Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
told truth unto the men of this generation, and eke to the women;
moreover, forasmuch as he hath kept a pair of boots that did not fit, and
doth not admire Sheil's play, Leigh Hunt, Tom Moore, Bob Southey, and Mr.
Rogers; and does admire Wm. Hazlitt; moreoverer for as more as he liketh
half of Wordsworth, and none of Crabbe; moreover-est for as most as he
hath written this page of penmanship--he prayeth your Worships to give him
a lodging--Witnessed by Rd. Abbey and Co., cum familiaribus et
consanguineis (signed) Count de Cockaigne.
The nothing of the day is a machine called the velocipede. It is a wheel
carriage to ride cock-horse upon, sitting astride and pushing it along
with the toes, a rudder wheel in hand--they will go seven miles an hour--A
handsome gelding will come to eight guineas; however they will soon be
cheaper, unless the army takes to them. I look back upon the last month, I
find nothing to write about; indeed I do not recollect anything particular
in it. It's all alike; we keep on breathing. The only amusement is a
little scandal, of however fine a shape, a laugh at a pun--and then after
all we wonder how we could enjoy the scandal, or laugh at the pun.
I have been at different times turning it in my head whether I should go
to Edinburgh and study for a physician; I am afraid I should not take
kindly to it; I am sure I could not take fees--and yet I should like to do
so; it's not worse than writing poems, and hanging them up to be fly-blown
on the Review shambles. Everybody is in his own mess. Here is the parson
at Hampstead quarrelling with all the world, he is in the wrong by this
same token; when the black cloth was put up in the Church for the Queen's
mourning, he asked the workmen to hang it the wrong side outwards, that it
might be better when taken down, it being his perquisite--Parsons will
always keep up their character, but as it is said there are some animals
the ancients knew which we do not, let us hope our posterity will miss the
black badger with tri-cornered hat; Who knows but some Reviewer of Buffon
or Pliny may put an account of the parson in the Appendix; No one will
then believe it any more than we believe in the Phoenix. I think we may
class the lawyer in the same natural history of Monsters; a green bag will
hold as much as a lawn sleeve. The only difference is that one is fustian
and the other flimsy; I am not unwilling to read Church history at present
and have Milner's in my eye; his is reckoned a very good one.
18th September 1819.
[In looking over some of my papers I found the above specimen of my
carelessness. It is a sheet you ought to have had long ago--my letter must
have appeared very unconnected, but as I number the sheets you must have
discovered how the mistake happened. How many things have happened since I
wrote it--How have I acted contrary to my resolves. The interval between
writing this sheet and the day I put this supplement to it, has been
completely filled with generous and most friendly actions of Brown towards
me. How frequently I forget to speak of things which I think of and feel
most. 'Tis very singular, the idea about Buffon above has been taken up by
Hunt in the Examiner, in some papers which he calls "A Preter-natural
History."][90]
Friday 19th March.
This morning I have been reading "the False One." Shameful to say, I was
in bed at ten--I mean this morning. The Blackwood Reviewers have committed
themselves in a scandalous heresy--they have been putting up Hogg, the
Ettrick Shepherd, against Burns: the senseless villains! The Scotch cannot
manage themselves at all, they want imagination, and that is why they are
so fond of Hogg, who has a little of it. This morning I am in a sort of
temper, indolent and supremely careless--I long after a Stanza or two of
Thomson's Castle of Indolence--my passions are all asleep, from my having
slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me,
to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness.
If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it
languor, but as I am[B] I must call it laziness. In this state of
effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of
the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of
enticement and pain no unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor
Love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me; they seem
rather like figures on a Greek vase--a Man and two women whom no one but
myself could distinguish in their disguisement.[91] This is the only
happiness, and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body
overpowering the Mind. I have this moment received a note from Haslam, in
which he expects the death of his Father, who has been for some time in a
state of insensibility; his mother bears up he says very well--I shall go
to town to-morrow to see him. This is the world--thus we cannot expect to
give way many hours to pleasure. Circumstances are like Clouds continually
gathering and bursting--While we are laughing, the seed of some trouble is
put into the wide arable land of events--while we are laughing it sprouts
it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck. Even so we
have leisure to reason on the misfortunes of our friends; our own touch us
too nearly for words. Very few men have ever arrived at a complete
disinterestedness of Mind: very few have been influenced by a pure desire
of the benefit of others,--in the greater part of the Benefactors to
Humanity some meretricious motive has sullied their greatness--some
melodramatic scenery has fascinated them. From the manner in which I feel
Haslam's misfortune I perceive how far I am from any humble standard of
disinterestedness. Yet this feeling ought to be carried to its highest
pitch, as there is no fear of its ever injuring society--which it would
do, I fear, pushed to an extremity. For in wild nature the Hawk would lose
his Breakfast of Robins and the Robin his of Worms--The Lion must starve
as well as the swallow. The greater part of Men make their way with the
same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye from their purposes, the
same animal eagerness as the Hawk. The Hawk wants a Mate, so does the
Man--look at them both, they set about it and procure one in the same
manner. They want both a nest and they both set about one in the same
manner--they get their food in the same manner. The noble animal Man for
his amusement smokes his pipe--the Hawk balances about the Clouds--that is
the only difference of their leisures. This it is that makes the Amusement
of Life--to a speculative Mind--I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse
of a Stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass--the creature
hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the
buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along--to what? the Creature
has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. But then, as Wordsworth
says, "we have all one human heart----" There is an electric fire in human
nature tending to purify--so that among these human creatures there is
continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at
it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. I have no doubt that
thousands of people never heard of have had hearts completely
disinterested: I can remember but two--Socrates and Jesus--Their histories
evince it. What I heard a little time ago, Taylor observe with respect to
Socrates, may be said of Jesus--That he was so great a man that though he
transmitted no writing of his own to posterity, we have his Mind and his
sayings and his greatness handed to us by others. It is to be lamented
that the history of the latter was written and revised by Men interested
in the pious frauds of Religion. Yet through all this I see his splendour.
Even here, though I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the
veriest human animal you can think of, I am, however young, writing at
random, straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness,
without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet
may I not in this be free from sin? May there not be superior beings
amused with any graceful, though instinctive, attitude my mind may fall
into as I am entertained with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a
Deer? Though a quarrel in the Streets is a thing to be hated, the energies
displayed in it are fine; the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel.
By a superior Being our reasonings may take the same tone--though
erroneous they may be fine. This is the very thing in which consists
Poetry, and if so it is not so fine a thing as philosophy--For the same
reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as a truth. Give me this
credit--Do you not think I strive--to know myself? Give me this credit,
and you will not think that on my own account I repeat Milton's lines--
"How charming is divine Philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute."
No--not for myself--feeling grateful as I do to have got into a state of
mind to relish them properly. Nothing ever becomes real till it is
experienced--Even a Proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has
illustrated it. I am ever afraid that your anxiety for me will lead you to
fear for the violence of my temperament continually smothered down: for
that reason I did not intend to have sent you the following sonnet--but
look over the two last pages and ask yourselves whether I have not that in
me which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment
on my sonnet; it will show you that it was written with no Agony but that
of ignorance; with no thirst of anything but Knowledge when pushed to the
point though the first steps to it were through my human passions--they
went away and I wrote with my Mind--and perhaps I must confess a little
bit of my heart--
Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell:
No God, no Deamon of severe response
Deigns to reply from heaven or from Hell.--
Then to my human heart I turn at once--
Heart! thou and I are here sad and alone;
Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan,
To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain!
Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease,
My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads:
Yet could I on this very midnight cease,[92]
And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds;
Verse, fame and Beauty are intense indeed
But Death intenser--Death is Life's high meed.
I went to bed and enjoyed an uninterrupted sleep. Sane I went to bed and
sane I arose.
[April 15.]
This is the 15th of April--you see what a time it is since I wrote; all
that time I have been day by day expecting Letters from you. I write quite
in the dark. In the hopes of a Letter daily I have deferred that I might
write in the light. I was in town yesterday, and at Taylor's heard that
young Birkbeck had been in Town and was to set forward in six or seven
days--so I shall dedicate that time to making up this parcel ready for
him. I wish I could hear from you to make me "whole and general as the
casing air."[93] A few days after the 19th of April[94] I received a note
from Haslam containing the news of his father's death. The Family has all
been well. Haslam has his father's situation. The Framptons have behaved
well to him. The day before yesterday I went to a rout at Sawrey's--it was
made pleasant by Reynolds being there and our getting into conversation
with one of the most beautiful Girls I ever saw--She gave a remarkable
prettiness to all those commonplaces which most women who talk must
utter--I liked Mrs. Sawrey very well. The Sunday before last your Brothers