habits were robust, but not his health; that secret
had been disclosed to me before he went to America; and to the last he
refused steadily to admit the enormous price he had paid for his
triumphs and successes. The morning after his last note I heard again.
"I have been so very unwell this morning, with giddiness, and headache,
and botheration of one sort or other, that I didn't get up till noon:
and, shunning Fleet-street" (the office of the proposed new paper), "am
now going for a country walk, in the course of which you will find me,
if you feel disposed to come away in the carriage that goes to you with
this. It is to call for a pull of the first part of the _Cricket_, and
will bring you, if you like, by way of Hampstead to me, and subsequently
to dinner. There is much I should like to discuss, if you can manage it.
It's the loss of my walks, I suppose; but I am as giddy as if I were
drunk, and can hardly see." I gave far from sufficient importance at the
time to the frequency of complaints of this kind, or to the recurrence,
at almost regular periods after the year following the present, of
those spasms in the side of which he has recorded an instance in the
recollections of his childhood, and of which he had an attack in Genoa;
but though not conscious of it to its full extent, this consideration
was among those that influenced me in a determination to endeavour to
turn him from what could not but be regarded as full of peril. His
health, however, had no real prominence in my letter; and it is strange
now to observe that it appears as an argument in his reply. I had simply
put before him, in the strongest form, all the considerations drawn from
his genius and fame that should deter him from the labour and
responsibility of a daily paper, not less than from the party and
political involvements incident to it; and here was the material part of
the answer made. "Many thanks for your affectionate letter, which is
full of generous truth. These considerations weigh with me, _heavily_:
but I think I descry in these times, greater stimulants to such an
effort; greater chance of some fair recognition of it; greater means of
persevering in it, or retiring from it unscratched by any weapon one
should care for; than at any other period. And most of all I have,
sometimes, that possibility of failing health or fading popularity
before me, which beckons me to such a venture when it comes within my
reach. At the worst, I have wri