"My Dear Miss Wordsworth,--

I wished to tell you that you would one day feel the kind of peaceful state of mind and sweet memory of the dead, which you so happily describe, as now almost begun; but I felt that it was improper, and most grating to the feelings of the afflicted, to say to them that the memory of their affliction would in time become a constant part, not only of their dreams, but of their most wakeful sense of happiness. That you would see every object with and through your lost brother, and that that would at last become a real and everlasting source of comfort to you, I felt, and well knew, from my own experience in sorrow; but till you yourself began to feel this, I did not dare to tell you so; but I send you some poor lines, which I wrote under this conviction of mind, and before I heard Coleridge was returning home.

...

"Why is he wandering on the sea?-- Coleridge should now with Wordsworth be. By slow degrees he'd steal away Their woes, and gently bring a ray (So happily he'd time relief,) Of comfort from their very grief. He'd tell them that their brother dead, When years have passed o'er their head, Will be remembered with such holy, True and tender melancholy, That ever this lost brother John Will be their heart's companion. His voice they'll always hear, His face they'll always see; There's naught in life so sweet As such a memory."

(See 'Final Memorials of Charles Lamb', by Thomas Noon Talfourd, vol. ii. pp. 233, 234.)--Ed.

* * * * *