Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Part 10

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 G.o.d 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 appreciated. 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, and also altered the thirteenth line p. 32 to make sense of it, as you will see. I will take care the printer shall not trip up my heels. There should be no dash after Dryope, in the line "Dryope's lone lulling of her child."

Remember me to Percy Street.

Your sincere and obliged friend

JOHN KEATS.

_P.S._--You shall have a short preface in good time.

XL.--TO MESSRS. TAYLOR AND HESSEY.

[Hampstead, March 1818?]

My dear Sirs--I am this morning making a general clearance of all lent Books--all--I am afraid I do not return all--I must fog your memories about them--however with many thanks here are the remainder--which I am afraid are not worth so much now as they were six months ago--I mean the fashions may have changed--

Yours truly

JOHN KEATS.

XLI.--TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.

Teignmouth, Friday [March 13, 1818].[50]

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 you should 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 had better stop--I went down to prevent his coming up. Will not this do? turn it which way you like--it is selvaged all round. I have used it, these three last days, to keep out the abominable Devonshire weather--by the by, you may say what you will of Devonshire: the truth is, it is a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod county. The hills are very beautiful, when you get a sight of 'em--the primroses are out, but then you are in--the Cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then the Clouds are continually vieing with them--the Women like your London people in a sort of negative way--because the native men are the poorest creatures in England--because Government never have thought it worth while to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworth's sonnet "Vanguard of Liberty! ye men of Kent!" the degenerated race about me are Pulvis ipecac. simplex--a strong dose. Were I a corsair, I'd make a descent on the south coast of Devon; if I did not run the chance of having Cowardice imputed to me. As for the men, they'd run away into the Methodist meeting-houses, and the women would be glad of it. Had England been a large Devonshire, we should not have won the Battle of Waterloo.

There are knotted oaks--there are l.u.s.ty rivulets? there are meadows such as are not--there are valleys of feminine[51] climate--but there are no thews and sinews--Moore'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 Caesar 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,"[51] 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 pa.s.sable, 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 pa.s.sages 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"--

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year; There are four seasons in the mind of Man: He hath his l.u.s.ty Spring, when Fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span: He has his Summer, when luxuriously He chews the honied cud of fair Spring thoughts, Till in his Soul, dissolv'd, they come to be Part of himself: He hath his Autumn Ports And havens of repose, when his tired wings Are folded up, and he content to look[52]

On Mists in idleness--to let fair things Pa.s.s by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his winter too of Pale misfeature, Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

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 must not stare if in any future letter, I endeavour to prove that Apollo, as he had catgut strings to his lyre, used a cat's paw as a pecten--and further from said Pecten's reiterated and continual teasing came the term _hen-pecked_. My Brother Tom desires to be remembered to you; he has just this moment had a spitting of blood, poor fellow--Remember me to Gleig and Whitehead.

Your affectionate friend

JOHN KEATS.

XLII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

Teignmouth, Sat.u.r.day [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 5--ditto--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 superst.i.tion. Buy a girdle--put a pebble in your mouth--loosen 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 way with bramble 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!"[53] 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. I wish it was all done; for I want to forget it and make my mind free for something new--Atkins the Coachman, Bartlett the Surgeon, Simmons the Barber, and the Girls over at the Bonnet-shop, say we shall now have a month of seasonable weather--warm, witty, and full of invention--Write to me and tell me that you are well or thereabouts, or by the holy Beaucoeur, which I suppose is the Virgin Mary, or the repented Magdalen (beautiful name, that Magdalen), I'll take to my Wings and fly away to anywhere but old or Nova Scotia--I wish I had a little innocent bit of Metaphysic in my head, to criss-cross the letter: but you know a favourite tune is hardest to be remembered when one wants it most and you, I know, have long ere this taken it for granted that I never have any speculations without a.s.sociating you in them, where they are of a pleasant nature, and you know enough of me to tell the places where I haunt most, so that if you think for five minutes after having read this, you will find it a long letter, and see written in the Air above you,

Your most affectionate friend

JOHN KEATS.

Remember me to all. Tom's remembrances to you.

XLIII.--TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.

Teignmouth, Sat.u.r.day Morn [March 21, 1818].

My dear Haydon--In sooth, I hope you are not too sanguine about that seal--in sooth I hope it is not Brumidgeum--in double sooth I hope it is his--and in triple sooth I hope I shall have an impression.[54] Such a piece of intelligence came doubly welcome to me while in your own County and in your own hand--not but I have blown up the said County for its urinal qualifications--the six first days I was here it did nothing but rain; and at that time having to write to a friend I gave Devonshire a good blowing up--it has been fine for almost three days, and I was coming round a bit; but to-day it rains again--with me the County is yet upon its good behaviour. I have enjoyed the most delightful Walks these three fine days beautiful enough to make me content.

Here all the summer could I stay, For there's Bishop's teign And King's teign And Coomb at the clear teign head-- Where close by the stream You may have your cream All spread upon barley bread.

There's arch Brook And there's larch Brook Both turning many a mill; And cooling the drouth Of the salmon's mouth, And fattening his silver gill.

There is Wild wood, A Mild hood To the sheep on the lea o' the down, Where the golden furze, With its green, thin spurs, Doth catch at the maiden's gown.

There is Newton marsh With its spear gra.s.s harsh-- A pleasant summer level Where the maidens sweet Of the Market Street, Do meet in the dusk to revel.

There's the Barton rich With d.y.k.e and ditch And hedge for the thrush to live in And the hollow tree For the buzzing bee And a bank for the wasp to hive in.

And O, and O The daisies blow And the primroses are waken'd, And the violets white Sit in silver plight, And the green bud's as long as the spike end.

Then who would go Into dark Soho, And chatter with dack'd hair'd critics, When he can stay For the new-mown hay, And startle the dappled p.r.i.c.kets?

I know not if this rhyming fit has done anything--it will be safe with you if worthy to put among my Lyrics. Here's some doggrel for you--Perhaps you would like a bit of b----hrell--

Where be ye going, you Devon Maid?

And what have you there in the Basket?

Ye tight little fairy just fresh from the dairy, Will ye give me some cream if I ask it?