you call the "Sigh," I think I hear _you_ again. I image to myself the
little smoky room at the Salutation and Cat, where we have sat together
thro' the winter nights, beguiling the cares of life with Poesy. When
you left London, I felt a dismal void in my heart, I found myself cut
off at one and the same time from two most dear to me. "How blest with
Ye the Path could I have trod of Quiet life." In your conversation you
had blended so many pleasant fancies, that they cheated me of my grief.
But in your absence, the tide of melancholy rushd in again, and did its
worst Mischief by overwhelming my Reason. I have recoverd. But feel a
stupor that makes me indifferent to the hopes and fears of this life. I
sometimes wish to introduce a religious turn of mind, but habits are
strong things, and my religious fervors are confined alas to some
fleeting moments of occasional solitary devotion--A correspondence,
opening with you, has roused me a little from my lethargy, and made me
conscious of existence. Indulge me in it. I will not be very
troublesome. At some future time I will amuse you with an account as
full as my memory will permit of the strange turn my phrensy took. I
look back upon it at times with a gloomy kind of Envy. For while it
lasted I had many many hours of pure happiness. Dream not Coleridge, of
having tasted all the grandeur and wildness of Fancy, till you have gone
mad. All now seems to me vapid; comparatively so. Excuse this selfish
digression.

Your monody is so superlatively excellent, that I can only wish it
perfect, which I can't help feeling it is not quite. Indulge me in a few
conjectures. What I am going to propose would make it more compress'd
and I think more energic, tho' I am sensible at the expence of many
beautiful lines. Let it begin "Is this the land of song-ennobled line,"
and proceed to "Otway's famish'd form." Then "Thee Chatterton," to
"blaze of Seraphim." Then "clad in nature's rich array," to "orient