Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Part 19

Remember us particularly to your Mother.

Your sincere friend

JOHN KEATS.

LXIX.--TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE.

[Hampstead, September 21 1818.]

My dear Dilke--According to the Wentworth place Bulletin you have left Brighton much improved: therefore now a few lines will be more of a pleasure than a bore. I have things to say to you, and would fain begin upon them in this fourth line: but I have a Mind too well regulated to proceed upon anything without due preliminary remarks.--You may perhaps have observed that in the simple process of eating radishes I never begin at the root but constantly dip the little green head in the salt--that in the Game of Whist if I have an ace I constantly play it first. So how can I with any face begin without a dissertation on letter-writing? Yet when I consider that a sheet of paper contains room only for three pages and a half, how can I do justice to such a pregnant subject? However, as you have seen the history of the world stamped as it were by a diminishing gla.s.s in the form of a chronological Map, so will I "with retractile claws" draw this into the form of a table--whereby it will occupy merely the remainder of this first page--

Folio--Parsons, Lawyers, Statesmen, Physicians out of place--ut--Eustace--Thornton--out of practice or on their travels.

Foolscap--1. Superfine--Rich or n.o.ble poets--ut Byron. 2. common ut egomet.

Quarto--Projectors, Patentees, Presidents, Potato growers.

Bath--Boarding schools, and suburbans in general.

Gilt edge--Dandies in general, male, female, and literary.

Octavo or tears--All who make use of a lascivious seal.

Duodec.--May be found for the most part on Milliners' and Dressmakers' Parlour tables.

Strip--At the Playhouse-doors, or anywhere.

Slip--Being but a variation.

Snip--So called from its size being disguised by a twist.

I suppose you will have heard that Hazlitt has on foot a prosecution against Blackwood. I dined with him a few days since at Hessey's--there was not a word said about it, though I understand he is excessively vexed.

Reynolds, by what I hear, is almost over-happy, and Rice is in town. I have not seen him, nor shall I for some time, as my throat has become worse after getting well, and I am determined to stop at home till I am quite well. I was going to Town to-morrow with Mrs. D. but I thought it best to ask her excuse this morning. I wish I could say Tom was any better. His ident.i.ty presses upon me so all day that I am obliged to go out--and although I intended to have given some time to study alone, I am obliged to write and plunge into abstract images to ease myself of his countenance, his voice, and feebleness--so that I live now in a continual fever. It must be poisonous to life, although I feel well. Imagine "the hateful siege of contraries"--if I think of fame, of poetry, it seems a crime to me, and yet I must do so or suffer. I am sorry to give you pain--I am almost resolved to burn this--but I really have not self-possession and magnanimity enough to manage the thing otherwise--after all it may be a nervousness proceeding from the Mercury.

Bailey I hear is gaining his spirits, and he will yet be what I once thought impossible, a cheerful Man--I think he is not quite so much spoken of in Little Britain. I forgot to ask Mrs. Dilke if she had anything she wanted to say immediately to you. This morning look'd so unpromising that I did not think she would have gone--but I find she has, on sending for some volumes of Gibbon. I was in a little funk yesterday, for I sent in an unseal'd note of sham abuse, until I recollected, from what I heard Charles say, that the servant could neither read nor write--not even to her Mother as Charles observed. I have just had a Letter from Reynolds--he is going on gloriously. The following is a translation of a line of Ronsard--

Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins.

You have pa.s.sed your Romance, and I never gave in to it, or else I think this line a feast for one of your Lovers. How goes it with Brown?

Your sincere friend

JOHN KEATS.

LXX.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

[Hampstead, about September 22, 1818.]

My dear Reynolds--Believe me I have rather rejoiced at your happiness than fretted at your silence. Indeed I am grieved on your account that I am not at the same time happy--But I conjure you to think at Present of nothing but pleasure--"Gather the rose, etc."--gorge the honey of life. I pity you as much that it cannot last for ever, as I do myself now drinking bitters.

Give yourself up to it--you cannot help it--and I have a Consolation in thinking so. I never was in love--Yet the voice and shape of a Woman has haunted me these two days[80]--at such a time, when the relief, the feverous relief of Poetry seems a much less crime--This morning Poetry has conquered--I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life--I feel escaped from a new strange and threatening sorrow--And I am thankful for it--There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of Immortality.

Poor Tom--that woman--and Poetry were ringing changes in my senses--Now I am in comparison happy--I am sensible this will distress you--you must forgive me. Had I known you would have set out so soon I could have sent you the 'Pot of Basil' for I had copied it out ready.--Here is a free translation of a Sonnet of Ronsard, which I think will please you--I have the loan of his works--they have great Beauties.

Nature withheld Ca.s.sandra in the skies, For more adornment, a full thousand years; She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes, And shap'd and tinted her above all Peers: Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings, And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes With such a richness that the cloudy Kings Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs.

When from the Heavens I saw her first descend, My heart took fire, and only burning pains, They were my pleasures--they my Life's sad end; Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins.

I had not the original by me when I wrote it, and did not recollect the purport of the last lines.

I should have seen Rice ere this--but I am confined by Sawrey's mandate in the house now, and have as yet only gone out in fear of the damp night.--You know what an undangerous matter it is. I shall soon be quite recovered--Your offer I shall remember as though it had even now taken place in fact--I think it cannot be. Tom is not up yet--I cannot say he is better. I have not heard from George.

Your affectionate friend

JOHN KEATS.

LXXI.--TO f.a.n.n.y KEATS.

[Hampstead, October 9, 1818.]

My dear f.a.n.n.y--Poor Tom is about the same as when you saw him last; perhaps weaker--were it not for that I should have been over to pay you a visit these fine days. I got to the stage half an hour before it set out and counted the buns and tarts in a Pastry-cook's window and was just beginning with the Jellies. There was no one in the Coach who had a Mind to eat me like Mr. Sham-deaf. I shall be punctual in enquiring about next Thursday--

Your affectionate Brother

JOHN.

LXXII.--TO JAMES AUGUSTUS HESSEY.

[Hampstead, October 9, 1818.]

My dear Hessey--You are very good in sending me the letters from the Chronicle--and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a kindness sooner--pray forgive me. It has so chanced that I have had that paper every day--I have seen to-day's. I cannot but feel indebted to those Gentlemen who have taken my part--As for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness.--Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own Works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could possibly inflict--and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to the slip-shod Endymion.[81] That it is so is no fault of mine. No!--though it may sound a little paradoxical. It is as good as I had power to make it--by myself--Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble--I will write independently.--I have written independently _without Judgment_. I may write independently, and _with Judgment_, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself--That which is creative must create itself--In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green sh.o.r.e, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest--But I am nigh getting into a rant. So, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse etc. I am

Yours very sincerely