Letters of John Keats

My dear Tom,
I have not been able to keep up my journal completely on account of other letters to George and one which I am writing to Fanny from which I have turned to loose no time whilst Brown is coppying a song about Meg Merrilies which I have just written for her - We are now in Meg Merrilies county and have this morning passed through some parts exactly suited to her - Kirkcudbright County is very beautiful, very wild with craggy hills somewhat in the westmoreland fashion - We have come down from Dumfries to the Sea Coast part of it - The song I mention you would have from Dilke: but perhaps you would like it here -

Old Meg she was a Gipsey
And liv'd upon the Moors;
Her bed it was the brown heath turf,
And her house was out of doors.
Her apples were swart blackberries,
Her currants pods o'Broom,
Her wine was dew o' the wild white rose,
Her book a churchyard tomb.
Her brothers were the craggy hills,
Her Sisters larchen trees -
Alone with her great family
She liv'd as she did please.
No Breakfast had she many a morn,
No dinner many a noon;
And 'stead of supper she would stare
Full hard against the Moon.
But every Morn, of wood bine fresh
She made her garlanding;
And every night the dark glen Yew
She wove and she would sing.
And with her fingers old and brown
She plaited Mats o' Rushes,
And gave them to the Cottagers
She met among the Bushes.
Old Meg was brave as Margaret Queen
And tall as Amazon:
An old red blanket cloak she wore
A chip hat had she on -
God rest her aged bones somewhere
She died full long agone!
______________

Now I will return to Fanny - it rains. I may have time to go on here presently. July 5 - You see I have missed a day from Fanny's Letter. Yesterday was passed in Kirkcudbright - the Country is very rich - very fine and with a little of Devon - I am now writing at Newton Suart six Miles into Wigton - Our Landlady of yesterday said very few Southrens passed these ways. The children jabber away as in a foreign Language - The barefooted Girls look very much in keeping - I mean with the Scenery about them. Brown praises their cleanliness and appearance of comfort - the neatness of their cottages etc it may be - they are very squat among trees and fern and heaths and broom, on levels, slopes and heights - They are very pleasant because they are very primitive - but I wish they were as snug as those up the Devonshire vallies. We are lodged and entertained in great varieties - we dined yesterday on dirty bacon dirtier eggs and dirtiest Potatoes with a slice of Salmon - we breakfast this morning in a nice carpeted Room with Sofa hair bottomed chairs and green-baized mehogany - A spring by the road side is always welcome - we drink water for dinner diluted with a Gill of whiskey. July 7^th Yesterday Morning we set out from Glenluce going some distance roung to see some Ruins - they were scarcely worth the while - we went on towards Stranrawier in a burning Sun and had gone about six Miles when the Mail overtook us - we got up - were at Portpatrick in a jiffy, and I am writing now in little Ireland - The dialect on the neighbouring shores of Scotland and Ireland is much the same - yet I can perceive a great difference in the nations from the Chambermaid at this nate Inn kept by M^r kelly. She is fair, kind and ready to laugh, because she is out of the horrible dominion of the Scotch Kirk. A Scotch Girl stands in terrible awe of the Elders - poor little Susannas - They will scarcely laugh - they are greatly to be pitied and the Kirk is greatly to be damn'd. These Kirkmen have done Scotland good. They have made men, women, old men, young men, old women, young women, hags, girls, and infants, all careful; so they are formed into regular phalanges of savers and gainers - such a thrifty army cannot fail to enrich their Country and give it a greater appearance of comfort than that of their poor irish neighbours - These Kirk-men have done Scotland harm; they have banished puns and laughing and Kissing (except in cases where the very danger and crime must make it very fine and gustful. I shall make a full stop at Kissing for after that there should be a better parent hesis: and go on to remind you of the fate of Burns. Poor unfortunate fellow - his disposition was Southern - how sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged in self defence to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity, and not in things attainable that it may not have leisure to go mad after things which are not. No Man in such matters will be content with the experience of others - It is true that out of suffrance there is no greatness, no dignity; that in the most abstracted Pleasure there is no lasting happiness: yet who would not like to discover over again that Cleopatra was a Gipsey, Helen a Rogue and Ruth a deep one? I have not sufficient reasoning faculty to settle the doctrine of thrift - as it is consistent with the dignity of human Society - with the happiness of Cottagers - All I can do is by plump contrasts - Were the fingers made to squeeze a guinea or a white hand? Were the Lips made to hold a pen or a Kiss? and yet in Cities Man is shut out from his fellows if he is poor, the Cottager must be dirty and very wretched if she be not thrifty - The present state of society demands this and this convinces me that the world is very young and in a very ignorant state - We live in a barbarous age. I would sooner be a wild deer than a Girl under the dominion of the Kirk, and I would sooner be a wild hog than be the occasion of a Poor Creatures pennance before those execrable elders. It is not so far to the Giant's Cause way as we supposed - we thought it 70, and hear it is only 48 Miles - so we shall leave one of our Knapsacks here at Donoghadee, take our immediate wants and be back in a week - when we shall proceed to the County of Ayr. In the Packet Yesterday we heard some Ballads from two old Men - one was a romance which seemed very poor - then there was the Battle of the Boyne - then Robin Huid as they call him - 'Before the king you shall go, go, go, before the King you shall go'. There were no Letters for me at Port Patrick so I am behind hand with you I dare say in news from George. Direct to Glasgow till the 17^th of this month.
9^th We stopped very little in Ireland and that you may not have leisured to marvel at our speedy return to Port Patrick I will tell you that is it as dear living in Ireland as at the Hummums - thrice the expence of Scotland - it would have cost us £15 before our return - Moreover we found those 48 Miles to be irish ones which reach to 70 english - So having walked to Belfast one day and back to Donoghadee the next we left Ireland with a fair breeze - We slept last night at Port Patrick where I was gratified by a letter from you. On our walk in Ireland we had too much opportunity to see the worse than nakedness, the rags, the dirt and misery of the poor common Irish - A Scotch cottage, though in that sometimes the Smoke has no exit but at the door, is a pallace to an irish one. We could observe that impetiosity in Man Boy and Woman. We had the pleasure of finding our way through a Peat-Bog - three miles long at least - dreary, black, dank, flat and spongy: here and there were poor dirty creatures and a few strong men cutting or carting peat. We heard on passing into Belfast through a most wretched suburb that most disgusting of all noises worse than the Bag pipe, the laugh of a Monkey, the chatter of women solus the scream of a Macaw - i mean the sound of the Shuttle. What a trememdous difficulty is the improvement of the condition of such people. I cannot conceive how a mind 'with child' of Philanthropy could grasp at possibility - with me it is absolute despair. At a miserable house of entertainment half way between Donaghadee and Belfast were two Men sitting at Whiskey - one a Laborer and the other I took to be a drunken Weaver - The Laborer took mee for a Frenchman and the other hinted at Bounty Money saying he was ready to take it. On calling for the Letters at Port Patrick the man snapp'd out 'what Regiment'? On our return from Bellfast we met a Sadan - the Duchess of Dunghill - It is no laughing matter tho - Imagine the worst dog kennel you ever saw placed upon two poles from a mouldy fencing. In such a wretched thing sat a squalid old Woman squat like an ape half starved from a scarcity of Buiscuit in its passage from Madagascar to the cape, - with a pipe in her mouth and looking out with a sort of horizontal idiotic movement of her head - squab and lean she sat and puff'd out the smoke while two ragged tattered Girls carried her along. What a thing would be a history of her Life and sensations. I shall endeavour when I know more and have thought a little more, to give you my ideas of the difference between the scotch and irish - The two Irishmen I mentioned were speaking of their treatment in England when the Weaver said - 'Ah you were a civil Man but I was a drinker' Remember me to all - I intend writing to Haslam - but dont tell him for fear I should delay - We left a notice at Portpatrick that our Letters should be thence forwarded to Glasgow - Our quick return from Ireland will occasion our passing Glasgow sooner than we thought - so till further notice you must direct to Inverness

Your most affectionate Brother John -

Remember me to the Bentleys

Letters of John Keats

My dear Reynolds

What I complain of is that I have been in so an uneasy a state of Mind as not to be fit to write to an invalid. I cannot write to any length under a disguised feeling. I should have loaded you with an addition of gloom, which I am sure you do not want. I am now thank God in a humour to give you a good groats worth - for Tom, after a Night without a Wink of sleep, and overburdened with fever, has got up after a refreshing day sleep and is better than he has been for a long time; and you I trust have been again round the Common without any effect but refreshment. - As to the Matter I hope I can say with Sir Andrew: "I have matter enough in my head" in your favor. And now, in the second place, for I reckon that I have finished my Imprimis, I am glad you blow up the weather all through your letter there is a leaning towards a climate-curse, and you know what a delicate satisfaction there is in having a vexation anathematized: one would think there has been growing up for these last four thousand years, a grandchild Scion of the old forbidden tree, and that some modern Eve had just violated it; and that there was come with double charge

"Notus and Afer, black with thunderous clouds
From Sierraleona.'"

I shall breathe worsted stockings sooner than I thought for - Tom wants to be in town - we will have some such days upon the heath like that of last summer - and why not with the same book: or what say you to a black-Letter Chaucer printed in 1596: aye I've got one huzza! I shall have it bounden gothique - a nice combre binding - it will go a little way to unmodernize. And also I see no reason, because I have been away this last month, why I should not have a peep at your Spencerian - notwithstanding you speak of your office, in my thought a little too early, for I do not see why a Mind like yours is not capable of harbouring and digesting the whole Mystery of Law as easily as Parson Hugh does Pepins - which did not hinder him from his poetic Canry - Were I to study physic or rather Medicine again, I feel it would not make the least difference in my Poetry; when the Mind is in its infancy a Bias is in reality a Bias, but when we have acquired more strength, a Bias becomes no Bias. Every department of Knowledge we see excellent and calculated towards a great whole. I am so convinced of this, that I am glad at not having given away my medical Books, which I shall again look over to keep alive the little I know thitherwards; and moreover intend through you and Rice to become a sort of pip-civilian. An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people - it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the Burden of the Mystery: a thing I begin to understand a little, and which weighed upon you in the most gloomy and true sentence in your Letter. The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this - in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again without wings and with all the horror of a bare shouldered creature - in the former case, our shoulders are fledge, and we go thro' the same air and space without fear. This is running one's rigs on the score of abstracted benefit - when we come to human Life and the affections it is impossible to know how a parallel of breast and head can be drawn - (you will forgive me for thus privately treading out of my depth, and take it for treading as schoolboys tread the water) - It is impossible to know how far Knowledge will console us for the death of a friend and the ill "that flesh is heir to" - With respect to the affections and Poetry you must know by a sympathy my thoughts that way; and I dare say these few lines will be but a ratification: I wrote them on May-day - and intend to finish the ode all in good time. -

Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia!
May I sing to thee
As thou was hymned on the shores of Baiæ?
Or may I woo thee
In earlier Sicilan? or thy smiles
Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles,
By Bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan?
O give me their old vigou, and unheard,
Save of the quiet Primrose, and the span
Of Heaven and few ears
Rounded by thee My song should die away
Content as theirs
Rich in the simple worship of a day. -

You may be anxious to know for fact to what sentence in your Letter I allude. You say "I fear there is little chance of any thing else in life". you seem by that to have been going through with a more painful and acute zest the same labyrinth that I have - I have come to the same conclusions thus far. My Branchings out therefrom have been numerous: one of them is the consideration of Wordsworth's genius and as a help, in the manner of gold being the meridian Line of worldly wealth, - how he differs from Milton. - And here I have nothing but surmises, from an uncertainty whether Miltons apparently less anxiety for Humanity proceeds from his seeing further or no than Wordsworth: And whether Wordsworth has in truth epic passion, and martyrs himself to the human heart, the main region of his song - In regard to his genius alone - we find what he says true as far as we have experienced and we can judge no further but by larger experience - for axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author. - I know this is not plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say, that now I shall relish Hamlet more than I ever have done - Or, better - You are sensible no Man can set down Venery as a bestial or joyless thing until he is sick of it and therefore all philosophizing on it would be mere wording. Until we are sick, we understand not; in fine, as Byron says, "Knowledge is Sorrow"; and I go on to say that "Sorrow is Wisdom" - and further for aught we can know for certainty "Wisdom is folly"! - So you see how I have run away from Wordsworth, and Milton, and shall still run away from what was in my head, to observe, that some kind of letters are good squares others handsome ovals, and other some orbicular, others spheroid - and why should there not be another species with two rough edges like a Rat-trap? I hope you will find all my long letters of that species, and all will be well; for by merely touching the spring delicately and etherically, the rough edged will fly immediately into a proper compactness; and thus you may make a good wholesome loaf, with your own leaven in it, of my fragments - If you cannot find this said Rat-trap sufficientsly tracable - alas for me, it being an impossiblity in grain for my ink to stain otherwise: If I scribble long letters I must play my vagaries. I must be too heavy, or too light, for whole pages - I must be quaint and free of Tropes and figures - I must play my draughts as I please, and for my advantage and your erudition, crown a white with a black, of a black with a white, and move into black or white, far and near as I please - I must go from Hazlitt to Patmore, and make Wordsworth and Coleman play at leap-frog - or keep one of them down a whole half-holiday at fly the garter - "from Gray to Gay, from Little to Shakespeare" - Also, as a long cause requires two or more sittings of the Court, so a long letter will require two or more sittings of the Breech wherefore I shall resume after dinner. -
Have you not seen a Gull, an orc, a Sea Mew, or any thing to bring this Line to a proper length, and also fill up this clear part; that like the Gull I may dip - I hope, not out of sight - and also, like a Gull, I hope to be lucky in a good sized fish - This crossing a letter is not without its association - for chequer work leads us naturally to a Milkmaid, a Milkmaid to Hogarth Hogarth to Shakespeare Shakespeare to Hazlitt - Hazlitt to Shakespeare and thus by merely pulling an apron string we set a pretty peal of Chimes at work - Let them chime on while, with your patience, I will return to Wordsworth - whether or no he has an extended vision or a circumscribed grandeur - whether he is an eagle in his nest, or on the wing - And to be more explicit and to show you how tall I stand by the giant, I will put down a simile of human life as far as I now perceive it; that is, to the point to which I say we both have arrived at - Well - I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me. The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think - We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of this thinking principle within us - we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere. We see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delying there for ever in delight. However, among the effects this breathing is father of, is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of man, of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of misery and heartbreak, pain, sickness, and oppression; whereby this Chamber of Maidenthought becomes graually darkened, and at the same time, on all sides of it, many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages. We see not the balance of good and evil; we are in a mist. We are in that state, we feel the "Burden of the Mystery", To this Point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive when he wrote 'Tintern Abbey' and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them - he is a Genius and superior to us, in so far as he can, more than we, make discoveries, and shed a light in them - Here I must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton - though I think it has depended more upon the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness of Mind - From the Paradise Lost and the other Works of Milton, I hope it is not too presuming, even between ourselves to say, that his Philosophy, human and divine, may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years, In his time englishmen were just emancipated from a great superstition - and Men had got hold of certain points and resting places in reasoning which were too newly born to be doubted, and too much opposed by the Mass of Europe not to be thought etherial and authentically divine - who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice and Chastity in Comus, just at the time of the dismissal of Cod-pieces and a hundred other disgraces? who would not rest satisfied with his hintings at good and evil in the Paradise Lost, when just free from the inquisition and burning in Smithfield? The Reformation produced such immediate and great benefits, that Protestantism was considered under the immediate eye of heaven, and its own remaining Dogmas and superstitions, then, as it were, regenerated, constituted those resting places and seeming sure points of Reasoning - from that I have mentioned, Milton, whatever he may have thought in the sequel, appears to have been content with these by his writings - He did not think into the human heart, as Wordsworth has done - Yet Milton as a Philosopher, had sure as great powers as Wordsworth - What is then to be inferr'd? O many things - It proves there is really a grand march of intellect -, proves that a mighty providence subdues the mightiest Minds to the service of the time being, whether it be in human Knowledge or Religion - I have often pitied a Tutor who has to hear "Nom: Musa" - so often dinn'd into his ears - I hope you may not have the same pain in this scribbling - I may have read these things before, but I never had even a thus dim perception of them; and moreover I like to say my lesson to one who will endure my tediousness for my own sake - After all there is certainly something real in the World - Moore's present to Hazlitt is real - I like that Moore, and am glad I saw him at the Theatre just before I left Town. Tom has spit a leetle blood this afternoon, and that is rather a damper - but I know - the truth is there is something real in the World. Your third Chamber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one - stored with the wine of love - and the Bread of Friendship. When you see George if he should not have received a letter from me tell him he will find one at home most likely - tell Bailey I hope soon to see him - Remember me to all. The leaves have been out here, for many a day - I have written to George for the first stanzas of my Isabel - I shall have them soon and will copy the whole out for you.

Your affectionate friend,
John Keats.

Letters of John Keats

My dear Bailey

When a poor devil is drowning, it is said he comes thrice to the surface, ere he makes his final sink - if however, even at the third rise, he can manage to catch hold of a piece of week or rock, he stands a fair chance, as I hope I do now, of being saved. I have sunk twice in our Correspondence, have risen twice and been too idle, or something worse, to extricate myself. I have sunk the third time and just now risen again at this two of the Clock P.M. and saved myself from utter perdition - by beginning this, all drench'd as I am and fresh from the Water - and I would rather endure the present inconvenience of a Wet jacket than you should keep a laced one in store for me. Why did I not stop at Oxford in my Way? - How can you ask such a Question? Why did I not promise to do so? Did I not in a Letter to you make a promise to do so? Then how can you be so unreasonable as to ask me why I did not? This is the thing - (for I have been rubbing up my invention; trying several sleights - I first polish'd a cold, felt it in my fingers tried it on the table, but could not pocket it: I tried Chilblains, Rheumatism, Gout, tight Boots, nothing of that sort would do, so this is, as I was going to say, the thing. - I had a Letter from Tom saying how much better he had got, and thinking he had better stop - I went down to prevent his coming up. Will not this do? Turn it which way you like - it is selvaged all round. I have used it these three last days to keep out the abominable Devonshire Weather - by the by you may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of 'em; the primroses are out, -but then you are in; the cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then the clouds are continually vieing with them. The women like your London People in a sort of negative way - because the native men are the poorest creatures in England - because Government never have thought it worth while to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworths's Sonnet 'Vanguard of Liberty! ye Men of Kent!' the degenerated race about me are Pulvis Ipecac. Simplex - a strong dose. Were I a Corsair I'd make a descent on the South Coast of Devon, if I did not run the chance of having Cowardice imputed to me: as for the Men they'd run away into the methodist meeting houses, and the Women would be glad of it. Had England been a large Devonshire we should not have won the Battle of Waterloo. There are knotted oaks - there are lusty rivulets there are Meadows such as are not - there are vallies of feminine Climate but there are no thews and Sinews - Moor's Almanack is here a curiosity - Arms Neck and Shoulders may at least be seen there and the Ladies read it as some out of the way romance. Such a quelling Power have these thoughts over me that I fancy the very Air of a deteriorationg quality - I fancy the flowers, all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them - I feel able to beat off the devonshire wave like soap froth. I think it well for the honor of Britain that Julius Ceasar did not first land in this country: A Devonshirer, standing on his native hills is not a distinct object; he does not show against the light; a wolf or two would dispossess him. I like I love England. I like its strong Men. Give me a long brown plain for my Morning so I may meet with some of Edmond Ironside's descendants. Give me a barren mould so I may meet with some Shadowing of Alfred in the Shape of a Gipsey, a Huntsman or a Shepherd. Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer, Achilles is fine, Diomed is fine, Shakspeare is fine, Hamlet is fine, Lear is fine, but dwingled englishmen are not fine- Where too the Women are so passabel, and have such english names, such as Ophelia, Cordelia &c - that they should have such Paramours or rather Imparamours. As for them I cannot, in thought help wishing as did the cruel Emperour, that they had but one head and I might cut it off to deliver them from any horrible Courtesy they may do their undeserving Countrymen. - I wonder I meet with no born Monsters - O Devonshire, last night I thought the Moon had dwindled in heaven. I have never had your Sermon from Wordsworth but Mrs Dilke lent it me. You know my ideas about Religion. I do not think myself more in the right than other people, and that nothing in this world is proveable. I wish I could enter into all your feelings on the subject merely for one short 10 Minutes and give you a Page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack a lanthen to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As Tradesmen say every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer - being in itself a nothing - Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads - Things real - things semireal - and no things. Things real - such as existences of Sun Moon & Stars and passages of Shakspeare. Things semi-real such as Love, the Clouds &c which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist - and Nothings which are made Great and dignified by an ardent pursuit - which by the by stamps the burgundy mark on the bottles of our Minds, insomuch as they are able to "consecrate whate'er they look upon". I have written a Sonnet here of a somewhat collateral nature - so don't imagine it an a propos des botte.

Four Seasons fill the Measure of the year;
Four Seasons are there in the mind of Man.
He hath his lusty spring when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He hath his Summer, when luxuriously
He chews the honied cud of fair springs thoughts,
Till, in his Soul dissolv'd they come to be
Part of himself. He hath his Autumn ports
And Havens of repose, when his tired wings
Are folded up, and he content to look
On Mists in idleness: to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshhold brood.
He hath his Winter too of pale Misfeature,
Or else he would forget his mortal nature

Aye this may be carried - but what am I talking of - it is an old maxim of mine and of course must be well known that every point of thought is the centre of an intellectual world - the two uppermost thoughts in a Man's mind are the two poles of his World he revolves on them and every thing is southward or northward to him through their means. We take but three steps from feathers to iron. Now my dear fellow I must once for all tell you I have not one Idea of the truth of any of my speculations - I shall never be a Reasoner because I care not to be in the right, when retired from bickering and in a proper philosophical temper. So you must not stare if in any future letter I endeavour to prove that Apollo as he had cat gut strings to his Lyre used a cats's paw as a Pecten - and further from said Pecten's reiterated and continual teasing came the term Hen peck'd. My Brother Tom desires to be remember'd to you - he has just this moment had a spitting of blood poor fellow. Remember me to Greig and Whitehead -

Your affectionate friend,
John Keats

Letters of John Keats

My dear Taylor -
Your alteration strikes me as being a great Improvement - And now I will attend to the punctuations you speak of - The comma should be at soberly, and in the other passage, the Comma should follow quiet. I am extremely indebted to you for this attention, and also for your after admonitions. It is a sorry thing for me that any one should have to overcome prejudices in reading my verses - that affects me more than any hypercriticism on any particular passage - In Endymion, I have most likely but moved into the go-cart from the leading-strings - In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre.
1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
2d. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, seem natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than to write it - And this leads me to another axiom - That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. - However, it may be with me, I cannot help looking into new countries with 'O for a Muse of Fire to ascend!' If Endymion serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content - I have great reason to be content, for thank God I can read, and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths; and I have I am sure many friends, who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to humbleness rather than pride - to a cowering under the wings of great poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious to get Endymion printed that I may forget it and proceed. I have copied the 3rd Book and begun the 4th.

Your sincere and obliged friend,
John Keats

Letters of John Keats

My dear Reynolds-

I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner - Let him on a certain day read a certain page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander upon it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it: until it becomes stale - But when will it do so? Never - When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all 'the two-and-thirty Palaces.' How happy is such a voyage of concentration, what delicious diligent Indolence! ...Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers - for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great works to the 'spirit and pulse of good' by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge - Many have original minds who do not think it - they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel - the points of leaves and twigs on thich the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful ciruiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Web of his Soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. But the Minds of Mortals are so different and bent on such diverse journeys that it may at first appear impossible for any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these suppositions. It is however quite the contrary. Minds would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old Man and a child would talk together and the old Man be led on his path and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute or assert but whisper results to his neighbour and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould ethereal every human might become great, and Humanity instead of being a wide heath of Furze and Briars with here and there a remote Oak or Pine, would become a grand democracy of Forest Trees! It has been an old comparison for our urging on - the Beehive; however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the Bee - for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving - no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee - its leaves blush deeper in the next spring - and who shall say between man and woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury - let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive - budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness - I have not read any books - the Morning said I was right - I had no idea but of the morning, and the thrush said I was right - seeming to say,

O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm-tops 'mong the freezing stars,
To thee the Spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away,
To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge - I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he's awake who thinks himself asleep.

Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication (however it may neighbor to any truths), to excuse my own indolence - so I will not deceive myself that man should be equal with Jove - but think himself very well off as a sort of scullion-Mercury, or even a humble Bee. It is no matter whether I am right or wrong, either one way or another, if there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders.

Your affectionate friend,
John Keats

A photograph of Keat's Life Love-Fanny Brawne

Letters of John Keats

My dear Brothers
When once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time, he delays it longer for one or two reasons; first, because he must begin in a very commonplace style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last - I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my poem all out, I am now much beforehand with the printer, they have done none yet, and I am half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing, I am determined they shall not trouble me when I have copied it all - Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called "Nehemiah Muggs, an exposure of the Methodists" perhaps I may send you a few extracts. Hazlitt's last Lecture was on Thompson Cowper and Crabbe, he praised Cowper and Thomson, but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking. I think Hunt's article of Fazio - no it was not, but I saw Fazio the first night, it hung rather heavily on me - I am in the high way of being introduced to a squad of people, Peter Pindar, Mrs Opie - Mrs Scott - Mr Robinson a great friend of Colerdige's called on me - Richards tells me that my Poems are known in the West Country and that he saw a very clever copy of verses, headed with a Motto from my Sonnet to George - Honors rush so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them. What think you, am I to be crowned in the Capitol. Am I to be made a Mandarin - No! I am to be invited, Mrs Hunt tells me, to a party at Ollier's to keep Shakespeare's birthday - Shakespeare would stare to see me there - The Wednesday before last Shelley, Hunt and I wrote each a Sonnet on the River Nile, some day you shall read them all. I saw a sheet of Endymion, and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done, there shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing at intervals many songs and Sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth, to read them over to you: however I think I had better wait till this Book is off my mind; it will not be long first.
Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles in the Yellow Dwarf on Popular Preachers - All the talk here is about Dr. Croft the Duke of Devon &c.

Your most affectionate Brother
John