Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends

for these last four thousand years, a grand-child 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 thundrous clouds From Serraliona--" I shall breathe worsted stockings[63] 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 bound en gothique--a nice sombre binding--it will go a little way to unmodernise. And also I see no reason, because I have been away this last month, why I should not have a peep at your Spenserian--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 pippins, which did not hinder him from his poetic canary.[64] 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 which 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 horror of a bare-shouldered Creature--in the former case, our shoulders are fledged, and we go through 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 school-boys 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 daresay these few lines will be but a ratification: I wrote them on Mayday--and intend to finish the ode all in good time-- Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia! May I sing to thee As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baiae? Or may I woo thee In earlier Sicilian? 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 vigour, 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 perhaps be anxious to know for fact to what sentence in your Letter I allude. You say, "I fear there is little chance of anything else in this 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 conclusion 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 Milton's apparently less anxiety for Humanity proceeds from his seeing further or not 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 philosophising 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 not there 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 ethereally, 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 sufficiently tractable, alas for me, it being an impossibility 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, or 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 Shakspeare." 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 anything to bring this Line to a proper length, and also fill up this clear part; that like the Gull I may _dip_[65]--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 Shakspeare--Shakspeare to Hazlitt--Hazlitt to Shakspeare--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 the 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 delaying 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 Maiden Thought becomes gradually 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 now 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 ethereal and authentically divine--Who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice, and Chastity in Comus, just at the time of the dismissal of a hundred 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 inferred? O many things--It proves there is really a grand march of intellect,--It 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