On December 21 he wrote to his brother:
Rome.
Perhaps in the spring you could see me in Illyria. I would then show you my kind little nurse, to whom I owe most of the little happiness I have enjoyed since my illness.
He had stopped his treatment for four months and had lived rather more freely, but in ‘every respect I have continued extremely temperate.’
On January 30, 1829, he was still at Rome. He said, ‘The palpitation of the heart has increased almost alarmingly, and I do not think I have gained any strength in the weak limbs.’
On February 1 he wrote in his journal, ‘Finished the dialogues fifth and sixth’ (these ended the ‘Consolations in Travel’). ‘Si moro, spero che ho fatto il mio dovere, e che la mia vita non e stata vana ed inutile.’
On February 6 he wrote to his friend Poole from Rome:
Would I were better, I would then write to you an agreeable letter from this curious city; but I am here wearing away the winter, a ruin amongst ruins.
I write and philosophise a good deal, and have nearly finished a work with a higher aim than the little ‘Salmonia,’ which I shall dedicate to you. It contains the essence of my philosophical opinions and some of my poetical reveries. I sometimes think of the lines of Waller:
The soul’s dark cottage, battered and decayed,
Lets in new light through chinks that time has made.
I have, notwithstanding my infirmities, attended to scientific objects whenever it was in my power, and I have sent to the Royal Society a paper, which they will publish, on the ‘Peculiar Electricity of the Torpedo,’ which I think bears remotely on the functions of life. I attend a good deal to natural history.
I fight against sickness and fate, believing I have still duties to perform, and that even my illness is connected in some way with my being made useful to my fellow-creatures. I have this conviction full on my mind, that intellectual beings spring from the same breath of Infinite Intelligence, and return to it again, but by different courses, like rivers born amidst the clouds of heaven and lost in the deep and eternal ocean; some in youth rapid and short-lived torrents, some in manhood powerful and copious rivers, and some in age by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career and making their exit by many sandy and shallow mouths. [And then he asks him if he will come and travel with him.] But I write as if I were a strong man, when I am like a pendulum, as it were, swinging between death and life. God bless you, my dear Poole!
Your grateful and affectionate Friend,
H. Davy.
A fortnight afterwards he had another severe attack of paralysis of the right side.
On February 23, three days after the attack, he dictated a letter to his brother.