1840-42. LYING ASIDE. 135 



To-night I am alone, and may, in the first place, inform you 

 that I am ordered off to the country, and shall remove to 

 the seaside on Monday next. I am now nearly free from * 

 pain, except from an abscess which has formed near the 

 heel j but as the doctors think it will prove on the whole 

 beneficial, I don't mind the trifling amount of suffering it 

 entails. It makes a very great difference on the feeling 

 with which pain is borne, to know that its issue will be 

 favourable; the same amount of it, if known to be the 

 index of formidable or incurable distemper, would seem 

 unbearable. 



" You tell me in your last you still write verses. I have 

 entirely abandoned the task, as I may truly call it in my 

 case. Indeed, in the utterly prostrated state of mind in 

 which for the last year I have been, I have avoided even 

 reading poetry. To relish it and the same remark applies 

 to music I find in my case a certain elasticity and exhila- 

 ration of mind necessary. When I opened old favourites, 

 I was so pained to find the passages I used to thrill over 

 become flat and unprofitable that I closed all of them, 

 resolved that they should lie unopened till restored health 

 enabled me with the old emotions to read them again. 

 With the solitary exception of Milton, accordingly, I have N 

 not read any poetry for the last twelvemonth. In addition, 

 I feel myself now obliged to devote all my thoughts to 

 science, and blame myself for every moment which I spend 

 away from it. I am like a stranded ship, lying powerless in - 

 the sand, with sails idly flapping on the masts, while those 

 who set sail with me, with like hopes and chances, are far 

 ahead out in the open sea. Every occasion, therefore, on 

 which I feel revisitings of my old energy, is spent in making 

 such preparations as may enable me to be ready for active 

 service should I get afloat again. Now, poetry was never 



