 Letter XXII 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 Benjamin Bailey, Burford Bridge, November XXII, 1817 My dear Bailey, I will get over the first part of this unsaid letter as soon as possible, for it relates to the affairs of poor Cripps. To a man of your nature such a letter as Haydn's must have been extremely cutting. What occasions the greater part of the world's quarrels? Simply this. Two minds meet, and do not understand each other time enough to prevent any shock or surprise at the conduct of either party. As soon as I had known Haydn three days I had got enough of his character not to have been surprised at such a letter as he has hurt you with, nor, when I knew it, was it a principle with me to drop his acquaintance, although with you it would have been an imperious feeling. I wish you knew all that I think about genius and the heart, and yet I think that you are thoroughly acquainted with my innermost breast in that respect, for you could not have known me even thus long, and still hold me worthy to be your dear friend. In passing, however, I must say one thing that has pressed upon me lately and increased my humility and capability of submission, and that is this truth. Men of genius are great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on the mass of neutral intellect, but they have not any individuality, any determined character. I would call the top and head of those who have a proper self, men of power. But I am running my head into a subject which I am certain I could not do justice to under five-year study in three volumes, octavo, and, moreover, I long to be talking about the imagination. So my dear Bailey, do not think of this unpleasant affair, if possible do not. I defy any harm to come of it. I defy. I shall write to Cripps this week, and request him to tell me all his goings-on from time to time by letter, wherever I may be. It will go on well, so I don't, because you have suddenly discovered a coldness in Hayden. Suffer yourself to be teased. Do not, my dear fellow. Oh! I wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination. What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or not, for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love. They are all in their sublime, creative of essential beauty. In a word you may know my favorite speculation by my first book and the little song I sent to my last, which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these matters. The imagination may be compared to Adam's dream. He awoke and found a truth. I am more zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning, and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However, it may be, oh, for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts. It is a vision in the form of youth, a shadow of reality to come, and this consideration has further convinced me, for it has come as auxiliary to another favorite speculation of mine, that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we call happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone. And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in sensation, rather than hunger as you do after truth. Adam's dream will do here, and seems to be a conviction that imagination and its imperial reflection is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. But as I was saying, the simple imaginative mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent working, coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness. To compare great things with small, have you never, by being surprised with an old melody in a delicious place, by a delicious voice, felt, over again, your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your soul? Do you not remember forming to yourself the singer's face, more beautiful than it was possible? And yet, with the elevation of the moment, you did not think so. Even then you were mounted on the wings of imagination, so high that the prototype must be hereafter, that delicious face you will see. And at time I am continually running away from the subject. Sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex mind, one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits, who would exist partly on sensation, partly on thought, to whom it is necessary that years should bring the philosophic mind. Such a one I consider yours, and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness that you not only drink this old wine of heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal musings upon earth, but also increase in knowledge and know all things. I am glad to hear that you are in a fair way freester. You will soon get through your unpleasant reading, and then, but the world is full of troubles, and I have not much reason to think myself, pestered with many. I think Jane or Marianne has a better opinion of me than I deserve, for, really and truly, I do not think my brother's illness connected with mine. You know more of the real cause than they do, nor have I any chance of being wracked as you have been. You perhaps at one time thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out. You have a necessity from your disposition, and thus let away. I scarcely remember counting upon any happiness. I look not for it, if it be not in the present hour. Nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hearing a misfortune having befallen another is this. Well, it cannot be helped. He will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit. And I beg now, my dear Bailey, that hereafter, should you observe anything cold in me, not to put it in the account of heartlessness, but abstraction. For I assure you, I sometimes feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole week, and so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself and the genuineness of my feelings at other times, thinking them a few barren tragedy tears. My brother Tom is much improved. He is going to Devonshire. Wither I shall follow him. At present I am just arrived at Dorking, to change the scene, change the air, and give me a spur to wind up my poem, of which there are wanting five hundred lines. I should have been here a day sooner, but the Reynolds's persuaded me to stop in town to meet your friend Christie. There were Rice and Martin. We talked about Ghost. I will have some talk with Taylor and let you know. Then please, God, I come down at Christmas. I will find the examiner if possible. My best regards to Gleeg, my brothers to you, and Mrs. Bentley. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. I want to say much more to you. A few hints will set me going. Direct Burford Bridge, near Dorking. End of Letter 22 Letter 23 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, Burford Bridge, November 22, 1817. My dear Reynolds, there are two things which tease me here, one of them Crips, and the other that I cannot go with Tom into Devonshire. However, I hope to do my duty to myself in a week or so. And then I'll try what I can do for my neighbour. Now is not this virtuous. I'm returning to town. I'll damn all idleness. Indeed, in superabundance of employment, I must not be content to run here and there on little two penny errands, but turn Raichel, i.e., go amassing. Or Bailey will thank me just as great a promise keeper as he thinks you. For myself, I do not. And do not remember above one complaint against you for matter of that. Bailey writes so abominable a hand to give his letter a fair reading requires a little time. So I had not seen, when I saw you last, his invitation to Oxford at Christmas. I'll go with you. You know how poorly Rice was. I do not think it was all corporeal. Bodily pain was not used to keep him silent. I'll tell you what, he was hurt at what your sister said about his joking with your mother. He was, soothly, to say, it will all blow over. God knows, my dear Reynolds, I should not talk any sorrow to you. You must have enough exations, so I won't anymore. If ever I start a rueful subject in the letter to you, blow me, why don't you? Now I am going to ask you a very silly question neither you nor anybody else could answer, under a folio, or at least a pamphlet, you shall judge. Why don't you, as I do, look unconcerned at what may be called, more particularly, heart vexations? They never surprise me. Lord, a man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world. I like this place very much. There is hill and dale and a little river. I went up Box Hill this evening after the moon. You have seen the moon, came down, and wrote some lines. Whenever I am separated from you, and not engaged in a continued poem, every letter shall bring you a lyric. But I am too anxious for you to enjoy the whole to send you a particle. Of the three books I have with me is Shakespeare's poems. I never found so many beauties in the sonnets. They seem to be full of fine things, said unintentionally, in the intensity of working out conceits. Is this to be borne, harky? When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, which, erst from heat, did canopy the head. And summer's green all girded up in sheaves, borne on the beer with white and bristly head. He has left nothing to say about nothing or anything, for look at snails. You know what he says about snails. You know when he talks about cockled snails. Well, in one of these sonnets he says, the chap slips into— No, I lie. This is in the Venus and Adonis. This simile brought it to my mind. As the snail, whose tender horns being hit, shrinks back into his shelly cave with pain, and there all smothered up in shade, death sit, long after, fearing to put forth again. So at his bloody view her eyes are fled into the deep dark cabins of her head. He overwhelms a genuine lover of poise, with all manner of abuse, talking about a poet's rage and stretched meter of an antique song. Which, by the by, will be a capital motto for my poem, won't it? He speaks, too, of Time's antique pen, and April's first-born flowers, and death's eternal cold. By the whim, King, I'll give you a stanza, because it is not material in connection, and when I wrote it I wanted you to give your vote, pro-Orcon. Crystalline brother of the belt of heaven, Aquarius, to whom King Jov hath given, two liquid pulse-streams, stead of feathered wings, two fan-like fountains, thine aluminings for diam play, dissolve the frozen purity of air, let thy white shoulders, silvery and bare, so cold through watery pinions, make more bright the star queen's crescent on her marriage-night, haste haste away. I see there is an advertisement in the chronicle to poets. He is so overloaded with poems on the late princess. I suppose you do not lack. Send me a few. Lend me thy hand, to laugh a little. Send me a little pullet-sperm, a few finch aches. And remember me to each of our card-playing club. When you die you will all be turned into dice, and be put in pawn with the devil. For cards they crumple up like anything. I rest your affectionate friend, John Keats. Give my love to both houses, in catque y link. End of Letter 23. December 24 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To George and Thomas Keats, Hampstead December 22, 1817. My dear brothers, I must crave your pardon for not having written there this. I saw Keen return to the public in Richard III. And finally he did it. And at the request of Reynolds I went to criticise his duke in Richard. The critique is in today's champion, which I send you with the examiner, in which you will find very proper lamentation on the absolution of Christmas gambles and pastimes. But it was mixed up with so much egotism of that driveling nature that pleasure is entirely lost. Hone, the publisher's trial, you must find very amusing. And as Englishmen very encouraging, his not guilty is a thing which not to have been would have doled still more liberties and blazing. Lord Ellenbarrow has been paid in his own coin. Wooler and Hone have done us an essential service. I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke yesterday and today. An am at this moment just come from him and feel in the humour to go on with this, begun in the morning and from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells and went next morning to see death on the pale horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered. But there is nothing to be intense upon. No women one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality. The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth. Examine King Lear, and you will find this exemplified throughout. But in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited in which to bury its repulsiveness. The picture is larger than Christ rejected. I dined with Hayden the Sunday after you left, and had a very pleasant day. I dined too, for I have been out too much lately, with Horace Smith and met his two brothers with Hill and Kingston and Wendubal. They only served to convince me how superior humour is to wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which all make one start without making one feel. They are all alike, their manners are alike, they all know fashionables, they all have a mannerism in their very eating and drinking and their mere handling a decanter. They talked of keen and his low company. Would I were with that company instead of yours, said I to myself. I know such like acquaintance will never do for me, and yet I am going back to Reynolds on Wednesday. Brown and Dilk walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilk upon various subjects. All things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously. I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine, isolated, their similitude, caught from the penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. Shelley's poem is out, and there are words about it being objected to as much as Queen Mab was. Of course, Shelley, I think he has his quota of good qualities and sooth la. Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate brother, John. END OF LETTER XXIV My dear brothers, I ought to have written before, and you should have had, a long letter last week. But I undertook the champion for Reynolds. Who's at Exeter? I wrote two articles, one on the Jury Lane pantomime, the other on the Covent Garden New Tragedy, which they have not put in. The one they have inserted is so badly punctuated that you perceive I am determined never to write more. But some care in that particular. Wells tells me that you were licking your chops, Tom, in expectation of my book coming out. I am sorry to say, I have not begun my corrections yet. Tomorrow I set out. I called unsorryed this morning. He did not seem to be at all put out at anything I said in the inquiries I made with regard to your spitting of blood, and, moreover, desired me to ask you to send him a correct account of all your sensations and symptoms concerning the palpitation and the spitting and the cough, if you have any. Your last letter gave me a great pleasure, for I think the invalid is in a better spirit there along the edge. And as for George, I must immediately, now I think of it, correct a little misconception of a part of my last letter. The Misses' Reynolds have never said one word against me about you, or by any means endeavored to lessen you in my estimation. That is not what I referred to, but the manner and thoughts which I knew they internally had towards you time will show. Wells and Severin dined with me yesterday. We had a very pleasant day. I pitched upon another bottle of claret. We enjoyed ourselves very much. We're all very witty and full of rhymes. We played a concert from four o'clock till ten. Drink your health, the hunts, and, note well, seven Peter Pindars. I said on that day the only good thing I was ever guilty of. We were talking about Stevens in the first gallery. I said I wondered that careful folks would go there, for although it was but a shilling, still you had to pay through the nose. I saw the peachy family in a box or jewelry one night. I've got such a curious—or rather, I had such. Now I am in my own hand. I have had a great deal of pleasant time with rice lately, and am getting initiated into a little band. They call drinking deep, dying scarlet. They call good wine a pretty tipple. Then call getting a child knocking out an apple, stopping at a tavern they call hanging out. Where do you sup? Is where do you hang out? Thursday I promised to dine with Wordsworth, and the weather is so bad that I am undecided, for he lives at Mortimer Street. I had an invitation to meet him at Kingston's, but not liking that place I sent my excuse. What I think of doing today is to dine in Mortimer Street, Wordsworth, and sup here in the Featherstown buildings, as Mr. Wells has invited me. On Saturday I called on Wordsworth before he went to Kingston's, and was surprised to find him with a stiff collar. I saw his spouse, and I think his daughter. I forget whether I'd written my last before my Sunday evening at Haydn's. No, I did not, or I should have told you, Tom, of a young man you met at Paris, at Scots's, Richie. I think he's going to Faisan in Africa, then to proceed if possible, like Mungo Park. He was very polite to me, and inquired very particularly after you. Then there was Wordsworth, Lamb, Munkhouse, Lancere, Kingston, and your humble servant. Tom got tipsy, and blew up Kingston, proceeding so far as to take the candle across the room, hold it to his face, and show us what a soft fellow he was. I astonish Kingston at supper, with a pertinacity and favour of drinking, keeping my two glasses at work in a knowing way. I've seen Fanny twice lately. She inquired particularly after you, and wants a co-partnership letter from you. She has been unwell, but is improving. I think she will be quick. Mrs. Abbey was saying that the Keatses were ever indolent, that they would ever be so, and that it is born in them. Well, whispered Fanny to me, if it is born with us, how can we help it? She seems very anxious for a letter. As I have asked her what I should get for her, she said, a Medal of the Princess. I called on Haslam. We dined very snugly together. He sent me a hair last week, which I sent to Mrs. Dilke. Brown has not come back. I and Dilke are getting capital friends. He is going to take the champion. He has sent his farce to Covent Garden. I met Bob Harris on the Stepsick Covent Garden. We had a good deal of curious chat. He came out with his old humble opinion. The Covent Garden pantomime is a very nice one, but they have a middling Harlequin. A bad pantaloon, a worse clown, and a shocking Columbine. Who is one of the Miss Dennetts? I suppose you will see my critique on the new tragedy in the next week's champion. It is a shocking bad one. I have not seen Hunt. He was out when I called. Mrs. Hunt looks as well as ever. I saw her after her confinement. There is an article in the Sennight Examiner on Godwin's Mandeville, signed E.K. I think it Miss Kent's. I will send it. There are fine subscriptions going on for home. You ask me what degrees there are between Scots's novels and those of Smollett. They appear to me to be quite distinct in every particular, more especially in their aims. Scots endeavours to throw so interesting and romantic a colouring into common and low characters as to give them a touch of the sublime. Smollett, on the contrary, pulls down in levels what with other men would continue romance. The grand parts of Scots are within the reach of more minds than the finest humours in Humphrey Clinker. I forget whether that fine thing of the Sergeant is Fielding or Smollett, but it gives me more pleasure than the whole novel of the antiquary. You must remember what I mean. Someone says to the Sergeant, that's a non-sequitur. If you come to that, replies the Sergeant, you're another. I see by Wells's letter Mr. Abbey does not overstock you with money. You must write. I have not seen yet, but expect it on Wednesday. I'm afraid it is gone. Severin tells me he is in order for some drawings for the Emperor of Russia. You must get well, Tom, and then I shall feel whole and genial as the winter air. Give me as many letters as you like and write to Saury soon. I received a short letter from Bailey about Cripps and one from Hayden Ditto. Hayden thinks he improved very much. Mrs. Wells desires particularly to Tom and her respects to George, and I desire no better than to be ever your most affectionate brother, John. P.S. I had not opened the champion before I found both my articles in it. I was at a dance at Red Halls and passed a pleasant time enough, drank deep, and ten pound six at cutting for half guineas. Bailey was there and seemed to enjoy the evening. Rice said he cared less about the hour than anyone, and the proof is his dancing. He cares not for time, dancing as if he was deaf. Old Red Hall not being used to give parties had no idea of the quantity of wine that would be drank, and he actually put in readiness on the kitchen stairs eight dozen. Everyone inquires after you and desires their remembrances to you. Your brother, John. End of Letter 25. Letter 26 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 Benjamin Robert Hayden. Hampstead. Saturday Mourn. January 10, 1818. My dear Hayden, I should have seen you air this, but on account of my sister being in town, so that when I have sometimes made ten paces towards you, Fanny has called me into the city, and the Christmas holidays are your only time to see sisters. That is, if they are so situated as mine. I will be with you early next week. Tonight it should be, but we have a sort of a club every Saturday evening. Tomorrow, but I have on that day an insuperable engagement. Crips has been down to me and appear sensible that a binding to you would be of the greatest advantage to him. If such a thing be done, it cannot be before one hundred and fifty pound, or two hundred pound, are secured in subscriptions to him. I will write to Bailey about it, give a copy of the subscriber's names to everyone I know, who is likely to get a five pound for him. I will leave a copy of Taylor and Hesse's, Rodwell and Martin, and will ask Kingston and Company to cash up. Your friendship for me is now getting into its teens, and I feel the past. Also every day older I get. The greater is my idea of your achievements in art, and I am convinced that there are three things to rejoice at in this age—the excursion, your pictures, and Hazlet's depth of taste. Yours affectionately, John Keats. End of Letter twenty-six Letter twenty-seven 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, Hampstead, Saturday morning, January 10th, 1818. My dear Taylor, several things have kept me from you lately. First you had got into a little hell, which I was not anxious to reconnoitre. I have made a vow not to call again without my first book, so you may expect to see me in four days. Thirdly, I have been racketing too much, and do not feel over well. I have seen Wordsworth frequently, dined with him last Monday. Reynolds, I suppose you have seen. Just scribble me thus many lines to let me know you are in the land of the living and well. Send army to the Fleet Street household, and should you see any from Percy Street, give my kindest regards to them, your sincere friend, John Keats. End of Letter twenty-seven Letter twenty-eight of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To George and Thomas Keats, Hampstead, Tuesday, January 13, 1818 My dear brothers, I am certain I think of having a letter tomorrow morning, for I expected one so much this morning, having been in town two days, at the end of which my expectations began to get up a little. I found two on the table, one from Bailey and one from Hayden. I am quite perplexed in a world of doubts and fancies. There is nothing stable in the world, uproars your only music. I don't mean to include Bailey in this, and so dismiss him from this, with all the opprobium he deserves. That is, in so many words, he is one of the noblest men alive at the present day. In a note to Hayden about a week ago, which I wrote with a full sense of what he had done and how he had never manifested any little mean drawback in his value of me, I said, if there were three things superior in the modern world they were the excursion, Hayden's pictures, and Hazlet's depth of taste, so I do believe, not thus speaking with any poor vanity that works of genius were the first things in this world. No. For that sort of property and disinterestedness which such men as Bailey possess does hold and grasp the tip-top of any spiritual honors that can be paid to anything in this world. And moreover, having this feeling at this present come over me in its full force, I sat down to write to you with a grateful heart, and that I had not a brother who did not feel and credit me for a deeper feeling in devotion, for his uprightness, than for any marks of genius however splendid. I was speaking about doubts and fancies. I mean there has been a quarrel of a severe nature between Hayden and Reynolds, and another — the devil rides upon a fiddle-stick — between Hunt and Hayden. The first grew from the Sunday on which Hayden invited some friends to meet Wordsworth. Reynolds never went, and never sent any notice about it. This offended Hayden more than it ought to have done. He wrote a very sharp and high note to Reynolds, and then another in palliation, but which Reynolds feels as an aggravation of the first. Considering all things, Hayden's frequent neglect of his appointments, etc., his notes were bad enough to put Reynolds on the right side of the question. But then Reynolds has no power of sufferance. No idea of having a thing against him. So he answered Hayden one of the most cutting letters I ever read, exposing to himself all his own weaknesses and going on to an excess, which, whether it is just to know, is what I would feign have unsaid. The fact is, they are both in the right and both in the wrong. The quarrel with Hunt I understand thus far. Mrs. Hunt was in the habit of borrowing silver of Hayden. The last time she did so. Hayden asked her to return it at a certain time. She did not. Hayden sent for it. Hunt went to expostulate on the indelicacy, etc. They got to words imparted forever. All I hope is at some time to bring them together again. Lock! Molly, there's been such doings. One day evening I made an appointment with Wells to go to a private theatre, and it being in the neighbourhood of Jury Lane, and thinking we might be fatigued with sitting the whole evening in one dirty hole, I got the Jury Lane ticket, and therewith we divided the evening with a spice of Richard III. Later January 19 or 20. Good Lord! I began this letter nearly a week ago. What have I been doing since? I have been, I mean not been, sending last Sunday's paper to you. I believe because it was not near me, for I cannot find it, and my conscious presses heavy on me for not sending it. You would have had one last Thursday, but I was called away, and have been about somewhere ever since. Where? What? Well, I rejoice almost that I have not heard from you because no news is good news. I cannot for the world recollect why I was called away. All I know is that there has been a dance at Dilkes and another at the London Coffee-House, to both of which I went. But I must tell you in another letter the circumstances thereof, for though a week should have passed since I wrote on the other side it quite appalls me. I can only write in scraps and patches. Brown is returned from Hampstead. Hayden has returned in answer in the same style. They are all dreadfully irritated against each other. On Sunday I saw Hunt and Dined with Hayden, met Haslett and Bewick there, and took Haslam with me, forgot to speak about Crips, though I broke my engagement to Haslam's on purpose. But to self, Haslam came to meet me, found me at breakfast, had the goodness to go with me my way. I've just finished the revision of my first book, and shall take it to Taylor's to-morrow, intend to persevere. Do not let me see many days pass without hearing from you. Your most affectionate brother, John. End of letter twenty-eight. Letter twenty-nine 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, Hampstead, Friday twenty-third, January eighteen-eighteen. My dear Taylor, I have spoken to Hayden about the drawing. He would do it with all his art and heart, too, if so I will it. However, he has written thus to me, but I must tell you, first, he intends painting a finished picture from the poem. Thus he writes, When I do anything for your poem, it must be effectual, an honour to both of us. To hurry up a sketch for the season won't do. I think an engraving from your head, from a chalk drawing of mine, done with all my might, to which I would put my name, would answer Taylor's idea better than the other. Indeed I am sure of it. This I will do, and this will be effectual, and as I have not done it for any other human being, it will have an effect. What think you of this? Let me hear. I shall have my second book in readiness forthwith. Yours most sincerely, John Keats. If Reynolds calls, tell him three lines will be acceptable, for I am squat at Hampstead. End of Letter 29 Letter 30 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sydney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To George and Thomas Keats, Hampstead, Friday, 23rd, January, 1818. My dear brothers, I was thinking what hindered me from writing so long, for I have so many things to say to you, and know not where to begin. This shall be upon a thing most interesting to you, my poem. I have given the first book to Taylor. He seemed more than satisfied with it, and to my surprise, proposed publishing it in quarto, if Hayden would make a drawing of some event therein for a frontispiece. I called on Hayden. He said he would do anything I liked, but said he would rather paint a finished picture from it, which he seems eager to do. This in a year or two will be a glorious thing for us, and it will be for Hayden is struck with the first book. I left Hayden, and the next day received a letter from him, proposing to make, as he says, with all his might, a finished chalk sketch of my head, to be engraved in the first style and put at the head of my poem, saying at the same time he had never done the thing for any human being, and that it must have considerable effect as he will put his name to it. I began today to copy my second book, thus far into the bowels of the land. You shall hear whether it will be quarto or non quarto, picture or non picture. Leah Hunt, I showed my first book to. He allows it not much merit as a whole. Says it is unnatural, and made ten objections to it for the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural, and too high flown for a brother and sister. Says it should be simple, forgetting, de-mind, that they are both overshadowed by a supernatural power, and a force cannot speak like Francesca and the Rimini. He must first prove that Caliban's poetry is unnatural. This with me completely overturns his objections, the fact that he and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, out my not having showed them the affair officiously, and from several hints I have had, they appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made. But who's afraid? Ah, Tom, damn if I am! I went last Tuesday, an hour too late, to Hazlett's lecture on poetry. Got there just as they were coming out, when all these pounced upon me. Hazlett, John Hunt, and Son, Wells, Buick, all the Lancers, Bob Harris, I, and more. The Lancers inquired after you particularly. I know not where the Wordsworth has left town, but Sunday I dined with Hazlett and Hayden, also that I took Haslam with me. I dined with Brown lately. Dilk, having taken the champion, theatricals, was obliged to be in town. Fanny has returned of Walthamstow. Mr. Abbey appeared very glum the last time I went to see her, and said in an indirect way that I had no business there. Rice has been ill, but has been mending much lately. I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately. I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed. I, who for so long a time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of this observe, I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again. The thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet. I wrote it and began to read. I know you would like to see it. I'm sitting down to King Lear once again. A golden-tongued romance with serene lute, fair plumed siren queen afar away. Leave melodizing on this wintery day. Shut up thine olden volume and be mute. Adieu! For once again the fierce dispute betwixt hell torment and impassioned clay must I burn through. Once more a say the bitter sweet of this Shakespearean fruit. Chief poet, and ye clouds of Albion, begetters of our deep eternal theme. When I am through the old oak forest gone, let me not wander in a barren dream. But when I am consumed with the fire, give me new phoenix wings to fly at my desire. So you see, I'm getting at it with a sort of determination and strength, though verily I do not feel it at this moment. This is my fourth letter this morning, and I feel rather tired, and my head rather swimming, so I will leave it open till tomorrow's post. I am in the habit of taking my papers to Dilks and copying there, so I chat and proceed at the same time. I have been there at my work this evening, and the walk over the heath takes off all sleep, so I will even proceed with you. I left off short in my last, just as I began an account of a private theatrical. Well, it was of the lowest order, all greasy and oily, in so much that if they had lived in olden times, when signs were hung over the doors, the only appropriate one for that oily place would have been a guttered candle. They played John Bull, The Review, and it was to conclude with Bombasti's Furioso. I saw from a box the first act of John Bull, then went to Drury and did not return till it was over. When by Well's interest we got behind the scenes, there was not a yard wide all the way round for actors, scene-shifters and interlopers to move in. For note to Bene, the green room was under the stage, and there was I threatened over and over again to be turned out by the oily scene-shifters. There did I hear a little painted trollop-own, very candidly, that she had failed in Mary, with a damned if she'd play a serious part again as long as she lived, and at the same time she was habited as the Quaker in The Review. There was a quarrel and a fat, good-natured-looking girl in soldiers' clothes, with she had only been a man for Tom's sake. One fellow began a song, but an unlucky finger-point from the gallery sent him off like a shot. One chap was dressed to kill for the king and bombasties, and he stood at the edge of the scene in the very sweat of anxiety to show himself, but alas, the thing was not played. The sweetest morsel of the night moreover was that the musicians began pegging and fagging away at an overture, never did you see faces more in earnest. Three times did they play it over, dropping all kinds of corrections and still did not the curtain go up. Well, then they went into a country dance, then into a region they well knew, into the old Boonson Pothouse, and then to see how pompous of the sudden they turned, how they looked about and chatted, how they did not care a damn was a great treat. I hope I have not tired you by this filling up of the dash in my last. Constable, the bookseller, has offered Reynolds ten guineas a sheet to write for his magazine. It is an Edinburgh one, which Blackwoods started up in opposition to. Hunt said he was nearly sure that the Cockney School was written by Scott, so you're right, Tom. There are no more little bits of news I can remember at present. I remain, my dear brothers, your very affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 30. Letter 31 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 Benjamin Bailey, Hampstead, Friday, January 23, 1818. My dear Bailey, 12 days have passenger last reached me. What has gone through the myriads of human minds since the 12th? We talk of the immense number of books. The volumes range thousands by thousands, but perhaps more goes through the human intelligence in 12 days than ever was written. How has that unfortunate family lived through the 12? One saying of yours I shall never forget. You may not recollect it, it being perhaps said when you were looking on the surface and seeming of humanity alone, without a thought of the past or the future, or the deeps of good and evil. You were at that moment estranged from speculation. And I think you have arguments ready for the man who would utter it to you. This is a formidable preface for a simple thing. Merely you said, why should women suffer? I, why should she? By heavens, I'd coined my very soul and drop my blood for drachmas. These things are and he who feels how incompetent the most skyy night air entry is to heal this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand of thought. You're tearing, my dear friend, a spiritless and gloomy letter up to rewrite to me is what I shall never forget. It was to me a real thing. Things have happened lately of great perplexity. You must have heard of them. Reynolds and Hayden retorting and recriminating and parting forever. The same thing has happened between Hayden and Hunt. It is unfortunate. Men should bear with each other. There lives not the man who may not be cut up. I lash to pieces on his weakest side. The best of men have but a portion of good in them, a kind of spiritual yeast in their frames, which creates the ferment of existence, by which a man is propelled to act and strive and buff it with circumstance. The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man's faults and then be passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Hayden, I was well read in their faults. Yet, knowing them, I have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for them both, for reasons almost opposite. And to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the hope that, when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together. The time must come because they have both hearts and they will recollect the best parts of each other when this gust is overblown. I had a message from you through a letter to Jane, I think, about Cripps. There can be no idea of binding until a sufficient sum is sure for him. And even then the thing should be maturely considered by all his helpers. I shall try my luck upon as many fat purses as I can meet with. Cripps is improving very fast. I have the greater hopes of him because he is so slow in development. A man of great executing powers at 20, with a look and a speech almost stupid, is sure to do something. I've just looked through the second side of your letter. I feel a great content at it. I was at Hunts the other day and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's hair. I know you would like what I wrote there on, so here it is, as they say of a sheep in a nursery book. On seeing a lock of Milton's hair. Chief of organic numbers, old scholar of the spheres, thy spirit never slumbers, but rolls about our ears, for ever and for ever, oh what a mad endeavour, worketh he, who to thy sacred and ennobled hearse would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse and melody. How heavenward thou soundest live temple of sweet noise, and discord unconfoundest giving delight new joys, and pleasure nobler opinions, oh where are thy dominions, lend thine ear to a young, deely an oath, I, by thy soul, by all that from thy mortal lips did roll, and by the kernel of thine earthly love, beauty in things on earth and things above. I swear when every childish fashion has vanished from my rhyme, will I, gray gone in passion, leave to an after time, hymning in harmony of thee and of thy works and of thy life, but vain is now the burning and the strife, pangs are in vain until I grow high rife with old philosophy and mad with glimpses of futurity. For many years my offering must be hushed when I do speak, I'll think upon this hour, because I feel my forehead hot and flushed, even at the simplest vassal of thy power. A lock thy bright hair, sudden it came, and I was startled when I caught thy name, coupled so unaware, yet at the moment temperate was my blood, I thought I had beheld it from the flood. This I did at Hans's at his request. Perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home. I've sent my first book to the press, and this afternoon shall begin preparing the second. I visit to you will be a great spur to quicken the proceeding. I've not had your sermon returned. I long to make it the subject of a letter to you. What do they say at Oxford? I trust you and Gleeg pass much fine time together. Remember me to him and Whitehead. My brother Tom is getting stronger, but his spitting of blood continues. I sat down to read King Lear yesterday and felt the greatness of the thing up to the writing of a sonnet, preparatory there too. In my next you shall have it. There were some miserable reports of Rice's health. I went and lo, Master Jemmy had been to the play the night before and was out at the time. He always comes on his legs like a cat. I've seen a good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlett is lecturing on poetry at the Surrey Institution. I shall be there next Tuesday. Your most affectionate friend, John Keats. End of letter 31. Letter 32 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, Hampstead, January 30th, 1818. My dear Taylor, these lines as they now stand about happiness have rung in my ears like a chime amending. See here, behold, wherein lies happiness, Piona, fold, et cetera. It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear to you more eligible. Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks our ready minds to fellowship divine, a fellowship with essence till we shine full, alchemized and free of space. Behold, the clear religion of heaven, fold, et cetera. You must indulge me by putting this in. For setting aside the badness of the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole thing must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man, as a thing almost of mere words. But I assure you that when I wrote it, it was a regular stepping of the imagination towards a truth. My having written that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service to me of anything I ever did. It's set before me the gradations of happiness, even like a kind of pleasure thermometer, and is my first step towards the chief attempt in the drama. The playing of different natures with joy and sorrow. Do me this favor, and believe me, your sincere friend, John Keats. I hope your next work will be of a more general interest. I suppose you cogitate a little about it now and then. End of Letter 32. Letter 33 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, Hampstead, Saturday, January 31, 1818. My dear Reynolds, I have parceled out this day for letter writing. More resolve thereon, because your letter will come as a refreshment and will have sick, parvus, et cetera, the same effect as a kiss in certain situations where people become over-generous. I have read this first sentence over and think it savers rather. However, an inward innocence is like a nested dove, as the old song says. Now I propose to write to you a serious poetical letter, but I find that a maxim I met with the other day is a just one. En cause, mieux qu'on a dit pas que ça. I was hindered, however, from my first intention by a mere Muslim handkerchief, very neatly pinned. But, hence, vain deluding, et cetera. Yet I cannot write in prose. It is a sun-shiny day, and I cannot. So here goes. Hence Burgundy-Clarot and Port, away with old hawk and madera. Too earthly ye are for my sport. There's a beverage brighter and clearer. Instead of a pitiful rumour, my wine overbrims a whole summer. My bowl is the sky, and I drink it my eye, till I feel in the brain a Delphian pain, then follow my chaias, then follow. On the green of the hill we will drink our fill of golden sunshine, till our brains intertwine with the glory and grace of Apollo. God of the meridian and of east and west, to thee my soul is flown, and my body is earthward pressed. It is an awful mission, a terrible division, and leaves a gulf austere to be filled with worldly fear. I, when the soul is fled too high above our head, affrighted do we gaze after its airy maze, as doth a mother wild when her young infant child is in an eagle's claws. And is not this the cause of madness? God of song, thou bearest me along. Through sights I scarce can bear. Oh, let me, let me share, with a hot liar in thee, the staid philosophy. Temper my lonely hours, and let me see thy bowers, more unalarmed. My dear Reynolds, you must forgive all this ranting. But the fact is, I cannot write since this morning. However, you shall have some. I will copy out my last sonnet. When I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen is gleamed my teeming grain, before high-piled books and characterry hold like rich garners the full ripened grain. When I behold upon the night's starred face huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, and think that I may never live to trace their shadows with a magic hand of chance. And when I feel fair creature of an hour that I shall never look upon thee more, never have relish in the fairy power of unreflecting love than on the shore of the wide world I stand alone and think to love and fame to nothingness do sink. I must take a turn and then write to tin-myth. Remember me to all, not accepting yourself. Your sincere friend, John Keats. End of letter 33. Letter 34 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, Hampstead, Tuesday, February 3rd, 1818. My dear Reynolds, I thank you for your dish of filberts. Would I could get a basket of them by way of dessert every day for the sum of tuppence? Footnote, alluding to two sonnets of Reynolds on Robin Hood, copies of which Keats had just received from him by post. End footnote. Would we were a sort of ethereal pigs and turn loose to feed upon spiritual mast and acorns, which would be merely being a squirrel and feeding upon filberts? For what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is that where there are a throng of delightful images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on account of the first line and the arrow foiled of its antlered food. And moreover, and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand. The last has tender and true. We must cut this and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth and so on should have their due from us. But for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain philosophy engendered in the whims of an egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them until he makes a false queenage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very borne of heaven and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a journey heavenward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us. And if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers. How would they lose their beauty? Were they to throng into the highway crying out, admire me, I am a violet. Dote upon me, I am a primrose. Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this. Each of the moderns, like an elector of Hanover, governs his petty state and knows how many straws are swept daily from the causeways and all his dominions and has a continual itching that all the housewives should have their coppers well scoured. The ancients were emperors of vast provinces. They had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this. I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manassi when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the pricks when we can walk on roses? Why should we be owls when we can be eagles? Why be teased with nigh-side wag-tails when we have in sight the cherub contemplation? Why with Wordsworth's Matthew with a bow of wilding in his hand when we can have Jacques under an oak and so on? The secret of the bow of wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing. And because he happens in an evening walk to imagine the figure of the old man, he must stamp it down in black and white and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonets gave me more pleasure than will the fourth book of Child Herald and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your dish of Philberts, I have gathered a few catkins. I hope they'll look pretty. To J.H.R., an answer to his Robin Hood sonets. No, those days are gone away and their hours are old and gray and their minutes buried all under the downtrodden pall of the leaves of many years. Many times have winter shears frozen north and chilling east, sounded tempests to the feast of the forest's whispering fleeces since men paid no rent on leases. No, the bugle sounds no more and the twanging bow no more. Silent is the ivory shrill past the heath and up the hill. There is no mid-forest laugh where lone echo gives the half to some white amaze to hear jesting deep in forest drear. On the Ferris time of June, you may go with sun or moon or the seven stars to light you or the polar ray to write you, but you never may behold little John or Robin Bold, never any of all the clan, thrumming on an empty can some old hunting diddy, while he doth his green way bugile to fair hostess merriment down beside the pasture Trent, for he left the merry tale messenger for spicy ale. Gone the merry Morris din, gone the song of Gamelin, gone the tough belted-out law idling in the grain they shall, all are gone away and past, and if Robin should be cast, sudden from his turfid grave, and if Marion should have, once again her forest days, she would weep and he would craze. He would swear for all his oaks fallen beneath the dockyard strokes, have rotted on the briny seas, she would weep that her wild bees sang not to her. Strange that, honey, can't be got without hard money. So it is, yet let us sing honour to the old bow string, honour to the bugle horn, honour to the woods unshawn, honour to the Lincoln green, honour to the archer keen, honour to tight little John and the horse he rode upon, honour to bold Robin Hood sleeping in the underwood, honour to Maid Marion and to all the Sherwood clan. Though their days have hurried by, let us too a burden try. I hope you will like them. They are at least written in the spirit of outlawry. Here are the mermaid lines. Souls of poets dead and gone, what Elysium have you known, happy field or mercy cavern, fairer than the mermaid tavern. Have you tippled drink more fine than mine hosts canary wine? Or are fruits of paradise sweeter than those dainty pies of venison? O generous food, dressed as though bold Robin Hood, wood with his Maid Marion, suppin' bows from horn and can. I have heard that on a day mine hosts signboard flew away, nobody knew wither till an astrologer's old quill, to a sheepskin gave the story, said he saw you in your glory, underneath a new old sign, sipping beverage divine and pledging with contented smack the mermaid in the zodiac. Souls of poets dead and gone, are the winds a sweeter home. Richer is uncellered cavern, then the mermaid tavern. I will call on you at four tomorrow, and we will trudge together, for it is not the thing to be a stranger in the land of harpsicles. I hope also to bring you my second book, in the hope that these scribblings will be some amusement for you this evening, I remain copying on the hill your sincere friend and co-scribbler John Keats. End of letter 34. Letter 35. 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. Fleet Street, Thursday morn, February 5th, 1818. My dear Taylor, I have finished copying my second book, but I want it for one day to overlook it. And moreover this day, I have a very particular employ in the affair of crypts. So I trespass on your indulgence and take advantage of your good nature. You shall hear from me soon or see me soon. I will tell Reynolds of your engagement tomorrow. Yours unfanedly, John Keats. End of letter 35. Letter 36. 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 George and Thomas Keats, Hamstead, Saturday night, February 14th, 1818. My dear brothers, when once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time, he delays it longer for one or two reasons. First, because he must begin in a very common place style. That is to say, with an excuse. And secondly, things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last. I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my poem all out. I am now much beforehand with the printer. They have done none yet. And I am half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing. I am determined, they shall not trouble me when I have copied it all. Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called Nehemiah Mugs, An Exposure of the Methodist. Perhaps I may send you a few extracts. Haslett's last lecture was on Thomas, Cowper and Crab. He praised Thompson and Cowper, but he gave Crab an unmerciful licking. I think Hunt's article of Fazio. No, it was not. But I saw Fazio the first night. It hung rather heavily on me. I am in the highway of being introduced to a squad of people. Peter Pindar, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Scott. Mr. Robinson, a great friend of Coleridge's, called on me. Richards tells me that my poems are known in the West Country, and that he saw a very clever copy of verses headed with a motto from my sonnet to George. Honors rush so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them. What think you? Am I to be crowned in the capital? Am I to be made a Mandarin? No. I am to be invited, Mrs. Hunt tells me, to a party at all years, to keep Shakespeare's birthday. Shakespeare would stare to see me there. The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt and I wrote each a sonnet on the River Nile. Someday you shall read them all. I saw a sheet of endymion and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done. There shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing at intervals, many songs and sonnets, and I long to be a tin myth to read them over to you. However, I think I had better wait till this book is off my mind. It will not be long first. Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles in the Yellow Dwarf on popular preachers. All the talk here is about Dr. Croft, The Duke of Devon, et cetera. Your most affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 36. Letter 37 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, Hampstead, February 19, 1818. My dear Reynolds, I had an idea that a man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner. Let him on a certain day read a certain page full of poetry or distilled prose, let him wander with it and muse upon it and reflect from it and bring home to it and prophecy upon it and dream upon it until it becomes stale. But when will it do so? Never. When man has arrived at a certain ripeness and intellect, any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all the two and 30 palaces. How happy is such a voyage of conception? What delicious, diligent indolence. A dose upon a sofa does not hinder it and a nap upon clover and genders ethereal finger pointings. The prattle of a child gives it wings and the converse of middle age, a strength to beat them. A strain of music conducts to an odd angle of the aisle and when the leaves whisper, it puts a girdle round the earth. Nor will this sparing touch of noble books be any irreverence to their writers. For perhaps the honors paid by man to man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great works to the spirit and pulse of good by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called knowledge. Many have original minds who do not think it. They are led away by custom. Now it appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards, his own air he set it out. The points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with this few points to tip with a fine web of his soul and weave a tapestry emperion full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different and bent on such diverse journeys that it may at first appear impossible for any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these suppositions. It is, however, quite the contrary. Mines would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child would talk together and the old man be led on his path and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute or assert but whisper results to his neighbor and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mold ethereal every human might become great in humanity instead of being a wide heath of furs and briars with here and there a remote oak or pine would become a grand democracy of forestries. It has been an old comparison for our urging on the beehive. However, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the bee. For it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving. No, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair girdon from the bee. Its leaves blush deeper in the next spring. And who shall say between man and woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury. Let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey be like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be arrived at. But let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favors us with a visit. Sap will be given us for meat and due for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of idleness. I've not read any books. The morning said I was right. I had no idea but of the morning. And the thrush said I was right. Seeming to say, O thou whose face hath felt the winter's wind, whose eye has seen the snow clouds hung and missed, and the black elm taps among the freezing stars. To thee the spring will be a harvest time. O thou whose only book has been the light of supreme darkness, which thou fetst on night after night when Phoebus was away. To thee the spring shall be a triple morn. O fret not after knowledge, I have none, and yet my song comes native with warmth. O fret not after knowledge, I have none, and yet the evening listens. He who saddens at thought of idleness cannot be idle, and he's awake who thinks himself asleep. Now I am sensible, all this is a mere sophistication. However, it may neighbor to any truth, to excuse my own idleness. So I will not deceive myself that man should be equal with Jove, but think himself very well off as a sort of Skullian Mercury, or even a humble bee. It is no matter whether I am right or wrong, either one way or another. If there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of letter 37. Letter 38 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 Thomas Keats, Hampstead, Saturday, February 21, 1818. My dear brothers, I am extremely sorry to have given you so much uneasiness by not writing. However, you know good news is no news or vice versa. I do not like to write a short letter to you, or you would have had one long before. The weather, although boisterous today, has been very much milder, and I think Devonshire is not the last place to receive a tempered change. I have been abominably idle since you left, but have just turned over a new leaf and used as a marker a letter of excuse to an invitation from Horace Smith. The occasion of my writing today is the enclosed letter by Postmark from Ms. W. Does she expect you in town, George? I received a letter the other day from Hayden in which he says his essays on the Elgin Marbles are being translated into Italian, the witch he super intends. I did not mention that I had seen the British Gallery. There are some nice things by Stark and Bathsheba by Wilkie, which is condemned. I could not bear Alston's orio. Reynolds has been very ill for some time, confined to the house, and had leeches applied to his chest. When I saw him on Wednesday, he was much the same, and he is in the worst place for amendment among the strife of women's tongues and a hot and parched murm. I wish he would move to Butler's for a short time. The thrushes and blackbirds have been singing me into an idea that it was spring and almost that leaves were on the trees, so that black clouds and boisterous winds seemed to have mustered and collected in full divan for the purpose of convincing me to the contrary. Taylor says my poem shall be out in a month. I think he will be out before it. The thrushes are singing now as if they would speak to the winds because their big brother Jack the Spring was not far off. I'm reading Voltaire and Gibbon, although I wrote to Reynolds the other day to prove reading of no use. I've not seen Hunt since. I'm a good deal with Dilke and Brown. We are very thick. They are very kind to me, they are well. I don't think I could stop in Hampstead, but for their neighborhood. I hear Haslitz lectures regularly. His last was on Gray, Collins, Young, et cetera, and he gave a very fine piece of discriminating criticism on Swift, Voltaire, and Rabelais. I was very disappointed at his treatment of Chateron. I generally meet with many I know there. Lord Byron's fourth canto is expected out, and I heard somewhere that Walter Scott has a new poem in readiness. I'm sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity, and bigotry. Yet he is a great poet, if not a philosopher. I have not yet read Shelly's poem. I do not suppose you have it yet at the Tinmouth Libraries. These double letters must come rather heavy. I hope you have a moderate portion of cash, but don't fret at all if you have not. Lord, I intend to play it cut and run as well as Falstaff, that is to say, before he got so lusty. I remain praying for your health, my dear brothers, your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 38. Letter 39 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. Hamston, February 27th, 1818. My dear Taylor, your alteration strikes me as being a great improvement, and now I will attend to the punctuations you speak of. The comma should be at soberly, and in the other passage, the comma should follow quiet. I am extremely indebted to you for this alteration, and also for your after-admonitions. It is a sorry thing for me that anyone should have to overcome prejudices in reading my verses. That affects me more than any hypercriticism on any particular passage. In Endymion, I have most likely but moved into the go-cart from the leading strings. In poetry, I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. First, I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity. It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. Second, its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it, and this leads me to... another axiom, that if poetry comes not as naturally as leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. However, it may be with me. I cannot help looking into new countries with, oh, for a muse of fire to ascend. If Endymion serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content. I have great reason to be content, for I thank God I can read, and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths, and I have, I am sure, many friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to humbleness rather than pride, to a cow-waring under the wings of great poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious to get Endymion printed that I may forget it and proceed. I have copied the third book and begun the fourth. On running my eye over the proofs, I saw one mistake. I will notice it presently, and also any others if there be any. There should be no comma in the raft-branched-down sweeping from a tall ash top. I have, besides, made one or two alterations, and also altered the thirteenth line, page 32, to make sense of it, as you will see. I will take care the printer shall not trip up my heels. There should be no dash after dryapy, in the line dryapy's lone lowling of a child. Remember me to Percy Street. Your sincere and obliged friend, John Keats. P.S., you shall have a short preface in good time. End of Letter 39. Letter 40 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 Messers Taylor and Hesse, Hampstead, March, 1818. My dear sirs, I am this morning making a general clearance of all lent books. All, I am afraid I do not return all. I must fog your memories about them. However, with many thanks, here are the remainder, which I am afraid are not worth so much now as they were six months ago. I mean, the fashions may have changed. Yours truly, John Keats. End of Letter 40. Letter 41 of Letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Bailey. TinMeth, Friday, March, 13th, 1818. My dear Bailey, when a poor devil is drowning, it is said he comes thrice to the surface ere he makes his final sink. If, however, even at the third rise, he can manage to catch hold of a piece of weed or rock, he stands a fair chance, as I hope I do now, of being saved. I have sunk twice in our correspondence, have risen twice and have been too idle or something worse to extricate myself. I have sunk the third time and just now risen again at this two of the clock p.m. and saved myself from utter perdition by beginning this all drenched as I am and fresh from the water. And I would rather endure the present inconvenience of a wet jacket than you should keep a laced one in store for me. Why did I not stop at Oxford on my way? How can you ask such a question? Why did I not promise to do so? Did I not, in a letter to you, make a promise to do so? Then how can you be so unreasonable as to ask me why I did not? This is the thing, for I have been rubbing up my invention, trying several slides. I first polished a cold, felt it in my fingers, tried it on the table, but could not pocket it. I tried chill-blanes, rheumatism, gout, tight boots. Nothing of that sort would do. So this is, as I was going to say, the thing. I had a letter from Tom saying how much better he had got and thinking he had better stop. I went down to prevent his coming up. Will this not do? Turn it which way you like. It is salvaged all round. I have used it these three last days to keep out the abominable Devonshire weather. By the by, you may say what you will of Devonshire. The truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, bloody, muddy, slip-shot county. The hills are very beautiful when you get a side of them. The prim roses are out, but then you are in. The cliffs are of a fine, deep color, but then the clouds are continually vying with them. The women like your London people in a sort of negative way because the native men are the poorest creatures in England because government never have thought it worthwhile to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of words were sonnet, vanguard of liberty ye men of Kent. The degenerated race about me are pulvis, epicaque, simplex, a strong dose. Where I course there, I'd make a descent on the south coast of Devon. If I did not run the chance of having cowardice imputed to me, as for the men, they'd run away into the Methodist meeting houses, and the women would be glad of it. Had England been a large Devonshire, we should not have won the Battle of Waterloo. There are knotted oaks. There are lusty rivulets. There are meadows such as are not. There are valleys of feminine climate, but there are no fues and sinews. Moore's almanac is here a curiosity. Arms, neck, and shoulders may at least be seen there. And the ladies read it as some out-of-the-way romance. Such a quelling power have these thoughts over me that I fancy the very air of a deteriorating quality. I fancy the flowers, all precocious, have an accretion spell about them. I feel able to beat off the Devonshire waves like soap froth. I think it well for the honour of Britain that Julius Caesar did not first land in this county. A Devonshire standing on his native hills is not a distinct object. He does not show against the light. A wolf or two would dispossess him. I like. I love England. I like its living men. Give me a long-brown plain for my mourning. So I may meet with some of Edmund Ironside's descendants. Give me a barren mould. So I may meet with some shadowing of Alfred in the shape of a gypsy, a huntsman, or a shepherd. scenery is fine, but human nature is finer. The sword is richer for the tread of a real nervous English foot. The eagle's nest is finer for the mountaineer has looked into it. Are these facts or prejudices? Whatever they be, for them, I shall never be able to relish entirely any Devonshire scenery. Homer is fine, Achilles is fine, Diomed is fine, Shakespeare is fine, Hamlet is fine, Lyre is fine, but dwindled Englishmen are not fine. Where, too, the women are so passable and have such English names, such as Ophelia, Cordelia, and so on, that they should have such paramours, or rather imperimours. As for them, I cannot in thought help wishing, as did the cruel emperor, that they had but one head, and I might cut it off to deliver them from any horrible courtesy. They may do their undeserving countrymen. I wonder I meet with no born monsters. Oh, Devonshire, last night I thought the moon had dwindled in heaven. I have never had your sermon from Wordsworth, but Mr. Dilk lent it to me. You know my ideas about religion. I do not think of myself more in the right than other people, and that nothing in this world is provable. I wish I could enter into all your feelings on the subject, merely for one short 10 minutes, and give you a page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very skeptical as to think poetry itself, a mere jack-o'-lantern, to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As tradesmen say, everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer, being in itself a nothing. Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads, things real, things semi-real, and nothings. Things real, such as existences of sun, moon, and stars, and passages of Shakespeare, things semi-real, such as love, the clouds, and so on, which require a greeting of the spirit to make them wholly exist, and nothings, which are made great and dignified by an ardent pursuit, which, by the by, stamp the burgundy mark on the bottles of our minds, in so much as they are able to consecrate whatever they look upon. I have written a sonnet here of somewhat collateral nature, so don't imagine it apropos de vote. Four seasons fill the measure of the year, there are four seasons in the mind of man, he hath his lusty spring, when fancy clear takes in all beauty within an easy span. He has his summer, when luxuriously he choose the honeyed cut of fair spring thoughts, till in his soul dissolved, they come to be part of himself. He hath his autumn ports and havens of repose when his tired wings are folded up, and he content to look on mists and idleness to let fair things pass by unheated as a threshold brook. He has his winter too of pale mist feature, or else he would forgo his mortal nature. Aye, this may be carried, but what am I talking of? It is an old maxim of mine, and of course must be well known that every point of thought is the center of an intellectual world. The two uppermost thoughts in a man's mind are the two poles of his world, he revolves on them, and everything is southward or northward to him through their means. We take but three steps from feathers to iron. Now my dear fellow, I must once for all tell you I have not won the idea of the truth of any of my speculations. I shall never be a reasoner because I care not to be in the right when retired from bickering and in a proper philosophical temper. So you must not stare if in any future letter I endeavour to prove that Apollo, as he had cat-gut strings to his lyre, used a cat's paw as a pectin, and further from said pectins reiterated and continual teasing came the term hen pecked. My brother Tom desires to be remembered to you. He has just this moment had a spitting of blood, poor fellow. Remember me to glig in whitehead. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of Letter 41 Letter 42 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. Tin Moth. Saturday. March 14, 1818. Dear Reynolds, I escaped being blown over and blown under and trees in house being toppled on me. I have since, hearing a brown's accident, had an adversion to a dose of parapet, and being also a lover of antiquities, I would sooner have a harmless piece of Herculaneum sent me as quietly a present and ever so modern a chimney-pot tumbled onto my head. Being a gog to see some Devonshire, I would have taken a walk the first day, but the rain would not let me, and the second, but the rain would not let me, and the third, but the rain forbade it. Ditto fourth, ditto fifth, ditto. So I made up my mind to stop indoors and catch a sight flying between the showers, and behold, I saw a pretty valley, pretty cliffs, pretty brooks, pretty meadows, pretty trees, both standing as they were created, and blown down as they are uncreated. The green is beautiful, as they say, and pity it is that it is amphibious. May, but alas, the flowers here wait as naturally for the rain twice a day as the mussels do for the tide. So we look upon a brook in these parts, as you look upon a splash in your country. There must be something to support this, eye, fog, hail, snow, rain, mist, blanketing up three parts of the year. This Devonshire is like Lydia Languish, very entertaining when it smiles, but cursedly subject to sympathetic moisture. You have the sensation of walking under one great lamp lighter, and you can't go on the other side of the ladder to keep your frock clean and cost it your superstition. Buy a girdle, put a pebble in your mouth, loosen your braces, for I am going among scenery once I intend to tip you the Damacelle Radcliffe. I'll cavern you and grotto you, and waterfall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense rock you, and tremendous sound you, and solitude you. I'll make a lodgement of your glaces by a row of pines, and storm your covered way with bramble bushes. I'll have at you with hip and haw, small shot, and cannonade you with shingles. I'll be witty upon saltfish, and impede your cavalry with clotted cream. But ah, coward, to talk at this rate to a sick man, or, I hope, to one that was sick. For I hope by this you stand on your right foot. If you are not, that's all. I intend to cut all sick people if they do not make up their minds to cut sickness. A fellow to whom I have a complete diversion, and whose strange to say is harbored and countenanced, in several houses where I visit. He is sitting now quite impudent between me and Tom. He insults me at poor Gemrises, and you have seated him before now between us at the theatre, when I thought he looked with a longing eye of poor Keen. I shall say, once for all, to my friends generally and severally, cut that fellow, or I cut you. I went to the theatre here the other night, which I forgot to tell George, and got insulted, which I ought to remember to forget to tell anybody, for I did not fight, and as yet had no redress. Lie thou there, sweetheart. I wrote to Bailey yesterday, obliged to speak in a high way, and a damn who's afraid. For I had owed him so long. However, he shall see I will be better in future. Is he in town yet? I have directed to Oxford as the better chance. I've copied my fourth book, and shall write the preface soon. I wish it was all done, for I want to forget it, and make my mind free for something new. Atkins the coachman, Bartlett the surgeon, Simmons the barber, and the girls over at the bond shop, say we shall now have a month of seasonable weather, warm, witty, and full of invention. Write to me, and tell me, that you are well or thereabout, or, by the holy bookure, which I suppose is the Virgin Mary, or the repented Magdalene. Beautiful name, that Magdalene. I'll take to my wings and fly away to anywhere, but old or Nova Scotia. I wish I had a little innocent bit of metaphysics in my head, to crisscross the letter. But you know a favorite tune is hardest to be remembered, when one wants it most, and you, I know, have long aired this taken it for granted, that I never have any speculations without associating you in them, where they are of a pleasant nature, and you know enough of me, to tell the places where I haunt most, so that if you think for five minutes after having read this, you will find it a long letter, and see written in the air above you, your most affectionate friend, John Keats. Remember me to all, Tom's, rememberances to you. End of Letter 42 Letter 43 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. Tinmyth. Saturday Mourn. March 21st, 1818. My dear Hayden. In Soothe. I hope you're not too sanguine about that seal. In Soothe. I hope it is not Bromidgim. In Double Soothe. I hope it is his. And in Triple Soothe. I hope I shall have an impression. Footnote. Replying to an ecstatic note of Hayden's about a seal with a true lover's knot and the initials W.S., lately found in a field at Stratford on Avon. End footnote. Such a piece of intelligence came doubly welcome to me while in your own county and in your own hand. Not but I have blown up the said county for its urinal qualifications. The six first days I was here it did nothing but rain. And at that time having to write to a friend I gave Devonshire a good blowing up. It has been fine for almost three days and I was coming around a bit. But today it rains again. With me the county is yet upon its good behavior. I have enjoyed the most delightful walks these three fine days. Beautiful enough to make me content. Here all the summer could I stay. For there's Bishop's Tin and King's Tin and Coombe at the Clear Tin Head. Where close by the stream you may have your cream I'll spread upon barley bread. There's Archbook and there's Larchbook both turning many a mill and cooling the drought of the salmon's mouth and fattening a silver gill. There's Wildwood a mild hood to the sheep on the lee of the down. Where the golden furs with its green thin spurs to catch at the maiden's gown. There's Newton Marsh with its speargrass harsh a pleasant summer level. Where the maiden's sweet of the market street do meet in the dusk to revel. There's the Barton Rich with dyke and ditch and hedge for the thrush to live in. And the Hollow Tree for the buzzing bee. And a bank for the wasp to hive in. An O and O the daisies blow and the primroses are wakened. And the violets whites in silver plight and the green buds as long as the spike end. Then who would go into dark soho and shatter with dactared critics. When he can stay for the new mown hay and startle the dappled prickeths. I know not if this rhyming fit has done anything. It will be safe with you if worthy to put among my lyrics. Here's some dog roll for you. Perhaps you would like a bit of a bitrell. Where be you going you devon maid? And what have you there in the basket? You tight little fairy just fresh from the dairy. Will you give me some cream if I ask it? I love your meads and I love your flowers and I love your junkets mainly. But behind the door I love kissing more. Oh, look not so disdainly. I love your heels and I love your dales and I love your flocks of beating. Blow on the heather to lie together with both our hearts of beating. I'll put your basket all safe in the nook. Your shawl I hang on the willow. And we will sigh in the daisies eye and kiss on a grass-green pillow. How does the work go on? I should like to bring out my dentatis at the same time your epic makes its appearance. Footnote. Dentatis was the subject of Hayden's new picture. End footnote. I expect to have my mind soon clear for something new. Tom has been much worse, but is now getting better. His remembrance is to you. I think of seeing the dart in Plymouth. But I don't know. It has as yet been a mystery to me how and where Wordsworth went. I can't help thinking he has returned to a shell with his beautiful wife and his enchanting sister. It is a great pity that people should, by associating themselves with the finest things, spoil them. Hunt has damned Hampstead and masks and sonnets and Italian tales. Wordsworth has damned the lakes. Millman has damned the old drama. West has damned wholesale. Peacock has damned satire. Alleyer has damned music. Hazlet has damned the bigoted and the blue stockinged. How dource the man. He is your only good dammer. And if ever I am damned, damn me if I shouldn't like him to damn me. It will not be long ere I see you, but I thought I would just give you a line out of Devon. Yours affectionately, John Keats. Remember me to all we know. End of Letter 43. Letter 44 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 Messers Taylor and Hesse. Tin Mouth. Saturday Morn. March 21, 1818. My dear sirs, I had no idea of your getting on so fast. I thought of bringing my fourth book to town, all in good time for you, especially after the late unfortunate chance. I did not, however, for my own sake, delay finishing the copy, which was done a few days after my arrival here. I send it off to-day, and will tell you in a post-script at what time to send for it from the bull and mouth or other inn. You will find the preface and dedication and the title-page as I should wish it to stand. For a romance is a fine thing notwithstanding the circulating libraries. My respects to Mrs. Hesse and to Percy Street. Yours very sincerely, John Keats. P.S. I have been advised to send it to you. You may expect it on Monday, for I sent it by the postman to Exeter at the same time with this letter. Adieu. End of Letter 44