 Letter 109 of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. To Charles Wentworth-Doke, Shanklin, Saturday Evening, July 31, 1819. My dear Doke, I will not make my diligence an excuse for not writing to you sooner, because I consider idleness a much better plea. A man in the hurry of business of any sort is expected and ought to be expected to look to everything. His mind is in a whirl, and what matters at what whirl. But to require a letter of a man lost in idleness is the utmost cruelty. You cut the thread of his existence. You beat. You pummel him. You sell his goods and chattels. You put him in prison. You impale him. You crucify him. If I had not put pen to paper since I saw you, this would be to me a vietamus taking up before the judge, but having got over my darling, lounging habits a little. As with scarcely any pain I come to this dating from Shanklin and dear Doke. The Isle of Wight is but so-so, etc. Rice and I passed rather a dull time of it. I hope he will not repent coming with me. He was unwell, and I was not in very good health, and I am afraid we made each other worse by acting upon each other's spirits. We would grow as melancholy as need be. I confess I cannot bear a sick person in a house, especially alone, weighs upon me day and night, and more so when perhaps the case is irretrievable. Indeed, I think Rice is in a dangerous state. I have had a letter from him which speaks favorably of his health at present. Brown and I are pretty well harnessed again to our dog-cart, I mean the tragedy, which goes on sinkingly. We are thinking of introducing an elephant, but have not historical reference within reach to determine us as to Otho's menagerie. When Brown first mentioned this, I took it for a joke. However, he brings such plausible reasons and discourses so eloquently on the dramatic effect that I am giving it a serious consideration. The art of poetry is not sufficient for us, and if we get on in that as well as we do in painting, we shall by next winter crush the reviews and the royal academy. Indeed, if Brown would take a little of my advice, he could not fail to be first pallet of his day. But odd as it may appear, he says plainly that he cannot see any force in my plea of putting skis in the background and leaving Indian ink out of an ashtray. The other day he was sketching Shanklin Church, and as I saw how the business was going on, I challenged him to a trial of skill. He lent me pencil and paper. We keep the sketches to contend for the prize at the gallery. I will not say who's I think best, but really I do not think Brown's done to the top of the art. A word or two on the Isle of Wight. I have been no further than Steep Hill. If I may gas, I should say there is no finer part in the island than from this place to Steep Hill. I do not hesitate to say it is fine. Bond Church is the best, but I have seen so many finer walks with a background of lake and mountain instead of the sea, that I am not much touched with it, though I credit it for all the surprise I should have felt if I had taken my cockney maidenhead. But I may call myself an old stager in the picturesque, and unless it be something very large and overpowering I cannot receive any extraordinary relish. I am sorry to hear that Charles is so much oppressed at Westminster, though I am sure it will be the finest touchstone for his medal in the world. His troubles will grow day by day less, as his age and strength increase. The very first battle he wins will lift him from the tribe of Manessa. I do not know how I should feel were I a father, but I hope I should strive with all my power not to let the present trouble me. When your boy shall be twenty, ask him about his childish troubles, and he will have no more memory of them than you have of yours. John tells me Mrs. Dilke sets off today for Chichester. I am glad. I was going to say she had a fine day, but there has been a great thundercloud muttering over Hampshire all day. I hope she is now at supper with a good appetite. So Reynolds peace succeeded. That is all well. Papers have with thanks been duly received. We leave this place on the thirteenth, and we'll let you know where we may be a few days after. Brown says he will write when the fit comes on him. If you will stand law expenses, I'll beat him into one before his time. When I come to town I shall have a little talk with you about Brown and one Jenny Jacobs. Open daylight. He don't care. I am afraid there will be some more feet for little stockings. Of Keats' making, I mean the feet. Footnote. This and the next interpolation are Brown's. Brown here tried at a piece of wit, but it failed him. As you see, though long a brewing, this is a second lie. Men should never despair. You see he has tried again and succeeded to a miracle. He wants to try again, but as I have a right to an inside place in my own letter I take possession. Your sincere friend, John Keats. End of Letter 109. Letter 110 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sydney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Neema. To Benjamin Bailey. Fragment outside sheet of a letter addressed to Bailey at St. Andrews, Winchester, August 15, 1819. We remove to Winchester for the convenience of a library and find it in exceedingly pleasant town, enriched with a beautiful cathedral and surrounded by fresh-looking country. We are intolerably good in cheap lodgings. Within these two months I've written 1500 lines, most of which, besides many more prior composition, you'll probably see by next winter. I've written two tales. One from Bocaccio called The Pot of Basil, and another called St. Agnes's Eve on a popular superstition, and a third, called Lemia, have finished. I've also been writing parts of my Hyperion and completed four acts of a tragedy. It was the opinion of most of my friends that I should never be able to write a scene. I will endeavor to wipe away the prejudice. I sincerely hope you'll be pleased when my labors, since we last saw each other, shall reach you. One of my ambitions is to make as great a revolution in modern dramatic writing as Keen has done in acting. Another to upset the drawing of the blue-stocking literary world. If in the course of a few years I do these two things, I ought to die content, and my friends should drink a dozen of claret on my tomb. I'm convinced more and more every day that, accepting the human friend philosopher, a fine writer is the most genuine being in the world. Shakespeare and the Paradise Lost Every Day become great wonders to me. I look upon fine phrases like a lover. I was glad to see by a passage of one of Brown's letters some time ago from the North that you were in such good spirits. Since that, you've been married, and in congratulating you, I wish you every continuance of them. Present my respects to Mrs. Bailey. This sounds oddly to me, and I dare say I'd do it awkwardly enough. But I suppose, by this time, it is nothing new to you. Brown's remembrance is to you. As far as I know, we shall remain at Winchester for a goodish while. Ever your sincere friend, John Keats End of Letter 110 Letter 111 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 Winchester Monday Mourn August 23, 1819 My dear Taylor, Brown and I have together been engaged, this I should wish to remain secret, on a tragedy which I have just finished and from which we hope to share moderate profits. I feel every confidence that, if I choose, I may be a popular writer, that I will never be, but for all that I will get a livelihood. I equally dislike the favor of the public with the love of a woman. They are both a cloying treacle to the wings of independence. I shall ever consider them people as debtors to me for verses, not myself to them for admiration, which I can do without. I have of late been indulging my spleen by composing a preface at them, after all resolving never to write a preface at all. There are so many verses, what I have said to them, give so much means for me to buy pleasure with as a relief to my hours of labor. You will observe at the end of this, if you put down the letter, how a solitary life engenders pride and egotism. True, I know it does, but this pride and egotism will enable me to write finer things than anything else could, so I will indulge it. Just so much as I am humbled by the genius above my grasp, am I exalted and look with hate and contempt upon the literary world. A drummer boy who holds out his hand, familiarly, to a field marshal. That drummer boy with me is the good word in favor of the public. Who could wish to be among the commonplace crowd of the little famous, who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves? Is this worth lauding or playing the hypocrite for? To beg suffrages for a seat on the benches of a myriad aristocracy and letters? This is not wise. I am not a wise man. To his pride, I will give you a definition of a proud man. He is a man who is neither vanity nor wisdom. One filled with hatreds cannot be vain. Neither can he be wise. Pardon me for hammering instead of writing. Remember me to Woodhouse Hesse and All in Percy Street. Ever yours sincerely, John Keats. End of letter 111. Letter 112 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo. To John Hamilton Reynolds. Winchester, August 25, 1819. My dear Reynolds, by this post I read to Rice, who will tell you why we have left Shanklin and how we like this place. I have indeed scarcely anything else to say, leading so monotonous a life, except I was to give you a history of sensations and day nightmares. You would not find me at all unhappy in it, as all my thoughts and feelings, which are the selfish nature, home speculations, every day continued to make me more iron. I am convinced more and more every day that fine writing is, next to fine doing, the top thing in the world. The paradise lost becomes a greater wonder. The more I know what my diligence made in time probably effect, the more does my heart distend with pride and obstancy. I feel it in my power to become a popular writer. I feel it in my power to refuse the poisonous suffrage of a public. My own being, which I know to be, becomes of more consequence to me than the crowds of shadows and the shape of men and women that inhabit a kingdom. This soul is a world of itself and has enough to do in its own home. Those whom I know already, and who have grown as it were a part of myself, I could not do without. But for the rest of mankind they are as much a dream to me as Milton's hierarchies. I think if I had a free and healthy and lasting organization of heart and lungs as strong as an ox's, so as to be able to bear unhurt the shock of extreme thought and sensation without wariness, I could pass my life very nearly alone, though it should last eighty years. But I feel my body too weak to support me to the height. I am obliged continually to check myself and be nothing. It would be vain for me to endeavor after a more reasonable manner of writing to you. I have nothing to speak of but myself. And what can I say but what I feel? If you should have any reason to regret this state of excitement in me, I will turn the tide of your feelings in the right channel by mentioning that it is the only state for the best sort of poetry. That is all I care for, all I live for. Forgive me for not filling up the whole sheet. Letters become so irksome to me that the next time I leave London I shall petition them all to be spared me. To give me credit for constancy and, at the same time, waive letter writing will be the highest indulgence I can think of. Ever your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of Letter 112 Letter 113 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, Winchester, August 28, 1819 My dear Fanny, you must forgive me for suffering so long a space to elapse between the dates of my letters. It is more than a fortnight since I left Shanklin, chiefly, for the purpose of being near a tolerable library, which, after all, is not to be found in this place. However, we like it very much. It is the pleasantest town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations of any. There is a fine cathedral which to me is always a source of amusement, part of it built 1400 years ago, and the more modern by a magnificent man you may have read of in our history, called William of Wickham. The whole town is beautifully wooded. From the hill at the eastern extremity you see a prospect of streets and old buildings mixed up with trees. Then there are the most beautiful streams about I ever saw, full of trout. There is the foundation of St. Croix about half a mile in the fields, a charity greatly abused. We have a collegiate school, a Roman Catholic school, a chapel, ditto, and a nunnery. And what improves it all is the fashionable inhabitants are all gone to Southampton. We are quiet, except a fiddle that now and then goes like a gimlet through my ears, our landlady's son not being quite a proficient. I have still been hard at work, having completed a tragedy. I think I spoke of to you. But there I fear all my labor will be thrown away for the present as I hear Mr. Keane is going to America. For all I can guess I shall remain here till the middle of October, when Mr. Brown will return to his house at Hampstead. Wither I shall return with him. I sometimes since sent the letter I told you I'd receive from George to Haslam with a request to let you and Mrs. Wiley see it. He sent it back to me for very insufficient reasons without doing so, and I was so irritated by it that I would not send it travelling about by the post any more. Besides, the postage is very expensive. I know Mrs. Wiley will think this is a great neglect. I'm sorry to say, my temper gets the better of me. I will not send it again. Some correspondence I have had with Mr. Abbey about George's affairs and I must confess he has behaved very kindly to me as far as the wording of his letter went. Have you heard any further mention of his retiring from business? I am anxious to hear whether Hodgkinson, whose name I cannot bear to write, will in any likelihood be thrown upon himself. The delightful weather we have had for two months is the highest gratification I could receive. No chilled red noses, no shivering, but fair atmosphere to think in. A clean towel, marked with a mangle, and a basin of clear water to drench one's face with ten times a day. No need of much exercise, a mile a day being quite sufficient. My greatest regret is that I have not been well enough to bathe, though I have been two months by the seaside and live now close to delicious bathing. Still, I enjoy the weather. I adore fine weather as the greatest blessing I can have. Give me books, fruit, French wine, and fine weather, and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know. Not pay the price of one's time for a jig, but little chance music, and I can pass a summer very quietly, without caring much about fat Lewis, fat regent, or the Duke of Wellington. Why have you not written to me? Because you were in expectation of George's letter, and so waited. Mr. Brown is copying out our tragedy of Otho the Great in a superb style, better than it deserves. There, as I said, is labor and vain for the present. I had hoped to give Keen another opportunity to shine. What can we do now? There is not another actor, tragedy, in all London or Europe. The Covent Garden Company is excruble. Young is the best among them, and he is a ranting, cox comical, tasteless actor, a disgust, a nausea, and yet the very best after Keen. What a set of barren asses are actors. I should like now to promenade round your gardens. Apple-tasting, pear-tasting, plum-judging, apricot nibbling, peach-scrunching, nectarine-sucking, and melon-garving. I have also a great feeling for antiquated cherries full of sugar-cracks, and a white currant tree kept for company. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water lily pond to eat white currants and see goldfish, and go to the fair in the evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that. One is sure to get into some mess before evening. Have these hot days I brag of so much been well or ill for your health. Let me hear soon. Your affectionate brother, John. End of letter 113. Letter 114 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 Taylor, Winchester, September 1, 1819. My dear Taylor, Brown and I have been employed for these three weeks past, from time to time, in writing to our different friends. A dead silence is our only answer. We wait morning after morning. Tuesday is the day for the examiner to arrive. This is the second Tuesday, which has been barren even of a newspaper. Men should be in imitation of spirits, responsive to each other's note. Instead of that, I pipe and no one hath danced. We have been cursing like mandible and lile. With this I shall send by the same post a third letter to a friend of mine, who though it is of consequence, has neither answered right or left. We have been much in want of news from the theatres, having heard that Keen is going to America, but no, not a word. Why I should come on you with all these complaints I cannot explain to myself, especially as I suspect you must be in the country. Do answer me soon, for I really must know something. I must steer myself by the rudder of information. Ever yours sincerely, John Keats. End of Letter 114 Letter 115 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends, edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nemo. To John Taylor, Winchester, September 5, 1819. My dear Taylor, this morning I received yours of the second, in with it a letter from Hessey, enclosing a bank post bill of thirty pound, an ample sum I assure you, more I had no thought of. You should not have delayed so long in Fleet Street. Leading an inactive life as you did was breathing poison. You will find the country air do more for you than you expect, but it must be proper country air, you must choose a spot. What sort of a place is Redford? You should have a dry gravelly barren, elevated country, open to the currents of air, and such a place is generally furnished with the finest springs. The neighborhood of a rich and closed, fulsome, manured, arable land, especially in a valley, and almost as bad on a flat, would be almost as bad as a smoke of Fleet Street. Such a place as this was Shanklin, only open to the southeast, and surrounded by hills in every other direction. From the southeast came the Damps of the Sea, which, having no egress, the air would for days together take on an unhealthy idiosyncrasy, altogether innervating and weakening as a city smoke. I felt it very much. Since I've been here at Winchester, I've been improving in health. It is not so confined, and there is on one side of the city a dry chalky down where the air is worth six pence a pint. So if you do not get better at Redford, do not impute it to your own weakness before you have well considered the nature of the air and soil, especially as autumn is encroaching, for the autumn fog over rich land is like the steam from cabbage water. What makes the great difference between veilsmen, flat landmen, and mountaineers, the cultivation of the earth in a great measure? Our health temperament and disposition are taken more, not with standing the contradiction of the history of Cain and Abel, from the air we breathe, than is generally imagined. See the difference between a peasant and a butcher. I'm convinced a great cause of it is the difference of the air they breathe. The one takes his mingled with a fume of slaughter. The other from the dank exhalement from the gleb. The teeming damp that comes up from the plough furrow is of great effect in taming the fierceness of a strong man more than his labor. Let him be mowing furs upon a mountain, and at the day's end his thoughts will run upon a axe. If he ever had handled one, let him leave the plough, and he will think quietly of his supper. Agriculture is the tamer of men. The steam from the earth is like drinking their mother's milk. It innervates their nature. This appears a great cause of the imbecility of the Chinese. And if this sort of atmosphere is a mitigation to the energy of a strong man, how much more must it injure a weak one unoccupied unaccessised? For what is the cause of so many men maintaining a good state in cities but occupation, an idle man, a man who is not sensitively alive to self-interest in a city, cannot continue long in good health? This is easily explained. If you were to walk leisurely through an unwholesome path in the fence with a little horror over them, you would be sure to have your ague. But let Macbeth cross the same path, with a dagger in the air leading him on, and he would never have an ague or anything like it. You should give these things a serious consideration. Not, I believe, is a flat county. You should be on the slope of one of the dry, barren hills in Summershire. I am convinced there is as harmful air to be breathed in the country as in town. I am greatly obliged to you for your letter. Perhaps, if you had strength and spirits enough, you would have felt offended by my offering a note of hand, or rather expressed it. However, I am sure you will give me credit for not in any ways mistrusting you, or imagining that you would take advantage of any power I might give you over me. No. It proceeded for my serious resolve not to be a gratuitous power from a great desire to be correct in money manners, to have in my desk the chronicles of them to refer to, and know my worldly non-estate. Besides, in case of my death such documents would be but just, if merely as memorials of the friendly turns I had done to me. Had I known of your illness I should not have written in such a fiery phrase in my first letter. I hope that shortly you will be able to bear six times as much. Brown likes the tragedy very much, but he is not a fit judge of it, as I have only acted as midwife to his plot. And, of course, he will be fond of his child. I do not think I can make you any extracts without spoiling the effect of the whole when you come to read it. I hope you will then not think of my labor misspent. Since I finished it I have finished lamea, and now, occupied in revising St. Agnes's Eve and studying Italian, eroso I find his diffuse and parts his Spencer. I understand completely the difference between them. I will cross the letter with some lines from lamea, Brown's kindest remembrance to you, and I am ever your most sincere friend, John Keats. A haunting music soul perhaps in lone, supportrous of the fairy rift-made moan, throughout his fearful the whole charm might fade, fresh, carved cedar, mimicking a blade of palm and plantain met from either side, and the high mitts in honour of the bride. Two palms, and then two plantains, and so on, from either side their stems branched one to one, all down the isle place beneath all, there ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall. So canopy'd lay an untasted feast, teeming a perfume, lamea, regaled dressed, silvery paced about, and as she went, mission'd her viewless servants too enrich, the splendid finish of each nook and niche. Between the tree stems, wanes coated at first, came jasper panels, then anon their burst, forth creeping imagery of slighter trees, and, with the larger, woven small intricacies, and so till she was sated, then came down, soft lighting on her head a brilliant crown, wreathed turban-wise of tender, wonish fire, and sprinkled oar with stars like Aridani's tiar. Approving all, she faded at self-will, and shut the chamber up, clothes hushed and still, complete and ready for the revel's rude when dreadful guest would come to spoil her solitude. The day came soon, and all the gossip wrought, O senseless Lyceus. This is a good sample of this story. Brown is gone to Chichester of his sitting. I shall be alone here for three weeks, expecting accounts of your health. End of Letter 115 Letter 116 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 George Anna Keats Winchester, September 17, 1819, Friday My dear George, I was closely employed in reading and composition in this place, wither I'd come from Shanklin for the convenience of a library, when I received your last dated 24th July. You will have seen by the short letter I wrote from Shanklin how matters stand between us and Mr. Jennings. They had not at all moved, and I knew no way of overcoming the inveterate obstinacy of our affairs. On receiving your last I immediately took a place in the same night's coach for London. Mr. Abbey behaved extremely well to me, appointed Monday evening at seven to meet me, and observed that he should drink tea at that hour. I gave him the enclosed note and showed him the last leaf of yours to me. He really appeared anxious about it, and promised he would forward your money as quickly as possible. I think I mentioned that Walton was dead. He will apply to Mr. Glidden, the partner endeavoring to get rid of Mrs. Jennings' claim and be expeditious. He has received an answer from my letter to Frye. That is something. We are certainly in a very low estate. I say we, for I am in such a situation that we're not for the assistance of Brown and Taylor. I must be as badly off as a man can be. I cannot raise any sum by the promise of any poem. No, not by the mortgage of my intellect. You must wait a little while. I really have hopes of success. I have finished a tragedy which, if it succeeds, will enable me to sell what I may have in manuscript to a good advantage. I have passed my time in reading, writing, and fretting, the last I intend to give up and stick to the other two. They are the only chances of benefit to us. Your wants will be a fresh spur to me. I assure you you shall more than share what I can get whilst I am still young. The time may come when age will make me more selfish. I have not been well treated by the world, and yet I have, capitalally well. I do not know a person to whom so many purse strings would fly open as to me, if I could possibly take advantage of them, which I cannot do, for none of the owners of these purses are rich. Your present situation I will not suffer myself to dwell upon. When misfortunes are so real, we are glad enough to escape them and the thought of them. I cannot help thinking, Mr. Audubon, a dishonest man. Why did he make you believe that he was a man of property? How is it that his circumstances have altered so suddenly? In truth, I do not believe you fit to deal with the world, or at least the American world. But good God, who can avoid these chances? You have done your best. Take matters as cool as you can, and confidently expecting help from England. Act as if no help were nigh. Mine, I am sure, is a tolerable tragedy. It would have been a bank to me, if just as I had finished it, I had not heard of Keen's resolution to go to America. That was the worst news I could have had. There is no actor can do the principal character besides Keen. At Covent Garden there is a great chance of it being damned. Were to succeed even there it would lift me out of the mire. I mean the mire of a bad reputation, which is continually rising against me. My name with literary fashionables is vulgar. I am a weaver-boy to them. A tragedy would lift me out of this mess, a mess it is as far as regards our pockets. But be not cast down any more than I am. I feel that I can bear real ills better than imaginary ones. Whenever I find myself growing vaporish, I rouse myself, wash and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoestrings neatly, and in fact, out on eyes as I were going out. Then all clean and comfortable, I sit down to write. This I find the greatest relief. Besides I am becoming accustomed to the privations of the pleasures of sense. In the midst of the world I live like a hermit. I forgot how to lay plans for the enjoyment of any pleasure I feel I can bear anything. Any misery, even imprisonment. So long as I have neither wife nor child. Perhaps you say yours are your only comfort. They must be. I return to Winchester the day before yesterday, and I am now here alone. For Brown some days before I left went to Bedhampton, and there he will be for the next fortnight. The term of his house will be up in the middle of next month, when we shall return to Hampstead. On Sunday I dined with your mother and hen in Charles in Henrietta Street. Mr. and Mrs. Milar were in the country. Charles had been but a few days' return from Paris. I dare say you will have letters expressing the motives of his journey. Mrs. Wiley and Mrs. Waldegrave seem as quiet as the two mice there alone. I did not show you last. I thought it better not, for better times will certainly come, and why should they be unhappy in the meantime? On Monday morning I went to Walthamstow. Fanny looked better than I had seen her for some time. She complains of not hearing from you, appealing to me as if it were half my fault. I d been so long in retirement that London appeared a very odd place. I could not make out I had so many acquaintances, and it was a whole day before I could feel among men. I had another strange sensation. There was not one house I felt any pleasure to call at. Reynolds was in the country, and saving himself. I am prejudiced against all that family. Dilk and his wife and child were in the country. Taylor was at Nottingham. I was out and everybody was out. I walked among the streets as in a strange land. Rice was the only one at home. I pass some time with him. I know him better since we have lived a month together in the Isle of Wight. He is the most sensible, and even wise man I know. He has a few John Bull prejudices, but they improve him. His illness is at times alarming. We are great friends, and there is no one I like to pass a day with better. Martin called in to bid him good-bye before he sent out for Dublin. If you would like to hear one of his jokes, here is one which at the time we laughed at a good deal. A miss, blank, with three young ladies, one of them Martin's sister, had come agating in the Isle of Wight, and took for a few days a cottage opposite ours. We dined with them one day, and as I was saying they had fish. Miss, blank, said she thought they tasted of the boat. Knows, says Martin very seriously, they haven't been kept long enough. I saw Haslam. He is very much occupied with love and business, being one of Mr. Saunders' executors, and lover to a young woman. He showed me her picture by Severn. I think she is, though not very cunning, too cunning for him. Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous's love. A man in love I do think cuts a sourious figure in the world, queer, when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it. I could burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible. Not that I take Haslam as a pattern for lovers. He is a very worthy man and a good friend. His love is very amusing. Somewhere in the spectator is related an account of a man inviting a party of stutterers and squinters to his table. It would please me more to scrape together a party of lovers, not to dinner, but to tea. There would be no fighting as among knights of old. Pensive they sit and roll their languid eyes, nibble their toast and cool their tea with sighs, or else forget the purpose of the night. Forget their tea, forget their appetite. See, with crossed arms they sit, ah hapless crew. The fire is going out and no one rings for coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings. Flies in the milk pot must he die circled by humane society? No, no. There, Mr. Werder, take his spoon, inserts it, dips the handle, and lo, soon the little straggler saved from pearls dark across the teaboard draws along wet mark. Romeo, arise, takes snuffers by the handle. There's a large cauliflower in each candle. A winding sheet, ah me, I must away to number seven, just be on the circus gay. Alas, my friend, your coat sits very well. Where may your tailor live? I may not tell. Oh, pardon me. I'm absent now and then. Where might my tailor live? I say again, I cannot tell. Let me no more be teased. He lives in whopping might live where he pleased. You see, I cannot get on without writing, as boys do at school, a few nonsense verses. I begin them, and before I've written six the whim has passed. If there is anything deserving so respectable a name in them, I shall put in a bit of information anywhere, just as it strikes me. Mr. Abbey is to write to me as soon as he can bring matters to bear, and then I am to go to town and tell him the means of forwarding to you through Capper and Hazelwood. I wonder, I did not put this before. I shall go on tomorrow. It is so fine now I must take a bit of a walk. Saturday, September 18. With my constant disposition, there's no wonder that this morning, amid all our bad times and misfortunes, I should feel so alert and well spirited. At this moment you are perhaps in a very different state of mind. It is because my hopes are of a paramount to my despair. I have been reading over a part of a short poem I have composed lately called Lemia. And I am certain there is that sort of fire in it that must take hold of people some way. Give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation. What they want is a sensation of some sort. I wish I could pitch the key of your spirits as high as mine is. But your organ loft is beyond the reach of my voice. I admire the exact ad-measurement of my niece in your mother's letter. Oh, the little span-long elf. I'm not in the least a judge of the proper weight and size of an infant. Never trouble yourselves about that. She is sure to be a fine woman. Let her have only the delicate nails both on hands and feet, and both as small as a mayfly's, who will live you his life on a three square inch of oak leaf. A nail she must have, quite different from the market woman here, who plough into butter and make a quarter pound taste of it. I intend to read a letter to your wife, and there I may say more on this little plump subject. I hope she's plump, still harping on my daughter. This Winchester is a place tolerably well-suited to me. There's a fine cathedral, a college, a Roman Catholic chapel, a Methodist Dio, an independent Dio, and there's not one loom, or anything like a manufacturing beyond bread and butter in the whole city. There are a number of rich Catholics in the place. It is a respectable ancient, aristocratic place, and moreover, it contains a nunnery. Our setter by no means so hail fellow well-met on literary subjects as we are want to be. Reynolds is turned to the law. By the by he brought out a little piece at the Lyceum called one, two, three, four, by advertisement. It met with complete success. The meaning of this odd title is explained when I tell you the principal actor is a mimic, who takes off four of our best performers in the course of the farce. Our stage is loaded with mimics. I did not see the piece. Being out of town the whole time, it was in progress. Dilk is entirely swallowed up in his boy. It is really lamentable to what a pitch he carries a sort of parental mania. I had a letter from him at Shanklin. He went on, a word or two about the Isle of Wight, which is a bit of a hobbyhorse of his, but he soon deviated to his boy. I am sitting, says he, at the window expecting my boy from. I suppose I told you somewhere that he lives in West Minister. When his boy goes to school there, where he gets beaten, and every bruise he has, and I dare say deserves, is very bitter to Dilk. The place I am speaking of puts me in mind to his circumstance, which occurred lately at Dilk's. I think a very rich and dramatic and quite illustrative of the little quiet fun that he will enjoy sometimes. First, I must tell you that their house is at the corner of Great Smith Street, so that some of the windows look into one street, and the back windows into another around the corner. Dilk had some old people to dinner. I know not who, but there were two old ladies among them. Brown was there. They had known him from a child. Brown is very pleasant with old women, and on that day it seemed to behave himself so winningly that they became hand and glove together in a little complementary. Brown was obliged to depart early. He bid them goodbye and passed into the passage. No sooner was his back turned than the old women began lauding him. When Brown had reached the street door and was just going, Dilk threw up the window and called, Brown, Brown, they say you look younger than ever you did. Brown went on, and had just turned the corner into the other street. When Dilk appeared at the back window crying, Brown, Brown, by God, they say you're handsome. You see what a many words it requires to give any identity to a thing I could have told you in half a minute. I've been reading lately Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and I think you'll be very much amused with the page I hear copy for you. I call it a faux-de-joy around the batteries of Fort St. Hyphen de Fraise on the birthday of the Degama. The whole alphabet was drawn up in a phalanx on the corner of an old dictionary, band playing, emo, amas, etc. Every lover admires his mistress, though she be very deformed of herself. Ill-favored, wrinkled, pimpled, pale, red, yellow, tanned, telephased, have a swollen juggler's platter face, or a thin, lean, chitty face, have clouds in her face, be crooked, dry, bald, google-eyed, bleary-eyed, or with staring eyes. She looks like a squished cat. Hold her head still awry, heavy, dull, hollow mouth. Persian hook-nose, have a sharp Joe's nose, a red nose. China-flat, great nose, Narasimha patalup, a nose like a promontory. Gobber-tushed, rotten teeth, black, uneven, brown teeth, beetle-browed, a witch's beard. Her breath stink all over the room. Her nose dropped winter and summer with a Bavarian poke under her chin. A sharp chin, lavery-eared, with a long cranes-neck, which stands awry, too. Pendulous mammoth, her dugs like two double-jugs, her else no dugs in the other extreme. Bloody fallen fingers, she have filthy, long, unpaired nails, scabbed hands, a wrist, a tanned skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back. She stoops, is lame, spley-footed. As slender in the middle is a cow in the waist, gouty legs. Her ankles hang over her shoes, her feet stink. She breed lice, a mere changeling, a very monster. And often, perfect, her whole complexion savers, a harsh voice, incondite gesture, vile gait, a vast varago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fuster-lugs, a truss, a long-lean robon, a skeleton, a sneaker, si quale tent milor puta. And to thy judgment looks like a maradinal lanthorn, whom thou couldst not fancy for a world, but haters loathis, and wits have spit in her face, her blow thy nose in her bosom, her medium amorous to another man, a dowdy, a slut, a scold, a nasty, rank, ramy, filthy, beastly queen, dishonest per adventure, obscene, base, beggarly, rude, foolish, untaught, peevish, iris's daughter, therserite sister, garbanian scholar, if he lover once he admires her for all this, he takes no notice of any such errors, or imperfections of body or mind. There is a dose for you, fire! I would give my favorite leg to have written this as a speech in a play. With what effect could Matthew's popcorn it at the pit? This, I think, will amuse you more than so much poetry. Of that I do not like to copy any. As I'm afraid it is to mail apopo for you at the present. And yet I will send you some, for by the time you receive it, things in England may have taken a different turn. When I left Mr. Abbey on Monday evening, I walked up cheap side, but he returned, put some letters in the post, and met him again in Bucklesbury. We walked together, through the poultry as far as the baker's shop. He has some concern in. He spoke of it in such a way to me, I thought he wanted me to make an offer to assist him in it. I do believe if I could be a hatter I might be one. He seemed anxious about me. He began blowing up Lord Byron while I was sitting with him. However, maybe the fellow says true now and then, in which he took up a magazine, and read me some extracts from Don Juan, Lord Byron's last flash-palm, particularly one against literary ambition. I do think I must be well spoken of among sets, for Hodgkinson is more than polite, and the coffee-german endeavored to be very close to me the other night at Convent Garden, where I went at half price before I tumbled into bed. Everyone, however distant and acquaintance, behaves in the most conciliating manner to me. You will see I speak of this as a matter of interest. On the next sheet I will give you a little politics. In every age there has been in England for two or three centuries subjects of great popular interest on the carpet, so that, however great the uproar, one can scarcely prophecy any material change in the government, for as loud disturbances have agitated the country many times. All civilized countries become gradually more enlightened, and there should be a continual change for the better. Look at this country a present, and remember it, when it was even thought impious to doubt the justice of a trial by combat. From that time there has been a gradual change. Three great changes have been in progress. First for the better, next for the worse, and a third for the better once more. The first was the gradual annihilation of the tyranny of the nobles, when kings found it in their interest to conciliate the common people, elevate them, and be just to them. Just when baronial power ceased and before standing armies were so dangerous, taxes were few, kings were lifted by the people over the heads of their nobles, and those people held a rod over kings. The change for the worse in Europe was again this, the obligation of kings to the multitude began to be forgotten. Custom had made noblemen the humble servants of kings, then kings turned to the nobles as the adorners of their power, the slaves of it, and from the people as creatures continually endeavouring to check them. Then in every kingdom there was a long struggle of kings to destroy all popular privileges. The English were the only people in Europe who made a grand kick at this. There were slaves to Henry VIII, but were free men under William III, at the time of the French, were abject slaves under Louis XIV. The example of England, and the liberal writers of France and England, sowed the seed of opposition to this tyranny, and it was swelling in the ground till it burst out in the French Revolution. That has had an unlucky termination, and put a stop to the rapid progress of free sentiments in England, and gave our courts hopes of turning back to the despotism of the 18th century. They have made a handle of this event in every way to undermine our freedom. They spread a horrid superstition against all innovation and improvement. The present struggle in England of the people is to destroy the superstition. What has roused them to do it is their distresses. Perhaps, on this account, the present distresses of this nation are a fortunate thing, though so horrid in their experience. You will see, I mean, that the French Revolution put a temporary stop to this third change, the change for the better. Now it is in progress again, and I think it is an effectual one. This is no contest between Wig and Tory, but between right and wrong. There is scarcely a grain of party spirit now in England, right and wrong, considered by each man abstractedly, is the fashion. I know very little of these things. I am convinced, however, that apparently small causes make great alterations. There are little signs whereby we may know how matters are going on. This makes the business of Carlow, the bookseller, of great amount to my mind. He has been selling diastical pamphlets, republished Tom Payne, and many other works held in superstitious horror. Even as been selling for some time, immense numbers of a work called the diast, which comes out in weekly numbers. For this conduct he, I think, has had about a dozen indictments issued against him, for which he has found bail to the amount of many thousand pounds. After all, they are afraid to prosecute. They are afraid of his defense, who would be published in all the papers all over the empire. They shudder at this. The trials would light a flame that could not extinguish. Do you not think this of great import? You will hear by the papers of the proceedings at Manchester and Hunt's triumphal entry into London. It would take me a whole day and a choir of paper to give you anything like detail. I will merely mention that it is calculated that thirty thousand people were in the streets waiting for him, the whole distance from the angel at Islington to the crown and anchor was lined with multitudes. As I passed Colnaghi's window I saw a profile portrait of Saint, the destroyer of Kotzebue. His very look must interest everyone in his favour. I suppose they have represented him in his college dress. He seems to me like a young abalard, a fine mouth, cheekbones, and this is no joke, full of sentiment, a fine, unvulgar nose and plump temples. I'm looking over some letters I found the one I wrote intended for you from the foot of Havelin to Liverpool. But you had sailed, and therefore it was returned to me. It contained, among other nonsense, and a cross-stick of my sister's name, and a pretty long name it is. I wrote it in a great hurry which you will see. Indeed, I would not copy it if I thought it would ever be seen by any but yourselves. Give me your patience, sister, while I frame exact and capitals your golden name, or sue the fair Apollo and he will, rouse from his heavy slumber and instill, great love in me for thee in poesy. Imagine not the greatest mastery, in kingdom over all the realms of verse, nears more to heaven and ought then when we nurse, and, surty, give to love and brotherhood. Anthropophagy in Othello's mood, Ulysses stormed, and his enchanted belt glowed with amuse, but they are never felt, unbwismed so, and so eternal made, such tender incense in their laurel shade, to all the recent sisters of the nine is this poor offering to you, sister mine, kind sister, I, this third name says you are enchanted, has it been the Lord knows where, and may its taste to you, like good old wine, take you to real happiness, and give, sons, daughters, and a home, like Honied Hive. Foot of Helbellon, June 27. I sent you in my first packet some of my scotch letters. I find I have one kept back, which was written in the most interesting part of our tour, and will copy part of it in the hope you will not find it unamusing. I would give now anything for Richardson's power of making mountains of molehills. Incipit epistola cala donanceia. Duncan Cullen. I did not know the day of the month, for I find I have not added it. Brown must have been asleep. Just after my last had gone to the post, before I go any further, I must premise that I would send the identical letter, instead of taking the trouble to copy it. I do not do so, for it would spoil my notion of the neat manner in which I intended to fold these three gentile sheets. The originals written on coarse paper, and the soft one, would ride in the postbag very uneasy. Perhaps there might be a quarrel. I ought to make a large question mark here, but I'd better take the opportunity of telling you I've got rid of my haunting sore throat, and conduct myself in a manner not to catch another. You speak of Lord Byron and me. There is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees. I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task. Now see the immense difference. The Edinburgh reviewers, they're afraid to touch upon my poem. They do not know what to make of it. They do not like to condemn it, and they will not praise it for fear. They are shy of it, as I should be, of wearing a Quaker's hat. The fact is, they have no real taste. They dare not compromise their judgments, and so puzzling a question. If I'm my next publication, they should praise me, and so lug in and dimmion, I will address them in a manner they will not at all relish. The cowardliness of the Edinburgh is more than the abuse of the Quarterly. End of Letter 116 Part 1 Letter 116 Part 2 Of Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Nima. To George and George Anna Keats. Monday, September 20. This day is a grand day for Winchester. They elect the Mayor. It was indeed high time the place should have some sort of excitement. There was nothing going on. All asleep. Not an old-made sedan returning from a card-party. And if any old woman have got tipsy at Christenings, they have not exposed themselves in the street. The first night, though, of our arrival here, there was a slight uproar took place at about ten o'clock. We heard distinctly a noise padding down the street, as of a walking cane of the good old dowager breed. In a little minute after, we heard a less voice observe. What a noise the ferrule made. It must be loose. Brown wanted to call the constables. But I observed it was only a little breeze and would soon pass over. The side streets here are excessively maiden-lady-like. The doorsteps always fresh from the flannel. The knockers have a very staid, serious collection of lines and ramsheads. The doors, most part black, with a little brass handle just above the keyhole, so that you may easily shut yourself out of your own house. He hee. There is none of your Lady Bellistan ringing and rapping here. No thundering Jupiter footmen. No opera-trouble tattoos. What a modest lifting up of the knocker by a set of little wee old fingers, the peep through the gray mittens, and a dying fall thereof. The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting. The Palatine Venice and the Abbotine Winchester are equally interesting. Sometimes, since I began a poem called The Eve of St. Mark, quite in the spirit of town quietude, I think I will give you the sensation of walking about an old country town in a coolish evening. I know not whether I shall ever finish it. I will give it, as far as I've gone, Utibi Plakeset. The Eve of St. Mark. Upon a Sabbath day it fell, twice holy was the Sabbath bell, that called the folk to evening prayer. The city streets were clean and fair, from wholesome drench of April rains, and when, on western window-panes, the chilly sunset faintly told of un-matured green valleys cold, of the green thorny, bloomless hedge, of rivers new of springtine's edge, of prim-roses by sheltered rills and daisies on the Agua hills. Twice holy was the Sabbath bell, the silent streets were crowded well, with staid and pious companies warm from their fireside oratries, and moving with demurrous air to even song and vesper prayer. Each arch-porch and entry-low was filled with patient folk and slow, with whispers hush and shuffling feet, while played the organ loud and sweet. The bells had ceased, the prayers begun, and Bertha had not yet half done. A curious volume, patched and torn, that all day long from earliest morn, had taken captive her two eyes, among its golden broideries, perplexed her with a thousand things, the stars of heaven and angels' wings, martyrs in a fiery blaze, azure saints in silver rays, Moses breastplate and the seven candlesticks Johnson heaven, the winged lion of St. Mark, and the covenantal ark, with its many mysteries, cherubim and golden mice, Bertha was a maiden fair, dwelling in the old Minster Square. From her fireside she could see, side-long, its rich antiquity, far as the bishop's garden wall, where sycamores and elm trees tall, full-leaved the forest had out-script, by no sharp north wind ever nipped, so sheltered by the mighty pile, Bertha rose and read awhile, with forehead against the window-pane, again she tried, and then again, until the dusk eve left her dark, upon the legend of St. Mark. From plated lawn-frile fine and thin, she lifted up her soft, warm chin, with aching neck and swimming eyes, and dazed with saintly imageries. All was gloom and silent all, saved now and then, the still footfall. Of one returning homewards late, past the echoing Minster Gate, the clamorous stars that, all the day, above the treetops and powers play, pair by pair, had gone to rest each in ancient belfry nest, where asleep they fall be times to music and the drowsy chimes. All was silent, all was gloom, abroad and in the homely room. Down she sat, poor-cheated soul, and struck a lamp from the dismal coal, leaned forward with bright drooping hair, and slant-book full against the glare. Her shadow, in uneasy guise, hovered about a giant size, on ceiling beam and old oak chair, the parrot's cage and panel square, and the warm angled winter screen, on which were many monster-scene, called Doves of Siam, Lime of Mice, and Legless Birds of Paradise, Macaw and Tender, Eva DeVat, and Silken Ferd and Goracat. Untired, she read, her shadow still, glowered about as it would fill, the room with wildest forms and shades, as though some ghostly queen of spades, had come to mock behind her back and dance and ruffle her garments black. Untired, she read the legend page of Holy Mark from youth to age, on land, on sea, in peg and chains, rejoicing for as many pains. Sometimes the learned Aromite, with golden star or dagger bright, referred to pious poesies, written in smallest crow-cool size. Beneath the text, and thus the rhyme, was parceled out from time to time. Alas, right as he of Swing Venice, manhand be foreign, they wake in bliss, wand that her friends think him bound, and crimped shroud far underground, and how a little child won't be a saint ere its nativity. Giff that the mother, God her bless, keepin' in solitariness, and kissin' devout the holy crotch of God's love and Satan's force. He writeeth, in things many more, of switchy things I may not show, but I must tellin' verily, some dell of Saint Sicily, and chiefly what he auto-creeth of Saint Mark's life in death, at length their constant eyelids come upon the fervent martyrdom, then lastly to his holy shrine exalt amid the taper shine at Venice. I hope you will like this for all its carelessness. I must take an opportunity here to observe that, though I am writing to you, I am all the while writing at your wife. This explanation will count for my speaking sometimes, hoity-toityishly, whereas, if you were alone, I should sport a little more sober sadness. I am like a squinty gentleman, who, saying soft things to one lady, ogles another. Or, what is as bad, in arguing with a person on his left hand, appeals with his eyes to the one on the right. His vision is elastic. He bends it to a certain object, but having a patent spring, it flies off. Writing has this disadvantage of speaking. One cannot write a wink or a nod or a grin or a purse of the lips or a smile, O law. One cannot put one's finger to one's nose, or yirky in the ribs, or lay hold of your button in writing. But in all the most lively and tiddly parts of my letter, you must not fail to imagine me. As the epic poets say, Now here, now there, now with one foot pointed at the ceiling, now with another, now with my pen on my ear, now with my elbow in my mouth. O my friends, you lose the action. An attitude is everything, is fusely said, when he took up his leg like a musket to shoot a swallow just darting behind his shoulder. And yet, does not the word mum go for one's finger beside the nose? I hope it does, and I have to make use of the word mum, before I tell you that Severn has got a little baby, all his own, let us hope. He told Brown he had given up painting and had turned modeler. I hope sincerely, does not a party concern that no Mr. Blank, or Blank, is the real Pinkset and Severn, the poor Sculpset, to this work of art. You know he has long studied in the life alchemy. Hayden, yes, your wife will say. Here is a sum total account of Hayden again. I wonder your brother, don't put a monthly bulletin in the Philadelphia papers about him. I won't hear, no. Skip down to the bottom, and there are some more of his verses. Skip, lullaby by them too. No, let's go regularly through. I won't hear a word about Hayden, bless the child, how riotish she is. There, go on there. Now pray go on here, for I have a few words to say about Hayden, before this chancery threat had cut off my every legitimate supply of cash for me. I had a little at my disposal. Hayden, being very much in want, I lent him thirty pound of it. Now, in the seesaw game of life, I got nearest to the ground, and this chancery business riveted me there, so that I was sitting in that uneasy position where the seat slants so abominably. I applied to him for payment. He could not. That was no wonder. But Goodman Delver, where was the wonder then? Why marry in this? He did not seem to care much about it, and let me go without my money with almost nonchalance, when he ought to have sold his drawings to supply me. I shall perhaps still be acquainted with him, but for friendship that is at an end. Brown has been my friend in this. He got him to sign a bond, payable three months. Haslam has assisted me with the return of part of the money you lent him. Hunt! There, says your wife, there is another of those dull folk, not a syllable about my friends. Well, hunt. What about hunt? You little thing. See how she bites my finger. My is not this a tooth. Well, when you have done with the tooth, read on. Not a syllable about your friends. Here are some syllables. As far as I could smoke things on the Sunday before last, thus matters stood in Henrietta Street. Henry was a greater blade than ever, I remember, to have seen him. He had on a very nice coat, a becoming waistcoat in buff trousers. I think his face has lost a little of the Spanish brown, but no flesh. He carved some beef exactly to suit my appetite, as if I had been measured for it. As I stood looking out of the window of Charles after dinner, quizzing the passengers, at which I am sorry to say he is too apt, I observed that this young son of a gun's whiskers had begun to curl and curl. Little twist and twist, all down the sides of his face, getting properly thickest on the angles of the visage. He certainly will have a notable pair of whiskers. How shiny your gown is in front, says Charles. Why don't you see, does an apron, says Henry. Where at I scrutinized, and behold your mother had a purple stuffed gown on, and over it an apron of the same color, being the same cloth that was used for the lining. And furthermore, to account for the shining, it was the first day of wearing. I guessed as much of a gown, but that is entre-nure. Charles likes England better than France. They've got a fat-smiling fair cook as ever you saw. She is a little lame, but that improves her. It makes her go more swimmingly. When I asked, is Mrs. Wiley within? She gave me such a large, five-and-thirty-year-old smile, and made me look round upon the fourth stair. It might have been the fifth. But that's a puzzle. I shall never be able, if I were to set myself a recollecting for a year, to recollect, I think, I remember two or three specks in her teeth. But I really can't say exactly. Your mother said something about Miss Giesel. What that was is quite a riddle to me now. Whether she had got fatter or thinner, or broader or longer, straighter, or had taken to the zig-zags. Whether she had taken to, or had left off, Ess's milk. That, by the by, she ought never to touch. How much better would it be to put her out to nurse with a wise woman of Brentford? I can say no more on so spare subject. Miss Milar now is a different morsel. If one knew how to divide and subdivide, theme her out into sections and subsections. Lay a little on every part of her body as it is divided, and common, with all her fellow creatures in Moore's Almanac. But alas, I have not heard a word about her, no cue to begin with. There is indeed a buzz about her, and her mother's being at old Mrs. So-and-So. Who was like to die, as the Jews say? But I dare say, keeping up their dialect, she was not like to die. I must tell you a good thing Reynolds did. It was the best thing he ever said. You know, at taking leave of a party at a doorway, sometimes a man dallys and foolishes and gets awkward, and does not know how to make off to advantage. Goodbye, well, goodbye, and yet he does not go. Goodbye, and so on. Well, good bless you. You know what I mean. Now Reynolds was in this predicament, and got out of it in a very witty way. He was leaving us at Hampstead. He delayed, and we were pressing at him, and he even said, be off, in which he put the tails of his coat between his legs, and sneaked off as nigh like a spaniel as could be. He went with flying colors. This is very clever. I must, being upon the subject, tell you another good thing of him. He began, for the service it might be of to him in the law, to learn French. He had lessons at the cheap rate of two shilling six pence per fag, and observed the brown. God says he. The man sells his lessons so cheap, he must have stolen them. You have heard of Hook, the farce-writer. Horace Smith said to one who asked him if he knew Hook. Oh, yes, Hook and I are very intimate. There is a page of wit for you to put John Bunyan's emblems out of continents. Tuesday, September 21st You see, I keep adding a sheet daily till I send the packet off, which I shall not do for a few days, as I am inclined to write a good deal, for there can be nothing so memorizing and enchaining as a good long letter, be composed of what it may, from the time you left me, our friends say I have altered completely, am not the same person. Perhaps in this letter I am. For in a letter one takes up one's existence from the time we last met. I dare say you have altered also. Every man does. Our bodies every seven years are completely materialed. Seven years ago it was not this hand that clinched itself against Hammond. We are like the relics of garments of a saint. The same and not the same. For the careful monks patch it and patch it till there is not a thread of the original garment left, and still they show it for St. Anthony's shirt. This is the reason why men, who have been bosom friends on being separated for any number of years, meet coldly, neither them knowing why. The fact is, they are both altered. Men who live together have a silent molding and influencing power over each other. They inter-assimilate. Tis an uneasy thought that in seven years the same hands cannot greet each other again. All this may be obviated by a willful and dramatic exercise of our minds towards each other. Some think I have lost that poetic ardor and fire Tis said I once had. The fact is, perhaps I have. But instead of that, I hope I shall substitute a more thoughtful and quiet power. I am more frequently now contented to read and think, but now and then haunted with ambitious thoughts. Quieter in my pulse, improved in my digestion. Exerting myself against vexing speculations, scarcely content to write the best verses for the fever they leave behind. I want to compose without this fever. I hope I one day shall. You would scarcely imagine I could live alone so comfortably, keeping in solitari-ness, I told Anne the servant here the other day, to say I was not at home if anyone should call. I am not certain how I should endure loneliness and bad weather together. Now the time is beautiful. I take a walk every day for an hour before dinner, and this is generally my walk. I go out the back gate, across one street, into the cathedral yard, which is always interesting. There I pass under the trees along a paved path, past the beautiful front of the cathedral, turned to the left under a stone doorway. Then I am on the other side of the building, which, leaving behind me, I pass on through two college-like squares, seemingly built for the dwelling place of deans and free benderies, garnished with grass and shaded with trees. Then I pass through one of the old city gates, and then you are on one college street, through which I pass, and at the end thereof, crossing some meadows, and at last a country alley of gardens. I arrive. That is my worship arrives at the foundation of St. Cross, which is a very interesting old place, both for its Gothic tower and Almsquare, and for the appropriation of its rich rents to a relation of the Bishop of Winchester. Then I pass across St. Cross meadows till you come to the most beautifully clear river. Now this is only one mile of my walk. I will spare you the other two till after supper, when they would do you more good. You must avoid going the first mile best after dinner. Wednesday, September 22nd. I could almost advise you to put by this nonsense until you are lifted out of your difficulties, but when you come to this part, feel with confidence what I now feel, that though there can be no stop-put-troubles we are inheritors of, there can be and must be, and end to immediate difficulties. Rest in the confidence that I will not omit any exertion to benefit you by some means or other, for I cannot remit you hundreds, I will tens, and if not that, ones. Let the next year be managed by you as well as possible, the next month, I mean, for I trust you will soon receive Abbey's remittance. What he can send you will not be a sufficient capital to ensure you any command in America. What he has of mine I have nearly anticipated by debts, so I would advise you not to sink it but to live upon it in hopes of my being able to increase it. To this end I will devote whatever I may gain for a few years to come, at which period I must begin to think of a security of my own comforts, when quiet will become more pleasant to me than the world. Still, I would have you doubt my success. Tis at present the cast of a die with me. You say, these things will be a great torment to me. I shall not suffer them to be so. I shall only exert myself the more, while the seriousness of their nature will prevent me from nursing up imaginary griefs. I have not had the Blue Devils once since I received your last. I would advise not to publish till it is seen whether the tragedy will or not succeed. Should it, a few months may see me in the way of acquiring property. Should it not, it will be a drawback and I shall have to perform a longer literary pilgrimage. You will perceive that it is quite out of my interest to come to America. What could I do there? How could I employ myself out of reach of libraries? You do not mention the name of the gentleman who assists you. Tis an extraordinary thing. How could you do without that assistance? I will not trust myself with brooding over this. The following is an extract from a letter of Reynolds to me. I am glad to hear you are getting on so well with your writings. I hope you are not neglecting the revision of your poems for the press, from which I expect more than you do. The first thought that struck me on reading your last was to mortgage a poem to Murray. But on more consideration, I made up my mind not to do so. My reputation is very low. He would not have negotiated my bill of intellect or given me a very small sum. I should have bound myself down for some time. Tis best to meet present misfortunes, not for a momentary good to sacrifice great benefits which one's own untrammeled and free industry may bring one in the end. In all this, do never think of me as in any way unhappy. I shall not be so. I have a great pleasure in thinking of my responsibility to you, and shall do myself the greatest luxury if I can succeed in any way so as to be of assistance to you. We shall look back upon these times even before our eyes are at all dim. I am convinced of it. But be careful of those Americans. I could almost advise you to come whenever you have the sum of five hundred pound to England. Those Americans will, I am afraid, still fleece you. If ever you think of such a thing, you must bear in mind the very different state of society here, the immense difficulties of the times, the great sum required per annum to maintain yourself in any decency. In fact, the whole is with providence. I know not how to advise you, but by advising you to advise with yourself. In your next, tell me at large your thoughts about America, what chance there is of succeeding there, for it appears to me you have as yet been somehow deceived. I cannot help thinking Mr. Audubon has deceived you. I shall not like the sight of him. I shall endeavour to avoid seeing him. You see how puzzled I am. I have no meridian to fix you to, being the slave of what is to happen. I think I may bid you finally remain in good hopes, and not tease yourself with my changes and variations of mind. If I say nothing decisive in any one particular part of my letter, you may glean the truth from the whole pretty correctly. You may wonder why I had not put your affairs with Abbey in train on receiving your letter before last, to which there will reach you a short answer dated from Shanklin. I did write and speak to Abbey, but to no purpose. Your last, with the enclosed note, has appealed home to him. He will not see the necessity of a thing, till he is hit in the mouth, till be effectual. I am sorry to mix up foolish and serious things together, but in writing so much I am obliged to do so, and I hope sincerely the tenor of your mind will maintain itself better. In the course of a few months I shall be as good an Italian scholar as I am a French one. I am reading ariosto at present, not managing more than six or eight stanzas at a time. When I have done this language, so as to be able to read it tolerably well, I shall set myself to get to complete in Latin, and there my learning must stop. I do not think of returning upon Greek. I would not go even so far if I were not persuaded of the power the knowledge of any language gives one. The fact is, I like to be acquainted with foreign languages. It is, besides, a nice way of filling up intervals, etc. Also, the reading of Dante is well worth the while, and in Latin there is a fund of curious literature of the Middle Ages, the works of many great men. I shall never become attached to a foreign idiom, so as to put it into my writings. The paradise lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language. It should be kept as it is. Unique, a curiosity, a beautiful grand curiosity, the most remarkable production of the world, a northern dialect accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I think, or what ought to be the purest, is Chatterton's. The language had existed long enough to be entirely uncorrupted of Chaucer's Galicisms, and still the old words are used. Chatterton's language is entirely northern. I prefer the native music of it to Milton's, cut by feet. I have but lately stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me. Miltonic verse cannot be written, but it is the verse of art. I wish to devote myself to another verse alone. Friday, September 24. I have been obliged to intimate your letter for two days, this being Friday morning, from having had to attend to other correspondents. Brown, who was a Bedhampton, went thence to Chichester, and I am still directing my letters Bedhampton. There arose a misunderstanding about them. I began to suspect my letters had been stopped from curiosity. However, yesterday Brown had four letters from me all in a lump, and the matters cleared up. Brown complained very much in his letter to me of yesterday, of the great alteration the disposition of Dilk has undergone. He thinks of nothing but political justice and his boy. Now, the first political duty a man ought to have a mind to is the happiness of his friends. I wrote to Brown a comment on the subject wherein I explained what I thought of Dilk's character, which resolved itself into this conclusion that Dilk was a man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he has made up his mind about everything. The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts, not a select party. The genus is not scarce in population. All the stubborn arguers you meet with are of the same brood. They never begin upon a subject they have not pre-resolved on. They want to hammer their nail into you, and if you have the point, still they think you're wrong. Dilk will never come at a truth as long as he lives, because he is always trying at it. He is a God-win Methodist. I must not forget to mention that your mother showed me the lock of hair, tis of a very dark color for a so younger creature. Then it is two feet in length. I shall not stand a barley-corn higher. That's not fair, one ought to go on growing as well as others. At the end of this sheet I shall stop for the present and send it off. You may expect another letter immediately after it, as I never know the day of the month but by chance. I put here that this is the 24th September. I would wish you here to stop your ears, for I have a word or two to say to your wife. My dear sister, in the first place I must quarrel with you for sending me such a shabby piece of paper, though that is in some degree made up for by the beautiful impression of the seal. You should like to know what I was doing the first of May. Let me see. I cannot recollect. I have all the examiners ready to send. There will be a great treat to you when they reach you. I shall pack them up when my business with Abbey has come to a good conclusion, and the remittance is on the road to you. I have dealt round your best wishes like a pack of cards. But being always given to cheat myself, I have turned up ace. You see, I am making game of you. I see you are not at all happy in that America. England, however, would not be over happy for you if you were here. Perhaps, it would be better to be teased here than there. I must preach patience to you both. No step hasty or injurious to you must be taken. You say let one large sheet be all to me. You will find more than that in different parts of this packet for you. Certainly. I have been caught in rains. I catch in the rain occasioned my last sore throat. But, as for the red-haired girls upon my word, I do not recollect ever having seen one. Are you quizzing me, or Miss Waldegrave, when you talk of promenading? As for pun-making, I wish it was as good a trade as pin-making. There is very little business of that sort going on now. We struck for wages like the Manchester Weavers, but to no purpose. So we are all out of employ. I am more lucky than some, you see, by having an opportunity of exporting a few, getting into a little foreign trade, which is a comfortable thing. I wish one could get change for a pun in silver currency. I would give three and a half any night to get into jewelry-pit, but they won't ring at all. No more will notes, you will say, but notes are different things, though they make together a pun note as the term goes. If I were your son, I shouldn't mind you, though you wrapped me with the scissors. But, Lord, I should be out of favour when the little unbecome. You have made an uncle of me, you have, and I don't know what to make of myself. I suppose next there will be a nevy. You say in my last, right directly. I have not received your letter above ten days. The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard a Mr. Lamb say. A child in arms was passing by towards its mother, in the nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long clothes saying, Where, God bless me, where does it leave off? Saturday, September 25. If you would prefer a joke or two to anything else, I have two for you fresh-hatched, just Riz, as the baker's wife say by the rolls. The first I played off on Brown. The second I played on myself. Brown, when he left me, Keats says he, my good fellow, staggering upon his left heel and fetching an irregular perwett with his right. Keats says he, depressing his left eyebrow and elevating his right one, though by the way at the moment I did not know which was the right one. Keats says he, still in the same posture, but furthermore both his hands in his waistcoat pockets and putting out his stomach. Keats, my good fellow, says he, interlarding his exclamation with a certain ventriloquial parenthesis. No, this is all a lie. He was as sober as a judge when a judge happens to be sober, and said, Keats, if any letters come for me, do not forward them, but open them, and give me the marrow of them in a few words. At the time I wrote my first to him no letter had arrived. I thought I would invent one, and as I had not time to manufacture a long one, I dabbed off a short one, and that was the reason of the joke succeeding beyond my expectations. Brown led his house to a Mr. Benjamin, a Jew. Now the water which furnishes the house is in a tank sided with a composition of lime, and the lime impregnates the water unpleasantly. Taking advantage of the circumstance, I pretended that Mr. Benjamin had written the following short note. Sir, by drinking your damned tank water, I have got the gravel. What reparation can you make to me and my family? Nathan Benjamin. By a fortunate hit, I hit upon his right he the name, his right pronomen. Brown, in consequence, appears, wrote to the surprise Mr. Benjamin the following. Sir, I cannot offer you any renumeration until your gravel shall have formed itself into a stone, when I will cut you with pleasure. C. Brown. This of Brown's Mr. Benjamin has answered, insisting on an explanation of this singular circumstance. B. says, when I read your letter and his following, I roared, and in came Mr. Snoop, who on reading them seemed likely to burst the hoops of his fat sides. So the joke is told well. Now for the one I played on myself. I must first give you the scene and the Dermatis personae. There are an old major and his youngish wife here in the next apartments to me. His bedroom door opens at an angle with my sitting-room door. Yesterday I was reading as demerly as a parish clerk when I heard a wrap at the door. I got up and opened it. No one was to be seen. I listened and heard someone in the major's room. Not content with this, I went upstairs and down, looked in the cupboards and watched. At last I set myself to read again, not quite so demerly, when there came a louder wrap. I was determined to find out who it was. I looked out. The staircases were all silent. This must be the major's wife's that I read. At all events I will see the truth. So I wrapped me at the major's door and went in, to the utter surprise and confusion of the lady who was in reality there. After a little explanation, which I can no more describe than fly, I made my retreat from her convinced of my mistake. She is to all appearance a silly body and is really surprised about it. She must have been, for I have discovered that a little girl in the house was the rapper. I assure you she has nearly made me sneeze. If the lady tells tits I shall put a very grave and moral face on the matter with the old gentleman and make his little boy a present of a humming-top. Monday, September 27 My dear George, this Monday morning, the 27th, I have received your last, dated 12th July. You say you have not heard from England for three months. Then my letter from Shanklin, written, I think, at the end of June, has not reached you. You shall not have cause to think I neglect you. I have kept this back a little time in expectation of hearing from Mr. Abbey. You will say I might have remained in town to be Abbey's messenger in these affairs. That I offered him, but he and his answer convinced me that he was anxious to bring the business to an issue. He observed that by being himself the agent in the whole, people might be more expeditious. You say you have not heard for three months, and yet your letters have the tone of knowing how our affairs are situated, by which I conjecture I acquainted you with them in a letter previous to the Shanklin one. That I may not have done, to be certain, I will hear state that it is in consequence of Mrs. Jennings threatening a chance-resuit that you have been kept from the receipt of monies, and myself deprived of any help from Abbey. I am glad you say you keep up your spirits. I hope you make a true statement on that score. Still keep them up, for we are all young. I can only repeat here that you shall hear from me again immediately, not withstanding this bad intelligence. I have experienced some pleasure in receiving so correctly two letters from you, as it gives me, if I may say so, a distant idea of proximity. This last improves upon my little niece, kiss her for me. Do not fret yourself about the delay of money on account of my immediate opportunity being lost. For in a new country, whoever has money must have an opportunity of employing it in many ways. The report runs now more in favor of Keane stopping in England. If he should, I have confident hopes of our tragedy. If he invokes the hot-blooded character of Ludoff, and he is the only actor that can do it, he will add to his own fame and improve my fortune. I will give you a half-dozen lines of it before I part as a specimen. Not as a swordsman would I pardon Crave, but as a son, the bronze centurion, long toiled in foreign wars and whose high deeds are shaded in a forest of tall spears, known only to his troop, hath greater plea of favor with my sire than I can have. Believe me, my dear brother and sister, your affectionate and anxious brother, John Keats. End of Letter 116, Part 2. Letter 117 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, Winchester, September 22nd, 1819. My dear Reynolds, I was very glad to hear from Woodhouse that you would meet in the country. I hope you will pass some pleasant time together, which I wish to make pleasanter by a brace of letters, very highly to be estimated, as really I have had very bad luck with this sort of game this season. I, keeping in solitariness, for Brown has gone and visiting, I am surprised myself at the pleasure I live alone in. I can give you no news of the place here, or any other idea of it, but what I have to this effector it into George. Yesterday, I say to him, was a grand day for Winchester. They elected a mayor. It was indeed high time the place should receive some sort of excitement. There was nothing going on, all asleep, not an old maid's sedan returning from a card-party, and if any old woman got tipsy at christenings they did not expose it in the streets. The first night, though, of our arrival here, there was a slight uproar took place at around ten o'clock. We heard distinctly a noise pattering down the high street as of a walking cane of a good old dowager breed. And a little minute after we heard a less voice observe, what a noise the feral made, it must be loose. Brown wanted to call the constables, but I observed to was only a little breeze and would soon pass over. The side streets here are excessively maiden-lady-like. The door steps always fresh from the flannel. The knockers have a staid, serious, nay almost awful quietness about them. I never saw so quiet a collection of lions and rams heads. The doors are most part black, with the little brass handle just above the keyhole, so that in Winchester a man may very quietly shut himself out of his own house. How beautiful the season is now, how fine the air, a temperate sharpness about it, really without joking chaste weather, dye and skies, I never like stubblefield so much as now. I better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubblefield looks warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it. Footnote, the beautiful ode to autumn, the draft of which Keats had copied in a letter, unluckily not preserved, written earlier in the same day to Woodhouse. End footnote. I hope you are better employed than in gaping after weather. I have been at different times so happy as not to know what weather it was. No, I will not copy a parcel of verses. I always somehow associate Chatterton with autumn. He is the purest writer in the English language. He has no French idiom or particles like Chaucer, to his genuine English idiom in English words. I have given up Hyperion. There were too many Meltonic inversions in it. Meltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather artist's humor. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion and put a mark X to the false beauty preceding from art and one pipe to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul twas imagination, I cannot make the distinction. Every now and then there is a Meltonic intonation but I cannot make the division properly. The fact is, I must take a walk, for I am writing a long letter to George and have been employed at it all the morning. You will ask, have I heard from George? I am sorry to say, not the best news. I hope for better. This is the reason, among others, that if I write to you it must be in such a scrap-like way. I have no Meridian to date interest from or measure circumstances. Tonight I am all in a mist I scarcely know what's what. But you, knowing my unsteady and vigourish disposition, will guess that all this turmoil will be settled by tomorrow morning. It strikes me tonight that I have led a very odd sort of life for the two or three last years. Here and there, no anchor, I am glad of it. If you can get a peep at Babacome before you leave the country, do. I think at the finest place I have seen or is to be seen in the south. There is a cottage there I took warm water at that made up for the tea. I have lately shirked some friends of ours and I advise you to do the same. I mean the Blue Devils. I am never at home to them. You need not fear them while you remain in Devonshire. There will be some of the family waiting for you at the coach office. But go buy another coach. I shall beg leave to have a third opinion in the first discussion you have with Woodhouse, just half way between both. You know I will not give up my argument. In my walk today I stooped under a railing that lay across my path and asked myself why I did not get over. Because, answered I, no one wanted to force you under. I would give a guinea to be a reasonable man, good sound sense, a says what he thinks and does what he says, man, and did not take snuff. They say men near death, however mad they may have been, come to their senses. I hope I shall hear in this letter. There is a decent space to be very sensible in. Many a good proverb has been in less. Nay, I have heard of the statutes at large being changed into the statutes at small and printed for a watch paper. Your sisters by this time must have got the Devonshire ease. Short ease, you know them. They are the prettiest ease in the language. Oh how I admire the middle-sized, delicate Devonshire girls of about fifteen. There was one at an indoor holding a quatern of brandy. The very thought of her kept me warm a whole stage. And a sixteen-miler, too. You'll pardon me for being jocular. Ever your affectionate friend, John Keats. End of letter one hundred seventeen. Letter one hundred eighteen. Of letters of John Keats to his family and friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. This Slibervox recording is in the public domain. To Charles Wentworth Dilk, Winchester Wednesday Eve, September 22nd, 1819. My dear Dilk, whatever I take to for the time, I cannot leave off in a hurry. Letter writing is the go now. I have consumed a choir at least. You must give me credit now for a free letter when it is in reality an interested one on two points, the one requestive, the other verging to the pros and cons. As I expect they will lead me to sing and conferring with you in a short time. I shall not enter at all upon a letter I have lately received from George of not the most comfortable intelligence. But proceed to these two points, which if you can theme out into sections and subsections for my edification you will oblige me. The first I shall begin upon. The other will follow like a tail to a comet. I have written to Brown on the subject. And can but go over the same ground with you in a very short time, it not being more in length than the ordinary paces between the wickets. It concerns a resolution I have taken to endeavor to acquire something by temporary writing in periodical works. You must agree with me how unwise it is to keep feeding upon hopes, which depending so much on the state of temper and imagination appear gloomy or bright, near or far off, just as it happens. Now an act has three parts. To act, to do and to perform. I mean I should do something for my immediate welfare. Even if I am swept away like a spider from a drawing room, I am determined to spin, homespun anything for sale, yea I will traffic, anything but mortgage my brain to Blackwood. I am determined not to lie like a dead lump. If Reynolds had not taken to the law, would he not be earning something? Why cannot I? You may say I want tacked. That is easily acquired. You may be up to the slaying of a cockpit in three battles. It is fortunate I have not before this been tempted to venture on the common. I should a year or two ago have spoken my mind on every subject with the utmost simplicity. I hope I have learned a little better and am confident. I shall be able to cheat as well as any literary Jew of the market and shine up an article on anything without much knowledge of the subject. I like an orange. I would willingly have recourse to other means. I cannot. I am fit for nothing but literature. Wait for the issue of this tragedy. No, there cannot be greater uncertainties east, west, north, and south than concerning dramatic composition. How many months must I wait? Had I not better begin to look about me now? If better events supersede this necessity, what harm will be done? I have no trust whatever on poetry. I don't wonder at it. The marvel is to me how people read so much of it. I think you will see the reasonableness of my plan. To forward it, I purpose living in cheap lodging in town, that I may be in the reach of books and information, of which there is here a plentiful lack. If I can find any place tolerably comfortable, I will settle myself and fag till I can afford to buy pleasure. Which, if I can never afford, I must go without. Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing with one hand and with the other holding to my mouth a nectarine. Good God, how fine. It went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy. All is delicious and bumpalm melted down my throat like a large, beatified strawberry. I shall certainly breathe. Now I come to my request. Should you like me for a neighbor again? Come, plump it out. I won't blush. I should also be in the neighborhood of Mrs. Wiley, which I should be glad of. Though that, of course, does not influence me. Therefore, will you look about Marsham or Rodney Street for a couple of rooms for me? Rooms like the gallant's legs in Massengers' Time. Quote, as good as times allow, sir. I have written today to Reynolds and to Woodhouse. Do you know him? He is a friend of Taylor's, at whom Brown has taken one of his funny odd dislikes. I'm sure he's wrong, because Woodhouse likes my poetry. Conclusive. I ask your opinion, and yet I must say to you, as to him, Brown, that if you have anything to say against it, I shall be as obstinate and heady as a radical. By the examiner coming in your handwriting, you must be in town. They have put me into spirits. Notwithstanding my aristocratic temper, I cannot help being very much pleased with the present public proceedings. I hope sincerely I shall be able to put a might of help to the liberal side of the question before I die. If you should have left town again, for your holidays cannot be up yet, let me know when this is forwarded to you. A most extraordinary mischance has befallen two letters I wrote to Brown, one from London, whether I was obliged to go on business for George, the other from this place, since my return. I can't make it out. I am excessively sorry for it. I shall hear from Brown and from you almost together, for I have sent him a letter today. You must positively agree with me or by the delicate toenails of the virgin I will not open your letters. If they are, as David says, suspicious looking letters, I won't open them. If Saint John had been half as cunning, he might have seen the revelations comfortably in his own room, without giving angels the trouble of breaking open seals. Remember me to Mrs. D., and the West Monastery, and believe me, ever your sincere friend John Keats. End of letter 118. Letter 119 of letters of John Keats to his family and friends edited by Sidney Colvin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. To Charles Brown, Winchester, September 23, 1819. Now I am going to enter on the subject of self. It is quite time I should set myself doing something, and live no longer upon hopes. I have never yet exerted myself. I am getting into an idle, minded, vicious way of life, almost content to live upon others. In no period of my life have I acted with any self will, but in throwing up the apothecary profession, that I do not repent of. Look at Reynolds. If he was not in the law, he would be acquiring, by his abilities, something towards his support. My occupation is entirely literary. I will do so too. I will write on the liberal side of the question, for whoever will pay me. I have not known yet what it is to be diligent. I purpose living in town, in a cheap lodging, and endeavoring for a beginning, to get the theatricals of some paper. When I can afford to compose deliberate poems, I will. I shall be an expectation of an answer to this. Look on my side of the question. I am convinced I am right. Suppose the tragedy should succeed. There will be no harm done. And here I will take an opportunity of making a remark or two on our friendship, and on all your good offices to me. I have a natural timidity of mind in these matters, liking better to take the feeling between us for granted than to speak of it. Good God, what a short while you have known me. I feel it a sort of duty to thus recapitulate however unpleasant it may be to you. You have been living for others more than any man I know. This is a vexation to me because it has been depriving you in the very prime of your life, of pleasures which it was your duty to procure. As I am speaking in general terms, this may appear nonsense. You perhaps will not understand it. But if you can go over day by day, any month of the last year, you will know what I mean. On the whole, however, this is a subject that I cannot express myself upon. I speculate upon it frequently. And believe me, the end of my speculations is always an anxiety for your happiness. This anxiety will not be one of the least incitements to the plan I purpose pursuing. I had got into a habit of mind of looking towards you as a help in all difficulties. This very habit would be the parent of idleness and difficulties. You see it is a duty I owe myself to break the neck of it. I do nothing for my subsistence, make no exertion. At the end of another year you shall applaud me, not for verses, but for conduct. While I have some immediate cash I had better settle myself quietly and fag on as others do. I shall apply to Hazlet, who knows the market as well as anyone, for something to bring me in a few pounds as soon as possible. I shall not suffer my pride to hinder me. The whisper may go round, I shall not hear it. If I can get an article in the Edinburgh I will. One must not be delicate, nor let this disturb you longer than a moment. I look forward with a good hope that we shall one day be passing free, untrammeled, unanxious time together. That can never be if I continue a dead lump. I shall be expecting anxiously an answer from you. If it does not arrive in a few days this will have miscarried and I shall come straight to, before I go to town, which you I am sure will agree had better be done while I still have some ready cash. By the middle of October I shall expect you in London. We will then set at the theatres. If you have anything to gain say I shall be even as the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears. End of letter 119