Threw its long glories over life’s dark stream.
TO THE LADY FANNY PROBY.
London, April, 1817.
You are indeed qualified to ‘minister to a mind diseased,’ both from the tenderness of your feelings, and the quickness of your faculties. Many with kind hearts fail in the office of comforter, from want of that intuitive perception and delicacy you eminently possess. I am inclined to believe that ‘telle bonté qu’on a, on n’a que celle de son esprit;’ and we may think this without supposing any partiality shown to the more highly gifted, when we qualify it with the knowledge that ‘where much is given,’ there ‘much will be required.’
I took my boys to see Macbeth last night, but found that though they read Shakespeare, they did not readily catch the language of the scene. They understood Kean well, his tones are so natural; but the raised voice and declamatory style in which most others pronounce tragedy, renders it, I see, nearly unintelligible to children. I was astonished by Kean’s talents in all that followed the murder, highly as I before thought of them. I suppose remorse never was more finely expressed; and I quitted the house with more admiration of him, and even of Shakespeare, than ever I had felt before.
The sight of the poor in London is even more melancholy than that of the dark, foggy, and snowy sky. I speak not of those who ask, but of the silent and drooping figures in the prime and middle of life, seated, shivering and dying, on the steps of houses, without stockings, without linen, in ragged clothing above that of the lower class, with famine sunken in every line of their faces. ‘This is,’ indeed, ‘a sorry sight’ in this once happy country.
May 2, 1817, London.—I return next Monday to the country, my spirits, I think, not amended by my visit to town. All earthly sufferings return in paroxysms; mine are nearly as frequent, yet I have done all that my friends desired, have seen a variety of things and persons, mingled in crowds, &c. &c. Employment more solid would be better for a mind like mine; but having this depends not on one’s self, when one is married, and a mother.