Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

There were Rice and Martin--we talked about Ghosts. I will have some Talk with Taylor and let you know,--when please God I come down at Christmas. I will find that Examiner if possible. My best regards to Gleig, my Brothers' to you and Mrs. Bentley. Your affectionate Friend JOHN KEATS. I want to say much more to you--a few hints will set me going. Direct Burford Bridge near Dorking. XXIII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. [Burford Bridge,] November 22, 1817. My dear Reynolds--There are two things which tease me here--one of them Cripps, and the other that I cannot go with Tom into Devonshire. However, I hope to do my duty to myself in a week or so; and then I'll try what I can do for my neighbour--now, is not this virtuous? On returning to Town I'll damm all Idleness--indeed, in superabundance of employment, I must not be content to run here and there on little two-penny errands, but turn Rakehell, _i.e._ go a masking, or Bailey will think me just as great a Promise Keeper as _he_ thinks you; for myself I do not, and do not remember above one complaint against you for matter o' that. Bailey writes so abominable a hand, to give his Letter a fair reading requires a little time: so I had not seen, when I saw you last, his invitation to Oxford at Christmas. I'll go with you. You know how poorly Rice was. I do not think it was all corporeal,--bodily pain was not used to keep him silent. I'll tell you what; he was hurt at what your Sisters said about his joking with your Mother, he was, soothly to sain. It will all blow over. God knows, my dear Reynolds, I should not talk any sorrow to you--you must have enough vexations--so I won't any more. If I ever start a rueful subject in a letter to you--blow me! Why don't you?--now I am going to ask you a very silly Question neither you nor anybody else could answer, under a folio, or at least a Pamphlet--you shall judge--why don't you, as I do, look unconcerned at what may be called more particularly Heart-vexations? They never surprise me--lord! a man should have the fine point of his soul taken off to become fit for this world. I like this place very much. There is Hill and Dale and a little River. I went up Box hill this Evening after the Moon--"you a' seen the Moon"--came down, and wrote some lines. Whenever I am separated from you, and not engaged in a continued Poem, every letter shall bring you a lyric--but I am too anxious for you to enjoy the whole to send you a particle. One of the three books I have with me is Shakspeare's Poems: I never found so many beauties in the sonnets--they seem to be full of fine things said unintentionally--in the intensity of working out conceits. Is this to be borne? Hark ye! When lofty trees I see barren of leaves, Which erst from heat did canopy the head, And Summer's green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly head. He has left nothing to say about nothing or anything: for look at snails--you know what he says about Snails--you know when he talks about "cockled Snails"--well, in one of these sonnets, he says--the chap slips into--no! I lie! this is in the Venus and Adonis: the simile brought it to my Mind. As the snail, whose tender horns being hit, Shrinks back into his shelly cave with pain, And there all smothered up in shade doth sit, Long after fearing to put forth again; So at his bloody view her eyes are fled, Into the deep dark Cabins of her head. He overwhelms a genuine Lover of poesy with all manner of abuse, talking about-- "a poet's rage And stretched metre of an antique song." Which, by the bye, will be a capital motto for my poem, won't it? He speaks too of "Time's antique pen"--and "April's first-born flowers"--and "Death's eternal cold."--By the Whim-King! I'll give you a stanza, because it is not material in connection, and when I wrote it I wanted you--to give your vote, pro or con.-- Crystalline Brother of the belt of Heaven, Aquarius! to whom King Jove hath given Two liquid pulse-streams, 'stead of feather'd wings-- Two fan-like fountains--thine illuminings For Dian play: Dissolve the frozen purity of air; Let thy white shoulders, silvery and bare, Show cold through wat'ry pinions: make more bright The Star-Queen's Crescent on her marriage night: Haste, haste away! ... I see there is an advertisement in the _Chronicle_ to Poets--he is so over-loaded with poems on the "late Princess." I suppose you do not lack--send me a few--lend me thy hand to laugh a little--send me a little pullet-sperm, a few finch-eggs--and remember me to each of our card-playing Club. When you die you will all be turned into Dice, and be put in pawn with the devil: for cards, they crumple up like anything.... I rest Your affectionate friend JOHN KEATS. Give my love to both houses--hinc atque illinc. XXIV.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS. Hampstead, December 22, 1817. My dear Brothers--I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this.... I saw Kean return to the public in Richard III., and finely he did it, and, at the request of Reynolds, I went to criticise his _Duke_ in Rich{d.}--the critique is in to-day's Champion, which I send you with the Examiner, in which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of Christmas Gambols and pastimes: but it was mixed up with so much egotism of that drivelling nature that pleasure is entirely lost. Hone the publisher's trial, you must find very amusing, and as Englishmen very encouraging: his _Not Guilty_ is a thing, which not to have been, would have dulled still more Liberty's Emblazoning--Lord Ellenborough has been paid in his own coin--Wooler and Hone have done us an essential service. I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke yesterday and to-day, and am at this moment just come from him, and feel in the humour to go on with this, begun in the morning, and from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells[33] and went next morning to see _Death on the Pale horse_. It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; but there is nothing to be intense upon, no women one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality. The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth--Examine King Lear, and you will find this exemplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness--The picture is larger than Christ rejected. I dined with Haydon the Sunday after you left, and had a very pleasant day, I dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith and met his two Brothers with Hill and Kingston and one Du Bois, they only served to convince me how superior humour is to wit, in respect to enjoyment--These men say things which make one start, without making one feel, they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have all a mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere handling a Decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company--would I were with that company instead of yours said I to myself! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me and yet I am going to Reynolds, on Wednesday. Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute, but a disquisition, with Dilke upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakspeare possessed so enormously--I mean _Negative Capability_, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery,[34] from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. Shelley's poem[35] is out and there are words about its being objected to, as much as Queen Mab was. Poor Shelley I think he has his Quota of good qualities, in sooth la! Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate Brother JOHN. XXV.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS. Featherstone Buildings,[36] Monday [January 5, 1818]. My dear Brothers--I ought to have written before, and you should have had a long letter last week, but I undertook the Champion for Reynolds, who is at Exeter. I wrote two articles, one on the Drury Lane Pantomime, the other on the Covent Garden new Tragedy, which they have not put in;[37] the one they have inserted is so badly punctuated that you perceive I am determined never to write more, without some care in that particular. Wells tells me that you are licking your chops, Tom, in expectation of my book coming out. I am sorry to say I have not begun my corrections yet: to-morrow I set out. I called on Sawrey[38] this morning. He did not seem to be at all put out at anything I said and the inquiries I made with regard to your spitting of blood, and moreover desired me to ask you to send him a correct account of all your sensations and symptoms concerning the palpitation and the spitting and the cough--if you have any. Your last letter gave me a great pleasure, for I think the invalid is in a better spirit there along the Edge; and as for George, I must immediately, now I think of it, correct a little misconception of a part of my last letter. The Misses Reynolds have never said one word against me about you, or by any means endeavoured to lessen you in my estimation. That is not what I referred to; but the manner and thoughts which I knew they internally had towards you, time will show. Wells and Severn dined with me yesterday. We had a very pleasant day. I pitched upon another bottle of claret, we enjoyed ourselves very much; were all very witty and full of Rhymes. We played a concert from 4 o'clock till 10--drank your healths, the Hunts', and (_N.B._) seven Peter Pindars. I said on that day the only good thing I was ever guilty of. We were talking about Stephens and the 1st Gallery. I said I wondered that careful folks would go there, for although it was but a shilling, still you had to pay through the Nose. I saw the Peachey family in a box at Drury one night. I have got such a curious[39] ... or rather I had such, now I am in my own hand. I have had a great deal of pleasant time with Rice lately, and am getting initiated into a little band. They call drinking deep dyin' scarlet. They call good wine a pretty tipple, and call getting a child knocking out an apple; stopping at a tavern they call hanging out. Where do you sup? is where do you hang out? Thursday I promised to dine with Wordsworth, and the weather is so bad that I am undecided, for he lives at Mortimer Street. I had an invitation to meet him at Kingston's,[40] but not liking that place I sent my excuse. What I think of doing to-day is to dine in Mortimer Street (Words{th}), and sup here in the Feath{s} buildings, as Mr. Wells has invited me. On Saturday, I called on Wordsworth before he went to Kingston's, and was surprised to find him with a stiff collar. I saw his spouse, and I think his daughter. I forget whether I had written my last before my Sunday evening at Haydon's--no, I did not, or I should have told you, Tom, of a young man you met at Paris, at Scott's, ... Ritchie. I think he is going to Fezan, in Africa; then to proceed if possible like Mungo Park. He was