rate, if I could 
 keep on so ; and I could keep on so, If I had 
 you with me to encourage me with your 
 sweet smiles, and share my lot. The Ber- 
 wick smacks sail twice a week, and the 
 wind sits fair. When I think of the thous- 
 and endearing caresses that have passed 
 between us, I do not wonder at the strong 
 
38 LETTERS TO THE SAME. 
 
 attachment that draws me to you ; but I 
 am sorry for my own want of power to 
 please. I hear the wind sigh through the 
 lattice, and keep repeating over and over to 
 myself two lines of Lord Bryon's Tragedy 
 
 " So shalt thou find me ever at thy side 
 Here and hereafter, if the last may be " 
 
 applying them to thee, my love, and think- 
 ing whether I shall ever see thee again. 
 Perhaps not for some years at least till 
 both thou and I are old and then, when 
 all else have forsaken thee, I will creep to 
 thee, and die in thine arms. You once 
 made me believe I was not hated by her I 
 loved ; and for that sensation, so delicious 
 was it, though but a mockery and a dream, 
 I owe you more than I can ever pay. I 
 thought to have dried up my tears for ever, 
 the day I left you ; but as I write this, they 
 stream again. If they did not, I think my 
 heart would burst. I walk out here of an 
 afternoon, and hear the notes of the thrush, 
 that come up from a sheltered valley below, 
 welcome in the spring ; but they do not melt 
 
LETTERS TO THE SAME. 39 
 
 my heart as they used : it is grown cold 
 and dead. As you say, it will one day be 
 colder. Forgive what I have written above ; 
 I did not intend it : but you were once my 
 little all, and I cannot bear the thought of 
 having lost you for ever, I fear through my 
 own fault. Has any one called ? Do not 
 send any letters that come. I should like 
 you and your mother (if agreeable) to go 
 and see Mr. Kean in Othello, and Miss 
 Stephens in Love in a Village. If you will, 
 
 I will write to Mr. T , to send you 
 
 tickets. Has Mr. P called ? I think I 
 
 must send to him for the picture to kiss and 
 talk to. Kiss me, my best-beloved. Ah ! 
 if you can never be mine, still let me be 
 your proud and happy slave. 
 
 H. 
 
TO THE SAME. 
 
 March, 1822. 
 
 You will be glad to learn I have done 
 my work a volume in less than a month. 
 This is one reason why I am better than 
 when I came, and another is, I have had two 
 letters from Sarah. I am pleased I have got 
 through this job, as I was afraid I might 
 lose reputation by it (which I can little afford 
 to lose) and besides, I am more anxious to 
 do well now, as I wish you to hear me well 
 spoken of. I walk out of an afternoon, and 
 hear the birds sing as I told you, and think, 
 if I had you hanging on my arm, and that 
 for life, how happy I should be happier 
 than I ever hoped to be, or had any con- 
 ception of till I knew you. " But that can 
 
TO THE SAME. 41 
 
 never be " I hear you answer in a soft, low 
 murmur. Well, let me dream of it some- 
 times I am not happy too often, except 
 when that favorite note, the harbinger of 
 spring, recalling the hopes of my youth, 
 whispers thy name and peace together in 
 my ear. I was reading something about 
 Mr. Macready to-day, and this put me in 
 mind of that delicious night, when I went 
 with your mother and you to see Romeo 
 and Juliet. Can I forget it for a moment 
 your sweet modest looks, your infinite pro- 
 priety of behaviour, all your sweet winning 
 ways your hesitating about taking my arm 
 as we came out till your mother did your 
 laughing about nearly losing your cloak 
 your stepping into the coach without my 
 being able to make the slightest discovery 
 and oh ! my sitting down beside you 
 there, you whom I had loved so long, so 
 well, and your assuring me I had not less- 
 ened your pleasure at the play by being 
 with you, and giving me your dear hand to 
 press in mine ! I thought I was in heaven 
 that slender exquisitely turned form con- 
 
4^ TO THE SAME. 
 
 tained my all of heaven upon earth ; and 
 as I folded you yes, you, my own best 
 Sarah, to my bosom, there was, as you say, 
 a tie between us you did seem to me, for 
 those few short moments, to be mine in all 
 truth and honour and sacredness Oh ! 
 that we could be always so Do not mock 
 me, for I am a very child in love. I ought 
 to beg pardon for behaving so ill afterwards, 
 but I hope the little image made it up between 
 us, &c. 
 
 \_To this letter I have received no answer, not 
 a line. The rolling years of eternity will 
 never fill up that blank. Where shall I 
 be ? What am I? Or where have I been ?~\ 
 
WRITTEN IN A BLANK LEAF OF 
 ENDYMION. 
 
 I WANT a hand to guide me, an eye to 
 cheer me, a bosom to repose on ; all which 
 I shall never have, but shall stagger into 
 my grave, old before my time, unloved and 
 unlovely, unless S. L. keeps her faith with 
 me. 
 
 But by her dove's eyes and serpent- 
 shape, I think she does not hate me ; by 
 her smooth forehead and her crested hair, 
 I own I love her ; by her soft looks and 
 queen-like grace (which men might fall 
 down and worship) I swear to live and die 
 for her ! 
 
A PROPOSAL OF LOVE. 
 
 (Given to her in our early acquaintance.) 
 
 " Oh ! if I thought it could be in a woman 
 
 (As, if it can, I will presume in you) 
 
 To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love, 
 
 To keep her constancy in plight and youth, 
 
 Outliving beauties outward with a mind 
 
 That doth renew swifter than blood decays : 
 
 Or that persuasion could but thus convince me, 
 
 That my integrity and truth to you 
 
 Might be confronted with the match and weight 
 
 Of such a winnowed purity in love 
 
 How were I then uplifted ! B,ut, alas, 
 
 I am as true as truth's simplicity, 
 
 And simpler than the infancy of truth." 
 
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. 
 
LIBER AMORIS. 
 PART II. 
 
LETTERS TO C. P , ESQ. 
 
 Bees- Inn. 
 
 MY GOOD FRIEND, 
 
 Here I am in Scotland (and shall have 
 been here three weeks, next Monday) as I 
 may say, on my probation. This is a lone 
 inn, but on a great scale, thirty miles from 
 Edinburgh. It is situated on a rising 
 ground (a mark for all the winds, which 
 blow here incessantly) there is a woody 
 hill opposite, with a winding valley below, 
 and the London road stretches out on 
 either side. You may guess which way I 
 oftenest walk. I have written two letters to 
 S. L. and got one cold, prudish answer, 
 beginning Sir, and ending From your" s truly, 
 with Best respects from herself and relations. 
 
48 LETTER I. 
 
 I was going to give in, but have returned an 
 answer, which I think is a touch-stone. I 
 send it you on the other side to keep as a 
 curiosity, in case she kills me by her 
 exquisite rejoinder. I am convinced from 
 the profound contemplations I have had on 
 the subject here and coming along, that I 
 am on a wrong scent. We, had a famous 
 parting-scene, a complete quarrel and then 
 a reconciliation, in which she did beguile 
 me of my tears, but the deuce a one did 
 she shed. What do you think? She cajoled 
 me out of my little Buonaparte as cleverly 
 as possible, in manner and form following. 
 She was shy the Saturday and Sunday (the 
 day of my departure) so I got in dudgeon, 
 and began to rip up grievances. I asked 
 her how she came to admit me to such 
 extreme familiarities, the first week I 
 entered the house. "If she had no par- 
 ticular regard for me, she must do so (or 
 more) with every one : if she had a liking 
 to me from the first, why refuse me with 
 scorn and wilfulness ? " If you had seen 
 how she flounced, and looked, and went to 
 
LETTER I. 49 
 
 the door, saying " She was obliged to me 
 for letting her know the opinion I had 
 always entertained of her" then I said, 
 " Sarah ! " and she came back and took my 
 hand, and fixed her eyes on the mantle- 
 piece (she must have been invoking her 
 idol then if I thought so, I could devour 
 her, the darling but I doubt her) So I 
 said " There is one thing that has occurred 
 to me sometimes as possible, to account 
 for your conduct to me at first there wasn't 
 a likeness, was there, to your old friend ? " 
 She answered " No, none but there was a 
 likeness " I asked, to what ? She said 
 "To that little image!" I said, "Do you 
 mean Buonaparte ? " She said, " Yes, all 
 but the nose." "And the figure?" "He 
 was taller." I could not stand this. So I 
 got up and took it, and gave it her, and 
 after some reluctance, she consented to 
 "keep it for me." What will you bet me 
 that it wasn't all a trick ? I'll tell you why 
 I suspect it, besides being fairly out of my 
 wits about her. I had told her mother half 
 an hour before, that I should take this 
 E 
 
5O LETTER I. 
 
 image and leave it at Mrs. B.'s, for that I 
 didn't wish to leave any thing behind me 
 that must bring me back again. Then up 
 she comes and starts a likeness to her lover : 
 she knew I should give it her on the spot 
 " No, she would keep it for me ! " So I 
 must come back for it. Whether art or 
 nature, it is sublime. I told her I should 
 write and telty5iTs5, and that I parted from 
 her, confiding, adoring ! She is beyond me, 
 that's certain. Do go and see her, and 
 desire her not to give my present address to 
 a single soul, and learn if the lodging is let, 
 and to whom. My letter to her is as 
 follows. If she shews the least remorse at- 
 it, I'll be hanged, though it might move a 
 stone, I modestly think. (See before, Part 
 I. page. tf). 
 
 N.B. I have begun a book of our con- 
 versations (I mean mine and the statue's) 
 which I call LIBER AMORIS. I was de- 
 tained at Stamford and found myself dull, 
 and could hit upon no other way of employ- 
 ing my time so agreeably. 
 
LETTER II. 
 
 DEAR P- 
 
 Here without loss of time, in order that I 
 may have vour opinion upon it, i{ little YES 
 and No'sjanswer to my last, 
 "si/, 
 
 " I should not have disregarded your in- 
 junction not to send you any more letters 
 that might come to you, had I not promised 
 the Gentleman who left the enclosed to 
 forward it the earliest opportunity, as he 
 said it was of consequence. Mr. P called 
 the day after you left town. My mother 
 and myself are much obliged by your kind 
 offer of tickets to the play, but must decline 
 accepting it. My family send their best 
 respects, in which they are joined by 
 Your's truly, 
 
 S. L." 
 
 The deuce a bit more is there of it. If 
 
52 LETTER II. 
 
 you can make any thing out of it (or any 
 body else) I'll be hanged. You are to 
 understand, this comes in a frank, the 
 second I have received from her, with a 
 name I can't make out, and she won't tell 
 me, though I asked her, where she got 
 franks, as also whether the lodgings were 
 let, to neither of which a word of answer. 
 # * * # is the name on the frank : see if you 
 can decypher it by a Red-book. I suspect 
 her grievously of being an arrant jilt, to say 
 no more yet I love her dearly. Do you 
 know I'm going to write to the sweet rogue 
 presently, having a whole evening to myself 
 in advance of my work ? Now mark, 
 before you set about your exposition of the 
 new Apocalypse of the New Calypso, the 
 only thing to be endured in the above letter 
 is the date. It was written the very day 
 after she received mine. By this she seems 
 willing to lose no time in receiving these 
 letters "of such sweet breath composed." 
 If I thought so but I wait for your reply. 
 \ After all, what is there in her but a pretty 
 figure, and that you can't get a word out of 
 
LETTER II. 53 
 
 Her's is the Fabian method of making 
 love and conquests. What do you suppose 
 she said the night before I left her ? 
 
 " H. Could you not come and live with 
 me as a friend ? 
 
 S. I don't know : and yet it would be of 
 no use if I did, you would always be hanker- 
 ing after what could never be ! " 
 
 I asked her if she would do so at once 
 the very next day ? And what do you guess 
 was her answer "Do you think it would 
 be prudent?" As I didn't proceed to extre- 
 mities on the spot, she began to look grave, 
 and declare off. " Would she live with me 
 in her own house to be with me alt day as 
 dear friends, if nothing more, to sit and 
 read and talk with me?" "She would 
 make no promises, but I should find her the 
 same." "Would she go to the play with 
 me sometimes, and let it be understood that 
 I was paying my addresses to her ?" " She 
 could not, as a habit her father was rather 
 strict, and would object." Now what am I 
 to think of all this ? Am I mad or a fool ? 
 Answer me to that, Master Brook ! You are 
 a philosopher. 
 
LETTER III. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 I ought to have written to you before ; 
 but since I received your letter, I have been 
 in a sort of purgatory, and what is worse, I 
 see no prospect of getting out of it. I 
 would put an end to my torments at once ; 
 but I am as great a coward as I have been 
 a dupe. Do you know I have not had a 
 word of answer from her since ! What can 
 be the reason ? Is she offended at my 
 letting you know she wrote to me, or is it 
 some new affair ? I wrote to her in the 
 tenderest, most respectful manner, poured 
 my soul at her feet, and this is the return 
 she makes me ! Can you account for it, 
 except on the admission of my worst doubts 
 concerning her ? Oh God ! can I bear 
 
LETTER III. 55 
 
 after all to think of her so, or that I am 
 scorned and made a sport of by the creature 
 to whom I had given my whole heart ? 
 Thus has it been with me all my life ; and 
 so will it be to the end of it ! If you 
 should learn any thing, good or bad, tell 
 me, I conjure you : I can bear any thing 
 but this cruel suspense. If I knew she 
 was a mere abandoned creature, I should 
 try to forget her ; but till I do know this, 
 nothing can tear me from her, I have drank 
 in poison from her lips too long alas ! 
 mine do not poison again. I sit and indulge 
 my grief by the hour together ; my weak- 
 ness grows upon me ; and I have no hope 
 left, unless I could lose my senses quite. 
 Do you know I think I should like this ? 
 To forget, ah ! to forget there would be 
 something in that to change to an ideot 
 for some few years, and then to wake up a 
 poor wretched old man, to recollect my 
 misery as past, and die ! Yet, oh ! with 
 her, only a little while ago, I had different 
 hopes, forfeited for nothing that I know of ! 
 
56 LETTER III. 
 
 solation on the subject of my tormentor, 
 pray do. The pain I suffer wears me out 
 daily. I write this on the supposition that 
 
 Mrs. may still come here, and that I may 
 
 be detained some weeks longer. Direct to 
 me at the Post-office ; and if I return to 
 town directly as I fear, I will leave word 
 for them to forward the letter to me in 
 London not at my old lodgings. I will 
 not go back there : yet how can I breathe 
 away from her ? Her hatred of me must 
 be great, since my love of her could not 
 I overcome it ! I have finished the book of 
 my conversations with her, which I told you 
 S of: if I am not mistaken, you will think 
 it very nice reading. 
 
 Your's ever. 
 
 Have you read Sardanapalus ? How like 
 the little Greek slave, Myrrha, is to her ! 
 
LETTER IV. 
 (Written in the Winter}. 
 
 MY GOOD FRIEND, 
 
 I received your letter this morning, and I 
 kiss the rod not only with submission, but 
 gratitude. Your reproofs of me and your 
 defences of her are the only things that 
 save my soul from perdition. She is my 
 heart's idol ; and believe me those words of 
 yours applied to the dear saint " To lip a 
 chaste one and suppose her wanton" were 
 balm and rapture to me. I have lipped her, 
 God knows how often, and oh ! is it even 
 possible that she is chaste, and that she has 
 bestowed her loved "endearments" on me 
 (her own sweet word) out of true regard ? 
 That thought, out of the lowest depths of 
 
58 LETTER IV. 
 
 despair, would at any time make me strike 
 my forehead against the stars. Could I but 
 think the love "honest," I am proof against 
 all hazards. She by her silence makes my 
 dark hour ; and you by your encouragements 
 dissipate it for twenty-four hours. Another 
 
 thing has brought me to life. Mrs. is 
 
 actually on her way here about the divorce. 
 Should this unpleasant business (which has 
 been so long talked of) succeed, and I 
 should become free, do you think S. L. will 
 
 agree to change her name to ? If she 
 
 will, she shall ; and to call her so to you or 
 to hear her called so by others, would be 
 music to my ears, such as they never drank 
 in. Do you think if she knew how I love 
 her, my depressions and my altitudes, my 
 wanderings and my constancy, it would not 
 move her ? She knows it all ; and if she is 
 not an incorrigible, she loves me, or regards 
 me with a feeling next to love. I don't 
 believe that any woman was ever courted 
 more passionately than she has been by me. 
 y* As Rousseau said of Madame d'Houptot 
 \ (forgive the allusion) my heart has found 
 
LETTER IV. 59 
 
 a tongue in speaking to her, and I have 
 talked to her the divine language of love. 
 Yet she says, she is insensible to it. Am 
 I to believe her or you ? You for I wish 
 it and wish it to madness, now that I am 
 like to be free, and to have it in my power 
 to say to her without a possibility of sus- 
 picion, " Sarah, will you be mine ?" When 
 I sometimes think of the time I first saw 
 the sweet apparition, August 16, 1820, and 
 that possibly she may be my bride before 
 that day two years, it makes me dizzy with 
 incredible joy and love of her. Write soon. 
 
LETTER V. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 I read your answer this morning with 
 gratitude. I have felt somewhat easier since. 
 It shewed your interest in my vexations, and 
 also that you know nothing worse than I do. 
 I cannot describe the weakness of mind to 
 which she has reduced me. This state of 
 suspense is like hanging in the air by a sin- 
 gle thread that exhausts all your strength to 
 keep hold of it ; and yet if that fails you, you 
 have nothing in the world else left to trust 
 to. I am come back to Edinburgh about 
 
 this cursed business, and Mrs. is coming 
 
 from Montrose next week. How it will end, 
 I can't say ; and don't care, except as it re- 
 gards the other affair. I should, I confess, 
 like to have it in my power to make her the 
 
LETTER V. 6 I 
 
 offer direct and unequivocal, to see how she'd 
 receive it. It would be worth something at 
 any rate to see her superfine airs upon the 
 occasion ; and if she should take it into her 
 head to turn round her sweet neck, drop her 
 eye-lids, and say " Yes, I will be yours !" 
 why then, " treason domestic, foreign levy, 
 nothing could touch me further." By Hea^ 
 ven ! I doat on her. The truth is, I never had x \ 
 any pleasure, like love, with any one but her.^/ 
 Then how can I bear to part with her ? Do 
 you know I like to think of her best in her 
 morning-gown and mob-cap it is so she has 
 oftenest come into my room and enchanted 
 me ! She was once ill, pale, and had lost 
 all her freshness. I only adored her the more 
 for it, and fell in love with the decay of her 
 beauty. I could devour the little witch. 
 If she had a plague-spot on her, I could 
 touch the infection : if she was in a burning 
 fever, I could kiss her, and drink death as I 
 have drank life from her lips. When I 
 press her hand, I enjoy perfect happiness 
 and contentment of soul. It is not what she 
 says or what she does it is herself that I 
 
62 LETTER V. 
 
 love. To be with her is to be at peace. I 
 have no other wish or desire. The air about 
 her is serene, blissful ; and he who breathes 
 it is like one of the Gods ! So that I can 
 but have her with me always, I care for 
 nothing more. I never could tire of her 
 sweetness ; I feel that I could grow to her, 
 body and soul ? My heart, my heart is her's. 
 
LETTER VI. 
 
 ( Written in May). 
 
 DEAR P- 
 
 What have I suffered since I parted with 
 you ! A raging fire is in my heart and in my 
 brain, that never quits me. The steam-boat 
 (which I foolishly ventured on board) seems 
 a prison-house, a sort of spectre-ship, moving 
 on through an infernal lake, without wind or 
 tide, by some necromantic power the 
 splashing of the waves, the noise of the en- 
 gine gives me no rest, night or day no tree, 
 no natural object varies the scene but the 
 abyss is before me, and all my peace lies 
 weltering in it ! I feel the eternity of pun- 
 ishment in this life ; for I see no end of my 
 woes. The people about me are ill, uncom- 
 
64 LETTER VI. 
 
 fortable, wretched enough, many of them 
 but to-morrow or next day, they reach the 
 place of their destination, and all will be new 
 and delightful. To me it will be the same. 
 I can neither escape from her, nor from my- 
 self. All is endurable where there is a 
 limit : but I have nothing but the blackness 
 and the fiendishness of scorn around me 
 mocked by her (the false one) in whom I 
 placed my hope, and who hardens herself 
 against me ! I believe you thought me quite 
 gay, vain, insolent, half mad, the night I left 
 the house no tongue can tell the heaviness 
 of heart I felt at that moment. No footsteps 
 ever fell more slow, more sad than mine ; for 
 every step bore me farther from her, with 
 whom my soul and every thought lingered. 
 I had parted with her in anger, and each had 
 spoken words of high disdain, not soon to 
 be forgiven. Should I ever behold her 
 again ? Where go to live and die far from 
 her ? In her sight there was Elysium ; her 
 smile was heaven ; her voice was enchant- 
 ment ; the air of love waved round her, 
 breathing balm into my heart: for a little 
 
LETTER VI. 65 
 
 while I had sat with the Gods at their 
 golden tables, I had tasted of all earth's 
 bliss, " both living and loving ! " But now 
 Paradise barred its doors against me ; I was 
 driven from her presence, where rosy blushes 
 and delicious sighs and all soft wishes dwelt, 
 the outcast of nature and the scoff of love ! I 
 thought of the time when I was a little happy 
 careless child, of my father's house, of my 
 early lessons, of my brother's picture of me 
 when a boy, of all that had since happened 
 to me, and of the waste of years to come 
 I stopped, faultered, and was going to turn 
 back once more to make a longer truce with 
 wretchedness and patch up a hollow league 
 with love, when the recollection of her words 
 " I always told you I had no affection for 
 you " steeled my resolution, and I deter- 
 mined to proceed. You see by this she 
 always hated me, and only played with my 
 credulity till she could find some one to sup- 
 ply the place of her unalterable attachment 
 to the little image. ******! am a 
 little, a very little better to-day. Would it 
 were quietly over ; and that this misshapen 
 
 F 
 
C 
 
 66 LETTER VI. 
 
 form (made to be mocked) were hid out of 
 "the sight of cold, sullen eyes ! The people 
 about me even take notice of my dumb de- 
 spair, and pity me. What is to be done ? I 
 cannot forget her; and I can find no other 
 like what she seemed. I should wish you to 
 call, if you can make an excuse, and see 
 whether or no she is quite marble whether 
 I may go back again at my return, and whe- 
 ther she will see me and talk to me some- 
 times as an old friend. Suppose you were 
 
 to call on M from me, and ask him 
 
 what his impression is that I ought to do. 
 But do as you think best. Pardon, pardon. 
 
 P.S. I send this from Scarborough, where 
 the vessel stops for a few minutes. I scarcely 
 know what I should have - done, but for this 
 relief to my feelings. 
 
LETTER VII. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 The important step is taken, and I am 
 virtually a free man. * * * What had I 
 better do in these circumstances ? I dare 
 not write to her, I dare not write to her 
 father, or else I would. She has shot me 
 through with poisoned arrows, and I think 
 another " winged wound " would finish me. 
 It is a pleasant sort of balm (as you express 
 it) she has left in my heart ! One thing I 
 agree with you in, it will remain there for 
 ever ; but yet not very long. It festers, and 
 consumes me. If it were not for my little 
 boy, whose face I see struck blank at the 
 news, looking through the world for pity 
 and meeting with contempt instead, I should 
 soon, I fear, settle the question by my death. 
 
68 LETTER VII. 
 
 That recollection is the only thought that 
 brings my wandering reason to an anchor ; 
 that stirs the smallest interest in me ; or 
 gives me fortitude to bear up against what 
 I am doomed to feel for the ungrateful. 
 Otherwise, I am dead to every thing but 
 the sense of what I have lost. She was my 
 life it is gone from me, and I am grown 
 spectral ! If I find myself in a place I am 
 acquainted with, it reminds me of her, of 
 the way in which I thought of her, 
 
 " and carved on every tree 
 
 The soft, the fair, the inexpressive she ! " 
 
 If it is a place that is new to me, it is de- 
 solate, barren of all interest ; for nothing 
 touches me but what has a reference to her. 
 If the clock strikes, the sound jars me ; a 
 million of hours will not bring back peace 
 to my breast. The light startles me ; the 
 darkness terrifies me. I seem falling into a 
 pit, without a hand to help me. She has 
 deceived me, and the earth fails from under 
 my feet : no object in nature is substantial, 
 real, but false and hollow, like her faith on 
 which I built my trust. She came (I knew 
 
LETTER VII. 69 
 
 not how) and sat by my side and was folded 
 in my arms, a vision of love and joy, as if 
 she had dropped from the Heavens to bless 
 me by some especial dispensation of a fa- 
 vouring Providence, and make me amends 
 for all ; and now without any fault of mine 
 but too much fondness, she has vanished 
 from me, and I am left to perish. My heart 
 is torn out of me, with every feeling for . 
 which I wished to live. The whole is like a 
 dream, an effect of enchantment ; it tor- 
 ments me, and it drives me mad. I lie down 
 with it ; I rise up with it ; and see no chance 
 of repose. I grasp at a shadow, I try to 
 undo the past, and weep with rage and pity 
 over my own weakness and misery. I spared 
 her again and again (fool that I was) think- 
 ing what she allowed from me was love, 
 friendship, sweetness, not wantonness. How 
 could I doubt it, looking in her face, and 
 hearing her words, like sighs breathed from 
 the gentlest of all bosoms ? I had hopes, 
 I had prospects to come, the flattery of 
 something like fame, a pleasure in writing, 
 health even would have come back with her 
 
70 LETTER VII. 
 
 smile she has blighted all, turned all to 
 poison and childish tears. Yet the barbed 
 arrow is in my heart I can neither endure 
 it, nor draw it out ; for with it flows my 
 life's-blood. I had conversed too long with 
 abstracted truth to trust myself with the 
 immortal thoughts of love. That S. L. 
 might have been mine, and now never can 
 ' these are the two sole propositions that 
 forever stare me in the face, and look 
 ghastly in at my poor brain. I am in 
 
 9 some sense proud that I can feel this dread- 
 ful passion it gives me a kind of rank 
 in the kingdom of love but I could have 
 wished it had been for an object that at 
 least could have understood its value and 
 pitied its excess. You say her not coming 
 to the door when you went is a proof yes, 
 that her complement is at present full ! 
 That is the reason she doesn't want me 
 there, lest I should discover the new affair 
 wretch that I am ! Another has possession 
 of her, oh Hell ! I'm satisfied of it from 
 her manner, which had a wanton insolence 
 in it. Well might I run wild when I re- 
 
LETTER VII. 71 
 
 ceived no letters from her. I foresaw, I felt 
 my fate. The gates of Paradise were at 
 once open to me too, and I blushed to enter 
 but with the golden keys of love ! I would 
 die ; but her lover my love of her ought 
 not to die. When I am dead, who will love 
 her as I have done ? If she should be in 
 misfortune, who will comfort her? When 
 she is old, who will look in her face, and 
 bless her? Would there be any harm in 
 
 calling upon M , to know confidentially 
 
 if he thinks it worth my while to make her 
 an offer the instant it is in my power? 
 Let me have an answer, and save me, if 
 possible, yV her and/rom myself. 
 
LETTER VIII. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 Your letter raised me for a moment from 
 the depths of despair ; but not hearing from 
 you yesterday or to-day (as I hoped) I have 
 had a relapse. You say I want to get rid of 
 her. I hope you are more right in your 
 conjectures about her than in this about me. 
 Oh no ! believe it, I love her as I do my 
 own soul ; my very heart is wedded to her 
 (be she what she may) and I would not 
 hesitate a moment between her and "an 
 angel from Heaven." I grant all you say 
 about my self-tormenting folly : but has it 
 been without cause ? Has she not refused 
 me again and again with a mixture of scorn 
 and resentment, after going the utmost 
 lengths with a man for whom she now dis- 
 
LETTER VIII. 73 
 
 claims all affection ; and what security can 
 I have for her reserve with others, who will 
 not be restrained by feelings of delicacy 
 towards her, and whom she has probably 
 preferred to me for their want of it ? " She 
 can make no more confidences" these words 
 ring for ever in my ears, and will be my 
 death-watch. They can have but one mean- 
 ing, be sure of it she always expressed 
 herself with the exactest propriety. That 
 was one of the things for which I loved her 
 shall I live to hate her for it ? My poor 
 fond heart, that brooded over her and the 
 remains of her affections as my only hope 
 of comfort upon earth, cannot brook this 
 new degradation. Who is there so low as 
 me ? Who is there besides (I ask) after the 
 homage I have paid her and the caresses 
 she has lavished on me, so vile, so abhorrent 
 to love, to whom such an indignity could 
 have happened ? When I think of this 
 (and I think of nothing else) it stifles me. 
 I am pent up in burning, fruitless desires, 
 which can find no vent or object. Am I 
 not hated, repulsed, derided by her whom 
 
74 LETTER VIII. 
 
 alone I love or ever did love ? I cannot 
 stay in any place, and seek in vain for relief 
 from the sense of her contempt and her in- 
 gratitude. I can settle to nothing : what is 
 the use of all I have done ? Is it not that 
 very circumstance (my thinking beyond my 
 strength, my feeling more than I need about 
 so many things) that has withered me up, 
 and made me a thing for Love to shrink 
 from and wonder at ? Who could ever feel 
 that peace from the touch of her dear hand 
 that I have done ; and is it not torn from 
 me for ever ? My state is this, that I shall 
 never lie down again at night nor rise up in 
 the morning in peace, nor ever behold my 
 little boy's face with pleasure while I live 
 unless I am restored to her favour. Instead 
 of that delicious feeling I had when she 
 was heavenly-kind to me, and my heart 
 softened and melted in its own tenderness 
 and her sweetness, I am now inclosed in a 
 dungeon of despair. The sky is marble to 
 my thoughts ; nature is dead around me, as 
 hope is within me ; no object can give me 
 one gleam of satisfaction now, nor the pros- 
 
LETTER VIII. 75 
 
 pect of it in time to come. I wander by 
 the sea-side ; and the eternal ocean and 
 lasting despair and her face are before me. 
 Slighted by her, on whom my heart by its 
 last fibre hung, where shall I turn ? I wake 
 with her by my side, not as my sweet bed- 
 fellow, but as the corpse of my love, with- 
 out a heart in her bosom, cold, insensible, 
 or struggling from me ; and the worm gnaws 
 me, and the sting of unrequited love, and 
 the canker of a hopeless, endless sorrow. I 
 have lost the taste of my food by feverish 
 anxiety ; and my favourite beverage, which 
 used to refresh me when I got up, has no 
 moisture in it. Oh ! cold, solitary, sepul- 
 chral breakfasts, compared with those which 
 I promised myself with her ; or which I 
 made when she had been standing an hour 
 by my side, my guardian-angel, my wife, my 
 sister, my sweet friend, my Eve, my all ; 
 and had blest me with her seraph-kisses ! 
 Ah ! what I suffer at present only shews 
 what I have enjoyed. But "the girl is a 
 good girl, if there is goodness in human 
 nature." I thank you for those words ; and 
 
j6 LETTER VIII. 
 
 I will fall down and worship you, if you can 
 prove them true : and I would not do much 
 less for him that proves her a demon. She 
 is one or the other, that's certain ; but I fear 
 the worst. Do let me know if any thing 
 has passed : suspense is my greatest punish- 
 ment. I am going into the country to see 
 if I can work a little in the three weeks I 
 have yet to stay here. Write on the receipt 
 of this, and believe me ever your unspeak- 
 ably obliged friend. 
 
TO EDINBURGH. 
 
 " Stony-hearted" Edinburgh ! What 
 
 art thou to me ? The dust of thy streets 
 mingles with my tears and blinds me. City 
 of palaces, or of tombs a quarry, rather 
 than the habitation of men ! Art thou like 
 London, that populous hive, with its sun- 
 burnt, well-baked, brick-built houses its 
 public edifices, its theatres, its bridges, its 
 squares, its ladies, and its pomp, its throng 
 of wealth, its outstretched magnitude, and 
 its mighty heart that never lies still ? Thy 
 cold grey walls reflect back the leaden me- 
 lancholy of the soul. The square, hard- 
 edged, unyielding faces of thy inhabitants 
 have no sympathy to impart. What is it 
 to me that I look along the level line of thy 
 tenantless streets, and meet perhaps a law- 
 yer like a grasshopper chirping and skip- 
 
78 TO EDINBURGH. 
 
 ping, or the daughter of a Highland laird, 
 haughty, fair, and freckled ? Or why should 
 I look down your boasted Prince's-street, 
 with the beetle-browed Castle on one side, 
 and the Calton-hill with its proud monu- 
 ment at the further end, and the ridgy steep 
 of Salisbury-Crag, cut off abruptly by Na- 
 ture* s boldest hand, and Arthur's- Seat over- 
 looking all, like a lioness watching her 
 cubs ? Or shall I turn to the far-off Pent- 
 land-hills, with Craig-Crook nestling beneath 
 them, where lives the prince of critics and 
 the king of men ? Or cast my eye unsated 
 over the Frith of Forth, that from my win- 
 dow of an evening (as I read of AMY and her 
 love) glitters like a broad golden mirror in 
 the sun, and kisses the win'ding shores of 
 kingly Fife ? Oh no ! But to thee, to thee 
 I turn, North Berwick-Law, with thy blue 
 cone rising out of summer seas ; for thou 
 art the beacon of my banished thoughts, 
 and dost point my way to her, who is my 
 heart's true home. The air is too thin for 
 me, that has not the breath of Love in it ; 
 that is not embalmed by her sighs ! 
 
A THOUGHT. 
 
 I am not mad, but my heart is so ; and 
 raves within me, fierce and untameable, like 
 a panther in its den, and tries to get loose 
 to its lost mate, and fawn on her hand, and 
 bend lowly at her feet. 
 
 ANOTHER. 
 
 Oh ! thou dumb heart, lonely, sad, shut 
 up in the prison-house of this rude form, 
 that hast never found a fellow but for an in- 
 stant, and in very mockery of thy misery, 
 speak, find bleeding words to express thy 
 thoughts, break thy dungeon-gloom, or die 
 pronouncing thy Infelice's name ! 
 
 ANOTHER. 
 
 Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and 
 base fear, and shame and hate ; but above 
 all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned 
 with her graces, silent and in tears. 
 
LETTER IX. 
 
 MY DEAR P 
 
 You have been very kind to me in this 
 business ; but I fear even your indulgence 
 for my infirmities is beginning to fail. To 
 what a state am I reduced, and for what ? 
 For fancying a little artful vixen to be an 
 angel and a saint, because she affected to 
 look like one, to hide her rank thoughts and 
 deadly purposes. Has she not murdered me 
 under the mask of the tenderest friendship ? 
 And why ? Because I have loved her with 
 unutterable love, and sought to make her my 
 wife. You say it is my own "outrageous 
 conduct" that has estranged her ; nay, I have 
 been too gentle with her. I ask you first in 
 candour whether the ambiguity of her beha- 
 viour with respect to me, sitting and fondling 
 a man (circumstanced as I was) sometimes 
 
 
LETTER IX. 8 1 
 
 for half a day together, and then declaring 
 she had no love for him beyond common re- 
 gard, and professing never to marry, was not 
 enough to excite my suspicions, which the 
 different exposures from the conversations 
 below-stairs were not calculated to allay ? I 
 ask you what you yourself would have felt or 
 done, if loving her as I did, you had heard 
 what I did, time after time ? Did not her 
 mother own to one of the grossest charges 
 (which I shall not repeat) and is such inde- 
 licacy to be reconciled with her pretended 
 character (that character with which I fell in 
 love, and to which I made love) without sup- 
 posing her to be the greatest hypocrite in 
 the world ? My unpardonable offence has 
 been that I took her at her word, and was 
 willing to believe her the precise little puri- 
 tanical person she set up for. After exciting 
 her wayward desires by the fondest embraces 
 and the purest kisses, as if she had been 
 " made my wedded wife yestreen," or was to 
 become so to-morrow (for that was always 
 my feeling with respect to her) I did not 
 proceed to gratify them, or to follow up my 
 
 G 
 
82 LETTER IX. 
 
 advantage by any action which should de- 
 clare, " I think you a common adventurer, 
 and will see whether you are so or not !" 
 Yet any one but a credulous fool like me 
 would have made the experiment, with what- 
 ever violence to himself, as a matter of life 
 and death ; for I had every reason to distrust 
 appearances. Her conduct has been of a 
 piece from the beginning. In the midst of 
 her closest and falsest endearments, she has 
 always (with one or two exceptions) dis- 
 claimed the natural inference to be drawn 
 from them, and made a verbal reservation, 
 by which she might lead me on in a Fool's 
 Paradise, and make me the tool of her levity, 
 her avarice, and her love of intrigue as long 
 as she liked, and dismiss me whenever it 
 suited her. This, you see, she has done, 
 because my intentions grew serious, and if 
 complied with, would deprive her of the plea- 
 sures of a single life ! Offer marriage to this 
 " tradesman's daughter, who has as nice a 
 sense of honour as any one can have ;" and 
 like Lady Bellaston in Tom Jones she cuts 
 you immediately in a fit of abhorrence and 
 
LETTER IX. 83 
 
 alarm. Yet she seemed to be of a different 
 mind formerly, when struggling from me in 
 the height of our first intimacy, she ex- 
 claimed " However I might agree to my 
 own ruin, I never will consent to bring dis- 
 grace upon my family !" That I should have 
 spared the traitress after expressions like 
 this, astonishes me when I look back upon 
 it. Yet if it were all to do over again, I know 
 I should act just the same part. Such is 
 her power over me ! I cannot run", the 
 least risk of offending her I love her so. 
 When I look in her face, I cannot doubt 
 her truth ! Wretched being that I am ! 
 I have thrown away my heart and soul upon 
 an unfeeling girl ! and my life (that might 
 have been so happy, had she been what I 
 thought her) will soon follow either volun- 
 tarily, or by the force of grief, remorse, and 
 disappointment. I cannot get rid of the 
 reflection for an instant, nor even seek relief 
 from its galling pressure. Ah ! what a 
 heart she has lost ! All the love and affect- 
 ion of my whole life were centred in her, 
 who alone, I thought, of all women had 
 
84 LETTER IX. 
 
 found out my true character, and knew how 
 to value my tenderness. Alas ! alas ! that 
 this, the only hope, joy, or comfort I ever 
 had, should turn to a mockery, and hang like 
 an ugly film over the remainder of my 
 days ! I was at Roslin Castle yesterday. 
 It lies low in a rude, but sheltered valley, 
 hid from the vulgar gaze, and powerfully 
 reminds one of the old song. The strag- 
 gling fragments of the russet ruins, suspend- 
 ed smiling and graceful in the air as if they 
 would linger out another century to please 
 the curious beholder, the green larch-trees 
 trembling between with the blue sky and 
 white silver clouds, the wild mountain plants 
 starting out here and there, the date of the 
 year on an old low door-way, but still more, 
 the beds of flowers in orderly decay, that 
 seem to have no hand to tend them, but 
 keep up a sort of traditional remembrance 
 of civilization in former ages, present 
 altogether a delightful and amiable subject 
 for contemplation. The exquisite beauty of 
 the scene, with the thought of what I should 
 feel, should I ever be restored to her, and 
 
LETTER IX. 85 
 
 have to lead her through such places as my 
 adored, my angel-wife, almost drove me 
 beside myself. For this picture, this ecstatic 
 vision, what have I of late instead as the 
 image of the reality ? Demoniacal posses- 
 sions. I see the young witch seated in 
 another's lap, twining her serpent arms 
 round him, her eye glancing and her cheeks 
 on fire why does not the hideous thought 
 choke me ? Or why do I not go and find 
 out the truth at once ? The moonlight 
 streams over the silver waters : the bark is 
 in the bay that might waft me to her, almost 
 with a wish. The mountain-breeze sighs 
 out her name : old ocean with a world of 
 tears murmurs back my woes ! Does not 
 my heart yearn to be with her ; and shall I 
 not follow its bidding ? No, I must wait 
 till I am free ; and then I will take my 
 Freedom (a glad prize) and lay it at her 
 feet and tell her my proud love of her that 
 would not brook a rival in her dishonour, 
 and that would have her all or none, and 
 gain her or lose myself for ever ! 
 
 You see by this letter the way I am in, 
 
86 LETTER IX. 
 
 and I hope you will excuse it as the picture 
 of a half-disordered mind. The least 
 respite from my uneasiness (such as I had 
 yesterday) only brings the contrary reflection 
 back upon me, like a flood ; and by letting 
 me see the happiness I have lost, makes me 
 feel, by contrast, more acutely what I am 
 doomed to bear. 
 
LETTER X. 
 
 DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 Here I am at St. Bees once more, amid the 
 scenes which I greeted in their barrenness 
 in winter ; but which have now put on their 
 full green attire that shows luxuriant to the 
 eye, but speaks a tale of sadness to this 
 heart widowed of its last, its dearest, its only 
 hope ! Oh ! lovely Bees-Inn ! here I com- 
 posed a volume of law- cases, here I wrote 
 my enamoured follies to her, thinking her 
 human, and that "all below was not the 
 fiend's " here I got two cold, sullen answers 
 
 from the little witch, and here I was 
 
 and I was damned. I thought the revisiting 
 the old haunts would have soothed me for a 
 time, but it only brings back the sense of 
 what I have suffered for her and of her un- 
 kindness the more strongly, till I cannot en- 
 
88 LETTER X. 
 
 ydure the recollection. I eye the Heavens in 
 dumb despair, or vent my sorrows in the 
 desart air. " To the winds, to the waves, to 
 the rocks I complain" you may suppose 
 with what effect ! I fear I shall be obliged 
 to return. I am tossed about (backwards 
 and forwards) by my passion, so as to be- 
 come ridiculous. I can now understand 
 how it is that mad people never remain in 
 the same place they are moving on for ever, 
 from themselves ! 
 
 Do you know, you would have been de- 
 lighted with the effect of the Northern twi- 
 light on this romantic country as I rode 
 along last night ? The hills and groves and 
 herds of cattle were seen reposing in the 
 grey dawn of midnight, as in a moonlight 
 without shadow. The whole wide canopy 
 of Heaven shed its reflex light upon them, 
 like a pure crystal mirror. No sharp points, 
 no pretty details, no hard contrasts every 
 object was seen softened yet distinct, in its 
 simple outline and natural tones, trans- 
 parent with an inward light, breathing its 
 own mild lustre. The landscape altogether 
 
LETTER X. 89 
 
 was like an airy piece of mosaic-work, or 
 like one of Poussin's broad massy land- 
 scapes or Titian's lovely pastoral scenes. Is 
 it not so, that poets see nature, veiled to the 
 sight, but revealed to the soul in visionary 
 grace and grandeur ! I confess the sight 
 touched me ; and might have removed all 
 sadness except mine. So (I thought) the 
 light of her celestial face once shone into 
 my soul, and wrapt me in a heavenly trance. 
 The sense I have of beauty raises me for a 
 moment above myself, but depresses me the 
 more afterwards, when I recollect how it is 
 thrown away in vain admiration, and that it 
 only makes me more susceptible of pain 
 from the mortifications I meet with. Would 
 I had never seen her ! I might then not in- 
 deed have been happy, but at least I might 
 have passed my life in peace, and have sunk 
 into forgetfulness without a pang. The 
 noble scenery in this country mixes with my 
 passion, and refines, but does not relieve it. 
 I was at Stirling Castle not long ago. It 
 gave me no pleasure. The declivity seemed 
 to me abrupt, not sublime ; for in truth I did 
 
90 LETTER X. 
 
 not shrink back from it with terror. The 
 weather-beaten towers were stiff and formal : 
 the air was damp and chill : the river winded 
 its dull, slimy way like a snake along the 
 marshy grounds : and the dim misty tops of 
 Ben Leddi, and the lovely Highlands (woven 
 fantastically of thin air) mocked my embraces 
 and tempted my longing eyes like her, the 
 sole queen and mistress of my thoughts ! I 
 never found my contemplations on this sub- 
 ject so subtilised and at the same time so 
 desponding as on that occasion. I wept 
 myself almost blind, and I gazed at the broad 
 golden sun-set through my tears that fell in 
 showers. As I trod the green mountain turf, 
 oh ! how I wished to be laid beneath it in 
 one grave with her that I might sleep with 
 her in that cold bed, my hand in hers, and 
 my heart for ever still while worms should 
 taste her sweet body, that I had never tasted ! 
 There was a time when I could bear solitude ; 
 but it is too much for me at present. Now 
 I am no sooner left to myself than I am 
 lost in infinite space, and look round me in 
 vain for support or comfort. She was my 
 
LETTER X. 91 
 
 stay, my hope : without her hand to cling to, 
 I stagger like an infant on the edge of a pre- 
 cipice. The universe without her is one 
 wide, hollow abyss, in which my harassed 
 thoughts can find no resting-place. I must \L 
 break off here ; for the hysterica passio comes 
 upon me, and threatens to unhinge my 
 reason. 
 
LETTER XL 
 
 MY DEAR AND GOOD FRIEND, 
 
 I am afraid I trouble you with my queru- 
 lous epistles, but this is probably the last. 
 To-morrow or the next day decides my fate 
 with respect to the divorce, when I expect 
 to be a free man. In vain ! Was is not for 
 her and to lay my freedom at her feet, that 
 I consented to this step which has cost me 
 infinite perplexity, and now to be discarded 
 for the first pretender that came in her way! 
 If so, I hardly think I can survive it. You 
 who have been a favourite with women, do 
 not know what it is to be deprived of one's 
 only hope, and to have it turned to shame 
 and disappointment. There is nothing in 
 the world left that can afford me one drop of 
 comfort this I feel more and more. Every 
 thing is to me a mockery of pleasure, like 
 
LETTER XI. 93 
 
 her love. The breeze does not cool me : the 
 blue sky does not cheer me. I gaze only on 
 her face averted from me alas ! the only 
 face that ever was turned fondly to me ! 
 And why am I thus treated ? Because I 
 wanted her to be mine for ever in love or 
 friendship, and did not push my gross fami- 
 liarities as far as I might. " Why can you 
 not go on as we have done, and say noth- 
 ing about the word, forever ? " Was it not 
 plain from this that she even then medi- 
 tated an escape from me to some less sen- 
 timental lover ? " Do you allow any one 
 else to do so ? " I said to her once, as I was 
 toying with her. " No, not now ! " was her 
 answer; that is, because there was nobody 
 else in the house to take freedoms with her. 
 I was very well as a stopgap, but I was to be 
 nothing more. While the coast was clear, I 
 had it all my own way : but the instance 
 
 C came, she flung herself at his head 
 
 in the most bare-faced way, ran breathless 
 up stairs before him, blushed when his foot 
 was heard, watched for him in the passage, 
 and was sure to be in close conference with 
 
94 LETTER XI. 
 
 him when he went down again. It was then 
 my mad proceedings commenced. No won- 
 der. Had I not reason to be jealous of 
 every appearance of familiarity with others, 
 knowing how easy she had been with me at 
 first, and that she only grew shy when I did 
 not take farther liberties ? What has her 
 character to rest upon but her attachment 
 to me, which she now denies, not modestly, 
 but impudently ? Will you yourself say that 
 if she had all along no particular regard for 
 me, she will not do as much or more with 
 other more likely men? "She has had," 
 she says, " enough of my conversation, " so 
 it could not be that ! Ah I my friend, it was 
 not to be supposed I should ever meet even 
 with the outward demonstrations of regard 
 from any woman but a common trader in the 
 endearments of love ! I have tasted the 
 sweets of the well practised illusion, and 
 now feel the bitterness of knowing what a 
 bliss I am deprived of, and must ever be de- 
 prived of. Intolerable conviction ! Yet I 
 might, I believe, have won her by other 
 methods ; but some demon held my hand. 
 
LETTER XI. 95 
 
 How indeed could I offer her the least insult 
 when I worshipped her very footsteps ; and 
 even now pay her divine honours from my 
 inmost heart, whenever I think of her, abased 
 and brutalised as I have been by that Circean 
 cup of kisses, of enchantments, of which I 
 have drunk ! I am choked, withered, dried 
 up with chagrin, remorse, despair, from 
 which I have not a moment's respite, day or 
 night. I have always some horrid dream 
 about her, and wake wondering what is the 
 matter that " she is no longer the same to 
 me as ever ?" I thought at least we should 
 always remain dear friends, if nothing more 
 did she not talk of coming to live with me 
 only the day before I left her in the winter ? 
 But " she's gone, I am abused, and my re- 
 venge must be to love her !" Yet she knows 
 that one line, one word would save me, the 
 cruel, heartless destroyer ! I see nothing 
 for it but madness, unless Friday brings a 
 change, or unless she is willing to let me go 
 back. You must know I wrote to her to that 
 purpose, but it was a very quiet, sober letter, 
 begging pardon, and professing reform for 
 
96 LETTER XI. 
 
 the future, and all that. What effect it will 
 have, I know not. I was forced to get out 
 of the way of her answer, till Friday came. 
 Ever your's. 
 
TO S. L. 
 
 MY DEAR MISS L- 
 
 Evil to them that evil think, is an old say- 
 ing ; and I have found it a true one. I have 
 ruined myself by my unjust suspicions of 
 you. Your sweet friendship was the balm of 
 my life ; and I have lost it, I fear for ever, 
 by one fault and folly after another. What 
 would I give to be restored to the place in 
 your esteem, which, you assured me, I held 
 only a few months ago ! Yet I was not 
 contented, but did all I could to torment 
 myself and harass you by endless doubts 
 and jealousy. Can you not forget and for- 
 give the past, and judge of me by my con- 
 duct in future ? Can you not take all my 
 follies in the lump, and say like a good, 
 generous girl, " Well, I'll think no more of 
 H 
 
98 TO s. L. 
 
 them ? " In a word, may I come back, and 
 try to behave better? A line to say so 
 would be an additional favour to so many 
 already received by 
 
 Your obliged friend, 
 
 And sincere well-wisher. 
 
LETTER XII. TO C. P . 
 
 I have no answer from her. I'm mad. I 
 
 wish you to call on M in confidence, to 
 
 say I intend to make her an offer of my 
 hand, and that I will write to her father to 
 that effect the instant I am free, and ask him 
 whether he thinks it will be to any purpose, 
 and what he would advise me to do. 
 
UNALTERED LOVE. 
 
 "Love is not love that alteration finds : 
 Oh no ! it is an ever-fixed mark, 
 That looks on tempests and is never shaken." 
 
 SHALL I not love her for herself alone, 
 in spite of fickleness and folly ? To love 
 her for her regard to me, is not to love her, 
 but myself. She has robbed me of herself: 
 shall she also rob me of my love of her ? 
 "Did I not live on her smile ? Is it less 
 sweet because it is withdrawn from me ? 
 Did I not adore her every grace ? Does she 
 bend less enchantingly, because she has 
 turned from me to another ? Is my love 
 then in the power of fortune, or of her ca- 
 price ? No, I will have it lasting as it is 
 pure ; and I will make a Goddess of her, 
 and build a temple to her in my heart, and 
 worship her on indestructible altars, and* 
 
UNALTERED LOVE. IOI 
 
 raise statues to her: and my homage shall 
 be unblemished as her unrivalled symmetry 
 of form ; and when that fails, the memory 
 of it shall survive ; and my bosom shall be 
 proof to scorn, as her's has been to pity ; 
 and I will pursue her with an unrelenting 
 love, and sue to be her slave, and tend her 
 steps without notice and without reward ; 
 and serve her living, and mourn for her 
 when dead. And thus my love will have 
 shewn itself superior to her hate ; and I 
 shall triumph and then die. This is my idea 
 of the only true and heroic love ! Such is 
 mine for her. 
 
PERFECT LOVE. 
 
 PERFECT love has this advantage in it, 
 that it leaves the possessor of it nothing- 
 farther to desire. There is one object (at 
 least) in which the soul finds absolute con- 
 tent, for which it seeks to live, or dares to 
 die. The heart has as it were filled up the 
 moulds of the imagination. The truth of 
 passion keeps pace with and outvies the 
 extravagance of mere language. There are 
 no words so fine, no flattery so soft, that 
 there is not a sentiment beyond them, that 
 it is impossible to express, at the bottom of 
 the heart where true love is. What idle 
 sounds the common phrases, adorable crea- 
 ture, angel, divinity, are ! What a proud 
 reflection it is to have a feeling answering 
 to all these, rooted in the breast, unalterable, 
 
PERFECT LOVE. 103 
 
 unutterable, to which all other feelings are 
 light and vain ! Perfect love reposes on the 
 object of its choice, like the halcyon on the 
 wave ; and the air of heaven is around it. 
 
FROM C. P. ESQ. 
 
 London, July ^th, 1822. 
 
 I have seen M ! Now, my dear H , 
 
 let me entreat and adjure you to take what 
 I have to tell you, for what it is worth 
 neither for less, nor more. In the first 
 place, I have learned nothing decisive from 
 him. This, as you will at once see, is, as 
 far as it goes, good. I am either to hear 
 from him, or see him again in a day or two ; 
 but I thought you would like to know what 
 passed inconclusive as it was so I write 
 without delay, and in great haste to save a 
 post. I found him frank, and even friendly 
 in his manner to me, and in his views re- 
 specting you. I think that he is sincerely 
 sorry for your situation ; and he feels that 
 the person who has placed you in that situ- 
 
FROM C. P. ESQ. 105 
 
 ation is not much less awkwardly situated 
 herself; and he professes that he would 
 willingly do what he can for the good of 
 both. But he sees great difficulties attend- 
 ing the affair which he frankly professes to 
 consider as an altogether unfortunate one. 
 With respect to the marriage, he seems to 
 see the most formidable objections to it, on 
 both sides ; but yet he by no means decid- 
 edly says that it cannot, or that it ought not 
 to take place. These, mind you, are his 
 own feelings on the subject : but the most 
 important point I learn from him is this, 
 that he is not prepared to use his influence 
 either way that the rest of the family are 
 of the same way of feeling ; and that, in 
 fact, the thing must and does entirely rest 
 with herself. To learn this was, as you see, 
 gaining a great point. When I then endea- 
 voured to ascertain whether he knew any 
 thing decisive as to what are her views 
 on the subject, I found that he did not. 
 He has an opinion on the subject, and he 
 didn't scruple to tell me what it was ; but 
 he has no positive knowledge. In short, 
 
106 FROM C. P. ESQ. 
 
 he believes, from what he learns from her- 
 self (and he had purposely seen her on 
 the subject, in consequence of my appli- 
 cation to him) that she is at present indis- 
 posed to the marriage ; but he is not 
 prepared to say positively that she will not 
 consent to it. Now all this, coming from 
 him in the most frank and unaffected 
 manner, and without any appearance of 
 cant, caution, or reserve, I take to be most 
 important as it respects your views, whatever 
 they may be ; and certainly much more 
 favorable to them (I confess it) than I was 
 prepared to expect, supposing them to 
 remain as they were. In fact, as I said 
 before, the affair rests entirely with herself. 
 They are none of them disposed either to 
 further the marriage, or throw any insur- 
 mountable obstacles in the way of it ; and 
 what is more important than all, they are 
 evidently by no means certain that SHE may 
 not, at some future period, consent to it ; 
 or they would, for her sake as well as their 
 own, let you know as much flatly, and put 
 an end to the affair at once. 
 
FROM C. P. ESQ. 107 
 
 Seeing in how frank and straitforward a 
 manner he received what I had to say to 
 him, and replied to it, I proceeded to ask 
 him what were his views, and what were 
 likely to be her's (in case she did not con- 
 sent) as to whether you should return to 
 live in the house ; but I added, without 
 waiting for his answer, that if she intended 
 to persist in treating you as she had done 
 for some time past, it would be worse than 
 madness for you to think of returning. I 
 added that, in case you did return, all you 
 would expect from her would be that she 
 would treat you with civility and kindness 
 that she would continue to evince that 
 friendly feeling towards you, that she had 
 done for a great length of time, &c. To 
 this, he said, he could really give no de- 
 cisive reply, but that he should be most 
 happy if, by any intervention of his, he 
 could conduce to your comfort ; but he 
 seemed to think that for you to return on any 
 express understanding that she should behave 
 to you in any particular manner, would be to 
 place her in a most awkward situation. He 
 
108 FROM C. P. ESQ. 
 
 went somewhat at length into this point, 
 and talked very reasonably about it; the 
 result however was that he would not throw 
 any obstacles in the way of your return, or 
 of her treating you as a friend, &c. nor did 
 it appear that he believed she would refuse 
 to do so. And, finally, we parted on the 
 understanding that he would see them on 
 the subject, and ascertain what could be 
 done for the comfort of all parties : though 
 he was of opinion that if you could make 
 up your mind to break off the acquaintance 
 altogether, it would be the best plan of all. 
 I am to hear from him again in a day or two. 
 Well, what do you say to all this ? Can 
 you turn it to any thing but good compar- 
 ative good ? If you would know what / say 
 to it, it is this : She is still to be won by 
 wise and prudent conduct on your part ; 
 she was always to have been won by such ; 
 and if she is lost, it has been (not, as you 
 sometimes suppose, because you have not 
 carried that unwise, may I not say unworthy ? 
 conduct still farther, but) because you gave 
 way to it at all. Of course I use the terms 
 
FROM C. P. ESQ. 109 
 
 and "prudent'* with reference to 
 your object. Whether the pursuit of that 
 object is wise, only yourself can judge. I 
 say she has all along been to be won, and 
 she still is to be won ; and all that stands in 
 the way of your views at this moment is 
 your past conduct. They are all of them,**"*^ f 
 every soul, frightened at you ; they have seen 
 enough of you to make them so ; and they 
 have doubtless heard ten times more than 
 they have seen, or than any one else has 
 
 seen. They are all of them, including M 
 
 (and particularly she herself) frightened out 
 of their wits, as to what might be your 
 treatment of her if she were your's ; and 
 they dare not trust you they will not trust- 
 you, at present. I do not say that they will 
 trust you or rather that she will, for it all 
 depends on her, when you have gone through 
 a probation, but I am sure that she will not 
 trust you till you have. You will, I hope, 
 not be angry with me when I say that she 
 would be a fool if she did. If she were to 
 accept you at present, and without knowing 
 more of you, even / should begin to suspect 
 
110 FROM C. P. ESQ. 
 
 that she had an unworthy motive for doing it. 
 Let me not forget to mention what is perhaps 
 as important a point as any, as it regards the 
 
 marriage. I of course stated to M that 
 
 when you are free, you are prepared to make 
 her a formal offer of your hand ; but I begged 
 him, if he was certain that such an offer 
 would be refused, to tell me so plainly at 
 once, that I might endeavour, in that case, 
 to dissuade you from subjecting yourself to 
 the pain of such a refusal. He would not 
 tell me that he was certain. He said his 
 opinion was that she would not accept your 
 offer, but still he seemed to think that there 
 would be no harm in making it ! One word 
 more, and a very important one. He once, 
 and without my referring in the slightest 
 manner to that part of th$ subject, spoke of 
 her as a good girl, and likely to make any man 
 an excellent wife I Do you think if she were 
 a bad girl (and if she were, he must know 
 her to be so) he would have dared to do this, 
 under these circumstances ? And once, in 
 speaking of his not being a fit person to set 
 his face against " marrying for love," he 
 
FROM C. P. ESQ. Ill 
 
 added "I did so myself, and out of that 
 house ; and I have had reason to rejoice at 
 it ever since." And mind (for I anticipate 
 your cursed suspicions) I'm certain, at least, 
 if manner can entitle one to be certain of 
 any thing, that he said all this spontaneously, 
 and without any understood motive ; and I'm 
 certain, too, that he knows you to be a 
 person it would not do to play any tricks of 
 this kind with. I believe (and all this 
 would never have entered my thoughts, but 
 that I know it will enter your's) I believe 
 that even if they thought (as you have some- 
 times supposed they do) that she needs 
 whitewashing, or making an honest woman 
 of, you would be the last person they would 
 think of using for such a purpose, for they 
 know (as well as I do) that you couldn't fail 
 to find out the trick in a month, and would 
 turn her into the street the next moment, 
 though she were twenty times your wife 
 and that, as to the consequences of doing 
 so, you would laugh at them, even if you 
 cou'dn't escape from them. I shall lose the 
 post if I say more. 
 
 Believe me, Ever truly your friend, 
 
 C.P. 
 
LETTER XIII. 
 
 MY DEAR P- 
 
 You have saved my life, If I do not keep 
 friends with her now, I deserve to be hanged, 
 drawn, and quartered. She is an angel from 
 Heaven, and you cannot pretend I ever said 
 a word to the contrary! The little rogue 
 must have liked me from the first, or she 
 never could have stood all these hurricanes 
 without slipping her cable. What could she 
 find in me ? " I have mistook my person 
 all this while," &c. Do you know I saw a 
 picture, the very pattern of her, the other 
 day, at Dalkeith Palace (Hope finding For- 
 tune in the Sea) just before this blessed news 
 came, and the resemblance drove me almost 
 out of my senses. Such delicacy, such ful- 
 ness, such perfect softness, such buoyancy, 
 
LETTER XIII. 113 
 
 such grace ! If it is not the very image of 
 her, I am no judge. You have the face to 
 doubt my making the best husband in the 
 world : you might as well doubt it if I was 
 married to one of the Houris of Paradise. 
 She is a saint, an angel, a love. If she 
 deceives me again, she kills me. But I will 
 have such a kiss when I get back, as shall 
 last me twenty years. May God bless her 
 for not utterly disowning and destroying me ! 
 What an exquisite little creature it is, and 
 how she holds out to the last in her system 
 of consistent contradictions ! Since I wrote 
 to you about making a formal proposal, I 
 have had her face constantly before me, 
 looking so like some faultless marble statue, 
 as cold, as fixed and graceful as ever statue 
 did ; the expression (nothing was ever like 
 that /) seemed to say " I wish I could love 
 you better than I do, but still I will be your's." 
 No, I'll never believe again that she will not 
 be mine ; for I think she was made on pur- 
 pose for me. If there's any one else that 
 understands that turn of her head as I do, 
 I'll give her up without scruple. I have 
 I 
 
114 LETTER XIII. 
 
 made up my mind to this, never to dream of 
 another woman, while she even thinks it 
 worth her while to refuse to have me. You 
 see I am not hard to please, after all. Did 
 M know of the intimacy that had sub- 
 sisted between us ? Or did you hint at it ? 
 I think it would be a clencher, if he did. 
 How ought I to behave when I go back ? 
 Advise a fool, who had nearly lost a Goddess 
 by his folly. The thing was, I could not think 
 it possible she should ever like me. Her 
 taste is singular, but not the worse for that. 
 I'd rather have her love, or liking (call it 
 what you will) than empires. I deserve to 
 call her mine ; for nothing else can atone for 
 what I've gone through for her. I hope your 
 next letter will not reverse all, and then I 
 shall be happy till I see her-: one of the blest 
 when I do see her, if she looks like my own 
 beautiful love. I may perhaps write a line 
 when I come to my right wits. Farewel at 
 present, and thank you a thousand times 
 for what you have done for your poor 
 friend. 
 
LETTER XIII. I 15 
 
 P.S. I like what M said about her 
 
 sister, much. There are good people in the 
 world : I begin to see it, and believe it. 
 
LETTER THE LAST. 
 
 DEAR P- 
 
 To-morrow is the decisive day that 
 makes me or mars me. I will let you know 
 the result by a line added to this. Yet 
 what signifies it, since either way I have little 
 hope there, "whence alone my hope cometh !" 
 You must know I am strangely in the dumps 
 at this present writing. My reception with 
 her is doubtful, and my fate is then certain. 
 The hearing of your happiness has, I own, 
 made me thoughtful. It is just what I pro- 
 posed to her to do to have crossed the Alps 
 with me, to sail on sunny seas, to bask in 
 Italian skies, to have visited Vevai and the 
 rocks of Meillerie, and to have repeated to 
 her on the spot the story of Julia and St. 
 Preux, and to have shewn her all that my 
 
LETTER THE LAST. I I 7 
 
 heart had stored up for her but on my fore- 
 head alone is written REJECTED ! Yet I 
 too could have adored as fervently, and 
 loved as tenderly as others, had I been per- 
 mitted. You are going abroad, you say, 
 happy in making happy. Where shall I be ? 
 In the grave, I hope, or else in her arms. 
 To me, alas ! there is no sweetness out of 
 her sight, and that sweetness has turned to 
 bitterness, I fear ; that gentleness to sullen 
 scorn ! Still I hope for the Jbest. If she 
 will but have me, I'll make her love me : and 
 I think her not giving a positive answer 
 looks like it, and also shews that there is no 
 one else. Her holding out to the last also, 
 I think, proves that she was never to have 
 been gained but with honour. She's a strange, 
 almost an inscrutable girl : but if I once win 
 her consent, I shall kill her with kindness. 
 Will you let me have a sight of somebody be- 
 fore you go ? I should be most proud. I was 
 in hopes to have got away by the Steam-boat 
 to-morrow, but owing to the business not 
 coming on till then, I cannot ; and may not 
 be in town for another week, unless I come 
 
Il8 LETTER THE LAST. 
 
 by the Mail, which I am strongly tempted to 
 do. In the latter case I shall be there, and 
 visible on Saturday evening. Will you look 
 in and see, about eight o'clock ? I wish 
 much to see you and her and J. H. and my 
 little boy once more ; and then, if she is not 
 what she once was to me, I care not if I die 
 that instant. I will conclude here till to- 
 morrow, as I am getting into my old me- 
 lancholy. 
 
 It is all over, and I am my own man, and 
 your's ever 
 
LIBER AMORIS. 
 PART III. 
 
ADDRESSED TO J. S. K- 
 
 MY DEAR K- 
 
 It is all over, and I know my fate. I told 
 you I would send you word, if any thing 
 decisive happened ; but an impenetrable 
 mystery hung over the affair till lately. It 
 is at last (by the merest accident in the 
 world) dissipated ; and I keep my promise, 
 both for your satisfaction, and for the ease 
 of my own mind. 
 
 You remember the morning when I said 
 " I will go and repose my sorrows at the foot 
 of Ben Lomond " and when from Dumbar- 
 ton-bridge its giant-shadow, clad in air and 
 sunshine, appeared in view. We had a 
 pleasant day's walk. We passed Smollet's 
 monument on the road (somehow these 
 poets touch one in reflection more than most 
 
122 TO J. S. K. . 
 
 military heroes) talked of old times ; you 
 repeated Logan's beautiful verses to the 
 cuckoo,* which I wanted to compare with 
 Wordsworth's, but my courage failed me ; 
 you then told me some passages of an early 
 attachment which was suddenly broken off; 
 we considered together which was the most 
 to be pitied, a disappointment in love where 
 the attachment was mutual or one where 
 there has been no return, and we both agreed, 
 I think, that the former was best to be en- 
 dured, and that to have the consciousness of 
 
 * " Sweet bird, thy bower is ever green, 
 Thy sky is ever clear ; 
 Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, 
 No winter in thy year." 
 
 So they begin. It was the month of May ; the cuckoo 
 sang shrouded in some woody copse ; the showers 
 fell between whiles ; my friend repeated the lines with 
 native enthusiasm in a clear manly voice, still resonant 
 of youth and hope. Mr. Wordsworth will excuse 
 me, if in these circumstances I declined entering the 
 field with his profounder metaphysical strain, and kept 
 my preference to myself. 
 
TO J. S. K . 123 
 
 it a companion for life was the least evil of 
 the two, as there was a secret sweetness that 
 took off the bitterness and the sting of regret, 
 and " the memory of what once had been " 
 atoned, in some measure, and at intervals, for 
 what " never more could be." In the other 
 case, there was nothing to look back to with 
 tender satisfaction, no redeeming trait, not 
 even a possibility of turning it to good. It 
 left behind it not cherished sighs, but stifled 
 pangs. The galling sense of it did not bring 
 moisture into the eyes, but dried up the 
 heart ever after. One had been my fate, the 
 other had been yours ! 
 
 You startled me every now and then from 
 my reverie by the robust voice, in which you 
 asked the country people (by no means pro- 
 digal of their answers) "If there jwas 'any 
 trout-fishing in those streams ?" and our 
 dinner at Luss set us up for the rest of our 
 day's march. The sky now became over- 
 cast ; but this, I think, added to the effect 
 of the scene. The road to Tarbet is superb. 
 It is on the very verge of the^lake hard 
 level, rocky, with low stone-bridges con- 
 
124 TO J- s - K 
 
 stantly flung across it, and fringed with birch 
 trees, just then budding into spring, behind 
 which, as through a slight veil, you saw the 
 huge shadowy form of Ben Lomond. It lifts 
 its enormous but graceful bulk direct from the 
 edge of the water without any projecting 
 lowlands, and has in this respect much the 
 advantage of Skiddaw. Loch Lomond comes 
 upon you by degrees as you advance, un- 
 folding and then withdrawing its conscious 
 beauties like an accomplished coquet. You 
 are struck with the point of a rock, the arch 
 of a bridge, the Highland huts (like the first 
 rude habitations of men) dug out of the soil, 
 built of turf, and covered with brown heather, 
 a sheep-cote, some straggling cattle feeding 
 half-way down a precipice ; but as you ad- 
 vance farther on, the view expands into the 
 perfection of lake scenery. It is nothing (or 
 your eye is caught by nothing) but water, 
 earth, and sky. Ben Lomond waves to the 
 right, in its simple majesty, cloud-capt or 
 bare, and descending to a point at the head 
 of the lake, shews the Trossacs beyond, 
 tumbling about their blue ridges like woods 
 
TO J. S. K . 125 
 
 waving ; to the left is the Cobler, whose top 
 is like a castle shattered in pieces and nod- 
 ding to its ruin ; and at your side rise the 
 shapes of round pastoral hills, green, fleeced 
 with herds, and retiring into mountainous 
 bays and upland valleys, where solitude and 
 peace might make their lasting home, if 
 peace were to be found in solitude ! That it 
 was not always so, I was a sufficient proof ; 
 for there was one image that alone haunted 
 me in the midst of all this sublimity and 
 beauty, and turned it to a mockery and a 
 dream ! 
 
 The snow on the mountain would not let 
 us ascend ; and being weary of waiting and 
 of being visited by the guide every two 
 hours to let us know that the weather would 
 not do, we returned, you homewards, and I 
 to London 
 
 " Italiam, Italiam !" 
 
 You know the anxious expectations with 
 which I set out : now hear the result. 
 
 As the vessel sailed up the Thames, the 
 air thickened with the consciousness of 
 
I 26 TO J. S. K . 
 
 being near her, and I " heaved her name 
 pantingly forth." As I approached the 
 house, I could not help thinking of the 
 lines 
 
 " How near am I to happiness, 
 That earth exceeds not ! Not another like it. 
 The treasures of the deep are not so precious 
 As are the concealed comforts of a man 
 Lock'd up in woman's love. I scent the air 
 Of blessings when I come but near the house. 
 What a delicious breath true love sends forth ! 
 The violet-beds not sweeter. Now for a welcome 
 Able to draw men's envies upon man : 
 A kiss now that will hang upon my lip, 
 As sweet as morning dew upon a rose, 
 And full as long ! " 
 
 I saw her, but I saw at the first glance that 
 there was something amiss. It was with 
 much difficulty and after several pressing 
 intreaties that she was prevailed on to come 
 up into the room ; and when she did, she 
 stood at the door, cold, distant, averse ; and 
 when at length she was persuaded by my 
 repeated remonstrances to come and take 
 my hand, and I offered to touch her lips, 
 she turned her head and shrunk from my 
 
TO J. S. K . 127 
 
 embraces, as if quite alienated or mortally 
 offended. I asked what it could mean ? 
 What had I done in her absence to have 
 incurred her displeasure ? Why had she not 
 written to me ? I could get only short, 
 sullen, disconnected answers, as if there was 
 something labouring in her mind which she 
 either could not or would not impart. I 
 hardly knew how to bear this first reception 
 after so long an absence, and so different 
 from the one my sentiments towards her 
 merited ; but I thought it possible it migjit 
 be prudery (as I had returned without having 
 actually accomplished what I went about) or 
 that she had taken offence at something in 
 my letters. She saw how much I was hurt. 
 I asked her, "If she was altered since I went 
 away ? " " No." " If there was any one 
 else who had been so fortunate as to gain 
 her favourable opinion ? " " No, there was 
 no one else." " What was it then ? Was it 
 any thing in my letters ? Or had I displeased 
 
 her by letting Mr. P know she wrote to 
 
 me?" "No, not at all; but she did not 
 apprehend my last letter required any an- 
 
128 TO J. S. K . 
 
 swer, or she would have replied to it." All 
 this appeared to me very unsatisfactory and 
 evasive ; but I could get no more from her, 
 and was obliged to let her go with a heavy, 
 foreboding heart. I however found that 
 
 C was gone, and no one else had been 
 
 there, of whom I had cause to be jealous. 
 " Should I see her on the morrow ? " 
 " She believed so, but she could not pro- 
 mise." The next morning she did not 
 appear with the breakfast as usual. At this 
 I grew somewhat uneasy. The little Buona- 
 parte, however, was placed in its old position 
 on the mantle-piece, which I considered as 
 a sort of recognition of old times. I saw her 
 once or twice casually ; nothing particular 
 happened till the next day, which was Sun- 
 day. I took occasion to go into the parlour 
 for the newspaper, which she gave me with 
 a gracious smile, and seemed tolerably frank 
 and cordial. This of course acted as a spell 
 upon me. I walked out with my little boy, 
 intending to go and dine out at one or two 
 places, but I found that I still contrived to 
 bend my steps towards her, and I went back 
 
TO J. S. K . 129 
 
 to take tea at home. While we were out, I 
 talked to William about Sarah, saying that 
 she too was unhappy, and asking him to 
 make it up with her. He said, if she was 
 unhappy, he would not bear her malice any 
 more. When she came up with the tea- 
 things, I said to her, "William has something 
 to say to you I believe he wants to be 
 friends." On which he said in his abrupt, 
 hearty manner, " Sarah, I'm sorry if I've 
 ever said any thing to vex you" so they 
 shook hands, and she said, smiling affably 
 "Then I'll think no more of it ! " I added 
 " I see you've brought me back my little 
 Buonaparte" She answered with tremulous 
 softness " I told you I'd keep it safe for 
 you ! " as if her pride and pleasure in doing 
 so had been equal, and she had, as it were, 
 thought of nothing during my absence but 
 how to greet .me with this proof of her 
 fidelity on my return. I cannot describe her 
 manner. Her words are few and simple ; 
 but you can have no idea of the exquisite, 
 unstudied, irresistible graces with which she 
 accompanies them, unless you can suppose 
 K 
 
130 TO J. S. K . 
 
 a Greek statue to smile, move, and speak. 
 Those lines in Tibullus seem to have been 
 written on purpose for her 
 
 Quicquid agit, quoquo vestigia vertit, 
 Componuit furtim, subsequiturque decor. 
 
 Or what do you think of those in a modern 
 play, which might actually have been com- 
 posed with an eye to this little trifler 
 
 " See with what a waving air she goes 
 
 Along the corridor. How like a fawn ! 
 Yet statelier. No sound (however soft) 
 Nor gentlest echo telleth when she treads, 
 But every motion of her shape doth seem 
 Hallowed by silence. So did Hebe grow 
 Among the Gods a paragon ! Away, I'm grown 
 The very fool of Love ! " 
 
 The truth is, I never saw any thing like her, 
 nor I never shall again. How then do I 
 console myself for the loss of her ? Shall I 
 tell you, but you will not mention it again ? 
 I am foolish enough to believe that she and 
 I, in spite of every thing, shall be sitting 
 together over a sea-coal fire, a comfortable 
 
TO J. S. K . Ijr 
 
 good old couple, twenty years hence ! But 
 to my narrative. 
 
 I was delighted with the alteration in her 
 manner, and said, referring to the bust 
 " You know it is not mine, but your's ; I 
 gave it you ; nay, I have given you all my 
 heart, and whatever I possess, is your's ! " 
 She seemed good-humouredly to decline this 
 carte blanche offer, and waved, like a thing of 
 enchantment, out of the room. False calm ! 
 Deceitful smiles ! Short interval of peace, 
 followed by lasting woe ! I sought an 
 interview with her that same evening. I 
 could not get her to come any farther 
 than the door. " She was busy she could 
 hear what I had to say there." "Why 
 do you seem to avoid me as you do ? Not 
 one five minutes' conversation, for the sake 
 of old acquaintance ? Well, then, for the 
 sake of the little image /" The appeal seemed 
 to have lost its efficacy ; the charm was 
 broken; she remained immoveable. "Well, 
 then, I must come to you, if you will not 
 run away." I went and sat down in a chair 
 near the door, and took her hand, and talked 
 
132 TO J. S. K . 
 
 to her for three quarters of an hour; and she 
 listened patiently, thoughtfully, and seemed 
 a good deal affected by what I said. I 
 told her how much I had felt, how much I 
 had suffered for her in my absence, and how 
 much I had been hurt by her sudden silence, 
 for which I knew not how to account. I 
 could have done nothing to offend her while 
 I was away ; and my letters were, I hoped, 
 tender and respectful. I had had but one 
 thought ever present with me ; her image 
 never quitted my side, alone or in company, 
 to delight or distract me. Without her I 
 could have no peace, nor ever should again, 
 unless she would behave to me as she had 
 done formerly. There was no abatement of 
 my regard to her ; why was she so changed ? 
 I said to her, "Ah! Sarah, when I think 
 that it is only a year ago that you were every 
 thing to me I could wish, and that now you 
 seem lost to me for ever, the month of May 
 (the name of which ought to be a signal for 
 joy and hope) strikes chill to my heart. 
 How different is this meeting from that 
 delicious parting, when you seemed never 
 
TO J. S. K . 133 
 
 weary of repeating the proofs of your regard 
 and tenderness, and it was with difficulty we 
 tore ourselves asunder at last ! I am ten 
 thousand times fonder of you than I was 
 then, and ten thousand times more unhappy.'* 
 "You have no reason to be so ; my feelings 
 towards you are the same as they ever were." 
 I told her " She was my all of hope or 
 comfort : my passion for her grew stronger 
 every time I saw her." She answered, 
 " She was sorry for it ; for that she never 
 could return." I said something about 
 looking ill : she said in her pretty, mincing, 
 emphatic way, "I despise looks!" So, 
 thought I, it is not that ; and she says 
 there's no one else : it must be some strange 
 air she gives herself, in consequence of the 
 approaching change in my circumstances. 
 She has been probably advised not to give 
 up till all is fairly over, and then she will be 
 rny own sweet girl again. All this time she 
 was standing just outside the door, my hand 
 in hers (would that they could have grown 
 together !) she was dressed in a loose 
 morning-gown, her hair curled beautifully ; 
 
134 T J- s. K . 
 
 she stood with her profile to me, and looked 
 down the whole time. No expression was 
 ever more soft or perfect. Her whole 
 attitude, her whole form, was dignity and 
 bewitching grace. I said to her, " You look 
 like a queen, my love, adorned with your 
 own graces !" I grew idolatrous, and would 
 have kneeled to her. She made a movement, 
 as if she was displeased. I tried to draw 
 her towards me. She wouldn't. I then got 
 up, and offered to kiss her at parting. I 
 found she obstinately refused. This stung 
 me to the quick. It was the first time in her 
 life she had ever done so. There must be 
 some new bar between us to produce these 
 continued denials ; and she had not even 
 esteem enough left to tell me so. I followed 
 her half-way down-stairs, but to no purpose, 
 and returned into my room, confirmed in my 
 most dreadful surmises. I could bear it no 
 longer. I gave way to all the fury of disap- 
 pointed hope and jealous passion. I was 
 made the dupe of trick and cunning, killed 
 with cold, sullen scorn ; and, after all the 
 agony I had suffered, could obtain no 
 
TO J. S. K . 135 
 
 explanation why I was subjected to it. I 
 was still to be tantalized, tortured, made the 
 cruel sport of one, for whom I would have 
 sacrificed all. I tore the locket which 
 contained her hair (and which I used to 
 wear continually in my bosom, as the precious 
 token of her dear regard) from my neck, 
 and trampled it in pieces. I then dashed 
 the little Buonaparte on the ground, and 
 stamped upon it, as one of her instruments 
 of mockery. I could not stay in the room ; 
 I could not leave it ; my rage, my despair 
 were uncontroulable. I shrieked curses on 
 her name, and on her false love ; and the 
 scream I uttered (so pitiful and so piercing 
 was it, that the sound of it terrified me) 
 instantly brought the whole house, father, 
 mother, lodgers and all, into the room. 
 They thought I was destroying her and 
 myself. I had gone into the bed-room, 
 merely to hide away from myself, and as I 
 came out of it, raging-mad with the new 
 sense of present shame and lasting misery, 
 
 Mrs. F said, " She's in there ! He has 
 
 got her in there !" thinking the cries had 
 
136 TO J. S. K . 
 
 proceeded from her, and that I had been 
 offering her violence. " Oh ! no," I said, 
 " She's in no danger from me ; I am not the 
 person ; " and tried to burst from this scene 
 of degradation. The mother endeavoured 
 to stop me, and said, "For God's sake, 
 
 don't go out, Mr. ! for God's sake, 
 
 don't!" Her father, who was not, I believe, 
 in the secret, and was therefore justly 
 scandalised at such outrageous conduct, said 
 angrily, " Let him go ! Why should he stay?" 
 I however sprang down stairs, and as they 
 called out to me, " What is it ? What has 
 she done to you?" I answered, "She has 
 murdered me ! She has destroyed me for 
 ever ! She has doomed my soul to per- 
 dition !" I rushed out of the house, thinking 
 to quit it forever; but I was no sooner in 
 the street, than the desolation and the 
 darkness became greater, more intolerable ; 
 and the eddying violence of my passion 
 drove me back to the source, from whence it 
 sprung. This unexpected explosion, with 
 the conjectures to which it would give rise, 
 could not be very agreeable to the precieuse 
 
TO J. S. K . 137 
 
 or her family: and when I went back, the 
 father was waiting at the door, as if antici- 
 pating this sudden turn of my feelings, with 
 no friendly aspect. I said, " I have to beg 
 pardon, Sir; but my mad fit is over, and I 
 wish to say a few words to you in private/ * 
 He seemed to hesitate, but some uneasy 
 forebodings on his own account, probably, 
 prevailed over his resentment ; or, perhaps 
 (as philosophers have a desire to know the 
 cause of thunder) it was a natural curiosity 
 to know what circumstances of provocation 
 had given rise to such an extraordinary scene 
 of confusion. When we reached my room, 
 I requested him to be seated. I said, " It is 
 true, Sir, I have lost my peace of mind 
 forever, but at present I am quite calm and 
 collected, and I wish to explain to you why 
 I have behaved in so extravagant a way, and 
 to ask for your advice and intercession." 
 He appeared satisfied, and I went on. I had 
 no chance either of exculpating myself, or 
 of probing the question to the bottom, but 
 by stating the naked truth, and therefore I 
 said at once, " Sarah told me, Sir (and I 
 
138 TO J. S. K . 
 
 never shall forget the way in which she told 
 me, fixing her dove's eyes upon me, and 
 looking a thousand tender reproaches for 
 the loss of that good opinion, which she 
 held dearer than all the world) she told me, 
 Sir, that as you one day passed the door, 
 which stood a-jar, you saw her in an attitude 
 which a good deal startled you ; I mean 
 sitting in my lap, with her arms round my 
 neck, and mine twined round her in the 
 fondest manner. What I wished to ask was, 
 whether this was actually the case, or 
 whether it was a mere invention of her own, 
 to enhance the sense of my obligations to 
 her ; for I begin to doubt everything ? " 
 " Indeed, it was so ; and very much sur- 
 prised and hurt I was to see it." " Well, 
 then, Sir, I can only say, that as you saw her 
 sitting then, so she had been sitting for the 
 last year and a half, almost every day of her 
 life, by the hour together ; and you may 
 judge yourself, knowing what a nice modest- 
 looking girl she is, whether, after having 
 been admitted to such intimacy with so 
 sweet a creature, and for so long a time, it 
 
TO J. S. K . 139 
 
 is not enough to make anyone frantic to 
 be received by her as I have been since 
 my return, without any provocation given 
 or cause assigned for it.'* The old man 
 answered very seriously, and, as I think, 
 sincerely, "What you now tell me, Sir, 
 mortifies and shocks me, as much as it 
 can do yourself. I had no idea such a 
 thing was possible. I was much pained at 
 what I saw ; but I thought it an accident, 
 and that it would never happen again." 
 "It was a constant habit; it has happened 
 a hundred times since, and a thousand 
 before. I lived on her caresses as my daily 
 food, nor can I live without them." So I 
 told him the whole story, u what conjura- 
 tions, and what mighty magic I won his 
 daughter with," to be anything but mine for 
 life. Nothing could well exceed his as- 
 tonishment and apparent mortification. 
 " What I had said," he owned, " had left 
 a weight upon his mind that he should not 
 easily get rid of.*' I told him, " For myself, 
 I never could recover the blow I had re- 
 ceived. I thought, however, for her own 
 
140 TO J. S. K . 
 
 sake, she ought to alter her present be- 
 haviour. Her marked neglect and dislike, 
 so far from justifying, left her former inti- 
 macies without excuse ; for nothing could 
 reconcile them to propriety, or even a pre- 
 tence to common decency, but either love, 
 or friendship so strong and pure that it could 
 put on the guise of love. She was certainly 
 a singular girl. Did she think it right and 
 becoming to be free with strangers, and 
 strange to old friends ? " I frankly declared, 
 " I did not see how it was in human nature 
 for any one who was not rendered callous to 
 such familiarities by bestowing them indis- 
 criminately on every one, to grant the 
 extreme and continued indulgences she had 
 done to me, without either liking the man 
 at first, or coming to like him in the end, in 
 spite of herself. When my addresses had 
 nothing, and could have nothing honourable 
 in them, she gave them every encourage- 
 ment ; when I wished to make them honour- 
 able, she treated them with the utmost con- 
 tempt. The terms we had been all along on 
 were such as if she had been to be my bride 
 
TO J. S. K . 141 
 
 next day. It was only when I wished her 
 actually to become so, to ensure her own 
 character and my happiness, that she shrunk 
 back with precipitation and panic-fear. 
 There seemed to me something wrong in all 
 this ; a want both of common propriety, and 
 I might say, of natural feeling ; yet, with all 
 her faults, I loved her, and ever should, be- 
 yond any other human being. I had drank 
 in the poison of her sweetness too long ever 
 to be cured of it ; and though I might find 
 it to be poison in the end, it was still in my 
 veins. My only ambition was to be per- 
 mitted to live with her, and to die in her 
 arms. Be she what she would, treat me how 
 she would, I felt that my soul was wedded 
 to hers ; and were she a mere lost creature, 
 I would try to snatch her from perdition, 
 and marry her to-morrow if she would 
 have me. That was the question " Would 
 she have me, or would she not ? " He 
 said he could not tell ; but should not 
 attempt to put any constraint upon her in- 
 clinations, one way or other. I acquiesced, 
 and added, that " I had brought all this 
 
I 
 
 142 TO J. S. K . 
 
 upon myself, by acting contrary to the 
 
 suggestions of my friend, Mr. , who had 
 
 desired me to take no notice whether she 
 came near me or kept away, whether she 
 smiled or frowned, was kind or contemp- 
 tuous all you have to do, is to wait patiently 
 for a month till you are your own man, as 
 you will be in all probability ; then make 
 her an offer of your hand, and if she re- 
 fuses, there's an end of the matter." Mr. 
 L. said, "Well, Sir, and I don't think you 
 can follow a better advice ! " I took this 
 as a sort of negative encouragement, and so 
 we parted. 
 
TO THE SAME (in continuation). 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 The next day I felt almost as sailors must 
 do after a violent storm overnight, that has 
 subsided towards daybreak. The morning 
 was a dull and stupid calm, and I found she 
 was unwell, in consequence of what had 
 happened. In the evening I grew more 
 uneasy, and determined on going into the 
 country for a week or two. I gathered up 
 the fragments of the locket of her hair, and 
 the little bronze statue, which were strewed 
 about the floor, kissed them, folded them up 
 in a sheet of paper, and sent them to her, 
 with these lines written in pencil on the out- 
 side "Pieces of a broken heart, to be kept in 
 remembrance of the unhappy. Farewell" No 
 notice was taken ; nor did I expect any. 
 
 
1 44 TO J. S. K . 
 
 The following morning I requested Betsey 
 to pack up my box for me, as I should go 
 out of town the next day, and at the same 
 time wrote a note to her sister to say, I 
 should take it as a favour if she would 
 please to accept of the enclosed copies of 
 the Vicar of Wake field, The Man of Feeling, 
 and Nature and Art, in lieu of three volumes 
 of my own writings, which I had given her 
 on different occasions, in the course of our 
 acquaintance. I was piqued, in fact, that 
 she should have these to shew as proofs of 
 my weakness, and as if I thought the way 
 to win her was by plaguing her with my own 
 performances. She sent me word back that 
 the books I had sent were of no use to her, 
 and that I should have those I wished for 
 in the afternoon ; but that she could not 
 before, as she had lent them to her sister, 
 
 Mrs. M , I said, " Very well ; " but 
 
 observed (laughing) to Betsey, "It's a bad 
 rule to give and take ; so, if Sarah won't 
 have these books, you must ; they are very 
 pretty ones, I assure you." She curtsied 
 and tbok them, according to the family 
 
TO J. S, K . 145 
 
 custom. In the afternoon, when I came 
 back to tea, I found the little girl on her 
 knees, busy in packing up my things, and a 
 large paper-parcel on the table, which I 
 could not at first tell what to make of. On 
 opening it, however, I soon found what it 
 was. It contained a number of volumes 
 which I had given her at different times 
 (among others, a little Prayer-Book, bound 
 in crimson velvet, with green silk linings ; 
 she kissed it twenty times when she received 
 it, and said it was the prettiest present in 
 the world, and that she would shew it to her 
 aunt, who would be proud of it) and all 
 these she had returned together. Her name 
 in the title-page was cut out of them all. I 
 doubted at the instant whether she had done 
 this before or after I had sent for them back, 
 and I have doubted of it since ; but there is 
 no occasion to suppose her ugly all over with 
 hypocrisy. Poor little thing ! She has enough 
 to answer for, as it is. I asked Betsey if 
 she could carry a message for me, and she 
 said " Yes." " Will you tell your sister, then, 
 that I did not want all these books ; and 
 L 
 
146 TO J. S. K . 
 
 give my love to her, and say that I shall be 
 obliged if she will still keep these that I 
 have sent back, and tell her that it is only 
 those of my own writing that I think un- 
 worthy of her." What do you think the 
 little imp made answer ? She raised herself 
 on the other side of the table where she 
 stood, as if inspired by the genius of the 
 place, and said "AND THOSE ARE THK ONES 
 
 THAT SHE PRIZES THE MOST ! " If there 
 
 were ever words spoken that could revive 
 the dead, those were the words. Let me 
 kiss them, and forget that my ears have 
 heard aught else ! I said, "Are you sure of 
 that?" and she said, "Yes, quite sure." I 
 told her, " If I could be, I should be very 
 different from what I was." And I became 
 so that instant, for these cas.ual words carried 
 assurance to my heart of her esteem that 
 once implied, I had proofs enough of her 
 fondness. Oh ! how I felt at that moment ! 
 Restored to love, hope, and joy, by a breath 
 which I had caught by the merest accident, 
 and which I might have pined in absence 
 and mute despair for want of hearing! I 
 
TO J. S. K . 147 
 
 did not know how to contain myself; I was 
 childish, wanton, drunk with pleasure. I 
 gave Betsey a twenty-shilling note which I 
 happened to have in my hand, and on her 
 asking " What's this for, Sir ? " I said, " It's 
 for you. Don't you think it worth that to 
 be made happy ? You once made me very 
 wretched by some words I heard you drop, 
 and now you have made me as happy ; and 
 all I wish you is, when you grow up, that 
 you may find some one to love you as well 
 as I do your sister, and that you may love 
 better than she does me !" I continued in 
 this state of delirium or dotage all that day 
 and the next, talked incessantly, laughed at 
 every thing, and was so extravagant, nobody 
 could tell what was the matter with me. I 
 murmured her name ; I blest her ; I folded 
 her to my heart in delicious fondness ; I 
 called her by my own name ; I worshipped 
 
 her ; I was mad for her. I told P I 
 
 should laugh in her face, if ever she pre- 
 tended not to like me again. Her mother 
 came in and said, she hoped I should excuse 
 Sarah's coming up. " Oh ! Ma'am," I said, 
 
148 TO J. S. K . 
 
 " I have no wish to see her ; I feel her at 
 my heart ; she does not hate me after all, 
 and I wish for nothing. Let her come when 
 she will, she is to me welcomer than light, 
 than life ; but let it be in her own sweet 
 time, and at her own dear pleasure." Betsey 
 also told me she was "so glad to get the 
 books back." I, however, sobered and 
 wavered (by degrees) from seeing nothing 
 of her, day after day; and in less than a 
 week I was devoted to the Infernal Gods. I 
 could hold out no longer than the Monday 
 evening following. I sent a message to her; 
 she sent an ambiguous answer ; but she 
 came up. Pity me, my friend, for the shame 
 of this recital. Pity me for the pain of 
 having ever had to make it ! If the spirits of 
 mortal creatures, purified by faith and hope, 
 can (according to the highest assurances) 
 ever, during thousands of years of smooth- 
 rolling eternity and balmy, sainted repose, 
 forget the pain, the toil, the anguish, the 
 helplessness, and the despair they have 
 suffered here, in this frail being, then may I 
 forget that withering hour, and her, that fair, 
 
TO J. S. K . 149 
 
 pale form that entered, my inhuman betrayer, 
 and my only earthly love ! She said, " Did 
 you wish to speak to me, Sir?" I said "Yes, 
 may I not speak to you ? I wanted to see 
 you and be friends." I rose up, offered her 
 an arm-chair which stood facing, bowed on 
 it, and knelt to her adoring. She said 
 (going) "If that's all, I have nothing to say." 
 I replied, " Why do you treat me thus ? 
 What have I done to become thus hateful to 
 you ?" Answer, " I always told you I had 
 no affection for you." You may suppose 
 this was a blow, after the imaginary honey- 
 moon in which I had passed the preceding 
 week. I was stunned by it ; my heart sunk 
 within me. I contrived to say, " Nay, my 
 dear girl, not always neither; for did you 
 not once (if I might presume to look back 
 to those happy, happy times) when you were 
 sitting on my knee as usual, embracing and 
 embraced, and I asked if you could not love 
 me at last, did you not make answer, in the 
 softest tones that ever man heard, ' / could 
 easily say so, whether I did or not : you should 
 judge by my actions ! ' Was I to blame in 
 
150 TO J. S. K . 
 
 taking you at your word, when every hope I 
 had depended on your sincerity ? And did 
 you not say since I came back, l Your feel- 
 ings to me were the same as ever ? ' Why then 
 is your behaviour so different?" S. "Is it 
 nothing, your exposing me to the whole 
 house in the way you did the other evening ?" 
 H. " Nay, that was the consequence of your 
 cruel reception of me, not the cause of it. 
 I had better have gone away last year, as I 
 proposed to do, unless you would give some 
 pledge of your fidelity ; but it was your own 
 offer that I should remain. ' Why should I 
 go ?' you said, * Why could we not go on the 
 same as we had done, and say nothing about 
 the word forever?' S. "And how did you 
 behave when you returned ?" H. " That 
 was all forgiven when we -last parted, and 
 your last words were, * I should find you the 
 same as ever ' when I came back ? Did you 
 not that very day enchant and madden me 
 over again by the purest kisses and embraces, 
 and did I not go from you (as I said) ador- 
 ing, confiding, with every assurance of 
 mutual esteem and friendship ? " S. " Yes, 
 
TO J. S. K . 151 
 
 and in your absence I found that you had 
 told my aunt what had passed between us." 
 H. " It was to induce her to extort your 
 real sentiments from you, that you might no 
 longer make a secret of your true regard for 
 me, which your actions (but not your words) 
 confessed." S. " I own I have been guilty 
 of improprieties, which you have gone and 
 repeated, not only in the house, but out of 
 it ; so that it has come to my ears from 
 various quarters, as if I was a light charac- 
 ter. And I am determined in future to be 
 guided by the advice of my relations, and 
 particularly of my aunt, whom I consider as 
 my best friend, and keep every lodger at a 
 proper distance." You will find hereafter 
 that her favourite lodger, whom she visits 
 daily, had left the house ; so that she might 
 easily make and keep this vow of extraordin- 
 ary self-denial. Precious little dissembler ! 
 Yet her aunt, her best friend, says, " No, 
 Sir, no ; Sarah's no hypocrite !" which I was 
 fool enough to believe ; and yet my great 
 and unpardonable offence is to have enter- 
 tained passing doubts on this delicate point. 
 
152 TO J. S. K . 
 
 I said, Whatever errors I had committed, 
 arose from my anxiety to have every thing 
 explained to her honour ; my conduct shewed 
 that I had that at heart, and that I built on 
 the purity of her character as on a rock. 
 My esteem for her amounted to adoration. 
 " She did not want adoration." It was only 
 when any thing happened to imply that I 
 had been mistaken, that I committed any 
 extravagance, because I could not bear to 
 think her short of perfection. " She was far 
 from perfection," she replied, with an air 
 and manner (oh, my God !) as near it as 
 possible. " How could she accuse me of a 
 want of regard to her? It was but the 
 other day, Sarah," I said to her, " when that 
 little circumstance of the books happened, 
 and I fancied the expressions your sister 
 dropped proved the sincerity of all your 
 kindness to me you don't know how my 
 heart melted within me at the thought, that 
 after all, I might be dear to you. New hopes 
 sprung up in my heart, and I felt as Adam 
 must have done when his Eve was created 
 for him !" " She had heard enough of that 
 
TO J. S. K . 153 
 
 sort of conversation," (moving towards the 
 door). This, I own, was the unkindest cut 
 of all. I had, in that case, no hopes what- 
 ever. I felt that I had expended words in 
 vain, and that the conversation below stairs 
 which I told you of when I saw you) had 
 spoiled her taste for mine. If the allusion 
 had been classical I should have been to 
 blame ; but it was scriptural, it was a sort of 
 religious courtship, and Miss L. is religious ! 
 
 At once he took his Muse and dipt her 
 Right in the middle of the Scripture. 
 
 It would not do the lady could make 
 neither head nor tail of it. This is a poor 
 attempt at levity. Alas ! I am sad enough. 
 " Would she go and leave me so ? If it was 
 only my own behaviour, I still did not doubt 
 of success. I knew the sincerity of my love, 
 and she would be convinced of it in time. 
 If that was all, I did not care : but tell me 
 true, is there not a new attachment that is 
 the real cause of your estrangement ? Tell 
 me, my sweet friend, and before you tell me, 
 give me your hand (nay, both hands) that I 
 
iS4 T0 J- s. K . 
 
 may have something to support me under 
 the dreadful conviction/' She let me take 
 her hands in mine, saying, " She supposed 
 there could be no objection to that," as if 
 she acted on the suggestions of others, 
 instead of following her own will but still 
 avoided giving me any answer. I conjured 
 her to tell me the worst, and kill me on the 
 spot. Any thing was better than my present 
 
 state. I said, "Is it Mr. C ?" She 
 
 smiled, and said with gay indifference, " Mr. 
 
 C was here a very short time." "Well, 
 
 then, was it Mr. ?" She hesitated, and 
 
 then replied faintly, " No." This was a 
 mere trick to mislead ; one of the profound- 
 nesses of Satan, in which she is an adept. 
 " But," she added hastily, " she could make 
 no more confidences." "Then," said I, 
 " you have something to communicate." 
 " No ; but she had once mentioned a thing 
 of the sort, which I had hinted to her mother, 
 though it signified little." All this while I 
 was in tortures. Every word, every half- 
 denial, stabbed me. " Had she any tie ?" 
 " No, I have no tie ?" " You are not 
 
TO J. S. K . 155 
 
 going to be married soon ?" " I don't 
 intend ever to marry at all !" " Can't 
 you be friends with me as of old ?" 
 "She could give no promises." " Would 
 she make her own terms ?" " She would 
 make none." " I was sadly afraid the little 
 image was dethroned from her heart, as I 
 had dashed it to the ground the other night." 
 " She was neither desperate nor violent." 
 I did not answer "But deliberate and 
 deadly," though I might ; and so she 
 vanished in this running fight of question 
 and answer, in spite of my vain efforts to 
 detain her. The cockatrice, I said, mocks 
 me : so she has always done. The thought 
 was a dagger to me. My head reeled, my 
 heart recoiled within me. I was stung with 
 scorpions ; my flesh crawled ; I was choked 
 with rage ; her scorn scorched me like flames ; 
 her air (her heavenly air) withdrawn from 
 me, stifled me, and left me gasping for breath 
 and being. It was a fable. She started up 
 in her own likeness, a serpent in place of a 
 woman. She had fascinated, she had stung 
 me, and had returned to her proper shape, 
 
156 TO J. S. K . 
 
 gliding from me after inflicting the mortal 
 wound, and instilling deadly poison into every 
 pore ; but her form lost none of its original 
 brightness by the change of character, but 
 was all glittering, beauteous, voluptuous 
 grace. Seed of the serpent or of the woman, 
 she was divine ! I felt that she was a witch, 
 and had bewitched me. Fate had enclosed 
 me round about. / was transformed too, 
 no longer human (any more than she, to 
 whom I had knit myself) my feelings were 
 marble ; my blood was of molten lead ; 
 my thoughts on fire. I was taken out 
 of myself, wrapt into another sphere, far 
 from the light of day, of hope, of love. I 
 had no natural affection left ; she had slain 
 me, but no other thing had power over me- 
 Her arms embraced another ; but her mock- 
 embrace, the phantom of her love, still 
 bound me, and I had not a wish to escape. 
 So I felt then, and so perhaps shall feel till I 
 grow old and die, nor have any desire that 
 my years should last longer than they are 
 linked in the chain of those amorous folds, 
 or than her enchantments steep my soul in 
 
TO J. S. K . 157 
 
 oblivion of all other things ! I started to 
 find myself alone for ever alone, without a 
 creature to love me. I looked round the 
 room for help ; I saw the tables, the chairs, 
 the places where she stood or sat, empty, 
 deserted, dead. I could not stay where I 
 was ; I had no one to go to but to the 
 parent-mischief, the preternatural hag, that 
 had " drugged this posset " of her daughter's 
 charms and falsehood for me, and I went 
 down and (such was my weakness and 
 helplessness) sat with her for an hour, and 
 talked with her of her daughter, and the 
 sweet days we had passed together, and said 
 I thought her a good girl, and believed that 
 if there was no rival, she still had a regard 
 for me at the bottom of her heart ; and how 
 I liked her all the better for her coy, maiden 
 airs : and I received the assurance over and 
 over that there was no one else ; and that 
 Sarah (they all knew) never staid five minutes 
 with any other lodger, while with me she 
 would stay by the hour together, in spite of 
 all her father could say to her (what were 
 her motives, was best known to herself !) and 
 
158 TO J. S. K . 
 
 while we were talking of her, she came 
 bounding into the room, smiling with smoth- 
 ered delight at the consummation of my 
 folly and her own art; and I asked her 
 mother whether she thought she looked as if 
 she hated me, and I took her wrinkled, 
 withered, cadaverous, clammy hand at parting, 
 and kissed it. Faugh ! 
 
 I will make an end of this story ; there is 
 something in it discordant to honest ears. I 
 left the house the next day, and returned to 
 Scotland in a state so near to phrenzy, that 
 I take it the shades sometimes ran into one 
 
 another. R met me the day after I 
 
 arrived, and will tell you the way I was in. 
 I was like a person in a high fever ; only 
 mine was in the mind instead of the body. 
 It had the same irritating uncomfortable 
 effect on the bye-standers. I was incapable 
 of any application, and don't know what I 
 should have done, had it not been for the 
 
 kindness of . I came to see you, to 
 
 " bestow some of my tediousness upon you," 
 but you were gone from home. Every 
 thing went on well as to the law-business ; 
 
TO J. S. K . 159 
 
 and as it approached to a conclusion, I wrote 
 
 to my good friend P to go to M , 
 
 who had married her sister, and ask him if 
 it would be worth my while to make her a 
 formal offer, as soon as I was free, as, with 
 the least encouragement, I was ready to 
 throw myself at her feet ; and to know, in 
 case of refusal, whether I might go back 
 there and be treated as an old friend. Not 
 a word of answer could be got from her on 
 either point, notwithstanding every impor- 
 tunity and intreaty ; but it was the opinion 
 
 of M that I might go and try my fortune. 
 
 I did so with joy, with something like 
 confidence. I thought her giving no positive 
 answer implied a chance, at least, of the 
 reversion of her favour, in case I behaved 
 well. All was false, hollow, insidious. The 
 first night after I got home, I slept on down. 
 In Scotland, the flint had been my pillow. 
 But now I slept under the same roof with 
 her. What softness, what balmy repose in 
 the very thought ! I saw her that same day 
 and shook hands with her, and told her how 
 glad I was to see her ; and she was kind 
 
l6o TO J. S. K . 
 
 and comfortable, though still cold and 
 distant. Her manner was altered from what 
 it was the last time. She still absented herself 
 from the room, but was mild and affable 
 when she did come. She was pale, dejected, 
 evidently uneasy about something, and had 
 been ill. I thought it was perhaps her 
 reluctance to yield to my wishes, her pity for 
 what I suffered ; and that in the struggle 
 between both, she did not know what to do. 
 How I worshipped her at these moments ! 
 We had a long interview the third day, and 
 I thought all was doing well. I found her 
 sitting at work in the window-seat of the 
 front parlour ; and on my asking if I might 
 come in, she made no objection. I sat 
 down by her ; she let me take her hand ; I 
 talked to her of indifferent things, and of 
 old times. I asked her if she would put 
 some new frills on my shirts ? " With 
 the greatest pleasure." If she could get 
 the littk image mended ? "It was broken 
 in three pieces, and the sword was gone, but 
 she would try." I then asked her to make up 
 a plaid silk which I had given her in the 
 
TO J. S. K . l6l 
 
 winter, and which she said would make a 
 pretty summer gown. I so longed to see 
 her in it ! " She had little time to spare, 
 but perhaps might ! " Think what I felt, 
 talking peaceably, kindly, tenderly with my 
 love, not passionately, not violently. I 
 tried to take pattern by her patient meekness, 
 as I thought it, and to subdue my desires to 
 her will. I then sued to her, but respectfully, 
 to be admitted to her friendship she must 
 know I was as true a friend as ever woman 
 had or if there was a bar to our intimacy 
 from a dearer attachment, to let me know it 
 frankly, as I shewed her all my heart. She 
 drew out her handkerchief and wiped her 
 eyes " of tears which sacred pity had 
 engendered there." Was it so or not ? I 
 cannot tell. But so she stood (while I 
 pleaded my cause to her with all the earnest- 
 ness and fondness in the world) with the 
 tears trickling from her eye-lashes, her head 
 stooping, her attitude fixed, with the finest 
 expression that ever was seen of mixed 
 regret, pity, and stubborn resolution ; but 
 without speaking a word, without altering 
 M 
 
1 62 TO J. S. K . 
 
 a feature. It was like a petrifaction of a 
 human face in the softest moment of passion. 
 "Ah!" I said, "how you look! I have 
 prayed again and again while I was away 
 from you, in the agony of my spirit, that I 
 might but live to see you look so again, and 
 then breathe my last !" I entreated her to 
 give me some explanation. In vain ! At 
 length she said she must go, and disappeared 
 like a spirit. That week she did all the 
 little trifling favours I had asked of her. 
 The frills were put on, and she sent up to 
 know if I wanted any more done. She got 
 the Buonaparte mended. This was like 
 healing old wounds indeed ! How ? As 
 follows, for thereby hangs the conclusion of 
 my tale. Listen. 
 
 I had sent a message one 'evening to speak 
 to her about some special affairs of the house, 
 and received no answer. I waited an hour 
 expecting her, and then went out in great 
 vexation at my disappointment. I complained 
 to her mother a day or two after, saying I 
 thought it so unlike Sarah's usual propriety 
 of behaviour, that she must mean it as a mark 
 
TO J. S. K . 163 
 
 of disrespect. Mrs. L said, " La ! Sir, 
 
 you're always fancying things. Why, she 
 was dressing to go out, and she was only 
 going to get the little image you're both 
 so fond of mended ; and its to be done 
 this evening. She has been to two or 
 three places to see about it, before she could 
 get any one to undertake it." My heart, my 
 poor fond heart, almost melted within me at 
 this news. I answered, " Ah ! Madam, 
 that's always the way with the dear creature. 
 I am finding fault with her and thinking the 
 hardest things of her ; and at that very time 
 she's doing something to shew the most 
 delicate attention, and that she has no greater 
 satisfaction than in gratifying my wishes !" 
 On this we had some farther talk, and I took 
 nearly the whole of the lodgings at a hundred 
 guineas a year, that (as I said) she might 
 have a little leisure to sit at her needle of an 
 evening, or to read if she chose, or to walk 
 out when it was fine. She was not in good 
 health, and it would do her good to be less 
 confined. I would be the drudge and she 
 should no longer be the slave. I asked 
 
164 TO J. S. K . 
 
 nothing in return. To see her happy, to 
 make her so, was to be so myself. This was 
 agreed to. I went over to Blackheath that 
 evening, delighted as I could be after all I had 
 suffered, and lay the whole of the next 
 morning on the heath under the open sky, 
 dreaming of my earthly Goddess. This was 
 Sunday. That evening I returned, for I 
 could hardly bear to be for a moment out of 
 the house where she was, and the next 
 morning she tapped at the door it was 
 opened it was she she hesitated and then 
 came forward : she had got the little image 
 in her hand, I took it, and blest her from my 
 heart. She said " They had been obliged to 
 put some new pieces to it." I said "I didn't 
 care how it was done, so that I had it restored 
 to me safe, and by her." I thanked her and 
 begged to shake hands with her. She did so, 
 and as I held the only hand in the world that 
 I never wished to let go, I looked up in her 
 face, and said " Have pity on me, have pity 
 on me, and save me if you can !" Not a 
 word of answer, but she looked full in my 
 eyes, as much as to say, " Well, I'll think 
 
TO J. S. K . 165 
 
 of it ; and if I can, I will save you !" We 
 talked about the expense of repairing the 
 figure. "Was the man waiting?" " No, 
 she had fetched it on Saturday evening." 
 I said I'd give her the money in the course 
 of the day, and then shook hands with her 
 again in token of reconciliation ; and she 
 went waving out of the room, but at the door 
 turned round and looked full at me, as she 
 did the first time she beguiled me of my 
 heart. This was the last. 
 
 All that day I longed to go down stairs to 
 ask her and her mother to set out with me 
 for Scotland on Wednesday, and on Saturday 
 I would make her my wife. Something 
 withheld me. In the evening, however, I 
 could not rest without seeing her, and I said 
 to her younger sister, " Betsey, if Sarah will 
 come up now, I'll pay her what she laid out 
 for me the other day." " My sister's gone 
 out, Sir," was the answer. What again ! 
 thought I, That's somewhat sudden. I told 
 
 P her sitting in the window-seat of the 
 
 front parlour boded me no good. It was not 
 in her old character. She did not use to 
 
166 "TO j. s. K . 
 
 know there were doors or windows in the 
 house and now she goes out three times in 
 a week. It is to meet some one, I'll lay my 
 life on't. "Where is she gone ? " "To my 
 grandmother's, Sir." "Where does your 
 grandmother live now ? " " At Somers' 
 Town." I immediately set out to Somers' 
 Town. I passed one or two streets, and at 
 last turned up King-street, thinking it most 
 likely she would return that way home. I 
 passed a house in King-street where I had 
 once . lived, and had not proceeded many 
 paces, ruminating on chance and change and 
 old times, when I saw her coming towards 
 me. I felt a strange pang at the sight, but 
 I thought her alone. Some people before 
 me moved on, and I saw another person with 
 her. The murder was out.' It was a tall, 
 rather well-looking young man, but I did not 
 at first recollect him. We passed at the 
 crossing of the street without speaking. 
 Will you believe it, after all that had passed 
 between us for two years, after what had 
 passed in the last half-year, after what 
 had passed that very morning, she went 
 
TO J S. K . 167 
 
 by me without even changing countenance, 
 without expressing the slightest emotion, 
 without betraying either shame or pity or 
 remorse or any other feeling that any 
 other human being but herself must have 
 shewn in the same situation. She had 
 no time to prepare for acting a part, to 
 suppress her feelings the truth is, she has 
 not one natural feeling in her bosom to 
 suppress. I turned and looked they also 
 turned and looked and as if by mutual 
 consent, we both retrod our steps and passed 
 again, in the same way. I went home. I 
 was stifled. I could not stay in the house, 
 walked into the street, and met them coming 
 towards home. As soon as he had left her 
 at the door (I fancy she had prevailed with 
 him to accompany her, dreading some 
 violence) I returned, went upstairs, and 
 requested an interview. Tell her, I said, I'm 
 in excellent temper and good spirits, but I 
 must see her! She came smiling, and I said, 
 " Come in, my dear girl, and sit down, and 
 tell me all about it, how it is and who it 
 is." " What," she said, " do you mean Mr. 
 
1 68 TO J. S. K- 
 
 C ? Oh," said I, " then it is he ! Ah ! 
 
 you rogue, I always suspected there was 
 something between you, but you know you 
 denied it lustily : why did you not tell me all 
 about it at the time, instead of letting me 
 suffer as I have done ? But however, no 
 reproaches. I only wish it may all end 
 happily and honourably for you, and I am 
 satisfied. But," I said, " you know you used 
 to tell me, you despised looks." "She didn't 
 think Mr. C was so particularly hand- 
 some." " No, but he's very well to pass, and 
 a well-grown youth into the bargain." 
 Pshaw ! let me put an end to the fulsome 
 detail. I found he had lived over the way, 
 that he had been lured thence, no doubt, 
 almost a year before, that they had first 
 spoken in the street, and that he had never 
 once hinted at marriage, and had gone 
 away, because (as he said) they were too 
 much together, and that it was better for 
 her to meet him occasionally out of doors. 
 " There could be no harm in their walking 
 together." " No, but you may go some 
 where afterwards." " One must trust to 
 
 
TO J. S. K . 169 
 
 one's principle for that." Consummate 
 hypocrite ! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
 
 ******** I told her Mr. M , 
 
 who had married her sister, did not wish to 
 leave the house. I, who would have married 
 her, did not wish to leave it. I told her I 
 hoped I should not live to see her come to 
 shame, after all my love of her ; but put her 
 on her guard as well as I could, and said, 
 after the lengths she had permitted herself 
 with me, I could not help being alarmed at 
 the influence of one over her, whom she 
 could hardly herself suppose to have a tenth 
 part of my esteem for her ! ! She made no 
 answer to this, but thanked me coldly for 
 my good advice, and rose to go. I begged 
 her to sit a few minutes, that I might try to 
 recollect if there was any thing else I 
 wished to say to her, perhaps for the last 
 time ; and then, not finding any thing, I 
 bade her good night, and asked for a fare- 
 wel kiss. Do you know she refused ; so 
 little does she understand what is due to 
 friendship, or love, or honour ! We parted 
 friends, however, and I felt deep grief, but 
 
170 TO J. S. K . 
 
 no enmity against her. I thought C 
 
 had pressed his suit after I went, and had 
 prevailed. There was no harm in that a 
 little fickleness or so, a little over-pretension 
 to unalterable attachment but that was all. 
 She liked him better than me it was my 
 hard hap, but I must bear it. I went out to 
 roam the desart streets, when, turning a 
 corner, whom should I meet but her very 
 lover ? I went up to him and asked for a 
 few minutes' conversation on a subject that 
 was highly interesting to me and I believed 
 not indifferent to him : and in the course 
 of four hours' talk, it came out that for 
 three months previous to my quitting 
 London for Scotland, she had been playing 
 the same game with him as with me that 
 he breakfasted first, and enjoyed an hour of 
 her society, and then I took my turn, so 
 that we never jostled ; and this explained 
 why, when he came back sometimes and 
 passed my door, as she was sitting in my 
 lap, she coloured violently, thinking, if her 
 lover looked in, what a denouement there 
 would be. He could not help again and 
 
TO J. S. K . iyi 
 
 again expressing his astonishment at finding 
 that our intimacy had continued unimpaired 
 up to so Late a period after he came, and 
 when they were on the most intimate foot- 
 ing. She used to deny positively to him 
 that there was any thing between us, just as 
 she used to assure me with impenetrable 
 
 effrontery that " Mr. C was nothing to 
 
 her, but merely a lodger." All this while 
 she kept up the- farce of her romantic 
 attachment to her old lover, vowed that she 
 never could alter in that respect, let me go 
 to Scotland on the solemn and repeated 
 assurance that there was no new flame, that 
 there was no bar between us but this 
 shadowy love I leave her on this under- 
 standing, she becomes more fond or more 
 intimate with her new lover ; he quitting 
 the house (whether tired out or not, I can't 
 say) in revenge she ceases to write to me, 
 keeps me in wretched suspense, treats me 
 like something loathsome to her when I 
 return to enquire the cause, denies it with 
 scorn and impudence, destroys me and 
 shews no pity, no desire to soothe or shorten 
 
172 TO J. S. K . 
 
 the pangs she has occasioned by her 
 wantonness and hypocrisy, and wishes to 
 linger the affair on to the last moment, 
 going out to keep an appointment with 
 another while she pretends to be obliging 
 
 me in the tenderest point (which C 
 
 himself said was too much) What do 
 
 you think of all this ? Shall I tell you my 
 opinion ? But 1 must try to do it in another 
 letter. 
 
TO THE SAME (in Conclusion). 
 
 I did not sleep a wink all that night ; nor 
 did I know till the next day the full meaning 
 of what had happened to me. With the 
 morning's light, conviction glared in upon 
 me that I had not only lost her for ever 
 but every feeling I had ever had towards 
 her respect, tenderness, pity all but my 
 fatal passion, was gone. The whole was a 
 mockery, a frightful illusion. I had em- 
 braced the false Florimel instead of the true ; 
 or was like the man in the Arabian Nights 
 who had married agouL How different was 
 the idea I once had of her ! Was this she, 
 
 " Who had been beguiled she who was made 
 Witnin a gentle bosom to be laid- 
 To bless and to be blessed to be heart-bare 
 To one who found his bettered likeness there 
 
174 TO j. s. K . 
 
 To think for ever*with him, like a bride 
 
 To haunt his eye, like taste personified 
 
 To double his delight, to share his sorrow, 
 
 And like a morning beam, wake to him every morrow?" 
 
 I saw her pale, cold form glide silent by 
 me, dead to shame as to pity. Still I seemed 
 to clasp this piece of witchcraft to my bosom ; 
 this lifeless image, which was all that was 
 left of my love, was the only thing to which 
 my sad heart clung. Were she dead, should 
 I not wish to gaze once more upon her pallid 
 features ? She is dead to me ; but what she 
 once was to me, can never die ! The agony, 
 the conflict of hope and fear, of adoration 
 and jealousy is over ; or it would, ere long, 
 have ended with my life. I am no more 
 lifted now to Heaven, and then plunged in 
 the abyss ; but I seem to have been thrown 
 from the top of a precipice, and to lie 
 groveling, stunned, and stupefied. I am 
 melancholy, lonesome, and weaker than a 
 child. The worst is, I have no prospect of 
 any alteration for the better : she has cut off 
 all possibility of a reconcilement at any 
 
TO J. S. K . 175 
 
 future period. Were she even to return to 
 her former pretended fondness and endear- 
 ments, I could have no pleasure, no confi- 
 dence in them. I can scarce make out the 
 contradiction to myself. I strive to think 
 she always was what I now know she is ; but 
 I have great difficulty in it, and can hardly 
 believe but she still is what she so long 
 seemed, Poor thing ! I am afraid she is 
 little better off herself ; nor do I see what 
 is to become of her, unless she throws off 
 the mask at once, and runs a-muck at infamy. 
 She is exposed and laid bare to all those 
 whose opinion she set a value upon. Yet 
 she held her head very high, and must feel 
 (if she feels any thing) proportionably morti- 
 fied. A more complete experiment on 
 character was never made. If I had not 
 met her lover immediately after I parted 
 with her, it would have been nothing. I 
 might have supposed she had changed her 
 mind in my absence, and had given him the 
 preference as soon as she felt it, and even 
 shewn her delicacy in declining any farther 
 intimacy with me. But it comes out that 
 
176 TO J. S. K . 
 
 she had gone on in the most forward and 
 familiar way with both at once (she could 
 not change her mind in passing from one 
 room to another) tola both the same bare- 
 faced and unblushing falsehoods, like the 
 commonest creature ; received presents from 
 me to the very last, and wished to keep up 
 the game still longer, either to gratify her 
 humour, her avarice, or her vanity in playing 
 with my passion, or to have me as a dernier 
 resort, in case of accidents. Again, it would 
 have been nothing, if she had not come up 
 with her demure, well-composed, wheedling 
 looks that morning, and then met me in the 
 evening in a situation, which (she believed) 
 might kill me on the spot, with no more 
 feeling than a common courtesan shews, 
 who bilks a customer, and passes him, leer- 
 ing up at her bully, the moment after. If 
 there had been the frailty of passion, it 
 would have been excusable ; but it is evident 
 she is a practised, callous jilt, a regular 
 lodging-house decoy, played off by her 
 mother upon the lodgers, one after another, 
 applying them to her different purposes, 
 
TO J. S. K : . 177 
 
 laughing at them in turns, and herself the 
 probable dupe and victim of some favourite 
 gallant in the end. I know all this ; but 
 what do I gain by it, unless I could find 
 some one with her shape and air, to supply 
 the place of the lovely apparition ? That 
 a professed wanton should come and sit on 
 a man's knee, and put her arms round his 
 neck, and caress him, and seem fond of 
 him, means nothing, proves nothing, no one 
 concludes any thing from it ; but that a 
 pretty, reserved, modest, delicate-looking 
 girl should do this, from the first hour to 
 the last of your being in the house, without 
 intending any thing by it, is new, and, I 
 think, worth explaining. It was, I confess, 
 out of my calculation, and may be out of 
 that of others. Her unmoved indifference 
 and self-possession all the while, shew that 
 it is her constant practice. Her look even, 
 if closely examined, bears this interpretation. 
 It is that of studied hypocrisy or startled 
 guilt, rather than of refined sensibility or 
 conscious innocence. " She defied any one 
 to read her thoughts ? " she once told me. 
 
 N 
 
178 TO J. S. K . 
 
 "Do they then require concealing?" I 
 imprudently asked her. The command over 
 herself is surprising. She never once betrays 
 herself by any momentary forgetfulness, by 
 any appearance of triumph or superiority to 
 the person who is her dupe, by any levity of 
 manner in the plenitude of her success ; 
 it is one faultless, undeviating, consistent, 
 consummate piece of acting. Were she a 
 saint on earth, she could not seem more like 
 one. Her hypocritical high-flown preten- 
 sions, indeed, make her the worse : but still 
 the ascendancy of her will, her determined 
 perseverance in what she undertakes to do, 
 has something admirable in it, approaching 
 to the heroic. She is certainly an extra- 
 ordinary girl ! Her retired manner, and 
 invariable propriety of behaviour made me 
 think it next to impossible she could grant 
 the same favours indiscriminately to every 
 one that she did to me. Yet this now appears 
 to be the fact. She must have done the 
 
 very same with C , invited him into 
 
 the house to carry on a closer intrigue 
 with her, and then commenced the double 
 
TO J, S. K . 179 
 
 game with both together. She always " de- 
 spised looks." This was a favourite phrase 
 with her, and one of the hooks which she 
 baited for me. Nothing could win her but 
 a man's behaviour and sentiments. Besides, 
 she could never like another she was a 
 martyr to disappointed affection and friend- 
 ship was all she could even extend to any 
 other man. All the time, she was making 
 signals, playing off her pretty person, and 
 having occasional interviews in the street 
 with this very man, whom she could only 
 have taken so sudden and violent a liking to 
 from his looks, his personal appearance, 
 and what she probably conjectured of his 
 circumstances. Her sister had married a 
 
 counsellor the Miss F 's, who kept the 
 
 house before, had done so too and so would 
 she. "There was precedent for it." Yet 
 if she was so desperately enamoured of this 
 new acquaintance, if he had displaced the 
 little image from her breast, if he was become 
 her second " unalterable attachment " (which 
 I would have given my life, to have been) 
 why continue the same unwarrantable 
 
l8o TO J. S. K . 
 
 familiarities with me to the last, and 
 promise that they should be renewed on my 
 return (if I had not unfortunately stumbled 
 upon the truth to her aunt) and yet keep 
 up the same refined cant about her old 
 attachment all the time, as if it was that which 
 stood in the way of my pretensions, and not 
 her faithlessness to it ? " If one swerves 
 from one, one shall swerve from another " 
 was her excuse for not returning my regard. 
 Yet that which I thought a prophecy, was 
 I suspect a history. She had swerved twice 
 from her vowed engagements, first to me, 
 and then from me to another. If she made 
 a fool of me, what did she make of her lover ? 
 I fancy he has put that question to himself. 
 I said nothing to him about the amount of 
 the presents ; which is another damning 
 circumstance, that might have opened my 
 eyes long before ; but they were shut by 
 my fond affection, which "turned all to 
 favour and to prettiness." She cannot be 
 supposed to have kept up an appearance 
 of old regard to me, from a fear of hurting 
 my feelings by her desertion ; for she not 
 
TO J. S. K . l8l 
 
 only shewed herself indifferent to, but 
 evidently triumphed in my sufferings, and 
 heaped every kind of insult and indignity 
 upon them. I must have incurred her 
 contempt and resentment by my mistaken 
 delicacy at different times ; and her manner, 
 when I have hinted at becoming a reformed 
 man in this respect, convinces me of it. 
 " She hated it ! " She always hated whatever 
 
 she liked most. She "hated Mr. C 's 
 
 red slippers," when he first came ! One 
 more count finishes the indictment. She 
 not only discovered the most hardened 
 indifference to the feelings of others ; she 
 has not shewn the least regard to her own 
 character, or shame when she was detected. 
 When found out, she seemed to say, " Well, 
 what if I am ? I have played the game as 
 long as I could ; and if I could keep it up no 
 longer, it was not for want of good will ! " 
 Her colouring once or twice is the only sign 
 of grace she has exhibited. Such is the 
 creature on whom I had thrown away my 
 heart and soul one who was incapable of 
 feelinsr the commonest emotions of human 
 
1 82 TO J. S. K . 
 
 nature, as they regarded herself or any one 
 else. " She had no feelings with respect to 
 herself," she often said. She in fact knows 
 what she is, and recoils from the good 
 opinion or sympathy of others, which she 
 feels to be founded on a deception ; so that 
 my overweening opinion of her must have 
 appeared like irony, or direct insult. My 
 seeing her in the street has gone a good way 
 to satisfy me. Her manner there explains 
 her manner in-doors to be conscious and 
 overdone ; and besides, she looks but 
 indifferently. She is diminutive in stature, 
 and her measured step and timid air do not 
 suit these public airings. I am afraid she 
 will soon grow common to my imagination, 
 as well as worthless in herself. Her image 
 seems fast " going into the wastes of time," 
 like a weed that the wave bears farther and 
 farther from me. Alas ! thou poor hapless 
 weed, when I entirely lose sight of thee, and 
 forever, no flower will ever bloom on earth 
 to glad my heart again ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
ERRATUM. 
 
 For Patmore's " My Friends and Acquaintances " 
 read " My Friends and Acquaintance." 
 
1 82 TO J. S. K . 
 
 nature, as they regarded herself or any one 
 else. " She had no feelings with respect to 
 herself," she often said. She in fact knows 
 what she is, and recoils from the good 
 opinion or sympathy of others, which she 
 feels to be founded on a deception ; so that 
 
 seems last * gumg mtu LUC waoica ui tune, 
 like a weed that the wave bears farther and 
 farther from me. Alas ! thou poor hapless 
 weed, when I entirely lose sight of thee, and 
 forever, no flower will ever bloom on earth 
 to glad my heart again ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
RUGBY : 
 
 PRINTED BY GEORGE E. OVER, 
 THE RUGBY PRESS. 
 
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