or assert, but whisper results to his Neighbour, and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould ethereal every human might become great, and humanity instead of being a wide heath of furze and briars, with here and there a remote Oak or Pine, would become a grand democracy of forest trees. It has been an old comparison for our urging on the beehive however it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the Bee for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee its leaves blush deeper in the next spring — and who shall say between Man and Woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury:let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like, buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be arrived at. But let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - Sap will be given us for meat, and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read any Books - the Morning said I was right- I had no idea but of the Morning, and the Thrush said I was right seeming to say,

one way or another, if there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders — Your affectionate friend JOHN KEATS.

37. TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS

Hampstead, Saturday [February 21, 1818.] MY DEAR BROTHERS I am extremely sorry to have given you so much uneasiness by not writing; however, you know good news is no news or vice versâ. I do not like to write a short letter to you, or you would have had one long before. The weather although boisterous to-day has been very much milder; and I think Devonshire is not the last place to receive a temperate Change. I have been abominably idle since you left, but have just turned over a new leaf, and used as a marker a letter of excuse to an invitation from Horace Smith. The occasion of my writing to-day is the enclosed letter-by Postmark from Miss W[ylie]. Does she expect you in town George? I received a letter the other day from Haydon, in which he says, his Essays on the Elgin Marbles are being translated into Italian, the which he superintends. I did not mention that I had seen the British Gallery, there are some nice things by Stark, and Bathsheba by Wilkie, which is condemned. I could not bear Alston's Uriel.

Reynolds has been very ill for some time, confined to the house, and had leeches applied to his chest; when I saw him on Wednesday he was much the same, and he is in the worst place for amendment, among the strife of women's tongues, in a hot and parch'd room: I wish he would move to Butler's for a short time. The Thrushes and Blackbirds have been singing me into an idea that it was Spring, and almost that leaves were on the trees. So that black clouds and boisterous winds seem to have mustered and collected in full Divan, for the purpose of convincing me to the contrary. Taylor says my poem shall be out

The thrushes are singing now as if they would speak to the winds, because their big brother Jack, the Spring, was not far off. I am reading Voltaire and Gibbon, although I wrote to Reynolds the other day to prove reading of no use; I have not seen Hunt since, I am a good deal with Dilke and Brown, we are very thick; they are very kind to me, they are well. I don't think I could stop in Hampstead but for their neighbourhood. I hear Hazlitt's lectures regularly, his last was on Gray, Collins, Young, etc., and he gave a very fine piece of discriminating Criticism on Swift, Voltaire, and Rabelais. I was very disappointed at his treatment of Chatterton. I generally meet with many I know there. Lord Byron's 4th Canto is expected out, and I heard somewhere, that Walter Scott has a new Poem in readiness. I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited in town by his egotism, Vanity, and bigotry. Yet he is a great poet if not a philosopher. I have not yet read Shelley's Poem, I do not suppose you have it yet, at the Teignmouth libraries. These double letters must come rather heavy, I hope you have a moderate portion of cash, but don't fret at all, if you have not-Lord! I intend to play at cut and run as well as Falstaff, that is to say, before he got so lusty.

I remain praying for your health my dear Brothers

Your affectionate Brother

38. TO JOHN TAYLOR

JOHN.

Hampstead, February 27 [1818]. MY DEAR TAYLOR Your alteration strikes me as being a great Improvement

And now I will attend to the punctuations you speak of — The comma should be at soberly, and in the other passage, the Comma should follow quiet. I am extremely indebted to you for this alteration, and also

1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

2d. 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 appre ciated. 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,

Teignmouth, Friday [March 13, 1818]. 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 should you 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 - I went down to prevent had better stop his coming up. it which way you

Will not this do? turn like—it is selvaged all

round. I have used it, these three last out the abominable Devondays, to keep s shire weatherwhat you will of it is a splashy, rapiny, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The iful, when you get a hills are very beaut let sight of 'em the phe then you are in-the b.

by the by, you may say Devonshire: the truth is,

rimroses are out, but Cliffs are of a fine he Clouds are con

deep colour, but then th sup the Women tinually vieing with the see

m —

in a sort of neglike your London people nic native men are

ative way

- because the Vill

the poorest creatures in En belgland-because hought it worth Government never have th party among while to send a recruiting or s Wordsworth's

them. When I think of d le

! ye men of sonnet Vanguard of Liberty saw e about me Kent!' the degenerated racime, are Pulvis ipecac. simplex- aent, Were I a corsair, I'd make al on the south coast of Devoid m not run the chance of havinge Th imputed to me. As for the ing run away into the Methodisalmo houses, and the women would 1 Had England been a large Deem to should not have won the Battle There are knotted oaks

nen, they'd meeting

glad of it. that vonshire, we

of Waterloo. lusty

Div re are the to tr such

rivulets? there are meadows shall not there are valleys of f climate but there are no

as are

eminine [?] thews and

sinews - Moor'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,' [money ?] 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

[The sonnet is that entitled 'The Human Seasons,' given on p. 44.]

Aye, this may be carried but what am I talking of ?—it is an old maxim of mine, and of course must be well known, that every point of thought is the Centre of an intellectual world. The two uppermost thoughts in a Man's mind are the two poles of his world-he revolves on them, and everything is Southward or Northward to him through their means. We take but three steps from feathers to iron. — Now, my dear fellow, I must once for all tell you I have not one idea of the truth of any of my speculations- I shall never be a reasoner, because I care not to be in the right, when retired from bickering and in a proper philosophical temper. So you

TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS

Teignmouth, Saturday [March 14, 1818]. DEAR REYNOLDS I escaped being blown over and blown under and trees and house being toppled on me. I have since hearing of Brown's accident had an aversion to a dose of parapet, and being also a lover of antiquities I would sooner have a harmless piece of Herculaneum sent me quietly as a present than ever so modern a chimney-pot tumbled on to my head Being agog to see some Devonshire, I would have taken a walk the first day, but the rain would not let me; and the second, but the rain would not let me; and the third, but the rain forbade it. Ditto 4- ditto 5ditto so I made up my Mind to stop indoors, and catch a sight flying between the showers: and, behold I saw a pretty valley — pretty cliffs, pretty Brooks, pretty Meadows, pretty trees, both standing as they were created, and blown down as they are uncreated - The green is beautiful, as they say, and pity it is that it is amphibious mais! but alas! the flowers here wait as naturally for the rain twice a day as the Mussels do for the Tide; so we look upon a brook in these parts as you look upon a splash in your Country. There must be something to support this - aye, fog, hail, snow, rain, Mist blanketing up three parts of the year. This Devonshire is like Lydia Languish, very entertaining when it smiles, but cursedly subject to sympathetic moisture. You have the sensation of walking under one great Lamplighter: and you

can't go on the other side of the ladder to keep your frock clean, and cosset your superstition. Buy a girdle- put a pebble in mouth - loosen your your braces for I am going among scenery whence I intend to tip you the Damosel Radcliffe - I'll cavern you, and grotto you, and waterfall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and tremendous-sound you, and solitude you. I'll make a lodgment on your glacis by a row of Pines, and storm your covered with bramble way Bushes. I'll have at you with hip and haw small-shot, and cannonade you with Shingles- I'll be witty upon salt-fish, and impede your cavalry with clotted cream. But ah Coward! to talk at this rate to a sick man, or, I hope, to one that was sick - for I hope by this you stand on your right foot. If you are not - that's all, I intend to cut all sick people if they do not make up their minds to cut Sickness -a fellow to whom I have a complete aversion, and who strange to say is harboured and countenanced in several houses where I visit - he is sitting now quite impudent between me and Tom-He insults me at poor Jem Rice's—and you have seated him before now between us at the Theatre, when I thought he looked with a longing eye at poor Kean. I shall say, once for all, to my friends generally and severally, cut that fellow, or I cut you

I went to the Theatre here the other night, which I forgot to tell George, and got insulted, which I ought to remember to forget to tell any Body; for I did not fight, and as yet have had no redress 'Lie thou there, sweetheart!' I wrote to Bailey yesterday, obliged to speak in a high way, and a damme who's afraid - for I had owed him so long; however, he shall see I will be better in future. Is he in town yet? I have directed to Oxford as the better chance. I have copied my fourth Book, and shall write the Preface soon. wish it was all done; for I want to forget it and make my mind free for something

I