“In another letter he hopes the correspondence will continue, since he knows it would tend ‘towards the establishment in our minds of fixed principles, upon matters the most important to man’s welfare here, as well as in that existence of his which (we believe) is to come.’ It would also strengthen our friendship, though upon the subject generally he has some sad things to say—as that at the time he is writing there lived not the man with whom he had ‘true unity of feeling.’ As the letter proceeds we see that he is entering the melancholy period of life when sad and depressed spirits are a very frequent distemper with young men who are thoughtful and live much alone. In such a mood Caine had the day before written verses some of which he quotes, and a few lines of which I further quote.
“‘What wonder, if in height of grief The fading flower, the falling leaf Make truer solace to the mind, Than Nature’s richest, gladdest bloom In harvest waving to the wind.
“‘What wonder if it grant relief To hearts o’erta’en, o’erdone by grief, To see the sun and sky unblest Put on a dark and murky vest! To see the moon in shadows pale Fade out before the coming gale!’
“It is a not uncommon mood with young men, and its not unnatural cure is for the young man to fall deeply in love. But there seemed no likelihood of any such happiness befalling young Caine, so far as any of his friends knew. He seemed to avoid the possibility of such a contingency. His friendships, so far as I knew, were exclusively with young men, though there was nothing of the misogynist in him. In the letter from which the above quotations are taken, he again refers to grave spiritual questions—what is life? he asks, and naturally gives vague answers and speculations. He quotes, in connection with the hypothesis that evil is a quality of our more material part, the lines:—
“‘I am the wave of life Stained with my margin’s dust.’
He excuses himself for not sending the play in blank verse as he has only one draft copy, and its condition is such that he is convinced I could not read it. In some letters now lost he had referred to a Christmas poem he is to write, but although now it is the first day of December, it is not begun. ‘It is to be framed from an old plot of one of the Greek Tragedians,’ and is to be ‘written in the same vein as Christabel.’ At the close of this letter he mentions that if I cared to see newspaper articles of general interest written by him, I could have them in volumes.