so poor and dissipated, that I have not felt worthy to address you.
“At present I am not at all Zelterian in my mood, but very sombre and sullen. I have shut the door for a few days, and tried to do something; you have really been doing something. And that is why I write. I want to see you, and still more to hear you. I must kindle my torch again. Why have I not heard you this winter? I feel very humble just now, yet I have to say that being lives not who would have received from your lectures as much as I should. There are noble books, but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see. I think that is enough to say about them. I know Dr. Wayland now, but I shall not care for him. He would never understand me, and, if I met him, it must be by those means of suppression and accommodation which I at present hate to my heart’s core. I hate everything that is reasonable just now, ‘wise limitations’ and all. I have behaved much too well for some time past; it has spoiled my peace. What grieves me, too, is to find or fear my theory a cheat. I cannot serve two masters, and I fear all the hope of being a worldling and a literary existence also must be resigned. Isolation is necessary to me, as to others. Yet I keep on ‘fulfilling all my duties,’ as the technical phrase is, except to myself. But why do I write thus to you who like nothing but what is good, that is, cheerfulness and fortitude? It is partly because yours is an image of my oratory,[1] and if I do not jest when I write to you, I must pray. And partly as a preliminary to asking you,
- ↑ “I suppose you will not know what this means, whether you come or no. Do not disappoint me.”
