'What is she now? A sufferer for my sins;
A thing I dare not think upon.'
He speaks of her blood as haunting him, and as being
'My blood,—the pure, warm stream
That ran in the veins of my fathers, and in ours
When we were in our youth, and had one heart,
And loved each other as we should not love.'
This work was conceived in the commotion of mind immediately following his separation. The scenery of it was sketched in a journal sent to his sister at the time.
In letter 377, defending the originality of the conception, and showing that it did not arise from reading 'Faust,' he says,—
'It was the Steinbach and the Jungfrau, and something else, more than Faustus, that made me write "Manfred."'
In letter 288, speaking of the various accounts given by critics of the origin of the story, he says,—
'The conjecturer is out, and knows nothing of the matter. I had a better origin than he could devise or divine for the soul of him.'
In letter 299, he says:—
'As to the germs of "Manfred," they may be found in the journal I sent to Mrs. Leigh, part of which you saw.'