and
syllable by syllable, with a crutch under my chin, and a sort of gag on
the rebellious tongue, I have read all through in a loud voice Milton's
whole Paradise Lost and Regained, and the most of Cowper's poems! That
was the sort of tongue-drill and nerve-quieting recommended and enforced
for many hours a day, through weary months, by a certain Mr. C., while
Dr. P., his successor to the well-named "patient," gave, first,
emulcents, and then styptics, and was fortunately prevented in time by
my father from some surgical experiments on the muscles of lip and
tongue. However, nobody could cure me, until I cured myself; rather, let
me gratefully and humbly confess, until God answered constant prayer,
and granted stronger bodily health, and gave me good success in my
literary life, and made me to feel I was equal in speech, as now, to the
most fluent of my fellows. So let any stammerer (and there are many
such) take comfort from my cure, and pray against the trouble as I did,
and courageously stand up against the multitude to claim before heaven
and earth man's proudest prerogative--the privilege of speech. In my
Proverbial Essay "Of Speaking" will be found two contrasted pictures
drawn from my own experiences: one of the stifled stammerer, the other
of the unbridled orator: which you can turn to as you will. As, however,
some of my old groanings after utterance are not equally accessible, I
will here give a few lines of mine from the "Stammerer's Complaint,"
printed in the medical book of one of my Galens:--

"... And is it not in truth
A poisoned sting in every social joy,
A thorn that rankles in the writhing flesh,
A drop of gall in each domestic sweet,
An irritating petty misery,--
That I can never look on one I love
And speak the fulness of my burning thoughts?
That I can never with unmingled joy
Meet a long-loved and long-expected friend
Because I feel, but cannot vent my feelings,--
Because I know I ought, but must not, speak,--
Because I mark his quick impatient eye
Striving in kindness to anticipate
The word of welcome strangled in its birth?
Is it not sorrow, while I truly love
Sweet social converse, to be forced to shun
The happy circle, from a nervous sense--
An agonising poignant consciousness--
That I must stand aloof, nor mingle with
The wise and good in rational argument,
The young in brilliant quickness of reply