Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To the same.

I yesterday received your affectionate letter. You are too generous, my dear Convers. Ever since I entered my nineteenth year I have received nothing but presents and attention. I never was more happy in my life. I never possessed such unbounded elasticity of spirit. It seems as if my heart would vibrate to no touch but joy. Like old Edie Ochiltree “I wuss it may bode me gude.” “An high heart goeth before destruction,” but I never heard the same of a light one.

In one of your last letters you promise to send me “Don Juan.” Do not send it, I beseech you. I can give you no idea of the anguish I felt when I read tins shocking specimen of fearless and hardened depravity. I felt as if a friend had betrayed me. A sensation somewhat similar to what I should have felt, had you, my dear brother, committed an action [7] unworthy of humanity. I have long cherished an enthusiastic admiration of this great man; I have long indulged the hope that when the blazing solstice of youth was over, autumnal reflection would shed a lovelier, though less brilliant, light upon his character; and that some tie might be found, sacred and tender enough to sooth the bitter misanthropy of his feelings. But with deep regret I relinquish the hope forever. Still I cannot but admire the bold efforts of his genius that flash through this work like the horrid glare of the lightning amid the terrors of a midnight storm. What a pity that one who might have shone, the most brilliant star in the flaming zodiac of genius, should only be held out as a blazing beacon to warn others from the road to wretchedness and guilt. It is intolerable to think that his Pegasus has still to gallop over twelve more cantos of such hellish ground.