Their melancholy is nearly alike,
but not its consequences. Jachin retained hia belief, and though he
hated life, he could never be induced to quit it voluntarily; but
Abel was driven to terminate his misery in a way which the
unfixedness of his religious opinions rather accelerated than
retarded. I am, therefore, not without hope, that the more
observant of my readers will perceive many marks of discrimination
in these characters.
{13} The character of Grimes, his obduracy and apparent want of
feeling, his gloomy kind of misanthropy, the progress of his
madness, and the horrors of his imagination, I must leave to the
judgment and observation of my readers. The mind here exhibited is
one untouched by pity, unstung by remorse, and uncorrected by shame;
yet is this hardihood of temper and spirit broken by want, disease,
solitude, and disappointment: and he becomes the victim of a
distempered and horror-stricken fancy. It is evident, therefore,
that no feeble vision, no half-visible ghost, not the momentary
glance of an unbodied being, nor the half-audible voice of an
invisible one, would be created by the continual workings of
distress on a mind so depraved and flinty.
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