An emotion when it can be expressed is in a manner relegated from the present to the past,--from experience to memory; and we may be sure that the poets were pretty well cured of their woes, before they made the world resound with their harrowing despairs and their plaintive wailings. Goethe tells us he got quit of much perilous stuff in writing Werther, but one can scarcely doubt that he was convalescent before he undertook the task. Art is always fiction, though fiction is so seldom art, and its nearest approach to actual veracity is when the artist brings forth the ashes of bygone emotion from the sepulchre of memory, and galvanizes them into a second life before his attentive world.
Such utterance as Roderick had been able to achieve had done him good. The beads of moisture stood on his brow, as he folded and addressed his letter; he directed that it should be given into Sophia's own hands, and then returning to his bed, he closed his eyes with a long sigh of relief, and fell into a peaceful sleep.
The letter was as follows:--
'My dear Sophia,
'For this once I must so address you, even if it be permitted me to do so never again. I am sick in bed, in consequence of yesterday's misadventure, so unable to come to you myself and speak, and it has come to my knowledge that an offer of marriage is already, or will shortly be made to you, therefore I write.
'I owe it to myself, that you should know before you have given an answer, that I too desire you to look on me as your suitor.
'I had meant to wait till after my ordination, but I cannot run the risk of letting another man speak while I remain silent.
'Oh, Sophia, I seem to have loved you ever since I saw you first--as far back as I can recollect--since we were both children; and the love has grown with the years till I believe I could not live if I saw you married to another. That other may be rich, while I am not; but think, Sophia,--he never saw you till the other day--and what can his love be to mine, that has been growing and deepening through so many years?
'Think of it, dearest. Have we not played together as children? sung together as boy and girl? Have we not taken sweet counsel together as christian man and woman? and shall we not walk through life as wife and husband?
'Think of it all, Sophia, and choose with the best wisdom you can command.