your spirits. I hope you make a true statement on that score. Still keep them up, for we are all young. I can only repeat here that you shall hear from me again immediately. Notwithstanding this bad intelligence, I have experienced some pleasure in receiving so correctly two letters from you, as it gives me, if I may so say, a distant idea of proximity. This last improves upon my little niece-kiss her for me. Do not fret yourself about the delay of money on account of my immediate opportunity being lost, for in a new country whoever has money must have an opportunity of employing it in many ways. The report runs now more in favour of Kean stopping in England. If he should, I have confident hopes of our tragedy. If he invokes the hotblooded character of Ludolph,—and he is the only actor that can do it,--he will add to his own fame and improve my fortune. I will give you a half-dozen lines of it before I part as a specimen— Not as a swordsman would I pardon crave, But as a son: the bronz'd Centurion, Long-toil'd in foreign wars, and whose high deeds Are shaded in a forest of tall spears, Known only to his troop, hath greater plea of favour with my sire than I can have. Believe me, my dear brother and sister, your affectionate and anxious Brother JOHN KEATS. you CXVII.-TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. Winchester, September 22, 1819. My dear Reynolds-I was very glad to hear from Woodhouse that you would meet in the country. I hope will pass some pleasant time together. Which I wish to make pleasanter by a brace of letters, very highly to be estimated, as really I have had very bad luck with this sort of game this season. I "kepen in solitarinesse," for Brown has gone a-visiting. I am surprised myself at : the pleasure I live alone in. I can give you no news of the place here, or any other idea of it but what I have to this effect written to George. Yesterday I say to him was a grand day for Winchester. They elected a Mayor. It was indeed high time the place should receive some sort of excitement. There was nothing going on: all asleep not an old maid's sedan returning from a card party and if any old woman got tipsy at Christenings they did not expose it in the streets. The first night though of our arrival here, there was a slight uproar took place at about 10 o' the Clock. We heard distinctly a noise pattering down the High Street as of a walking cane of the good old Dowager breed; and a little minute after we heard a less voice observe "What a noise the ferril made it must be loose." Brown wanted to call the constables, but I observed 'twas only a little breeze and would soon pass over.—The side streets here are excessively maiden-lady-like: the door-steps always fresh from the flannel. The knockers have a staid serious, nay almost awful quietness about them. I never saw so quiet a collection of Lions' and Rams' heads. The doors are most part black, with a little brass handle just above the keyhole, so that in Winchester a man may very quietly shut himself out of his own house. How beautiful the season is now-How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather-Dian skies-I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm-in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.1 I hope you are better employed than in gaping after weather. I have been at different times so happy as not to know what weather it was-No I will not copy a 1 The beautiful Ode to Autumn, the draft of which Keats had copied in a letter (unluckily not preserved) written earlier in the same day to Woodhouse. parcel of verses. I always somehow associate Chatterton with autumn. He is the purest writer in the English Language. He has no French idiom or particles, like Chaucer 'tis genuine English Idiom in English words. I have given up Hyperion - there were too many Miltonic inversions in it-Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark > to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one || to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul 'twas imagination-I cannot make the distinction-Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation-But I cannot make the division properly. The fact is, I must take a walk for I am writing a long letter to George: and have been employed at it all the morning. You will ask, have I heard from George. I am sorry to say not the best news- -I hope for better. This is the reason, among others, that if I write to you it must be in such a scrap-like way. I have no meridian to date interests from, or measure circumstances-To-night I am all in a mist; I scarcely know what's what-But you knowing my unsteady and vagarish disposition, will guess that all this turmoil will be settled by to-morrow morning. It strikes me to-night that I have led a very odd sort of life for the two or three last years-Here and there—no anchor-I am glad of it.—If you can get a peep at Babbicombe before you leave the country, do.-I think it the finest place I have seen, or is to be seen, in the South. There is a Cottage there I took warm water at, that made up for the tea. I have lately shirk'd some friends of ours, and I advise you to do the same, I mean the blue-devils-I am never at home to them. You need not fear them while you remain in Devonshire—there will be some of the family waiting for you at the Coach office-but go by another Coach. I shall beg leave to have a third opinion in the first Y discussion you have with Woodhouse-just half-way, between both. You know I will not give up my argument—In my walk to-day I stoop'd under a railing that lay across my path, and asked myself "Why I did not get over." Because," answered I, "no one wanted to force you under." I would give a guinea to be a reasonable man-good sound sense-a says what he thinks and does what he says man-and did not take snuff. They say men near death, however mad they may have been, come to their senses-I hope I shall here in this letter-there is a decent space to be very sensible inmany a good proverb has been in less-nay, I have heard of the statutes at large being changed into the Statutes at Small and printed for a watch paper. Your sisters, by this time, must have got the Devonshire "ees"-short ees-you know 'em-they are the prettiest ees in the language. O how I admire the middle-sized delicate Devonshire girls of about fifteen. There was one at an Inn door holding a quartern of brandy-the very thought of her kept me warm a whole stage and a 16 miler too-"You'll pardon me for being jocular.' Ever your affectionate friend JOHN KEATS. CXVIII. TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE. Winchester, Wednesday Eve. My dear Dilke-Whatever I take to for the time I cannot leave off in a hurry; letter writing is the go now; I have consumed a quire at least. You must give me credit, now, for a free Letter when it is in reality an interested one, on two points, the one requestive, the other verging to the pros and cons. As I expect they will lead me to seeing and conferring with you in a short time, I shall not enter at all upon a letter I have lately received from George, of not the most comfortable intelligence : but proceed to these two points, which if you can theme out into sections and subsections, for my edification, you will oblige me. The first I shall begin upon, the other will follow like a tail to a Comet. I have written to Brown on the subject, and can but go over the same ground with you in a very short time, it not being more in length than the ordinary paces between the Wickets. It concerns a resolution I have taken to endeavour to acquire something by temporary writing in periodical works. You must agree with me how unwise it is to keep feeding upon hopes, which depending so much on the state of temper and imagination, appear gloomy or bright, near or afar off, just as it happens. Now an act has three parts-to act, to do, and to perform-I mean I should do something for my immediate welfare. Even if I am swept away like a spider from a drawing-room, I am determined to spin-homespun anything for sale. Yea, I will traffic. Anything but Mortgage my Brain to Blackwood. I am determined not to lie like a dead lump. If Reynolds had not taken to the law, would he not be earning something? Why cannot I. You may say I want tact that is easily acquired. You may be up to the slang of a cock pit in three battles. It is fortunate I have not before this been tempted to venture on the common. I should a year or two ago have spoken my mind on every subject with the utmost simplicity. I hope I have learned a little better and am confident I shall be able to cheat as well as any literary Jew of the Market and shine up an article on anything without much knowledge of the subject, aye like an orange. I would willingly have recourse to other means. I cannot ; I am fit for nothing but literature. of this Tragedy? No-there cannot be greater uncertainties east, west, north, and south than concerning dramatic composition. How many months must I wait! Had I not better begin to look about me now? If better events supersede this necessity what harm will be done? I have no trust whatever on Poetry. I don't wonder at it-the marvel is to me how people read so much of it. Wait for the issue |