An amiable wife and sweet children I contemplate as part of that beauty, but I must have a thousand of these beautiful particles to fill up my heart. feel more and more every day as my imagination) strengthens that I do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my spirit the office which is equivalent to a king's body-guard: "Then Tragedy with sceptr❜d pall comes sweeping by." According to my state of mind, I am with Achilles shouting in the trenches, or with Theocritus in the vales of Sicily; or throw my whole being into Troilus, and repeating these lines, "I wander like a lost soul upon the Stygian bank, staying for waftage." I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone. These things, combined with the opinion I have formed of the generality of women, who appear to me as children, to whom I would rather give a sugar-plum than my time, form a barrier against matrimony, which I rejoice in. I have written this that you might see that I have my share of the highest pleasures of life, and that though I may choose to pass my days alone, I shall be no solitary; you see there is nothing splenetic in all this. The only thing that can affect me personally for more than one short passing day is any doubts about my powers for poetry: I seldom have any, and I look with the hope to the nighing time when I shall have none. I am as happy as a man

'It was about six months from the date of this letter that he began to be haunted

by "the voice and shape of a woman," and that woman, of course, was Fanny Brawne.

can be—that is, in myself; I should be happier if Tom were well, and if I knew you were passing pleasant days. Then I should be most enviablewith the yearning passion I have for the beautiful connected and made one with the ambition of my intellect. Think of my pleasures in solitude in comparison with my commerce with the world: there I am a child; there they do not know me, not even my most intimate acquaintance. I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from imitating a little child. Some think me meddling, others silly, others foolish; every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will, when in truth it is with my will. I am content to be thought all this, because I have in my own breast so great a resource. This is one great reason they like me so, because they can all show to advantage in a room, and eclipse (from a certain tact) one who is reckoned to be a good poet. I hope I am not here playing tricks "to make the angels weep." I think not, for I have not the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical, my greatest elevations of soul leave me every time more humbled. Enough of this, though in your love for me you will not think it enough.

Tom is rather more easy than he has been, but is still so nervous that I cannot speak to him of you; indeed, it is the care I have had to keep his mind aloof from feelings too acute that has made this letter so rambling. I did not like to write before him a letter he knew was to reach your hands; I cannot even now ask him for any message; his heart speaks to you.