To Mrs . Saville ,
Letter
2
To Mrs . Saville ,
England , Archangel , 28th March , 17-
How slowly the time passes here , encompassed as I am by frost and snow ! Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise . I have hired a vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors ; those whom I have already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly possessed of dauntless courage . But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy , and the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil , I have no friend , Margaret : when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success , there will be none to participate my joy ; if I am assailed by disappointment , no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection . I shall commit my thoughts to paper , it is true ; but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling . I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me , whose eyes would reply to mine . You may deem me romantic , my dear sister , but I bitterly feel the want of a friend . I have no one near me , gentle yet courageous , possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind , whose tastes are like my own , to approve or amend my plans . How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother ! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties . But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated : for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas ’ books of voyages . At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country ; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country . Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen . It is true that I have thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent , but they want ( as the painters call it ) KEEPING ; and I greatly need a friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic , and affection enough for me to endeavour to regulate my mind . Well , these are useless complaints ; I shall certainly find no friend on the wide ocean , nor