en that I suffer, with all my turns and tumbles, from the
sense of serious illness; and I hate it, as I believe everybody does.
And then the combination of not being able to read, not being allowed to
speak, being too weak to write, and not wishing to eat, leaves a man
with some empty seconds. But I bless God, it's over now; to-day I am
much mended.

Insatiable gulf, greedier than hell, and more silent than the woods of
Styx, have you or have you not lost the dedication to the _Child's
Garden_? Answer that plain question as otherwise I must try to tackle to
it once again.

Sciatica is a word employed much by Shakespeare in a certain connection.
'Tis true, he was no physician, but as I read, he had smarted in his
day. I, too, do smart. And yet this keen soprano agony, these veins of
fire and bombshell explosions in the knee, are as nothing to a certain
dull, drowsy pain I had when my kidneys were congested at Nice; there
was death in that; the creak of Charon's rowlocks, and the miasmas of
the Styx. I may say plainly, much as I have lost the power of bearing
pain, I had still rather suffer much than die. Not only the love of life
grows on me, but the fear of certain odd end-seconds grows as well. 'Tis
a suffocating business, take it how you will; and Tyrrel and Forest only
bunglers.

Well, this is an essay on death, or worse, on dying: to return to
daylight and the winds, I perceive I have grown to live too much in my
work and too little in life. 'Tis the dollars do it: the world is too
much. Whenever I think I would like to live a little, I hear the
butcher's cart resounding through the neighbourhood; and so to plunge
again. The fault is a good fault for me; to be able to do so, is to
succeed in life; and my life has been a huge success. I can live with
joy and without disgust in the art by which I try to support myself; I
have the best wife in the world; I have rather more praise and nearly as
much coin as I deserve; my friends are many and true-hearted. Sir, it is
a big thing in successes. And if mine anchorage lies something open to
the wind, Sciatica, if the crew are blind, and the captain spits blood,
one cannot have all, and I may be patched up again, who knows? "His
timbers yet are (indifferently) sound, and he may float again."

Thanks for the word on _Silverado_.--Yours ever,

THE SCIATICATED BARD.

TO TREVOR HADDON

The allusions to Skelt, the last of the designers and etchers of
ch