“I have felt several times in the last six weeks that I ought to have written to some of you; but in truth, my dear child, I had not the courage; and today it is not so much because I have the courage, as because I cannot help it.
“That startling and matchless Fragment was laid upon my table this morning; and before I had read out the first sentence, the real presence of my beloved and incomparable friend was so brought before me, in all his brilliancy, benevolence, and flashing decision, that I seemed again to hear his voice and read in his eye, and burst into an agony of crying. I went through the whole in the same state of feeling: my fancy kindled, and my intellect illumined, but my heart struck through with the sense of our loss, so suddenly and so deeply impressed by this seeming restoration.
“I do not think he ever wrote anything so good, and I
feel mournfully that there is no one man alive who could have so written. The
effect, I am persuaded, will be greater than from any of his other
publications: it is a voice from the grave. And it may truly
| MEMOIR OF THE REV. SYDNEY SMITH. | 407 |
“It relieves me to say all this, and you must forgive it. Heaven bless you, my dear child! With kind remembrances from all here,
