tragedy. It was the opinion of most of my friends that I should never be able to write I will endeavour to wipe away a scene. the prejudice-I sincerely hope you will be pleased when my labours, since we last saw each other, shall reach you. One of my Ambitions is to make as great a revolution in modern dramatic writing as Kean has done in acting. Another to upset the drawling of the blue-stocking literary world—if in the Course of a few years I do these two things, I ought to die content, and my friends should drink a dozen of claret on my tomb. I am convinced more and more every day that (excepting the human friend philosopher), a fine writer is the most genuine being in the world. Shakspeare and the Paradise lost every day become greater wonders to me. I look upon fine phrases like a lover. I was glad to see by a passage of one of Brown's letters, some time ago, from the North that you were in such good spirits. Since that you have been married, and in congratulating you I wish you every continuance of them. Present my respects to Mrs. Bailey. This sounds oddly to me, and I daresay I do it awkwardly enough: but I suppose by this time it is nothing new to you. Brown's remembrances to you. As far as I know, we shall remain at Winchester for a goodish while. Ever your sincere friend JOHN KEATS. 122. TO FANNY BRAWNE Winchester, August 17th. [Postmark, August 16, 1819.] MY DEAR GIRL- what shall I say for myself? I have been here four days and not yet written you- 't is true I have had many teasing letters of business to dismiss and I have been in the Claws, like a serpent in an Eagle's, of the last act of our Tragedy. This is no excuse; I know it; I do not presume to offer it. I have no -- right either to ask a speedy answer to let me know how lenient you are- I must remain some days in a Mist- I see you through a Mist: as I daresay you do me by this time. Believe in the first Letters I wrote you: I assure you I felt as I wrote I could not write so now. The thousand images I have had pass through my brain -my uneasy spirits — my unguess'd fate — all spread as a veil between me and you. Remember I have had no idle leisure to brood over you - 't is well perhaps I have not. I could not have endured the throng of jealousies that used to haunt me before I had plunged so deeply into imaginary interests. I would fain, as my sails are set, sail on without an interruption for a Brace of Months longer—I am in complete cue - in the fever; and shall in these four Months do an immense deal. This Page as my eye skims over it I see is excessively unloverlike and ungallant - I cannot help it - I am no officer in yawning quarters; no Parson-Romeo. My Mind is heap'd to the full; stuff'd like a cricket ball-if I strive to fill it more it would burst. I know the generality of women would hate me for this; that I should have so unsoften'd, so hard a Mind as to forget them; forget the brightest realities for the dull imaginations of my own Brain. But I conjure you to give it a fair thinking; and ask yourself whether 't is not better to explain my feelings to you, than write artificial Passion. Besides, you would see through it. It would be vain to strive to deceive 'Tis harsh, harsh, I know it. My heart seems now made of iron-I could not write a proper answer to an invitation to Idalia. You are my Judge: my forehead is on the ground. You seem offended at a little simple innocent childish playfulness in my last. I did not seriously mean to say that you were endeavouring to make me keep my promise. I beg your pardon for it. 'Tis but just your Pride should take the alarm seriously. You say I may do as I please - I do not think you. with any conscience I can; my cash resources are for the present stopp'd; I fear for some time. I spend no money, but it increases my debts. I have all my life they thought very little of these matters seem not to belong to me. It may be a proud sentence; but by Heaven I am as entirely above all matters of interest as the Sun is above the Earth and though of my own money I should be careless; of my Friends' I must be spare. You see how I go on - like so many strokes of a hammer. I cannot help it I am impell'd, driven to it. I am not happy enough for silken Phrases, and silver sentences. I can no more use soothing words to you than if I were at this moment engaged in a charge of Cavalry. Then you will say I should not write at all. Should I not? This Winchester is a fine place a beautiful Cathedral and many other ancient buildings in the Environs. The little coffin of a room at Shanklin is changed for a large room, where I can promenade at my pleasure looks out onto a beautiful - blank side of a house. It is strange I should like it better than the view of the sea from our window at Shanklin. I began to hate the very posts there - the voice of the old Lady over the way was getting a great Plague. The Fisherman's face never altered any more than our black teapot the knob however was knock'd off to my little relief. I am getting a great dislike of the picturesque; and can only relish it over again by seeing you enjoy it. One of the pleasantest things I have seen lately was at Cowes. The Regent in his Yatch (I think they spell it) was anchored opposite a beautiful vessel - and all the Yatchs and boats on the coast were passing and repassing it; and circuiting and tacking about it in every direction - I never beheld anything so silent, light, and graceful. As we pass'd over to Southampton, there was nearly an accident. There came by a Boat well mann'd, with two naval officers at the stern. Our Bow-lines took Winchester, Monday morn [August 23, 1819.] Brown and MY DEAR TAYLOR I have together been engaged (this I should wish to remain secret) on a Tragedy which I have just finished and from which we hope to share moderate profits. . . . I feel every confidence that, if I choose, I may be a popular writer. That I will never be ; but for all that I will get a livelihood. I equally dislike the favour of the public with the love of a woman. They are both a cloying treacle to the wings of Independence. I shall ever consider them (People) as debtors to me for verses, not myself to them for admiration — which I can do without. I have of late been indulging my spleen by composing a preface AT them after all resolving never to write a preface at all. 'There are so many verses, would I have said to them, 'give so much means for me to buy pleasure with, as a relief to my hours of labour' - You will observe at the end of this if you put down the letter, 'How a solitary life engenders pride and egotism !' True I know it : does but this pride and egotism will enable me to write finer things than anything else could - so I will indulge it. Just so much as I am humbled by the genius above my grasp am I exalted and look with hate and contempt upon the literary world. A drummer-boy who holds out his hand familiarly to a field Marshal, that drummer-boy with me is the good word and favour of the public. Who could wish to be among the common-place crowd of the little famous — who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves? Is this worth louting or playing the hypocrite for? To beg suffrages for a seat on the benches of a myriad-aristocracy in letters? This is not wise. I am not a wise man 'Tis pride I will give you a definition of a proud man He is a man who has neither Vanity nor Wisdom One filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise. Pardon me for hammering instead of writing. Remember me to Woodhouse Hessey and all in Percy Street. -- Ever yours sincerely JOHN KEATS. 124. TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS ; Winchester, August 25 [1819]. MY DEAR REYNOLDS- By this post I write to Rice, who will tell you why we have left Shanklin ; and how we like this place. I have indeed scarcely anything else to say, leading so monotonous a life, except I was to give you a history of sensations, and day-nightmares. You would not find me at all unhappy in it, as all my thoughts and feelings which are of the selfish nature, home speculations, every day continue to make me more iron I am convinced more and more, every day, that fine writing is, next to fine doing, the top thing in the world; the Paradise Lost bea greater wonder. The more I know what my diligence may in time probably effect, the more does my heart distend with Pride and Obstinacy- I feel it in my power to become a popular writer I feel comes it in my power to refuse the poisonous suffrage of a public. My own being which I know to be becomes of more consequence to me than the crowds of Shadows in the shape of men and women that inhabit a kingdom. The soul is a world of itself, and has enough to do in its own home. Those whom I know already, and who have grown as it were a part of myself, I could not do without but for the rest of mankind, they are as much a dream to me as Milton's Hierarchies. I think if I had a free and healthy and lasting organisation of heart, and lungs as strong as an ox's so as to be able to bear unhurt the shock of extreme thought and sensation without weariness, I could pass my life very nearly alone though it should last eighty years. But I feel my body too weak to support me to the height, I am obliged continually to check myself, and be nothing. It would be vain for me to endeavour after a more reasonable manner of writing to you. I have nothing to speak of but myself, and what can I say but what I feel? If you should have any reason to regret this state of excitement in me, I will turn the tide of your feelings in the right Channel, by mentioning that it is the only state for the best sort of Poetry — that is all I care for, all I live for. Forgive me for not filling up the whole sheet; Letters become so irksome to me, that the next time I leave London I shall petition them all to be spared me. To give me credit for constancy, and at the same time waive letter writing will be the highest indulgence I can think of. Ever your affectionate friend Library, which after all is not to be found in this place. However we like it very much: it is the pleasantest Town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations of any. There is a fine Cathedral which to me is always a source of amusement, part of it built 1400 years ago; and the more modern by a magnificent Man, you may have read of in our History, called William of Wickham. The whole town is beautifully wooded. From the Hill at the eastern extremity you see a prospect of Streets, and old Buildings mixed up with Trees. Then there are the most beautiful streams about I ever saw - full of Trout. There is the Foundation of St. Croix about half a mile in the fields — a charity greatly abused. We have a Collegiate School, a Roman catholic School; a chapel ditto and a Nunnery! and what improves it all is, the fashionable inhabitants are all gone to Southampton. We are quiet-except a fiddle that now and then goes like a gimlet through my Ears -our Landlady's son not being quite a Proficient. I have still been hard at work, having completed a Tragedy I think I spoke of to you. But there I fear all my labour will be thrown away for the present, as I hear Mr. Kean is going to America. For all I can guess I shall remain here till | the middle of October - when Mr. Brown will return to his house at Hampstead; whither I shall return with him. I some time since sent the Letter I told you I had received from George to Haslam with a request to let you and Mrs. Wylie see it: he sent it back to me for very insufficient reasons without doing so; and I was so irritated by it that I would not send it travelling about by the post any more: besides the postage is very expensive. I know Mrs. Wylie will think this a great neglect. I am sorry to say my temper gets the better of me - I will not send it again. Some correspondence I have had with Mr. Abbey about George's affairs—and I must confess he has behaved very kindly to me as far as the wording of his Letter went. Have you heard any further mention of his retiring from Business? I am anxious to hear whether Hodgkinson, whose name I cannot bear to write, will in any likelihood be thrown upon himself. The delightful Weather we have had for two Months is the highest gratification I could receive no chill'd red noses- no shivering - but fair atmosphere to think in a clean towel mark'd with the mangle and a basin of clear Water to drench one's face with ten times a day: no need of much exercise -a Mile a day being quite sufficient. My greatest regret is that I have not been well enough to bathe though I have been two Months by the seaside and live now close to delicious bathing Still I enjoy the Weather -I adore fine Weather as the greatest blessing I can have. Give me Books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know not pay the price of one's time for a jig but a little chance music: and I can pass a summer very quietly without caring much about Fat Louis, fat Regent or the Duke of Wellington. Why have you not written to me? Because you were in expectation of George's Letter and so waited? Mr. Brown is copying out our Tragedy of Otho the Great in a superb style - better than it deserves — there as I said is labour in vain for the present. I had hoped to give Kean another opportunity to shine. What can we do now? There is not another actor of Tragedy in all London or Europe. The Covent Garden company is execrable. Young is the best among them and he is a ranting coxcombical tasteless Actor -a Disgust, a Nausea — and yet the very best after Kean. What a set of barren asses are actors! I should like now to promenade round your Gardens — appletasting-pear-tasting - plum - judging — apricot-nibbling-peach-scrunching — nectarine-sucking and Melon-carving. I also have a great feeling for antiquated cherries full of sugar cracks - and a white currant tree kept for company. I admire lolling we wait morning after morning. Tuesday is the day for the Examiner to arrive, this is the 2d Tuesday which has been barren even of a newspaper- Men should be in imitation of spirits 'responsive to each other's note.' Instead of that I pipe and no one hath danced. We have been cursing like Mandeville and Lisle With this I shall send by the same post a 3d letter to a friend of mine, who though it is of consequence has neither answered right or left. We have been much in want of news from the Theatres, having heard that Kean is going to America- but no- not a word. Why I should come on you with all these complaints I cannot explain to myself, especially as I suspect you must be in the country. Do answer me soon for I really must know something. I must steer myself by the rudder of Information. Ever yours sincerely 127. ... JOHN KEATS. TO THE SAME son: you will find the country air do more for you than you expect. But it must be proper country air. You must choose a spot. What sort of a place is Retford ? You should have a dry, gravelly, barren, elevated country, open to the currents of air, and such a place is generally furnished with the finest springs - The neighbourhood of a rich enclosed fulsome manured arable land, especially in a valley and almost as bad on a flat, would be almost as bad as the smoke of Fleet Street. - Such a place as this was Shanklin, only open to the south-east, and surrounded by hills in every other direction. From this south-east came the damps of the sea; which, having no egress, the air would for days together take on an unhealthy idiosyncracy altogether enervating and weakening as a city smoke -I felt it very much. Since I have been here at Winchester I have been improving in health-it is not so confined—and there is on one side of the City a dry chalky down, where the air is worth Sixpence a pint. So if you do not get better at Retford, do not impute it to your own weakness before you have well considered the Nature of the air and soil - especially as Autumn is encroaching—for the Autumn fog over a rich land is like the steam from cabbage water. What makes the great difference between valesmen, flatlandmen and mountaineers? The cultivation of the earth in a great measure - Our health temperament and disposition are taken more (notwithstanding the contradiction of the history of Cain and Abel) from the air we breathe, than is generally imagined. See the difference between a Peasant and a Butcher. I am convinced a great cause of it is the difference of the air they breathe: the one takes his mingled with the fume of slaughter, the other from the dank exhalement from the glebe; the teeming damp that comes up from the plough-furrow is of great effect in taming the fierceness of a strong man- - more than his labour - Let him be mowing furz upon a mountain, and |