lar hour is good,
even for so uncertain an influence as mesmerism. But Robert waits for an
inclination--works by fits and starts--he can't do otherwise he
says.[98] Then reading hurts him. As long as I have known him he has not
been able to read long at a time--he can do it now better than in the
beginning of time. The consequence of which is that he wants occupation
and that an active occupation is salvation to him with his irritable
nerves, saves him from ruminating bitter cud, and from the process which
I call beating his dear head against the wall till it is bruised, simply
because he sees a fly there, magnified by his own two eyes almost
indefinitely into some Saurian monster. He has an enormous superfluity
of vital energy, and if it isn't employed, it strikes its fangs into
him. He gets out of spirits as he was at Havre. Nobody understands
exactly why--except me who am in the inside of him and hear him breathe.
For the peculiarity of our relation is, that even when he's displeased
with me, he thinks aloud with me and can't stop himself. And I know
ultimately that whatever takes him out of a certain circle (where habits
of introvision and analysis of fly-legs are morbidly exercised), is life
and joy to him. I wanted his poems done this winter very much--and here
was a bright room with three windows consecrated to use. But he had a
room all last summer, and did nothing. Then, he worked himself out by
riding for three or four hours together--there has been little poetry
done since last winter, when he did much. He was not inclined to write
this winter. The modelling combines body-work and soul-work, and the
more tired he has been, and the more his back ached, poor fellow, the
more he has exulted and been happy--'_no, nothing ever made him so happy
before_'--also the better he has looked and the stouter grown. So I
couldn't be much in opposition against the sculpture--I couldn't, in
fact, at all. He has the material for a volume, and will work at it this
summer, he says. His power is much in advance of 'Strafford,' which is
his poorest work of all. Oh, the brain stratifies and matures
creatively, even in the pauses of the pen.

At the same time his treatment in England affects him naturally--and for
my part I set it down as an infamy of that public--no other word. He
says he has told you some things you had not heard, and which, I
acknowledge, I always try to prevent him from repeating to anyone. I
wonder if he has to