Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
An astrologer's old Quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old-sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack,
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.
Souls of Poets dead and gone,
Are the winds a sweeter home?
Richer is uncellar'd cavern,
Than the merry mermaid Tavern?[46]
I will call on you at 4 to-morrow, and we will trudge together, for it is
not the thing to be a stranger in the Land of Harpsicols. I hope also to
bring you my 2nd Book. In the hope that these Scribblings will be some
amusement for you this Evening, I remain, copying on the Hill,
Your sincere friend and Co-scribbler
JOHN KEATS.
XXXV.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Fleet Street, Thursday Morn [February 5, 1818].
My dear Taylor--I have finished copying my Second Book--but I want it for
one day to overlook it. And moreover this day I have very particular
employ in the affair of Cripps--so I trespass on your indulgence, and take
advantage of your good nature. You shall hear from me or see me soon. I
will tell Reynolds of your engagement to-morrow.
Yours unfeignedly
JOHN KEATS.
XXXVI.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.
Hampstead, Saturday Night [February 14, 1818].
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 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--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.[47] 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.[48] 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 etc.
Your most affectionate Brother
JOHN.
XXXVII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
[Hampstead, February 19, 1818.]
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 with it, and muse upon it, and
reflect from 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 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,
"O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in Mist,
And the black Elmtops '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
neighbour 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.
XXXVIII.--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----[49] 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 in a month, I think he will be out before
it....
The thrushes are singing now as if they would speak to the winds, because
their big brother Jack, the Spring, was not far off. I am reading Voltaire
and Gibbon, although I wrote to Reynolds the other day to prove reading of
no use; I have not seen Hunt since, I am a good deal with Dilke and Brown,
we are very thick; they are very kind to me, they are well. I don't think
I could stop in Hampstead but for their neighbourhood. I hear Hazlitt's
lectures regularly, his last was on Gray, Collins, Young, etc., and he
gave a very fine piece of discriminating Criticism on Swift, Voltaire, and
Rabelais. I was very disappointed at his treatment of Chatterton. I
generally meet with many I know there. Lord Byron's 4th Canto is expected
out, and I heard somewhere, that Walter Scott has a new Poem in readiness.
I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited
in town by his egotism, Vanity, and bigotry. Yet he is a great poet if not
a philosopher. I have not yet read Shelley's Poem, I do not suppose you
have it yet, at the Teignmouth libraries. These double letters must come
rather heavy, I hope you have a moderate portion of cash, but don't fret
at all, if you have not--Lord! I intend to play at cut and run as well as
Falstaff, that is to say, before he got so lusty.
I remain praying for your health my dear Brothers
Your affectionate Brother
JOHN.
XXXIX.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.
Hampstead, February 27 [1818].
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