Symington.
Most of these letters were written in poor health from the Isle of
Wight or Jersey, to which places he was sent by the doctors. They are
not of the brilliant or gossipy order, but they are admirable in their
good colloquial English and cheerful, unaffected style. Lover was a man
of great activity of mind, combined with warm affections. His
life-story was not very romantic, but it was a wholesome and pleasant
one. When young he was deeply attached to an English girl, with whom,
though they were separated (Mr. Symington does not say from what
cause), he maintained through life a warm friendship. The young lady
married, and Lover consoled himself and was married twice, each time,
it appears, very happily. His letters contain many little domestic
allusions, reporting his own occupations and those of "the good little
wife" at their fireside in Kent or away at the shore, where they look
back with regret to their own country-house. Lover had a warm
attachment to home, the house as well as the inmates. "I cannot tell
you," he writes from the Isle of Wight, "how much I have been put off
my balance by my exile from my own house. For a time one is willing to
make, for health's sake, a sacrifice of domestic comfort and give up
the pleasant habits one can indulge in in one's own home; but to lead
for months and months a lodging-house life is very miserable: it
benumbs the best of our faculties; the edge of enjoyment is blunted.
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