“It has been very well said of mental wounds, that they must digest, like those of the body, before they can be healed. The poultice of necessity can alone, perhaps, in some cases, bring on this digestion; but we should not impede it by caustics or corrosions. Let the wound be open a due time—but not kept bare with violence.—
“To quit all metaphor, we must, alas! try to diminish our sorrow for one calamity to enable us to support another! A general peace gives but time to refit for new war; a mental blow, or wound, is no more. So far, however, am I from blaming your sorrow on the present occasion, that, in fact, I both love and honour you for it;—and, therefore, will add no more on that melancholy subject. With respect to the other,—&c. &c.
It would be needless, it is hoped, to say that this mild and admirable exhortation effected fully its benevolent purpose. With grateful tears, and immediate compliance to his will, she hastened to his arms, received his tenderest welcome, and, quitting her chamber seclusion, again joined the family—if not with immediate cheerfulness, at least with composure: and again, upon his motion, and under his loved wing, returned to the world; if not with inward gaiety, with outward, yet true and unaffected gratitude for the kindness with which it received her back again to its circles:—but Mr. Crisp was not less gone, nor less internally lamented!
What the Doctor intimates of the proofs she would one day find of the continual occupation of his thoughts by his departed friend, alludes to an elegy to which he was then devoting every instant he could snatch from his innumerable engagements; and which, as a memorial of his friendship, was soothing to his affliction. It opens with the following lines.
“The guide and tutor of my early youth, Whose word was wisdom, and whose wisdom, truth, Whose cordial kindness, and whose active zeal Full forty years I never ceas’d to feel; The Friend to whose abode I eager stole To pour each inward secret of my soul; The dear companion of my leisure hours, Whose cheerful looks, and intellectual powers, Drove care, anxiety, and doubt away, And all the fiends that on reflection prey, Is now no more!—The features of that face Where glow’d intelligence and manly grace; Those eyes which flash’d with intellectual fire Kindled by all that genius could inspire— Those, those—and all his pleasing powers are fled To the cold, squalid mansions of the dead! This highly polished gem, which shone so bright, Impervious now, eclips’d in viewless night From earthly eye, irradiates no more This nether sphere!”—