Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
last I asked Haydon to dine with me, when I thought of settling all
matters with him in regard to Cripps, and let you know about it. Now,
although I engaged him a fortnight before, he sent illness as an excuse.
He never will come. I have not been well enough to stand the chance of a
wet night, and so have not seen him, nor been able to expurgatorise more
masks for you; but I will not speak--your speakers are never doers. Then
Reynolds,--every time I see him and mention you, he puts his hand to his
head and looks like a son of Niobe's; but he'll write soon.
Rome, you know, was not built in a day. I shall be able, by a little
perseverance, to read your letters off-hand. I am afraid your health will
suffer from over study before your examination. I think you might regulate
the thing according to your own pleasure,--and I would too. They were
talking of your being up at Christmas. Will it be before you have passed?
There is nothing, my dear Bailey, I should rejoice at more than to see you
comfortable with a little Peona wife; an affectionate wife, I have a sort
of confidence, would do you a great happiness. May that be one of the many
blessings I wish you. Let me be but the one-tenth of one to you, and I
shall think it great. My brother George's kindest wishes to you. My dear
Bailey, I am,
Your affectionate friend
JOHN KEATS.
I should not like to be pages in your way; when in a tolerable hungry mood
you have no mercy. Your teeth are the Rock Tarpeian down which you capsize
epic poems like mad. I would not for forty shillings be Coleridge's Lays
in your way. I hope you will soon get through this abominable writing in
the schools, and be able to keep the terms with more comfort in the hope
of retiring to a comfortable and quiet home out of the way of all
Hopkinses and black beetles. When you are settled, I will come and take a
peep at your church, your house; try whether I shall have grown too lusty
for my chair by the fireside, and take a peep at my earliest bower. A
question is the best beacon towards a little speculation. Then ask me
after my health and spirits. This question ratifies in my mind what I have
said above. Health and spirits can only belong unalloyed to the selfish
man--the man who thinks much of his fellows can never be in spirits. You
must forgive, although I have only written three hundred lines; they would
have been five, but I have been obliged to go to town. Yesterday I called
at Lamb's. St. Jane looked very flush when I first looked in, but was much
better before I left.
XX.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
[_Fragment from an outside sheet: postmark_ London, November 5, 1817.]
... I will speak of something else, or my spleen will get higher and
higher--and I am a bearer of the two-edged sword.--I hope you will receive
an answer from Haydon soon--if not, Pride! Pride! Pride! I have received
no more subscription--but shall soon have a full health, Liberty and
leisure to give a good part of my time to him. I will certainly be in time
for him. We have promised him one year: let that have elapsed, then do as
we think proper. If I did not know how impossible it is, I should say--"do
not at this time of disappointments, disturb yourself about others."
There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the E_n_dinburgh Magazine. I
never read anything so virulent--accusing him of the greatest Crimes,
depreciating his Wife, his Poetry, his Habits, his Company, his
Conversation. These Philippics are to come out in numbers--called "the
Cockney School of Poetry." There has been but one number published--that
on Hunt--to which they have prefixed a motto from one Cornelius Webb
Poetaster--who unfortunately was of our party occasionally at Hampstead
and took it into his head to write the following,--something about "we'll
talk on Wordsworth, Byron, a theme we never tire on;" and so forth till he
comes to Hunt and Keats. In the Motto they have put Hunt and Keats in
large letters--I have no doubt that the second number was intended for me:
but have hopes of its non-appearance, from the following Advertisement in
last Sunday's Examiner:--"To Z.--The Writer of the Article signed Z., in
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for October 1817 is invited to send his
address to the printer of the Examiner, in order that Justice may be
Executed on the proper person." I don't mind the thing much--but if he
should go to such lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must
infallibly call him to an Account if he be a human being, and appears in
Squares and Theatres, where we might possibly meet--I don't relish his
abuse....
XXI.--TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE.
[Hampstead, November 1817.]
My dear Dilke--Mrs. Dilke or Mr. Wm. Dilke, whoever of you shall receive
this present, have the kindness to send pr. bearer Sibylline Leaves, and
your petitioner shall ever pray as in duty bound.
Given under my hand this Wednesday morning of Novr. 1817.
JOHN KEATS.
Vivant Rex et Regina--amen.
XXII.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.
[Burford Bridge, November 22, 1817.]
My dear Bailey--I will get over the first part of this (_un_said[31])
Letter as soon as possible, for it relates to the affairs of poor
Cripps.--To a Man of your nature such a Letter as Haydon's must have been
extremely cutting--What occasions the greater part of the World's
Quarrels?--simply this--two Minds meet, and do not understand each other
time enough to prevent any shock or surprise at the conduct of either
party--As soon as I had known Haydon three days, I had got enough of his
Character not to have been surprised at such a Letter as he has hurt you
with. Nor, when I knew it, was it a principle with me to drop his
acquaintance; although with you it would have been an imperious feeling. I
wish you knew all that I think about Genius and the Heart--and yet I think
that you are thoroughly acquainted with my innermost breast in that
respect, or you could not have known me even thus long, and still hold me
worthy to be your dear Friend. In passing, however, I must say one thing
that has pressed upon me lately, and increased my Humility and capability
of submission--and that is this truth--Men of Genius are great as certain
ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect--but they
have not any individuality, any determined Character--I would call the top
and head of those who have a proper self Men of Power.
But I am running my head into a subject which I am certain I could not do
justice to under five Years' study, and 3 vols. octavo--and, moreover, I
long to be talking about the Imagination--so my dear Bailey, do not think
of this unpleasant affair, if possible do not--I defy any harm to come of
it--I defy. I shall write to Cripps this week, and request him to tell me
all his goings-on from time to time by Letter wherever I may be. It will
go on well--so don't because you have suddenly discovered a Coldness in
Haydon suffer yourself to be teased--Do not my dear fellow--O! I wish I
was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary
start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing
but of the holiness of the Heart's affections, and the truth of
Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth--whether
it existed before or not,--for I have the same idea of all our passions as
of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. In
a Word, you may know my favourite speculation by my first Book, and the
little Song I sent in my last, which is a representation from the fancy of
the probable mode of operating in these Matters. The Imagination may be
compared to Adam's dream,--he awoke and found it truth:[32]--I am more
zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how
anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning--and yet it must
be. Can it be that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at his Goal
without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life
of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! It is "a Vision in the form of
Youth," a shadow of reality to come--And this consideration has further
convinced me,--for it has come as auxiliary to another favourite
speculation of mine,--that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having
what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone--And yet such a
fate can only befall those who delight in Sensation, rather than hunger as
you do after Truth. Adam's dream will do here, and seems to be a
Conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflection, is the same as
human life and its spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the Simple
imaginative Mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent
Working coming continually on the Spirit with a fine Suddenness--to
compare great things with small, have you never by being surprised with an
old Melody, in a delicious place by a delicious voice, _felt_ over again
your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your
soul?--do you not remember forming to yourself the Singer's face--more
beautiful than it was possible, and yet with the elevation of the Moment
you did not think so? Even then you were mounted on the Wings of
Imagination, so high that the prototype must be hereafter--that delicious
face you will see. What a time! I am continually running away from the
subject. Sure this cannot be exactly the Case with a complex mind--one
that is imaginative, and at the same time careful of its fruits,--who
would exist partly on Sensation, partly on thought--to whom it is
necessary that years should bring the philosophic Mind? Such a one I
consider yours, and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness
that you not only drink this old Wine of Heaven, which I shall call the
redigestion of our most ethereal Musings upon Earth, but also increase in
knowledge and know all things. I am glad to hear that you are in a fair
way for Easter. You will soon get through your unpleasant reading, and
then!--but the world is full of troubles, and I have not much reason to
think myself pestered with many.
I think Jane or Marianne has a better opinion of me than I deserve: for,
really and truly, I do not think my Brother's illness connected with
mine--you know more of the real Cause than they do; nor have I any chance
of being rack'd as you have been. You perhaps at one time thought there
was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods
of time marked out,--you have of necessity from your disposition been thus
led away--I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness--I look not for
it if it be not in the present hour,--nothing startles me beyond the
moment. The Setting Sun will always set me to rights, or if a Sparrow come
before my Window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel.
The first thing that strikes me on hearing a Misfortune having befallen
another is this--"Well, it cannot be helped: he will have the pleasure of
trying the resources of his Spirit"--and I beg now, my dear Bailey, that
hereafter should you observe anything cold in me not to put it to the
account of heartlessness, but abstraction--for I assure you I sometimes
feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole Week--and
so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself, and the
genuineness of my feelings at other times--thinking them a few barren
Tragedy Tears.
My brother Tom is much improved--he is going to Devonshire--whither I
shall follow him. At present, I am just arrived at Dorking--to change the
Scene--change the Air, and give me a spur to wind up my Poem, of which
there are wanting 500 lines. I should have been here a day sooner, but the
Reynoldses persuaded me to stop in Town to meet your friend Christie.