Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
Book--have written 800 lines thereof, and hope to finish it next Week.
Bailey likes what I have done very much. Believe me, my dear Reynolds, one
of my chief layings-up is the pleasure I shall have in showing it to you,
I may now say, in a few days. I have heard twice from my Brothers, they
are going on very well, and send their Remembrances to you. We expected to
have had notices from little-Hampton this morning--we must wait till
Tuesday. I am glad of their Days with the Dilkes. You are, I know, very
much teased in that precious London, and want all the rest possible; so I
shall be contented with as brief a scrawl--a Word or two, till there comes
a pat hour.
Send us a few of your stanzas to read in "Reynolds's Cove." Give my Love
and respects to your Mother, and remember me kindly to all at home.
Yours faithfully
JOHN KEATS.
I have left the doublings for Bailey, who is going to say that he will
write to you to-morrow.
XVII.--TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.
Oxford, September 28 [1817].
My dear Haydon--I read your letter to the young Man, whose Name is Cripps.
He seemed more than ever anxious to avail himself of your offer. I think I
told you we asked him to ascertain his Means. He does not possess the
Philosopher's stone--nor Fortunatus's purse, nor Gyges's ring--but at
Bailey's suggestion, whom I assure you is a very capital fellow, we have
stummed up a kind of contrivance whereby he will be enabled to do himself
the benefits you will lay in his Path. I have a great Idea that he will be
a tolerable neat brush. 'Tis perhaps the finest thing that will befal him
this many a year: for he is just of an age to get grounded in bad habits
from which you will pluck him. He brought a copy of Mary Queen of Scots:
it appears to me that he has copied the bad style of the painting, as well
as coloured the eyeballs yellow like the original. He has also the fault
that you pointed out to me in Hazlitt on the constringing and diffusing of
substance. However I really believe that he will take fire at the sight of
your Picture--and set about things. If he can get ready in time to return
to town with me, which will be in a few days--I will bring him to you. You
will be glad to hear that within these last three weeks I have written
1000 lines--which are the third Book of my Poem. My Ideas with respect to
it I assure you are very low--and I would write the subject thoroughly
again--but I am tired of it and think the time would be better spent in
writing a new Romance which I have in my eye for next summer--Rome was not
built in a Day--and all the good I expect from my employment this summer
is the fruit of Experience which I hope to gather in my next Poem.
Bailey's kindest wishes, and my vow of being
Yours eternally
JOHN KEATS.
XVIII.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
Hampstead, Wednesday [October 8, 1817].
My dear Bailey--After a tolerable journey, I went from Coach to Coach as
far as Hampstead where I found my Brothers--the next Morning finding
myself tolerably well I went to Lamb's Conduit Street and delivered your
parcel. Jane and Marianne were greatly improved. Marianne especially, she
has no unhealthy plumpness in the face, but she comes me healthy and
angular to the chin--I did not see John--I was extremely sorry to hear
that poor Rice, after having had capital health during his tour, was very
ill. I daresay you have heard from him. From No. 19 I went to Hunt's and
Haydon's who live now neighbours.--Shelley was there--I know nothing about
anything in this part of the world--every Body seems at Loggerheads.
There's Hunt infatuated--there's Haydon's picture in statu quo--There's
Hunt walks up and down his painting room criticising every head most
unmercifully. There's Horace Smith tired of Hunt. "The web of our life is
of mingled yarn."[27] Haydon having removed entirely from Marlborough
Street, Cripps must direct his letter to Lisson Grove, North Paddington.
Yesterday Morning while I was at Brown's, in came Reynolds, he was pretty
bobbish, we had a pleasant day--he would walk home at night that cursed
cold distance. Mrs. Bentley's children are making a horrid
row[28]--whereby I regret I cannot be transported to your Room to write to
you. I am quite disgusted with literary men and will never know another
except Wordsworth--no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the
friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years--now
they live, pour ainsi dire, jealous neighbours--Haydon says to me, Keats,
don't show your lines to Hunt on any Account, or he will have done half
for you--so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds
in the Theatre, John told him that I was getting on to the completion of
4000 lines--Ah! says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been
7000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people?
Haydon received a Letter a little while back on this subject from some
Lady--which contains a caution to me, through him, on the subject--now is
not all this a most paltry thing to think about? You may see the whole of
the case by the following Extract from a Letter I wrote to George in the
Spring--"As to what you say about my being a Poet, I can return no Answer
but by saying that the high Idea I have of poetical fame makes me think I
see it towering too high above me. At any rate, I have no right to talk
until Endymion is finished--it will be a test, a trial of my Powers of
Imagination, and chiefly of my invention, which is a rare thing indeed--by
which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with
poetry: and when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done
it will take me but a dozen paces towards the temple of fame--it makes me
say--God forbid that I should be without such a task! I have heard Hunt
say, and I may be asked--_why endeavour after a long Poem?_ To which I
should answer, Do not the Lovers of Poetry like to have a little Region to
wander in, where they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so
numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a second Reading: which
may be food for a Week's stroll in the Summer? Do not they like this
better than what they can read through before Mrs. Williams comes down
stairs? a Morning work at most.
"Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take to be the Polar
star of Poetry, as Fancy is the Sails--and Imagination the rudder. Did our
great Poets ever write short Pieces? I mean in the shape of Tales--this
same invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a
Poetical excellence--But enough of this, I put on no Laurels till I shall
have finished Endymion, and I hope Apollo is not angered at my having made
a Mockery at him at Hunt's"----
You see, Bailey, how independent my Writing has been. Hunt's dissuasion
was of no avail--I refused to visit Shelley that I might have my own
unfettered scope;--and after all, I shall have the Reputation of Hunt's
eleve. His corrections and amputations will by the knowing ones be traced
in the Poem. This is, to be sure, the vexation of a day, nor would I say
so many words about it to any but those whom I know to have my welfare and
reputation at heart. Haydon promised to give directions for those Casts,
and you may expect to see them soon, with as many Letters--You will soon
hear the dinning of Bells--never mind! you and Gleig[29] will defy the
foul fiend--But do not sacrifice your health to Books: do take it kindly
and not so voraciously. I am certain if you are your own Physician, your
Stomach will resume its proper strength and then what great benefits will
follow.--My sister wrote a Letter to me, which I think must be at the
post-office--Ax Will to see. My Brother's kindest remembrances to you--we
are going to dine at Brown's where I have some hopes of meeting Reynolds.
The little Mercury I have taken has corrected the poison and improved my
health--though I feel from my employment that I shall never be again
secure in Robustness. Would that you were as well as
Your Sincere friend and brother
JOHN KEATS.
XIX.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
[Hampstead: about November 1, 1817.]
My dear Bailey--So you have got a Curacy--good, but I suppose you will be
obliged to stop among your Oxford favourites during Term time. Never mind.
When do you preach your first sermon?--tell me, for I shall propose to the
two R.'s[30] to hear it,--so don't look into any of the old corner oaken
pews, for fear of being put out by us. Poor Johnny Moultrie can't be
there. He is ill, I expect--but that's neither here nor there. All I can
say, I wish him as well through it as I am like to be. For this fortnight
I have been confined at Hampstead. Saturday evening was my first day in
town, when I went to Rice's--as we intend to do every Saturday till we
know not when. We hit upon an old gent we had known some few years ago,
and had a _veiry pleasante daye_. In this world there is no
quiet,--nothing but teasing and snubbing and vexation. My brother Tom
looked very unwell yesterday, and I am for shipping him off to Lisbon.
Perhaps I ship there with him. I have not seen Mrs. Reynolds since I left
you, wherefore my conscience smites me. I think of seeing her to-morrow;
have you any message? I hope Gleig came soon after I left. I don't suppose
I've written as many lines as you have read volumes, or at least chapters,
since I saw you. However, I am in a fair way now to come to a conclusion
in at least three weeks, when I assure you I shall be glad to dismount for
a month or two; although I'll keep as tight a rein as possible till then,
nor suffer myself to sleep. I will copy for you the opening of the Fourth
Book, in which you will see from the manner I had not an opportunity of
mentioning any poets, for fear of spoiling the effect of the passage by
particularising them.
Thus far had I written when I received your last, which made me at the
sight of the direction caper for despair; but for one thing I am glad
that I have been neglectful, and that is, therefrom I have received a
proof of your utmost kindness, which at this present I feel very much, and
I wish I had a heart always open to such sensations; but there is no
altering a man's nature, and mine must be radically wrong, for it will lie
dormant a whole month. This leads me to suppose that there are no men
thoroughly wicked, so as never to be self-spiritualised into a kind of
sublime misery; but, alas! 'tis but for an hour. He is the only Man "who
has kept watch on man's mortality," who has philanthropy enough to
overcome the disposition to an indolent enjoyment of intellect, who is
brave enough to volunteer for uncomfortable hours. You remember in
Hazlitt's essay on commonplace people he says, "they read the Edinburgh
and Quarterly, and think as they do." Now, with respect to Wordsworth's
"Gipsy," I think he is right, and yet I think Hazlitt is right, and yet I
think Wordsworth is rightest. If Wordsworth had not been idle, he had not
been without his task; nor had the "Gipsies"--they in the visible world
had been as picturesque an object as he in the invisible. The smoke of
their fire, their attitudes, their voices, were all in harmony with the
evenings. It is a bold thing to say--and I would not say it in print--but
it seems to me that if Wordsworth had thought a little deeper at that
moment, he would not have written the poem at all. I should judge it to
have been written in one of the most comfortable moods of his life--it is
a kind of sketchy intellectual landscape, not a search after truth, nor is
it fair to attack him on such a subject; for it is with the critic as with
the poet; had Hazlitt thought a little deeper, and been in a good temper,
he would never have spied out imaginary faults there. The Sunday before