 Letter 75 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats, Hampstead, October 26, 1818. My dear Fanny, I called on Mr. Abbey in the beginning of last week, when he seemed averse to letting you come again, from having heard that you had been to other places besides Wellwalk. I do not mean to say that you did wrongly and speaking of it, for there should rightly be no objection to such things, but you know with what people we are obliged in the course of childhood to associate, whose conduct forces us into duplicity and falsehood to them. To the worst of people we should be open-hearted, but it is as well as things are to be prudent in making any communication to anyone that may throw an impediment in the way of any of the little pleasures you may have. I do not recommend duplicity but prudence with such people. Perhaps I am talking too deeply for you. If you do not now, you will understand what I mean in the course of a few years. I think poor Tom is a little better. He sends his love to you. I shall call on Mr. Abbey tomorrow, when I hope to settle when to see you again. Mrs. Dilk has been for some time at Brighton. She is expected home in a day or two. She will be pleased, I am sure, with your present. I will try for permission for you to remain here all night, should Mrs. D return in time. Your affectionate brother, John. My dear Woodhouse, your letter gave me great satisfaction, more an account of its friendliness than any relish of that matter in it, which is accounted so acceptable to the genus Irritabile. The best answer I can give you is in a clerk-like manner to make some observations on two principal points which seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole pro and con about genius and views and achievements and ambition, etc. First, as to the poetical character itself, I mean that sort of which, if I am anything, I am a member, that sort distinguished from the words worthian or egotistical sublime, which is a thing per se and stands alone. It is not itself. It has no self. It is everything and nothing. It has no character. It enjoys light and shade. It lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence because he has no identity. He is continually in for and filling some other body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men and women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute. The poet has none. No identity. He is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's creatures. If then he has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I should say I would write no more, might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the characters of Saturn and Ops. Footnote. This notes Woodhouse is in reply to a letter of protest he had written Keats concerning, quote, what had fallen from him about six weeks back when we dined together at Mr. Hesse's, respecting his continuing to write, which he seemed very doubtful of, end quote, end footnote. It is a wretched thing to confess, but it is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature. How can it, when I have no nature? When I am in a room with people, if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself, but the identity of everyone in the room begins to press upon me so that I am in a very little time annihilated. Not only among men, it would be the same in a nursery of children. I know not whether I make myself wholly understood. I hope enough so to let you see that no dependence is to be placed on what I said that day. In the second place, I will speak of my views and of the life I purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing the world some good, if I should be spared, that may be the work of mature years. In interval, I will say to reach as high a summit in poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is that I may not lose all interest in human affairs, that the solitary indifference I feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will. I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labour should be burnt every morning and no I ever shine upon them. But even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself, but from some character in whose soul I now live. I am sure, however, that this next sentence is from myself. I feel your anxiety, good opinion, and friendship in the highest degree, and am, yours most sincerely, John Keats. End of letter seventy-six. Letter seventy-seven of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Hampstead, November 5th, 1818. My dear Fanny, I have seen Mr. Abbey three times about you and have not been able to get his consent. He says that once more between this and the holidays will be sufficient. What can I do? I should have been at Waltham Stowe several times, but I am not able to leave Tom for so long as that would take me. Poor Tom has been rather better these last four days in consequence of obtaining a little rest at nights. Write to me as often as you can, and believe that I would do anything to give you any pleasure. We must as yet wait patiently. Your affectionate brother, John. End of letter seventy-seven. Letter seventy-eight of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To James Rice. Will Walk, Hampstead, November 24th, 1818. My dear Rice, your amend honorable, I must call, un sequant d'amité, for I am not at all sensible of anything but that you were unfortunately engaged and I was unfortunately in a hurry. I completely understand your feeling in this mistake, and find in it that balance of comfort which remains after regretting your uneasiness. I have long made up my mind to take for granted the genuine heartedness of my friends, notwithstanding any temporary ambiguousness in their behavior or their tongues, nothing of which, however, I had the least scent of this morning. I say completely understand, for I am everlastingly getting my mind into such like painful tremors, and am even at this moment suffering under them in the case of a friend of ours. I will tell you two most unfortunate and parallel slips. It seems downright pre-intention. A friend says to me, Keats, I shall go and see Severn this week. Ah, says I, you want him to take your portrait. And again, Keats, says a friend, when will you come to town again? I will, says I, let you have the manuscript next week. In both these cases I appeared to attribute an interested motive to each of my friends' questions. The first made him flush, the second made him look angry. And yet I am innocent in both cases. My mind leapt over every interval to what I saw was, per se, a pleasant subject with him. You see, I have no allowances to make. You see how far I am from supposing you could show me any neglect. I very much regret the long time I have been obliged to exile from you, for I have one or two rather pleasant occasions to confer upon with you. What I have heard from George is favourable. I expect a letter from the settlement itself. Your sincere friend, John Keats. I cannot give any good news of Tom. End of Letter 78 Letter 79 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Fanny Keats. Hampstead, Tuesday morning, December 1st, 1818. My dear Fanny, poor Tom has been so bad that I have delayed your visit hither, as it would be so painful to you both. I cannot say he is any better this morning. He is in a very dangerous state. I have scarce any hopes of him. Keep up your spirits for me, my dear Fanny. Repose entirely in your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 79 Letter 80 Part 1 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 George and Georgiana Keats Hampstead, about December 18, 1818. My dear brother and sister, you will have been prepared before this reaches you for the worst news you could have, nay, if Haslam's letter arrives in proper time. I have a consolation in thinking that the first shock will be passed before you receive this. The last days of poor Tom were the most distressing nature, but his last moments were not so painful, and his very last was without a pang. I will not enter into any parsonic comments on death, yet the common observations of the commonest people on death are as true as their proverbs. I have scarce a doubt of the immortality of some nature or other, neither had Tom. My friends have been exceedingly kind to me, every one of them. Brown detained me at his house. I suppose no one could have had their time made smoother than mine has been. During poor Tom's illness I was not able to write, and since his death, the task of beginning has been a hindrance to me. Within this last week I have been everywhere, and I will tell you as nearly as possible how all go on. With Dilkin Brown I am quite thick. With Brown, indeed, I am going to domesticate, that is, we shall keep house together. I shall have the front parlor and he the back one, by which I shall avoid the noise of Bentley's children, and be the better able to go on with my studies, which have been greatly interrupted lately, so that I have not the shadow of an idea of a book in my head, and my pen seems to have grown too gouty for sense. How are you going on now? The goings on of the world makes me dizzy. There you are with Birkbeck, here I am with Brown. Sometimes I fancy an immense separation, and sometimes, as a present, a direct communication of spirit with you. That will be one of the grandeurs of immortality. There will be no space, and consequently, the only commerce between spirits will be by their intelligence of each other. When they will completely understand each other, while we in this world merely comprehend each other in different degrees, the higher the degree of good so higher is our love and friendship. I have been so little used to writing lately that I am afraid you will not smoke my meaning, so I will give an example. Suppose Brown or Haslam, or any one whom I understand in the next degree to what I do you, were in America. There would be so much the farther for me in proportion, as their identity was less impressed upon me. Now the reason why I do not feel at the present moment so far from you, is that I remember your ways and manners and actions. I know your manner of thinking, your manner of feeling. I know what shape your joy or your sorrow would take. I know the manner of your walking, standing, sauntering, sitting down, laughing, punting, and every action so truly that you seem near to me. You will remember me in the same manner, and the more when I tell you that I shall read a passage of Shakespeare every Sunday at ten o'clock. You read one at the same time. We shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same room. I saw your mother the day before yesterday, an intent now frequently to pass half a day with her. She seemed tolerably well. I called in Henrietta Street, and so was speaking with your mother about Miss Millar. We had a chat about heiresses. She told me, I think, of seven or eight dying swans. Charles was not at home. I think I have heard a little more talk about Miss Kiesel. All I know of her is she had a new sort of shoe on, a bright leather like our knapsacks. Miss Millar gave me one of her confounded pinches. N. B. did not like it. Mrs. Delk went with me to see Fanny last week, and Haslam went with me last Sunday. She was well. She gets a little plumper and had a little color. On Sunday I brought from her a present of face-greens and a work-bag for Mrs. D. They were really very pretty. From Walthamstow we walked to Bethnal Green, where I felt so tired for my long walk that I was obliged to go to bed at ten. Mr. and Mrs. Kiesel were there. Haslam has been excessively kind, and his anxiety about you is great. I never meet him, but we have some chat thereon. He is always doing me some good turn. He gave me this thin paper for the purpose of writing to you. I have been passing an hour this morning with Mr. Lewis. He wants news of you very much. Hayden was here yesterday. He amused us much by speaking of young Hopner, who went, with Captain Ross, on a voyage of discovery to the Poles. The ship was sometimes entirely surrounded with vast mountains and crags of ice, and in a few minutes not a particle was to be seen all round the horizon. Once they met with so vast a mass that they gave themselves over for lost. Their last resource was in meeting it with a bowsprit, which they did, and split it asunder, and glided through it as it parted for a great distance, one mile or more. Their eyes were so fatigued with the eternal dazzle and whiteness that they lay down in their backs upon deck to relieve their sight on the blue sky. Hopner describes his dreadful weariness at the continual day, the sun ever moving in a circle round above their heads, so pressing upon him that he could not rid himself of the sensation even in the dark hold of the ship. The Eskimo are described as the most wretched beings. They float from their summer to their winter residences and back again, like white bears on the ice floats. They seem never to have washed, and so when their features move, the red skin shows beneath the cracking peel of dirt. They had no notion of any inhabitants in the world but themselves. The sailors who had not seen a star for some time, when they came again southwards, on the hailing of the first revision of one, all ran upon deck with feelings of the most joyful nature. Hayden's eyes will not suffer him to proceed with his picture. His physician tells him he must remain two months more inactive. Hunt keeps on in his old way. I'm completely tired of it all. He has lately published a pocket book called the Literary Pocket Book, full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine. Reynolds as well. He has become an Eidenberg reviewer. I've not heard from Bailey. Rice I've seen very little of lately, and I'm very sorry for it. The Miss R's are all as usual. Archer, above all people, called on me one day. He wanted some information, by my means, from Hunt and Hayden concerning some man they knew. I got him what he wanted, but knew none of the whys and wherefores. Poor Kirkman left Wentworth Place one evening, about half past eight, and was stopped, beaten, and robbed of his watch in Pond Street. I saw him a few days since. He had not recovered from his bruises. I called on Haslick the day I went to Romney Street. I gave John Hunt extracts from your letters. He has taken no notice. I've seen Lamb lately. Brown and I were taken by Hunt to Novello's. There we were devastated and excruciated with bad and repeated puns. Brown don't want to go again. We went the other evening to see Brutus, a new tragedy by Howard Payne, an American. Keen was excellent. The play was very bad. It is the first time I have been, since I went with you, to the Lyceum. Mrs. Braun, who took Brown's house for the summer, still resides in Hampstead. She is a very nice woman, and her daughter, Sr., is, I think, beautiful and elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable, and strange. We have a little tiff now and then, and she behaves a little better, or I must have sheared off. I find by a side-long report from your mother that I am to be invited to Miss Mila's birthday dance. Shall I dance with Miss Waldgrave? I shall be obliged to shirk a good many there. I shall be the only dandy there, and indeed I merely comply with the invitation that the party may not be entirely destitute of a specimen of that race. I shall appear in a complete dress of purple, hat and all, with a list of the beauties I have conquered embroidered around my calves. Thursday, December 24. This morning is so very fine. I should have walked over to Walthamstow, if I had thought of it yesterday. What are you doing this morning? Have you a clear hard frost as we have? How do you come on with a gun? Have you shot a buffalo? Have you met with any pheasants? My thoughts are very frequently in a foreign country. I live more out of England than in it. The mountains of Tatari are a favourite lounge. If I happen to miss the Allegheny Ridge, I have no whim for a Savoy. There must be great pleasure in pursuing game. Pointing your gun? No. It won't do. Now. No. Rabbit. It. Now. Bang. Smoke and feathers. Where is it? Shall you be able to get a good pointer or so? Have you seen Mr. Trimmer? He is an acquaintance of Peaches. Now I am not addressing myself to G. Minor, and yet I am, for you are one. Have you some warm furs? By your next letters, I shall expect to hear exactly how you go on. Smother nothing. Let us have all, fair and foul, all plain. With a little baron have made his entrance before you have this. Kiss it for me, and when it can first know a cheese from a caterpillar, show it to my picture twice a week. You will be glad to hear that Gifford's attack upon me has done me service. It has got my book among several sets. Nor must I forget to mention once more what I suppose Haslam has told you. The present of twenty-five pound note I'd anonymously sent me. I have many things to tell you. The best way will be to make copies of my correspondence. And I must not forget the sonnet I received with the note. Last week I received the following from Woodhouse whom you must recollect. Quote Insisted upon having it to read for a day or two, and undertook to make my cousin's piece with me on account of the extra delay. Neville told me that one of the Mrs. Porter, of romance celebrity, had seen it on his table, dipped into it, and expressed a wish to read it. I desired he should keep it as long and lend it to as many as he pleased, provided it was not allowed to slumber on any one shelf. I learned subsequently from Miss Frogley that these ladies had requested of Mr. Neville if he was acquainted with the author, the pleasure of an introduction. About a week back the enclose was transmitted by Mr. Neville to my cousin as a species of apology for keeping her so long without the book that she sent it to me knowing that it would give me pleasure. I forward it to you for somewhat the same reason, or principally, because it gives me the opportunity of naming to you, which it would have been fruitless to do before. The opening there is for an introduction to a class of society from which you may possibly derive advantage, as well as qualification, if you think proper to avail yourself of it. In such a case I should be very happy to further your wishes, but do just as you please. The whole is entirely entre nu, yours, etc., R.W. Well, now, this is Miss Porter's letter to Neville. Quote, Dear Sir, as my mother is sending a messenger to Escher, I cannot but make the same the bearer of my regrets for not having had the pleasure of seeing you the morning you called at the gate. I had given orders to be denied. I was so very unwell with my still adhesive cold, but had I known it was you, I should have taken off the interdict for a few minutes to say how very much I am delighted with endymion. I just finished the poem, and I have done as you permitted, lent it to Miss Fitzgerald. I regret you were not personally acquainted with the author, for I should have been happy to have acknowledged to him through the advantage of your communication. The very rare delight my sister and myself have enjoyed from the first fruits of genius. I hope the ill-natured review will not have damaged or damped such true Parnassian fire. It ought not, for when life is granted, etc., end quote. And so she goes on. Now I feel more obliged than flattered by this, so obliged that I will not at present give you an extravaganza of a lady romancer. I will be introduced to them if it be merely for the pleasure of writing to you about it. I shall certainly see a new race of people. I shall more certainly have no time for them. Hunt is asked me to meet Tom Moore some day, so you shall hear of him. The night we went to Novello's there was a complete set to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow my own inclinations I should never meet any one of that set again, not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him. But in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and in morals. He understands many a beautiful thing. But then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself professes, he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart. I care not for white bust, and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing. This distorts one's mind, makes one's thoughts bizarre, perplexes one in the standard of beauty. Martin is very much irritated against Blackwood for printing some letters in his magazine, which were Martin's property. He always found excuses for Blackwood till he himself was injured, and now he is enraged. I have been several times thinking whether or not I should send you the examiners, as Birkbeck no doubt has all the good periodical publications. I will save them at all events. I must not forget to mention how attentive and useful Mrs. Bentley has been. I am very sorry to leave her, but I must, and I hope she will not be much a loser by it. Bentley is very well. He has just brought me a closed basket of books. Brown has gone to town today to take his nephews who are on a visit here to see the lions. I am passing a quiet day, which I have not done for a long while, and if I do continue so I feel I must again begin with my poetry, for if I am not in action, mind or body I am in pain, and from that I suffer greatly by going into parties where from the rules of society and a natural pride I am obliged to smother my spirit and look like an idiot, because I feel my impulses given way to would too much amaze them. I live under an everlasting restraint, never relieved except when I am composing, so I will write away. Friday, December 25 I think you know before you left England that my next subject would be the fall of Hyperion. I went in a little with it last night, but it will take some time to get into the vein again. I will not give you any extracts, because I wish the whole to make an impression. I have, however, a few poems which you will like, and I will copy out on the next sheet. I shall dine with Hayden on Sunday, and go over to Walthamstow on Monday if the frost hold. I think also of going into Hampshire this Christmas to Mr. Snooks. They say I shall be very much amused, but I don't know. I think I am in too huge a mind for study. I must do it. I must wait at home and let those who wish come to see me. I cannot always be, how do you spell it, traipsing. Here I must tell you that I have not been able to keep the journal or write the tale I promised. Now I shall be able to do so. I will write to Haslam this morning to know when the packet sales, until it does, I will write something every day. After that my journal shall go on like clockwork, and you must not complain of its dullness, for what I wish is to write a quantity to you. Knowing well that dullness itself will for me be interesting to you. You may conceive how this not having been done has weighed upon me. I shall be able to judge from you next what sort of information will be of most service or amusement to you. Perhaps, as you were fond of giving me sketches of character, you may like a little picnic of scandal even across the Atlantic. But now I must speak particularly to you, my dear sister, for I know you love a little quizzing better than a great bit of apple-dumpling. Do you know Uncle Redhall? He is a little man with an innocent powdered upright head. He lists, with a protruded underlip, his two nieces. Each one would weigh three of him, one for height and the other for breadth. He knew Bartolosi. He gave a supper and ranged his bottles of wine all up the kitchen and cellar stairs. Quite ignorant of what might be drunk. It might have been a good joke to pour on the sly, bottle after bottle into a washing-tub and roar for more. If you were to trip him up it would discompose a pigtail and bring his underlip nearer to his nose. He never had the good luck to lose a silk handkerchief in a crowd, and therefore has only one topic of conversation, Bartolosi. Shall I give you Miss Braun? She is about my height, with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort. She wants sentiment in every feature. She manages to make her hair look wow. Her nostrils are fine. Though a little painful, her mouth is bad and good. Her profile is better than her full face, which indeed is not full but pale and thin, without showing any bone. Her shape is very graceful, and so are her movements. Her arms are good, her hands bad-ish, her feet tolerable. She is not seventeen, but she is ignorant, monstrous in her behavior, flying out in all directions, calling people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the term minx. This, I think, not from any innate vice, but from a penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am, however, tired of such style, and shall decline any more of it. She had a friend to visit her lately. You have known plenty such. Her face is raw, as if she was standing out in a frost, her lips raw, and seem always ready for a pullet. She plays the music without one sensation but the feel of the ivory at her fingers. She is downright miss without one set off. We hated her, and smoked her and baited her, and I think drove her away. Miss B thinks her Paragana fashion, and says she is the only woman she would change persons with. What a stoop! She is superior as a rose to a dandelion. When we went to bed, Brown observed, as he put out the taper, what a very ugly old woman that Miss Robinson would make, at which I must have groaned aloud for I am sure ten minutes. I have not seen the thing in Kingston again. George will describe him to you. I shall insinuate some of these creatures into a comedy some day, and perhaps have hunt among them. Seeing. A little parlor. Enter Hunt. Gaddy. Hazlet. Mrs. Novello. Allier. Gaddy. Ha! Hunt! Got into your new house. Ha! Mrs. Novello. Seeing Altam and his wife. Mrs. N. Yes, with a grin. It's Mr. Hunt's, isn't it? Gaddy. Hunt says, No. Ha! Mr. Allier. I congratulate you upon the highest compliment I ever heard paid to the book. Mr. Hazlet, I hope you are well. Hazlet. Yes, sir. No, sir. Mr. Hunt. At the music. La beyondina. Etc. Hazlet, did you ever hear this? La beyondina. Etc. Hazlet. Oh, no, sir. I never. Allier. Do, Hunt. Give it us over again. Divine. Gaddy. Divino. Hunt. When does your pocketbook come out? Hunt. What is this absorbs me quite? Oh, we are spinning on a little. We shall fluoridize soon, I hope. Such a thing was very much wanting. People think of nothing but money getting. Now for me, I am rather inclined to the liberal side of things. I am reckoned lax in my Christian principles, etc., etc., etc. December 29. It is some days since I wrote the last page, and what I had been about since I have no idea. I dined at Oslooms on Sunday, with Hayden yesterday, and saw Fanny in the morning. She was well. Just now I took up my poem to go on with it, but the thought of my writing so little to you came upon me, and I could not get on. So I began at random, and I have not a word to say, and yet my thoughts are so full of you that I can do nothing else. I shall be confined at Hampstead a few days, and I count of a sore throat. The first thing I do will be to visit your mother again. The last time I saw Henry he showed me his first engraving, which I thought capital. Mr. Lewis called this morning, and brought some American papers. I have not looked into them. I think we ought to have heard of you before this. I am in daily expectation of letters. Nill Desperandum. Mrs. Abbey wishes to take Fanny from school. I shall strive all I can against that. There has happened a great misfortune in the Drew family. Old Drew has been dead some time, and lately George Drew expired in a fit, on which account Reynolds has gone into Devonshire. He dined a few days since at Horace Twizzies with Liston and Charles Kemble. I see very little of him now, as I seldom go to Little Britain, because the N-way always seizes me there, and John Reynolds is very dull at home. Nor have I seen rice. How are you now going on is a mystery to me. I hope a few days we'll clear it up. December 30. I never know the day of the month. It is very fine here today, though I expect a thundercloud, or rather a snow cloud, in less than an hour. I am at present alone at Wentworth Place, Brown being a chichester, and Mr. and Mrs. Dilke making a little stay in town. I know not what I should do without a sunshiny morning now and then. It clears up one's spirits. Dilke and I frequently have some chat about you. I have now and then some doubt, but he seems to have a great confidence. I think there will soon be perceptible a change in the fashionable slang literature of the day. It seems to me that reviews have had their day, that the public have been suffocated. There will soon be some new folly to keep the parlors in talk. What it is, I care not. We have seen three literary kings in our time, Scott, Byron, and then the Scotch novels. All now appears to be dead, or I may mistake literary bodies may still keep up at the bustle, which I do not hear. Hayden showed me a letter he had received from Tripoli. Richie was well, and in good spirits, among camels, turbans, palm trees, and sands. You may remember, I promised to send him an endymion, which I did not. However, he has one. You have one. One is in the wilds of America. The other is on a camel's back and the plains of Egypt. I am looking into a book of Du Boises. He has written directions to the players. One of them is very good. And singing never mind the music. Observe what time you please. It would be a pretty degradation indeed if you were obliged to confine your genius to the dull regularity of a fiddler. Horse-hair and cat's guts. No. Let him keep your time and play your tune. Dodge him. I will now copy out the letter and sign it I have spoken of. The outside cover was thus directed. Messers Taylor and Hesse, booksellers. No. 93 Fleet Street, London. And it contained this. Messers Taylor and Hesse are requested to forward the enclosed letter by some safe mode of conveyance to the author of Endymion, who is not known to Tynmyth. Or, if they have not his address, they will return the letter by post, directed as below, within a fortnight. Mr. P. Fenbeck, P. O. Tynmyth, 9th November, 1818. In this sheet was enclosed the following, with a superscription. Mr. John Keats, Tynmyth. Then came Sonnet to John Keats, which I would not copy for any in the world but you. You know that I scout mild light and loveliness, or any such nonsense in myself. Star of high promise, not to this dark age, do thy mild light and loveliness belong, for it is blind, intolerant, and wrong. Dead to imperial soreness and the rage of scoffing spirits, bitter war doth wage, with all that bold integrity of song. Yet thy clear beam shall shine through ages strong, to ripest times a light and heritage. And there breathe now who dote upon thy fame, whom thy wild numbers wrap beyond their being, who love the freedom of thy lays, their aim above the scope of a dull tribe unseeing. And there is one whose hand will never scant from his poor store of fruits all thou canst want. November, 1818. Turn over. I turned over and found a twenty-five pound note. Now this appears to me all very proper. If I had refused it, I should have behaved in a very braggadocio, dunder-headed manner. And yet the present galls me a little, and I do not know whether I shall not return it if I ever meet with the donor after, whom to no purpose I've written. I have your miniature on the table, George, the great. It's very like, though not quite about the upper lip. I wish we had a better of your little George. I must not forget to tell you that a few days since I went with Dilk a shooting on the heath and shot a tom-tot. There were as many guns abroad as birds. I intended to have been at Chichester this Wednesday, but on account of this sore throat I wrote him brown my excuse yesterday. End of Letter 80 Part 1 Letter 80 Part 2 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo. To George and Georgiana Keats. Thursday, December 31. I will date when I finish. I received a note from Haslam yesterday, asking if my letter is ready. Now, this is only the second sheet, notwithstanding all my promises. But you must reflect what hindrances I have had. However, unsealing this, I shall have nothing to prevent my proceeding in a gradual journal, which will increase in a month to a considerable size. I will insert any little pieces I may write, though I will not give any extracts from my large poem, which is scarce began. I want to hear very much whether poetry and literature in general has gained or lost interest with you, and what sort of writing is of the highest gust with you now? With what sensation do you read fielding, and do not Hogarth's pictures seem an odd thing to you? Yet you are very little more removed from general association than I am. Recollect that no man can live but in one society at a time. His enjoyment in the different states of human society must depend upon the powers of his mind. That is, you can imagine a Roman triumph or an Olympic game as well as I can. We, with our bodily eyes, see but the fashion and manners of one country for one age, and then we die. Now, to me, manners and customs, long since past, whether among the Babylonians or the Bactrians, are as real, or even more real, than those among which I now live. My thoughts have turned lately this way. The more we know, the more inadequacy we find in the world to satisfy us. This is an old observation. But I have made up my mind never to take anything for granted, but even to examine the truth of the commonest proverbs. This, however, is true. Mrs. Tye and Beatty once delighted me. Now I see through them and can find nothing in them but weakness. Yet how many they still delight. Perhaps a superior being may look upon Shakespeare in the same light. Is it possible? No. The same inadequacy is discovered, forgive me, little George. You know I don't mean to put you in the mess. In women with few exceptions. The dressmaker, the blue stocking, and the most charming sentimentalists differ but in a slight degree, and are equally smokable. But I'll go no further. I may be speaking sec religiously, and on my word I've thought so little that I have not one opinion upon anything except in matters of taste. I never can feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty. And I find myself very young-minded, even in that perceptive power, which I hope will increase. A year ago I could not understand in the slightest degree Raphael's cartoons. Now I begin to read them a little. And how did I learn to do so? By seeing something done in quite an opposite spirit. I mean a picture of Guido's in which all the saints, instead of that heroic simplicity, an unaffected grandeur which they inherit from Raphael. At each of them, both in countenance and gesture, all the canting, solemn, melodramatic, mockishness of Mackenzie's father Nicholas. When I was last at Haydn's, I looked over a book of prints taken from the fresco of the Church of Milan, the name of which I forget. In it are comprised specimens of the first and second age of art in Italy. I do not think I ever had a greater treat out of Shakespeare. Full of romance and the most tender feeling, magnificence of draperies beyond any I ever saw, not accepting Raphael's, but grotesque to a curious pitch, yet still making up a fine whole, even finer to me than more accomplished works, as there was left so much room for imagination. I have not heard one of this last course of Haslitz Lectures. They were, upon wit and humor, the English comic writers. Saturday, January 2nd, 1819 Yesterday, Mr. and Mrs. D., and myself, dined at Mrs. Bronze. Nothing particular passed. I never intend hereafter to spend any time with ladies unless they are handsome. You lose time to no purpose. For that reason I shall beg leave to decline going again to Reddolls or Butler's or any squad where a fine future cannot be musted among them all. And where, all the evening's amusement consists in saying your good health, your good health, and your good health, and, oh, I beg pardon, yours, Miss. And such thing not even dull enough to keep one awake. With respect to amiable speaking, I can read, let my eyes be fed, or I'll never go out to dinner anywhere. Perhaps you may have heard of the dinner given to Thomas More and Dublin, because I have the account here by me in the Philadelphia Democratic paper. The most pleasant thing that occurred was a speech Mr. Tom made on his father's health being drank. I am afraid a great part of my letters are filled up with promises, and what I will do, rather, than any great deal written. But here I say once for all, that circumstances prevented me from keeping my promise in my last, but now I affirm that, as there will be nothing to hinder me, I will keep a journal for you. That I have not yet done so you would forgive if you knew how many hours I have been repenting of my neglect. For I have no thought pervading me so constantly and frequently as that of you. My poem cannot frequently drive it away. You will retard it much more than you could by taking up my time if you were in England. I never forget you, except after seeing now and then some beautiful woman. But that is a fever. The thought of you both is a passion with me, but for the most part a calm one. I ask Dilk for a few lines for you. He has promised them. I shall send what I have written to Haslam on Monday morning. What I can get into another sheet tomorrow I will. There are one or two little poems you might like. I have given up snuff very nearly quite. Dilk has promised to sit with me this evening. I wish he would come this minute for I want a pinch of snuff very much just now. I have none though in my own snuff box. My sore throat is much better today. I think I might venture on a pinch. Here are the poems. They will explain themselves, as all poems should do without any comment. Ever let the fancy roam, pleasure never is at home. Add a touch sweet pleasure melteth, like the bubbles when rain pelteth. Then let wing fancy wander towards heaven, still spread beyond her. Open wide the mind's cage door, she'll dart forth in cloudward sore. Oh sweet fancy, let her loose. Summer's joys are spoiled by use, and the enjoying of the spring fades as doth its blossoming. Autumn's red-lipped frutage too, blushing through the mist and dew. Cloys with kissing, what do then, sit thee, in an ingle when? The seer faggot blazes bright. Spirit of a winter night. When the soundless earth is muffled, and the caked snow is shuffled, from the plow-boys heavy shewn. When the night doth meet the moon, and a dark conspiracy to banish Vesper from the sky, sit thee then, and send abroad with the mind self-overawed. Fancy high commissioned sender, she'll have vassals to attend her. She'll bring thee spite of frost, beauties that the earth has lost. She'll bring thee all together, all the lights of summer weather. All the fairy buds of May, on spring turf or scented spray. All the heaped autumn's wealth, with this still mysterious stealth. She'll mix these pleasures up, like three fit wines in a cup. Thou shalt quaffet, thou shalt hear. Instant harvest carol's clear. Bustle of their reaped corn, sweet birds, antheming the morn, and in the same moment hark, to the early April arc, and the rooks with a busy caw, forging for sticks and straw. Thou shalt, at one glance behold, the daisy and the marigold, white-plumed lilies and the first hedgerow, primrose, that hath burst. Shaded high as synth alway, sapphire queen of the mid-May, and every leaf and every flower, purled with the same soft shower. Thou shalt see the field-mouse creep, meager from its held sleep, and the snake all winter shrank, cast its skin on sunny bank. Freckled nest-eggs shalt thou see, hatching in the hawthorn tree, when the hen birds wing doth rest, quiet on its mossy nest. Then the hurry and alarm, when the beehive cast its swarm, acorns ripe down scattering, while the autumn breezes sing, for the same sleek-throated mouse to store up in its winter house. Oh, sweet fancy letter loose, every joy is spoiled by use, every pleasure every joy, not a mistress but doth glory. Where's the cheek that doth not fade, too much gazed at? Where's the maid whose lip mature's ever knew? Where's the eye, however blue, doth not weary? Where's the face one would meet in every place? Where's the voice, however soft, one would hear, too oft and oft? At a touch, sweet pleasure melteth, like the bubbles when rain pelteth, let then winged fancy find the amistress to thy mind. Dulset eyed is Ciri's daughter, ere the god of torment totter, how to frown in how to chide, with a waist and with a side, white as hebe's when her zone, sipped its golden clasp and down, fell her curdle to her feet, while she held the goblet sweet, and Jove grew languid, mistress fair, thou shalt have that trecid hair. At an eye tangled all for spite, and the mouth he would not kiss, and the treasure he would miss, and the hand he would not press, and the warmth he would distress. O the ravishment, the bliss, fancy has her there she is, never fulsome ever new, there she steps and tell me who has a mistress so divine, be the pallet nare so fine. She cannot second break the mesh of the fancy's silken leash, where she tethered to the heart, quickly break her prison string, and such joys as these she'll bring. Let the wing fancy roam, pleasure never is at home. I did not think this had been so long a poem. I have another not so long, but as it will more conveniently be copied on the other side, I will just put down here some observations on Caleb Williams by Haslett. I meant to say St. Leon. For although he has mentioned all the novels of God when very freely, I do not quote them, but this only on account of its being a specimen of his usual abrupt manner, and fiery laconicism, he says of St. Leon. He is a limb torn off society, in possession of eternal youth and beauty he can feel no love, surrounded, tantalized, and tormented with riches, he can do no good. The faces of men pass before him as in a speculum, but he is attached to them by no common tie of sympathy or suffering. He is thrown back into himself and his own thoughts. He lives in the solitude of his own breast, without wife or child or friend or enemy in the world. This is the solitude of the soul, not of woods or trees or mountains, but the desert of society, the waste and oblivion of the heart. He is himself alone. His existence is purely intellectual, and is therefore intolerable to one who has felt the rapture of affection or the anguish of woe. As I am about it, I might as well give you his character of Godwin as a romancer. Quote, Whoever else is, it is pretty clear that the author of Caleb Williams is not the author of Waverly. Nothing can be more distinct or excellent in their several ways than these two writers. If the one owes almost everything to external observations and traditional character, the other owes everything to internal conception and contemplation of the possible workings of the human mind. There is little knowledge of the world, little variety, neither an eye for the picturesque nor a talent for the humors in Caleb Williams. For instance, but you cannot doubt for a moment of the originality of the work and the force of the conception. The impression made upon the reader is the exact measure of the strength of the author's genius. For the effect, both in Caleb Williams and St. Leon is entirely made out, not by facts nor dates, by black letter or magazine learning, by transcript nor record, but by intense and patient study of the human heart, and by an imagination projecting itself into certain situations, incapable of working up its imaginary feelings to the height of reality. This appears to me quite correct. Now I will copy the other poem. It is on the double immortality of poets. Bards of passion and of mirth ye have left your souls on earth, have ye souls in heaven too, double lived in regions new? Yes, and those of heaven commune, with the spheres of sun and moon, with the noise of fountains wondrous, and the parl of voices thunderous, with the whisper of heaven's trees, and one another in soft ease, seated on Elysian lawns, browsed by none but Diane's fawns, underneath large bluebells tinted, where the daisies are rose-scented, and the rose herself has got perfume that on earth is not. Where the nightingale doth sing, not a senseless, tranced thing, but melodious truth divine, philosophic numbers fine, tales in golden histories of heaven and its mysteries. Thus ye live on earth, and then on the earth ye live again, and the souls ye left behind you teach us here the way to find you, where your other souls are joing, never slumbered, never cloying. Here your earth-born souls still speak, to mortals of the little weak, they must sojourn with their cares, of their sorrows and delights, of their passions and their spights, of their glory and their shame, what doth strengthen and what maim. Thus ye teach us every day, wisdom though fled far away. Bards of passion and of mirth ye have left your souls on earth, ye have souls in heaven too, double-lived in regions new. These are specimens of a sort of rendezvous, which I think I shall become partial to, because you have one idea amplified with greater ease and more delight and freedom than in the Sonnet. It is my intention to wait a few years before I publish any minor poems, and then I hope to have a volume of some worth, and which those people will relish who cannot bear the burden of a long poem. In my journal I intend to copy the poems I write the days they are written. There is just room, I see, in this page to copy a little thing I wrote off to some music as it was playing. I had a dove and the sweet dove died, and I have thought it died for grieving. Oh, what could it mourn for? It was tied, with a silken thread of my own hands weeding. Sweet little red feet, why did you die? Why would you leave me, sweet dove, why? You lived alone on the forest tree. Why, pretty thing, could you not live with me? I kissed you off, and I gave you white peas. Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees? Sunday, January 3rd. I have been dining with Dilk today. He is up to his ears in Walpole's letters. Mr. Manker is there, and I have come round to see if I can conjure up anything for you. Kirkman came down to see me this morning. His family has been very badly off lately. He told me of a villainous trick of his uncle William in Newgate Street, who became sole creditor to his father under pretense of serving him, and put an execution on his own sister's goods. He went into the family at Portsmouth, conversed with him, went out, and sent in the sheriff's officer. He tells me, too, of abominable behavior of Archer to Carolyn Matthew. Archer has lived nearly at the Matthews these two years. He has been amusing Carolyn, and now he has written a letter to Mrs. M, declining on pretense of inability to support a wife as he would wish, all thoughts of marriage. What is the worst is Carolyn is twenty-seven years old. It is an abominable matter. He has called upon me twice lately. I was out both times. What can it be for? There is a letter today in the examiner to the electors of Westminster on Mr. Hobb House's account. In it there is a good character of Cobbett. I have not the paper by me or I would copy it. I do not think I have mentioned the discovery of an African kingdom. The account is much the same as the first account of Mexico. All magnificence. There is a book being written about it. I will read it and give you the cream in my next. The romance we have heard upon it runs thus. They have window frames of gold, a hundred thousand infantry, human sacrifices. The gentleman who is the adventurer has his wife with him. She, I am told, is a beautiful little silphid woman. Her husband was to have been sacrificed to their gods and was led through a chamber filled with different instruments of torture with privilege to choose what death he would die without their having a thought of his aversion to such a death, they considering it a supreme distinction. However, he was led off and became a favourite with a king, who at last openly patronised him, though at first, on account of the jealousy of his ministers, he was wont to hold conversations with his Majesty in the dark middle of the night. All this sounds a little blue-beardish, but I hope it is true. There is another thing I must mention of the momentous kind, but I must mine my periods in it. Mrs. Dilk has two cats, a mother and a daughter. Now the mother is a tabby, and the daughter a black and white, like the spotted child. Now it appears to me, for the doors of both houses are open frequently, that so there is a complete thoroughfare for both cats, they are being no bored up to the contrary. There may one in several of them come into my room add libidem, but no, the tabby only comes, whether from sympathy for Anne the maid or me I cannot tell, or whether Brown has left behind him any atmospheric spirit of maidenhood I cannot tell. The cat is not an old maid herself, her daughter is proof of it. I have questioned her. I have looked at the lines of her paw, I have felt her pulse, to no purpose. Why should the old cat come to me? I ask myself, and myself is not a word to answer. It may come to light some day. If it does, you shall hear of it. Kirkman this morning promised to write a few lines to you and send them to Haslam. I do not think I have anything to say in the business way. You will let me know what you would wish done with your property in England, what things you would wish sent out. But I am quite in the dark about what you are doing. If I do not hear soon, I shall put on my wings and be after you. I will in my next, and after I have seen your next letter, tell you my own particular idea of America. Your next letter will be the key by which I shall open your hearts and see what spaces want filling with any particular information. Whether the affairs of Europe are more or less interesting to you, whether you would like to hear of the theatres, of the bear garden, of the boxers, the painters, the lectures, the dress, the progress of dandyism, the progress of courtship, or the fate of Mary Millar, being a full, true, and tray particular count of Miss M's ten suitors, how the first tried the effect of swearing, the second of stammering, the third of whispering, the fourth of sonnets, the fifth of Spanish leather boots, the sixth of flattering her body, the seventh of flattering her mind, the eighth of flattering himself, the ninth stuck to the mother, the tenth kissed the chambermaid, and told her to tell her mistress. But he was soon discharged, his reading led him into an error. He could not sport the Sir Lucius to any advantage, and now for this time I bid you goodbye. I have been thinking of these sheets so long that I appear in closing them to take my leave of you. But that is not it. I shall immediately, as I send this off, begin my journal. When some days I shall write no more than ten lines, and others ten times as much. Mrs. Dilk is knocking at the wall for tea as ready. I will tell you what sort of tea it is, and then bid you goodbye. January 4th. This is Monday morning. Nothing particular happened yesterday evening, except that when the trade came up Mrs. Dilk and I had a battle with celery stalks. She sends her love to you. I shall close this and send it immediately to Haslam. Remaining ever, my dearest brother and sister, your most affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 80, Part 2. Letter 81 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Richard Woodhouse. Wentworth Place, Friday Mourn, December 18th, 1818. My dear Woodhouse, I am greatly obliged to you. I must needs feel flattered by making an impression on a set of ladies. I should be content to do so by a meretricious romance verse, if they alone and not men were to judge. I should like very much to know these ladies, though, look here, Woodhouse, I have a new leaf to turn over. I must work. I must read. I must write. I am unable to afford time for new acquaintances. I am scarcely able to do my duty to those I have. Leave the matter to chance, but do not forget to give my remembrances to your cousin. Yours most sincerely, John Keats. End of Letter 81. Letter 82 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Mrs. Reynolds. Wentworth Place, Tuesday December 22nd, 1818. My dear Mrs. Reynolds, when I left you yesterday, t'was with the conviction that you thought I had received no previous invitation for Christmas The truth is, I had, and had accepted it under the conviction that I should be in Hampshire at the time. Else, believe me, I should not have done so, but kept in mind my old friends. I will not speak of the proportion of pleasure I may receive at different houses, that never enters my head. You may take for a truth, that I would have given up even what I did see to be a greater pleasure, for the sake of old acquaintanceship. Time is nothing. Two years are as long as twenty. Yours faithfully, John Keats. End of Letter 82. Letter 83 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden. Wentworth Place, Tuesday December 22nd, 1818. My dear Hayden, upon my soul I never felt you're going out of the room at all, and believe me, I never wrote a montage anywhere but in your company. My general life in society is silence. I feel in myself all the vices of a poet, irritability, love of effect and admiration. And influenced by such devils I may at times say more ridiculous things than I am aware of. But I will put a stop to that in a manner I have long resolved upon. I will buy a gold ring and put it on my finger, and from that time a man of superior head shall never have occasion to pity me, or one of inferior and nonskull to chuckle at me. I am certainly more for greatness in a shade than in the open day. I am speaking as a mortal. I should say I value more the privilege of seeing great things in loneliness than the fame of a prophet. Yet here I am sinning, so I will turn to a thing I have thought on more. I mean your means till your picture be finished. Not only now, but for this year and half have I thought of it. Believe me, Hayden, I have that sort of fire in my heart that would sacrifice everything I have to your service. I speak without any reserve. I know you would do so for me. I open my heart to you in a few words. I will do this sooner than you shall be distressed. But let me be the last day. Ask the rich lovers of art first. I'll tell you why. I have a little money which may enable me to study and to travel for three or four years. I never expect to get anything by my books. And moreover, I wish to avoid publishing. I admire human nature, but I do not like men. I should like to compose things honourable to men, but not fingerable over by men. So I am anxious to exist without troubling the printer's devil or drawing upon men's or women's admiration, in which great solitude I hope God will give me strength to rejoice. Try the long purses, but do not sell your drawings or I shall consider it a breach of friendship. I'm sorry I was not at home when salmon called. Do write and let me know all your present lies and wherefores. Yours most faithfully, John Keats. End of Letter 83. Letter 84. 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, Wentworth Place, December 24th, 1818. My dear Taylor, can you lend me thirty pounds for a short time? Ten I want for myself and twenty for a friend, which will be repaid me by the middle of next month. I shall go to Chichester on Wednesday and perhaps day of fortnight. I am afraid I shall not be able to dine with you before I return. Remember me to Woodhouse. Yours sincerely, John Keats. End of Letter 84. Letter 85. Of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden, Wentworth Place, December 27th, 1818. My dear Hayden, I had an engagement today and it is so fine a morning that I cannot put it off. I will be with you tomorrow when we will thank the gods, though you have bad eyes and I am idle. I regret more than anything than not being able to dine with you today. I have had several movements that way, but then I should disappoint when who has been my true friend. I will be with you tomorrow morning and stop all day. We will hate the profane vulgar and make us wings. God bless you. John Keats. End of Letter 85. Letter 86. Of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. To Fanny Keats, Wentworth Place, Wednesday, December 30, 1818. My dear Fanny, I am confined at Hampstead with a sore throat, but I do not expect it will keep me above two or three days. I intended to have been in town yesterday, but feel obliged to be careful a little while. I am in general so careless of these trifles that they tease me for months, when a few days' care is all that is necessary. I shall not neglect any chance of an endeavor to let you return to school, nor to procure you a visit to Mrs. Dilks, which I have great fears about. Write to me if you can find time. And also, get a few lines ready for George, as the post sales next Wednesday. Your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 86. Letter 87. Of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden, Wentworth Place, Monday afternoon, January 4, 1819. My dear Hayden, I have been out this morning, and did not therefore see your note till this minute, or I would have gone to town directly. It is now too late for today. I will be in town early tomorrow, and trust I shall be able to lend you assistance noon or night. I was struck with the improvement in the architectural part of your picture, and now that I think on it, I cannot help wondering you should have had it so poor, especially after the Solomon. Excuse this dry bones of a note. For though my pen may grow cold, I should be sorry my life should freeze. Your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of Letter 87. Letter 88. Of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden, Wentworth Place, between January 7 and 14, 1819. My dear Hayden, we are very unlucky. I should have stopped to dine with you, but I knew I should not have been able to leave you in time for my plaguey sore throat, which is getting well. I shall have a little trouble in procuring the money and a great ordeal to go through. No trouble indeed to anyone else, or ordeal either. I mean, I shall have to go to town some thrice, and stand in the bank an hour or two, to be worse than anything in Dante. I should have less chance with the people around me than Orpheus had with the stones. I have been riding a little now and then lately, but nothing to speak of. Being discontented and, is it, were, molting. Yet I do not think I shall ever come to the rope or the pistol, for after a day or two's melancholy, although I smoke more and more my own insufficiency. I see by little and little more of what is to be done, and how it is to be done, should I ever be able to do it. On my soul there should be some reward for that continual agonies on ears. I was thinking of going into Hampshire for a few days. I have been delaying it longer than I intended. You shall see me soon, and do not be at all anxious, for this time I really will do what I never did before in my life, business in good time and properly. With respect to the bond, it may be a satisfaction to you to let me have it, but as you love me, do not let there be any mention of interest, although we are mortal men, and bind ourselves for fear of death. Yours forever, John Keats. End of Letter 88 Letter 89 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Benjamin Robert Hayden, Wentworth Place, January 1819 My dear Hayden, my throat has not suffered me yet to expose myself to the night air. However, I have been to town in the daytime, have had several interviews with my guardian, have written him rather a plain spoken letter, which has had its effect, and he now seems inclined to put no stumbling block in my way, so that I see a good prospect of performing my promise. What I should have lent you ere this, if I could have got it, was belonging to poor Tom, and the difficulty is whether I am to inherit it before my sister is of age, a period of six years. Should it be so, I must incontinently take to Corduroy trousers, but I am nearly confident his all a bam. I shall see you soon, but do let me have a line today or tomorrow concerning your health and spirits. Your sincere friend, John Keats. End of Letter 89 Letter 90 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo To Fanny Keats Wentworth Place January 1819 My dear Fanny, I send this to Walthamstow, for fear you should not be a pancre slain when I call tomorrow, before going in to Hampshire for a few days. I will not be more, I assure you. You may think how disappointed I am in not being able to see you more and spend more time with you than I do. But how can it be helped? The thought is a continual vexation to me, and often hinders me from reading and composing. Right to me as often as you can, and believe me, your affectionate brother, John. End of Letter 90 Letter 91 Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo To Fanny Keats Wentworth Place February 11, 1819, Thursday My dear Fanny, your letter to me at Bedhampton hurt me very much. What objection can there be to your receiving a letter from me? At Bedhampton, I was unwell and did not go out to the Garden Gate, but twice or thrice during the fortnight I was there. Since I came back, I have been taking care of myself. I have been obliged to do so, and am now in hopes that by this care I shall get rid of a sore throat which has haunted me at intervals nearly a twelve month. I had always a pre-sentiment of not being able to succeed in persuading Mr. Abbey to let you remain longer at school. I am very sorry that he will not consent. I recommend you to keep up all that you know and to learn more by yourself however little. The time will come when you will be more pleased with life. Look forward to that time, and, though it may appear a trifle, be careful not to let the idle and retired life you lead fix any awkward habit or behavior on you. Whether you sit or walk, endeavor to let it be in a seemingly and if possible a graceful manner. We have been very little together, but you have not the less been with me in thought. You have known in the world besides me who would sacrifice anything for you. I feel myself the only protector you have. In all your little troubles think of me, with a thought that there is at least one person in England who, if he could, would help you out of them. I live in hopes of being able to make you happy. I should not perhaps write in this manner, if it were not for the fear of not being able to see you often or long together. I am in hopes Mr. Abbey will not object any more to your receiving a letter now and then for me. How unreasonable! I want a few more lines from you for George. There are some young men, acquaintances of a school fellow of mine, going out to Birkbeck's at the letter end of this month. I am in expectation every day of hearing from George. I begin to fear his last letters miscarried. I shall be in town tomorrow. If you should not be in town, I shall send this little parcel by the Walthamstow coach. I think you will like it, Goldsmith. Write to me soon. Your affectionate brother, John. Mrs. Dilke has not been very well. She has gone a walk to town today for exercise. End of Letter 91 Letter 92, Part 1 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima to George and Georgiana Keats. Sunday morning, February 14, 1819 My dear brother and sister, how is it that we have not heard from you from the settlement yet? The letters most surely have miscarried. I am in expectation every day. Peechee wrote me a few days ago, saying some more acquaintances of his were preparing to set out for Birkbeck. Therefore, I shall take the opportunity of sending you what I can muster in a sheet or two. I am still at Wentworth Place, indeed. I have kept indoors lately, resolved if possible to rid myself of my sore throat. Consequently, I have not been to see your mother since my return from Chichester. But my absence from her has been a great weight upon me. I say since my return from Chichester, I believe I told you I was going thither. I was nearly a fortnight at Mr. John Snook's and a few days at old Mr. Dilks. Nothing worth speaking of happened at either place. I took down some thin paper and wrote on it a little poem called St. Agnes's Eve, which you shall have as it is when I finished the blank part of the rest for you. I went down twice at Chichester to Dowager card parties. I see very little now and very few persons, being almost tired of men and things. Brown and Dilk are very kind and considerate towards me. The Miss R's have been stomping next door lately, but are very dull. Miss Braun and I have every now and then a chat and a tiff. Brown and Dilk are walking round the garden, hands in pockets, making observations. The literary world I know nothing about. There is a poem from Rogers, Dead Born, and another satire is expected from Byron, called Don Giovanni. Yesterday I went to town for the first time, for these three weeks, I met people from all parts and of all sets. Mr. Towers, one of the Holts, Mr. Domney Williams, Mr. Woodhouse, Mrs. Haslett and Son, Mrs. Webb, and Mrs. Septimus Brown. Mr. Woodhouse was looking up at a book window in Newgate Street and, being short-sighted, twisted his muscles into so queer a stage that I stood by in doubt whether it was him or his brother, if he has one, and turning round saw Mrs. Haslett with the little nearer her son. Woodhouse, on his features subsiding, proved to be Woodhouse and not his brother. I have had a little business with Mr. Abbey from time to time. He has behaved to me with a little brusquery. This hurt me a little, especially when I knew him to be the only man in England who dared to say a thing to me I did not approve of without its being resented, or at least noticed. So I wrote him about it and have made an alteration in my favor. I expect from this to see more a fanny who has been quite shut out for me. I see Cobbett has been attacking the settlement, but I cannot tell what to believe, and shall be all out at elbows till I hear from you. I am invited to Miss Milar's birthday dance on the nineteenth. I am nearly sure I shall not be able to go. A dance would injure my throat very much. I see very little of Reynolds. Hunt, I hear, is going on very badly. I mean in money matters. I shall not be surprised to hear of the worst. Hayden too, in consequence of his eyes, is out at elbows. I live as prudently as it is possible for me to do. I have not seen Haslam lately. I have not seen Richards for this half year. Rice for three months. Or Charles Calden Clark, for God knows when. When I last called in Henrietta Street, Miss Milar was very unwell, and Miss Waldegrave as stead and self-possessed as usual. Henry was well. There are two new tragedies, one by the Apostate Ma and one by Miss Jane Porter. Next week I am going to stop at Taylor's for a few days, when I will see them both and tell you what they are. Mr. and Mrs. Bentley are well, and all the young carrots. I said nothing of consequence past at Snook's, no more than this, that I like the family very much. Mr. and Mrs. Snook were very kind. We used to have a little religion and politics together almost every evening, and sometimes about you. He proposed writing out for me his experience in farming, for me to send to you. If I should have an opportunity of talking to him about it, I will get to all I can at all events. But you may say in your answer to this what value you place upon such information. I have not seen Mr. Lewis lately, for I have shrank from going up the hill. Mr. Lewis went a few mornings ago to town with Mrs. Braun. They talked about me, and I heard that Mr. L said a thing I am not at all contented with. He says he, Oh, he is quite the little poet. Now this is abominable. You might as well say Bonaparte is quite the little soldier. You see what it is to be under six foot and not a lord. There is a long fuzz today in the examiner about a young man who delighted a young woman with a valentine. I think it must be all yours. Brown and I are thinking of passing the summer oppressals. If we do, we shall go about the first of May. We, i.e. Brown and I, sit opposite one another all day authorizing. NB and S instead of a Z would give a different meaning. He is at present writing a story of an old woman who lived in a forest, and to whom the devil or one of his aides-de-foe came one night very late and in disguise. The old dame set before him pudding after pudding, mess after mess which he devours, and moreover cast his eyes up at a side of bacon hanging over his head, and at the same time ask if her cat is a rabbit. On going he leaves her three pips of Eve's apple, and somehow she, having lived a virgin all her life, begins to repent of it, and wished herself beautiful enough to make all the world and even the other world fall in love with her. So it happens, she sets out from her smoky cottage in magnificent apparel. The first city she enters, everyone falls in love with her, from the prince to the blacksmith. A young gentleman on his way to the church to be married leaves his unfortunate bride and follows this nonsuch. A whole regiment of soldiers are smitten at once and follow her. A whole convent of monks in Corpus Christi procession join the soldiers. The mayor and corporation follow the same road. Old and young, deaf and dumb, all but the blind, are smitten and form an immense concourse of people who, what Brown will do with them, I know not. The devil himself falls in love with her, flies away with her to a desert place and consequence of which she lays an infinite number of eggs. The eggs being hatched from time to time fill the world with many nuisances, such as John Knox, George Fox, Johanna, Southcote, and Gifford. There have been within a fortnight eight failures of the highest consequence in London. Brown went a few evenings since to Davenport's, and on his coming in he talked about bad news in the city with such a face I began to think of a national bankruptcy. I did not feel much surprised and was rather disappointed. Carlisle, a bookseller on the Hone principle, has been issuing pamphlets from his shop in Fleet Street called the Deist. He was conveyed to Newgate last Thursday. He intends making his own defence. I was surprised to hear from Taylor the amount of money of the bookseller's last sale. What think you of twenty five thousand pound? He sold four thousand copies of Lord Byron. I am sitting opposite the Shakespeare I brought from the Isle of Wight, and I never look at him but the silk tassels on it give me as much pleasure as the face of the poet itself. In my next packet, as this is won by the way, I shall send you the Pot of Basil, Saint Agnes' Eve, and if I should have finished it, a little thing called the Eve of Saint Mark. You see what fine mother Radcliffe names I have. It is not my fault. I do not search for them. I have not gone on with Hyperion, but to tell the truth I have not been in great queue for writing lately. I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little. The only time I went out, from Bedhampton, was to see a chapel consecrated. Brown Eye and John Snook, the boy, went in a chase behind a leaden horse. Brown drove, but the horse did not mind him. This chapel is built by a Mr. Way, a great Jew converter, who in that line has spent one hundred thousand pounds. He maintains a great number of poor Jews. Of course, his communion plate was stolen. He spoke to the clerk about it. The clerk said he was very sorry, adding, I dare she, your honour. It's among us. The chapel is built in Mr. Way's park. The consecration was not amusing. There were a number of carriages, and his house crammed with clergy. They sanctified the chapel, and it being a wet day, consecrated the burial ground through the vestry window. I begin to hate parsons. They did not make me love them that day when I saw them in their proper colours. A parson is a lamb in a drawing-room, and a lion in a vestry. The notions of society will not permit a parson to give way to his temper in any shape, so he festers in himself. His features get a peculiar, diabolical, self-sufficient, iron-stupid expression. He is continually acting. His mind is against every man, and every man's mind is against him. He is a hypocrite to the believer, and a coward to the unbeliever. He must be either a nave or an idiot, and there is no man so much to be pitied as an idiot parson. The soldier who is cheated into in a spree decor by a redcoat, a band, and colours, for the purpose of nothing, is not half so pitiable as the parson who is led by the nose by the bench of bishops, and is smothered in absurdities, a poor necessary subaltern of the church. Friday, February 18 The day before yesterday I went to Romney Street. Your mother was not at home. But I have just written her that I shall see her on Wednesday. I called on Mr. Lewis this morning, he is very well, and tells me not to be uneasy about letters, the chances being so arbitrary. He is going on as usual, among his favourite Democrat papers. We had a chat as usual about Cobbett and the Westminster electors. Dilke has lately been very much harassed about the manner of educating his son. He at length decided for a public school, and then he did not know what school. He as at last has decided for Westminster, and as Charlie's to be a day-boy, Dilke will remove to Westminster. We lead very quiet lives here. Dilke is at present in Greek histories and antiquities, and talks of nothing but the electors of Westminster, in the retreat of the Ten Thousand. I never drink now, above three glasses of wine, and never any spirits and water. Though by the by the other day Woodhouse took me to his coffee-house and ordered a bottle of Claret. Now I like Claret. Whenever I can have Claret, I must drink it. It is the only pallet affair that I am at all sensual in. Would it not be a good speck to send you some vine-roots? Could it be done? I'll inquire. If you could make some wine like Claret to drink on summer evenings, in an arbor. For really, tis so fine. It fills one mouth with a gushing freshness, and goes down cool and feverless. Then you do not feel it, quarreling with your liver. No, it is rather a peacemaker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the queen bee, and the more ethereal part of it mounts into the brain, not to salting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a bad house, looking for his trawl and hurrying from door to door bouncing against the wainscote, but rather walks like a lad in, about his own enchanted palace so gently, that you do not feel a step. Other wines of a heavy and spiritist nature transform a man to a salinus. This makes mahermes, and gives a woman the soul and immortality of Eradani, for whom Bacchus always kept a good seller of Claret. And even of that he could never persuade her to take above two cups. I said the same Claret is the only pallet passion I have. I forgot game. I must plead guilty to the breast of a partridge, the back of a hair, the backbone of a grouse, the wing inside of a pheasant and a woodcock pasm. Talking of game, I wish I could make it. The lady whom I met at Hastings, and of whom I said something my last, I think has lately made me many presents of game, and enabled me to make as many. She made me take home a pheasant the other day, which I gave to Mrs. Dilk, on which to-morrow Rice, Reynolds, and the Wentworthians will dine next door. The next I intend for your mother. These moderate sheets of paper are much more pleasant to write upon than those large thin sheets which I hope you by this time have received. Though that can't be, now I think of it. I've not said in any letter yet a word about my affairs. In a word, I am in no despair about them. My poem has not at all succeeded. In the course of a year or so I think I shall try the public again. In a selfish point of view, I should suffer my pride and my contempt of public opinion to hold me silent. But for yours and Fanny's sake, I will pluck up a spirit and try again. I have no doubt of success in a course of years if I persevere. But it must be patience, for the reviews have innervated and made indolent men's minds few think for themselves. These reviews, too, are getting more and more powerful, especially the quarterly. They are like a superstition, which the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer continues the more powerful it becomes, just in proportion to their increasing weakness. I was in hopes that when people saw, as they must do now, all the trickery and inequity of these plagues they would scout them. But no, they are like the spectators at the Westminster Cockpit. They like the battle and do not care who wins or loses. Brown is going on this morning with the story of his old woman in the devil. He makes but slow progress. The fact is, it is a libel on the devil. And, as that person is Brown's muse, looky, if he libels his own muse, how can he expect to write? Either Brown or his muse must turn tail. Yesterday was Charlie Dulk's birthday. Brown and I were invited to tea. During the evening nothing passed worth notice but a little conversation between Mrs. Dulk and Mrs. Brown. The subject was the watchman. It was ten o'clock, and Mrs. Brown, who lived during the summer in Brown's house, and now lives in the road, recognized her old watchman's voice and said that he came as far as her now. Indeed, said Mrs. Dulk, does he turn the corner? There have been some letters passed between me and Haslam, but I have not seen him lately. The day before yesterday, which I made a day of business, I called upon him. He was out as usual. Brown has been walking up and down the room, a breeding now. At this moment he is being delivered of a couplet. And I dare say, will be as well as can be expected. Gracious, he has twins. I have a long story to tell you about Bailey. I will say first the circumstances as plainly and as well as I can remember, and then I will make my comment. You know that Bailey was very much cut up about a little jilt in the country somewhere. I thought he was in a dying state about it when it oxford with him. Little supposing, as I have since heard, that he was at that very time making impatient love to Marian Reynolds, and guess my astonishment at hearing after this that he had been trying at Miss Martin. So matters have been, so matters stood. When he got ordained and went to a curse in your carlyle where the family of the Gleagues reside, their susceptible heart was conquered by Miss Gleague, and thereby all his connections in town have been annulled, both male and female. I do not now remember clearly the facts. These, however, I know. He showed his correspondence with Marian to Gleague, returned all her letters, and asked for his own. He also wrote very abrupt letters to Mrs. Reynolds. I do not know any more of the Martin affair than I have written above. No doubt his conduct has been very bad. The great thing to be considered is, whether it is want of delicacy and principle, or want of knowledge and polite experience. And again weakness, yes, that it is, and the want of a wife, yes, that is it. And then Marian made great bones of him although her mother and sister have teased her very much about it. Her conduct has been very upright throughout the whole affair. She liked Bailey as a brother, but not as a husband, especially as he used to woo her with a Bible in Jeremy Taylor under his arm. They walked in no grove but Jeremy Taylor's. Marian's obstancy is some excuse, but his so quickly taking to Miss Gleague can have no excuse except that of a plowman who wants a wife. The thing which sways me more against him than anything else is Rice's conduct on the occasion. Rice would not make an immature resolve. He was ardent in his friendship for Bailey. He examined the whole for and against minutely. And he has abandoned Bailey entirely. All this I am not supposed by the Reynolds's to have any hint of. There will be a good lesson to the mother and daughters. Nothing would serve but Bailey. If you mentioned the word teapot, some of them came out with an apropos about Bailey, noble fellow, fine fellow, who was always in their mouths. This may teach them that the man who ridicules romance is the most romantic of men, that he who abuses women and slights them loves them the most, that he who talks of roasting a man alive would not do it when it came to the push, and above all, that they are very shallow people who take everything literally. A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the mystery of his life. A life like the scriptures, figurative, which such people can no more make out than they can the Hebrew Bible. Lord Byron cuts a figure, but he is not figurative. Shakespeare, little life of allegory, his works are the comments on it. March 12, Friday. I went to town yesterday, chiefly for the purpose of seeing some young men who would take some letters for us to you. Through the medium of peachy. I was surprised and disappointed hearing that they had changed their minds and did not purpose going so far as Birkbeck's. I was much disappointed, for I had counted upon seeing some persons who were to see you, and upon you are seeing some who had seen me. I have not only lost this opportunity, but the sale of the post-packet to New York or Philadelphia, by which last your brothers have sent some letters. The weather in town yesterday was so stifling that I could not remain here, though I wanted much to see Keen in Hotspur. I have by me a present Hazlet's letter to Gifford. Perhaps you would like an extract or two from the high-season parts. It begins thus. Sir, you have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do not like, and it will be the object of this letter to cure you of it. You say what you please of others. It is time you were told what you are. In doing this give me the leave to borrow the familiarity of your style, for the fidelity of the picture I shall be answerable. You are a little person, but a considerable cat's paw, and so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons high in office constantly influences your opinions, and alone gives importance to them. You are the government critic, a character nicely differing from that of government spy, the invisible link which connects literature with the police. Again, your employer, Mr. Gifford, do not pay their hirelings for nothing, for condescending to notice weak and wicked sophistry, for pointing out to contempt what excites no admiration, for cautiously selecting a few specimens of bad taste and bad grammar where nothing else is to be found. They want your invisible pertness, your mercenary malice, your impenetrable dullness, your bare-faced impudence, your pragmatical self-sufficiency, your hypocritical zeal, your pious frauds to stand in the gap of their prejudices and pretensions to fly blow in taint public opinion, to defeat independent efforts, to apply not the touch of the scorpion but the touch of the torpedo to youthful hopes, to crawl and leave the slimy track of sophistry, and lies over every work that does not dedicate its sweet leaves to some luminary of the treasury bench, or is not fostered in the hotbed of corruption. This is your office, this is what is looked for at your hands, and this you do not balk, to sacrifice what little honesty and prostitute, what little intellect you possess, to any dirty job you are commissioned to execute. They keep you as an ape does an apple in the corner of his jaw, first mouthed to be at last swallowed. You are by appointment literary toad-eater to greatness and taster to the court. You have a natural aversion to whatever differs from your own pretensions and an acquired one for what gives offense to your superiors. Your vanity panders to your interest, and your malice trickles only to your love of power. If your instructive or premeditated abuse of your enviable trust were found wanting in a single instance, if you were to make a single slip in getting up your select committee of inquiry and green bag report of the state of letters, your occupation would be gone. You would never after obtain a squeeze of the hand from acquaintance or a smile from a punk of quality. The great and powerful whom you call wise and good do not like to have the privacy of their self-love startled by the obtrusive and unimaginable claims of literature and philosophy, except through the intervention of people like you whom, if they have common penetration, they soon find out to be without any superiority of intellect, or if they do not, whom they can despise for their meanness of soul. You have the office opposite to St. Peter. You keep a corner in the public mind for foul prejudice and corrupt power to not engender in. You volunteer your services to people of quality to ease scruples of mind and qualms of conscious. You lay the flattering unction of venal prose and laurel verse to their souls. You persuade them that there is neither purity of morals nor depth of understanding except in themselves and their hangers on, and would prevent the unhallowed names of liberty and humanity from ever being whispered in ears polite. You, sir, do you not all this? I cry you mercy then. I took you for the editor of the quarterly review. This is the sort of void to joy he keeps up. There is another extract or two, one especially which I will copy tomorrow, for the candles are burnt down and I am using the wax taper, which has a long snuff on it. The fire is at its last click. I am sitting with my back to it with one foot rather askew upon the rug, and the other with a heel a little elevated from the carpet. I am writing this on the maid's tragedy, which I have read since tea with great pleasure. Besides this volume of Beaumont and Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of Tom Morris called Tom Cribbs Memorial to Congress. Nothing in it. These are trifles, but I require nothing so much of you but that you will give one a like description of yourselves. However, it may be when you are writing to me. Could I see the same thing done of any great man long since dead? It would be a great delight. As to know in what position Shakespeare sat, when he began, to be or not to be. Such things become interesting from distance of time or place. I hope you are both now in that sweet sleep which no two beings deserve more than you do. I must fancy so, and please myself in the fancy of speaking a prayer and a blessing over you and your lives. God bless you. I whisper good night in your ears, and you will dream of me. End of Letter 92, Part 1.