That he went
through a severe fever at the house of his friend Henry A. Page of
Medford is hardly worth considering, for he was so tenderly and
beautifully cared for there as almost to make it an enviable experience;
but in 1879 cataracts formed on both eyes, one of which had been injured
long before, and when they were operated on, two years later, the sight
was restored to his injured eye (such as it was previously) but not to
the other, so that he was left very nearly blind. He attributed this
catastrophe to the quantity of belladonna which had been prescribed for
him.
Such was his pathological history and a truly terrible one it is. Who
can remember the like of it? Certainly Job's trials were not heavier nor
were they borne with more fortitude and patience. In the midst of his
severest troubles he wrote "All is well:" a noble religious poem equal
to the hymn of Cleanthes or the twelfth ode of Horace; and in one of his
earlier essays he speaks of tragedy as possessing such beauty and
grandeur that he is almost ready to believe it is the proper goal and
destination of earthly life. In "Epic Philosophy" he says: "Strife is
around man, and strife is within him; the lightning thrusts its blazing
scymitar through his roof, the thief creeps in at his door, and remorse
at his heart. Who, looking on these things, does not acknowledge that
man is indeed fearfully as well as wonderfully made? Who would not
sometimes cry, 'O that my eyes were a fountain of tears, that I might
weep, not the desolations of Israel alone, but the hate of Israel to
Edom and of Edom to Israel, the jar, the horror, the ensanguined passion
and ferocity of Nature'? But when we would despair, behold we cannot.
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