on

you

TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON

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we will con over together. So Haydon is Now I think this is an excellent method of in Town. I had a letter from him yester- giving a very clear description of an inday. We will contrive as the winter comes teresting place such as Oxford is.

- but that is neither here nor there. [Here follows the verses on Oxford, given on Have heard from Rice ? Has Martin

p. 252.] met with the Cumberland Beggar, or been wondering at the old Leech-gatherer? Has

16. he a turn for fossils ? that is, is he capable of sinking up to his Middle in a Morass ?

Oxford, September 28 (1817]. How is Hazlitt ? We were reading his MY DEAR HAYDON I read

your

letter Table 15 last night. I know he thinks him- to the young Man, whose Name is Cripps. self not estimated by ten people in the He seemed more than ever anxious to avail world - I wish he knew he is. I am get- himself of your offer. I think I told you ting on famous with my third Book — have we asked him to ascertain his Means. He written 800 lines thereof, and hope to finish does not possess the Philosopher's stone it next Week. Bailey likes what I have nor Fortunatus's purse, nor Gyges's ring done

very much. Believe me, my dear Rey- – but at Bailey's suggestion, whom I asnolds, one of my chief layings-up is the sure you is very capital fellow, we have pleasure I shall have in showing it to you, stummed up a kind of contrivance whereby I may now say, in a few days. I have he will be enabled to do himself the benefits heard twice from my Brothers, they are you will lay in his Path. I have a great going on very well, and send their Remem- Idea that he will be a tolerable neat brush. brances to you. We expected to have had 'Tis perhaps the finest thing that will befal notices from little-Hampton this morning him this many a year: for he is just of an

we must wait till Tuesday. I am glad of age to get grounded in bad habits from their Days with the Dilkes. You are, I which you will pluck him. He brought a know, very much teased in that precious copy of Mary Queen of Scots: it appears London, and want all the rest possible; so I to me that he has copied the bad style of shall be contented with as brief a scrawl - the painting, as well as coloured the eyea Word or two, till there comes a pat hour. balls yellow like the original. He has also

Send us a few of your stanzas to read in the fault that you pointed out to me in Reynolds's Cove.' Give my Love and Hazlitt on the constringing and diffusing of respects to your Mother, and remember me substance. However I really believe that kindly to all at home.

he will take fire at the sight of your Picture Yours faithfully JOAN KEATS. - and set about things. If he can get

I have left the doublings for Bailey, who ready in time to return to town with me, is going to say that he will write to you to- which will be in 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 15.

my Poem. My Ideas with respect to it I [Oxford, September, 1817.) assure you are very low — and I would

write the subject thoroughly again — but I Wordsworth sometimes, though in a fine

am tired of it and think the time would way, gives us sentences in the style of be better spent in writing a new Romance school exercises. — For instance,

which I have in my eye for next summer The lake doth glitter,

Rome was not built in a Day and all the Small birds twitter.

good I expect from my employment this

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morrow.

TO THE SAME

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BENJAMIN BAILEY

If he will say

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summer is the fruit of Experience which I Haydon and Hunt have known each other hope to gather in my next Poem. Bailey's many years - now they live, pour ainsi kindest wishes, and my vow of being dire, jealous neighbours - Haydon says to Yours eternally

JOHN KEATS. 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 17. TO

be thought. When he met Reynolds in the

Theatre, John told him that I was getting Hampstead, Wednesday (October 8, 1817].

on to the completion of 4000 lines — Ah! MY DEAR BAILEY After a tolerable says Hunt, had it not been for me they journey, I went from Coach to Coach as far would have been 7000! as Hampstead where I found my Brothers this to Reynolds, what would he to other

the next Morning finding myself toler- people? Haydon received a Letter a little ably well I went to Lamb's Conduit Street while back on this subject from some Lady and delivered your parcel. Jane and Ma- which contains a caution to me, through rianne, were greatly improved. Marianne him, on the subject now is not all this a especially, she has no unhealthy plumpness most paltry thing to think about? You in the face, but she comes me healthy and may see the whole of the case by the followangular to the chin - I did not see John- ing Extract from a Letter I wrote to George I was extremely sorry to hear that poor in the Spring • As to what you say about Rice, after having had capital health during my being a Poet, I can return no Answer his tour, was very ill. I daresay you have but by saying that the high Idea I have heard from him. From No. 19 I went to of poetical fame makes me think I see it Hunt's and Haydon's who live now neigh- towering too high above me. At any rate, bours. Shelley was there — I know no- I have no right to talk until Endymion thing about anything in this part of the is finished it will be a test, a trial of world - every Body seems at Loggerheads. my Powers of Imagination, and chiefly of There's Hunt infatuated there's Hay- | my invention, which is a rare thing indeed don's picture in statu quo

There's Hunt – by which I must make 4000 lines of walks up and down his painting room one bare circumstance, and fill them with criticising every head most unmercifully. poetry: and when I consider that this is a There's Horace Smith tired of Hunt. The great task, and that when done it will take web of our life is of mingled yarn.' Hay- me but a dozen paces towards the temple don having removed entirely from Marl- of fame

- it makes me say

God forbid borough Street, Cripps must direct his that I should be without such a task ! I letter to Lisson Grove, North Paddington. have heard Hunt say, and I may be asked Yesterday Morning while I was at Brown's, - why endeavour after a long Poem? To in came Reynolds, he was pretty bobbish, which I should answer, Do not the Lovers we had a pleasant day — he would walk of Poetry like to have a little Region to home at night that cursed cold distance. wander in, where they may pick and choose, Mrs. Bentley's children are making a and in which the images are so numerous horrid row –

whereby I regret I cannot that many are forgotten and found new in be transported to your Room to write to a second Reading: which may be food for you. I am quite disgusted with literary a Week's stroll in the Summer? Do not men and will never know another except they like this better than what they can Wordsworth no not even Byron. Here read through before Mrs. Williams comes is an instance of the friendship of such. down stairs ? a Morning work at most.

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thing I am glad that I have been neglect- excuse. He never will come. I have not ful, and that is, therefrom I have received been well enough to stand the chance of a a proof of your utmost kindness, which at wet night, and so have not seen him, nor this present I feel very much, and I wish I been able to expurgatorise more masks for had a heart always open to such sensations; you; but I will not speak — your speakers but there is no altering a man's nature, and are never doers. Then Reynolds, every mine must be radically wrong, for it will time I see him and mention you, he puts lie dormant a whole month. This leads me his hand to his head and looks like a son of to suppose that there are no men thoroughly Niobe's; but he 'll write soon.

; wicked, so as never to be self-spiritualised Rome, you know, was not built in a day. into a kind of sublime misery; but, alas ! I shall be able, by a little perseverance, to 't is but for an hour. He is the only Man read your letters off-hand. I am afraid who has kept watch on man's mortality,' your health will suffer from over study bewho has philanthropy enough to overcome fore your examination. I think you might the disposition to an indolent enjoyment of regulate the thing according to your own intellect, who is brave enough to volunteer pleasure, — and I would too. They were for uncomfortable hours. You remember talking of your being up at Christmas. in Hazlitt's essay on commonplace people will it be before you have passed? There he says, “they read the Edinburgh and is nothing, my dear Bailey, I should rejoice ! Quarterly, and think as they do. Now, at more than to see you comfortable, with with respect to Wordsworth's "Gipsy,' I a little Peona wife; an affectionate wife, I think he is right, and yet I think Hazlitt have a sort of confidence, would do you a is right, and yet I think Wordsworth is great happiness. May that be one of the rightest. If Wordsworth had not been idle, many blessings I wish you. Let me be but he had not been without his task; nor had the one-tenth of one to you, and I shall the Gipsies'— they in the visible world think it great. My brother George's kindest had been as picturesque an object as he in wishes to you. My dear Bailey, I am, the invisible. The smoke of their fire, their Your affectionate friend John KEATS. attitudes, their voices, were all in harmony with the evenings. It is a bold thing to say

I should not like to be pages in your - and I would not say it in print - but way; when in a tolerable hungry mood you it seems to me that if Wordsworth had have no mercy. Your teeth are the Rock thought a little deeper at that moment, he Tarpeian down which you capsize epic would not have written the poem at all. I poems like mad. I would not for forty should judge it to have been written in one shillings be Coleridge's Lays in your way. of the most comfortable moods of his life I hope you will soon get through this abo- it is a kind of sketchy intellectual land- minable writing in the schools, and be able scape, not a search after truth, nor is it fair to keep the terms with more comfort in the to attack him on such a subject ; for it is hope of retiring to a comfortable and quiet with the critic as with the poet; had Haz- home out of the way of all Hopkinses and litt thought a little deeper, and been in a black beetles. When you are settled, I will good temper, he would never have spied come and take a peep at your church, your out imaginary faults there. The Sunday house; try whether I shall have grown too before last I asked Haydon to dine with lusty for my chair by the fireside, and take me, when I thought of settling all matters a peep at my earliest bower. A question is with him, in regard to Cripps, and let you the best beacon towards a little speculation. know about it. Now, although I engaged Then ask me after my bealth and spirits. him a fortnight before, he sent illness as an This question ratifies in my mind what I

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