In return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they'll look pretty. TO J. H. R. IN ANSWER TO HIS ROBIN HOOD SONNETS. No! those days are gone away, No! the Bugle sounds no more, Past the heath and up the Hill; On the fairest time of June Gone the merry morris din, She would weep, and he would craze : He would swear, for all his oaks, So it is! yet let us sing, And to all the Sherwood clan- I hope you will like them-they are at least written in the Spirit of Outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines, Souls of Poets dead and gone, Have ye tippled drink more fine Said he saw you in your glory, Sipping beverage divine, And pledging with contented smack, The Mermaid in the Zodiac. Souls of Poets dead and gone, Than the merry mermaid Tavern ?1 I will call on you at 4 to-morrow, and we will trudge together, for it is not the thing to be a stranger in the Land of Harpsicols. I hope also to bring you my 2nd Book. In the hope that these Scribblings will be some amusement for you this Evening, I remain, copying on the Hill, Your sincere friend and Co-scribbler JOHN KEATS. XXXV.-TO JOHN TAYLOR. Fleet Street, Thursday Morn [February 5, 1818]. And My dear Taylor-I have finished copying my Second Book-but I want it for one day to overlook it. moreover this day I have very particular employ in the affair of Cripps-so I trespass on your indulgence, and take advantage of your good nature. You shall hear from me or see me soon. I will tell Reynolds of your engagement to-morrow. Yours unfeignedly JOHN KEATS. XXXVI. TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS. Hampstead, Saturday Night [February 14, 1818]. My dear Brothers-When once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time, he delays it longer, for one or two reasons—first, because he must begin in a very common-place style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last-I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my poem all out, I am now much beforehand with the printer, they have done none yet, and I am 1 Both the Robin Hood and the Mermaid lines as afterwards printed vary in several places from these first drafts. half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing. I am determined they shall not trouble me when I have copied it all.—Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called "Nehemiah Muggs, an exposure of the Methodists"—perhaps I may send you a few extracts -Hazlitt's last Lecture was on Thomson, Cowper, and Crabbe, he praised Thomson and Cowper but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking-I think Hunt's article of Fazio-no it was not, but I saw Fazio the first night, it hung rather heavily on me-I am in the high way of being introduced to a squad of people, Peter Pindar, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Scott-Mr. Robinson a great friend of Coleridge's called on me.1 Richards tells me that my poems are known in the west country, and that he saw a very clever copy of verses, headed with a Motto from my Sonnet to George-Honours rush so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them. What think you-am I to be crowned in the Capitol, am I to be made a Mandarin-No! I am to be invited, Mrs. Hunt tells me, to a party at Ollier's, to keep Shakspeare's birthday - Shakspeare would stare to see me there. The Wednesday before last Shelley, Hunt and I wrote each a Sonnet on the River Nile, some day you shall read them all. I saw a sheet of Endymion, and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done, there shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing at intervals many songs and Sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth, to read them over to you: however I think I had better wait till this Book is off my mind; it will not be long first. Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles, in the Yellow Dwarf, on popular Preachers-All the talk here is about Dr. Croft the Duke of Devon etc. Your most affectionate Brother 1 Henry Crabb Robinson, author of the Diaries. JOHN. 2 The Olliers (Shelley's publishers) had brought out Keats's Poems the previous spring, and the ill success of the volume had led to a sharp quarrel between them and the Keats brothers. XXXVII. TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. [Hampstead, February 19, 1818.] My dear Reynolds-I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner-Let him on a certain day read a certain page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect from it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it: until it becomes stale-But when will it do so? Never-When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all "the two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent indolence! A doze upon a sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon Clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings-the prattle of a child gives it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them-a strain of music conducts to "an odd angle of the Isle," and when the leaves whisper it puts a girdle round the earth.-Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers-for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great works to the "spirit and pulse of good" by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called Knowledge-Many have original minds who do not think it-they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadel—the points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine Web of his Soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean--full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different and bent on such diverse journeys that it may at first appear impossible for any |