70 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



not enter the army or navy, a thing which is now entirely impos- 

 sible. While I keep moving, life goes on well enough, but when- 

 ever I pause, the fever of the soul begins. 



" John "Wilson." 



There is no letter again for a period of six months ; and we are 

 left to imagine that the interval was filled up with alternations of 

 gloom and gayety, of hard study and hard living. He was giving 

 himself, like the royal preacher, not only " to know wisdom," but 

 to know also " madness and folly." The mention of Margaret is 

 briefer than hitherto, even slightly suggestive of constraint, and one 

 begins to see some shadowing of the truth in that sentence of the 

 Essay on " Streams :" — " For two years of absence and of distance 

 brought a strange, dim, misty haze over the fires — supposed un- 

 quenchable — of our hearts ; then came suspicion, distrust, wrathful 

 jealousy, and stone-eyed despair !" It had not come to that yet, 

 for, before the curtain closes on this love-drama, there is one 

 glimpse of ecstatic happiness, followed only by deeper gloom and 

 unbroken silence. 



The next letter is addressed to Findlay, and dated 



" Oxford, April 13, 1806. 



" My dearest Robert : — If I have not answered your letter so 

 soon as perhaps I should have done, it was neither from being in- 

 different to the very agreeable contents of it, nor careless of that 

 happiness which I see awaits you in life, and which no soul on earth 

 better deserves than you. Most genuine satisfaction it did give me 

 to hear of the kindness which your father's memory has procured 

 you. 



" In your case it may justly be said that a good man's righteous- 

 ness is an inheritance to his children. That happiness, prosperity, 

 and peace may ever attend you, is a wish I need not express to one 

 who knows me so well as you do. As to myself, I have not a very 

 great deal to say. I am going on pretty much in the old way, 

 sometimes unhappy enough, God knows ! and at other times tol- 

 erably comfortable. 



" I believe that I live rather too hard, and I have formed a very 

 determined resolution to change my ways ; but it is one thing to 

 make a resolution, and another to keep it. I have certainly led a 

 dissipated life for some time, but, 



