It will often happen that what ought to turn the human mind from some
peculiar tendency produces the opposite effect. One would think that the
perusal in the newspaper of some crime and capital punishment would warn
away all who had ever meditated the crime, or dreaded the chance of
detection. Yet it is well known to us that many a criminal is made by
pondering over the fate of some predecessor in guilt. There is a
fascination in the Dark and Forbidden, which, strange to say, is only
lost in fiction. No man is more inclined to murder his nephews, or
stifle his wife, after reading "Richard the Third" or "Othello." It is
the reality that is necessary to constitute the danger of contagion.
Now, it was this reality in the fate and life and crowning suicide of
Chatterton that forced itself upon Leonard's thoughts, and sat there like
a visible evil thing, gathering evil like cloud around it. There was
much in the dead poet's character, his trials, and his doom, that stood
out to Leonard like a bold and colossal shadow of himself and his fate.
Alas! the book seller, in one respect, had said truly. Leonard came back
to him the next day a new man; and it seemed even to himself as if he had
lost a good angel in losing Helen. "Oh, that she had been by my side!"
thought he. "Oh, that I could have felt the touch of her confiding hand;
that, looking up from the scathed and dreary ruin of this life, that had
sublimely lifted itself from the plain, and sought to tower aloft from a
deluge, her mild look had spoken to me of innocent, humble, unaspiring
childhood! Ah! If indeed I were still necessary to her,--still the sole
guardian and protector,--then could I say to myself; 'Thou must not
despair and die! Thou hast her to live and to strive for.' But no, no!
Only this vast and terrible London,--the solitude of the dreary garret,
and those lustrous eyes, glaring alike through the throng and through the
solitude."