e your nineteenth
effusion, or the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth, or what you call the
"Sigh," I think I hear _you_ again. I image to myself the little smoky
room at the "Salutation and Cat," where we have sat together through the
winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with poesy. When you left
London, I felt a dismal void in my heart. I found myself cut off, at one
and the same time, from two most dear to me, "How blest with ye the path
could I have trod of quiet life!" In your conversation you had blended
so many pleasant fancies that they cheated me of my grief; but in your
absence the tide of melancholy rushed in again, and did its worst
mischief by overwhelming my reason. I have recovered, but feel a stupor
that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I
sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind; but habits are
strong things, and my religious fervours are confined, alas! to some
fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion,

A correspondence, opening with you, has roused me a little from my
lethargy and made me conscious of existence. Indulge me in it; I will
not be very troublesome! At some future time I will amuse you with an
account, as full as my memory will permit, of the strange turn my frenzy
took. I look back upon it at times with, a gloomy kind of envy; for
while it lasted, I had many, many hours of pure happiness. Dream not,
Coleridge, of having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of fancy till
you have gone mad! All now seems to me vapid,--comparatively so. Excuse
this selfish digression. Your "Monody" [3] is so superlatively excellent
that I can only wish it perfect, which I can't help feeling it is not
quite. Indulge me in a few conjectures; what I am going to propose would
make it more compressed and, I think, more energetic, though, I am
sensible, at the expense of many beautiful lines. Let it begin, "Is this
the land of song-ennobled line?" and proceed to "Otway's famished form;"
then, "Thee, Chatterton," to "blaze of Seraphim;" then, "clad in
Nature's rich array," to "orient day;" then, "but soon the scathing
lightning," to "blighted land;" then, "sublime of thought," to "his
bosom glows;" then

"But soon upon his poor unsheltered head
Did Penury her sickly mildew shed;
Ah! where are fled the charms of vernal grace,
And joy's wild gleams that lightened o'er his face."

Then "youth of tumultuous soul" to "sigh," as before. The rest may all
stand down