At that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own country but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my native country. But it is a still greater evil to me that I am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages.
How would such a friend repair the faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too impatient of difficulties. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my own, to approve or amend my plans. You may deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a friend. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. I shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I am practically industrious- painstaking, a workman to execute with perseverance and labour-but besides this there is a love for the marvellous, a belief in the marvellous, intertwined in all my projects, which hurries me out of the common pathways of men, even to the wild sea and unvisited regions I am about to explore. There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.
I have often attributed my attachment to, my passionate enthusiasm for, the dangerous mysteries of ocean to that production of the most imaginative of modern poets. I am going to unexplored regions, to "the land of mist and snow," but I shall kill no albatross therefore do not be alarmed for my safety or if I should come back to you as worn and woeful as the "Ancient Mariner." You will smile at my allusion, but I will disclose a secret. It is impossible to communicate to you a conception of the trembling sensation, half pleasurable and half fearful, with which I am preparing to depart. I cannot describe to you my sensations on the near prospect of my undertaking.
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