authority over public opinion; not that he may apply these authentic
sanctions to the backing of his own malice, and giving weight to his
private caprices: and, wherever such abuse takes place, then it should
be so contrived that some reaction in behalf of the injured person
might receive a sanction equally public. And, upon this point, I shall
say a word or two more, after first stating my own case; a case where
the outrage was far more insufferable, more deliberate, and more
malicious; but, on the other hand, in this respect less effectual for
injury, that it carried with it no sanction from any official station or
repute in the unknown parties who offered the wrong. The circumstances
were these:--In 1824, I had come up to London upon an errand in itself
sufficiently vexatious--of fighting against pecuniary embarrassments, by
literary labours; but, as had always happened hitherto, with very
imperfect success, from the miserable thwartings I incurred through the
deranged state of the liver. My zeal was great, and my application was
unintermitting; but spirits radically vitiated, chiefly through the
direct mechanical depression caused by one important organ deranged;
and, secondly, by a reflex effect of depression through my own thoughts,
in estimating my prospects; together with the aggravation of my case, by
the inevitable exile from my own mountain home,--all this reduced the
value of my exertions in a deplorable way. It was rare indeed that I
could satisfy my own judgment, even tolerably, with the quality of any
literary article I produced; and my power to make sustained exertions,
drooped, in a way I could not control, every other hour of the day:
insomuch, that what with parts to be cancelled, and what with whole days
of torpor and pure defect of power to produce anything at all, very
often it turned out that all my labours were barely sufficient (some
times not sufficient) to meet the current expenses of my residence in
London. Three months' literary toil terminated, at times, in a result =
0; the whole _plus_ being just equal to the _minus_, created by two
separate establishments, and one of them in the most expensive city of
the world. Gloomy, indeed, was my state of mind at that period: for,
though I made prodigious efforts to recover my health, (sensible that
all other efforts depended for their result upon this elementary effort,
which was the _conditio sine qua non_ for the rest), yet all availed me
not; and