Josiah Wedgewood."
"Keswick, Oct. 20, 1802.
My dear sir,
This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you, when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not now have been alive, if in addition to other miseries, I had had immediate poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so long. It has not been altogether indolence, or my habit of procrastination which have kept me from writing, but an eager wish,—I may truly say, a thirst of spirit, to have something honourable to tell you of myself.
At present I must be content to tell you something cheerful. My health is very much better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured by study, or the act of sitting at my writing desk; but my eyes suffer if at any time I have been intemperate in the use of candle light. This account supposes another, namely, that my mind is calm, and more at ease. My dear sir, when I was last with you at Stowey, my heart was often full, and I could scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale of my distresses, but could I add to your depression, when you were low? or how interrupt, or cast a shade on your good spirits, that were so rare, and so precious to you?
* * * * *
I found no comfort but in the direct speculations;—in the 'Ode to Dejection,' which you were pleased with. These lines, in the original, followed the line 'My shaping spirit of imagination,'—
'For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can,
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man;
This was my sole resource, my only plan
And that which suits a part infests the whole,
And now is almost grown the temple of my soul.'
I give you these lines for the spirit, and not for the poetry.
* * * * *