Page:My Life in Two Hemispheres, volume 1.djvu/239

 when the task of supporting a large family on the meagre profits of books published in Ireland proved impossible without the aid of his friends. To live by literature in a country where literature is the luxury of a class, not the recreation of a people, was a hard task, and when the middlemen of literature scarcely exceeded two or three, the sensitive immethodic man of letters stood at a painful disadvantage. From my first settlement in Dublin I had known him well, and aimed constantly and not unsuccessfully to restore him to his natural relations to his own country and people from which bigots had alienated him. After the lapse of a generation he made a visit to his native town, and it was pleasant to find the life of the man of genius not only cheered by a cordial reception but illuminated by a few gleams of romance, which brought him face to face with his youth. He wrote me from Clogher:—

"Nothing can surpass the attention I am receiving from all classes and creeds, from high and low. As soon as I return I shall publish a narrative (in the Nation) of my visit, my impressions, &c., in all senses and in all moods—on returning after twenty years to my native place. I have made a most singular and bitter discovery here. A girl — a namesake of your own (Anne Duffy)—with whom I fell in love at fourteen, and loved until I was eighteen (I think I never loved seriously since), has now acknowledged to me with tears that the love was mutual. I had never disclosed my passion to her—and her acknowledgment now proves that there never was or can be any true love but first love. My heart is bursting and my eyes are overflowing while I write to you, and I feel that this bitter discovery has cast a gloom over my whole future life and filled my heart with a bitterness that will never, never be removed. Oh, great God! why did I not know it in time! You could not dream of my misery; I feel as if my very heart were broken and the span of my life shortened by this most extraordinary but dreadful discovery. She made the acknowledgment with tears and sorrow and the bitterest agony. I have much to tell you when I see you.—Ever, my dear Charles, faithfully yours, "."