sure way, Bailey, is first to know a Man's faults, and then be passive · if after that he insensibly draws you towards him then you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Haydon, I was well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for them both, for reasons almost opposite -and to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the hope that, when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together. The time must come, because they have both hearts: and they will recollect the best parts of each other, when this gust is overblown. - I had a message from you through a letter to Jane I think, about Cripps - there can be no idea of binding until a sufficient sum is sure for him—and even then the thing should be maturely considered by all his helpers - I shall try my luck upon as many fat purses as I can meet with. Cripps is improving very fast: I have the greater hopes of him because he is so slow in development. A Man of great executing powers at 20, with a look and a speech almost stupid, is sure to do something. I have just looked through the Second Side of your Letter I feel a great content at it. I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's Hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery Book: [Here follow the lines, printed above, p. 39.] - This I did at Hunt's at his request perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home. I have sent my first Book to the press, and this afternoon shall begin preparing the Second my visit to you will be a great spur to quicken the proceeding. I have not had your Sermon returned - I long to make it the Subject of a Letter to you What do they say at Oxford? I trust you and Gleig pass much fine time together. Remember me to him and Whitehead. My Brother Tom is getting stronger, but his spitting of Blood continues. I sat down to read King Lear yesterday, and felt the greatness of the thing up to the Writing of a Sonnet preparatory thereto in my next you shall have it. There were some miserable reports of Rice's health—I went, and lo! Master Jemmy had been to the play the night before, and was out at the time-he always comes on his legs like a Cat. I have seen a good deal of Wordsworth. Hazlitt is lecturing on Poetry at the Surrey Institution - I shall be there next Tuesday. Your most affectionate friend Wherein lies happiness, Peona ? fold, etc.' It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear to you more eligible. 'Wherein lies Happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with Essence till we shine Full alchemised, and free of space Behold The clear religion of Heaven - fold, etc.' You must indulge me by putting this in, for setting aside the badness of the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole thing must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man, as a thing almost of mere words, but I assure you that, when I wrote it, it was a regular stepping of the Imagination towards a truth. My having written that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service to me of anything I ever did. It set before me the gradations of happiness, even squirrel and feeding upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a throng of delightful Images ready drawn, simplicity is the only thing. The first is the best on account of the first line, and the 'arrow, foil'd of its antler'd food,' and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has 'tender and true.' We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the like. It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, etc. should have their due from us. But, for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heavenward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself - but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, Admire me, I am a - violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose !' Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this: each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state and knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: The ancients were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this - I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teased with 'nice-eyed wagtails,' when we have in sight the Cherub Contemplation'? Why with Wordsworth's Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand,' when we can have Jacques under an oak,' etc.? The secret of the Bough of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teased with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of Childe Harold and the whole of anybody's life and opinions. In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty. [To J. H. R. in answer to his Robin Hood Sonnets. See p. 41.] I hope you will like them they are at least written in the Spirit of Outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines, [See p. 40.] - first, because he must begin in a very common-place style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last — I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my poem all out, I am now much beforehand with the printer, they have done none yet, and I am half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing. I am determined they shall not trouble me when I have copied it all. Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called 'Nehemiah Muggs, an exposure of the Methodists' — perhaps I may send you a few extracts Hazlitt's last Lecture was on Thomson, Cowper, and Crabbe, he praised Thomson and Cowper but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking -I think Hunt's article of Fazio 32 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 Coleridge's called on me. Richards tells me that my poems are known in the west country, and that he saw a very clever copy of verses, headed with a Motto from my Sonnet to George- Honours 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 Shakspeare's birthday Shakspeare 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. 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 conception, what delicious diligent indolence! A doze upon a sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon Clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings the prattle of a child gives it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them a strain of music conducts to 'an odd angle of the Isle,' and when the leaves whisper it puts a girdle round the earth. Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great works to the 'spirit and pulse of good' by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge - Many have original minds who do not think it they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with 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 arrived at. But let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that 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, one way or another, if there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders Your affectionate friend JOHN KEATS. 37. TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS Hampstead, Saturday [February 21, 1818.] MY DEAR BROTHERS - I am extremely sorry to have given you so much uneasiness by not writing; however, you know good news is no news or vice versa. I do not like to write a short letter to you, or you would have had one long before. The weather although boisterous to-day has been very much milder; and I think Devonshire is not the last place to receive a temperate Change. I have been abominably idle since you left, but have just turned over a new leaf, and used as a marker a letter of excuse to an invitation from Horace Smith. The occasion of my writing to-day is the enclosed letter-by Postmark from Miss W[ylie]. Does she expect you in town George? I received a letter the other day from Haydon, in which he says, his Essays on the Elgin Marbles are being translated into Italian, the which he superintends. I did not mention that I had seen the British Gallery, there are some nice things by Stark, and Bathsheba by Wilkie, which is condemned. I could not bear Alston's Uriel. Reynolds has been very ill for some time, confined to the house, and had leeches applied to his chest; when I saw him on Wednesday he was much the same, and he is in the worst place for amendment, among the strife of women's tongues, in a hot and parch'd room: I wish he would move to Butler's for a short time. The Thrushes and Blackbirds have been singing me into an idea that it was Spring, and almost that leaves were on the trees. So that black clouds and boisterous winds seem to have mustered and collected in full Divan, for the purpose of convincing me to the contrary. Taylor says my poem shall be out |