“Bedford—he is dead; my dear Edmund Seward! after six weeks’ suffering.
“These, Grosvenor, are the losses that gradually wean us from life. May that man want consolation in his last hour, who would rob the survivor of the belief, that he shall again behold his friend! You know not, Grosvenor, how I loved poor Edmund: he taught me all that I have of good. When I went with him into Worcestershire, I was astonished at the general joy his return occasioned—the very dogs ran out to him. In that room where I have so often seen him, he now lies in his coffin!
“It is like a dream, the idea that he is dead—that
his heart is cold—that he, whom but yesterday morning I thought and
talked of as alive—as the friend I knew and loved—is dead! When
these things come home to the heart, they palsy it. I am
| Ætat. 21. | OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 241 |
“There is a strange vacancy in my heart. The sun shines as usual, but there is a blank in existence to me. I have lost a friend, and such a one! God bless you, my dear, dear Grosvenor! Write to me immediately. I will try, by assiduous employment, to get rid of very melancholy thoughts. I am continually dwelling on the days when we were together: there was a time when the sun never rose that I did not see Seward. It is very wrong to feel thus; it is unmanly.
“P.S. I wrote to Edmund on receiving your last: my letter arrived the hour of his death, four o’clock on Wednesday last. Perhaps he remembered me at that hour.
“Grosvenor, I am a child; and all are children who fix their happiness on such a reptile as man;—this great, this self-ennobled being called man, the next change of weather may blast him.
“There is another world where all these things will be amended,
“God help the man who survives all his friends.”
