Well, she is gone, mad again, and dearest Charles—
I will not condescend to call him “poor,” for he loathes
to hear himself pitied—awaits her return from Hoxton.

In her first bout of madness, the sole woman Hazlitt
allowed as capable of reason struck their mother down
and said she would understand her “better in heaven.”

Grief stricken, Charles would have nothing more to do
with poetry, he was burning everything. I warned him
not to succumb to the temptation of self-destruction.

In return, he told me that I must cultivate filial feelings.
I had married rashly, out of passion for an ideology,
not a woman, and remain devoted to my own demons.