Note 27 — Chapter VI · : LITERARY BEGINNINGS
Reading edition
Among the things he wrote when A. M.'s book came to hand is this of "Domus Angusta," an essay they had discussed before. "Never again meditate the suppression of your gloomy passages. It is a most false epithet for anything you could ever write. You might as well impeach of gloominess my favourite bit in 'Timon,' with the majestic melancholy of its cadence—
'My long sickness Of wealth and living now begins to mend, And nothing brings me all things.'
Both that passage and yours are poignant; both are deeply sad; while yours has an added searchingness which makes it (in De Quincey's phrase) veritably 'heart-shattering'; but how can you call 'gloomy' what so nobly and resignedly faces the terror it evokes?"