[310]: I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments.
[311]: 1821.
[312]: They mean to insurrect here and are to honour me with a call thereupon. I shall not fall back, though I don't think them in force and heart sufficient to make much of it. But onward. What signifies self?... It is not one man nor a million, but the spirit of liberty that must be spread.... The mere selfish calculation ought never to be made on such occasions and, at present, it shall not be computed by me.... I should almost regret that my own affairs went well, when those of nations are in peril.
[313]: I always wake in actual despair, and despondency, in all respects, even of that which pleased me over night.
In England, five years ago, I had the same kind of hypochondria, but accompanied with so violent a thirst, that I have drunk as many as fifteen bottles of soda-water in one night, after going to bed, and been still thirsty.... striking off the necks of the bottles from mere thirsty impatience.
What I feel most growing upon me are laziness, and a disrelish more powerful than indifference. If I rouse, it is into fury. I presume that I shall end (if not earlier by accident) like Swift «dying at the top.»
Lega came in with a letter about a bill unpaid at Venice which I thought paid months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint.
I have always had «une âme» which not only tormented itself, but every body else in contact with it, and an «esprit violent,» which has almost left me without any «esprit» at all.
[314]: I have written from the fulness of my mind, from passion, from impulse, from many motives, but not «for their sweet voices.»
To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all—and publishing also the continuance of the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which else recoils upon itself.