In the meantime my darling Hartley has been taken with
a stomach illness, which has ended in the yellow jaundice; and this
greatly alarms me. So much for the doleful! Amid all these changes, and
humiliations, and fears, the sense of the Eternal abides in me, and
preserves unsubdued my cheerful faith, that all I endure is full of
blessings!
At times, indeed, I would fain be somewhat of a more tangible utility
than I am; but so I suppose it is with all of us--one while cheerful,
stirring, feeling in resistance nothing but a joy and a stimulus;
another while drowsy, self-distrusting, prone to rest, loathing our own
self-promises, withering our own hopes--our hopes, the vitality and
cohesion of our being!
I purpose to have 'Christabel' published by itself--this I publish
with confidence--but my travels in Germany come from me now with mortal
pangs. Nothing but the most pressing necessity could have induced
me--and even now I hesitate and tremble. Be so good as to have all that
is printed of 'Christabel' sent to me per post.
Wordsworth has nearly finished the concluding poem. It is of a mild,
unimposing character, but full of beauties to those short-necked men who
have their hearts sufficiently near their heads--the relative distance
of which (according to citizen Tourder, the French translator of
Spallanzani) determines the sagacity or stupidity of all bipeds and
quadrupeds.
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