1834, ISBN: 9780217868563

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This… Meer...

[ED: Softcover], [PU: Cambridge Scholars Publishing], Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: on the decrease. But a little while ago, and to think of Mr. Browning and of illness together seemed impossible. It is a singular fact that he who felt so keenly for human suffering had scarcely known, by experience, what physical pain was. The vigor, the exemption from feebleness, which marks his literary genius, accompanied the man as well. I recollect his giving a picturesque account of a headache he suffered from, once, in St. Petersburg, about the year 1834! Who amongst us is fortunate enough to remember his individual headaches? I seem to see him now, about six years ago, standing in the east wind on the doorstep of his house in Warwick Crescent, declaring with emphasis that he felt ill, really ill, more ill than he had felt for half a century, and looking all the while, in spite of that indisposition, a monument of sturdyhealth. Even his decline has been the reluctant fall of a wholesome and well- balanced being. Painlessly, without intellectual obscuration, demanding none of that pity that he deprecated, he falls asleep in Italy, faint indeed, yet, to the very last, pursuing. Since those we love must pass away since the light must sooner or later sink in the lantern, there is, perhaps, no better way than this. We may repeat of him what Sir Thomas Browne said of his friend, " We have missed not our desires in his soft departure, which was scarce an expiration." It is natural in these first moments to think more of the man than of his works. The latter remain with us, and coming generations will comprehend them better than we do. But our memories of the former, though far less salient, have this importance ? that they willpass away with us. Every hour henceforward makes the man more shadowy. We must condense our recollections, if they are not to prove wholly volatile and...Versandfertig in 6-10 Tagen, [SC: 0.00]<