not the thing to be a stranger in the Land of Harpsicols. I hope also to
bring you my 2nd Book. In the hope that these Scribblings will be some
amusement for you this Evening, I remain, copying on the Hill,
Your sincere friend and Co-scribbler
JOHN KEATS.
XXXV.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Fleet Street, Thursday Morn [February 5, 1818].
My dear Taylor--I have finished copying my Second Book--but I want it for
one day to overlook it. And moreover this day I have very particular
employ in the affair of Cripps--so I trespass on your indulgence, and take
advantage of your good nature. You shall hear from me or see me soon. I
will tell Reynolds of your engagement to-morrow.
Yours unfeignedly
JOHN KEATS.
XXXVI.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.
Hampstead, Saturday Night [February 14, 1818].
My dear Brothers--When once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time,
he delays it longer, for one or two reasons--first, because he must begin
in a very common-place style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly
things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not
what, or what not, he has said in his last--I shall visit you as soon as I
have copied my poem all out, I am now much beforehand with the printer,
they have done none yet, and I am half afraid they will let half the
season by before the printing. I am determined they shall not trouble me
when I have copied it all.--Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called
"Nehemiah Muggs, an exposure of the Methodists"--perhaps I may send you a
few extracts--Hazlitt's last Lecture was on Thomson, Cowper, and Crabbe,
he praised Thomson and Cowper but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking--I
think Hunt's article of Fazio--no it was not, but I saw Fazio the first
night, it hung rather heavily on me--I am in the high way of being
introduced to a squad of people, Peter Pindar, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Scott--Mr.
Robinson a great friend of Coleridge's called on me.[47] Richards tells me
that my poems are known in the west country, and that he saw a very clever
copy of verses, headed with a Motto from my Sonnet to George--Honours rush
so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them. What
think you--am I to be crowned in the Capitol, am I to be made a
Mandarin--No! I am to be invited, Mrs. Hunt tells me, to a party at
Ollier's, to keep Shakspeare's birthday--Shakspeare would stare to see me
there.[48] The Wednesday before last Shelley, Hunt and I wrote each a
Sonnet on the River Nile, some day you shall read them all. I saw a sheet
of Endymion, and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done,
there shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing at
intervals many songs and Sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth, to read
them over to you: however I think I had better wait till this Book is off
my mind; it will not be long first.
Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles, in the Yellow Dwarf,
on popular Preachers--All the talk here is about Dr. Croft the Duke of
Devon etc.
Your most affectionate Brother
JOHN.
XXXVII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
[Hampstead, February 19, 1818.]
My dear Reynolds--I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life
in this manner--Let him on a certain day read a certain page of full Poesy
or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and
reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream
upon it: until it becomes stale--But when will it do so? Never--When Man
has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual
passage serves him as a starting-post towards all "the two-and-thirty
Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious
diligent indolence! A doze upon a sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon
Clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings--the prattle of a child gives
it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them--a strain
of music conducts to "an odd angle of the Isle," and when the leaves
whisper it puts a girdle round the earth.--Nor will this sparing touch of
noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers--for perhaps the honors
paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great
works to the "spirit and pulse of good" by their mere passive existence.
Memory should not be called Knowledge--Many have original minds who do not
think it--they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost
any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy
Citadel--the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her
work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man
should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Web of his Soul,
and weave a tapestry empyrean--full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of
softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of
distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different and
bent on such diverse journeys that it may at first appear impossible for
any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these
suppositions. It is however quite the contrary. Minds would leave each
other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points,
and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child
would talk together and the old man be led on his path and the child left
thinking. Man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his
Neighbour, and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould
ethereal every human might become great, and humanity instead of being a
wide heath of furze and briars, with here and there a remote Oak or Pine,
would become a grand democracy of forest trees. It has been an old
comparison for our urging on--the beehive--however it seems to me that we
should rather be the flower than the Bee--for it is a false notion that
more is gained by receiving than giving--no, the receiver and the giver
are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair
guerdon from the Bee--its leaves blush deeper in the next spring--and who
shall say between Man and Woman which is the most delighted? Now it is
more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury:--let us not
therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like, buzzing here
and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be arrived at. But
let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive;
budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every
noble insect that favours us with a visit--Sap will be given us for meat,
and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the
beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read
any Books--the Morning said I was right--I had no idea but of the Morning,
and the Thrush said I was right--seeming to say,
"O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in Mist,
And the black Elmtops 'mong the freezing stars:
To thee the Spring will be a harvest-time--
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night, when Phoebus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn--
O fret not after knowledge--I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge--I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep."
Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication (however it may
neighbour to any truths), to excuse my own indolence--So I will not
deceive myself that Man should be equal with Jove--but think himself very
well off as a sort of scullion-Mercury or even a humble-bee. It is no
matter whether I am right or wrong either one way or another, if there is
sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders--
Your affectionate friend
JOHN KEATS.
XXXVIII.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.
Hampstead, Saturday [February 21, 1818].
My dear Brothers--I am extremely sorry to have given you so much
uneasiness by not writing; however, you know good news is no news or vice
versa. I do not like to write a short letter to you, or you would have had
one long before. The weather although boisterous to-day has been very much
milder; and I think Devonshire is not the last place to receive a
temperate Change. I have been abominably idle since you left, but have
just turned over a new leaf, and used as a marker a letter of excuse to an
invitation from Horace Smith. The occasion of my writing to-day is the
enclosed letter--by Postmark from Miss W----[49] Does she expect you in
town George? I received a letter the other day from Haydon, in which he
says, his Essays on the Elgin Marbles are being translated into Italian,
the which he superintends. I did not mention that I had seen the British
Gallery, there are some nice things by Stark, and Bathsheba by Wilkie,
which is condemned. I could not bear Alston's Uriel.
Reynolds has been very ill for some time, confined to the house, and had
leeches applied to his chest; when I saw him on Wednesday he was much the
same, and he is in the worst place for amendment, among the strife of
women's tongues, in a hot and parch'd room: I wish he would move to
Butler's for a short time. The Thrushes and Blackbirds have been singing
me into an idea that it was Spring, and almost that leaves were on the
trees. So that black clouds and boisterous winds seem to have mustered and
collected in full Divan, for the purpose of convincing me to the contrary.
Taylor says my poem shall be out in a month, I think he will be out before
it....
The thrushes are singing now as if they would speak to the winds, because
their big brother Jack, the Spring, was not far off. I am reading Voltaire
and Gibbon, although I wrote to Reynolds the other day to prove reading of
no use; I have not seen Hunt since, I am a good deal with Dilke and Brown,
we are very thick; they are very kind to me, they are well. I don't think
I could stop in Hampstead but for their neighbourhood. I hear Hazlitt's
lectures regularly, his last was on Gray, Collins, Young, etc., and he
gave a very fine piece of discriminating Criticism on Swift, Voltaire, and
Rabelais. I was very disappointed at his treatment of Chatterton. I
generally meet with many I know there. Lord Byron's 4th Canto is expected
out, and I heard somewhere, that Walter Scott has a new Poem in readiness.
I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited
in town by his egotism, Vanity, and bigotry. Yet he is a great poet if not
a philosopher. I have not yet read Shelley's Poem, I do not suppose you
have it yet, at the Teignmouth libraries. These double letters must come
rather heavy, I hope you have a moderate portion of cash, but don't fret
at all, if you have not--Lord! I intend to play at cut and run as well as
Falstaff, that is to say, before he got so lusty.
I remain praying for your health my dear Brothers
Your affectionate Brother
JOHN.
XXXIX.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Hampstead, February 27 [1818].
My dear Taylor--Your alteration strikes me as being a great
Improvement--And now I will attend to the punctuations you speak of--The
comma should be at _soberly_, and in the other passage, the Comma should
follow _quiet_. I am extremely indebted to you for this alteration, and
also for your after admonitions. It is a sorry thing for me that any one
should have to overcome prejudices in reading my verses--that affects me
more than any hypercriticism on any particular passage--In Endymion, I
have most likely but moved into the go-cart from the leading-strings--In
poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their
centre.
1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by
singularity; It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest
thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
2d. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the
reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting
of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and
set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of
twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than to write
it--And this leads me to
Another axiom--That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a
tree, it had better not come at all.--However it may be with me, I cannot
help looking into new countries with "O for a Muse of Fire to ascend!" If
Endymion serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content--I have
great reason to be content, for thank God I can read, and perhaps
understand Shakspeare to his depths; and I have I am sure many friends,
who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to
humbleness rather than pride--to a cowering under the wings of great
poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious
to get Endymion printed that I may forget it and proceed. I have copied
the 3rd Book and begun the 4th. On running my eye over the proofs, I saw
one mistake--I will notice it presently, and also any others, if there be
any. There should be no comma in "the raft branch down sweeping from a
tall ash-top." I have besides made one or two alterations, and also
altered the thirteenth line p. 32 to make sense of it, as you will see. I
will take care the printer shall not trip up my heels. There should be no
dash after Dryope, in the line "Dryope's lone lulling of her child."
Remember me to Percy Street.
Your sincere and obliged friend
JOHN KEATS.
_P.S._--You shall have a short preface in good time.
XL.--TO MESSRS. TAYLOR AND HESSEY.
[Hampstead, March 1818?]
My dear Sirs--I am this morning making a general clearance of all lent
Books--all--I am afraid I do not return all--I must fog your memories
about them--however with many thanks here are the remainder--which I am
afraid are not worth so much now as they were six months ago--I mean the
fashions may have changed--
Yours truly
JOHN KEATS.
XLI.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
Teignmouth, Friday [March 13, 1818].[50]
My dear Bailey--When a poor devil is drowning, it is said he comes thrice
to the surface ere he makes his final sink--if however even at the third
rise he can manage to catch hold of a piece of weed or rock he stands a
fair chance, as I hope I do now, of being saved. I have sunk twice in our
correspondence, have risen twice, and have been too idle, or something
worse, to extricate myself. I have sunk the third time, and just now risen
again at this two of the Clock P.M., and saved myself from utter perdition
by beginning this, all drenched as I am, and fresh from the water. And I
would rather endure the present inconvenience of a wet jacket than you
should keep a laced one in store for me. Why did I not stop at Oxford in
my way? How can you ask such a Question? Why, did I not promise to do so?
Did I not in a letter to you make a promise to do so? Then how can you be
so unreasonable as to ask me why I did not? This is the thing--(for I have
been rubbing up my Invention--trying several sleights--I first polished a
cold, felt it in my fingers, tried it on the table, but could not pocket
it:--I tried Chillblains, Rheumatism, Gout, tight boots,--nothing of that
sort would do,--so this is, as I was going to say, the thing)--I had a
letter from Tom, saying how much better he had got, and thinking he had
better stop--I went down to prevent his coming up. Will not this do? turn
it which way you like--it is selvaged all round. I have used it, these
three last days, to keep out the abominable Devonshire weather--by the by,
you may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy,
rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The
hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of 'em--the primroses are
out, but then you are in--the Cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then
the Clouds are continually vieing with them--the Women like your London
people in a sort of negative way--because the native men are the poorest
creatures in England--because Government never have thought it worth while
to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworth's sonnet
"Vanguard of Liberty! ye men of Kent!" the degenerated race about me are
Pulvis ipecac. simplex--a strong dose. Were I a corsair, I'd make a
descent on the south coast of Devon; if I did not run the chance of having
Cowardice imputed to me. As for the men, they'd run away into the
Methodist meeting-houses, and the women would be glad of it. Had England
been a large Devonshire, we should not have won the Battle of Waterloo.
There are knotted oaks--there are lusty rivulets? there are meadows such
as are not--there are valleys of feminine[51] climate--but there are no
thews and sinews--Moore's Almanack is here a Curiosity--Arms, neck, and
shoulders may at least be seen there, and the ladies read it as some
out-of-the-way Romance. Such a quelling Power have these thoughts over me
that I fancy the very air of a deteriorating quality. I fancy the flowers,
all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them--I feel able to beat off
the Devonshire waves like soapfroth. I think it well for the honour of
Britain that Julius Caesar did not first land in this County. A Devonshirer
standing on his native hills is not a distinct object--he does not show
against the light--a wolf or two would dispossess him. I like, I love
England. I like its living men--give me a long brown plain "for my
morning,"[51] so I may meet with some of Edmund Ironside's descendants.
Give me a barren mould, so I may meet with some shadowing of Alfred in the
shape of a Gipsy, a huntsman or a shepherd. Scenery is fine--but human
nature is finer--the sward is richer for the tread of a real nervous
English foot--the Eagle's nest is finer, for the Mountaineer has looked
into it. Are these facts or prejudices? Whatever they be, for them I shall
never be able to relish entirely any Devonshire scenery--Homer is fine,
Achilles is fine, Diomed is fine, Shakspeare is fine, Hamlet is fine, Lear
is fine, but dwindled Englishmen are not fine. Where too the women are so
passable, and have such English names, such as Ophelia, Cordelia etc. that
they should have such Paramours or rather Imparamours--As for them, I
cannot in thought help wishing, as did the cruel Emperor, that they had
but one head, and I might cut it off to deliver them from any horrible
Courtesy they may do their undeserving countrymen, I wonder I meet with no
born monsters--O Devonshire, last night I thought the moon had dwindled in
heaven----
I have never had your Sermon from Wordsworth, but Mr. Dilke lent it me.
You know my ideas about Religion. I do not think myself more in the right
than other people, and that nothing in this world is proveable. I wish I
could enter into all your feelings on the subject, merely for one short 10
minutes, and give you a page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very
sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack o' Lantern to amuse
whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As tradesmen say
everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit
takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer--being in
itself a Nothing. Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under
three heads--Things real--things semireal--and nothings. Things real, such
as existences of Sun moon and Stars--and passages of Shakspeare.--Things
semireal, such as love, the Clouds etc., which require a greeting of the
Spirit to make them wholly exist--and Nothings, which are made great and
dignified by an ardent pursuit--which, by the by, stamp the Burgundy mark
on the bottles of our minds, insomuch as they are able to "_consecrate
whate'er they look upon_." I have written a sonnet here of a somewhat
collateral nature--so don't imagine it an "apropos des bottes"--
Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of Man:
He hath his lusty Spring, when Fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
He chews the honied cud of fair Spring thoughts,
Till in his Soul, dissolv'd, they come to be
Part of himself: He hath his Autumn Ports
And havens of repose, when his tired wings
Are folded up, and he content to look[52]
On Mists in idleness--to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his winter too of Pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.
Aye, this may be carried--but what am I talking of?--it is an old maxim of
mine, and of course must be well known, that every point of thought is the
Centre of an intellectual world. The two uppermost thoughts in a Man's
mind are the two poles of his world--he revolves on them, and everything
is Southward or Northward to him through their means.--We take but three
steps from feathers to iron.--Now, my dear fellow, I must once for all
tell you I have not one idea of the truth of any of my speculations--I
shall never be a reasoner, because I care not to be in the right, when
retired from bickering and in a proper philosophical temper. So you must
not stare if in any future letter, I endeavour to prove that Apollo, as he
had catgut strings to his lyre, used a cat's paw as a pecten--and further
from said Pecten's reiterated and continual teasing came the term
_hen-pecked_. My Brother Tom desires to be remembered to you; he has just
this moment had a spitting of blood, poor fellow--Remember me to Gleig and
Whitehead.
Your affectionate friend
JOHN KEATS.
XLII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Teignmouth, Saturday [March 14, 1818].
Dear Reynolds--I escaped being blown over and blown under and trees and
house being toppled on me.--I have since hearing of Brown's accident had
an aversion to a dose of parapet, and being also a lover of antiquities I
would sooner have a harmless piece of Herculaneum sent me quietly as a
present than ever so modern a chimney-pot tumbled on to my head--Being
agog to see some Devonshire, I would have taken a walk the first day, but
the rain would not let me; and the second, but the rain would not let me;
and the third, but the rain forbade it. Ditto 4--ditto 5--ditto--so I made
up my Mind to stop indoors, and catch a sight flying between the showers:
and, behold I saw a pretty valley--pretty cliffs, pretty Brooks, pretty
Meadows, pretty trees, both standing as they were created, and blown down
as they are uncreated--The green is beautiful, as they say, and pity it is
that it is amphibious--_mais!_ but alas! the flowers here wait as
naturally for the rain twice a day as the Mussels do for the Tide; so we
look upon a brook in these parts as you look upon a splash in your
Country. There must be something to support this--aye, fog, hail, snow,
rain, Mist blanketing up three parts of the year. This Devonshire is like
Lydia Languish, very entertaining when it smiles, but cursedly subject to
sympathetic moisture. You have the sensation of walking under one great
Lamplighter: and you can't go on the other side of the ladder to keep your
frock clean, and cosset your superstition. Buy a girdle--put a pebble in
your mouth--loosen your braces--for I am going among scenery whence I
intend to tip you the Damosel Radcliffe--I'll cavern you, and grotto you,
and waterfall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and
tremendous-sound you, and solitude you. I'll make a lodgment on your
glacis by a row of Pines, and storm your covered way with bramble Bushes.
I'll have at you with hip and haw small-shot, and cannonade you with
Shingles--I'll be witty upon salt-fish, and impede your cavalry with
clotted cream. But ah Coward! to talk at this rate to a sick man, or, I
hope, to one that was sick--for I hope by this you stand on your right
foot. If you are not--that's all,--I intend to cut all sick people if they
do not make up their minds to cut Sickness--a fellow to whom I have a
complete aversion, and who strange to say is harboured and countenanced in
several houses where I visit--he is sitting now quite impudent between me
and Tom--He insults me at poor Jem Rice's--and you have seated him before
now between us at the Theatre, when I thought he looked with a longing eye
at poor Kean. I shall say, once for all, to my friends generally and
severally, cut that fellow, or I cut you--