be
reconciled to a few little ones?

Many, many a dreary weary hour have I got over--many a gloomy
misgiving postponed--many a mental and bodily annoyance forgotten by
help of the tragedies, and comedies, of our dramatists and novelists!
Many a trouble has been soothed by the still small voice of the moral
philosopher; many a dragon-like care charmed to sleep by the sweet
song of the poet! For all which I cry incessantly, not aloud, but in
my heart, 'Thanks and honour to the glorious masters of the pen, and
the great inventors of the press!' Such has been my own experience of
the blessing and comfort of literature and intellectual pursuits;
and of the same mind, doubtless, was Sir Humphry Davy, who went for
_Consolations in Travel_, not to the inn, or the posting-house, but to
his library and his books.

To DR. MOIR

_A humourist to the last_

[1845.]

DEAR MOIR,

God bless you and yours, and good-bye! I drop these few lines, as in a
bottle from a ship water-logged, and on the brink of foundering, being
in the last stage of dropsical debility; but though suffering in body,
serene in mind. So without reversing my union-jack, I await my last
lurch. Till which, believe me, dear Moir,

Yours most truly.

To SIR ROBERT PEEL

_A farewell letter_

Devonshire Lodge, New Finchley Road, [1845].

DEAR SIR,

We are not to meet in the flesh. Given over by my physicians and by
myself, I am only kept alive by frequent instalments of mulled port
wine. In this extremity I feel a comfort, for which I cannot refrain
from again thanking you, with all the sincerity of a dying man,--and,
at the same time, bidding you a respectful farewell.

Thank God my mind is composed and my reason undisturbed, but my race
as an author is run. My physical debility finds no tonic virtue in
a steel pen, otherwise I would have written one more paper--a
forewarning one--against an evil, or the danger of it, arising from
a literary movement in which I have had some share, a one-sided
humanity, opposite to that Catholic Shakespearian sympathy, which
felt with King as well as Peasant, and duly estimated the mortal
temptations of both stations. Certain classes at the poles of Society
are already too far asunder; it should be the duty of our writers to
draw them nearer by kindly attraction, not to aggravate the existing
repulsion, and place a wider moral gulf between Rich and Poor, with
Hate on the one side and Fear on the other. But