 Letter 45 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 James Rice, 10th Tuesday, March 24, 1818 My dear Rice, Being in the midst of your favorite Devin, I should not, by rights, pen one word, but it should contain a vast portion of wit, wisdom, and learning. Fry have heard that Milton, ere he wrote his answer to Salmasius, came into these parts, and for one whole month, rolled himself for three whole hours per day in a certain meadow hard by us, where the mark of his nose at equidistances is still shown. The exhibitor of the said meadow further saith that after these rollings, not a nettle sprang up in all the seven acres for seven years, and that from the said time a new sort of plant was made from the white thorn of a thornless nature, very much used by the bucks of the present day to wrap their boots with all. This account made me very naturally suppose that the nettles and thorns etherealized by the scholars wrote a remotion, and garnered in his head, thence flew after a process of fermentation against the luckless Salmasius and occasioned his well-known and unhappy end. What a happy thing it would be if we could settle our thoughts and make our minds up on any matter in five minutes and remain content, that is, build a sort of mental cottage of feelings, quiet and pleasant, to have a sort of philosophical back garden and cheerful holiday-keeping front one. But alas, this never can be, for as the material cottager knows, there are such places as France and Italy and the Andes and burning mountains, so the spiritual cottager has knowledge of the terra semi-incognita of things unearthly, and cannot for his life keep in the check-grain, or I should stop here, quiet and comfortable in my theory of nettles. You will see, however, I am obliged to run wild, being attracted by the lodestone concatenation. No sooner had I settled the naughty point of Salmasius, than the devil put this whim into my head in the likeliness of one of Pythagoras' questionings. Did Milton do more good or harm in the world? He wrote, let me inform you, for I have it from a friend who had it of— He wrote, Lucidius, Comus, Paradise Loss and other poems, with much delectable prose. He was, moreover, an active friend to man all his life and has been since his death. Very good, but my dear fellow, I must let you know that, as there is ever the same quantity of matter constituting this habitable globe, as the ocean notwithstanding the enormous changes and revolutions taking place in some or other of its domain, notwithstanding waterspouts, whirlpools, and muddy rivers emptying themselves into it. Still, is made up of the same bulk, nor ever varies the number of its atoms, and, as a certain bulk of water, was instituted at the creation. So, very likely, a certain portion of intellect was spun forth into the thin air, for the brains of man to pray upon it. You will see my drift without any unnecessary parenthesis. That which is contained in the Pacific could not line the hollow of the Caspian. That, which was in Milton's head, could not find room in Charles II's. He, like a moon, attracted intellect to its flow. It is not ebjet, but has left the shore-pebbles all bare. I mean, all box, authors of Hengist and Castle Race of the present day, who, without Milton's gormandising, might have been all wise men. Now, for as much as I was very predisposed to a country I had heard you speak so highly of, I took particular notice of everything during my journey, and have brought some folio asses' skins for memorandum. I've seen everything but the wind, and that, they say, becomes visible by taking a dose of acorns, or sleeping one night in a hog trough, with your tail to the south-south-west. Some of the little barmaids looked at me as if I knew Jem Brice. Well, I can't tell. I hope you are showing poor Reynolds the way to get well. Send me a good account of him, and if I can, I'll send you one of Tom. Oh, for a day and all well. I went yesterday to Dallish Fair. Over the hill and over the dale, and over the borne to Dallish, where gingerbread wives have a scanty sale, and gingerbread nuts are smallish, and et cetera, et cetera. Tom's remembrance is in mind to you all. Your sincere friend. John Keats. End of Letter 45. Letter 46. 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. 10th, March 25, 1818. My dear Reynolds, In the hopes of cheering you through a minute or two, I was determined willy nilly to send you some lines, so you will excuse the unconnected subject and careless verse. You know, I am sure, Claude's enchanted castle. The famous picture now belonging to Lady Wantage and exhibited at Burlington House in 1888. Whether Keats ever saw the original is doubtful. It was not shown at the British institution in this time, but he must have been familiar with the subject as engraved by Vivalde's and Woolett. And its suggestive power worked in his mind until it yielded at last the distilled poetic essence of the magic casement passage in Ode to a Nightingale. It is interesting to note the theme of the Grecian urn ode coming in also amidst the unconnected subject and careless verse of this rhymed epistle. End footnote. And I wish you may be pleased with my remembrance of it. The rain has come on again. I think with me Devonshire stands a very poor chance. I shall dam it uphill and down dale if it keeps up to the average of six fine days and three weeks. Let me have better news of you. Tom's Remembrances to you. Remember us to all. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. Dear Renance, as last night I lay in bed, there came before my eyes that wanted thread of shapes and shadows and remembrances that every other minute vex and please. Things all disjointed come from north and south, to which his eyes above a cherub's mouth. Voltaire with cask and shield and harbour-gen, and Alexander with his nightcap on, old Socrates attying his cravat, and Haslitt playing with Miss Edgworth's cat, and Junius Brutus pretty well so-so, making the best of's way towards Soho. Few are there who escape these visitings, perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings, and through whose curtains peep no hellish nose, no wild boar touches, and no mermaid's toes, but flowers bursting out with lusty pride, and young Aeolian harps personified. Some Titian colours touched into real life, the sacrifice goes on, the pontiff knife gleams in the sun, the milk-white heifer lows, the pipes go shrilly, the libation flows, a white sail shows above the green-head cliff, moves round the point and throws her anchor-stiff, the mariners join him with those on land. You know the enchanted castle, it does stand upon a rock on the border of a lake, nested in trees which all do seem to shake from some old, magic-like, organic sword. O Phoebus, that I had thy sacred word to show this castle, in fair dreaming wise unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies. You know it well enough, where it does seem a mossy place, a merlin's hall, a dream. You know the clear lake and the little aisles, the mountains blue and cold near neighbour-wills, all which elsewhere are but half-animate, there do they look alive to love and hate, to smiles and frowns, they seem a lifted mound above some giant pulsing underground. Part of the building was a chosen sea, built by a banished santone of county. The other part, two thousand years from him, was built by Cuthbert to St. Aldebrim. Then there's a little wing far from the sun, built by a lapland witch turned maudlin-none, and many other juts of age at stone, founded with many a mason devil's groan. The doors all look as if they oped themselves, the windows as if latched by phase and elves, and from them comes a silver flash of light as from the westward of a summer's night, or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes gone mad through olden songs and poesies. See what is coming from the distant stem, a golden galley all in silk and trim. Three rows of oars are lightening, moment-wiles into the vergerous bosoms of those aisles. Toward the shade, under the castle wall, it comes in silence, now it is hidden all. The clarion sounds, and from the postern gate an echo of sweet music doth create a fear in the poor herdsmen, who doth bring his beasts to trouble the enchanted spring. He tells of the sweet music and the spot to all his friends, and they believe him not. Oh, that our dreamings all of sleep or wake, with all their colours from the sunset take, from something of material sublime, rather than shadow our own soul's daytime in the dark void of a night. For in the world we jostle, but my flag is not unfurled on the admiral's staff, and so philosophies I dare not yet. Oh, never will the prize, high reason, and the love of good and ill be my award. Things cannot to the will be settled, but they tease us out of thought. Or is it that imagination brought beyond its proper bound yet still confined, lost in a sort of purgatory blind, cannot refer to any standard law of either earth or heaven. It is a flaw in happiness to see beyond our born. It forces us in summer skies to mourn. It spoils the singing of the nightingale. Reynolds, I have a mysterious tale, and cannot speak it. The first page I read upon a lamped rock of green seaweed among the breakers, twas a quiet eve. The rocks were silent. The wide sea did weave an untimulchuous fringe of silver foam along the flat brown sand. I was at home, and should have been most happy. I saw too far into the sea, where every maw, the greater on the less feeds evermore, but I saw too distinct into the core of an eternal fierce destruction. And so from happiness I far was gone. Still am I sick of it, and though today I've gathered young spring leaves and flowers gay of periwinkle and wild strawberry. Still do I that most fierce destruction see, the shark at savage prey, the hawk at pounce, the gentle robin like a pard or ounce ravening a worm, away ye horrid moods, moods of one's mind. You know I hate them well. You know I'd sooner be a clapping bell to some camp-shop-commissionary church than with these horrid moods be left in the lurch. End of Letter 46 Letter 47 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Edited by Sydney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Neema To Benjamin Robert Hayden Wednesday 10th April 8th, 1818 My dear Hayden, I am glad you were pleased with my nonsense, and if it so happen that the humor takes me when I have set down to prose to you I will not gainsay it. I should be, God forgive me, ready to swear because I cannot make use of your assistance in going through Devon if, I was not, in my own mind, determined to visit it thoroughly at some more favorable time of the year. But now Tom, who is getting greatly better, is anxious to be in town. Therefore I put off my threading the county. I purpose within a month to put my knapsack at my back and make a pedestrian tour through the north of England and part of Scotland to make a sort of prologue to the life I intend to pursue, that is to write to study and to see all Europe at the lowest expense. I will clamber through the clouds and exist. I will get such an accumulation of stupendous recollections that as I walk through the suburbs of London I may not see them. I will stand upon Mont Blanc and remember this coming summer when I intend to straddle Ben Lomond with my soul. Gallagascans are out of the question. I am near myself to hear your Christ is being tinted into immortality. Believe me, Hayden, your picture is part of myself. I have ever been too sensible of the labyrinthian path to eminence and art, judging from poetry, ever to think I understood the emphasis of painting. The innumerable compositions and decompositions which take place between the intellect and its thousand materials before it arrives at that trembling, delicate and snail-horn perception of beauty. I know not your many havens of intenseness, nor ever can know them, but for this I hope not you achieve is lost upon me, for when a schoolboy, the abstract idea I had of a heroic painting, was what I cannot describe. I saw it somewhat sideways, large, prominent, round, and colored with magnificence, somewhat like the feel I have of Anthony and Cleopatra, or of Alcibiades leaning on his crimson couch in his galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with the sea. That passage in Shakespeare is finer than this. See how the surly warwick mans the wall. I like your consignment of cornet. That's the humor of it. They shall be called your posthumous works. I don't understand your bit of Italian. I hope she'll wake from her dream and flourish fair, my respects to her. The hedges by this time are beginning to leaf. Cats are becoming more vociferous. Young ladies who wear watches are always looking at them. Women about forty-five think the season vary backward. Ladies mayors have but half an allowance of food. It rains here again, has been doing so for three days. However, as I told you, I'll take a trial in June, July, or August next year. I am afraid Wordsworth went rather huffed out of town. I am sorry for it. He cannot expect his fireside divan to be infallible. He cannot expect that every man of worth is as proud as himself. Oh, that he had not fit with a warner. That is, dying to Kingston's. I shall be in town in about a fortnight, and then we'll have a day or so, now and then, before I set out on my northern expedition. We will have no more abominable rouse, for they leave one in a fearful silence. Having settled the Methodist, let us be rational, not upon compulsion. No, if it will outlet it, but I will not play the bassoon any more deliberately. Remember me to Hazlett and Bewick. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of Letter forty-seven. Letter forty-eight 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 John Hamilton Reynolds. Thursday morning. 10th. April 9, 1818. My dear Reynolds. Since you all agree that the thing is bad, it must be so. Though I am not aware, there is anything like hunt in it. And if there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with hunt. Look it over again, and examine into it the motives, the seeds, from which any one sentence sprung. I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the public, or to anything in existence, but the eternal being, the principle of beauty, and the memory of great men. When I am writing for myself, for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course with me. But a preface is written to the public. A thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, in which I cannot address without feelings of hostility. If I write a preface in a supple or subdued style, you will not be in character with me as a public speaker. I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing me. But among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping. I hate the idea of humility to them. I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least shadow of public thought. Forgive me for vexing you and making a Trojan horse of such a trifle, both with respect to the matter in question and myself. But it eases me to tell you. I could not live without the love of my friends. I would jump down atna for any great public good. But I hate a mockish popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about pictures and books. I see swarms of porcupines with their quills erect like lime twigs set to catch my winged book. And I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my preface is not much of a torch. It would have been too insulting to begin from Jove. And I could not set a golden head upon a thing of clay. If there is any fault in the preface, it is not affectation, but an undersong of disrespect to the public. If I write another preface, it must be done without a thought of those people. I will think about it. If it should not reach you in four or five days, tell Taylor to publish it without a preface and let the dedication simply stand and scribe to the memory of Thomas Chatterton. I had resolved last night to write to you this morning. I wish it had been about something else, something to greet you towards the close of your long illness. I have had one or two intimations if you are going to Hampstead for a space. And I regret to see your confounded rheumatism keeps you in little Britain, where I am sure the air is too confined. Devonshire continues rainy. As the drops beat against the window, they give me the same sensation as a quart of cold water offered to revive a half-drowned devil. No field of the clouds dropping fatness, but as if the roots of the earth were rotten, cold and drenched. I have not been able to go to Kent's Cave at Babacombe. However, on one very beautiful day I had a fine clamber over the rocks all along as far as that place. I shall be in town in about ten days. We go by way of bath on purpose to call on Bailey. I hope soon to be writing to you about the things of the North proposing to wafer all over those parts. I have settled my accoutrements in my own mind and will go to Gorge Wonders. However, we'll have some days together before I set out. I have many reasons for going Wonderways, to make my winter chair free from spleen, to enlarge my vision, to escape disquisitions on poetry and Kingston criticism, to promote digestion and economize shoe leather. I'll have leather buttons and belt, and, if Brown holds his mind, over the hills we go. If my books will help me to it, then I will take all Europe in turn and see the kingdoms of the earth and the glory of them. Tom is getting better. He hopes you may meet him at the top of the hill. My love to your nurses, I am ever your affectionate friend. John Keats. End of Letter 48 Letter 49 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 John Hamilton Reynolds. Tinnmouth. Friday. April 10, 1818. My dear Reynolds, I am anxious you should find this preface tolerable. If there is an affectation in it, it is natural to me. Do let the printers devil cook it, and let me be as the casing air. You are too good in this matter. Where I in your state, I am certain I should have no thought but a discontent in illness. I might, though, be taught patience. I had an idea of giving no preface. However, don't you think this had better go? Oh, let it. One should not be too timid of committing faults. The climate here weighs us down completely. Tom is quite low-spirited. It is impossible to live in a country which is continually under hatches. Who would live in a region of mist, game laws, indemnity bills, etc., when there is such a place as Italy? It is said this England, from its climb, produces a spleen, able to engender the finest sentiments and cover the whole face of the aisle with green. So it ought, I am sure. I should still like the dedication simply, as I said in my last. I wanted to send you a few songs written in your favorite Devon. It cannot be. Rain, rain, rain. I am going this morning to take a facsimile of a letter of Nelson's. Very much to his honor. You will be greatly pleased when you see it. In about a week. What a spite it is, one cannot get out. The little way I went yesterday, I found a lane banked on each side with the store of Primrose's, while the earlier bushes are beginning to leaf. I shall hear a good account of you soon. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. My love to all. And remember me to Taylor. End of letter 49. Letter 50 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To John Taylor. TinMeth Friday, April 24th, 1818. My dear Taylor. I think I did wrong to leave to you all the trouble of Endymion, but I could not help it then. Another time I shall be more bent to all sorts of troubles and disagreeables. Young men for some time have an idea that such a thing as happiness is to be had, and therefore are extremely impatient under any unpleasant restraining. In time, however, of such stuff as the world about them, they know better, and instead of striving from uneasiness, greet it as an habitual sensation, a panier which is to weigh upon them throughout life. An improportion to my disgust at the task is my sense of your kindness and anxiety. The book pleased me much. It is very free from faults. And although there are one or two words I should wish replaced, I see in many places an improvement greatly to the purpose. I think those speeches which are related, those parts where the speaker repeats a speech, such as Glaucus' repetition of Cersei's words, should have inverted commas to every line. In this, there is a little confusion. If we divide the speeches into identical and related, and to the former put merely one inverted comma at the beginning and another at the end, and to the latter inverted commas before every line, the book will be better understood at the first glance. Look at pages 126, 127. You will find in the third line the beginning of a related speech marked thus, are to wake, while at the same time in the next page the continuation of the identical speech is marked in the same manner, young men of Latmas. You will find on the other side all the parts which should have inverted commas to every line. I was proposing to travel over the north this summer. There is but one thing to prevent to me. I know nothing. I have read nothing. And I mean to follow Solomon's directions. Get learning. Get understanding. I find earlier days are gone by. I find that I can have no enjoyment in the world, a continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world, some do it with their society, some with their wit, some with their benevolence, some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good humor on all they meet. And in a thousand ways, all dutiful to the command of great nature, there is but one way for me. The road lies through application, study, and thought. I will pursue it. And for that end, purpose retiring for some years. I have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious and a love for philosophy. Were I calculated for the former, I should be glad. But as I am not, I shall turn all my soul to the latter. My brother Tom is getting better, and I hope I shall see both him and Reynolds better before I retire from the world. I shall see you soon and have some talk about what books I shall take with me. Your very sincere friend, John Keats. Pray remember me to Hesse Woodhouse and Percy Street. End of Letter 50. Letter 51 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sydney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To John Hamilton Reynolds. Tinnmouth, April 27th, 1818. My dear Reynolds, it is an awful while since you have heard from me. I hope I may not be punished when I see you well, and so anxious as you always are for me, with the remembrance of my so seldom writing when you were so horribly confined. The most unhappy hours in our lives are those in which we recollect times past to our own blushing. If we are immortal, that must be the hell. If I must be immortal, I hope it will be after having taken a little of that watery labyrinth in order to forget some of my schoolboy days and others since those. I have heard from George at different times how slowly you were recovering. It is a tedious thing, but all medical men will tell you how far a very gradual amendment is preferable. You will be strong after this. Never fear. We are here still enveloped in clouds. I lay awake last night, listening to the rain, with a sense of being drowned and rotted like a grain of wheat. There is a continual courtesy between the heavens and the earth. The heavens rain down their unwelcomeness, and the earth sends it up again to be returned tomorrow. Tom has taken a fancy to a physician here, Dr. Turton, and I think is getting better. Therefore, I shall perhaps remain here some months. I have written to George for some books, shall learn Greek and very likely Italian, and in other ways prepare myself to ask Hazlet in about a year's time the best metaphysical road I can take. For although I take poetry to be chief, yet there is something else wanting to one who passes his life among books and thoughts on books. I long to feast upon old Homer as we have upon Shakespeare, and as I have lately upon Milton. If you understood Greek, and would read me passages now and then explaining their meaning, to it be from its mistiness, perhaps, a greater luxury than reading the thing oneself, I shall be happy when I can do the same for you. I have written for my folio Shakespeare, in which there are the first few stanzas of my pot of basil. I have the rest here finished, and will copy the whole out fair shortly, and George will bring it to you. The compliment is paid by us to Boccacci whether we publish or know. So there is content in this world. Mine is short. You must be deliberate about yours. You must not think of it till many months after you are quite well. Then put your passion to it, and I shall be bound up with you in the shadows of mind, as we are in our matters of human life. Perhaps a stanza or two will not be too foreign to your sickness. Were they unhappy then? It cannot be. Too many tears for lovers have been shed. Too many sighs give we to them in fee, too much of pity after they are dead. Too many doleful stories do we see, whose matter in bright gold were best be read, except in such a page where Theseus spouts over the pathless waves towards him bows. But for the general award of love the little sweet doth kill much bitterness, though died of silent his in undergrove, and Isabellus was a great distress. Though young Lorenzo and warm Indian clove was not embalmed, this truth is not the less. Even bees, the little almsmen of spring-bowers, know there is richest juice in poison flowers. She wept alone for pleasures not to be, sorely she wept until the night came on, and then instead of love, oh misery, she brooded over the luxury alone. What might have been too plainly did she see, and to the silence made a gentle moan, spreading her perfect arms upon the air, and on her couch low murmuring, where, oh where? I heard from Rice this morning, very witty, and have just written to Bailey. Don't you think I am brushing up in the letterway? And being in for it you shall hear again from me very shortly. If you will promise not to put hand to paper for me until you can do it with a tolerable ease of health. Except it be a lion or two. Give my love to your mother and sisters. Remember me to the butlers, not forgetting Sarah. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of letter fifty-one. Letter fifty-two. 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 John Hamilton Reynolds. Tynmouth. May 3, 1818. My dear Reynolds. What I complain of is that I have been in so uneasy a state of mind as not to be fit to write to an invalid. I cannot write to any length under a disguised feeling. I should have loaded you with an addition of gloom, which I am sure you do not want. I am now thank God in a humor to give you a good grotesworth, for Tom, after a night without a wink of sleep and overburdened with fever, has got up after refreshing day's sleep and is better than he has been for a long time. New I trust have been again round the common without any effect but refreshment. As to the matter, I hope I can say with Sir Andrew I have matter enough in my head in your favor. And now in the second place, for I reckon that I have finished my imprimise. I am glad you blow up the weather. All through your letter there is a leaning towards a climate curse, and you know what a delicate satisfaction there is in having a vexation anathematized. One would think there has been growing up for these last four thousand years a grand child scion of the old forbidden tree, and that some modern eve had just violated it, and that there was come with double charge, notice and affer black with thunderous clouds from Sarah Leona. I shall breathe worsted stockings sooner than I thought for. Tom wants to be in town. We will have some such days upon the heath like that of last summer. And why not with the same book? Or what you say to a black-lettered chaucer printed in 1596? Aye, I've got one who's ah. I shall have it bound and gothic, a nice somber binding. It will go a little way to un-modernize. And also I see no reason, because I've been away this last month, why I should not have a peep at your Spencerian. Notwithstanding, you speak of your office in my thought a little too early, for I do not see why a mind like yours is not capable of harboring and digesting the whole mystery of law as easily as Parson Hughes does Pippins, which did not hinder him from his poetic canary. Were I to study physics or rather medicine again, I feel it would not make the least difference in my poetry. When the mind is in its infancy, a bias is in reality a bias. But when we have acquired more strength, a bias becomes no bias. Every department of knowledge we see excellent and calculated towards a great whole. I'm so convinced of this that I am glad at not having given away my medical books, which I shall again look over to keep alive the little I know thither words. And moreover, intend through you and Rice to become a sort of Pipps civilian. An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people. It takes away the heart and fever and helps by widening speculation to ease the burden of the mystery. A thing which I begin to understand a little and which weighed upon you in the most gloomy and true sentence in your letter. The difference of high sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this. In the latter case, we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with all horror of a bare-shouldered creature. In the former case, our shoulders are fledged and we go through the same air and space without fear. This is running one's rigs on the score of abstracted benefit. When we come to human life and the affections, it is impossible to know how a parallel breast and head can be drawn. You will forgive me for thus privately treading out of my depth and take it for treading as schoolboys tread the water. It is impossible to know how far knowledge will console us for the death of a friend and the ill that flesh is heir to. With respect to the affections and poetry you must know by sympathy my thoughts that way and I dare say these few lines will be but a ratification. I wrote them on May Day and intend to finish the ode all in good time. Mother of Hermes and still youthful Maia, may I sing to thee as thou was him'd on the shores of Beia. Or may I woo thee in earlier Sicilian or thy smiles seek as they once were sought in Grecian Isles by Bards who died content on pleasant sward leaving great verse unto a little plan. O, give me their old vigor and unheard save of the quiet primers and the span of heaven and few ears. Rounded by thee my song should die away content is theirs, rich in the simple worship of a day. You may perhaps be anxious to know for fact to what sentence in your letter I elude. You say, I fear there is little chance of anything else in this life. You seem by that to have been going through with a more painful and acute zest the same labyrinth that I have. I have come to the same conclusion thus far. My branchings out there from have been numerous. One of them is the consideration of Wordsworth genius and as a help in the manner of gold being the meridian line of worldly wealth, how he differs from Milton. In here I have nothing but surmises from an uncertainty whether Milton's apparently less anxiety for humanity proceeds from his seeing further or not than Wordsworth and whether Wordsworth has in truth epic passion and martyrs himself to the human heart. The main region of his song in regards to his genius alone we find what he says true as far as we have experienced and we can judge no further but by larger experience. For axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses. We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author. I know this is not plain. You will know exactly my meaning when I say that now I shall relish Hamlet more than I ever have done. Or better, you are sensible, no man can set down venery as a bestial or joyless thing until he is sick of it and therefore all philosophizing on it would be mere wording. Until we are sick we understand not and fine as Byron says knowledge is sorrow and I go on to say that sorrow is wisdom and further for ought we can know for certainty wisdom is folly. So you see how I've run away from Wordsworth and Milton and shall still run away from what was in my head to observe that some kind of letters are good squares, others handsome ovals and others some orbicular other spheroid and why should there not be another species with two rough edges like a rat trap? I hope you will find all my long letters of that species and all will be well for by merely touching the spring delicately and ethereally the roughed edge will fly immediately into a proper compactness and thus you make a good wholesome love with your own leaven in it of my fragments. If you cannot find this said rat trap sufficiently tractable alas for me, it being an impossibility in grain for my ink to stain otherwise. If I scribble long letters I must play my vagaries. I must be too heavy or too light for whole pages. I must be quaint and free of tropes and figures. I must play my drafts as I please and for my advantage and your erudition crown a white with a black or a black with a white and move into black or white far and near as I please. I must go from Haslett to Patmore and make Wordsworth and Coleman play it leapfrog or keep one of them down a whole half holiday at Fly the Garter from gray to gay from little to Shakespeare. Also as a long cause requires two or more sittings of the court so a long letter will require two or more sittings of the breach wherefore I shall resume after dinner. Have you not seen a gall an orc, a seamew or anything to bring this line to a proper length and also fill up this clear part that like the gall I may dip. I hope not out of sight and also like a gall I hope to be lucky in a good size fish. This crossing a letter is not without its association. For checker work leads us naturally to a milkmaid a milkmaid to Hogarth Hogarth to Shakespeare Shakespeare to Haslett Haslett to Shakespeare and thus by merely pulling an apron string we set a pretty peel of chimes at work let them chime on while with your patience I will return to Wordsworth whether or no he has an extended vision or a circumscribed grandeur as an eagle on his nest or on the wing and to be more explicit and to show you how tall I stand by the giant I will put down a simile of human life as far as I now perceive it that is to the point to which I say we both have arrived at. Well, I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments two of which I can only describe the doors of the rest being a jet upon me the first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless chamber in which we remain as long as we do not think we remain there a long while and notwithstanding the doors of the second chamber remain wide open showing a bright appearance we care not to hasten to it but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle within us we know sooner into the second chamber which I shall call the chamber of maiden thought and we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere we see nothing but pleasant wonders and think of delaying there forever in delight however among the effects this breathing this father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart to nature of man of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of misery and heartbreak pain, sickness, and oppression whereby this chamber of maiden thought becomes gradually darkened and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open but all dark all leading to dark passages we see not the balance of good and evil we are in a mist we are now in that state we feel the burden to this point was Wordsworth come as far as I can conceive when he wrote to Intern Abbey and it seems to me that his genius is explorative of those dark passages now if we live and go on thinking we too shall explore them he is a genius and superior to us and so far as he can more than we make discoveries and shed a light on them here I must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton though I think it has depended more upon the general and gregarious advance of intellect than individual greatness of mind from the paradise loss and the other works of Milton I hope it is not too presuming even between ourselves to say that his philosophy human and divine may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years in his time Englishmen were just emancipated from a great superstition and men had got hold of certain points and resting places in reasoning which were too newly born to be doubted and too much opposed by the mass of Europe not to be thought ethereal and authentically divine who could gain say his ideas on virtue vice in chastity and comas just at the time of the dismissal of a hundred disgraces who would not rest satisfied with his hintings at good and evil in the paradise lost when just free from the inquisition in burning and Smithfield the reformation produced such immediate and great benefits that Protestantism was considered under the immediate eye of heaven and its own remaining dogmas and superstitions then as it were generated constituted those resting places and seeming sure points of reasoning from that I have mentioned Milton whatever he may have thought in the sequel appears to have been content with these bias writings he did not think into the human heart as Wordsworth has done yet Milton as a philosopher had sure as great powers as Wordsworth what is then to be inferred by the fangs it proves there is really a grand march of intellect it proves that a mighty providence subdues the mightiest minds to the service of the time being whether it be in human knowledge or religion I have often pitied a tutor who has to hear Nam Musa so often dined into his ears I hope you may not have the same pain in this scribbling I may have read these things before but I never had even a thus dim perception of them and moreover I like to say my lesson to one who will endure my tediousness for my own sake after all there is certainly something real in the world Moore is present to Hazlett is real I like that Moore and I am glad I saw him at the theater just before I left town Tom has spit a lethal blood this afternoon and that is rather a damper but I know the truth is there is something real in the world your third chamber of life shall be a lucky and a gentle one stored with a wine of love and the bread of friendship when you see George if he should not have received a letter from me tell him he will find one at home most likely tell Bailey I hope soon to see him remember me to all the leaves have been out here for money a day I have written to George for the first stanzas of my Isabel I shall have them soon and will copy the whole out for you your affectionate friend John Keats End of letter 52 Hampstead Thursday May 28th 1818 my dear Bailey I should have answered your letter on the moment if I could have said yes to your invitation what hinders me is insuperable I will tell it at a little length you know my brother George has been out of employ for some time it has weighed very much upon him and driven him to scheme and turn over things in his mind the result has been his resolution to emigrate to the back settlements of America become farmer and work with his own hands after purchasing 1400 acres of the American government this for many reasons has met with my entire consent and the chief one is this he is of two independent and liberal mind to get on and trade in this country in which a generous man with a scanty resource has opened I would sooner he should till the ground than bow to a customer there is no choice with him he could not bring himself to the ladder I would not consent to his going alone no but that objection is done away with he will marry before he sets sail a young lady he has known for several years of a nature liberal and high spirited enough to follow him to the banks of the Mississippi he will set off in a month or six weeks and you will see how I should wish to pass that time with him and then I must set out on a journey of my own Brown and I are going a pedestrian tour through the north of England and Scotland as far as Johnna Grotz I have this morning such a lethargy that I cannot write the reason of my delaying is often times from this feeling I wait for a proper temper now you ask for an immediate answer I do not like to wait even till tomorrow however I am now so depressed that I have not an idea to put to paper my hand feels like a lead and yet it is an unpleasant numbness it doesn't take away the pain of existence I don't know what to write Monday June 1st you see how I have delayed and even now I have but a confused idea of what I should be about my intellect must be in a degenerating state it must be for when I should be writing about God knows what I am troubling you with moods of my own mind or rather body for mind there is none I am in that temper that if I were underwater I should scarcely kick to come up to the top I know very well to all nonsense in a short time I hope I shall be in a temper to feel sensibly your mention of my book in vain have I waited till Monday to have any interest in that or anything else I feel no spur at my brother's going to America and I am almost stony hearted about his wedding all this will blow over all I am sorry for is having to write you in such a time but I cannot force my letters in a hotbed I could not feel comfortable in making sentences for you I am your debtor I must ever remain so nor do I wish to be clear of any rational debt there is a comfort in throwing oneself on the charity of one's friends tis like the albatross sleeping on its wings I will be to you wine in the cellar and the more modestly or rather indolently I retire the more backward bin the more phalerne will I be at the drinking there is one thing I must mention my brother talks of sailing in a fortnight if so I will most probably be with you a week before I set out for Scotland the middle of your first page should be sufficient to rouse me what I said is true and I have dreamt of your mention of it am I not answering it has weighed on me since if I come I will bring your letter and hear more fully your sentiments on one or two points I will call about the lectures at Taylor's and at Little Britain tomorrow yesterday I dined with Haslett, Barnes and Wilkie at Haydn's the topic was the Duke of Wellington very amusingly pro and conned Reynolds has been getting much better and Rice may begin to crow for he got a little so so at a party of his and was none the worse for it the next morning I hope I shall soon see you for we must have many new thoughts and feelings to analyse and to discover whether a little more knowledge has not made us more ignorant yours affectionately John Keats End of Letter 53 Letter 54 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sydney Colvin this LibriVox recording is in the public domain to Benjamin Bailey London June 10th 1818 My dear Bailey I have been very much gratified and very much hurt by your letters in the Oxford paper because independent of that unlawful and mortal feeling of pleasure at praise there is a glory and enthusiasm and because the world is malignant enough to chuckle at the most honourable simplicity yes on my soul my dear Bailey you are too simple for the world and that idea makes me sick of it how is it that by extreme opposites we have as it were got discontented nerves you have all your life I think so believed everybody I have suspected everybody and although you have been so deceived you make a simple appeal the world has something else to do and I am glad of it were it in my choice I would reject a patriarchal coronation on account of my dying day and because women have cancers I should not by right speak in this tone to you for it is an incendiary spirit that would do so yet I am not old enough or magnanimous enough to annihilate self and it would perhaps be paying you a compliment I was in hope some little time back to be able to relieve your dullness by my spirits to point out things in the world worth your enjoyment and now I am never alone without rejoicing that there is such a thing as death without placing my ultimate in the glory of dying for a great human purpose perhaps if my affairs were in a different state I should not have written the love I have two brothers one is driven by the burden of society to America the other with an exquisite love of life is in a lingering state my love for my brothers from the early loss of our parents and even from earlier misfortunes footnote referring probably to the unfortunate second marriage made by their mother and footnote has grown into an impression passing the love of women I have been ill-tempered with them I have vexed them but the thought of them has always stifled the impression that any woman might otherwise have made upon me I have a sister too and may not follow them either to America or to the grave life must be undergone and I certainly derive some consolation from the thought of writing one or two more poems I have heard some hints of your retiring to Scotland I should like to know your feeling on it it seems rather remote perhaps Gleig will have a duty near you I am not certain whether I shall be able to go any journey on account of my brother Tom and a little in disposition of my own if I do not you shall see me soon if no on my return or I'll quarter myself on you next winter I had known my sister-in-law some time before she was my sister and was very fond of her I like her better and better she is the most disinterested woman I ever knew that is to say she goes beyond degree in it to see an entirely disinterested girl quite happy is the most pleasant and extraordinary thing in the world it depends upon a thousand circumstances on my word it is extraordinary women must want imagination and they may thank God for it and so may we that a delicate being can feel happy without any sense of crime it puzzles me and I have no sort of logic to comfort me I shall think it over I am not at home and your letter being there I cannot look it over to answer any particular only I must say I feel that passage of Dante if I take any book with me it shall be those minute volumes of Kerry for they will go into the aptest corner Reynolds is getting I may say robust his illness has been of service to him like everyone just recovered he is high spirited I hear also good accounts of rice with respect to domestic literature the Edinburgh magazine in another blow up against hunt calls me the amiable Mr. Keats and I have more than a Laurel from the quarterly reviewers for they have smothered me and foliage I want you to read my pot of basil if you go to Scotland I should much like to read it there to you among the snows of next winter my brother's remembrances to you your affectionate friend John Keats end of letter 54 letter 55 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin the sleeper Vox recording is in the public domain to John Taylor Hamstead Sunday evening June 21st 1818 my dear Taylor I am sorry I have not had time to call and wish you health till my return really I have been hard run these last three days however our vaugh I saw well I start tomorrow morning my brother Tom will I am afraid be lonely I can scarce ask alone of books for him since I still keep those you lent me a year ago if I am overweening you will I know be indulgent therefore when you shall write do send him some you think will be the most amusing he will be careful in returning them let him have one of my books found I am ashamed to catalog these messages there is but one more which ought to go for nothing as there is a lady concerned I promised Mrs. Reynolds one of my books bound as I cannot write in it let the opposite be pasted in per the remember me to Percy Street tell Hilton that one gratification on my return will be to find him engaged on a history piece to his own content until the wind I shall become a disputant on the landscape thou for me very gentilly to Mrs. D or she will not admit your diploma remember me to Hesse saying I hope he'll carry his point I would not forget Whithouse adieu your sincere friend John O. Gratz End of Letter 55 Letter 56 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sydney Colvin this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Recording by Nemo to Thomas Keats Keswick June 29th 1818 my dear Tom I cannot make my journals distinct and actuals I could wish from having been engaged in writing to George and therefore I must tell you without circumstance that we proceeded from Ambleside to Rydall saw the waterfalls there and called on Wordsworth who was not at home nor was any one of his family I wrote a note and left it on the mantelpiece thence on we came to the foot of Helvellen where we slept but could not ascend it for the mist I must mention that from Rydall we passed Thurlswater and a fine pass in the mountains from Helvellen we came to Keswick on Derwent Water the approach to Derwent Water surpassed Windermere it is richly wooded and shut in with rich toned mountains from Helvellen to Keswick was eight miles to breakfast after which we took a complete circuit of the lake going about ten miles and seeing on our way the fall of Laudor I had an easy climb among the streams about the fragments of rocks and should have got I think to the summit but unfortunately I was damped by slipping one leg into a squashy hole there is no great body of water but the accompaniment is delightful for it oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular rocks all fledged with ash and other beautiful trees it is a strange thing how they got there at the south end of the lake perhaps as fine as anything we have seen on our return from the circuit we ordered dinner and set forth about a mile and a half on the Penrith Road to see the Druid Temple we had a fag up hill rather too near dinner time which was rendered void by the gratification of seeing those aged stones on a gentle rise in the midst of the mountains which at that time darkened all around except at the fresh opening of the Vale of St. John we went to bed rather fatigued but not so much so as to hinder us getting up this morning to Mount Skidaw it promised all along to be fair and we fagged and tugged nearly to the top when at half past six there came a mist upon us and shut out the view we did not however lose anything by it we were high enough without mist of Scotland, the Irish Sea the hills beyond Lancaster and nearly all the large ones of Cumberland and Westmoreland particularly Helvellen and Skawfell it grew colder and colder as we ascended and we were glad at about three parts of the way to taste a little rum which the guide brought with him mixed, mind ye, with mountain water I took two glasses going in one returning it is about six miles from where I am riding to the top so we have walked ten miles before breakfast today we went up with two others very good sort of fellows all felt on a rising into the cold air that same elevation which a cold bath gives one I felt as if I were going to a tournament Wordsworth's house is situated just on the rise of the foot of Carlyle his parlor window looks directly down Windermere I do not think I told you how fine the veil of grass mirrors and how I discovered the ancient woman seated on Helm Craig we shall proceed immediately to Carlyle intending to enter Scotland on the first of July via Carlyle, July 1st morning at Carlyle after Skidaw we walked to Treby the oldest market town in Cumberland where we were greatly amused by a country dancing school holding at the ton it was indeed no new coutillion fresh from France no they kick it and jump it with metal extraordinary and whisk it and frisk it and tote it and goat it and twirl it and whorled it and stamped it and sweated it and swore like mad the difference between our country dances and these Scottish figures is about the same as leisurely stirring a cup of tea and beating up a batter pudding I was extremely gratified to think that if I had pleasures they knew nothing of they had also some into which I could not possibly enter I hope I shall not return without having got the Highland fling there was as fine a row of boys and girls as you ever saw some beautiful faces and one exquisite mouth I never felt so near the glory of patriotism the glory of making by any means a country happier this is what I like better than scenery I fear our continued moving from place to place will prevent our becoming learned in village affairs we are mere creatures of rivers lakes and mountains our yesterday's journey goes from Treby to Wigton and from Wigton to Carlisle the cathedral does not appear very fine the castle is very ancient and a brick this city is very various old whitewashed narrow streets broad red brick ones more modern I will tell you anon whether the inside of the cathedral is worth looking at it is built of sandy redstone a brick we have now walked 114 miles and are merely a little tired in the thighs and a little blistered we shall ride 38 miles to Dumfries when we shall linger a while about Nithistale and Galloway I have written two letters to Liverpool I found a letter from sister George very delightful indeed I shall preserve it in the bottom of my knapsack for you Dumfries evening of same day July 1 I'm visiting the tomb of Burns the town, the churchyard and the setting sun the clouds, the trees the rounded hills all seem though beautiful, cold strange as in a dream I dreamed long ago not new begun the short-lived, pale summers but one from winter's egg you for one hour's gleam though sapphire warm their stars do never beam all is cold beauty pain is never done for he who is mine to relish minus wise the real of beauty free from the dead you sickly imagination and sick pride cast one upon it Burns with honour do I oft have honoured thee great shadow hide thy face I sin against thy native skies you will see by this sonnet that I am at Dumfries we have dined in Scotland Burns' tomb is in the churchyard corner not very much to my taste though on a scale large enough to show they wanted to honour him Mrs. Burns lives in this place most likely we shall see her tomorrow the sonnet I have written in a strange mood half asleep I know not how it is the clouds, the sky the houses all seem anti-Grecian and anti-Charlemanish I will endeavour to get rid of my prejudices and tell you fairly about the scotch Dumfries, July 2nd and Devon sure they say well, where be ye going here it is how is it we yourself a man on the coach said the horses took a hellish heap of driving the same fellow pointed out Burns' tomb with a deal of life there do ye see it among the trees white with a rune top the first well-dressed scotchman we had any conversation with to our surprise confessed himself a deist the careful manner of delivering his opinions not before he had received several encouraging hints from us was very amusing yesterday was an immense horse-faire of the ladies so that we met numbers of men and women on the road the women nearly all barefoot with their shoes and clean stockings in hand ready to put on and look smart in the towns there are plenty of wretched cottages whose smoke has no outlet but by the door we have now begun upon whiskey called here waski very smart stuff it is mixed like our liquors with sugar and water very pretty drink and much praised by Burns end of letter 56 letter 57 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sydney Colvin this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by Nima to Fanny Keats Dumfries July 2nd 1818 my dear Fanny I intended to have written to you from Kirkkudbright the town I shall be in tomorrow but I will write now because my knapsack has worn my coat in the seams my coat has gone to the tailors and I have but one coat to my back in these parts I must tell you how I went to Liverpool with George and our new sister and the gentleman my fellow traveller through the summer and autumn we had a tolerable journey to Liverpool which I left the next morning before George was up for Lancaster then we set off from Lancaster on foot with our knapsacks on and have walked a little zigzag through the mountains and lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland we came from Carlisle yesterday to this place we are employed in going up mountains looking at strange towns prying into old runes and eating very hardy breakfast here we are full in the midst of broad scotch how is it a we yourself the girls are walking about barefooted and in the worst cottages the smoke finds its way out of the door I shall come home full of news for you and for fear I should choke you by two grated dose at once I must make you used to it by a letter or two we have been taken for travelling jewelers razor-zellers and spectacle vendors because friend Brown wears a pair the first place we stopped at with our knapsacks contained one Richard Bradshaw a notorious tipler he stood in the shape of an apothecary symbol for an ounce and balanced himself as well as he could saying with his nose right in Mr. Brown's face do you who sell spectacles Mr. Abbey says we are Don Ciotis tell him we are more generally taken for peddlers all I hope is that we may not be taken for excise men in this whiskey country we are generally up about five walking before breakfast and we complete our 20 miles before dinner yesterday we visited Byrne's Tomb and this morning the fine runes of Lynn Cluton Awken, Karen same day, July 2 I had done thus far when my coat came back fortified at all points so as we lose no time we set forth again through Galloway all very pleasant and pretty with no fatigue when one is used to it in the midst of Meg Merily's country of whom I suppose you have heard old Meg she was a gypsy and lived upon the moors her bed it was the brown heath turf and her house was out of doors her apples were swart blackberries her currents pods a broom her wine was due to the wild white rose her book a churchyard tomb her brothers were their craigie hills her sisters larkin trees her other great family she lived as she did please no breakfast had she many a morn no dinner many a noon instead of supper she would stare full heart against the moon but every morn of woodbine fresh she made her garlanding and every night the dark blend you she wove and she would sing and with her fingers old and brown she plaited matzo rushes and gave them to the cottagers she met among the bushes old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen and tall as Amazon an old red blanket cloak she wore a chip hat had she on God rest her aged bones somewhere she died full long a gone if you like these sort of ballads I will now and then scribble one for you if I send any to Tom I'll tell him to send them to you Kirk Cudbright evening a same day July 2nd I have so many interruptions that I cannot manage to fill a letter in one day since I scribbled the song we have walked through a beautiful country to Kirk Cudbright at which place I will write you a song about myself there was a naughty boy a naughty boy was he he would not stop in home he could not quiet be he took in his knapsack a book full of vowels and a shirt with some towels a slight cap for nightcap a hairbrush comb ditto new stockings for old ones would split dough the knapsack tight its back he riveted clothes and followed his nose to the north and followed his nose to the north there was a naughty boy and a naughty boy was he for nothing would he do but scribble poetry he took an ink stand in his hand and a pen, biggest ten in the other in a way and a father he ran to the mountains and fountains in ghostess and postess and witches and ditches and wrote in his coat when the weather was cool fear of gout and without when the weather was warm the charm when we choose to follow one's nose to the north to follow one's nose to the north there was a naughty boy and a naughty boy was he he kept little fishes in washing tubs three in spite of the might of the maid nor afraid of his granny good he often would hurly burly get up early and go by hook or crook to the brook bring home miller's thumb tittle bat not over fat minnow small as the stall of a glove not above the size of a nice little baby's little fingers oh he made was his trade a fish a pretty kettle a kettle a kettle a fish a pretty kettle a kettle there was a naughty boy was he he ran away to scotland the people for to see then he found that the ground was as hard that a yard was as long that a song was as merry that a cherry was as red that lead was as weighty that forescore was as 80 that a door was as wooden as in england so he stood in his shoes and he wondered he stood in his shoes and he wondered newton stewart july 4th my dear fanny i am ashamed of writing you such stuff nor would i if it were not for being tired after my days walking and ready to tumble into bed so fatigued that when i am asleep you might sew my nose to my great toe and trundle me round the town like a hoop without waking me then i get so hungry a ham goes but a very little way and fouls are like larks to me a batch of bread i make no more ado within a sheet of parliament and i can eat a bull's head as easily as i used to do bull's eyes i take a whole string of pork sausages down as easily as a pen worth of ladies fingers ah dear i must soon be contented with an acre or two of otten cake a hog's head of milk and a closed basket of eggs morning noon and night when i get among the highlanders before we see them we shall pass into ireland and have a chat with the patties and look at the giant's causeway which you must have heard of i have not time to tell you particularly for i have to send a journal to tom of whom you shall hear all particulars or for me when i return since i began this we have walked 60 miles to newton stewart at which place i put in this letter tonight we sleep at glenloots tomorrow at port patrick and the next day we shall cross in the passage boat to ireland i hope miss abbey has quite recovered present my respects to her and to mister and mrs abbey god bless you your affectionate brother john do write me a letter directed to invernus scotland end of letter 57 letter 58 of letters of john keats to his family and friends edited by sydney colvin this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by neema to thomas keats doctor can for acker cairn third for second july 1818 my dear tom we are now in meg mary lee's country and have this morning pass through some parts exactly suited to her kirk cutbright county is very beautiful very wild with craigie hills somewhat in the westmoreland fashion we have come down from dumfries to the sea coast part of it the following song you will have from dilk or perhaps you would like it here newton stewart july 5th 4 4th yesterday was passed in kirk cutbright the country is very rich very fine and with a little of devin i'm now writing at newton stewart six miles into wigtown our landlady of yesterday said very few southerners passed hereaways the children jabber away as if in a foreign language the barefooted girls looked very much in keeping i mean with the scenery about them brown praises their cleanliness and appearance of comfort the neatness of their cottages etc it may be they are very squat among trees and fern and heath and broom plants and heights but i wish they were a snug as those up the devinshire valleys we are lodged and entertained in great varieties we dined yesterday on dirty bacon, dirtier eggs and dirtiest potatoes with a slice of salmon we breakfast this morning in a nice carpeted room with sofa, hair-bottom chairs and green-based mahogany drinking by the roadside is always welcome we drink water for dinner diluted with a gill of whisky don agadi, july 6 yesterday morning we set out from glenludes going some distance round to see some rivers they were scarcely worth the while we went on to strandrayer in a burning sun and had gone about six miles when the mail overtook us we got up we're at port patrick in a jiffy and i'm riding now in little ireland the dialects on the neighbouring shores of scotland and ireland are much the same yet i can perceive a great difference in the nations from the chambermaid at this natetune kept by mr. kelly she is fair, kind and ready to laugh because she is out of the horrible dominion of the scotchkirk which stands in terrible awe of the elders poor little susannas they will scarcely laugh and their kirk is greatly to be damned these kirkmen have done scotland good query they have made men, women, old men, young men, old women, young women, boys, girls and all infants careful so that they are formed into regular phalanges and gainers such a thrifty army cannot fail to enrich their country and give it a greater appearance of comfort than that of their poor rash neighbourhood these kirkmen have done scotland harm they have banished puns and laughing and kissing etc accepting cases with a very dangerous crime must make it very gustful i shall make a full stop at kissing this should be a better parenthesis and go on to remind you of the fate of burns poor unfortunate fellow his disposition was southern how sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self-defense to deaden its delicacy and vulgarity and rotten things attainable that it may not have leads you to go mad after things which are not no man in such matters will be content with the experience of others it is true that out of suffering there is no dignity no greatness that in the most abstracted pleasure there is no lasting happiness yet who would not like to discover over again that Cleopatra was a gypsy how in a rogue in Ruth a deep one i have not sufficient reasoning faculty to settle the doctrine of thrift as it is consistent with the dignity of human society with the happiness of cottagers all i can do is by plump contrast where the fingers made to squeeze a guinea or a white hand where the lips made to hold a pen or a kiss and yet in cities man is shut out from his fellows if he is poor the cottager must be very dirty and very wretched if she be not thrifty he demands this and this convinces me that the world is very young and in a very ignorant state we live in a barbarous age i would sooner be a wild deer than a girl under the dominion of the Kirk and i would sooner be a wild hog than be the occasion of a poor creature's penance before those excruble elders it is not so far to the giants causeway as we supposed we thought at 70 in here it is only 48 miles so we shall leave one of our knapsacks here at Don Agadi take our immediate wants and be back in a week when we shall proceed to the county of air in the packet yesterday we heard some ballads from two old men one was a romance which seemed very poor then there was the battle of the boine as they call him before the king you shall go, go, go before the king you shall go strong rare July 9th we stopped very little in Ireland and that you may not have leisure to marvel at our speedy return to poor Patrick i will tell you that it is as dear living in Ireland as at the Hammams thristy expense of Scotland it would have cost us 15 pound before our return moreover we found those 48 miles to be Irish ones which reached 70 English so having walked the Belfast one day and back to Don Agadi the next we left Ireland with a fair breeze we slept last night at Port Patrick when I was gratified by a letter from you on our walk in Ireland we had too much opportunity to see the worst of the nakedness the rags, the dirt and misery of the poor common Irish a scotch cottage though in that sometimes the smoke has no exit but at the door is a palace to an Irish one we could observe that impetuosity in man and women we had the pleasure of finding our way through a peat bog three miles long at least dreary, flat, dank black and spongy here and there were poor dirty creatures and a few strong men cutting or carting peat we heard on passing into Belfast through a most wretched suburb that most disgusting of all noises worse than the bagpipes the laugh of a monkey the chatter of women the scream of a macaw I mean the sound of the shuttle what a tremendous difficulty is the improvement of such people I cannot conceive how a mind with child of philanthropy could grasp at its possibility with me it is absolute despair at a miserable house of entertainment halfway between Dangadi and Belfast were two men sitting at whiskey one a laborer and the other I took to be a drunken weaver the laborer took me to be a Frenchman and the other hinted at bounty money saying he was ready to take it uncalling for the letters of poor Patrick the man snapped out what regiment on our return from Belfast we met a sedan the Duchess of Dunghill it is no laughing matter though imagine the worst dog kennel you ever saw placed upon two poles from a moldy fencing the wretched things had a squalid old woman squat like an ape half-starved from a scarcity of biscuit and its passage from Madagascar to the Cape with a pipe in her mouth and looking out with a round-eyed skinny-lidded inaneity with a sort of horizontal idiotic movement of her head squat and lean she sat and puffed out the smoke while two ragged tattered girls carried her along what a thing would be a history of her life and sensations I shall endeavor when I have thought a little more to give you my idea of the difference between the Scotch and Irish the two Irishmen I mentioned were speaking of their treatment in England when the weaver said ah you were a civil man but I was a drinker till further notice you must direct to Inverness your most affectionate brother John End of Letter 58 Letter 59 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin the Slibervox recording is in the public domain To Thomas Keats Belentry for Belentry July 10th ah keen ye what time met the day out to the mountains a coming down by craggy's gray mulsey fountains a good-haired marie yeeve I pray and minutes geasing for that I met upon the way his past expressing as I stood where a rocky brigade torrent crosses I spied upon a misty brigade trooper horses and as they trucked down the Glen I sped to meet them to see if I might know the men to stop and greet them first Willy on a sleek mare his long hair wrestled like a flame on board a shallop then came his brother Rob and then young Peggy's mother and Peggy too were down the Glen they went together I saw her wrap it in a hood free wind and raining her cheek was flush with timid blood took's growth in waning she turned a daisied head full laughed for their her breathers came riding with a bridegroom soft in money others young Tane came up and eyed me quick with red in cheek brought tim was daisied like a chick he couldn't speak ah marie they are all gain home through blustering weather and every heart is full on flame and light is feather ah marie they are all gone home free happy wedding we'll die ah is it not a shame sad tears am shedding my dear Tom the reason for my writing these lines was that Brown wanted to impose a Galloway song upon Dilk but it won't do the subject I got from meeting a wedding just as we came down into this place where I am afraid we shall be imprisoned a while by the weather yesterday we came twenty seven miles from Stranraal entered Ayrshire a little beyond Cairn and had our path through a delightful country I shall endeavour that you may follow our steps in this walk it would be uninteresting in a book of travels it cannot be interesting but by my having gone through it when we left Cairn I rode lay halfway up the sides of a green mountainous shore full of clefts of verger and eternally varying sometimes up sometimes down and over little bridges going across green chasms of moss, rock and trees winding about everywhere after two or three miles of this we turned suddenly into a magnificent glen finely wooded in parts seven miles long with a mountain stream winding down the midst full of cottages in the most happy situations the sides of the hills covered with sheep the effect of cattle lowing I never had so finely at the end we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the mountains whence in a little time I described in the sea Aelsa rock 940 feet high it was 15 miles distant and seemed close upon us the effect of Aelsa with the peculiar perspective of the sea and connection with the ground we stood on and the misty rain then falling gave me a complete idea of a deluge Aelsa struck me very suddenly really I was a little alarmed Gervin same day July 10th thus far had I written before we set out this morning now we are at Gervin 13 miles north of Bellentry our walk has been along a more grand shore today than yesterday Aelsa beside us all the way from the heights we could see quite at home Kintyre and the large mountains of Aran one of the Hebrides we are in comfortable quarters the rain we feared held up bravely and it has been foof fine this day tomorrow we shall be at air Kirk Oswald July 11th Tis now the 11th of July and we have come eight miles to breakfast to Kirk Oswald I hope the next Kirk will be Kirk Allaway I have nothing of consequence to say now concerning our journey so I will speak as far as I can judge on the Irish and Scotch I know nothing of the higher classes yet I have a persuasion that there the Irish are victorious as to the profanum vulgis I must incline to the Scotch they never laugh but they are always comparatively neat and clean the constitutions are not so remote and puzzling as the Irish the Scotchman will never give a decision on any point he will never commit himself in a sentence which may be referred to as a meridian in his notion of things so that you do not know him and yet you may come in nigh or neighborhood to him than to the Irishman who commits himself in so many places that it daises your head a Scotchman's motive is more easily discovered than an Irishman's a Scotchman will go wisely about to deceive you an Irishman cunningly an Irishman would bluster out of any discovery to his disadvantage a Scotchman would retire perhaps without much desire for revenge an Irishman likes to be thought a gallus fellow a Scotchman is contented with himself it seems to me they are both sensible of the character they hold in England and act accordingly to Englishman thus the Scotchman will become overgrave and over decent and the Irishman over impetuous I like a Scotchman best because he is less of a bore I like the Irishman best he is more comfortable the Scotchman has made up his mind within himself in a sort of snail-shell wisdom the Irishman is full of strong-headed instinct the Scotchman is farther in humanity than the Irishman there he will stick perhaps when the Irishman will be refined beyond him for the former thinks he cannot be improved the latter would grasp at it forever place but the good plane before him Mabel same day July 11th since breakfast we have come only four miles to dinner not merely for we have examined in the way two ruins one of them very fine called Cross-Ragall Abbey there is a winding staircase to the top of a little watch tower Kingswells July 13th I have been riding to Reynolds therefore any particulars since Kirk Oswald have escaped me from said Kirk we went to Mabel for dinner then we set forward to Burnesses Town air the approach to it is extremely fine quite out when to my expectations richly meadowed wooded, heathed and rivulated with a grand sea view terminated by the black mountains of the Isle of Arryn as soon as I saw them so nearly I said to myself how is it they did not beckon burns to some grand attempt at epic the Bonnie Dune is the sweetest river I ever saw overhung with fine trees as far as we could see we stood some time on the brig across it over which Tamo Shantar fled we took a pinch of snuff on the Keystone then we proceeded to the old Kirk Allaway as we were looking at it a farmer pointed the spot where Mungo's Mither hanged herself and drunk in Charlie Break's next Spain then we proceeded to the cottage he was born in there was a bore to that effect by the door side it had the same effect as the same sort of memorial at Stratford on Avon we drank some toddies to Burnes memory with an old man who knew burns damn him and damn his anecdotes he was a great bore it was impossible for a southern to understand above five words in a hundred there was something good in his description of Burnes' melancholy the last time he saw him I was determined to write a sonnet in the cottage I did but it was so bad I cannot venture it here next we walked into Airtown and before we went to Tee saw the new brig and the old brig and the Wallace Tower yesterday we dined with the Traveller we were talking about Keen he said he had seen him at Lascaux and Othello in the Jew I mean er er er er the Jew in Shylock he got bothered completely in vague ideas of the Jew in Othello Shylock in the Jew Shylock in Othello Othello in Shylock the Jew in Othello and so on and so on he left himself in a mess at last still satisfied with himself he went to the window and gave an abortive whistle of some tune it might have been Handel there's no end to these mistakes he'll go and tell people how you seen Malvolio in the Countess Twelfth Night in Midsummer Night's Dream Bottom in Machadoo about Nothing Viola and Barrymore Anthony and Cleopatra Falstaff in the Maustrap Glasgow July 14th we entered Glasgow last evening under a most oppressive stare a body could feel when we had crossed the bridge Brown looked back and said its whole population had turned out to wonder at us we came on till a drunken man came up to me I put him off with my arm he returned all up in arms saying aloud that he had seen all foreigners but he never saw the like of me I was obliged to mention the word officer and police before he would desist the city of Glasgow I take to be I was astonished to hear it was twice the size of Edinburgh it is built of stone and has a much more solid appearance than London we shall see the cathedral this morning they have deviled it into High Kirk I want very much to know the name of the ship George has gone in also what port he will land in I know nothing about it I hope you are leaving a quiet life and gradually improving make a long lounge of the whole summer by the time the leaves fall I shall be near you with plenty of confab there are a thousand things I cannot write take care of yourself I mean and not being vexed or bothered at anything God bless you John End of letter 59 Letter 60 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sydney Colvin this LibriVox recording is in the public domain to John Hamilton Reynolds Mabel July 11th 1818 my dear Reynolds I'll not run over the ground we have passed that would be merely as bad as telling a dream unless perhaps I do it in the manner of the Laputin printing press that is I put down mountains rivers lake stels glens rocks and clouds with beautiful enchanting gothic picturesque fine delightful enchanting grand sublime a few blisters and so on and now you have our journey thus far where I begin a letter to you because I am approaching Burns cottage very fast we have made continual inquiries from the time we saw his tomb at Dumfries his name of course is known all about his great reputation among the plotting people is that he wrote to good and only sensible things one of the pleasantest means of annulling self is approaching such a shrine as the cottage of Burns we need not think of his misery that is all gone bad luck to it I shall look upon it hereafter with unmixed pleasure as I do upon my Stratford on Avonday with Bailey I shall fill this sheet for you in the Bardes country going no further than this till I get to the town of air which will be a nine miles walk to tea Kingswells July 13 we were talking on different and in different things when on a sudden we turned to corner upon the immediate country of air the site was as rich as possible I had no conception that the native place of Burns was so beautiful the idea I had was more desolate his rigs of barley seemed always to me but a few strips of green on a cold hill oh prejudice it was as rich as Devon I endeavored to drink in the prospect that I might spin it out to you as a silkworm mixed silk from mulberry leaves I cannot recollect it besides all the beauty there were the mountains of R and Isle black in huge over the sea we came down upon everything suddenly there were in our way the Bonnie Dune with the brig that Tamo Shanta crossed Kirk Allaway Burns Cottage and then the brig of air first we stood upon a bridge across the Dune surrounded by every fantasy of green and tree meadow and hill the stream of the Dune as a farmer told us is covered with trees from head to foot you know those beautiful heaths so fresh against the weather of a summer evening there was one stretching along behind the trees I wish I knew always the humor my friends would be in at opening a letter of mine to suit it to them as nearly as possible I could always find an egg shell for melancholy and as for merriment a witty humor will turn anything to account my head is sometimes in such a whirl in considering the million likings and antipathies of our moments that I can get into no subtle strain in my letters my wig Burns and sentimentality coming across you and Frank Flatgate's in the office oh scenery that thou should be crushed between puns as for them I venture the rough Scaliest in the Scots region I hope Brown does not put them punctually in his journal if he does I must sit on the cutty stool all next winter we went to Kirk Allaway a prophet is no prophet in his own country we went to the cottage and took some whiskey I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake of writing some lines under the roof they are so bad I cannot transcribe them the man at the cottage was a great bore with his anecdotes I hate the rascal his life consisted in fuzz fuzz fuzziest he drinks glasses five for the quarter and twelve for the hour he is a mahogany faced old jackass who knew Burns he ought to have been kicked for having spoken to him he calls himself a curious old bitch but he is a flat old dog I should like to employ a caliph vatic to kick him oh the flummery of a birthplace can't can't can't it is enough to give a spirit the guts ache many a true word they say is spoken in jest this may be because his gab hindered my sublimity the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet my dear Reynolds I cannot write about scenery and visitings fancy is indeed less than a present palpable reality but it is greater than remembrance you would lift your eyes from Homer only to see close before you the real Isle of Tenedos you would rather read Homer afterwards than remember yourself one song of Burns is of more worth to you than all I could think of for a whole year in his native country his misery is a dead weight upon the nimbleness of one's quill I tried to forget it to drink taughty without any care to write sonnet it won't do he talked with bitches he drank with black guards he was miserable we can see horribly clear in the works of such a man his whole life as if we were cod spies what were his addresses to Jean and the latter part of his life I should not speak so to you yet why not you are not in the same case you are in the right path and you shall not be deceived I have spoken to you against marriage but it was general the prospect in those matters has been to me so blank that I have not been unwilling to die I would not now for I have inducements to life I must see my little nephews in America and I must see you marry your lovely wife my sensations are sometimes deadened for weeks together but believe me I have more than once yearned for the time of your happiness to come as much as I could for myself after the lips of Juliet from the tenor of my occasional rada-montade and chit chat you might have been deceived concerning me in these points upon my soul I have been getting more and more close to you every day ever since I knew you and now one of the first pleasures I looked to is your happy marriage the more since I have felt the pleasure of loving a sister in law I did not think it possible to become so much attached in so short a time things like these and they are real have made me resolve to have a care of my health you must be as careful the rain has stopped us today at the end of a dozen miles yet we hope to see Laka Lomond the day after tomorrow I will piddle out my information as Rice says next winter at any time when a substitute is wanted for Vantan we bear the fatigue very well, twenty miles a day in general a cloud came over us in getting up Skidda I hope to be more lucky in Ben Lomond and more lucky still in Ben Nevis what I think you would enjoy is poking about ruins sometimes abbey, sometimes castle the short stay we made in Ireland has left few remembrances but old woman in a dog kennel sedan with a pipe in her mouth is what I can never forget I wish I may be able to give you an idea of her remember me to your mother and sisters and tell your mother how I hope she will pardon me for having a scrap of paper pasted in the book sent to her I was driven on all sides and had not time to call on Taylor so Bailey is coming to Cumberland well if you'll let me know where at Inverness I will call and pass a little time with him I am glad his not Scotland tell my friends I do all I can for them that is drink their health in toddy perhaps I may have some lines by and by to send you fresh on your own letter Tom has a few to show you your affectionate friend John Keats End of Letter 60