I had purposed not to speak of Mary Lamb, but I had better write it than tell it. The Thursday before last she met at Rickman's a Mr. Babb, an old friend and admirer of her mother. The next day she _smiled_ in an ominous way; on Sunday she told her brother that she was getting bad, with great agony. On Tuesday morning she laid hold of me with violent agitation and talked wildly about George Dyer. I told Charles there was not a moment to lose; and I did not lose a moment, but went for a hackney-coach and took her to the private mad-house at Hugsden. She was quite calm, and said it was the best to do so. But she wept bitterly two or three times, yet all in a calm way. Charles is cut to the heart. You will send this note to Grasmere or the contents of it, though, if I have time, I shall probably write myself to them to-day or to-morrow.
MY DEAR SOUTHEY,--You have had much illness as well as I, but I thank God for you, you have never been equally diseased in voluntary power with me. I knew a lady who was seized with a sort of asthma which she knew would be instantly relieved by a dose of ether. She had the full use of her limbs, and was not an arm's-length from the bell, yet could not command voluntary power sufficient to pull it, and might have died but for the accidental coming in of her daughter. From such as these the doctrines of materialism and mechanical necessity have been deduced; and it is some small argument against the truth of these doctrines that I have perhaps had a more various experience, a more intuitive knowledge of such facts than most men, and yet I do not believe these doctrines. My health is _middling_. If this hot weather continue, I hope to go on endurably, and oh, for peace! for I forbode a miserable winter in this country. Indeed, I am rather induced to determine on wintering in Madeira, rather than staying at home. I have enclosed ten pounds for Mrs. Fricker. Tell her I wish it were in my power to increase this poor half year's mite; but ill health keeps me poor. Bella is with us, and seems likely to recover. I have not seen the "Edinburgh Review." The truth is that Edinburgh is a place of literary gossip, and even _I_ have had my portion of puff there, and of course my portion of hatred and envy. One man puffs me up--he has seen and talked with me; another hears him, goes and reads my poems, written when almost a boy, and candidly and logically hates me, because he does not admire my poems, in the proportion in which one of his acquaintance had admired me. It is difficult to say whether these reviewers do you harm or good.