 my
mind, ever eager in inventing means to escape from my misery, suggested. In my
haste to withdraw myself from the retreat in Wales, where first the certainty of
Mr. Falkland's menaces was confirmed to me, I left behind me the apparatus of my
etymological enquiries, and the papers I had written upon the subject. I have
never been able to persuade myself to resume this pursuit. It is always
discouraging, to begin over again a laborious task, and exert one's self to
recover a position we had already occupied. I knew not how soon or how abruptly
I might be driven from any new situation; the appendages of the study in which I
had engaged, were too cumbrous for this state of dependence and uncertainty;
they only served to give new sharpness to the enmity of my foe, and new
poignancy to my hourly-renewing distress.
    But what was of greatest importance, and made the deepest impression upon my
mind, was my separation from the family of Laura. Fool that I was, to imagine
that there was any room for me in the abodes of friendship and tranquillity! It
was now first that I felt, with the most intolerable acuteness, how completely I
was cut off from the whole human species. Other connections I had gained,
comparatively without interest; and I saw them dissolved, without the
consummation of agony. I had never experienced the purest refinements of
friendship, but in two instances, that of Collins, and this of the family of
Laura. Solitude, separation, banishment! These are words often in the mouths of
human beings; but few men, except myself, have felt the full latitude of their
meaning. The pride of philosophy has taught us to treat man as an individual. He
is no such thing. He holds, necessarily, indispensibly, to his species. He is
like those twin-births, that have two heads indeed, and four hands; but, if you
attempt to detach them from each other, they are inevitably subjected to
miserable and lingering destruction.
    It was this circumstance, more than all the rest, that gradually gorged my
heart with abhorrence of Mr. Falkland. I could not think of his name, but with a
sickness and a loathing, that seemed more than human. It was by his means, that
I suffered the loss of one consolation after another, of every thing that was
happiness, or that had the resemblance of happiness.
    The writing of these memoirs served me as a source of avocation for several
years. For some time I had a melancholy satisfaction in writing. I
