CCXXVI. TO MRS. ADERS. [?][176]
[Highgate, October 28, 1819.]
Dear Madam,—I wish from my very heart that you could teach me to express my obligations to you with half the grace and delicacy with which you confer them! But not to the Giver does the evening cloud indicate the rich lights, which it has received and transmits and yet retains. For other eyes it must glow: and what it cannot return it will strive to represent, the poor proxy of the gracious orb which is departing. I would that the simile were less accurate throughout, and with those of Homer’s lost its likeness as it approached to its conclusion! This, I fear, is somewhat too selfish; but we cannot have attachment without fear or grief.
“We cannot choose—
But weep to have what we so dread to lose,”
says Nature’s child, our best Shakespeare; and that Humanity cannot grieve without a portion of selfishness, Nature herself says. To take up my allegoric strain with a slight variation, even in the fairest shews and liveliest demonstrations of grateful and affectionate leave-taking from a generous friend or disinterested patron or benefactor, we are like evening rainbows, that at once shine and weep, things made up of reflected splendour and our own tears.[177]
To meet, to know, t’ esteem—and then to part,
Forms the sad tale of many a genial heart.[178]
The storm[179] now louring and muttering in our political atmosphere might of itself almost forbid me to regret your leaving England. For I have no apprehension of any serious or extensive danger to property or to the coercive powers of the Law. Both reason and history preclude the fear of any revolution, where none of the constituent states of a nation are arrayed against the others. The risk is still less in Great Britain where property is so widely diffused and so closely interlinked and co-organized. But I dare not promise as much for personal safety. The struggle may be short, the event certain; yet the mischief in the interim appalling!
May my Fears,
My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
And menace of the vengeful enemy
Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard
In this low dell, bow’d not the delicate grass.[180]
I confess that I read the poem from which these lines are extracted (“Fears in Solitude”) and now cite them with far other than an author’s feelings; those, I trust, of a patriot, I am sure, those of a Christian.
You will not, I know, fail to assure Miss Harding[181] of the kind feelings and wishes with which I accompany her; but my sense of the last boon, which I owe to her, I shall convey, my dear madam! by hands less likely to make extenuating comments on my words than your tongue or hand. Before I subscribe my name, I must tell you that had my wish been the chooser and had taken a month to deliberate on the choice, I could not have received a keepsake so in all respects gratifying to me, as the exquisite impressions of cameo’s and intaglio’s.[182] First, it enables me to entertain and gratify so many friends, my own and Mr. and Mrs. Gillman’s; secondly, every little gem is associated with my recollections, or more or less recalls the images and persons seen and met with during my own stay in the Mediterranean and Italy; thirdly, they stand in the same connection with the places of your past and future sojourn, and therefore, lastly, supply me with the means and the occasion of expressing to others more strongly, perhaps, but not more warmly or sincerely than I now do to yourself, with how much respect and regard I remain, dear madam,