Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
sleeping one night in a hog-trough, with your tail to the Sow Sow-West.
Some of the little Bar-maids look'd at me as if I knew Jem Rice.... Well,
I can't tell! I hope you are showing poor Reynolds the way to get well.
Send me a good account of him, and if I can, I'll send you one of Tom--Oh!
for a day and all well!
I went yesterday to Dawlish fair.
Over the Hill and over the Dale,
And over the Bourne to Dawlish,
Where ginger-bread wives have a scanty sale,
And ginger-bread nuts are smallish, etc. etc.
Tom's remembrances and mine to you all.
Your sincere friend
JOHN KEATS.
XLVI.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
[Teignmouth, March 25, 1818.]
My dear Reynolds--In hopes of cheering you through a Minute or two, I was
determined will he nill he to send you some lines, so you will excuse the
unconnected subject and careless verse. You know, I am sure, Claude's
Enchanted Castle,[56] and I wish you may be pleased with my remembrance of
it. The Rain is come on again--I think with me Devonshire stands a very
poor chance. I shall damn it up hill and down dale, if it keep up to the
average of six fine days in three weeks. Let me have better news of you.
Tom's remembrances to you. Remember us to all.
Your affectionate friend,
JOHN KEATS.
Dear Reynolds! as last night I lay in bed,
There came before my eyes that wonted thread
Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances,
That every other minute vex and please:
Things all disjointed come from north and south,--
Two Witch's eyes above a Cherub's mouth,
Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,
And Alexander with his nightcap on;
Old Socrates a-tying his cravat,
And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth's cat;
And Junius Brutus, pretty well so so,
Making the best of's way towards Soho.
Few are there who escape these visitings,--
Perhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings,
And thro' whose curtains peeps no hellish nose,
No wild-boar tushes, and no Mermaid's toes;
But flowers bursting out with lusty pride,
And young Aeolian harps personify'd;
Some Titian colours touch'd into real life,--
The sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife
Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows,
The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows:
A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,
Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff;
The mariners join hymn with those on land.
You know the Enchanted Castle,--it doth stand
Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake,
Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake
From some old magic-like Urganda's Sword.
O Phoebus! that I had thy sacred word
To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise,
Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!
You know it well enough, where it doth seem
A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream;
You know the clear Lake, and the little Isles,
The mountains blue, and cold near neighbour rills,
All which elsewhere are but half animate;
There do they look alive to love and hate,
To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound
Above some giant, pulsing underground.
Part of the Building was a chosen See,
Built by a banish'd Santon of Chaldee;
The other part, two thousand years from him,
Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;
Then there's a little wing, far from the Sun,
Built by a Lapland Witch turn'd maudlin Nun;
And many other juts of aged stone
Founded with many a mason-devil's groan.
The doors all look as if they op'd themselves
The windows as if latch'd by Fays and Elves,
And from them comes a silver flash of light,
As from the westward of a Summer's night;
Or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes
Gone mad thro' olden songs and poesies.
See! what is coming from the distance dim!
A golden Galley all in silken trim!
Three rows of oars are lightening, moment whiles
Into the verd'rous bosoms of those isles;
Towards the shade, under the Castle wall,
It comes in silence,--now 'tis hidden all.
The Clarion sounds, and from a Postern-gate
An echo of sweet music doth create
A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring,--
He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,
To all his friends, and they believe him not.
O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle,--but my flag is not unfurl'd
On the Admiral-staff,--and so philosophise
I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize,
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;
Or is it that imagination brought
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin'd,
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,
Cannot refer to any standard law
Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn,--
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.
Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale,
And cannot speak it: the first page I read
Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breakers; 'twas a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam
Along the flat brown sand; I was at home
And should have been most happy,--but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every maw
The greater on the less feeds evermore.--
But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.
Still am I sick of it, and tho' to-day,
I've gather'd young spring-leaves, and flowers gay
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,--
The Shark at savage prey,--the Hawk at pounce,--
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,
Ravening a worm,--Away, ye horrid moods!
Moods of one's mind! You know I hate them well.
You know I'd sooner be a clapping Bell
To some Kamtschatkan Missionary Church,
Than with these horrid moods be left i' the lurch.
XLVII.--TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
Wednesday, [Teignmouth, April 8, 1818].
My dear Haydon--I am glad you were pleased with my nonsense, and if it so
happen that the humour takes me when I have set down to prose to you I
will not gainsay it. I should be (God forgive me) ready to swear because I
cannot make use of your assistance in going through Devon if I was not in
my own Mind determined to visit it thoroughly at some more favourable time
of the year. But now Tom (who is getting greatly better) is anxious to be
in Town--therefore I put off my threading the County. I purpose within a
month to put my knapsack at my back and make a pedestrian tour through the
North of England, and part of Scotland--to make a sort of Prologue to the
Life I intend to pursue--that is to write, to study and to see all Europe
at the lowest expence. I will clamber through the Clouds and exist. I will
get such an accumulation of stupendous recollections that as I walk
through the suburbs of London I may not see them--I will stand upon Mount
Blanc and remember this coming Summer when I intend to straddle Ben
Lomond--with my soul!--galligaskins are out of the Question. I am nearer
myself to hear your "Christ" is being tinted into immortality. Believe me
Haydon your picture is part of myself--I have ever been too sensible of
the labyrinthian path to eminence in Art (judging from Poetry) ever to
think I understood the emphasis of painting. The innumerable compositions
and decompositions which take place between the intellect and its thousand
materials before it arrives at that trembling delicate and snail-horn
perception of beauty. I know not your many havens of intenseness--nor ever
can know them: but for this I hope not you achieve is lost upon me[57]:
for when a Schoolboy the abstract Idea I had of an heroic painting--was
what I cannot describe. I saw it somewhat sideways, large, prominent,
round, and colour'd with magnificence--somewhat like the feel I have of
Anthony and Cleopatra. Or of Alcibiades leaning on his Crimson Couch in
his Galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with the Sea. That
passage in Shakspeare is finer than this--
See how the surly Warwick mans the Wall.
I like your consignment of Corneille--that's the humour of it--they shall
be called your Posthumous Works.[58] I don't understand your bit of
Italian. I hope she will awake from her dream and flourish fair--my
respects to her. The Hedges by this time are beginning to leaf--Cats are
becoming more vociferous--young Ladies who wear Watches are always looking
at them. Women about forty-five think the Season very backward--Ladies'
Mares have but half an allowance of food. It rains here again, has been
doing so for three days--however as I told you I'll take a trial in June,
July, or August next year.
I am afraid Wordsworth went rather huff'd out of Town--I am sorry for
it--he cannot expect his fireside Divan to be infallible--he cannot expect
but that every man of worth is as proud as himself. O that he had not fit
with a Warrener[59]--that is dined at Kingston's. I shall be in town in
about a fortnight and then we will have a day or so now and then before I
set out on my northern expedition--we will have no more abominable
Rows--for they leave one in a fearful silence--having settled the
Methodists let us be rational--not upon compulsion--no--if it will out
let it--but I will not play the Bassoon any more deliberately. Remember me
to Hazlitt, and Bewick--
Your affectionate friend,
JOHN KEATS.
XLVIII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.
Thy. morng., [Teignmouth, April 9, 1818].
My dear Reynolds--Since you all agree that the thing[60] is bad, it must
be so--though I am not aware there is anything like Hunt in it (and if
there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt).
Look it over again, and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which
any one sentence sprung--I have not the slightest feel of humility towards
the public--or to anything in existence,--but the eternal Being, the
Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of great Men. When I am writing for
myself for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its
course with me--but a Preface is written to the Public; a thing I cannot
help looking upon as an Enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings
of Hostility. If I write a Preface in a supple or subdued style, it will
not be in character with me as a public speaker--I would be subdued before
my friends, and thank them for subduing me--but among Multitudes of Men--I
have no feel of stooping, I hate the idea of humility to them.
I never wrote one single Line of Poetry with the least Shadow of public
thought.
Forgive me for vexing you and making a Trojan horse of such a Trifle, both
with respect to the matter in Question, and myself--but it eases me to
tell you--I could not live without the love of my friends--I would jump
down Aetna for any great Public good--but I hate a Mawkish Popularity. I
cannot be subdued before them--My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the
thousand jabberers about Pictures and Books--I see swarms of Porcupines
with their Quills erect "like lime-twigs set to catch my Winged Book," and
I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my Preface is not much
of a Torch. It would have been too insulting "to begin from Jove," and I
could not set a golden head upon a thing of clay. If there is any fault in
the Preface it is not affectation, but an undersong of disrespect to the
Public--if I write another Preface it must be done without a thought of