He complains that
during the Scotch tour in 1803 'Wordsworth's hypochondriacal
feelings keep him silent and self-centred.' He again says to
Richard Sharp, in 1804, that Wordsworth has 'occasional fits of
hypochondriacal uncomfortableness, from which, more or less, and at
longer or shorter intervals, he has never been wholly free from his
very childhood,' and that he has a 'hypochondriacal graft in his
nature.' Wordsworth himself speaks of times when -
' . . . fears and fancies thick upon me came;
Dim sadness--and blind thoughts, I knew not nor could name.'
He is haunted with
' . . . the fear that kills,'
and he thinks of Chatterton and his end.
During 1793, 1794, and part of 1795, this tendency to hypochondria
must have been greatly encouraged. His hopes in the Revolution had
begun to fail, but the declaration of war against France made him
wretched. He wandered about from place to place, unable to
conjecture what his future would be. 'I have been doing nothing,'
he tells Matthews, 'and still continue to do nothing.
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