about possessed with. Have compassion for me! It is really very
miserable: but it will end. Some months more, and it is
_ended;_ and I am done with _French Revolution,_ and with
Revolution and Revolt in general; and look once more with
free eyes over this Earth, where are other things than mean
internecine work of that kind: things fitter for me, under the
bright Sun, on this green Mother's-bosom (though the Devil does
dwell in it)! For the present, really, it is like a Nessus'
shirt, burning you into madness, this wretched Enterprise; nay,
it is also like a kind of Panoply, rendering you invulnerable,
insensible, to all _other_ mischiefs.

I got the fatal First Volume finished (in the miserablest way,
after great efforts) in October last; my head was all in a
whirl; I fled to Scotland and my Mother for a month of rest.
Rest is nowhere for the Son of Adam: all looked so "spectral" to
me in my old-familiar Birthland; Hades itself could not have
seemed stranger; Annandale also was part of the kingdom of TIME.
Since November I have worked again as I could; a second volume
got wrapped up and sealed out of my sight within the last three
days. There is but a Third now: one pull more, and then! It
seems to me, I will fly into some obscurest cranny of the world,
and lie silent there for a twelvemonth. The mind is weary, the
body is very sick; a little black speck dances to and fro in the
left eye (part of the retina protesting against the liver, and
striking work): I cannot help it; it must flutter and dance
there, like a signal of distress, unanswered till I be done. My
familiar friends tell me farther that the Book is all wrong,
style cramp, &c., &c.: my friends, I answer, you are very right;
but this also, Heaven be my witness, I cannot help.--In such sort