pon him,
and did little to dissipate his physical inertness. "I have not yet
had courage to read the Dolliver proof-sheet," he wrote to his
publisher in December, 1863; "but will set about it soon, though with
terrible reluctance, such as I never felt before. I am most grateful
to you," he went on, "for protecting me from that visitation of the
elephant and his cub. If you happen to see Mr.----, of L----, a young
man who was here last summer, pray tell him anything that your
conscience will let you, to induce him to spare me another visit,
which I know he intended. I really am not well, and cannot be
disturbed by strangers, without more suffering than it is worth while
to endure." A month later he was obliged to ask for a further
postponement. "I am not quite up to writing yet, but shall make an
effort as soon as I see any hope of success. You ought to be thankful
that (like most other broken-down authors) I do not pester you with
decrepit pages, and insist upon your accepting them as full of the old
spirit and vigour. That trouble perhaps still awaits you, after I
shall have reached a further stage of decay. Seriously, my mind has,
for the time, lost its temper and its fine edge, and I have an
instinct that I had better keep quiet. Perhaps I shall have a new
spirit of vigour if I wait quietly for it; perhaps not." The winter
passed away, but the "new spirit of vigour" remained absent, and at
the end of February he wrote to Mr. Fields that his novel had simply
broken down, and that he should never finish it. "I hardly know what
to say to the public about this abortive romance, though I know pretty
well what the case will be. I shall never finish it. Yet it is not
quite pleasant for an author to announce himself, or to be announced,
as finally broken down as to his literary faculty.... I cannot finish
it unless a great change comes over me; and if I make too great an
effort to do so, it will be my death; not that I should care much for
that, if I could fight the battle through and win it, thus ending a
life of much smoulder and a scanty fire, in a blaze of glory. But I
should smother myself in mud of my own making.... I am not
low-spirited, nor fanciful, nor freakish, but look what seem to me
realities in the face, and am ready to take whatever may come. If I
could but go to England now, I think that the sea-voyage and the 'old
Home' might set me all right."

But he was not to go to England; he started three months late