MAY 1, 1845.
A LIST OF BOOKS
RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY
EDWARD MOXON, 44, DOVER STREET.
DRAMATIC LIBRARY.
I.
BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. With an INTRODUCTION. BY GEORGE DARLEY. In
two volumes, 8vo, with Portraits and Vignettes, price 32_s._ cloth.
II.
SHAKSPEARE. With REMARKS on his LIFE and WRITINGS. BY THOMAS
CAMPBELL. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait, Vignette, and Index,
price 16_s._ cloth.
III.
BEN JONSON. With a MEMOIR. BY WILLIAM GIFFORD. In one volume, 8vo,
with Portrait and Vignette, price 16_s._ cloth.
IV.
MASSINGER AND FORD. With an INTRODUCTION. BY HARTLEY COLERIDGE. In
one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette, price 16_s._ cloth.
V.
WYCHERLEY, CONGREVE, VANBRUGH, AND FARQUHAR. With BIOGRAPHICAL and
CRITICAL NOTICES. BY LEIGH HUNT. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait
and Vignette, price 16_s._ cloth.
VI.
SHERIDAN’S DRAMATIC WORKS. With a BIOGRAPHICAL and CRITICAL SKETCH.
By LEIGH HUNT. Price 5_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
ROGERS’S POEMS.
I.
ROGERS’S POEMS. A NEW EDITION; In one
volume, illustrated by 72 Vignettes, from designs by Turner
and Stothard, price 16_s._ boards.
II.
ROGERS’S ITALY. A NEW EDITION. In one
volume, illustrated by 56 Vignettes, from designs by Turner
and Stothard, price 16_s._ boards.
III.
ROGERS’S POEMS; AND ITALY. In two
pocket volumes, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 10_s._
cloth.
WORDSWORTH’S POEMS.
I.
WORDSWORTH’S POETICAL WORKS. In
six volumes, price 30_s._ cloth.
II.
WORDSWORTH’S POEMS, chiefly of early and
late Years, including “THE BORDERERS,” a Tragedy. In one
volume, price 9_s._ cloth.
III.
WORDSWORTH’S SONNET& In one Volume,
price 6_s._ cloth.
IV.
WORDSWORTH’S EXCURSION. A POEM.
In one volume, price _6s[._?] cloth.
V.
SELECT PIECES FROM WORDSWORTH. In
one volume, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 7_s._ 6_d._
boards. 8_s._ 6_d._ half-bound, morocco, gilt edges.
CAMPBELL’S POEMS.
I.
CAMPBELL’S POETICAL WORKS. A NEW
EDITION. In one volume, illustrated by 20 Vignettes from
designs by TURNER, and 37 Woodcuts from designs by HARVEY.
Price 20_s._ boards.
II.
CAMPBELL’S POETICAL WORKS. In one
pocket volume, illustrated by numerous Woodcuts, price 8_s._
cloth.
III.
THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF CAMPBELL.
Edited by Dr. WILLIAM BEATTIE, one of his Executors.
_In the Press._
SHELLEY’S WORKS.
I.
SHELLEY’S POETICAL WORKS. Edited by
MRS. SHELLEY. In one volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette,
price 10_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
II.
SHELLEY’S ESSAYS AND LETTERS FROM
ABROAD. Edited by MRS. SHELLEY. A NEW EDITION.
Price 5_s._
CHARLES LAMB’S WORKS.
I.
LAMB’S WORKS. A NEW EDITION. In one
volume, 8vo, with Portrait and Vignette, price 14_s._ cloth.
II.
THE ESSAYS OF ELIA. A NEW EDITION.
Price 5_s._
D’ISRAELI’S WORKS.
I.
CURIOSITIES OF LITERATURE. THIRTEENTH EDITION. In one volume, 8vo,
with Portrait, Vignette, and Index, price 16_s._ cloth.
II.
MISCELLANIES OF LITERATURE. In one volume, 8vo, with Vignette,
price 14_s._ cloth.
CONTENTS:--
1. LITERARY MISCELLANIES.
2. QUARRELS OF AUTHORS.
3. CALAMITIES OF AUTHORS.
4. THE LITERARY CHARACTER.
5. CHARACTER OF JAMES THE FIRST.
DYCE’S BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
THE WORKS OF BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER; the Text formed from a new
collation of the early Editions. With Notes and a biographical
Memoir. By the Rev. A. DYCE. In eleven volumes 8vo. Price 6_l._
12_s._ 0_d._ cloth.
CHAUCER AND SPENSER.
I.
CHAUCER’S POETICAL WORKS. With an ESSAY on his LANGUAGE AND
VERSIFICATION, and an INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE; together with NOTES
and a GLOSSARY. By THOMAS TYRWHITT. In one volume, 8vo with
Portrait and Vignette, price 16_s._ cloth.
II.
SPENSER’S WORKS. With a MEMOIR, NOTES, and a GLOSSARY. In one
volume, 8vo. _In the Press._
MISCELLANEOUS.
I.
HAYDN’S DICTIONARY OF DATES, and UNIVERSAL REFERENCE, relating to
all Ages and Nations; comprehending every Remarkable Occurrence,
Ancient and Modern--the Foundation, Laws, and Governments of
Countries--their Progress in Civilisation, Industry, and
Science--their Achievements in Arms; the Political and Social
Transactions of the British Empire--its Civil, Military, and
Religious Institutions--the Origin and Advance of Human Arts and
Inventions, with copious details of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
The whole comprehending a body of information, Classical,
Political, and Domestic, from the earliest accounts to the present
time. SECOND EDITION. In one volume, 8vo, price 18_s._ cloth.
II.
KNOWLES’S (JAMES) PRONOUNCING AND EXPLANATORY DICTIONARY OF THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Founded on a correct development of the Nature,
the Number, and the Various Properties of all its Simple and
Compound Sounds, as combined into Syllables and Words. A NEW
EDITION. In medium 8vo, price 10_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
III.
By the AUTHOR OF “TWO YEARS BEFORE THE MAST.”
DANA’S SEAMAN’S MANUAL; containing a Treatise on Practical
Seamanship, with Plates; a Dictionary of Sea Terms; Customs and
Usages of the Merchant Service; Laws relating to the Practical
Duties of Master and Mariners. SECOND EDITION. Price 5_s._ cloth.
IV.
HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP, to a NEPHEW and NIECE; or, Common Sense and
Common Errors in Common Riding. By Colonel GEORGE GREENWOOD, late
of the Second Life Guards; Price 2_s._ 6_d._
V.
CICERO’S LIFE AND LETTERS. The Life by Dr. MIDDLETON; The Letters
translated by WM. MELMOTH and Dr. HEBERDEN. In one volume, 8vo,
with Portrait and Vignette, price 16_s._ cloth.
VI.
ELLEN MIDDLETON. A TALE. BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON. SECOND
EDITION. In three volumes price 31_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
VII.
CAPTAIN BASIL HALL’S FRAGMENTS OF VOYAGES AND TRAVELS. A NEW
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VIII.
DEERBROOK. A NOVEL. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. A NEW EDITION. In one
pocket volume, price 6_s._ cloth.
IX.
THE HOUR AND THE MAN. A Historical Romance. By HARRIET MARTINEAU. A
NEW EDITION. In one pocket volume, price 6_s._ cloth.
X.
TALFOURD’S (MR. SERJEANT) VACATION RAMBLES AND THOUGHTS; comprising
the Recollections of three Continental Tours in the Vacations of
1841, 42, and 43. SECOND EDITION. Price 10_s._ 6_d._ cloth.
XI.
DYCE’S REMARKS ON MR. C. KNIGHT’S AND MR. J. P. COLLIER’S EDITIONS OF
SHAKSPEARE. In 8vo, price 9_s._ cloth.
XII.
LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM: ESSAYS. By AN INVALID. SECOND EDITION. Price
8_s._ boards.
XIII.
HISTOIRE DE FRANCE DU PETIT LOUIS. Par LADY CALLCOTT. Price 2_s._
6_d._ half-bound.
XIV.
SHELLEY’S (MRS.) RAMBLES IN GERMANY AND ITALY in 1840, 1842, and
1843. In 2 vols. post 8vo. Price 21_s._ cloth.
POETRY.
TENNYSON’S POEMS. 2 vols. Price 12_s._ boards.
MILNES’S POEMS. 4 vols. Price 20_s._ boards.
TRENCH’S JUSTIN MARTYR, and other Poems. 6_s._ bds.
-------- POEMS FROM EASTERN SOURCES. Price 6_s._ bds.
STERLING’S POEMS. Price 6_s._ boards.
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BROWNING’S PARACELSUS. Price 6_s._ boards.
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TAYLOR’S PHILIP VAN ARTEVELDE. Price 2_s._ 6_d._
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LEIGH HUNT’S POETICAL WORKS. Price 2_s._ 6_d._
PERCY’S RELIQUES. 3 vols. Price 7_s._ 6_d._
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Bradbury & Evans, Printers, Whitefriars.
ESSAYS.
“Quand on se porte bien, on ne comprend pas comment on pourrait
faire si on était malade; et quand on l’est, on prend médecine
gaiement: le mal y résout. On n’a plus les passions et les désirs
des divertissements et des promenades, que la santé donnait, et qui
sont incompatibles avec les nécessités de la maladie. La nature
donne alors des passions et des désirs conformes à l’état présent.
Ce ne sont que les craintes que nous nous donnons nous-mêmes, et
non pas la nature, qui nous troublent; parcequ’elles joignent à
l’état où nous sommes les passions de l’état où nous ne sommes
pas.”--PASCAL.
LIFE IN THE SICK-ROOM.
ESSAYS.
BY
AN INVALID.
“For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.”--SHAKSPERE.
“The saddest birds a season find to sing.”--ROBERT SOUTHWELL.
SECOND EDITION.
LONDON:
EDWARD MOXON, DOVER-STREET.
MDCCCXLIV.
LONDON:
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
TO ---- vii
THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE SICK-ROOM 1
SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID 11
NATURE TO THE INVALID 43
LIFE TO THE INVALID 64
DEATH TO THE INVALID 104
TEMPER 126
BECOMING INJURED 146
POWER OF IDEAS IN THE SICK-ROOM 155
SOME PERILS AND PAINS OF INVALIDISM 176
SOME GAINS AND SWEETS OF INVALIDISM 197
TO----
“Passion I see is catching; for mine eyes,
Seeing those beads of sorrow stand in thine,
Began to water.”
SHAKSPERE.
“When we our betters see bearing our woes,
We scarcely think our miseries our foes;
Who alone suffers suffers most i’ the mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind.
But then the mind much sufferance doth o’erskip,
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.”
SHAKSPERE.
As I write this, I cannot but wonder when and how you will read it, and
whether it will cause a single throb at the idea that it may be meant
for you. You have been in my mind during the passage of almost
all the thoughts that will be found in this book. But for your
sympathy--confidently reckoned on, though never asked--I do not know
that I should have had courage to mark their procession, and record
their order. I have felt that if I spoke of these things at all, it must
be to some fellow-sufferer--to some one who had attained these
experiences before me or with me; and, having you for my companion
throughout, (however unconsciously to yourself), I have uttered many
things that I could hardly otherwise have spoken: for one may speak far
more freely with a friend, though in the hearing of others, than when
singly addressing a number. Most frequently, however, I have forgotten
that others could hear, and have conversed as with you alone.
It matters little, in this view, that we have never met--that each of us
does not know, except by the eye of the mind, with what outward face the
other has encountered the unusual lot appointed to both. While I was as
busy as any one on the sunny plain of life, I heard of you laid aside in
the shadowy recess where our sunshine of hope and joy could never
penetrate to you; and it was with reverence, and not pity, that I
inquired of those who could tell whether you had separate lights of
heaven, such as there are for retreats like yours. When I was myself
withdrawn into such a recess, if I learned to pity more than before, it
was with a still enhanced reverence for your older experience. As the
evils of protracted unhealthiness came upon me, one after another, I
knew that they had all visited you long ago; and I felt as if they
brought me a greeting from you. For me, at least, you have not suffered
in vain. Would there might be anything in this volume which might enable
you to say the same to me!
At all events, there is something sweet and consoling in the fellowship.
Though we would, if we could, endure anything to set the other
free--though we would thankfully take upon us any suffering that nature
could bear for the thought that no one else was qualified to conceive of
our troubles,--yet, as this cannot be, we may make the most of the
comfort of our companionship. In our wakeful night seasons, when the
healthy and the happy are asleep, we may call to each other from our
retreats, to know each how the other fares; and, whether we are at the
moment dreary or at peace, it may be that there are angels abroad,
(perhaps the messengers of our own sympathies), who may bear our mutual
greetings, and drop them on their rounds. Often has this been my fancy,
when the images close about me have been terrific enough; and when, in
the very throng of these horrors, I have cast about for some charm or
talisman wherewith to rid myself of them, and some voice of prayer has
presently reached me from a temple on the furthest horizon of my
life--or some sweet or triumphant hymn of submission or praise has
floated to my spirit’s ear from the far shores of my childhood--I have
hoped, in the midst of the heaven thus brought down about me, that the
same consolations were visiting you, who in the same need would, I knew,
make the same appeal.
But there are times when the sense of fellowship is dearer still. You
know, doubtless, as well as I, the emptiness of the consolation when
our pitying friends, in all love and sincerity, remind us of what we did
by our efforts when we were well and active, and what we are doing still
for the world, by preserving a decent quietness in the midst of our
troubles. You know, as well as I, how withering would be the sense of
our own nothingness, if we tried to take comfort from our own dignity
and usefulness. You know, as well as I, how very far we can see from our
place on the verge of life, over its expanse, and how ridiculous, if it
were not shocking, would be any complacency on the ground of our having
followed the instincts of our nature to work, while work was
possible,--the issues of such divinely-appointed instrumentality being
wholly brought out and directed by Him who framed and actuated us. You
know, as I do, how useful it is to human beings to have before their
eyes spectacles of all experiences; and we are alike willing, having
worked while we could, now to suffer as we may, to help our kind in
another mode. We feel it some little service to be appointed to,--having
become accustomed to our footing on the shaking plank over the deep dark
river,--to lead on and uphold with a steady hand some who may be
appointed to follow, and perhaps to pass us upon it.
But while agreeing in this, our happiest fellowship must be, I think, in
seeing, with a clearness we could never otherwise have attained, the
vastness and certainty of the progression with which we have so little
to do. I do not believe it is possible for persons in health and action
to trace, as we can, the agencies for good that are going on in life and
the world. Or, if they can, it seems as if the perception were
accompanied by a breathless fear,--a dread of being, if not crushed,
whirled away somewhere, hurried along to new regions for which they are
unprepared, and to which, however good, they would prefer the familiar.
You and I, and our fellow-sufferers, see differently, whether or not we
see further. We know and feel, to the very centre of our souls, that
there is no hurry, no crushing, no devastation attending Divine
processes. While we see the whole system of human life rising and rising
into a higher region and a purer light, we perceive that every atom is
as much cared for as the whole. While we use our new insight to show us
how things are done,--and gravely smile to see that it is by every man’s
overrating the issues of his immediate pursuit, in order that he may
devote all his energies to it, (without which nothing would ever be
done,) we smile with another feeling presently, on perceiving how an
industry and care from above are compensating to every man his mistake
by giving him collateral benefits when he misses the direct good he
sought,--by giving him and his helpers a wealth of ideas, as often as
their schemes turn out, in their professed objects, profitless. When we
see men straining every nerve to reach the tempting apples which are to
prove dust and ashes in their jaws, we see also, by virtue of our
position, the flying messenger who is descending with the ambrosia which
is to feed their immortal part. We can tell that while revolutions are
grandly operating, by which life and the world will in time change their
aspect,--while a progress is advancing to which it is now scarcely
conceivable that we should ever have dreamed of putting our
hands,--there is not one of our passing thoughts that is not
ordained,--not a sigh of weariness unheeded,--not an effort of patience
that is not met half-way by divine pity,--not a generous emotion of
triumph in the world’s improvement that is not hallowed by the divine
sympathy ever living and breathing round about us. This our peculiar
privilege, of seeing and feeling something of the simultaneous vastness
and minuteness of providential administration, is one in which we most
enjoy sympathy;--at least, I do:--and in this, therefore, do I find your
undoubted fellowship most precious.
Here then I end my greeting,--except in as far as the whole book is
truly conversation with you. I shall not direct it to your hands, but
trust to the most infallible force in the universe,--human sympathy,--to
bring these words under your eye. If they should have the virtue to
summon thoughts which may, for a single hour, soften your couch, shame
and banish your foes of depression and pain, and set your chamber in
holy order and something of cheerful adornment, I may have the honour of
being your nurse, though I am myself laid low,--though hundreds of miles
are between us, and though we can never know one another’s face or
voice.
Yours,
----
ESSAYS.
THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT IN THE SICK-ROOM.
“Lasting! what’s lasting?
The earth that swims so well, must drown in fire,
And Time be last to perish at the stake.
The heavens must parch; the universe must smoulder.
Nothing but thoughts can live, and such thoughts only
As god-like are, making God’s recreation.”
I. KNOWE.
“Affliction worketh patience: and patience, experience; and
experience, hope.” ST. PAUL.
“All places that the eye of Heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.”
SHAKSPERE.
The sick-room becomes the scene of intense convictions; and among these,
none, it seems to me, is more distinct and powerful than that of the
permanent nature of good, and the transient nature of evil. At times I
could almost believe that long sickness or other trouble is ordained to
prove to us this very point--a point worth any costliness of proof.
The truth may pass across the mind of one who has suffered briefly--may
occur to him when glancing back over his experience of a short sharp
illness or adversity. He may say to himself that his temporary suffering
brought him lasting good, in revealing to him the sympathy of his
friends, and the close connexion of human happiness with things unseen;
but this occasional recognition of the truth is a very different thing
from the abiding and unspeakably vivid conviction of it, which arises
out of a condition of protracted suffering. It may look like a paradox
to say that a condition of permanent pain is that which, above all,
proves to one the transient nature of pain; but this is what I do
affirm, and can testify.
The apparent contradiction lies in the words “permanent pain”--that
condition being made up of a series of pains, each of which is
annihilated as it departs; whereas all real good has an existence beyond
the moment, and is indeed indestructible.
A day’s illness may teach something of this to a thoughtful mind; but
the most inconsiderate can scarcely fail to learn the lesson, when the
proof is drawn out over a succession of months and seasons. With me, it
has now included several New Year’s Days; and what have they taught me?
What any future New Year’s retrospect cannot possibly contradict, and
must confirm: though it can scarcely illustrate further what is already
as clear as its moon and stars.
During the year looked back upon, all the days, and most hours of the
day, have had their portion of pain--usually mild--now and then, for a
few marked hours of a few marked weeks, severe and engrossing; while,
perhaps, some dozen evenings, and half-dozen mornings, are remembered as
being times of almost entire ease. So much for the body. The mind,
meantime, though clear and active, has been so far affected by the
bodily state as to lose all its gaiety, and, by disuse, almost to forget
its sense of enjoyment. During the year, perhaps, there may have been
two surprises of light-heartedness, for four hours in June, and two
hours and a half in October, with a few single flashes of joy in the
intermediate seasons, on the occurrence of some rousing idea, or the
revival of some ancient association. Over all the rest has brooded a
thick heavy cloud of care, apparently causeless, but not for that the
less real. This is the sum of the pains of the year, in relation to
illness. Where are these pains now?--Not only gone, but annihilated.
They are destroyed so utterly, that even memory can lay no hold upon
them. The fact of their occurrence is all that even memory can preserve.
The sensations themselves cannot be retained, nor recalled, nor revived;
they are the most absolutely evanescent, the most essentially and
completely destructible of all things. Sensations are unimaginable to
those who are most familiar with them. Their concomitants may be
remembered, and so vividly conceived of, as to excite emotions at a
future time: but the sensations themselves cannot be conceived of when
absent. This pain, which I feel now as I write, I have felt innumerable
times before; yet, accustomed as I am to entertain and manage it, the
sensation itself is new every time; and a few hours hence I shall be as
unable to represent it to myself as to the healthiest person in the
house. Thus are all the pains of the year annihilated. What remains?
All the good remains.
And how is this? whence this wide difference between the good and the
evil?
Because the good is indissolubly connected with ideas--with the unseen
realities which are indestructible. This is true, even of those
pleasures of sense which of themselves would be as evanescent as bodily
pains. The flowers sent to me by kind neighbours have not
perished,--that is, the idea and pleasure of them remain, though every
blossom was withered months ago. The game and fruit, eaten in their
season, remain as comforts and luxuries, preserved in the love that sent
them. Every letter and conversation abides,--every new idea is mine for
ever; all the knowledge, all the experience of the year, is so much
gain. Even the courses of the planets, and the changes of the moon, and
the hay-making and harvest, are so much immortal wealth--as real a
possession as all the pain of the year was a passing apparition. Yes,
even the quick bursts of sunshine are still mine. For one instance,
which will well illustrate what I mean, let us look back so far as the
Spring, and take one particular night of severe pain, which made all
rest impossible. A short intermission, which enabled me to send my
servant to rest, having ended in pain, I was unwilling to give further
disturbance, and wandered, from mere misery, from my bed and my dim
room, which seemed full of pain, to the next apartment, where some
glimmer through the thick window-curtain showed that there was light
abroad. Light indeed! as I found on looking forth. The sun, resting on
the edge of the sea, was hidden from me by the walls of the old priory:
but a flood of rays poured through the windows of the ruin, and gushed
over the waters, strewing them with diamonds, and then across the green
down before my windows, gilding its furrows, and then lighting up the
yellow sands on the opposite shore of the harbour, while the
market-garden below was glittering with dew and busy with early bees and
butterflies. Besides these bees and butterflies, nothing seemed
stirring, except the earliest riser of the neighbourhood, to whom the
garden belongs. At the moment, she was passing down to feed her pigs,
and let out her cows; and her easy pace, arms a-kimbo, and complacent
survey of her early greens, presented me with a picture of ease so
opposite to my own state, as to impress me ineffaceably. I was suffering
too much to enjoy this picture at the moment: but how was it at the end
of the year? The pains of all those hours were annihilated--as
completely vanished as if they had never been; while the momentary peep
behind the window-curtain made me possessor of this radiant picture for
evermore. This is an illustration of the universal fact. That brief
instant of good has swallowed up long weary hours of pain. An
inexperienced observer might, at the moment, have thought the conditions
of my gain heavy enough; but the conditions being not only discharged,
but annihilated long ago, and the treasure remaining for ever, would not
my best friend congratulate me on that sunrise? Suppose it shining on,
now and for ever, in the souls of a hundred other invalids or mourners,
who may have marked it in the same manner, and who shall estimate its
glory and its good!
It is clear that the conviction I speak of arises from the
supposition--indispensable and, I believe, almost universal,--that pain
is the chastisement of a Father; or, at least, that it is, in some way
or other, ordained for, or instrumental to good. The experience of men
leaves this belief uncontested, and incontestable. Otherwise, evil and
pain would be, in their effects on sufferers, long-lived, if not as
immortal as good. If we believed our sufferings to be inflicted by
cruelty or malice, our pains would immediately take a permanent
existence by becoming connected with our passions of fear, revenge, &c.;
though still--as is known to students of the human soul,--the evil,
however long sustained, must be finally absorbed in the good. We, of our
age and state of society, however, have to do with none who believe pain
to be inflicted by the malignity of a superior being. Those who are not
so happy as to recognise in it a mere disguise of blessings otherwise
unattainable, receive it, under some of the various theories of
necessary imperfection, as something unavoidable, and therefore to be
received placidly, if not gratefully. These would admit, as cheerfully
as the adorers of a chastening Father, the richness of my wealth, as I
lie, on New Year’s Eve, surrounded by the treasures of the departing
year,--the kindly Year which has utterly destroyed for me so much that
is terrible and grievous, while he leaves with me all the new knowledge
and power, all the teachings from on high, and the love from far and
near, and even the frailest-seeming blossom of pleasure that, in any
moment, he has cast into my lap.
Thus has a succession of these friendly years now visited me and gone:
and, as far as we can see, thus will every future one repeat the
lesson. If any person disputes, no one can disprove, the result, wrought
out, as it is, by natural experience. It is no contradiction, that some
are soured by suffering. Their pains, like mine, are gone; and with
them, as with others, it is ideas which remain; and ideas are
essentially good, a part of the indestructible inner life which must,
from its very nature, sooner or later part with its evil, through
experience of the superabounding good of the universe. If one so soured
by pain dies in this mood, the ideal part of him is that which remains
to be carried into a fresh scene, where the mood cannot be fed by the
experience which nourished it here. If he lives long enough to change
his mood, there is every probability that the benignant influences which
are perpetually at work throughout life and nature will dissolve and
disperse his troubles, as the eastern lights, the breath of morning and
the chirp of birds, steal in upon the senses of the troubled sleeper,
and thence possessing themselves of his reason, convince him that the
miseries of the night season were but a dream.
True and consoling as it may be for him, and for those about him, to
find thus that “trouble may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning,” they have not fully learned the lessons of the sick-room if
they are not aware that, while the troubles of that night season are
thus sure to pass away, its product of thoughts and experiences must
endure, till the stars which looked down upon the scene have dissolved
in their courses. The constellations formed in the human soul, out of
the chaos of pain, must have a duration compared with which, those of
the firmament are but as the sparkles showered over the sea by the
rising sun. To one still in this chaos,--if he do but see the creative
process advancing,--it can be no reasonable matter of complaint, that
his course is laid the while through such a region; and he will feel
almost ashamed of even the most passing anxiety as to how soon he may be
permitted to emerge.
SYMPATHY TO THE INVALID.
“The essence of friendship is entireness; a total magnanimity and
trust. It must not surmise or provide for infirmity. It treats its
object as a god, that it may deify both.”
EMERSON.
“Our hands in one, we win not shrink
From life’s severest due:--
Our hands in one, we win not blink
The terrible and true.”
MILNES.
If all sorrow teaches us that nothing is more universal than sympathy,
long and irremediable sickness proves plainly, that nothing is more
various than its kinds and degrees; or, it may be, than the
manifestations of the sympathetic grief which is shared by all. In a
sharp sickness of a few days or weeks, all good and kind people act and
speak much alike; are busy and ingenious in hastening the recovery, and
providing relief meantime. It is when death is not to be looked for, nor
yet health, that the test is applied; that, on either hand, the genius
and the awkwardness of consolation present themselves, with a vast
gradation between these extremes. It is easy and pleasant to be grateful
for all, and to appreciate the love and pity which inspire them; but it
is impossible to relish all equally, or to give the same admiration to
that which flows forth fully and freely, and that sympathy which is
suppressed, restricted, or in any way changed before it reaches its
object.
O! what a heavenly solace to the soul is free sympathy in its hour of
need! There is but one that can vie with it; and that one is, in truth,
an enhancement of the same emotions. Communion with
“Mercy, carried infinite degrees
Beyond the tenderness of human hearts,”
is, indeed, the supreme, incommunicable delight which must be only
referred to, because no sense of it can be conveyed by language; but,
because it is of kindred nature, though separated by immeasurable
distance, the solace of human sympathy ranks next to this. What a
springing of the heart, like that on the discovery of a new truth, or
entrance on a new enterprise in youth, attends the revelation to a
sufferer of some stroke of genius in the consolations of one of the many
who grieve for his affliction!
Many give their best thoughts to provide alleviations--whether in the
form of medicines, or dainties for the mind or palate, for the eye or
ear; and sweet is the enjoyment of the kindness which provides, whether
the luxuries themselves can be relished or not. Some kind soul does a
better service still, by affording opportunity for the sufferer to
minister to other afflicted ones; to relieve some distress of poverty,
or other want. This is sweet; but there are times when the personal
trial needs some solace nearer and more direct than this. Then is the
hour when the pain of sympathy in the hearts of friends impels them to
cast about for relief, and tempts them to speak of hope to the sufferer
who has no hope, or none compatible with the kind of consolation they
attempt. Going back to the days when I, myself, was the sympathiser, I
remember how strong is the temptation to imagine, and to assure the sick
one, that his pain will not last; that the time will come when he will
be well again; that he is already better; or, if it be impossible to say
that, that he will get used to his affliction, and find it more
endurable. How was it that I did not see that such offers of consolation
must be purely irritating to one who was not feeling better, nor
believing that he should ever be better, nor in a state to be cheered by
any speculation as to whether his pain would, or would not become more
endurable with time! Exactly in proportion to the zeal with which such
considerations were pressed, must have been the sufferer’s clearness of
perception of the disguised selfishness which dictated the topics and
the words. I was (as I half suspected at the time, from my sense of
restraint and uneasiness,) trying to console myself, and not my friend;
indulging my own cowardice, my own shrinking from a painful truth, at
the expense of the feelings of the sufferer for whom my heart was
aching. I, who had no genius for consolation, at least in cases of
illness, have been silently corrected by the benignest of reproofs,--by
the experience of this genius in my own season of infirmity.
The manifestations of sympathetic feeling are as various as of other
feelings; but the differences are marked by those whom they concern,
with a keenness proportioned to the hunger of their heart. The sick man
has even sometimes to assure himself of the grief of his friends, by
their silence to him on circumstances which he cannot but feel most
important. Their letters, extending over months and years, perhaps
contain no mention of his trial, no reference to his condition, not a
line which will show to his executors that the years over which they
spread were years of illness. Though he can account for this suppression
in the very love of his friends, yet it brings no particular consolation
to him. Others, perhaps, administer praise;--praise, which is the last
thing a humbled sufferer can appropriate;--praise of his patience or
fortitude, which perhaps arrives at the moment when his resolution has
wholly given way, and tears may be streaming from his eyes, and
exclamations of anguish bursting from his lips. Such consolations
require forbearance, however it may be mingled with gratitude. Far
different was my emotion, when one said to me, with a face like the face
of an angel, “Why should we be bent upon your being better, and make up
a bright prospect for you? I see no brightness in it; and the time seems
past for expecting you ever to be well.” How my spirits rose in a moment
at this recognition of the truth!
And again--when I was weakly dwelling on a consideration which troubled
me much for some time, that many of my friends gave me credit for far
severer pain than I was enduring, and that I thus felt myself a sort of
impostor, encroaching unwarrantably on their sympathies, “O! never
mind!” was the reply. “That may be more than balanced hereafter. You
will suffer more, with time--or you will seem to yourself to suffer
more; and then you will have less sympathy. We grow tired of despairing,
and think less and less of such cases, whether reasonably or not; and
you may have less sympathy when you need it more. Meantime, you are not
answerable for what your friends feel; and it is good for them--natural
and right--whether you think it accurate or not.”
These words put a new heart into me, dismissed my scruples about the
over-wealth of the present hour, and strengthened my soul for future
need--the hour of which has not, however, yet arrived. It is a
comfortable season, if it may but last, when one’s friends have ceased
to hope unreasonably, and not “grown tired of despairing.”
Another friend, endowed both by nature and experience with the power I
speak of, gave me strength for months--for my whole probation--by a
brave utterance of one word, “Yes.” In answer to a hoping consoler, I
told a truth of fact which sounded dismal, though because it was fact I
spoke it in no dismal mood; and the genius at my side, by a
confirmatory “Yes,” opened to my view a whole world of aid in prospect
from a soul so penetrating and so true.
I know it is pleaded that there are sufferers not strong enough to bear
the truth--who like to be soothed with hopes, well or ill-grounded; who
find immediate comfort in being told that they will throw off their pain
and be at ease. If there be such, I have never known them; and I doubt
their existence. I believe that the tendency to make the worst of bodily
complaints, on which so many satires (some just) are founded, is much
aggravated, if not generally caused, by the tendency in the healthy and
happy to disallow pain and a sad prospect. Children, weak and
unpractised sufferers as they are, are found not to be consolable in the
manner proposed. We all know the story of the little boy in the street,
crying from the smart of a fall, who, when assured by a good-natured
passenger that he should not cry, because he would be well to-morrow,
answered, “Then I won’t cry to-morrow.”
The weakest sufferers are precisely those who are least able to
appropriate the future and its good things. If this be true of the
weak, and if the strong find it irritating to be medicined with soft
fictions, or presented with anything but sound truth, the popular method
of consolation appears to be excluded altogether. If my own life were to
be lived over again, I should, from the strength of this conviction,
convert most of its words of intended consolation into a far more
consolatory condolence. Never again should the suffering spirit turn
from me, as I fear it has often done--if too gentle to be irritated--yet
sickening at hollow words of promise, when instant fellow-feeling was
what was needed; and mournfully thinking, though too kind to say it,
“‘the heart knoweth its own bitterness,’ and mine must endure alone.”
The fair retribution has not followed, for never thus have I been left
to feel.
I am here reminded of a sort of consolation, often offered, which I do
not at all understand. I do not quarrel with it, however, for it may
suit others less insensible to its claims. Sequestered sufferers, whose
term of activity is over, and who apparently have only to endure as they
may, and learn and enjoy what they can, till they receive their summons
to enter on a new career, are referred for solace to their
consciences--to their consciousness of services rendered to society, and
duty done in active days. I strongly doubt whether Conscience was ever
appointed to the function of Consoler. I more than doubt; I disbelieve
it. According to my own experience, the utmost enjoyment that conscience
is capable of is a negative state, that of ease. Its power of suffering
is strong; and its natural and best condition I take to be one of simple
ease; but for enjoyment and consolation, I believe we must look to other
powers and susceptibilities of our nature.
It is inconceivable to me that our moral sense can ever be gratified by
anything in our own moral state. It must be more offended by our own
sins and weaknesses than by all the other sin and weakness in the world,
in proportion as the evil is more profoundly known to it, and more
nakedly disgusting, because it is stripped of the allowances and
palliations which are admissible in all other cases. And this disgust is
not compensated for by a corresponding satisfaction in our own good; for
the very best good we can ever recognise in ourselves falls so far short
of our own conceptions, so fails to satisfy the requisitions of the
moral sense, that it can afford no gratification. A conscience which
can enjoy itself on its own resources, must be of a very low degree--I
should say of a spurious nature. In the highest state of health that I
can conceive of--health spiritual and physical--I believe the function
of the moral sense to be to delight itself in good wherever it is to be
found, (and no wise person will look for it within himself,) to keep
watch and ward against evil, and to cherish lowliness at home by its
incessant consciousness of the imperfection there; an imperfection so
keenly felt by an enlightened and accurate conscience, as to cause a
wholesome going abroad for interests and gratifications, so that ease
may be found in self-forgetfulness. The necessity which so many feel of
a relief from their disappointed conscience--of adventitious merits on
which to rely in the failure of their own--of a saving interposition
between their own imperfections and the requisitions of God and duty;
this prevalent need is an unanswerable rebuke to the presumption which
talks of “the happiness of an approving conscience.” If it is thus in
the season of vigour, health, and self-command, how inexpressibly absurd
is the mistake of bringing such a topic as consolation to the sick and
sequestered!--to the sick, whose whole heart is faint, and the mental
frame disordered, more or less, in proportion as the body is jaded and
the nerves unstrung; and to the sequestered, who perforce devour their
own hearts, and find them the bitterest food! Why, one of the most
painful trials of long sickness and seclusion is, that all old pains,
all past moral sufferings, are renewed and magnified; that in sleepless
nights, and especially on waking in the morning, every old sin and
folly, and even the most trifling error, rises up anew, however long ago
repented of and forgiven, and, in the activity of ordinary life,
forgotten. Any sort of ghost is more easily laid than this kind. Though
their “brains were out” long years ago, they continue to come--they
present themselves in defiance of all--even the most sacred, exorcisms;
so that it becomes one of the duties of the sick to bear their presence
with composure, and cease to struggle for their exclusion. In the midst
of this experience, to have one’s friends come, and desire one to look
back upon one’s past life for complacency and self-gratulation, in order
to assure one’s self how well one has used one’s powers and
opportunities--how much one has done for society--how lofty and
honourable a life one has led--and so forth,--O! what words can express
the absurdity! If the consoler could but see the invisible array which
comes thronging into the sick-room from the deep regions of the past,
brought by every sound of nature without, by every movement of the
spirit within; the pale lips of dead friends whispering one’s hard or
careless words, spoken in childhood or youth--the upbraiding gaze of
duties slighted and opportunities neglected--the horrible apparition of
old selfishness and pusillanimities--the disgusting foolery of idiotic
vanities; if the consoler could catch a momentary glimpse of this
phantasmagoria of the sick-room, he would turn with fear and loathing
from the past, and shudder, while the inured invalid smiles, at such a
choice of topics for solace.
Then it might become the turn of the invalid to console--to explain how
these are but phantoms--how solace does abound, though it comes from
every region rather than the kingdom of conscience--and how, while the
past is dry and dreary enough, there are streams descending from the
heaven-bright mountain-tops of the future, forever flowing down to our
retreat, pure enough for the most fastidious longing, abundant enough
for the thirstiest soul. The consoler may then learn for life how easily
all personal complacencies may be dispensed with, while the sufferer can
tell of a true “refuge and strength,” and “present help,” and of this
“river that gladdens the city of God,” and flows to meet us as we
journey towards it.
But, the anxious consoler may say, Is it right so to banish these
complacencies? If you really have served the world, however imperfectly
in your own eyes--if you have sown thoughts in minds, and called forth
affections in hearts--ought you to deny the facts, or that they are
good?
By no means. If you assure me of these things as facts, you bring me
good news. But I should feel it as good news--perhaps better--if the
service had been rendered by anybody else; for the simple reason that
the good would then be to me unmixed, which now it is not, nor can ever
be. Call upon me, whenever you will, to rejoice that men have gained an
idea--that the aged or children have been amused or strengthened--or
that society has been relieved from an abuse, by anyone’s means. Rouse
me from the depression of pain, wake me up from sleep for the better
refreshment of this news, and I will rejoice; but do not think to
enhance your tidings by telling me that these things are my doing. The
only effect of that is, to remind me how much better the service might
have been done. Surely we both believe that all truth and goodness are
destined to arise sooner or later among men. To be visited with new or
good ideas is a blessing: to be appointed to communicate them is an
honour: but these blessings and honours are a ground for personal
humility, not complacency. It is to me impossible to connect the idea of
merit with any such destiny. There is nothing we have so little hand in
as our own ideas; there is no occupation less voluntary than that of
uttering them. And so will every servant of his race say of his own
species of service. He will rejoice that something new and good is
acquired or attained by his race; and he must naturally be thankful for
the honour and enjoyment appointed to him as the medium: but he can find
no ground for personal complacency in the matter. He will be utterly
careless whether men know, a hundred years hence, through whom they
received the benefit, or whether his name has been for ninety years
lost to all but his intimate friends. If he were offered the choice
between this reputation and the fact of his having conquered one unkind
emotion, or made one single effort of endurance, he would eagerly prefer
the secret genuine good to the blazoned apparent one.
“There is something extremely absurd and ridiculous,” says the holy
Hartley, “in supposing a person to be perpetually feasting his own mind
with, and dwelling upon, the praises that already are, or which he hopes
will hereafter be, given to him. And yet, unless a man does this (which
besides would evidently incapacitate him for deserving or obtaining
praise), how can he fill up a thousandth part of his time with the
pleasures of ambition?” Even more absurd is to me the image of a lonely
sufferer, trying not only to fill up his time, but to soothe his pains
of body, and calm his anguish of spirit, by drawing delight from the
remembrance of his own little contrivings and doings in the world. I
would recommend, in preference, the project of drawing sunbeams from
cucumbers, as a solace on the rack.
If it is asked, after all this, “who can console? how is it possible to
please and soothe the sufferer?” I answer, that nothing is
easier--nothing is more common--nothing more natural to simple-minded
people. Never creature had more title than I to speak confidently of
this, from experience which melts my heart day by day. “Speaking the
truth in love,” is the way. One who does this cannot but be an angel of
consolation. Everything but truth becomes loathed in a sick-room. The
restless can repose on nothing but this: the sharpened intellectual
appetite can be satisfied with nothing less substantial; the susceptible
spiritual taste can be gratified with nothing less genuine, noble, and
fair.