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At length, my brother died. I should have been sorry, only he left me a legacy. A house in the country was worth "fifty thousand brothers." I flung aside my blue gauzes, and thought of violets,
"Which come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."
I folded up my maize silks, and thought of the yellow daffodil,
"Bending its image o’er the watery clearness,
Wooing its own sad beauty into nearness."
I dismissed my foulards, intent on those radiant foulards of the garden:
"Tulips, that every shade of colour wear."
Let me not be ungrateful—I was happy for a month, which is as long as a honeymoon, perhaps longer: here I can’t speak from experience; the poetry by which I have regulated my existence is eloquent upon love, but silent upon matrimony. Moore says, no great genius ever yet lived happily with his wife. I thought it too great a risk, as their disciple, to try; some of the evil influence might have descended on me, their devout worshipper; and they have done me quite harm enough without that. Mr. George Robins was my Mephistopheles, and the copyhold of a cottage near Grasmere my bond. It was a sweet pretty place, quite removed from the high-road, with a porch hung with honeysuckle, roses that looked in at the window, and a garden "well stocked with fruit-trees and vegetables:" here, I thought, I may copy Wordsworth, and enjoy
"The harvest of a quiet eye,
That sleeps and broods on its own heart."
The influence of the Lake poets was on "the haunted air." I went to bed, and dreamt of getting up early, and really had new-laid eggs, and milk from the cow, for breakfast; but—for the truth may be told, when we are tired to death of keeping it to ourselves—I am a miserable man: I really do not know what to do with myself, the nights are so long; for I go to bed soon, and get up late—and the days are yet longer. In vain I remind myself, that I have realized my former dreams of human felicity; that I bake my own bread, grow my own vegetables, and kill my own mutton. In vain
"My banks they are furnished with bees,
Whose murmur invites one to sleep.
I cannot accept the invitation more than fourteen hours out of the twenty-four; and what to do with the remaining ten, I cannot tell. Why did Wilson give "Hints for the Holidays," unless they could be taken? but I own, walking tires me, fishing makes me swear, and I catch cold by going on the water: as to shooting, that is quite out of the question, unless, in my extremity, I shoot myself—and I don't want to die; I only want to live, and live poetically. If I had but taken a house near the high-road, I should at least have seen the stages pass; or if there were even an apothecary in the neighbourhood, or an officer on half-pay, or a curate, I might sometimes get them to dine with me, and not be doomed to watch my shadow on the wall, or in the glass; I have tried each side of the room, to avoid it.
"Oh solitude! where are the charms
That sages have seen in thy face?"
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