being, and from my infant years, ever since my dear
nurse left me, I had been a dreamer. I brought Rosalind and Miranda
and the lady of Comus to life to be my companions, or on my isle acted
over their parts imagining myself to be in their situations. Then I
wandered from the fancies of others and formed affections and
intimacies with the aerial creations of my own brain--but still
clinging to reality I gave a name to these conceptions and nursed them
in the hope of realization. I clung to the memory of my parents; my
mother I should never see, she was dead: but the idea of [my] unhappy,
wandering father was the idol of my imagination. I bestowed on him all
my affections; there was a miniature of him that I gazed on
continually; I copied his last letter and read it again and again.
Sometimes it made me weep; and at other [times] I repeated with
transport those words,--"One day I may claim her at your hands." I was
to be his consoler, his companion in after years. My favourite vision
was that when I grew up I would leave my aunt, whose coldness lulled
my conscience, and disguised like a boy I would seek my father through
the world. My imagination hung upon the scene of recognition; his
miniature, which I should continually wear exposed on my breast, would
be the means and I imaged the moment to my mind a thousand and a
thousand times, perpetually varying the circumstances. Sometimes it
would be in a desart; in a populous city; at a ball; we should perhaps
meet in a vessel; and his first words constantly were, "My daughter, I
love thee"! What extactic moments have I passed in these dreams! How
many tears I have shed; how often have I laughed aloud.[13]

This was my life for sixteen years. At fourteen and fifteen I often
thought that the time was come when I should commence my pilgrimage,
which I had cheated my own mind into believing was my imperious duty:
but a reluctance to quit my Aunt; a remorse for the grief which, I
could not conceal from myself, I should occasion her for ever
withheld me. Sometimes when I had planned the next morning for my
escape a word of more than usual affection from her lips made me
postpone my resolution. I reproached myself bitterly for what I called
a culpable weakness; but this weakness returned upon me whenever the
critical moment approached, and I never found courage to depart.[14]

[A] Wordsworth

[B] Dante

CHAPTER III

It was on my sixteenth birthday that my aunt rece