be--Rain! Rain! Rain! I am going this morning to take a facsimile of a
Letter of Nelson's, very much to his honour--you will be greatly pleased
when you see it--in about a week. What a spite it is one cannot get
out--the little way I went yesterday, I found a lane banked on each side
with store of Primroses, while the earlier bushes are beginning to leaf.
I shall hear a good account of you soon.
Your affectionate Friend
JOHN KEATS.
My Love to all and remember me to Taylor.
L.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Teignmouth, Friday [April 24, 1818].
My dear Taylor--I think I did wrong to leave to you all the trouble of
Endymion--But I could not help it then--another time I shall be more bent
to all sorts of troubles and disagreeables. Young men for some time have
an idea that such a thing as happiness is to be had, and therefore are
extremely impatient under any unpleasant restraining. In time however, of
such stuff is the world about them, they know better, and instead of
striving from uneasiness, greet it as an habitual sensation, a pannier
which is to weigh upon them through life--And in proportion to my disgust
at the task is my sense of your kindness and anxiety. The book pleased me
much. It is very free from faults: and, although there are one or two
words I should wish replaced, I see in many places an improvement greatly
to the purpose.
I think those speeches which are related--those parts where the speaker
repeats a speech, such as Glaucus's repetition of Circe's words, should
have inverted commas to every line. In this there is a little
confusion.--If we divide the speeches into _identical_ and _related_; and
to the former put merely one inverted Comma at the beginning and another
at the end; and to the latter inverted Commas before every line, the book
will be better understood at the 1st glance. Look at pages 126, 127, you
will find in the 3d line the beginning of a related speech marked thus
"Ah! art awake--" while, at the same time, in the next page the
continuation of the _identical_ speech is marked in the same manner,
"Young man of Latmos--" You will find on the other side all the parts
which should have inverted commas to every line.
I was proposing to travel over the North this summer. There is but one
thing to prevent me.--I know nothing--I have read nothing--and I mean to
follow Solomon's directions, "Get learning--get understanding." I find
earlier days are gone by--I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world
but continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but
the idea of doing some good for the world--Some do it with their
Society--some with their wit--some with their benevolence--some with a
sort of power of conferring pleasure and good-humour on all they meet--and
in a thousand ways, all dutiful to the command of great Nature--there is
but one way for me. The road lies through application, study, and
thought.--I will pursue it; and for that end, purpose retiring for some
years. I have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of
the luxurious, and a love for philosophy,--were I calculated for the
former, I should be glad. But as I am not, I shall turn all my soul to the
latter.--My brother Tom is getting better, and I hope I shall see both him
and Reynolds better before I retire from the world. I shall see you soon,
and have some talk about what Books I shall take with me.
Your very sincere friend
JOHN KEATS.
Pray remember me to Hessey Woodhouse and Percy Street.
LI.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Teignmouth, April 27, 1818.
My dear Reynolds--It is an awful while since you have heard from me--I
hope I may not be punished, when I see you well, and so anxious as you
always are for me, with the remembrance of my so seldom writing when you
were so horribly confined. The most unhappy hours in our lives are those
in which we recollect times past to our own blushing--If we are immortal
that must be the Hell. If I must be immortal, I hope it will be after
having taken a little of "that watery labyrinth" in order to forget some
of my school-boy days and others since those.
I have heard from George at different times how slowly you were
recovering--It is a tedious thing--but all Medical Men will tell you how
far a very gradual amendment is preferable; you will be strong after this,
never fear. We are here still enveloped in clouds--I lay awake last night
listening to the Rain with a sense of being drowned and rotted like a
grain of wheat. There is a continual courtesy between the Heavens and the
Earth. The heavens rain down their unwelcomeness, and the Earth sends it
up again to be returned to-morrow. Tom has taken a fancy to a physician
here, Dr. Turton, and I think is getting better--therefore I shall perhaps
remain here some Months. I have written to George for some Books--shall
learn Greek, and very likely Italian--and in other ways prepare myself to
ask Hazlitt in about a year's time the best metaphysical road I can take.
For although I take poetry to be Chief, yet there is something else
wanting to one who passes his life among Books and thoughts on Books--I
long to feast upon old Homer as we have upon Shakspeare, and as I have
lately upon Milton. If you understood Greek, and would read me passages,
now and then, explaining their meaning, 'twould be, from its mistiness,
perhaps, a greater luxury than reading the thing one's self. I shall be
happy when I can do the same for you. I have written for my folio
Shakspeare, in which there are the first few stanzas of my "Pot of Basil."
I have the rest here finished, and will copy the whole out fair shortly,
and George will bring it you--The compliment is paid by us to Boccace,
whether we publish or no: so there is content in this world--_mine_ is
short--you must be deliberate about yours: you must not think of it till
many months after you are quite well:--then put your passion to it, and I
shall be bound up with you in the shadows of Mind, as we are in our
matters of human life. Perhaps a Stanza or two will not be too foreign to
your Sickness.
Were they unhappy then?--It cannot be--
Too many tears for lovers have been shed,
Too many sighs give we to them in fee,
Too much of pity after they are dead,
Too many doleful stories do we see,
Whose matter in bright gold were best be read;
Except in such a page where Theseus' spouse
Over the pathless waves towards him bows.
But, for the general award of love
The little sweet doth kill much bitterness;
Though Dido silent is in under-grove,
And Isabella's was a great distress,
Though young Lorenzo in warm Indian clove
Was not embalm'd, this truth is not the less--
Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers,
Know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.
* * * * *
She wept alone for pleasures not to be;
Sorely she wept until the night came on,
And then, instead of love, O misery!
She brooded o'er the luxury alone:
What might have been too plainly did she see,[61]
And to the silence made a gentle moan,
Spreading her perfect arms upon the air,
And on her couch low murmuring "Where? O where?"
I heard from Rice this morning--very witty--and have just written to
Bailey. Don't you think I am brushing up in the letter way? and being in
for it, you shall hear again from me very shortly:--if you will promise
not to put hand to paper for me until you can do it with a tolerable ease
of health--except it be a line or two. Give my Love to your Mother and
Sisters. Remember me to the Butlers--not forgetting Sarah.
Your affectionate Friend
JOHN KEATS.
LII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Teignmouth, May 3d [1818].
My dear Reynolds--What I complain of is that I have been in so uneasy a
state of Mind as not to be fit to write to an invalid. I cannot write to
any length under a disguised feeling. I should have loaded you with an
addition of gloom, which I am sure you do not want. I am now thank God in
a humour to give you a good groat's worth--for Tom, after a Night without
a Wink of sleep, and over-burthened with fever, has got up after a
refreshing day-sleep and is better than he has been for a long time; and
you I trust have been again round the common without any effect but
refreshment. As to the Matter I hope I can say with Sir Andrew[62] "I have
matter enough in my head" in your favour--And now, in the second place,
for I reckon that I have finished my Imprimis, I am glad you blow up the
weather--all through your letter there is a leaning towards a
climate-curse, and you know what a delicate satisfaction there is in
having a vexation anathematised: one would think there has been growing up
for these last four thousand years, a grand-child Scion of the old
forbidden tree, and that some modern Eve had just violated it; and that
there was come with double charge
"Notus and Afer, black with thundrous clouds
From Serraliona--"
I shall breathe worsted stockings[63] sooner than I thought for--Tom wants
to be in Town--we will have some such days upon the heath like that of
last summer--and why not with the same book? or what say you to a black
Letter Chaucer, printed in 1596: aye I've got one huzza! I shall have it
bound en gothique--a nice sombre binding--it will go a little way to
unmodernise. And also I see no reason, because I have been away this last
month, why I should not have a peep at your Spenserian--notwithstanding
you speak of your office, in my thought a little too early, for I do not
see why a Mind like yours is not capable of harbouring and digesting the
whole Mystery of Law as easily as Parson Hugh does pippins, which did not
hinder him from his poetic canary.[64] Were I to study physic or rather
Medicine again, I feel it would not make the least difference in my
Poetry; when the mind is in its infancy a Bias is in reality a Bias, but
when we have acquired more strength, a Bias becomes no Bias. Every
department of Knowledge we see excellent and calculated towards a great
whole--I am so convinced of this that I am glad at not having given away
my medical Books, which I shall again look over to keep alive the little I
know thitherwards; and moreover intend through you and Rice to become a
sort of pip-civilian. An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking
people--it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening
speculation, to ease the Burden of the Mystery, a thing which I begin to
understand a little, and which weighed upon you in the most gloomy and
true sentence in your Letter. The difference of high Sensations with and
without knowledge appears to me this: in the latter case we are falling
continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again, without
wings, and with all horror of a bare-shouldered Creature--in the former
case, our shoulders are fledged, and we go through the same air and space
without fear. This is running one's rigs on the score of abstracted
benefit--when we come to human Life and the affections, it is impossible
to know how a parallel of breast and head can be drawn (you will forgive
me for thus privately treading out of my depth, and take it for treading
as school-boys tread the water); it is impossible to know how far
knowledge will console us for the death of a friend, and the ill "that
flesh is heir to." With respect to the affections and Poetry you must know
by a sympathy my thoughts that way, and I daresay these few lines will be
but a ratification: I wrote them on Mayday--and intend to finish the ode
all in good time--
Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!
May I sing to thee
As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae?
Or may I woo thee
In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By Bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan?
O, give me their old vigour, and unheard
Save of the quiet Primrose, and the span
Of heaven and few ears,
Rounded by thee, my song should die away
Content as theirs,
Rich in the simple worship of a day.--
You may perhaps be anxious to know for fact to what sentence in your
Letter I allude. You say, "I fear there is little chance of anything else
in this life"--you seem by that to have been going through with a more
painful and acute zest the same labyrinth that I have--I have come to the
same conclusion thus far. My Branchings out therefrom have been numerous:
one of them is the consideration of Wordsworth's genius and as a help, in
the manner of gold being the meridian Line of worldly wealth, how he
differs from Milton. And here I have nothing but surmises, from an
uncertainty whether Milton's apparently less anxiety for Humanity proceeds
from his seeing further or not than Wordsworth: And whether Wordsworth has
in truth epic passion, and martyrs himself to the human heart, the main
region of his song. In regard to his genius alone--we find what he says
true as far as we have experienced, and we can judge no further but by
larger experience--for axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are
proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never feel them to the
full until we have gone the same steps as the author.--I know this is not
plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say that now I shall
relish Hamlet more than I ever have done--Or, better--you are sensible no
man can set down Venery as a bestial or joyless thing until he is sick of
it, and therefore all philosophising on it would be mere wording. Until we
are sick, we understand not; in fine, as Byron says, "Knowledge is
sorrow"; and I go on to say that "Sorrow is wisdom"--and further for aught
we can know for certainty "Wisdom is folly"--So you see how I have run
away from Wordsworth and Milton, and shall still run away from what was in
my head, to observe, that some kind of letters are good squares, others
handsome ovals, and other some orbicular, others spheroid--and why should
not there be another species with two rough edges like a Rat-trap? I hope
you will find all my long letters of that species, and all will be well;
for by merely touching the spring delicately and ethereally, the
rough-edged will fly immediately into a proper compactness; and thus you
may make a good wholesome loaf, with your own leaven in it, of my
fragments--If you cannot find this said Rat-trap sufficiently tractable,
alas for me, it being an impossibility in grain for my ink to stain
otherwise: If I scribble long letters I must play my vagaries--I must be
too heavy, or too light, for whole pages--I must be quaint and free of
Tropes and figures--I must play my draughts as I please, and for my
advantage and your erudition, crown a white with a black, or a black with
a white, and move into black or white, far and near as I please--I must go
from Hazlitt to Patmore, and make Wordsworth and Coleman play at
leap-frog, or keep one of them down a whole half-holiday at
fly-the-garter--"From Gray to Gay, from Little to Shakspeare." Also as a
long cause requires two or more sittings of the Court, so a long letter
will require two or more sittings of the Breech, wherefore I shall resume
after dinner--
Have you not seen a Gull, an orc, a Sea-Mew, or anything to bring this
Line to a proper length, and also fill up this clear part; that like the
Gull I may _dip_[65]--I hope, not out of sight--and also, like a Gull, I
hope to be lucky in a good-sized fish--This crossing a letter is not
without its association--for chequer-work leads us naturally to a
Milkmaid, a Milkmaid to Hogarth, Hogarth to Shakspeare--Shakspeare to
Hazlitt--Hazlitt to Shakspeare--and thus by merely pulling an apron-string
we set a pretty peal of Chimes at work--Let them chime on while, with your
patience, I will return to Wordsworth--whether or no he has an extended
vision or a circumscribed grandeur--whether he is an eagle in his nest or
on the wing--And to be more explicit and to show you how tall I stand by
the giant, I will put down a simile of human life as far as I now perceive
it; that is, to the point to which I say we both have arrived at--Well--I
compare human life to a large Mansion of Many apartments, two of which I
can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me--The
first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we
remain as long as we do not think--We remain there a long while, and
notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing
a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length
imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle within
us--we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the
Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and
the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying
there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing is
father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart
and nature of Man--of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of
Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness, and oppression--whereby this
Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darkened, and at the same
time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open--but all dark--all
leading to dark passages--We see not the balance of good and evil--we are
in a mist--we are now in that state--We feel the "burden of the Mystery."
To this point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive, when he wrote
'Tintern Abbey,' and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of
those dark Passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall
explore them--He is a genius and superior to us, in so far as he can, more
than we, make discoveries and shed a light in them--Here I must think
Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though I think it has depended more upon
the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness
of Mind--From the Paradise Lost and the other Works of Milton, I hope it
is not too presuming, even between ourselves, to say, that his Philosophy,
human and divine, may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in
years. In his time, Englishmen were just emancipated from a great
superstition, and Men had got hold of certain points and resting-places in
reasoning which were too newly born to be doubted, and too much opposed by
the Mass of Europe not to be thought ethereal and authentically
divine--Who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice, and Chastity in
Comus, just at the time of the dismissal of a hundred disgraces? who would
not rest satisfied with his hintings at good and evil in the Paradise
Lost, when just free from the Inquisition and burning in Smithfield? The
Reformation produced such immediate and great benefits, that Protestantism
was considered under the immediate eye of heaven, and its own remaining
Dogmas and superstitions then, as it were, regenerated, constituted those
resting-places and seeming sure points of Reasoning--from that I have
mentioned, Milton, whatever he may have thought in the sequel, appears to
have been content with these by his writings--He did not think into the
human heart as Wordsworth has done--Yet Milton as a Philosopher had sure
as great powers as Wordsworth--What is then to be inferred? O many
things--It proves there is really a grand march of intellect,--It proves
that a mighty providence subdues the mightiest Minds to the service of the
time being, whether it be in human Knowledge or Religion. I have often
pitied a tutor who has to hear "Nom. Musa" so often dinn'd into his
ears--I hope you may not have the same pain in this scribbling--I may have
read these things before, but I never had even a thus dim perception of
them; and moreover I like to say my lesson to one who will endure my
tediousness for my own sake--After all there is certainly something real
in the world--Moore's present to Hazlitt is real--I like that Moore, and
am glad I saw him at the Theatre just before I left Town. Tom has spit a
_leetle_ blood this afternoon, and that is rather a damper--but I
know--the truth is there is something real in the World. Your third
Chamber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one--stored with the wine of
love--and the Bread of Friendship--When you see George if he should not
have received a letter from me tell him he will find one at home most
likely--tell Bailey I hope soon to see him--Remember me to all. The leaves
have been out here for mony a day--I have written to George for the first
stanzas of my Isabel--I shall have them soon, and will copy the whole out
for you.
Your affectionate Friend
JOHN KEATS.
LIII.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
Hampstead, Thursday [May 28, 1818].
My dear Bailey--I should have answered your Letter on the Moment, if I
could have said yes to your invitation. What hinders me is insuperable: I
will tell it at a little length. You know my Brother George has been out
of employ for some time: it has weighed very much upon him, and driven him
to scheme and turn over things in his Mind. The result has been his
resolution to emigrate to the back Settlements of America, become Farmer
and work with his own hands, after purchasing 14 hundred acres of the
American Government. This for many reasons has met with my entire
Consent--and the chief one is this; he is of too independent and liberal a
Mind to get on in Trade in this Country, in which a generous Man with a
scanty resource must be ruined. I would sooner he should till the ground
than bow to a customer. There is no choice with him: he could not bring
himself to the latter. I would not consent to his going alone;--no--but
that objection is done away with: he will marry before he sets sail a
young lady he has known for several years, of a nature liberal and
high-spirited enough to follow him to the Banks of the Mississippi. He
will set off in a month or six weeks, and you will see how I should wish
to pass that time with him.--And then I must set out on a journey of my
own. Brown and I are going a pedestrian tour through the north of England
and Scotland as far as John o' Grot's. I have this morning such a lethargy
that I cannot write. The reason of my delaying is oftentimes from this
feeling,--I wait for a proper temper. Now you ask for an immediate answer,
I do not like to wait even till to-morrow. However, I am now so depressed
that I have not an idea to put to paper--my hand feels like lead--and yet
it is an unpleasant numbness; it does not take away the pain of Existence.
I don't know what to write.
Monday [June 1].
You see how I have delayed; and even now I have but a confused idea of
what I should be about. My intellect must be in a degenerating state--it
must be--for when I should be writing about--God knows what--I am
troubling you with moods of my own mind, or rather body, for mind there is
none. I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick
to come up to the top--I know very well 'tis all nonsense--In a short time
I hope I shall be in a temper to feel sensibly your mention of my book. In
vain have I waited till Monday to have any Interest in that or anything
else. I feel no spur at my Brother's going to America, and am almost
stony-hearted about his wedding. All this will blow over--All I am sorry
for is having to write to you in such a time--but I cannot force my
letters in a hotbed. I could not feel comfortable in making sentences for
you. I am your debtor--I must ever remain so--nor do I wish to be clear of
any Rational debt: there is a comfort in throwing oneself on the charity
of one's friends--'tis like the albatross sleeping on its wings. I will be
to you wine in the cellar, and the more modestly, or rather, indolently, I
retire into the backward bin, the more Falerne will I be at the drinking.
There is one thing I must mention--my Brother talks of sailing in a
fortnight--if so I will most probably be with you a week before I set out
for Scotland. The middle of your first page should be sufficient to rouse
me. What I said is true, and I have dreamt of your mention of it, and my
not answering it has weighed on me since. If I come, I will bring your
letter, and hear more fully your sentiments on one or two points. I will
call about the Lectures at Taylor's, and at Little Britain, to-morrow.
Yesterday I dined with Hazlitt, Barnes, and Wilkie, at Haydon's. The topic
was the Duke of Wellington--very amusingly pro-and-con'd. Reynolds has
been getting much better; and Rice may begin to crow, for he got a little
so-so at a party of his, and was none the worse for it the next morning. I
hope I shall soon see you, for we must have many new thoughts and feelings
to analyse, and to discover whether a little more knowledge has not made
us more ignorant.
Yours affectionately
JOHN KEATS.
LIV.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
London [June 10, 1818].