 Letter 92, Part 2, of Letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. To George and Georgiana Keats. March 13, Saturday I've written to Fanny this morning and received a note from Haslam. I was to have dined with him to-morrow. He gives me a bad account of his father, who has not been in town for five weeks, and is not well enough for company. Haslam is well, and from the prosperous state of some love affair, he does not mind the double tides he has to work. I have been a walk past West End, and was going to call it Mr. Monkhouse's, but I did not, not being in the humor. I know not why Poetry and I have been so distant lately. I must make some advances soon, or she will cut me entirely. Haslet has this fine passage in his letter. Gifford, in his review of Haslet's characters of Shakespeare's plays, attacks the Coriolanus critique. He says that Haslet has slandered Shakespeare in saying that he had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question. Haslet thus defends himself. My words are, Coriolanus is a storehouse of political common places. The arguments for and against aristocracy and democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespeare himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question. Perhaps, from some feeling a contempt for his own origin, and have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true. What he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it. I then proceed to account for this by showing how it is that the cause of the people is but little calculated for a subject for poetry, or that the language of poetry naturally falls in with the language of power. I affirm, sir, that poetry, that the imagination generally speaking delights in power and strong excitement, as well as in truth, in good and right, whereas pure reason and the moral sense approve only of the true and good. I proceed to show that this general love or tendency to immediate excitement or theatrical effect, no matter how produced, gives a bias to the imagination, often consistent with the greatest good, that in poetry it triumphs over principle and bribes the passions to make a sacrifice of common humanity. You say that it does not, that there is no such original sin in poetry, that it makes no such sacrifice or unworthy compromise between poetical effect and the still small voice of reason. In how do you prove that there is no such principle, giving a bias to the imagination in a false coloring to poetry? Why, by asking in reply to the instances where this principle operates and where no other can with much modesty and simplicity, but are these the only topics that afford delight in poetry, etc.? No, but these objects do afford delight in poetry and they afford it in proportion to their strong and often tragical effect, and not in proportion to the good produced, or their desirableness in a moral point of view. Do we read with more pleasure of the ravages of a beast of prey than of the shepherd's pipe upon the mountain? No, but we do read with pleasure of the ravages of a beast of prey, and we do so on the principle I have stated, namely, from the sense of power abstracted from the sense of good, and it is the same principle that makes us read with admiration and reconciles us in a fact to the triumphant progress of the conquerors and mighty hunters of mankind, who come to stop the shepherd's pipe upon the mountains and sweep away his listening flock. Do you mean to deny that there is anything imposing to the imagination and power and grandeur and outward show in the accumulation of individual wealth and luxury at the expense of equal justice and the common wheel? Do you deny that there is anything in the pride-pomp in circumstance of glorious war that makes ambition virtue in the eyes of admiring multitudes? Is this a new theory of the pleasures of the imagination which says that the pleasures of the imagination do not take rise solely in the calculation of the understanding? Is it a paradox of my creating that one murder makes a villain millions a hero? Or is it not true that here, as in other cases, the enormity of the evil overpowers and makes a convert of the imagination by its very magnitude? You contradict my reasoning because you know nothing of the question, and you think that no one has a right to understand what you do not. My offense against purity in the passage alluded to, which contains the concentrated venom of my malignity, is that I have admitted that there are tyrants and slaves abroad in the world, and you would hush the matter up and pretend that there is no such thing in order that there may be nothing else. Further, I have explained the cause, the subtle sophistry of the human mind, that tolerates and pampers the evil in order to guard against its approaches. You would conceal the cause in order to prevent the cure, and to leave the proud flesh about the heart to harden and ossify into one impenetrable mass of selfishness and hypocrisy that we may not sympathize in the distresses of suffering virtue, in any case, in which they come in competition with the fictious wants and imputed weaknesses of the great. You ask, are we gratified by the cruelties of Domitian or Nero? No, not we. They were too petty and cowardly to strike the imagination at a distance. But the Roman Senate tolerated them, addressed their perpetrators, exalted them into gods, the fathers of the people, they had pimps and scribblers of all sorts in their pay, their Seneca's, etc. Till a turbulent rebel, thinking there were no injuries to society greater than the endurance of unlimited and wanton oppression, put an end to the farce and abated the sin as well as they could. Had you and I lived in those times, we should have been what we are now, I, a sour milk-attent, and you, a sweet courtierre. The manner in which this is managed, the force and innate power with which it yeasts and works up itself, the feeling for the costume of society is in a style of genius. He hath a demon, as he himself says of Lord Byron. We are to have a party this evening. The Davenport's from Church Row. I don't think you know anything of them. They have paid me a good deal of attention. I like Davenport himself. The names of the rest are Miss Byron's Miss Winter with the Children. Later, March 17 or 18. On Monday we had to dinner Severin and Cawthorne, the bookseller, and print virtuoso. In the evening, Severin went home to paint, and we other three went to the play, to see Sheal's new tragedy that I clubbed avante. In the morning Severin and I took a turn around the museum. There is a sphinx there of a giant size, and most voluptuous Egyptian expression. I have not seen it before. The play was bad even in comparison with 1818, the Augustan age of the drama. Come on, say, as Voltaire says, the whole was made up of a virtuous young woman and indignant brother. A suspecting lover, a libertine prince, a gratuitous villain, a street to Naples, a cypress grove, lilies and roses, virtue and vice, a bloody sword, a spangled jacket, one Lady Olivia, one Miss O'Neill, an Aliess. I van Der, aliasauthorne, alias dagenio, aliasivande, alias bellormera, alias alias, ye. And I say unto you, a greater than Elias. There was Abbot, and talking of Abbot, his name puts me in mind of a spelling-book lesson, descriptive of the whole Dramatis personae Abbot, Abbot, actor, actress. The play is a fine amusement, as a friend of mine once said to me do what you will, says he, paure gentleman who wants a guinea, can not spend his two shillings better than at the playhouse. The pantomime was excellent. I had seen it before, and I enjoyed it again. Your mother and I had some talk about Miss H. Says I. Will Henry have that miss? A laugh with a bodice, she who has been fine-drawn, fit for nothing but to cut up into cribbage pins, to the tune of fifteen point two. One who is all muslin, all feather and bone, once in travelling, she was made use of as a lynchpin. I hope we will not have her, though it is no uncommon thing to be smitten with a staff, though she might be very useful as his walking-stick, his fishing-rod, his toothpick, his hat-stick. She runs so much in his head. Let him turn farmer. She would cut into hurdles. Let him write poetry. She would be his turnstile. Her gown is like a flag on a pole. She would do for him if he turned Freemason. I hope she will prove a flag of truce, when she sits languishing, with her one foot on a stool, and one elbow on the table, and her head inclined. She looks like the sign of the crooked billet, or the frontispiece to Cinderella, or a teapaper woodcut of mother-shiptin at her studies. She is a make-believe. She is bona-fide, a thin young woman. But this is mere talk of a fellow-creature. Yet, party, I would not that Henry have her. Non volo ut imposida, nam, for it would be a bam, for it would be a sham. Don't think I am writing a petition to the governors of St. Luke. No, that would be in another style. May a pleasure worships, for as much as the under-sign has committed, transferred, given up, made over, consigned, and aberrated himself to the art and mystery of poetry. For as much as he hath cut, rebuffed, affronted, huffed, and shirked, and taken stint at, all other employments, arts, mysteries, and occupations, honest, idling, and dishonest. For as much as he hath at sundry times, and in diverse places, told truth unto the men of this generation, and eek to the women, moreover, for as much as he hath kept a pair of boots that did not fit, and doth not admire Sheel's play, Leahunt, Tomor, Bob Southey, and Mr. Rogers, and does admire William Hazlett. Moreover, for as more, as he liketh half of Wordsworth, and none of Crab, moreover, isst, for as most as he hath written this page of penmanship, he prayeth your worships to give him a lodging, witnessed by Rode Abbeying Company, Cung Fabrilis et Consangoris, signed Count de Coquini. The nothing of the day is a machine called the Velocipede. It is a wheel carriage to ride cock-horse upon, sitting astride and pushing it along with the toes, a rudder wheel in hand. They will go seven miles an hour. A handsome gelding will come to eight guineas. However, they will soon be cheaper, unless the army takes to them. I look back upon the last month, I find nothing to write about. Indeed, I do not recollect anything particular in it, and it's all alike we keep on breathing. The only amusement is a little scandal of however fine a shape, a laugh at a pun, and then, after all, we wonder how we could enjoy the scandal or laugh at the pun. I have been at different times, turning it in my head whether I should go to Aidenburg and study for a physician. I am afraid I should not take kindly to it. I am sure I could not take fees, and yet I should like to do so. It's not worse than writing poems and hanging them up to be flyblown on their review shambles. Everybody is in his own mess. Here is the parson at Hampstead, quarreling with all the world. He is in the wrong by the same token. When the black cloth was put up in the church for the queen's morning, he asked the workman to hang it to the wrongside outwards, that it might be better when taken down. If being his perquisite, parson's will always keep up their character. But, as it is said, there are some animals in the ancients new which we do not. Let us hope our posterity will miss the black badger with tri-cornered hat. Who knows but some reviewer or buffon or plenty may put an account of the parson in the appendix. No one will then believe it any more than we believe in the phoenix. I think we may class the lawyer in the same natural history of monsters. A green bag will hold as much as a lawnsleeve. The only difference is that one is Faustian and the other flimsy. I am not unwilling to read church history a present and have milners in my eye. His is reckoned a very good one. 18th September, 1819. In looking over some of my papers I found the above specimen of my carelessness. It is a sheet you ought to have had long ago. My letter must have appeared very unconnected. But as I number the sheets you must have discovered how the mistake happened. How many things have happened since I wrote it? How have I acted contrary to my resolves? The interval between writing this sheet and the day I put this supplement to it has been completely filled with generous and most friendly actions of brown towards me. How frequently I forget to speak of things which I think of and feel most. It is very singular. The idea about Buffon above has been taken up by Hunt in the examiner. In some papers, which he calls, a preter natural history. Friday 19th March. This morning I've been reading the false one. Shameful to say. I was in bed at ten. I mean this morning. The Blackwood reviewers have committed themselves in a scandalous heresy. They have been putting up hog, the Ettrick Shepherd against Burns, the senseless villains. The Scotch cannot manage themselves at all. They want imagination. And that is why they are so fond of hog, who is little of it. This morning I'm in sort of a temper, indolent and supremely careless. I long after a stanza or two of Thompson's Castle of Indolence. My passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fiber all over me to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness. If I had teeth of pearl in the breath of lilies, I should call it languor. But, as I am, I must call it laziness. In this state of ephemacy, the fibers of the brain are relaxed and common with the rest of the body. And to such a happy degree, the pleasure has no show of enticement and pain, no unbearable power. Neither poetry nor ambition nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me. They seem rather like figures on a Greek face, a man and two women, whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body overpowering the mind. I have this moment received a note from Haslam, in which she expects the death of his father, who has been for some time in a state of insensibility. His mother bears up, he says, very well. I shall go to town tomorrow to see him. This is the world, thus we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure. Circumstances are like clouds, continually gathering and bursting. While we are laughing, the seed of some trouble is put into the wide, arable land of events. While we are laughing, it sprouts, it grows, and suddenly bears a poison fruit, which we must pluck. Even so, we have leisure to reason on the misfortunes of our friends. Our own touch us too nearly for words. Very few men have ever arrived at a complete disinterestedness of mind. Very few have been influenced by a pure desire of the benefit of others. In the greater part of the benefactors to humanity, some meretricious motive has sullied their greatness. Some melodramatic scenery has fascinated them. From the manner in which I feel Haslam's misfortune, I perceive how far I am from any humble standard of disinterestedness. Yet this feeling ought to be carried to its highest pitch, as there is no fear of it ever injuring society, which it would do, I fear, pushed to an extremity. For in wild nature the hawk would lose his breakfast of robins, and the robin his of worms. The lion must starve as well as the swallow. The greater part of men make their way with the same instinctiveness, the same unwondering eye from their purposes. The same animal eagerness as the hawk. The hawk wants a mate. So does the man. Look at them both. They set about it and procure one in the same manner. They want both a nest and they both set about one in the same manner. They get their food in the same manner. The noble animal man for his amusement smokes his pipe. The hawk balances about the clouds. That is the only difference of their leisure. This it is that makes the amusement a life to a speculative mind. I go among the fields and catch a glimpse of a stout or a field mouse peeping out of the withered grass. The creature hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city, and I see a man hurrying along. To what? The creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. But then, as Wordsworth says, we have all one human heart. There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify, so that among these human creatures, there is a continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl and rubbish. I've no doubt that thousands of people, never heard of, have had their hearts completely disinterested. I can remember but two, Socrates and Jesus. Their histories evince it. What I heard a little time ago, Taylor observed with respect to Socrates, maybe said of Jesus, that he was so great a man that though he transmitted no writing his own to posterity, we have his mind and his sayings and his greatness handed to us by others. It is to be lamented that history of the latter was written and revised by men interested in the pious frauds of religion. Yet through all this I see his splendor. Even here, though I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the various human animal you can think of, I am, however young, writing at random, straining a particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, without knowing the bearing of any one assertion of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin? May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful, though instinctive attitude my mind may fall into, as I am entertained with the alertness of a stout or the anxiety of a deer. Though a coral in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine. The commonest man shows a grace in his coral. By a superior being our reasonings may take the same tone. Though erroneous they may be fine. This is the very thing in which consists poetry. And, if so, it is not so fine a thing as philosophy, for the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as the truth. Give me this credit. Do you not think I strive to know myself? Give me this credit, and you will not think that on my own account I repeat Milton's lines. How charming is divine philosophy, not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, but musical, as is Apollo's loot. No, not for myself. Feeling grateful as I do to have got into a state of mind to relish them properly. Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced, even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it. I am ever afraid that your anxiety for me will lead you to fear for the violence of my temperament continually smothered down. For that reason I did not intend to have sent you the following sonnet. But look over the two last pages and ask yourself, whether I have not that and me which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment on my sonnet. It will show you that it was written with no agony but that of ignorance, with no thirst of anything but knowledge. When pushed to the point through the first steps to it, or through my human passions, they went away and I wrote with my mind, and perhaps I must confess a little bit of my heart. Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell. No God, no demon of severe response. Dane's to reply from heaven or from hell. Then to my human heart I turn it once. Heart, thou and I are here sad and alone. Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain, O darkness, darkness, ever must I moan to question heaven and hell and heart and vein. Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease. My fancy to it is utmost bliss's spreads, yet could I in this very midnight cease, and the world's gaudy ensign's sea and shreds, verse, fame, and beauty, are intense indeed. But death and tenser, death is life's high mead. I went to bed and enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep. Sane I went to bed, insane I arose. End of Letter 92, Part 2. Letter 92, Part 3 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. To George and Georgiana Keats, April 15. This is the 15th of April. You see what a time it is, since I wrote. All that time I've been day by day expecting letters from you. I write quite in the dark, in the hopes of a letter daily I've deferred that I might write in the light. I was in town yesterday, and it tailors her that young Birkbeck had been in town, and was to set forward in six or seven days, so I shall dedicate that time to making up this parcel ready for him. I wish I could hear from you to make me whole and general as the casing air. A few days after the 19th of April, I received a note from Haslam containing the news of his father's death. The family has all been well. Haslam has his father's situation. The framtimes have behaved well to him. The day before yesterday I went to a route at Saury's. It was made pleasant by Reynolds being there, and our getting into conversation one of the most beautiful girls I ever saw. She gave a remarkable prettiness to all those common places which most women who talk must utter. I liked Mrs. Saury very well. Sunday before last your brothers were to come by long invitation, so long that for the time I forgot it, when I promised Mrs. Braun to dine with her on the same day, and recollecting my engagement with your brothers, I immediately excused myself with Mrs. Braun, but she would not hear of it, and insisted on my bringing my friends with me. So we all dined at Mrs. Braun's. I have been to Mrs. Bentley's this morning, and put all the letters to and from you and poor Tom and me. I found some of the correspondence between him and that degraded walls and Amina. It is a wretched business. I do not know the rights of it, but what I do know would, I am sure, affect you so much that I am in two minds whether I will tell you anything about it. And yet I do not see why, for anything, though it be unpleasant, that calls to mind those we still love has a compensation in itself for the pain and occasions. So very likely tomorrow I may set about copying the whole of what I have about it, with no sort of a Richardson self-satisfaction. I hate it to a sickness, and I am afraid more from indolence of mind than anything else. I wonder how people exist with all their worries. I have not been to Westminster, but once lately, and that was to see Dilke in his new lodgings. I think of living somewhere in the neighborhood myself. Your mother was well by your brother's account. I shall see her perhaps tomorrow. Yes, I shall. We have had the boys here lately. They make a bit of a racket. I shall not be sorry when they go. I found also this morning, and I know from George to you and my dear sister a lock of your hair, which I shall this morning put in a miniature case. A few days ago Hunt dined here, and Brown invited Davenport to meet him. Davenport, from a sense of weakness, thought it incumbent on him to show off, and pursuant to that never ceased talking and boring all day till I was completely fagged out. Brown grew melancholy. But Hunt, perceiving what a complementary tendency all this had bore remarkably well. Brown grumbled about it for two or three days. I went with Hunt to Sir John Lester's gallery. There I saw Northcote, Hilton Bewick, and many more great and little note. Hayden's picture is a very little progress this year. He talks about finishing it next year. Wordsworth is going to publish a poem called Peter Bell. What a perverse fellow it is. Why will he talk about Peter Bells? I was told not to tell, but to you who will not be telling. Reynolds, hearing that said Peter Bell was coming out, took it into his head to write a skit upon it called Peter Bell. He did it as soon as thought on. It is to be published this morning, and comes out before the real Peter Bell, with this admirable motto from the bold stroke for a wife, I am the real Simon Peer. It would be just as well to trounce Lord Byron in the same manner. I'm still at a stand in versifying. I cannot do it yet with any pleasure. I mean however, to look round on my resources and means, and see what I can do without poetry. To that end, I shall live in Westminster. I have no doubt of making by some means a little help on, or I shall be left on the lurch with the burden of a little pride. However, I look in time. The Dilks like their lodgings at Westminster tolerably well. I cannot help thinking what a shame it is that poor Dilk should give up his comfortable house and garden for his son, whom he will certainly ruin with too much care. The boy is nothing in his ears all day but himself, and the importance of his education. Dilk has continually in his mouth my boy. This is what spoils princes. It may have the same effect for commoners. Mrs. Dilk has been very well lately. But what a shameful thing it is that for the obstinate boy Dilk should stifle himself in town lodgings, and wear out his life by his continual apprehension of his boy's fate in Westminster school, with the rest of the boys and the masters. Everyone has some wear and tear. One would think that Dilk ought to be quiet and happy, but no. This one boy makes his face pale, his society silent, and his vigilance jealous. He would I have no doubt quarrel with anyone who snubbed his boy. With all this he has no notion how to manage him. Oh, what a farce is our greatest cares. Yet one must be in the pothole for the sake of clothes, food, and lodging. There's been a squabble between Keen and Mr. Buck. There are faults on both sides. On Buck's the faults are positive to the question. Keen's fault is a want of genteel knowledge and high policy. The former writes navishly foolish, and the other silly bombast. It was about a tragedy written by said Mr. Buck, which it appears Mr. Keen kicked at. It was so bad. After a little struggle of Mr. Buck's against Keen, Drury Lane had the policy to bring it out and Keen the impolicy not to appear in it. It was damned. People in the pit had a favorite call on the night of Buck, Buck, rise up, and Buck, Buck, how many horns do I hold up? Kutzabue, the German dramatist and traitor to his country, was murdered lately by a young student whose name I forget. He stabbed himself immediately after crying out, Germany, Germany. I was unfortunate to miss Richards the only time I have been for many months to see him. Shall I treat you with a little extemporary? When they were come into the fairies court, they rang, no one at home all gone to sport, and dance and kiss and love as fairies do, for fairies be as humans lovers true. Amid the woods there was alone and wild, where even the robin feels himself exiled. And where the very Brooks, as if afraid, hurried along to some less magic shade. No one at home, the fretful princes cried, and all for nothing such a dreary ride, and all for nothing my new diamond cross. No one to see my Persian feathers toss. No one to see my ape, my dwarf, my fool, or how I pace my Othetian mule. Ape, dwarf and fool, why stand you gaping there? Burst the door open quick, or I declare, I'll switch you soundly, and in pieces tear. The dwarf began to tremble, and the ape stared at the fool, the fool was all agape. The princess grasped her switch, but just in time, the dwarf, with piteous face, began to rhyme. Oh, mighty princess, did you nare hair tell, what your poor servants know but too well? Know you the three great crimes in fairyland. The first, alas, poor dwarf I understand. I made a whip-stock of a fairy's wand. The next is snoring in their company. The next, the last, the diarist of the three, is making free when they are not at home. I was a prince, a baby prince, my doom. You see, I made a whip-stock of a wand. My top has henceforth slept in fairyland. He was a prince, the fool, a grown-up prince, but he has never been a king sun since. He fell asleep snoring at fairy ball. Your poor ape was a prince, and he poor thing, pick-locked a fairy's bourgeois, now no king. But ape, so pray your highness stay awhile. To soothe indeed, we know it to our sorrow. Persist, and you may be an ape to-morrow. While the dwarf spake the princess off her spite, peal the brown hazel-twig to lily-white, clenched her small teeth, and held her lips apart, tried to look unconcerned with beating heart, they saw her highness had made up her mind, a quavering like the reeds before the wind. And they had had it, but o happy chance, the ape for the very fear began to dance, and grinned as all his ugliness did ache. She, stator Vixen, fingers for his sake. He was so very ugly, then she took, her pocket-mirror began to look, first at herself, and then at him, and then she smiled at her own beauteous face again. Yet for all this, for all her pretty face, she took it in her head to see the place. Women gain little from experience, either in lovers, husbands, or expense. The more their beauty, the more fortune too. Beauty before the wide world never knew. So each fair reasons, though it off miscarries, she thought her pretty face would please the fairies. My darling ape, I won't whip you to-day. Give me the pick-lock saran, go play. They all three wept, but Council was as vain as crying cup biddy to drops of rain. Yet lingering by did the sad ape forth draw, the pick-lock from the pocket in his jaw. The princess took it, and dismounting straight, tripped in blue-silvered slippers to the gate, and touched the wards, the door full courteously opened, she entered, with their servants three. Again it closed, and there was nothing seen, but the mule grazing on the herbage green. End of Canto XII. Canto XIII. The mule no sooner saw himself alone. Then he pricked up his ears, and said, well done. At least unhappy prince, I may be free. No more a princess shall side-settle me. O king of Othiti, though a mule, I, every inch of king, though fortune's fool, well done, for by what Mr. Dwarfie said, I would not give a sixpence for her head. Even as he spake, he trotted in high glee to the naughty side of an old pollard tree, and rubbed his sides against the mossed bark, till his girth spursed, and left it naked stark. Except as bridal, how get rid of that? Buckled and tied with many a twist and plate, at last it struck him to pretend to sleep, and then the thievish monkeys downward creep, and filch the unpleasant tramples quite away, no sooner thought of than a downy lay. Shammed a good snore, the monkey men descended, in whom they thought to injure they befriended. They hung his bridle on a top-moust bow, and off he went, run, trot, or anyhow. Brown has gone to bed, and I am tired of rhyming. There is a north wind blowing, playing young gooseberry with the trees. I don't care so it helps, even with the side wind, a letter to me, for I cannot put faith in any reports I hear of the settlement. Some are good and some bad. Last Sunday I took a walk towards Highgate, and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's Park, I met a Mr. Green, our demonstrator at Guy's in conversation with Coleridge. I joined them, after inquiring by look whether it would be agreeable. I walked with him at his aldermen's after dinner-pace for near two miles, I suppose, and those two miles he broached a thousand things. Let me see if I can give you a list. Nightingales, poetry, on poetical sensation, metaphysics, different gender and species of dreams, nightmare, a dream accompanied by a sense of touch, single and double touch, a dream related, first and second consciousness, the difference explained between will and volition, so say metaphysicians from a want of smoking the second consciousness, monsters, the kraken, mermaids, Southeast believes in them, Southeast's belief too much diluted, a ghost story. Good morning. I heard his voice as he came towards me. I heard it as he moved away. I had heard it all the interval, if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask me to call on him in Highgate. Good night. Later, April 16 or 17. It looks so much like rain, I shall not go to town today, but put it off till tomorrow. Brown this morning is writing some Sponsorian stanzas against Mrs., Miss Braun and me. So I shall muse myself with him a little, in the manner of Spencer. He is to eat a melancholy curl, thin in the waist with bushy head of hair, as half the suited thistle went in pearl, and holds his ephir, air at sendeth fair. It's light balloons into the summer air. There too his beard had not begun to bloom. No brush had touched his chin or razor shear. No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom. But knew he was and bright to scarf from Persian loom. Knee cared he for wine or half and half. Knee cared he for fish or flesh or frowl. And sauces held he worthless as the chaff. He's deigned the swineherd at the Wasale Bowl. Knee with lewd rebalds said he cheek by jowl. Knee with sly lemons in this corner's chair. But after water brooks the pilgrim's soul, panted, and all's food was woodland air. Though he would oft times feast on ghillie flowers rare. The slang of cities and no wise he knew. Tipping the wink to him was heathen greek. He slipped no olden tamar ruin blue. Ornance or cherry brandy drunk full meek by many a damsel horse and rouge of cheek. Nor did he know each age watchman's beat. Nor an obscured purgueless would he seek. For curled juices with ankles neat, whose they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet. The character would ensure him a situation in the establishment of patient Griselda. The servant has come for the little browns this morning. They have been a toothache to me, which I shall enjoy their riddance of. Their little voices are like wasp stings. Sometimes am I all wound with browns. We had a cleric feast some little while ago. There were Bill Reynolds, Skinner, Manker, John Brown, Martin Brown, and I. We all got a little tipsy, but pleasantly so. I enjoy Clara to a degree. Later, April 18 or 19. I've been looking over the correspondence of the pretended Amina and Wells this evening. And I'll see the whole cruel deception. I think Wells must have had an accomplice in it. Amina's letters are in a man's language and in a man's hand imitating a woman's. The instigations to this diabolical scheme were vanity and the love of intrigue. It was no thoughtless hoax, but a cruel deception on a sanguine temperament with every show of friendship. I do not think death too bad for the villain. The world would look upon it in a different light should I expose it. They would call it a frolic, so I must be wary. But I consider it my duty to be prudently revengeful. I will hang over his head like a sword by hair. I will be opium to his vanity. If I cannot injure his interest, he is a rat, and he shall have rat's bane to his vanity. I will harm him all I possibly can. I have no doubt I shall be able to do so. Let us leave him to his misery alone, except when we can throw in a little more. The fifth canto of Dante pleases me more and more. It is the one in which he meets with Palo and Francesca. I had passed many days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in that region of hell. The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I ever had my life. I floated about the whirling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined, as it seemed for an age, and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm. Even flowery tree-chops sprung up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew away again. I tried a sonnet upon it. There are fourteen lines, but nothing of what I felt in it. Oh, that I could dream it every night. As Hermes once took to his father's light, when lulled Argus baffled, swooned and slept, so on a Delphic reed my head will sprite, so played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft. The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes, and seeing it asleep so fled away, not to pirata, with its snow-cold skies, nor on to Tempe, where Jove grieved that day. But to that second circle of sad hell, where in the gust the whirlwind and the flaw of rain and hailstones lovers need not tell their sorrows, pale where the sweet lips I saw, pale where the lips I kissed, and fair the form, I floated with about that melancholy storm. I want very much of a little of your wit, my dear sister, a letter or two of yours, just a bandy back-upon or two across the Atlantic, and send a quibble over the Florida's. Now you have, by this time, crumpled up your large bonnet. What do you wear, a cap? Do you put your hair in papers of a night? Do you play the Miss Birkbeck some morning visit? Have you any tea? Or do you milk and water with him? What place of worship do you go to, the Quakers, the Moravians, the Unitarians, or the Methodist? Are there any flowers in bloom you like? Any beautiful heaths? Any streets full of corset-makers? What sort of shoes have you to fit those pretty feet of yours? Do you desire compliments to one another? Do you ride on horseback? What do you have for breakfast, dinner, and supper, without mentioning lunch and beaver, and wet and snack, and a bit to stay one stomach? Do you get any spirits? Now you might easily distill some whisky, and going into the woods, set up a whisky shop for the Monkeys. Do you and the Miss Birkbeck's get groggy on anything? A little so sewish, sows to be obliged to be seen home with a lantern. You may perhaps have a game at Puss in the Corner. Ladies are warranted to play at this game, though they have not whiskers. Have you a fiddle in the settlement? Or at any rate a juice-harp, which will play in spite of one's teeth? When you have nothing else to do for a whole day, I tell you how you may employ it. First get up and when you are dressed, as it would be pretty early with a high wind in the woods, give George a cold pig with my compliments. Then you may saunter into the nearest coffee-house, and after taking a dram and look at the Chronicle, go and frighten the wild boars upon the strength. You may as well bring one home for breakfast, serving up the hoofs, garnished with bristles and a grunt or two, to accompany the singing of the kettle. Then if George is not up, give him a colder pig, always with my compliments. When you are both set down to breakfast, I advise you to eat your full chair, but leave off immediately and feeling yourself inclined to anything on the other side of the puffy. Avoid that, for it does not become young woman. After you have eaten your breakfast, keep your eye upon dinner. It is the safest way. You should keep a hawk's eye over your dinner and keep hovering over it till due time then pounce, taking care not to break any plates. While you are hovering with your dinner and prospect, you may do a thousand things. Put a hedgehog into George's hat. Pour a little water into his rifle. Soak his boots in a pail of water. Cut his jacket round into shreds like a Roman kilt where the back of my grandmother stays, so off his buttons. Later, April 21st or 22nd. Yesterday I could not read a line I was so fatigued. For the day before I went to town in the morning, called on your mother and returned in time for a few friends we had to dinner. These were Taylor Woodhouse Reynolds. We began cards at about nine o'clock, and the night coming on, and continuing dark and rainy, they could not think of returning to town. So we played at cards till very daylight. And yesterday I was not worth this expense. Your mother was very well but anxious for a letter. We had half an hour's talk and no more. For I was obliged to be home. Mr. and Mrs. Millar were well, and so was Miss Waldegrave. I've asked your brothers here for next Sunday. When Reynolds was here on Monday, he asked me to give Hunt a hint to take notice of his Peter Bell in the examiner. The best thing I can do is to write a little notice of it myself, which I will do here and copy out if it should suit my purpose. Peter Bell. There have been lately advertised two books, both Peter Bell by name. What stuff the one was made of might be seen by the motto, I am the real Simon Pure. This false floral mail has hurried from the press and obtruded herself into public notice. While for ought, we know the real one may be still wandering about the woods and mountains. Let us hope she may soon appear and make good her right to the magic girdle. The pamphleteering archimage we can perceive has rather a splintic love than a downright hatred to real floral mouths, if indeed they have been so christened, or had even a pretension to play a bob cherry with Barbara Luthwy. But he has a fixed aversion to those three rhyming graces. Alice fell Susan Gale and Betty Foy. And now at length especially to Peter Bell. Fit Apollo may be seen from one or two passages in this little skit, that the writer of it has felt the finer parts of Mr. Wordsworth, perhaps expatiated with his more remote and sublime reviews. This as far as it relates to Peter Bell's unlucky. The more he may love the sad embroidery of the excursion, the more he will hate the coarse samplers of Betty Foy and Alice Fowle. And as they come from the same hand, the better will be able to imitate that which we imitated to it, Peter Bell. As far as can be imagined from the obstinate name, we repeat, it is very unlucky. This real Simon pure is in parts the very man. There's a pernicious likeness in the scenery, a pestilent humor in the rhymes, and invertebrate cadence in some of the stanzas that must be lamented. If we are one part amused with this, we are three parts sorry that an appreciator of Wordsworth should show so much temper at this really provoking name of Peter Bell. This will do well enough. I've copied it and enclosed it to hunt. You will call it a little politic, seeing I keep clear of all parties. I say something foreign against both parties and suit it to the tune of the examiner. I meant to say I do not unsuit it. And I believe I think what I say, nay, I am sure I do. I in my conscience are in luck today, which is an excellent thing. The other night I went to the play of rice Reynolds and Martin. We saw a new dull and half damned opera called the Heart of Midlothian. That was on Saturday. I stopped at Taylor's on Sunday with the Woodhouse and passed a quiet sort of pleasant day. I've been very much pleased with the panorama of the ship at the North Pole, with the icebergs, the mountains, the bears, the wolves, the seals, the penguins in a large whale floating back above water. It is impossible to describe the place. End of Letter 92 Part 3 Letter 92 Part 4 of Letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This subliminal of A. Vox Recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. To George and Georgiana Keats. Wednesday evening, April Twenty-Eight. Oh what can ail thee night at arms, alone in palae loitering, the sedge has withered from the lake, and no birds sing. Oh what can A healthy night at arms so haggard and so woe-begone, The squirrel's granary is full, and the harvest stunned. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish, moist and fever-dew, And on the cheek a fading rose, Fast withereth due. I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a fairy's child. Her hair was long, Her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant sound. She looked at me, as she did love, And made sweet moon. I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For side-long would she bend and sing, A fairy's song. She found me roots of relish-sweet, And honey-wild and mana-dew, And sure in language strange she said, I love thee true. She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept inside full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses for. And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dreamed, a-woe-be-tied, The latest stream I ever dreamt On the cold hillside. I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale, were they all. They cried, La belle dame sans messie, Die hath in thraw. I saw their starved lips in the gloom, With horrid warning gaped wide, And I woke, and found me here On the cold hillside. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone in palae loitering, Though the sedges withered from the lake, And no birds sing. Why four kisses, you will say? Why four? Because I wish to restrain The headlong and petuosity of my muse. She would have feigned said score Without hurting the rhyme. But we must temper the imagination, As the critics say with judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number, That both eyes might have fair play, To speak truly I think two apiece quite sufficient. Suppose I'd said seven, There would have been three-and-a-half apiece, A very awkward affair, And well-got out of, on my side. Later. Chorus of fairies, Four, fire, air, earth, and water, Salamander, Zephyr, duskitha, and Breama. Salamander, happy, happy, glowing fire, Zephyr, fragrant air, delicious light, Duskitha, let me to my gloom's retire, Breama, eye to green weed rivers bright. Salamander, happy, happy, glowing fire, Dazzling, bowers of soft retire, Ever let my nourished wing, Like a bat still wandering, Frankly fan your fiery spaces, Spirit, soul, and deadly places, In unhaunted roaring blaze, Open eyes that never daze. Let me see the myriad shapes Of men and beasts and fish and apes, Portrayed in many a fiery den, And wrought by spooly bitumen. On the deep and tensor roof, Arched every way aloof, Let me breathe upon my skies, And anger their live tapestries, Free from cold in every care Of chilly rain and shivering air. Zephyr, Sprite to fire away away, Or your very round delay Will sear my plumage newly budded From its quilled sheath and studded With the self-same dues that fell On the may-grown Asphodel. Sprite of fire away away, Breama, Sprite to fire away away, Zephyr blue-eyed fairy-turn, And see my cool-sad shaded urn, Where rest its mossy brim, Mid-water mint encresses dim, And the flowers in sweet troubles Lift their eyes above the bubbles, Like our queen, when she would Please to sleep in Oberon-wiltese, Love me blue-eyed fairy-true, Soothly I am sick for you. Zephyr. Gento Pogama, by the first Violet young nature-nurse, I will bathe myself with thee, So you some time follow me To my home, far, far and west, Far beyond the searching quest Of the golden-browed sun. Come with me, or tops of trees, To my fragrant palaces, Where they ever floating are Beneath the cherish of a star, Called Vesper, who, with silver veil, Ever hides his brilliance pale, Ever gently drowsed doth keep Twilight of the phase to sleep. Fear not that your watery hair Will thirst in drowdy ringlets there. Tables of stored summer rains, Thou shalt taste before the stains Of the mountains soil they take, In two unlucent for thee make. I love thee, crystal fairy-true. Sooth, I am sick for you. Salamander. Out ye aqueoush fairies, out, Chilly lovers, what a rout! Keep ye with your frozen breath, Colder than the mortal death. Catter-eyed, the Sceitha speak, Shall we leave them and go seek In the earth's wild entrails old? Couch is warm, as theirs is cold, O, for a fiery gloom in thee, the Sceitha, So enchantingly, freckled winged and lizard-sided, the Sceitha. By thee sprite will I be guided, I care not for colder heat, Tossed in flame or sparks or sleet, To my essence are the same, But I honour more the flame, sprite of fire. I follow thee, wheresoever it may be, To the torrid spouts and fountains, Underneath earthquakeed mountains, Or, at thy supreme desire, Touch the very pulse of fire, With my bare, unlit eyes. Salamander. Sweet, the Sceitha, paradise, Off ye icy spirits fly, Frosty creatures of the sky. The Sceitha. Breathe upon them, fiery sprite, Zephyr, Breyama, to each other. Away, away, to our delight, Salamander. Go feed on icicles while we, Bedded in tongueed flames, will be. The Sceitha. Lead me to those fever's glooms, Sprite to fire, Breyama. Me to the blooms, blue-eyed Zephyr of those flowers, Far in the west, Where the May cloud lowers, And the beams of stillvesper, Where winds are all whisked, Are shed, through the rain and the milder mist, And twilight, your floating bowers. I've been reading lately two very different books. Robertson's America, and Voltaire's Sequel d'Louis XIV. It is like walking arm in arm between Pizarro and the Great Little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we see the great body of the people in both instances, and the first, where men might seem to inherit quiet of mind from unsophisticated senses, from uncontamination of civilization, and especially from their being, as it were, estranged from the mutual helps of society and its mutual injuries, and thereby, more immediately under the protection of Providence, even there they have mortal pains to bear as bad, or even worse than Baeliff's, debts and poverty's as civilized life. The whole appears to resolve into this, that man is originally a poor forked creature subject to the same mischances as the beast of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of some kind or other. If he improves, by degrees, his bodily accommodations and comforts, at each stage, at each ascent they are waiting for him, a fresh set of annoyances. He is mortal, and there is still a heaven with its stars above his head. The most interesting question that can come before us is, how far, by the persevering endeavors of a seldom-apparing Socrates, mankind may be made happy. I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme, but what must it end in? Death. And who could in such a case bear with death? The whole troubles of life, which are now fretted away in a series of years, would then be accumulated for the last days of a being who instead of hailing its approach would leave this world as eb left paradise. But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectability. The nature of the world would not admit to it. The inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself. Let the fish philosophize the ice away from the rivers in wintertime, and they shall be a continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the poles and at the sands of Africa, whirlpools and volcanoes. Let men exterminate them, and I will say that they may arrive at earthly happiness. The point at which man may arrive is as far as the perilous state and in adamant nature and no further. For instance, suppose a rose to have sensation. It blooms on a beautiful morning. It enjoys itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun. It cannot escape it. It cannot destroy its annoyance. There is native to the world as itself. No more can man be happy in spite. The worldly elements will prey upon his nature. The common cognomen of this world, among the misguided and superstitious, is a veil of tears, from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to heaven. What a little circumscribed, straightened notion. Call the world, if you please, the veil of soul-making. Then you will find out the use of the world I'm speaking now in the highest terms for human nature, admitting it to be immortal, which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it. I say soul-making. Soul is distinguished from an intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions, but they are not souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception. They know and they see, and they are pure, in short, they are God. How then are souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them, so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How? By the medium of a world like this. This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I think it is a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion, or rather it is a system of spirit creation. This is affected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years. These three materials are the intelligence, the human heart, as distinguished from intelligence or mind, and the world or elemental space suited for the proper action of mind and heart on each other for the purpose of forming the soul or intelligence destined to possess the sense of identity. I can scarcely express what I would dimly perceive, and yet I think I perceive it, that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the world a school instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read. I will call the human heart the horn book used in that school, and I will call the child able to read the soul made from that school and its horn book. Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school and intelligence and make it a soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways, not merely is the heart the horn book, it is the mind's Bible, it is the mind's experience, it is the text from which the mind or intelligence sucks its identity, as various as the lives of men are, so various becomes their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, souls identical souls of the sparks of his own essence. This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of salvation, which does not defend our reason and humanity. I am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labor under would vanish before it, there is one which even now strikes me, the salvation of children, and then the spark or intelligence returns to God without any identity, it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart or seat of the human passions. It is pretty generally suspected that the Christian scheme has been copied from the ancient Persian and Greek philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more simple for common apprehension by introducing mediators and personages, in the same manner as in the heathen mythology abstractions are personified? Seriously, I think it probable that this system of soul-making may have been the parent of all the more palpable and personal schemes of redemption among the Zoroastrians, the Christians, and the Hindus. For as one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter, so another part must have the more palpable and named mediator and savior, their Christ, their oramans, and their Vishnu. If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts. I mean I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances and what are circumstances but touchstones of his heart, and what are touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers or alterers of his nature, and what is altered nature but his soul, and what was his soul before it came into the world, and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings, and intelligence without identity, and how is this identity to be made, through the medium of the heart, and how is the heart to become this medium but in a world of circumstances? There now I think what with poetry and theology you may thank your stars that my pen is not very long-winded. Yesterday I received two letters from your mother in Henry, which I shall send by young Birkbeck with this. Friday, April 30th. Brown has been here rummaging up some of my old sins, that is to say, sonnets. I do not think you remember them, so I will copy them out, as well as two or three lately written. I have just written one on fame, which Brown is transcribing, and he has his book in mind. I must employ myself, perhaps, in a sonnet on the same subject. On fame. You cannot eat your cake and have it, too, a proverb. How fevered is that man who cannot look upon his mortal days with temperate blood, who vexes all the leaves of his life's book, and robs his fair name of its maidenhood. It is as if the rose should pluck herself, or the ripe plum finger its misty bloom, as if a clear lake meddling with itself should cloud its clearness with a muddy gloom. But the rose leaves herself upon the briar, for winds to kiss and grateful bees to feed, and the ripe plum still wears its dim attire. The undisturbed lake has crystal space. Why then should man, teasing the world for grace, spoil a salvation by a fierce miscreed? Another on fame. Fame like a wayward girl will still be coy to those who woo her with two slavish knees, but make surrender to some thoughtless boy, and dotes the more upon a heart at ease. She as a gypsy will not speak to those who have not learnt to be content without her, a jilt whose ear was never whispered close, who think the scandal her who would talk about her, a very gypsy as she nilus-born, sister-in-law, to jealous potifar. He loves thick barred to repay her scorn for scorn. She loved Lauren Ardis, madmen that she are. Make your best bow to her and bid adieu. Then if she likes it she will follow you. Two sleep. A soft embalmer of the still midnight, shutting with careful fingers and benign, our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light, and shaded in forgetfulness divine. O sue this sleep, if so it please thee close, in midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes. O wait, the amen, ere thy poppy throes, around my bed its dewy charities. Then save me, o'er the past day will shine, upon my pillow breeding many woes. Save me from curious conscience, that still lords, its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole. Find the key deftly in the oiled wards, and seal the hushed casket of my soul. The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and the only one, with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry. This I have done leisurely. I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and a healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as goddess before the time of Apuleus, the Platonus who lived under the Augustan age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or sacrificed to with any of the ancient fervor, and perhaps never thought of in the old religion. I am more orthodox than to let a heathen goddess be so neglected. According to Psyche, O goddess, hear these tuneless numbers rung by sweet enforcement and remembrance dear, and pardon that thy secret should be sung, even into thine own soft conched ear. Surely I dreamt today, or did I see, thy winged Psyche with awakened eyes, I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly, and on the sudden fainting was surprise, so two fair creatures couched side by side, in deepest grass beneath thy whispering fan of leaves and troubled blossoms where they ran, a brooklet scarce espied, mid-hushed, cool-rooted flowers fragonied, blue freckle-pink and butted Syrian, they lay calm breathing on the bedded grass, their arms embraced in their pinions too, their lips touch not but had not bid adieu, as if disjoined by soft-handed slumber, and ready still past kisses too outnumber, a tender dawn of aurorian love, the winged boy I knew, but who was thou happy, happy dove? His Psyche, true, a latest born and loveliest vision far, of all Olympus-faded hierarchy, fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region star, or Vesper, amorous glowworm of the sky, fairer than these, though temple thou hast none, nor altar heaped with flowers, nor virgin choir to make delicious moan upon the midnight hours, no voice, no loot, no pipe, no incense sweet, from chain-swung censor teeming, no shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat, of pale mouth, profit dreaming. O blumious though too late for antique vows, too too late for the fond believing liar, when wholly were the haunted forest vows, wholly the air, the water, and the fire, yet even in these days so far retired, from happy pieties thy lucent fans, fluttering among the faint Olympians, I see and sing my own eyes inspired. O let me be thy choir and make a moan upon the midnight hours, thy voice, thy loot, thy pipe, thy incense sweet, from swing to censor teeming, thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat, of pale mouth, profit dreaming. Yes, I will be thy priest and build a fain, and some untrodden region of my mind, where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain, instead of pine shall murmur in the wind. Far, far around shall those dark clustered trees, fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep, and thereby Zephyr's streams and birds and bees, the moss-lain dryad shall be lulled to sleep. And in the midst of this wide quietness, a rosy sanctuary will lie dressed, with a wreathed trellis of a working brain, with buds and bells and stars without a name, with all the gardener fancy air could feign, who breeding flowers will never breed the same, and there shall be for thee all soft delight that shadowy thought can win, a bright torch and a casement ope at night to let the warm love in. Here endeth ye owed to Psyche. In Zippit, Altera, Sonetta. I have been endeavouring to discover a better sonnet stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes. The other kind appears too elegiac, and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect. I do not pretend to have succeeded. It will explain itself. If by dull rhymes our English must be chained, and like a dramata the sonnet sweet, fettered, in spite of pained loveliness, let us find out if we must be constrained, sandals more interwoven and complete, to fit the naked foot of poesy. Let us inspect the lyre and weigh the stress of every chord and see what may be gained, by ear industrious and attention-meat. Misers of sound and syllable no less, than Midas of his coinage let us be, jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath-crown. So if we may not let the muse be free, she will be bound with garlands of her own. May 3. This is the third of May, and everything is in delightful forwardness. The violets are not withered before the peeping of the first rows. You must let me know everything. How parcels come and go, what papers you have, and what newspapers you want, and other things. God bless you, my dear brother and sister. Your ever-affectionate brother, John Keats. End of Letter 92, Part 4 Letter 93 of Letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. The Fanny Keats Wentworth Place, Saturday morning, Postmark, February 27, 1819. My dear Fanny, I intended to have not failed to do as you requested, and write you, as you say, once a fortnight. On looking to your letter, I find there is no date, and not knowing how long it is since I received it, I do not precisely know how great a sinner I am. I am getting quite well, and Mrs. Dilke is getting on pretty well. You must pay no attention to Mrs. Abbey's unfeeling and ignorant gavel. You can't stop an old woman's crying more than you can a child's. The old woman is the greatest nuisance because she is too old for the rod. Many people live opposite a blackspist till they cannot hear the hammer. I've been in town for two or three days, and came back last night. I've been a little concerned at not hearing from George. I continue in daily expectation. Keep on reading and play as much on the music and the grass plot as you can. I should like to take possession of those grass plots for a month or so, and send Mrs. A to town to count coffee berries instead of current bunches, for I want you to teach me a few common dancing steps, and I would buy a watchbox to practice them in by myself. I think I had better always pay the postage of these letters. I shall send you another book the first time I am in town, early enough to book it with one of the morning Walthamstow coaches. You did not say a word about your chill-blanes. Write me directly, and let me know about them. Your letter shall be answered like an echo. Your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 93. Letter 94 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. To Fanny Keats, Wentworth Place, March 13, 1819. My dear Fanny, I have been employed lately in writing to George. I do not send him very short letters, but keep on day after day. There were some young men, I think, I told you of, who were going to the settlement. They have changed their minds, and I am disappointed in my expectation of sending letters by them. I went lately to the only dance I have been to, these twelve months, or shall go to, for twelve months again. It was to our brother-in-law's cousins. She gave a dance for her birthday, and I went for the sake of Mrs. Wiley. I am waiting every day to hear from George. I trust there is no harm in the silence. Other people are in the same expectation as we are. On looking at your seal, I cannot tell whether it is done or not with a tassie. It seems to me to be paced. As I went through Lester Square lately, I was going to call and buy you some. But not knowing, but you might have some, I would not run the chance of buying duplicates. Tell me if you have any, or if you would like any, and whether you would rather have motto ones like that, with which I sealed this letter, or heads of great men, such as Shakespeare, Milton, etc., or fancy pieces of art, such as fame, adonis, etc., those gentry you read of at the end of the English dictionary. Tell me also if you want any particular book, or pencils, or drawing paper, anything but livestock. Though I will not now be very severe on it, remembering how fond I used to be of goldfinches, tom-tits, minnows, mice, ticklebacks, dace, cock-sammons, and all the whole tribe of the bushes and the brooks. But verily, they are better in the trees than now the water. Though I must confess even now, a partiality for a handsome globe of goldfish. Then I would have it hold ten pails of water, and be fed continually fresh through a cool pipe with another pipe to let through the floor. Well ventilated, they would preserve all their beautiful silver and crimson. Then I would put it before a handsome painted window, and shade it all around with myrtles and japonicas. I should like the window to open onto the lake of Geneva, and there I'd sit and read all day like the picture of somebody reading. The weather now and then begins to feel like spring, and therefore I have begun my walks on the heath again. Mrs. Dilke is getting better than she has been, as she is at length taken of physician's advice. She ever and anon ask after you, and always bids me remember her in my letters to you. She is going to leave Hampstead for the sake of educating their son Charles at the Westminster School. We, Mr. Brown and I, shall leave in the beginning of May. I do not know what I shall do or where be all the next summer. Mrs. Reynolds has had a sick house, but they are all well now. You see what news I can send you, I do. We all live one day like the other, as well as you do. The only difference is being sick and well, with the variations of single and double knocks and the story of a dreadful fire in the newspapers. I mentioned Mr. Brown's name, yet I do not think I ever said a word about him to you. He is a friend of mine of two years standing, with whom I walk through Scotland, who has been very kind to me in many things when I most wanted his assistance, and with whom I keep house till the first of May. You will know him some day. The name of the young man who came with me is William Hoslem. Ever your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 94. Letter 95. Of Letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Neema. To Fanny Keats. Postmark. Hampstead. March 24, 1819. My dear Fanny, it is impossible for me to call on you today, for I have particular business at the other end of town this morning, and must be back to Hampstead with all speed to keep a long agreed on appointment. Tomorrow I shall see you. Your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 95. Letter 96. Of Letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Neema. To Joseph Severn, Wentworth Place. Monday afternoon, March 29, 1819. My dear Severn, your note gave me some pain, not on my own account, but on yours. Of course, I should never suffer any petty vanity of mine to hinder you in any wise, and therefore I should say put the miniature in the exhibition. If only myself was to be hurt. But will it not hurt you? What good can it do to any future picture? Even a large picture is lost in that canting place. What a drop of water in the ocean is a miniature. Those who might chance to see it, for the most part, if they had ever heard of either of us, and know what we were, and of what years would laugh at the puff of the one and the vanity of the other. I am, however, in these matters, a very bad judge, and would advise you to act in a way that appears to yourself the best for your interest. As your Hermia and Helena is finished, send that without the prologue of a miniature. I shall see you soon, if you do not pay me a visit sooner. There is a bowl for you. Yours ever sincerely, John Keats. End of Letter 96. Letter 97. Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo. To Fanny Keats, Wentworth Place, April 13, 1819. My dear Fanny, I have been expecting a letter from you about what the parson said to your answers. I have thought also of writing to you often, and I am sorry to confess that my neglect of it has been but a small instance of my idleness of late, which has been growing upon me, so that it will require a great shake to get rid of it. I have written nothing, and almost read nothing, but I must turn over a new leaf. One most discouraging thing hinders me. We have no news yet from George, so that I cannot, with any confidence, continue the letter I have been preparing for him. Many are in the same state with us, and many have heard from the settlement. They must be well, however, and we must consider the silence as good news. I ordered some bulbous roots for you at the gardeners, and they sent me some, but they were all in bud and could not be sent, so I put them in our garden. There are some beautiful heaths now in bloom and pots. Either heaths or some seasonable plants I will send you instead. Perhaps some that are not yet in bloom, that you may see them come out. Tomorrow night I am going to a route, a thing I am not at all in love with. Mr. Dilk and his family have left Hampstead. I shall dine with them today in Westminster, where I think I told you they were going to reside for the sake of sending their son, Charles, to the Westminster school. I think I mentioned the death of Mr. Haslam's father. Yesterday week the two Mr. Wiley's dined with me. I hope you have good store of double violets. I think they are the princesses of flowers. And in a shower of rain, almost as fine as barley-sugar drops are to a school boy's tongue. I suppose this fine weather the lamb's tails give a frisk or two extraordinary. When a boy would cry who's ah, and a girl oh my, a little lamb frisk its tail. I've not been lately through Leicester Square. The first time I do, I will remember your seals. I thought it best to live in town this summer, chiefly for the sake of books, which cannot be had with any comfort in the country. Besides, my scotch journey gave me a dose of the picturesque with which I ought to be contented for some time. Westminster is the place I have pitched upon. The city, or any place very confined, would soon turn me pale and thin, which is to be avoided. You must make up your mind to get stout this summer. Indeed, I have an idea we shall both be corpulent old folks with triple chins and stumpy thumbs. Your affectionate brother, John, end of letter 97. Letter 98 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sydney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden, Tuesday, April 13, 1819. My dear Hayden, when I offered you assistance, I thought I had it in my hand. I thought I had nothing to do but to do. The difficulties I met with arose from the alertness and suspicion of Abbey, and especially from the affairs of being still in a lawyer's hand, who has been draining our property for the last six years of every charge he could make. I cannot do two things at once, and thus this affair has stopped my pursuits in every way from the first prospect I had of difficulty. I assure you I have harassed myself ten times more than if I alone had been concerned in so much gain or loss. I have also ever told you the exact particulars as well as and as literally as any hopes or fear could translate them. For it was only by parcels that I found all these petty obstacles for which my own sake should not exist a moment, and yet why not, for from my own imprudence and neglect all my accounts are entirely in my guardian's power. This has taught me a lesson. Hereafter I will be more correct. I find myself possessed of much less than I thought for, and now if I had all on the table all I could do would be to take it from a moderate two years subsistence and lend you the rest, but I cannot say how soon I could become possessed of it. This would be no sacrifice nor any matter worth thinking of. Much less than parting as I have more than once done with little sums which might have gradually formed a library to my taste. These sums amount together to nearly two hundred pounds, which I have but a chance of ever being repaid or paid at a very distant period. I am humble enough to put this in writing from the sense I have of your struggling situation and the great desire that you should doom me the justice to credit me, the un ostentatious and willing state of my nerves on all such occasions. It has not been my fault. I am doubly hurt at the slightly reproachful tone of your note and at the occasion of it, for it must be some other disappointment. You seem so sure of some important help when I last saw you. Now you have maimed me again. I was whole. I began reading again. When your note came I was engaged in a book. I dread as much as plague the idle fever of two months more without any fruit. I will walk over the first fine day, then see what aspect your affairs have taken, and if they should continue gloomy walk into the city to Abbey and get his consent, for I am persuaded that to me alone he will not concede a jot. End of Letter 98 Letter 99 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sydney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Wentworth Place Saturday, April 17th, 1819. My dear Fanny, if it were but six o'clock in the morning I would set off to see you today. If I should do so now I could not stop long enough for a how do you do? It is so long a walk through Hornsey and Tottenham. And as for stagecoaching it, besides that it is very expensive. It is like going into the boxes by way of the pit. I cannot go out on Sunday. But if on Monday it should promise as fair as today, I will put on a pair of loose, easy palatable boots and marolder chevaux. I continue increasing my letter to George to send it by one of Burbeck's sons who is going out soon. So if you will let me have a few more lines they will be in time. I am glad you got on so well with Monsieur Le Cure. Is he a nice clergyman? A great deal depends on a coctat and powder. Not gunpowder, Lord Lovis, but ladymeal, violet smooth, dainty scented, lily white, feather soft, wigsby dressing, coat collar spoiling, whisker reaching, pigtail loving, swans down, puffing, parson's sweetening powder. I shall call him passing at the Tottenham nursery and see if I can find some seasonable plants for you. That is the nearest place. Or by our lock-in or ladykin. That is by the Virgin Mary's kindred. Is there not a twig manufacturer in Walthamstow? Mr. and Mrs. Dilke are coming to dine with us today. They will enjoy the country after Westminster. Oh, there's nothing like fine weather and health and books and fine country and a contented mind and diligent habit of reading and thinking and an amulet against the ennui. And please have in a little claret wine cool out of a cellar a mile deep with a few or a good many ratafia cakes, a rocky basin to bathe in, a strawberry bed to say your prayers to flora in, a pad and ag to go you ten miles or so, two or three sensible people to chat with, two or three spiteful folks to spar with, two or three odd fishes to laugh at and two or three numbskulls to argue with instead of using dumb bells on a rainy day. Two or three posies with two or three symbols, two or three noses with two or three pimples, two or three wise men and two or three ninnies, two or three purses and two or three guineas, two or three wraps at two or three doors, two or three naps of two or three hours, two or three cats and two or three mice, two or three sprouts at very great price, 2 or 3 sandies and 2 or 3 tabbies, 2 or 3 dandies and 2 mrs. Blank mum, 2 or 3 smiles and 2 or 3 frowns, 2 or 3 miles to 2 or 3 towns, 2 or 3 pegs for 2 or 3 bonnets, 2 or 3 dove eggs to hatch into sonnets. Good-bye, Ivan Appointment. Can't stop on word. Good-bye now. Don't get up. Open the door. Myself. Good-bye. See ya Monday. J.K. End of letter 99. Letter 100 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Hamston, May 13th, 1819. My dear Fanny, I have a letter from George at last, and it contains, considering all things, good news. I have been with it today to Mrs. Wiley's with whom I have left it. I shall have it again as soon as possible, and then I will walk over and read it to you. They are quite well and settled tolerably in comfort, after a great deal of fatigue and harris. They had the good chance to meet at Louisville with the school fellow of ours. You may expect me within three days. I am writing tonight several notes concerning this to many of my friends. Good-night. God bless you, John Keats. End of letter 100. Letter 101 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Hamston, May 26th, 1819. My dear Fanny, I have been looking for a fine day to pass at Walthamstow. There has not been one morning, except Sunday, and then I was obliged to stay at home, that I could depend upon. I have, I am sorry to say, had an accident with the letter. I sent it to Haslam, and he returned it torn into a thousand pieces. So I shall be obliged to tell you all that I can remember from memory. You would have heard from me before this, but that I was in continual expectation of a fine morning. I want also to speak to you concerning myself. Mind I do not purpose to quit England as George has done, but I am afraid I shall be forced to take a voyage or two. However, we will not think of that for some months. Should it be a fine morning tomorrow, you will see me. Your affectionate brother, John. End of letter 101. Letter 102 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Wentworth Place, June 9th, 1819. My dear Fanny, I shall be with you next Monday at the farthest. I could not keep my promise of seeing you again in a week, because I am in so unsettled a state of mind about what I am to do. I have given up the idea of the India man. I cannot resolve to give up my favorite studies, so I purpose to retire into the country and set my mind at work once more. A friend of mine who has an ill state of health called on me yesterday, and proposed to spend a little time with him at the back of the Isle of Wight, where he said we might live very cheaply. I agreed to his proposal. I have taken a great dislike to town. I never go there. Someone is always calling on me, and as we have spare beds they often stop a couple of days. I have written lately to some acquaintances in Devonshire concerning a cheap lodging, and they have been very kind in letting me know all I wanted. They have described a pleasant place which I think I shall eventually retire to. How came you on with my young master Yorkshire man? Did not Mrs. A sport her carriage and one? They really surprised me with super civility. How did Mrs. A manage it? How is the old tadpole gardener and the little master next door? It is to be hoped they will both die some of these days. Not having been to town I have not heard whether Mr. A purposes to retire from business. Do let me know if you have heard anything more about it. If he should not I shall be very disappointed. If anyone deserves to be put to his shifts it is that Hodgkinson. As for the other he would live a long time upon his fat and be none the worse for a good long lent. How came a lady to give one Lisbon wine had she drained the gooseberry? Truly I cannot delay making another visit. Asked to take lunch, whether I will have ale, wine, tick sugar, objection to green, like cream, thin bread and butter, another cup, agreeable, enough sugar, little more cream, two week, twelve shillen, and so on and so on and so on. Lord I must come again. We are just going to dinner. I must must with this to the post. Your affectionate brother, John. End of letter 102. Letter 103 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To James Elms. Wentworth Place, Hampstead, June 12th, 1819. Sir, I did not see your note till this Saturday evening, or I should have answered it sooner. However, as it happens, I have but just received the book which contains the only copy of the verses in question. Footnote, in all probability, the Ode to a Nightingale, published in the July Number of the Annals of the Fine Arts, of which James Elms was editor. End footnote. I have asked for it repeatedly, ever since I promised Mr. Hayden and could not help the delay, which I regret. The verses can be struck out in no time, and will, I hope, be quite in time. If you think it at all necessary, a proof may be forwarded, but as I shall transcribe it fairly, perhaps there may be no need. I am, sir, your obedient servant, John Keats. End of letter 103. Letter 104 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Wentworth Place, June 14th, 1819. My dear Fanny, I cannot be with you today for two reasons. Firstly, I have my sore throat coming again to prevent my walking. Secondly, I do not happen just at present to be flush of silver so that I might ride. Tomorrow I am engaged, but the day after you shall see me. Mr. Brown is waiting for me as we are going to town together, so good-bye. Your affectionate brother, John. End of letter 104. Letter 105 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Wentworth Place, June 16th, 1819. My dear Fanny, still I cannot afford to spend money by coach hire and still my throat is not well enough to warrant my walking. I went yesterday to ask Mr. Abbey for some money, but I could not on account of a letter he showed me from my aunt's solicitor. You do not understand the business. I trust it will not in the end be detrimental to you. I am going to try the press once more, and to that end shall retire to live cheaply in the country and compose myself, and verses as well as I can. I have very good friends ready to help me, and I am the more bound to be careful of the money they lend me. It will all be well in the course of a year, I hope. I am confident of it, so do not let it trouble you at all. Mr. Abbey showed me a letter he had received from George containing the news of the birth of a niece for us, and all doing well. He said he would take it to you, so I suppose today you will see it. I was preparing to inquire for a situation with an apothecary, but Mr. Brown persuades me to try the press once more, so I will with all my industry and ability. Mr. Rice, a friend of mine in ill health, has proposed retiring to the back of the Isle of Wight, which I hope will be cheap in the summer. I am sure it will in the winter. Thence you shall frequently hear from me, and in the letters I will copy those lines I may write, which will be most pleasing to you, in the confidence you will show them to no one. I have not run quite aground yet, I hope, having written this morning to several people, to whom I have lent money requesting repayment. I shall henceforth shake off my indolent fits, and among other reformation be more diligent in writing to you, and mind you always to answer me. I shall be obliged to go out of town on Saturday, and shall have no money till to-morrow, so I am very sorry to think I shall not be able to come to Waldenstow. The head, Mr. Severn did of me, is now too dear, but here enclosed is a very capital profile done by Mr. Brown. I will write again on Monday or Tuesday. Mr. and Mrs. Dilker, well, your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 105 Letter 106 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden. Wentworth Place Tuesday morning, June 17th, 1819. My dear Hayden, I know you will not be prepared for this, because your pocket must need to be very low, having been at Ebtide so long. But what can I do? Mine is lower. I was the day before yesterday much in want of money, but some news I had yesterday has driven me into necessity. I went to Abbey's for some cash, and he put into my hand a letter from my aunt's solicitor containing the pleasant information that she was about to file a bill in chancery against us. Now in case of a defeat, Abbey will be very undeservedly in the wrong box, so I could not ask him for any more money, nor can I till the affair is decided, and if it goes against him I must unconscious make over to him what little he may have remaining. My purpose is now to make one more attempt in the press. If that fail, ye hear no more of me, as Chaucer says. Brown has lent me some money for the present. Do borrow or beg somehow what you can for me. Do not suppose I am at all uncomfortable about the matter in any other way than as it forces me to apply to the needy. I could not send you those lines, for I could not get the only copy of them before last Saturday evening. I sent them Mr. Elms on Monday. I saw Munkhouse on Sunday. He told me you were getting on with the picture. I would have come over to you today, but I am fully employed. Yours ever sincerely, John Keats. End of Letter 106 I seek to come have an immediate reference. I think I told you the purpose for which I retired to this place, to try the fortune of my pen once more. And indeed I have some confidence in my success. But in every event, believe me, dear sister, I shall be sufficiently comfortable, as, if I cannot lead that life of competence and society I should wish, I have enough knowledge of my galapods to ensure me in employment and maintenance. The place I am in now, I visited once before, and a very pretty place it is, were it not for the bad weather. Our window looks over housetops, and cliffs into the sea, so that when the ships sail past the cottage chimneys, you may take them for weathercocks. We have hill and tail, forest and mead, and plenty of lobsters. I was on the Portsmouth coach the Sunday before last in that heavy shower, and I may say I went to Portsmouth by water. I got a little cold, and as it always flies to my throat, I am a little out of sorts that way. There were on the coach with me some common French people, but very well-behaved. There was a woman amongst them, to whom the poor men in ragged coats were more gallant than ever I saw a gentleman-to-lady at a ball. When we got down to Walkapill, one of them picked a rose, and the unremounting gave it to the woman with, Mamzelle, while I am bell-rose. I am so hard at work that perhaps I should not have written to you for a day or two, if George's letter had not diverted my attention to the interests and pleasure of those I love, and ever believe that when I do not behave punctually, it is from a very necessary occupation, and that my silence is no proof of my not thinking of you, or that I want more than a gentle Philip to bring your image with every claim before me. You have never seen mountains, or I might tell you that the hill at Steepill is, I think, almost of as much consequence as Mount Ridle on Lake Winander. Bond Church, too, is a very delightful place, as I can see by the cottages, all romantic, covered with creepers and honeysuckles with roses and eglentines peeping in at the windows. Fit to bodes for the people, I guess, live in them, romantic old maids fond of novels or soldiers' widows with a pretty jointure, or anybody's widows or aunts or anything given to poetry and a piano forte, as far as in them lies, as people say. If I could play upon the guitar, I might make my fortune with an old song, and get two blessings at once, a lady's heart and the rheumatism. But I am almost afraid to peep in at those little windows, for a pretty window should show a pretty face, and as the world goes, chances are against me. I am living with a very good fellow indeed, a Mr. Rice. He is unfortunately laboring under a complaint which has for some years been a burden to him. This is a pain to me. He has a greater tact in speaking to people of the village than I have, and in those matters is a great amusement as well as a good friend to me. He bought a ham the other day, for says he, Keats, I don't think a ham is a wrong thing to have in a house. Write to me, Shanklin, Isle of White, as soon as you can, for a letter is a great treat to me here. Believing me ever, your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 107 Letter 108 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To John Hamilton Reynolds. Extract from a letter dated Shanklin, near Ride, Isle of White, Sunday, 12th, for 11th, July, 1819. You will be glad to hear, under my own hand, though Rice says we are like sauntering Jack and Idle Joe, how diligent I have been and am being. I have finished the act, and in the interval of beginning the second have proceeded pretty well with Lamia, finishing the first part, which consists of about 400 lines. I have great hopes of success, because I make use of my judgment more deliberately than I have yet done. But in case of failure with the world, I shall find my content. And here, as I know you have my good at heart as much as a brother, I can only repeat to you what I have said to George, but however I should like to enjoy what the competencies of life procure. I am in no wise dashed at a different prospect. I have spent too many thoughtful days and moralized through too many nights for that, and fruitless would they be indeed if they did not by degrees make me look upon the affairs of the world with a healthy deliberation. I have of late been malting, not for fresh feathers and wings, they are gone. And in their stead I hope to have a pair of patient sublunary legs. I have altered, not from a chrysalis into a butterfly, but the contrary, having two little loopholes, whence I may look out into the stage of the world. And that world on our coming here I almost forgot. The first time I sat down to write, I could scarcely believe in the necessity for so doing. It struck me as a great oddity. Yet the very corn which is now so beautiful, as if it had only took to ripening yesterday, is for the market. So why should I be delicate? End of letter 108