Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
[19] Opening speech of the King in _Love's Labour's Lost_.
[20] _I.e._, their likenesses, as introduced by Haydon into his picture of
Christ's Entry into Jerusalem.
[21] General Bertrand, who followed Napoleon to St. Helena.
[22] On a visit to Benjamin Bailey at Magdalen Hall.
[23] Littlehampton.
[24] Reynolds's family lived in Little Britain.
[25] William Dilke, a younger brother of Charles Dilke, who had served in
the Commissariat department in the Peninsula, America, and Paris. He died
in 1885 at the age of 90.
[26] The _Round Table_: republished from the _Examiner_ of the two
preceding years.
[27] First Lord in _All's Well that Ends Well_, IV. iii.
[28] Bentley, the Hampstead postman, was Keats's landlord at the house in
Well Walk where he and his brothers had taken up their quarters the
previous June.
[29] G. R. Gleig, son of the Bishop of Stirling: born 1796, died 1888:
served in the Peninsula War and afterwards took orders: Chaplain-General
to the Forces from 1846 to 1875: author of the _Subaltern_ and many
military tales and histories.
[30] Reynolds and Rice.
[31] _Sic_: for "unpaid"?
[32]
"She disappear'd, and left me dark: I waked
To find her, or for ever to deplore
Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure:
When, out of hope, behold her not far off,
Such as I saw her in my dream, adorn'd
With what all Earth or Heaven could bestow
To make her amiable."
_Paradise Lost_, Book VIII.
[33] Charles Wells, a schoolmate of Tom Keats; afterwards author of
_Stories after Nature_ and _Joseph and his Brethren_. For Keats's
subsequent cause of quarrel with him see below, Letter XCII.
[34] An admirable phrase!--if only _penetralium_ were Latin.
[35] _Laon and Cythna_, presently changed to _The Revolt of Islam_.
[36] The family of Charles Wells lived at this address.
[37] Both in fact appeared in the number for Sunday, January 4: see
postscript below.
[38] The Hampstead doctor who attended the Keats brothers.
[39] The text of this letter is described by its American editor (who
seems to have mistaken the order of one or two passages) as written in an
evident hurry and almost illegible.
[40] Mr. Kingston was a Commissioner of Stamps, an acquaintance and
tiresome hanger-on of Wordsworth.
[41] For a more glowing account of this supper party of December 28, 1817,
compare Haydon, _Autobiography_, i. p. 384. The Mr. Ritchie referred to
started on a Government mission to Fezzan in September 1818, and died at
Morzouk the following November. An account of the expedition was published
by his travelling companion, Captain G. F. Lyon, R.N.
[42] The manager: of whom Macready in his _Reminiscences_ has so much that
is pleasant to say.
[43] Tea-merchant, of Pancras Lane and Walthamstow: guardian to the Keats
brothers and their sister.
[44] Of course a mere delusion; but Hunt and those of his circle retained
for years afterwards an impression that Scott had in some way inspired or
encouraged the _Cockney School_ articles.
[45] Alluding to two sonnets of Reynolds _On Robin Hood_, copies of which
Keats had just received from him by post. They were printed in the _Yellow
Dwarf_ (edited by John Hunt) for February 21, 1818, and again in the
collection of poems published by Reynolds in 1821 under the title _A
Garden of Florence_.
[46] Both the _Robin Hood_ and the _Mermaid_ lines as afterwards printed
vary in several places from these first drafts.
[47] Henry Crabb Robinson, author of the _Diaries_.
[48] The Olliers (Shelley's publishers) had brought out Keats's _Poems_
the previous spring, and the ill success of the volume had led to a sharp
quarrel between them and the Keats brothers.
[49] Georgiana Wylie, to whom George Keats was engaged.
[50] This letter has been hitherto erroneously printed under date
September 1818.
[51] Reading doubtful.
[52] The five lines ending here Keats afterwards re-cast, doubtless in
order to get rid of the cockney rhyme "ports" and "thoughts."
[53] "And, sweetheart, lie thou there":--Pistol (to his sword) in _Henry
IV._, Part 2, II. iv.
[54] Replying to an ecstatic note of Haydon's about a seal with a true
lover's knot and the initials W. S., lately found in a field at
Stratford-on-Avon.
[55] _Dentatus_ was the subject of Haydon's new picture.
[56] The famous picture now belonging to Lady Wantage, and exhibited at
Burlington House in 1888. Whether Keats ever saw the original is doubtful
(it was not shown at the British Institution in his time), but he must
have been familiar with the subject as engraved by Vivares and Woollett,
and its suggestive power worked in his mind until it yielded at last the
distilled poetic essence of the "magic casement" passage in the _Ode to a
Nightingale_. It is interesting to note the theme of the Grecian Urn ode
coming in also amidst the "unconnected subject and careless verse" of this
rhymed epistle.
[57] _Sic_: probably, as suggested by Mr. Forman, for "I hope what you
achieve is not lost upon me."
[58] The English rebels against tradition in poetry and art at this time
took much the same view of the French dramatists of the _grand siecle_ as
was taken by the _romantiques_ of their own nation a few years later; and
Haydon had written to Keats in his last letter, "When I die I'll have
Shakspeare placed on my heart, with Homer in my right hand and Ariosto in
the other, Dante at my head, Tasso at my feet, and Corneille under my
----"
[59] "He hath fought with a Warrener":--Simple in _Merry Wives_, I. iv.
[60] The first draught of the proposed preface to _Endymion_.
[61] Changed in the printed version to--"His image in the dusk she seemed
to see."
[62] The quotation is from Slender in _Merry Wives of Windsor_, I. i.
[63] Meaning the atmosphere of the little Bentleys in Well Walk.
[64] "I will make an end of my dinner; there's pippins and cheese to
come":--Sir Hugh Evans in _Merry Wives of Windsor_, I. ii.
[65] The crossing of the letter, begun at the words "Have you not," here
_dips_ into the original writing.
[66] The _Oxford Herald_ for June 6, 1818.
[67] Referring probably to the unfortunate second marriage made by their
mother.
[68] A leaf with the name and "from the Author," notes Woodhouse.
[69] _Compare the Ode to Psyche_:--
"Far, far around shall those dark-crested trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep."
[70] Wordsworth's lines "To Joanna" seem to have been special favourites
with Keats.
[71] Keats here repeats for his brother the Meg Merrilies piece contained
in the preceding letter to Fanny.
[72] Reading doubtful.
[73] Here follows a sketch.
[74] The Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, London, seems to have been the
coach office for Liverpool and the North-West; compare Lamb's _Letters_
(ed. Ainger), vol. i. p. 241.
[75] By Long Island Keats means, not of course the great chain of the
Outer Hebrides so styled, but the little island of Luing, east of Scarba
Sound. His account of the place from which he is writing, and its distance
from Oban as specified in the paragraph added there next day, seem to
identify it certainly as Kilmelfort.
[76] Cary's translation.
[77] No place so named appears on any map: but at the foot of the
Cruach-Doire-nan-Cuilean, off the road, is a house named Derrynaculan, and
a few miles farther on, at the head of Loch Seridain, an ancient fortified
site or _Dun_, with an inn on the road near by.
[78] For Loch na Keal.
[79] The six lines from "place" to "dance" were judiciously omitted by
Keats in copying these verses later.
[80] Miss Charlotte Cox, an East-Indian cousin of the Reynoldses--the
"Charmian" described more fully in Letter LXXIII.
[81] Referring to these words in John Scott's letter in his defence,
_Morning Chronicle_, October 3, 1818:--"That there are also many, very
many passages indicating both haste and carelessness I will not deny; nay,
I will go further, and assert that a real friend of the author would have
dissuaded him from immediate publication."
[82] Miss Charlotte Cox; see above, Letter LXX.
[83] This, notes Woodhouse, is in reply to a letter of protest he had
written Keats concerning "what had fallen from him, about six weeks back,
when we dined together at Mr. Hessey's, respecting his continuing to
write; which he seemed very doubtful of."
[84] On the death of his brother Tom (which took place December 1, a few
hours after the last letter was written) Brown urged Keats to leave the
lodgings where the brothers had lived together, and come and live with him
at Wentworth Place--a block of two semi-detached houses in a large garden
at the bottom of John Street, of which Dilke occupied the larger and Brown
the smaller: see _Keats_ (Men of Letters Series), p. 128. Keats complied;
and henceforth his letters dated Hampstead must be understood as written
not from Well Walk, but from Wentworth Place.
[85] A paper of the largest folio size, used by Keats in this letter only,
and containing some eight hundred words a page of his writing.
[86] This is Keats's first mention of Fanny Brawne. His sense on first
acquaintance of her power to charm and tease him must be understood, in
spite of his reticence on the subject, as having grown quickly into the
absorbing passion which tormented the remainder of his days.
[87] Of Bedhampton Castle: a connection of the Dilkes and special friend
of Brown.
[88] _I.e._ on George Keats's mother-in-law, Mrs. Wylie.
[89] The tassels were a gift from his sister-in-law.
[90] The sheet which Keats accidentally left out in making up his packet
in the spring, and which he forwarded with this supplement from Winchester
the following September, seems to have begun with the words, "On Monday we
had to dinner," etc. (p. 231), and to have ended with the words, "but as I
am" (p. 235, line 1): at least this portion of the letter is missing in
the autograph now before me. I supply it from Jeffrey's transcript.
[91] To about this date must belong the posthumously printed _Ode on
Indolence_, which describes the same mood with nearly the same imagery.
Possibly the "black eye" mentioned by Keats in his footnote, together with
the reflections on street-fighting later on, may help us to fix the date
of his famous fight with the butcher boy.
[92] Compare the repetition of the same thought and phrase in the ode _To
a Nightingale_ written two months later.
[93] Slightly misquoted from _Macbeth_ in the banquet scene.
[94] By mistake for the 19th of March.
[95] For "put together"?
[96] Brown's younger brothers: see below, p. 245.
[97]
"Sometime am I
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness."
Caliban in _Tempest_, II. ii.
[98] This old word for a snack between meals is used by Marlowe and Ben
Jonson, and I believe still survives at some of the public schools.
[99] This notice of Reynolds's parody was printed, with some revision, in
the _Examiner_ for April 26, 1819.
[100] There is no other autograph copy of this famous poem except the
draft here given. It contains several erasures and corrections. In verse 3
Keats had written first, for "a lily" and "a fading rose," "death's lily"
and "death's fading rose": in verse 4, for "Meads," "Wilds": in verse 7,
for "manna dew," "honey dew": in verse 8, for "and sigh'd full sore," "and
there she sigh'd"; in verse 11, for "gaped wide," "wide agape": and in
verse 12, for "sojourn," "wither."
[101] _Sic_: obviously for "run" or "go."
[102] In all probability the _Ode to a Nightingale_, published in the July
number of the _Annals of the Fine Arts_, of which James Elmes was editor.
[103] This and the next interpolation are Brown's.
[104] So copied by Woodhouse: query "battle-axe"?