Page:The Poetical Works of William Motherwell, 1849.djvu/75

 * * * I hope to hear from you soon, and to learn that you are in better spirits, and that the causes which have depressed them are happily removed. Kennedy joins me in warm and sincere prayers that this may speedily be the case.'

Motherwell was decidedly superstitious; that is, he had an absolute and unqualified belief in the reality of those spectral illusions which, under whatever name designated, have played so important a part in the history of human credulity from the dawn of time downwards. Upon this point he was tenacious, and as he fortified himself by what he supposed to be facts, he was wont to wax warm in defence of his Rosicrucian theory when it chanced to be assailed. It is no reproach to his memory to say that his logic upon such a subject was necessarily defective, and it would be altogether unjust to condemn as a weakness his participation in an infirmity which has so often attached itself to the highest created intelligences.

His habits of poetical composition were, I suspect, slow and even laborious, and there is ample evidence in his manuscripts to show that the divine œstrum was not always at command when most needed. That he prepared his productions with great care before he committed them to the press, or even inserted them in any of his common-place books, is certain; and the history of many of his freest compositions, could it be obtained, would demonstrate that he never forgot the Horatian precept, but wisely remembered that nescit vox missa reverti. Of