Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends. John Keats

Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than to write it—And this leads me to

      Another axiom—That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.—However it may be with me, I cannot help looking into new countries with “O for a Muse of Fire to ascend!” If Endymion serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content—I have great reason to be content, for thank God I can read, and perhaps understand Shakspeare to his depths; and I have I am sure many friends, who, if I fail, will attribute any change in my life and temper to humbleness rather than pride—to a cowering under the wings of great poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated. I am anxious to get Endymion printed that I may forget it and proceed. I have copied the 3rd Book and begun the 4th. On running my eye over the proofs, I saw one mistake—I will notice it presently, and also any others, if there be any. There should be no comma in “the raft branch down sweeping from a tall ash-top.” I have besides made one or two alterations, and also altered the thirteenth line p. 32 to make sense of it, as you will see. I will take care the printer shall not trip up my heels. There should be no dash after Dryope, in the line “Dryope’s lone lulling of her child.”

      Remember me to Percy Street.

      Your sincere and obliged friend

       John Keats.

      P.S.—You shall have a short preface in good time.

XL.—TO MESSRS. TAYLOR AND HESSEY.

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      [Hampstead, March 1818?]

      My dear Sirs—I am this morning making a general clearance of all lent Books—all—I am afraid I do not return all—I must fog your memories about them—however with many thanks here are the remainder—which I am afraid are not worth so much now as they were six months ago—I mean the fashions may have changed—

      Yours truly

       John Keats.

XLI.—TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.

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      Teignmouth, Friday [March 13, 1818].[50]

      My dear Bailey—When a poor devil is drowning, it is said he comes thrice to the surface ere he makes his final sink—if however even at the third rise he can manage to catch hold of a piece of weed or rock he stands a fair chance, as I hope I do now, of being saved. I have sunk twice in our correspondence, have risen twice, and have been too idle, or something worse, to extricate myself. I have sunk the third time, and just now risen again at this two of the Clock P.M., and saved myself from utter perdition by beginning this, all drenched as I am, and fresh from the water. And I would rather endure the present inconvenience of a wet jacket than you should keep a laced one in store for me. Why did I not stop at Oxford in my way? How can you ask such a Question? Why, did I not promise to do so? Did I not in a letter to you make a promise to do so? Then how can you be so unreasonable as to ask me why I did not? This is the thing—(for I have been rubbing up my Invention—trying several sleights—I first polished a cold, felt it in my fingers, tried it on the table, but could not pocket it:—I tried Chillblains, Rheumatism, Gout, tight boots—nothing of that sort would do—so this is, as I was going to say, the thing)—I had a letter from Tom, saying how much better he had got, and thinking he had better stop—I went down to prevent his coming up. Will not this do? turn it which way you like—it is selvaged all round. I have used it, these three last days, to keep out the abominable Devonshire weather—by the by, you may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of ’em—the primroses are out, but then you are in—the Cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then the Clouds are continually vieing with them—the Women like your London people in a sort of negative way—because the native men are the poorest creatures in England—because Government never have thought it worth while to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworth’s sonnet “Vanguard of Liberty! ye men of Kent!” the degenerated race about me are Pulvis ipecac. simplex—a strong dose. Were I a corsair, I’d make a descent on the south coast of Devon; if I did not run the chance of having Cowardice imputed to me. As for the men, they’d run away into the Methodist meeting-houses, and the women would be glad of it. Had England been a large Devonshire, we should not have won the Battle of Waterloo. There are knotted oaks—there are lusty rivulets? there are meadows such as are not—there are valleys of feminine[51] climate—but there are no thews and sinews—Moore’s Almanack is here a Curiosity—Arms, neck, and shoulders may at least be seen there, and the ladies read it as some out-of-the-way Romance. Such a quelling Power have these thoughts over me that I fancy the very air of a deteriorating quality. I fancy the flowers, all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them—I feel able to beat off the Devonshire waves like soapfroth. I think it well for the honour of Britain that Julius Cæsar did not first land in this County. A Devonshirer standing on his native hills is not a distinct object—he does not show against the light—a wolf or two would dispossess him. I like, I love England. I like its living men—give me a long brown plain “for my morning,”[51] so I may meet with some of Edmund Ironside’s descendants. Give me a barren mould, so I may meet with some shadowing of Alfred in the shape of a Gipsy, a huntsman or a shepherd. Scenery is fine—but human nature is finer—the sward is richer for the tread of a real nervous English foot—the Eagle’s nest is finer, for the Mountaineer has looked into it. Are these facts or prejudices? Whatever they be, for them I shall never be able to relish entirely any Devonshire scenery—Homer is fine, Achilles is fine, Diomed is fine, Shakspeare is fine, Hamlet is fine, Lear is fine, but dwindled Englishmen are not fine. Where too the women are so passable, and have such English names, such as Ophelia, Cordelia etc. that they should have such Paramours or rather Imparamours—As for them, I cannot in thought help wishing, as did the cruel Emperor, that they had but one head, and I might cut it off to deliver them from any horrible Courtesy they may do their undeserving countrymen, I wonder I meet with no born monsters—O Devonshire, last night I thought the moon had dwindled in heaven——

      I have never had your Sermon from Wordsworth, but Mr. Dilke lent it me. You know my ideas about Religion. I do not think myself more in the right than other people, and that nothing in this world is proveable. I wish I could enter into all your feelings on the subject, merely for one short 10 minutes, and give you a page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack o’ Lantern to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As tradesmen say everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer—being in itself a Nothing. Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads—Things real—things semireal—and nothings. Things real, such as existences of Sun moon and Stars—and passages of Shakspeare.—Things semireal, such as love, the Clouds etc., which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist—and Nothings, which are made great and dignified by an ardent pursuit—which, by the by, stamp the Burgundy mark on the bottles of our minds, insomuch as they are able to “consecrate whate’er they look upon.” I have written a sonnet here of a somewhat collateral nature—so don’t imagine it an “apropos des bottes”—

      Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

       There are four seasons in the mind of Man:

       He hath his lusty Spring, when Fancy clear

       Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

       He has his Summer, when luxuriously

       He chews the honied cud of fair Spring