attachment of his youth. It has been considered somewhat probable that
Alice W. was an imaginary being--some Celia, or Campaspe, or Lindamira;
that she was in effect one of those visions which float over us when we
escape from childhood. But it may have been a real love, driven deeper
into the heart, and torn out for another love, more holy and as pure: for
he was capable of a grand sacrifice. No one will, perhaps, ever ascertain
the truth precisely. It must remain undiscovered--magnified by the mist of
uncertainty--like those Hesperian Gardens which inspired the veises of
poets, but are still surrounded by fable.

For my own part, I am persuaded that the attachment was real. He says that
his sister would often "lend an ear to his desponding, love-sick lay."
After he himself had been in a lunatic asylum, he writes to Coleridge,
that his "head ran upon him, in his madness, as much almost as on another
person, _who was the more immediate cause of my frenzy._" Later in the
year he burned the "little journal of his foolish passion;" and, when
writing to his friend on the subject of his love sonnets, he says, "It is
a passion of which I retain nothing." It is clear, I think, that it was
love for a real person, however transient it may have been. But the fact,
whether true or false, is inexpressibly unimportant. It could not add to
his stature: it could not diminish it. His whole life is acted; and in it
are numerous other things which substantially raise and honor him. The
ashes (if ashes there were) are cold. His struggles and pains, and hopes
and visions, are over. All lie, diffused, intermingled in that vast Space
which has No Name; like the winds and light of yesterday, which came and
gave pleasure for a moment, and now have changed and left us, forever.

In contrast with this apocryphal attachment stands out his deep and
unalterable love for his sister Mary. "God love her," he says; "may we two
never love each other less." They never did. Their affection continued