‘Fear, the most dramatic passion you have hitherto touched, because capable of being drawn to the most extreme paroxysm on the stage. In Ozra you have all the gradations from timidity excited by strong and irritable imagination to the extremity which altogether unhinges the understanding. The most dreadful fright I ever had in my life (being neither constitutionally timid nor in the way of being exposed to real danger) was in returning from Hampstead the day which I spent so pleasantly with you. Although the evening was nearly closed, I foolishly chose to take the short-cut through the fields, and in the enclosure where the path leads by a thick and high hedge with several gaps. In it, however, did I meet with one of your thoroughpaced London ruffians—at least, judging from the squalid and jail-bird appearance and blackguard expression of countenance. Like the man who met the Devil, I had nothing to say to him, if he had nothing to say to me; but I could not help looking back to watch the movements of such a suspicious figure, and, to my great uneasiness, saw him creep through the hedge on my left hand. I instantly went to the first gap to watch his motions, and saw him stooping, as I thought, either to pick up a bundle or to speak to someone lying in the ditch. Immediately after he came cowering back, up the opposite side of the hedge, as returning to me under cover of it. I saw no weapon he had except a stick, but, as I moved on to gain the stile which was to let me into the free field, with the idea of a wretch springing upon me from the cover at every step I took, I assure you I would not wish the worst enemy I ever had to undergo such a feeling as I had for about five minutes. My fancy made him of that description which usually combines murder with plunder; and though I was armed with a stout stick, and a very formidable knife, which when open becomes a sort of _shene-dhu_, or dagger, I confess my sensations, though those of a man resolved not to die like a sheep, were vilely short of heroism. So much so that, when I jumped over the stile, a sliver of the wood ran a third of an inch between my nail and the flesh without my feeling the pain, or being sensible that such a thing had occurred. However, I saw my man no more, and it is astonishing how my spirits rose when I got into the open field; and when I reached the top of the little mount, and all the bells of London’ (it was probably on a Sunday evening) ‘began to jingle at once, I thought I had never heard anything so delightful in my life, so rapid are the alternations of our feelings.’[156]