PROSE AND MORTALITY
(To the Editor of The London Mercury)
Sir,—There is a good example of the recurrence of that "one music and one speech" so richly instanced in your article "Prose and Mortality" (January's London Mercury) in Keats's letter to Brown written on board the Maria Crowther off the Isle of Wight—good because, though the music is not full nor the harmony flawless, it is yet heard unmistakably in a familiar letter, where it rises from the midst of an invalid's colloquial writing. Here it is:
"Land and sea, weakness and decline, are great separators, but Death is the great divorcer for ever. When the pang of this thought has passed through my mind I may say the bitterness of death is passed."—Yours, etc.,
S. P. J.
Llangollen, February 8th.
[This is a perfect example, as it comes not from a set composition but from a familiar letter.—Editor.]