since--I have been--I mean not been--sending last Sunday's paper to you.
I believe because it was not near me--for I cannot find it, and my
conscience presses heavy on me for not sending it. You would have had one
last Thursday, but I was called away, and have been about somewhere ever
since. Where? What! Well I rejoice almost that I have not heard from you
because no news is good news. I cannot for the world recollect why I was
called away, all I know is that there has been a dance at Dilke's, and
another at the London Coffee House; to both of which I went. But I must
tell you in another letter the circumstances thereof--for though a week
should have passed since I wrote on the other side it quite appals me. I
can only write in scraps and patches. Brown is returned from Hampstead.
Haydon has returned an answer in the same style--they are all dreadfully
irritated against each other. On Sunday I saw Hunt and dined with Haydon,
met Hazlitt and Bewick there, and took Haslam with me--forgot to speak
about Cripps though I broke my engagement to Haslam's on purpose.
Mem.--Haslam came to meet me, found me at Breakfast, had the goodness to
go with me my way--I have just finished the revision of my first book, and
shall take it to Taylor's to-morrow--intend to persevere--Do not let me
see many days pass without hearing from you.
Your most affectionate Brother
JOHN.
XXIX.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
[Hampstead,] Friday 23d [January 1818].
My dear Taylor--I have spoken to Haydon about the drawing. He would do it
with all his Art and Heart too, if so I will it; however, he has written
thus to me; but I must tell you, first, he intends painting a finished
Picture from the Poem. Thus he writes--"When I do anything for your Poem
it must be effectual--an honour to both of us: to hurry up a sketch for
the season won't do. I think an engraving from your head, from a Chalk
drawing of mine, done with all my might, to which I would put my name,
would answer Taylor's idea better than the other. Indeed, I am sure of it.
This I will do, and this will be effectual, and as I have not done it for
any other human being, it will have an effect."
What think you of this? Let me hear. I shall have my second Book in
readiness forthwith.
Yours most sincerely
JOHN KEATS.
If Reynolds calls tell him three lines will be acceptable, for I am squat
at Hampstead.
XXX.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.
[Hampstead,] Friday 23d January [1818].
My dear Brothers--I was thinking what hindered me from writing so long,
for I have so many things to say to you, and know not where to begin. It
shall be upon a thing most interesting to you, my Poem. Well! I have given
the first Book to Taylor; he seemed more than satisfied with it, and to my
surprise proposed publishing it in Quarto if Haydon would make a drawing
of some event therein, for a Frontispiece. I called on Haydon, he said he
would do anything I liked, but said he would rather paint a finished
picture, from it, which he seems eager to do; this in a year or two will
be a glorious thing for us; and it will be, for Haydon is struck with the
1st Book. I left Haydon and the next day received a letter from him,
proposing to make, as he says, with all his might, a finished chalk sketch
of my head, to be engraved in the first style and put at the head of my
Poem, saying at the same time he had never done the thing for any human
being, and that it must have considerable effect as he will put his name
to it--I begin to-day to copy my 2nd Book--"thus far into the bowels of
the land"--You shall hear whether it will be Quarto or non Quarto, picture
or non picture. Leigh Hunt I showed my 1st Book to--he allows it not much
merit as a whole; says it is unnatural and made ten objections to it in
the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural and too
high-flown for Brother and Sister--says it should be simple forgetting do
ye mind that they are both overshadowed by a supernatural Power, and of
force could not speak like Francesca in the Rimini. He must first prove
that Caliban's poetry is unnatural--This with me completely overturns his
objections--the fact is he and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my
not having showed them the affair officiously and from several hints I
have had they appear much disposed to dissect and anatomise any trip or
slip I may have made.--But who's afraid? Ay! Tom! Demme if I am. I went
last Tuesday, an hour too late, to Hazlitt's Lecture on poetry, got there
just as they were coming out, when all these pounced upon me. Hazlitt,
John Hunt and Son, Wells, Bewick, all the Landseers, Bob Harris, aye and
more--the Landseers enquired after you particularly--I know not whether
Wordsworth has left town--But Sunday I dined with Hazlitt and Haydon, also
that I took Haslam with me--I dined with Brown lately. Dilke having taken
the Champion Theatricals was obliged to be in town--Fanny has returned to
Walthamstow.--Mr. Abbey appeared very glum, the last time I went to see
her, and said in an indirect way, that I had no business there--Rice has
been ill, but has been mending much lately--
I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately--I cannot
bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for so long a time have been
addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great
productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an
instance of this--observe--I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once
again: the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet, I wrote it,
and began to read--(I know you would like to see it.)
ON SITTING DOWN TO KING LEAR ONCE AGAIN.
O golden-tongued Romance with serene Lute!
Fair-plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!
Leave melodising on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden volume and be mute.
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute
Betwixt Hell torment and impassion'd Clay
Must I burn through; once more assay
The bitter sweet of this Shakspearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When I am through the old oak forest gone
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumed with the Fire,
Give me new Phoenix-wings to fly at my desire.
So you see I am getting at it, with a sort of determination and strength,
though verily I do not feel it at this moment--this is my fourth letter
this morning, and I feel rather tired, and my head rather swimming--so I
will leave it open till to-morrow's post.--
I am in the habit of taking my papers to Dilke's and copying there; so I
chat and proceed at the same time. I have been there at my work this
evening, and the walk over the Heath takes off all sleep, so I will even
proceed with you. I left off short in my last just as I began an account
of a private theatrical--Well it was of the lowest order, all greasy and
oily, insomuch that if they had lived in olden times, when signs were hung
over the doors, the only appropriate one for that oily place would have
been--a guttered Candle. They played John Bull, The Review, and it was to
conclude with Bombastes Furioso--I saw from a Box the first Act of John
Bull, then went to Drury and did not return till it was over--when by
Wells's interest we got behind the scenes--there was not a yard wide all
the way round for actors, scene-shifters, and interlopers to move in--for
'Nota Bene' the Green Room was under the stage, and there was I threatened
over and over again to be turned out by the oily scene-shifters, there did
I hear a little painted Trollop own, very candidly, that she had failed
in Mary, with a "damn'd if she'd play a serious part again, as long as she
lived," and at the same time she was habited as the Quaker in the
Review.--There was a quarrel, and a fat good-natured looking girl in
soldiers' clothes wished she had only been a man for Tom's sake. One
fellow began a song, but an unlucky finger-point from the Gallery sent him
off like a shot. One chap was dressed to kill for the King in Bombastes,
and he stood at the edge of the scene in the very sweat of anxiety to show
himself, but Alas the thing was not played. The sweetest morsel of the
night moreover was, that the musicians began pegging and fagging away--at
an overture--never did you see faces more in earnest, three times did they
play it over, dropping all kinds of corrections and still did not the
curtain go up. Well then they went into a country dance, then into a
region they well knew, into the old boonsome Pothouse, and then to see how
pompous o' the sudden they turned; how they looked about and chatted; how
they did not care a damn; was a great treat----
I hope I have not tired you by this filling up of the dash in my last.
Constable the bookseller has offered Reynolds ten guineas a sheet to write
for his Magazine--it is an Edinburgh one, which Blackwood's started up in
opposition to. Hunt said he was nearly sure that the 'Cockney School' was
written by Scott[44] so you are right Tom!--There are no more little bits
of news I can remember at present.
I remain, My dear Brothers, Your very affectionate Brother
JOHN.
XXXI.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
[Hampstead,] Friday Jan{y.} 23 [1818].
My dear Bailey--Twelve days have pass'd since your last reached me.--What
has gone through the myriads of human minds since the 12th? We talk of the
immense Number of Books, the Volumes ranged thousands by thousands--but
perhaps more goes through the human intelligence in Twelve days than ever
was written.--_How has that unfortunate family lived through the twelve?_
One saying of yours I shall never forget--you may not recollect it--it
being perhaps said when you were looking on the Surface and seeming of
Humanity alone, without a thought of the past or the future--or the deeps
of good and evil--you were at that moment estranged from speculation, and
I think you have arguments ready for the Man who would utter it to
you--this is a formidable preface for a simple thing--merely you said,
"_Why should woman suffer?_" Aye, why should she? "By heavens I'd coin my
very Soul, and drop my Blood for Drachmas!" These things are, and he, who
feels how incompetent the most skyey Knight-errantry is to heal this
bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand of
thought.--Your tearing, my dear friend, a spiritless and gloomy letter up,
to re-write to me, is what I shall never forget--it was to me a real
thing--Things have happened lately of great perplexity--you must have
heard of them--Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating--and
parting for ever--the same thing has happened between Haydon and Hunt. It
is unfortunate--Men should bear with each other: there lives not the Man
who may not be cut up, aye Lashed to pieces on his weakest side. The best
of Men have but a portion of good in them--a kind of spiritual yeast in
their frames, which creates the ferment of existence--by which a Man is
propelled to act, and strive, and buffet with Circumstance. The sure way,
Bailey, is first to know a Man's faults, and then be passive--if after
that he insensibly draws you towards him then you have no power to break
the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Haydon, I was
well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I have been cementing
gradually with both. I have an affection for them both, for reasons almost
opposite--and to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the
hope that, when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully
in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together. The time must come,
because they have both hearts: and they will recollect the best parts of
each other, when this gust is overblown.--I had a message from you through
a letter to Jane--I think, about Cripps--there can be no idea of binding
until a sufficient sum is sure for him--and even then the thing should be
maturely considered by all his helpers--I shall try my luck upon as many
fat purses as I can meet with.--Cripps is improving very fast: I have the
greater hopes of him because he is so slow in development. A Man of great
executing powers at 20, with a look and a speech almost stupid, is sure to
do something.
I have just looked through the Second Side of your Letter--I feel a great
content at it.--I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a
real authenticated lock of _Milton's Hair_. I know you would like what I
wrote thereon, so here it is--_as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery
Book_:--
ON SEEING A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.
Chief of Organic Numbers!
Old Scholar of the Spheres!
Thy spirit never slumbers,
But rolls about our ears
For ever, and for ever!
O what a mad endeavour
Worketh he,
Who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse
Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse
And melody.
How heavenward thou soundest,
Live Temple of sweet noise,
And Discord unconfoundest,
Giving Delight new joys,
And Pleasure nobler pinions!
O, where are thy dominions?
Lend thine ear
To a young Delian oath,--aye, by thy soul,
By all that from thy mortal lips did roll,
And by the kernel of thine earthly love,
Beauty, in things on earth, and things above,
I swear!
When every childish fashion
Has vanish'd from my rhyme,
Will I, gray-gone in passion,
Leave to an after-time,
Hymning and harmony
Of thee, and of thy works, and of thy life;
But vain is now the burning and the strife,
Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife
With old Philosophy,
And mad with glimpses of futurity!
For many years my offering must be hush'd;
When I do speak, I'll think upon this hour,
Because I feel my forehead hot and flush'd,
Even at the simplest vassal of thy power,--
A lock of thy bright hair,--
Sudden it came,
And I was startled, when I caught thy name
Coupled so unaware;
Yet, at the moment, temperate was my blood.
I thought I had beheld it from the flood.
This I did at Hunt's at his request--perhaps I should have done something
better alone and at home.--I have sent my first Book to the press, and
this afternoon shall begin preparing the Second--my visit to you will be a
great spur to quicken the proceeding.--I have not had your Sermon
returned--I long to make it the Subject of a Letter to you--What do they
say at Oxford?
I trust you and Gleig pass much fine time together. Remember me to him and
Whitehead. My Brother Tom is getting stronger, but his spitting of Blood
continues. I sat down to read King Lear yesterday, and felt the greatness
of the thing up to the Writing of a Sonnet preparatory thereto--in my next
you shall have it.--There were some miserable reports of Rice's health--I
went, and lo! Master Jemmy had been to the play the night before, and was
out at the time--he always comes on his legs like a Cat. I have seen a
good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlitt is lecturing on Poetry at the Surrey
Institution--I shall be there next Tuesday.
Your most affectionate friend
JOHN KEATS.
XXXII.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
[Hampstead, January 30, 1818.]
My dear Taylor--These lines as they now stand about "happiness," have rung
in my ears like "a chime a mending"--See here,
"Behold
Wherein lies happiness, Peona? fold, etc."
It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear to
you more eligible.
"Wherein lies Happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with Essence till we shine
Full alchemised, and free of space--Behold
The clear religion of Heaven--fold, etc."
You must indulge me by putting this in, for setting aside the badness of
the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole thing
must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man, as a thing
almost of mere words, but I assure you that, when I wrote it, it was a
regular stepping of the Imagination towards a truth. My having written
that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service to me of anything I
ever did. It set before me the gradations of happiness, even like a kind
of pleasure thermometer, and is my first step towards the chief attempt in
the drama. The playing of different natures with joy and Sorrow--Do me
this favour, and believe me
Your sincere friend
J. KEATS.
I hope your next work will be of a more general Interest. I suppose you
cogitate a little about it, now and then.
XXXIII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Hampstead, Saturday [January 31, 1818].
My dear Reynolds--I have parcelled out this day for Letter Writing--more
resolved thereon because your Letter will come as a refreshment and will
have (sic parvis etc.) the same effect as a Kiss in certain situations
where people become over-generous. I have read this first sentence over,
and think it savours rather; however an inward innocence is like a nested
dove, as the old song says....
Now I purposed to write to you a serious poetical letter, but I find that
a maxim I met with the other day is a just one: "On cause mieux quand on
ne dit pas _causons_." I was hindered, however, from my first intention by
a mere muslin Handkerchief very neatly pinned--but "Hence, vain deluding,"
etc. Yet I cannot write in prose; it is a sunshiny day and I cannot, so
here goes,--
Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port,
Away with old Hock and Madeira,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
There's a beverage brighter and clearer.
Instead of a pitiful rummer,
My wine overbrims a whole summer;
My bowl is the sky,
And I drink at my eye,
Till I feel in the brain
A Delphian pain--
Then follow, my Caius! then follow:
On the green of the hill
We will drink our fill
Of golden sunshine,
Till our brains intertwine
With the glory and grace of Apollo!
God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To thee my soul is flown,
And my body is earthward press'd.--
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division;
And leaves a gulph austere
To be fill'd with worldly fear.
Aye, when the soul is fled
Too high above our head,
Affrighted do we gaze
After its airy maze,
As doth a mother wild,
When her young infant child
Is in an eagle's claws--
And is not this the cause
Of madness?--God of Song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and thee,
The staid Philosophy.
Temper my lonely hours,
And let me see thy bowers
More unalarm'd!
My dear Reynolds, you must forgive all this ranting--but the fact is, I
cannot write sense this Morning--however you shall have some--I will copy
out my last Sonnet.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled Books in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain--
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting Love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
I must take a turn, and then write to Teignmouth. Remember me to all, not
excepting yourself.
Your sincere friend
JOHN KEATS.
XXXIV.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Hampstead, Tuesday [February 3, 1818].
My dear Reynolds--I thank you for your dish of Filberts--would I could get
a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of twopence.[45]
Would we were a sort of ethereal Pigs, and turned loose to feed upon
spiritual Mast and Acorns--which would be merely being a squirrel and
feeding upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a
filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth
cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful
Images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on
account of the first line, and the "arrow, foil'd of its antler'd food,"
and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more
because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has
"tender and true." We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more
of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that
Wordsworth, etc., should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a
few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a
certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every man has
his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till
he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to
the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his
half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heavenward as well as anybody.
We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not
agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be
great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not
startle it or amaze it with itself--but with its subject. How beautiful
are the retired flowers!--how would they lose their beauty were they to
throng into the highway, crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon
me, I am a primrose!" Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this:
each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state and
knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his
dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have
their coppers well scoured: The ancients were Emperors of vast Provinces,
they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I
will cut all this--I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in
particular--Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander
with Esau? Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on
Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teased with
"nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight "the Cherub Contemplation"?
Why with Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when
we can have Jacques "under an oak," etc.? The secret of the Bough of
Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew
spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an
Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, he must stamp it down
in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny
Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be
teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and
unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its
sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold
and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of
Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty.
TO J. H. R. IN ANSWER TO HIS ROBIN HOOD SONNETS.
No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years.
Many times have Winter's shears,
Frozen North and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men paid no rent on Leases.
No! the Bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the Hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.
On the fairest time of June
You may go with Sun or Moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John or Robin bold;
Never any of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair Hostess Merriment
Down beside the pasture Trent,
For he left the merry tale,
Messenger for spicy ale.
Gone the merry morris din,
Gone the song of Gamelyn,
Gone the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grene shawe":
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin _should_ be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian _should_ have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the Dock-yard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her--"strange that honey
Can't be got without hard money!"
So it is! yet let us sing,
Honour to the old bow-string,
Honour to the bugle-horn,
Honour to the woods unshorn,
Honour to the Lincoln green,
Honour to the archer keen,
Honour to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon:
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to maid Marian,
And to all the Sherwood clan--
Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.
I hope you will like them--they are at least written in the Spirit of
Outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines,
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field, or mossy cavern,
Fairer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine Host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of Venison? O generous food
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would with his Maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.
I have heard that, on a day,
Mine host's sign-board flew away,
No body knew whither, till
An astrologer's old Quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old-sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack,
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
Are the winds a sweeter home?
Richer is uncellar'd cavern,
Than the merry mermaid Tavern?[46]