Page:The Talisman.pdf/31

Rh "It is but another four-and-twenty hours, and the experiment will have been fairly tried. We allow to a sick man the indulgence of a whim, why not to a dying one that of his folly?" So saying, he turned to the lodging of a young friend, whose hospitality he resolved to ask for the night. Scott was at home, and hesitating between a wish for amusement and a fit of idleness—that pleasant idleness which follows indisposition. Never was companion more acceptable: a good fire and a good dinner are very exhilarating—so the two friends were as gay as if there had been no such things as study and suicide in the world. But Charles's spirits were too much those of feverish excitement to last. The jest died upon his lips; Scott's questions were first unanswered, and then unheard: he was only roused from contemplation by confidence. We again repeat, that there is no temper so communicative as an imaginative one. The poet seems under a necessity of sharing with others the thoughts he has half-created and half-coloured—and among the most reserved of us, who has not experienced, at some time or other, that words had all the relief of tears? One feeling leads to another, in conversation as in every thing else; and Charles soon found himself cracking almonds, flinging the shells into the fire, and narrating the whole history of his life. We shall pass over his childhood more briefly