Three months later he describes his fear of a relapse into “the maddening state of mind” from which he had but lately escaped.
In the spring of 1824 he writes:—
“I cannot condense my efforts as I used to do. I am obliged to take more time for everything.”
A few months later his brother Matthew writes to him:—
“I am very glad to hear of your recovery. If I were you, I would let the exhibition go to the Devil rather than overwork myself.... Depend upon it, you will never be paid either in fame or profit for any exertion in that barren spot. Spare yourself for better times.”
When the summer holidays began, he took a trip to Paris:—
“I visited one of the floating baths on the Seine, when, forgetful of my weak state, I plunged at once into deep water. Immediately the attendants hurried forward to my rescue with long, slender poles, like boat-hooks, and were very angry, as though I had intended suicide. And, in fact, I found that I was quite too weak to swim.”
It was in vain that his brother urged him to spare himself. Whatever he put his hand to, he did with all his might. A year later (September, 1825) he was once more dangerously ill. “Mr. Hodgson,”[64] his father wrote, “prohibits all hints even about business. He says that the serious aspect assumed by the carbuncle is clearly the effect of mental excitation, and that your brother’s is the first instance of such a turn in a person under forty that has come under his observation.... It is a sad thing to be paralysed at the instant of high water in our affairs. Disappointment is, however, no new thing to us, and patience may work a retrieval, as it has done in times past.”
Two days later he again writes:—
“Though it were vain to disguise the fears which intrude themselves on your mother’s mind and my own, still we have Mr. Hodgson’s assurance that all will go well, provided the dear boy’s mind can be kept from painful excitement.... Mr. Hodgson has told your mother that, as soon as Rowland recovers, he shall strongly advise him, as a medical friend, to abandon any plan that shall demand unusual energy. These, my dear boy, are damping suggestions. My fear is that they will be unavailing, and that a life so truly valuable will be lost in splendid but abortive efforts.”