Page:Blanchard on L. E. L.pdf/36

36 "I have now," proceeds the letter, "entirely lost my former passion for travelling. If I am so tired of what can scarcely be called a long journey, what should I do in my intended travels through Africa! I have not written to you since you enclosed Mr. Jerdan's note. How happy I am! it so far surpasses my expectations, convinced as I am that a kind of curse hangs over us all; it seemed too delightful to happen to one of the Cahets. . . . To say the truth, I had thought so much about the poem, that I had got quite tired of it, and at last sent it in a fit of despair. So favourable a verdict again revived the spirit of exertion. I had, indeed, compounded a miserable essence for expectation—it might have been styled intrusion, presumption, or, to sum up in a word, it might have been good for nothing. The poem I took with me to Clifton, intending to finish it, I quarrelled with and burnt. This one has been entirely written since I was there, and is now completely terminated.—'My task is ended now.'. . . . I have made your purse scarlet. I think, though, they say green is the colour of hope: it has been an unlucky colour to us, for how fond we all were of it! . . . My aunt is really a delightful person—so good-natured, lets me do just as I please: I don't wonder they all like her so much. When do you think of moving? Once together again, and I care not for anything. . . . I think you will smile when I tell you I often spend an evening engaged in a sober rubber at whist."

The contrast between the tone of this letter, and that of the lines enclosed in it, is apparent. It forms the distinction between reality and romance. In prose, the writer only wishes her mother "were in as agreeable a place;" in poetry, she is "consumed by sickening thoughts" that steal over her as