Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Part 25

How unreasonable! I want a few more lines from you for George--there are some young Men, acquaintances of a Schoolfellow of mine, going out to Birkbeck's at the latter end of this Month--I am in expectation every day of hearing from George--I begin to fear his last letters miscarried. I shall be in town to-morrow--if you should not be in town, I shall send this little parcel by the Walthamstow Coach--I think you will like Goldsmith--Write me soon--

Your affectionate Brother

JOHN ----.

Mrs. Dilke has not been very well--she is gone a walk to town to-day for exercise.

XCII.--TO GEORGE AND GEORGIANA KEATS.

Sunday Morn{g.} February 14, [1819].

My dear Brother and Sister--How is it that we have not heard from you from the Settlement yet? The letters must surely have miscarried. I am in expectation every day. Peachey wrote me a few days ago, saying some more acquaintances of his were preparing to set out for Birkbeck; therefore, I shall take the opportunity of sending you what I can muster in a sheet or two. I am still at Wentworth Place--indeed, I have kept indoors lately, resolved if possible to rid myself of my sore throat; consequently I have not been to see your Mother since my return from Chichester; but my absence from her has been a great weight upon me. I say since my return from Chichester--I believe I told you I was going thither. I was nearly a fortnight at Mr. John Snook's and a few days at old Mr. Dilke's. Nothing worth speaking of happened at either place. I took down some thin paper and wrote on it a little poem called St. Agnes's Eve, which you shall have as it is when I have finished the blank part of the rest for you. I went out twice at Chichester to dowager Card parties. I see very little now, and very few persons, being almost tired of men and things. Brown and Dilke are very kind and considerate towards me. The Miss R.'s have been stopping next door lately, but are very dull. Miss Brawne and I have every now and then a chat and a tiff. Brown and Dilke are walking round their garden, hands in pockets, making observations. The literary world I know nothing about. There is a poem from Rogers dead born; and another satire is expected from Byron, called "Don Giovanni." Yesterday I went to town for the first time for these three weeks. I met people from all parts and of all sets--Mr. Towers, one of the Holts, Mr. Dominie Williams, Mr.

Woodhouse, Mrs. Hazlitt and son, Mrs. Webb, and Mrs. Septimus Brown. Mr.

Woodhouse was looking up at a book window in Newgate Street, and, being short-sighted, twisted his muscles into so queer a stage that I stood by in doubt whether it was him or his brother, if he has one, and turning round, saw Mrs. Hazlitt, with that little Nero, her son. Woodhouse, on his features subsiding, proved to be Woodhouse, and not his brother. I have had a little business with Mr. Abbey from time to time; he has behaved to me with a little Brusquerie: this hurt me a little, especially when I knew him to be the only man in England who dared to say a thing to me I did not approve of without its being resented, or at least noticed--so I wrote him about it, and have made an alteration in my favour--I expect from this to see more of f.a.n.n.y, who has been quite shut out from me. I see Cobbett has been attacking the Settlement, but I cannot tell what to believe, and shall be all out at elbows till I hear from you. I am invited to Miss Millar's birthday dance on the 19th--I am nearly sure I shall not be able to go. A dance would injure my throat very much. I see very little of Reynolds. Hunt, I hear, is going on very badly--I mean in money matters.

I shall not be surprised to hear of the worst. Haydon too, in consequence of his eyes, is out at elbows. I live as prudently as it is possible for me to do. I have not seen Haslam lately. I have not seen Richards for this half year, Rice for three months, or Charles Cowden Clarke for G.o.d knows when.

When I last called in Henrietta Street[88] Miss Millar was very unwell, and Miss Waldegrave as staid and self-possessed as usual. Henry was well.

There are two new tragedies--one by the apostate Maw, and one by Miss Jane Porter. Next week I am going to stop at Taylor's for a few days, when I will see them both and tell you what they are. Mr. and Mrs. Bentley are well, and all the young carrots. I said nothing of consequence pa.s.sed at Snook's--no more than this--that I like the family very much. Mr. and Mrs.

Snook were very kind We used to have a little religion and politics together almost every evening,--and sometimes about you. He proposed writing out for me his experience in farming, for me to send to you. If I should have an opportunity of talking to him about it, I will get all I can at all events; but you may say in your answer to this what value you place upon such information. I have not seen Mr. Lewis lately, for I have shrank from going up the hill. Mr. Lewis went a few mornings ago to town with Mrs. Brawne. They talked about me, and I heard that Mr. L. said a thing I am not at all contented with. Says he, "O, he is quite the little poet." Now this is abominable--You might as well say Buonaparte is quite the little soldier. You see what it is to be under six foot and not a lord. There is a long fuzz to-day in the Examiner about a young man who delighted a young woman with a valentine--I think it must be Ollier's.

Brown and I are thinking of pa.s.sing the summer at Brussels--If we do, we shall go about the first of May. We--_i.e._ Brown and I--sit opposite one another all day authorizing (_N.B._, an "s" instead of a "z" would give a different meaning). He is at present writing a story of an old woman who lived in a forest, and to whom the Devil or one of his aides-de-feu came one night very late and in disguise. The old dame sets before him pudding after pudding--mess after mess--which he devours, and moreover casts his eyes up at a side of Bacon hanging over his head, and at the same time asks if her Cat is a Rabbit. On going he leaves her three pips of Eve's Apple, and somehow she, having lived a virgin all her life, begins to repent of it, and wished herself beautiful enough to make all the world and even the other world fall in love with her. So it happens, she sets out from her smoky cottage in magnificent apparel.--The first City she enters, every one falls in love with her, from the Prince to the Blacksmith. A young gentleman on his way to the Church to be married leaves his unfortunate Bride and follows this nonsuch--A whole regiment of soldiers are smitten at once and follow her--A whole convent of Monks in Corpus Christi procession join the soldiers.--The mayor and corporation follow the same road--Old and young, deaf and dumb,--all but the blind,--are smitten, and form an immense concourse of people, who----what Brown will do with them I know not. The devil himself falls in love with her, flies away with her to a desert place, in consequence of which she lays an infinite number of eggs--the eggs being hatched from time to time, fill the world with many nuisances, such as John Knox, George Fox, Johanna Southcote, and Gifford.

There have been within a fortnight eight failures of the highest consequence in London. Brown went a few evenings since to Davenport's, and on his coming in he talked about bad news in the city with such a face I began to think of a national bankruptcy. I did not feel much surprised and was rather disappointed. Carlisle, a bookseller on the Hone principle, has been issuing pamphlets from his shop in Fleet Street called the Deist. He was conveyed to Newgate last Thursday; he intends making his own defence.

I was surprised to hear from Taylor the amount of money of the bookseller's last sale. What think you of 25,000? He sold 4000 copies of Lord Byron. I am sitting opposite the Shakspeare I brought from the Isle of Wight--and I never look at him but the silk ta.s.sels on it give me as much pleasure as the face of the poet itself.[89]

In my next packet, as this is one by the way, I shall send you the Pot of Basil, St. Agnes Eve, and if I should have finished it, a little thing called the Eve of St. Mark. You see what fine Mother Radcliff names I have--it is not my fault--I do not search for them. I have not gone on with Hyperion--for to tell the truth I have not been in great cue for writing lately--I must wait for the spring to rouse me up a little. The only time I went out from Bedhampton was to see a chapel consecrated--Brown, I, and John Snook the boy, went in a chaise behind a leaden horse. Brown drove, but the horse did not mind him. This chapel is built by a Mr. Way, a great Jew converter, who in that line has spent one hundred thousand pounds. He maintains a great number of poor Jews--_Of course his communion plate was stolen_. He spoke to the clerk about it--The clerk said he was very sorry, adding, "_I dare shay, your honour, it's among ush_."

The chapel is built in Mr. Way's park. The consecration was not amusing.

There were numbers of carriages--and his house crammed with clergy--They sanctified the Chapel, and it being a wet day, consecrated the burial-ground through the vestry window. I begin to hate parsons; they did not make me love them that day when I saw them in their proper colours. A parson is a Lamb in a drawing-room, and a Lion in a vestry. The notions of Society will not permit a parson to give way to his temper in any shape--So he festers in himself--his features get a peculiar, diabolical, self-sufficient, iron stupid expression. He is continually acting--his mind is against every man, and every man's mind is against him--He is a hypocrite to the Believer and a coward to the unbeliever--He must be either a knave or an idiot--and there is no man so much to be pitied as an idiot parson. The soldier who is cheated into an Esprit du Corps by a red coat, a band, and colours, for the purpose of nothing, is not half so pitiable as the parson who is led by the nose by the Bench of Bishops and is smothered in absurdities--a poor necessary subaltern of the Church.

Friday, Feb{y.} 18.

The day before yesterday I went to Romney Street--your Mother was not at home--but I have just written her that I shall see her on Wednesday. I call'd on Mr. Lewis this morning--he is very well--and tells me not to be uneasy about Letters, the chances being so arbitrary. He is going on as usual among his favourite democrat papers. We had a chat as usual about Cobbett and the Westminster electors. Dilke has lately been very much harra.s.sed about the manner of educating his son--he at length decided for a public school--and then he did not know what school--he at last has decided for Westminster; and as Charley is to be a day boy, Dilke will remove to Westminster. We lead very quiet lives here--Dilke is at present in Greek histories and antiquities, and talks of nothing but the electors of Westminster and the retreat of the ten-thousand. I never drink now above three gla.s.ses of wine--and never any spirits and water. Though by the bye, the other day Woodhouse took me to his coffee house and ordered a Bottle of Claret--now I like Claret, whenever I can have Claret I must drink it,--'tis the only palate affair that I am at all sensual in. Would it not be a good speck to send you some vine roots--could it be done? I'll enquire--If you could make some wine like Claret to drink on summer evenings in an arbour! For really 'tis so fine--it fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness--then goes down cool and feverless--then you do not feel it quarrelling with your liver--no, it is rather a Peacemaker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape; then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal Part of it mounts into the brain, not a.s.saulting the cerebral apartments like a bully in a bad-house looking for his trull and hurrying from door to door bouncing against the wainstcoat, but rather walks like Aladdin about his own enchanted palace so gently that you do not feel his step. Other wines of a heavy and spirituous nature transform a Man to a Silenus: this makes him a Hermes--and gives a Woman the soul and immortality of Ariadne, for whom Bacchus always kept a good cellar of claret--and even of that he could never persuade her to take above two cups. I said this same claret is the only palate-pa.s.sion I have--I forgot game--I must plead guilty to the breast of a Partridge, the back of a hare, the backbone of a grouse, the wing and side of a Pheasant and a Woodc.o.c.k _pa.s.sim_. Talking of game (I wish I could make it), the Lady whom I met at Hastings and of whom I said something in my last I think has lately made me many presents of game, and enabled me to make as many. She made me take home a Pheasant the other day, which I gave to Mrs.

Dilke; on which to-morrow Rice, Reynolds and the Wentworthians will dine next door. The next I intend for your Mother. These moderate sheets of paper are much more pleasant to write upon than those large thin sheets which I hope you by this time have received--though that can't be, now I think of it. I have not said in any Letter yet a word about my affairs--in a word I am in no despair about them--my poem has not at all succeeded; in the course of a year or so I think I shall try the public again--in a selfish point of view I should suffer my pride and my contempt of public opinion to hold me silent--but for yours and f.a.n.n.y's sake I will pluck up a spirit and try again. I have no doubt of success in a course of years if I persevere--but it must be patience, for the Reviews have enervated and made indolent men's minds--few think for themselves. These Reviews too are getting more and more powerful, especially the Quarterly--they are like a superst.i.tion which the more it prostrates the Crowd and the longer it continues the more powerful it becomes just in proportion to their increasing weakness. I was in hopes that when people saw, as they must do now, all the trickery and iniquity of these Plagues they would scout them, but no, they are like the spectators at the Westminster c.o.c.k-pit--they like the battle and do not care who wins or who loses. Brown is going on this morning with the story of his old woman and the Devil--He makes but slow progress--The fact is it is a Libel on the Devil, and as that person is Brown's Muse, look ye, if he libels his own Muse how can he expect to write? Either Brown or his Muse must turn tail. Yesterday was Charley Dilke's birthday. Brown and I were invited to tea. During the evening nothing pa.s.sed worth notice but a little conversation between Mrs. Dilke and Mrs. Brawne. The subject was the Watchman. It was ten o'clock, and Mrs. Brawne, who lived during the summer in Brown's house and now lives in the Road, recognised her old Watchman's voice, and said that he came as far as her now. "Indeed," said Mrs. D., "does he turn the Corner?" There have been some Letters pa.s.sed between me and Haslam but I have not seen him lately. The day before yesterday--which I made a day of Business--I called upon him--he was out as usual. Brown has been walking up and down the room a-breeding--now at this moment he is being delivered of a couplet, and I daresay will be as well as can be expected. Gracious--he has twins!

I have a long story to tell you about Bailey--I will say first the circ.u.mstances as plainly and as well as I can remember, and then I will make my comment. You know that Bailey was very much cut up about a little Jilt in the country somewhere. I thought he was in a dying state about it when at Oxford with him: little supposing, as I have since heard, that he was at that very time making impatient Love to Marian Reynolds--and guess my astonishment at hearing after this that he had been trying at Miss Martin. So Matters have been--So Matters stood--when he got ordained and went to a Curacy near Carlisle, where the family of the Gleigs reside.

There his susceptible heart was conquered by Miss Gleig--and thereby all his connections in town have been annulled--both male and female. I do not now remember clearly the facts--These however I know--He showed his correspondence with Marian to Gleig, returned all her Letters and asked for his own--he also wrote very abrupt Letters to Mrs. Reynolds. I do not know any more of the Martin affair than I have written above. No doubt his conduct has been very bad. The great thing to be considered is--whether it is want of delicacy and principle or want of knowledge and polite experience. And again weakness--yes, that is it; and the want of a Wife--yes, that is it; and then Marian made great Bones of him although her Mother and sister have teased her very much about it. Her conduct has been very upright throughout the whole affair--She liked Bailey as a Brother but not as a Husband--especially as he used to woo her with the Bible and Jeremy Taylor under his arm--they walked in no grove but Jeremy Taylor's. Marian's obstinacy is some excuse, but his so quickly taking to Miss Gleig can have no excuse--except that of a Ploughman who wants a wife. The thing which sways me more against him than anything else is Rice's conduct on the occasion; Rice would not make an immature resolve: he was ardent in his friendship for Bailey, he examined the whole for and against minutely; and he has abandoned Bailey entirely. All this I am not supposed by the Reynoldses to have any hint of. It will be a good lesson to the Mother and Daughters--nothing would serve but Bailey. If you mentioned the word Tea-pot some one of them came out with an a propros about Bailey--n.o.ble fellow--fine fellow! was always in their mouths--This may teach them that the man who ridicules romance is the most romantic of Men--that he who abuses women and slights them loves them the most--that he who talks of roasting a Man alive would not do it when it came to the push--and above all, that they are very shallow people who take everything literally. A Man's life of any worth is a continual allegory, and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life--a life like the scriptures, figurative--which such people can no more make out than they can the Hebrew Bible. Lord Byron cuts a figure but he is not figurative--Shakspeare led a life of Allegory: his works are the comments on it--

March 12, Friday.

I went to town yesterday chiefly for the purpose of seeing some young Men who were to take some Letters for us to you--through the medium of Peachey. I was surprised and disappointed at hearing they had changed their minds, and did not purpose going so far as Birkbeck's. I was much disappointed, for I had counted upon seeing some persons who were to see you--and upon your seeing some who had seen me. I have not only lost this opportunity, but the sail of the Post-Packet to New York or Philadelphia, by which last your Brothers have sent some Letters. The weather in town yesterday was so stifling that I could not remain there though I wanted much to see Kean in Hotspur. I have by me at present Hazlitt's Letter to Gifford--perhaps you would like an extract or two from the high-seasoned parts. It begins thus:

"Sir, you have an ugly trick of saying what is not true of any one you do not like; and it will be the object of this Letter to cure you of it. You say what you please of others; it is time you were told what you are. In doing this give me leave to borrow the familiarity of your style:--for the fidelity of the picture I shall be answerable. You are a little person but a considerable cat's paw; and so far worthy of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons high in office constantly influences your opinions and alone gives importance to them. You are the government critic, a character nicely differing from that of a government spy--the invisible link which connects literature with the Police."

Again:

"Your employers, Mr. Gifford, do not pay their hirelings for nothing--for condescending to notice weak and wicked sophistry; for pointing out to contempt what excites no admiration; for cautiously selecting a few specimens of bad taste and bad grammar where nothing else is to be found. They want your invisible pertness, your mercenary malice, your impenetrable dulness, your bare-faced impudence, your pragmatical self-sufficiency, your hypocritical zeal, your pious frauds to stand in the gap of their Prejudices and pretensions to fly-blow and taint public opinion, to defeat independent efforts, to apply not the touch of the scorpion but the touch of the Torpedo to youthful hopes, to crawl and leave the slimy track of sophistry and lies over every work that does not dedicate its sweet leaves to some Luminary of the treasury bench, or is not fostered in the hotbed of corruption. This is your office; 'this is what is look'd for at your hands, and this you do not baulk'--to sacrifice what little honesty and prost.i.tute what little intellect you possess to any dirty job you are commission'd to execute. 'They keep you as an ape does an apple in the corner of his jaw, first mouth'd to be at last swallow'd.' You are by appointment literary toadeater to greatness and taster to the court. You have a natural aversion to whatever differs from your own pretensions, and an acquired one for what gives offence to your superiors. Your vanity panders to your interest, and your malice truckles only to your love of Power. If your instructive or premeditated abuse of your enviable trust were found wanting in a single instance; if you were to make a single slip in getting up your select committee of enquiry and green bag report of the state of Letters, your occupation would be gone.

You would never after obtain a squeeze of the hand from acquaintance, or a smile from a Punk of Quality. The great and powerful whom you call wise and good do not like to have the privacy of their self-love startled by the obtrusive and unmanageable claims of Literature and Philosophy, except through the intervention of people like you, whom, if they have common penetration, they soon find out to be without any superiority of intellect; or if they do not, whom they can despise for their meanness of soul. You 'have the office opposite to Saint Peter.' You keep a corner in the public mind for foul prejudice and corrupt power to knot and gender in; you volunteer your services to people of quality to ease scruples of mind and qualms of conscience; you lay the flattering unction of venal prose and laurell'd verse to their souls. You persuade them that there is neither purity of morals, nor depth of understanding except in themselves and their hangers-on; and would prevent the unhallow'd names of Liberty and humanity from ever being whispered in ears polite! You, sir, do you not all this? I cry you mercy then: I took you for the Editor of the Quarterly Review."

This is the sort of feu de joie he keeps up. There is another extract or two--one especially which I will copy to-morrow--for the candles are burnt down and I am using the wax taper--which has a long snuff on it--the fire is at its last click--I am sitting with my back to it with one foot rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated from the carpet--I am writing this on the Maid's Tragedy, which I have read since tea with great pleasure--Besides this volume of Beaumont and Fletcher, there are on the table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of Tom Moore's, called Tom Cribb's Memorial to Congress--nothing in it. These are trifles--but I require nothing so much of you but that you will give one a like description of yourselves, however it may be when you are writing to me. Could I see the same thing done of any great Man long since dead it would be a great delight: as to know in what position Shakspeare sat when he began "To be or not to be"--such things become interesting from distance of time or place. I hope you are both now in that sweet sleep which no two beings deserve more than you do--I must fancy so--and please myself in the fancy of speaking a prayer and a blessing over you and your lives--G.o.d bless you--I whisper good-night in your ears, and you will dream of me.

March 13, Sat.u.r.day.

I have written to f.a.n.n.y this morning and received a note from Haslam. I was to have dined with him to-morrow: he gives me a bad account of his Father, who has not been in Town for five weeks, and is not well enough for company. Haslam is well--and from the prosperous state of some love affair he does not mind the double tides he has to work. I have been a Walk past west end--and was going to call at Mr. Monkhouse's--but I did not, not being in the humour. I know not why Poetry and I have been so distant lately; I must make some advances soon or she will cut me entirely. Hazlitt has this fine Pa.s.sage in his Letter: Gifford in his Review of Hazlitt's characters of Shakspeare's plays attacks the Coriola.n.u.s critique. He says that Hazlitt has slandered Shakspeare in saying that he had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question.

Hazlitt thus defends himself,

"My words are, 'Coriola.n.u.s is a storehouse of political commonplaces.

The Arguments for and against aristocracy and democracy on the Privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on Liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a Poet and the acuteness of a Philosopher. Shakspeare himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin, and to have spared no occasion of bating the rabble. What he says of them is very true; what he says of their betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it.' I then proceed to account for this by showing how it is that 'the cause of the people is but little calculated for a subject for poetry; or that the language of Poetry naturally falls in with the language of power.' I affirm, Sir, that Poetry, that the imagination generally speaking, delights in power, in strong excitement, as well as in truth, in good, in right, whereas pure reason and the moral sense approve only of the true and good. I proceed to show that this general love or tendency to immediate excitement or theatrical effect, no matter how produced, gives a Bias to the imagination often consistent with the greatest good, that in Poetry it triumphs over principle, and bribes the pa.s.sions to make a sacrifice of common humanity. You say that it does not, that there is no such original Sin in Poetry, that it makes no such sacrifice or unworthy compromise between poetical effect and the still small voice of reason. And how do you prove that there is no such principle giving a bias to the imagination and a false colouring to poetry? Why, by asking in reply to the instances where this principle operates, and where no other can with much modesty and simplicity--'But are these the only topics that afford delight in Poetry, etc.?' No; but these objects do afford delight in poetry, and they afford it in proportion to their strong and often tragical effect, and not in proportion to the good produced, or their desireableness in a moral point of view. Do we read with more pleasure of the ravages of a beast of prey than of the Shepherd's pipe upon the Mountain? No; but we do read with pleasure of the ravages of a beast of prey, and we do so on the principle I have stated, namely, from the sense of power abstracted from the sense of good; and it is the same principle that makes us read with admiration and reconciles us in fact to the triumphant progress of the conquerors and mighty Hunters of mankind, who come to stop the Shepherd's Pipe upon the Mountains and sweep away his listening flock. Do you mean to deny that there is anything imposing to the imagination in power, in grandeur, in outward show, in the acc.u.mulation of individual wealth and luxury, at the expense of equal justice and the common weal? Do you deny that there is anything in the 'Pride, Pomp, and Circ.u.mstance of glorious war, that makes ambition virtue' in the eyes of admiring mult.i.tudes? Is this a new theory of the pleasures of the imagination, which says that the pleasures of the imagination do not take rise solely in the calculation of the understanding? Is it a paradox of my creating that 'one murder makes a villain millions a Hero'? or is it not true that here, as in other cases, the enormity of the evil overpowers and makes a convert of the imagination by its very magnitude? You contradict my reasoning because you know nothing of the question, and you think that no one has a right to understand what you do not. My offence against purity in the pa.s.sage alluded to, 'which contains the concentrated venom of my malignity,' is that I have admitted that there are tyrants and slaves abroad in the world; and you would hush the matter up and pretend that there is no such thing in order that there may be nothing else. Further, I have explained the cause, the subtle sophistry of the human mind, that tolerates and pampers the evil in order to guard against its approaches; you would conceal the cause in order to prevent the cure, and to leave the proud flesh about the heart to harden and ossify into one impenetrable ma.s.s of selfishness and hypocrisy, that we may not 'sympathise in the distresses of suffering virtue' in any case in which they come in compet.i.tion with the fict.i.tious wants and 'imputed weaknesses of the great.' You ask, 'Are we gratified by the cruelties of Domitian or Nero?' No, not we--they were too petty and cowardly to strike the imagination at a distance; but the Roman senate tolerated them, addressed their perpetrators, exalted them into G.o.ds, the fathers of the people, they had pimps and scribblers of all sorts in their pay, their Senecas, etc., till a turbulent rabble, thinking there were no injuries to Society greater than the endurance of unlimited and wanton oppression, put an end to the farce and abated the sin as well as they could. Had you and I lived in those times we should have been what we are now, I 'a sour malcontent,' and you 'a sweet courtier.'"

The manner in which this is managed: the force and innate power with which it yeasts and works up itself--the feeling for the costume of society; is in a style of genius. He hath a demon, as he himself says of Lord Byron.

We are to have a party this evening. The Davenports from Church Row--I don't think you know anything of them--they have paid me a good deal of attention. I like Davenport himself. The names of the rest are Miss Barnes, Miss Winter with the Children.

[Later, March 17 or 18.]

On Monday we had to dinner Severn and Cawthorn, the Bookseller and print-virtuoso; in the evening Severn went home to paint, and we other three went to the play, to see Sheil's new tragedy ycleped Evadne. In the morning Severn and I took a turn round the Museum--There is a Sphinx there of a giant size, and most voluptuous Egyptian expression, I had not seen it before. The play was bad even in comparison with 1818, the Augustan age of the Drama, "comme on sait," as Voltaire says--the whole was made up of a virtuous young woman, an indignant brother, a suspecting lover, a libertine prince, a gratuitous villain, a street in Naples, a Cypress grove, lilies and roses, virtue and vice, a b.l.o.o.d.y sword, a spangled jacket, one Lady Olivia, one Miss O'Neil alias Evadne, alias Bellamira, alias--Alias--Yea, and I say unto you a greater than Elias--There was Abbot, and talking of Abbot his name puts me in mind of a spelling-book lesson, descriptive of the whole Dramatis personae--Abbot--Abbess--Actor-- Actress--The play is a fine amus.e.m.e.nt, as a friend of mine once said to me--"Do what you will," says he, "a poor gentleman who wants a guinea, cannot spend his two shillings better than at the playhouse." The pantomime was excellent, I had seen it before and I enjoyed it again. Your Mother and I had some talk about Miss H.---- Says I, will Henry have that Miss ----, a lath with a boddice, she who has been fine drawn--fit for nothing but to cut up into Cribbage pins, to the tune of 15.2; one who is all muslin; all feathers and bone; once in travelling she was made use of as a lynch pin; I hope he will not have her, though it is no uncommon thing to be _smitten with a staff_; though she might be very useful as his walking-stick, his fishing-rod, his tooth-pik, his hat-stick (she runs so much in his head)--let him turn farmer, she would cut into hurdles; let him write poetry, she would be his turn-style. Her gown is like a flag on a pole; she would do for him if he turn freemason; I hope she will prove a flag of truce; when she sits languishing with her one foot on a stool, and one elbow on the table, and her head inclined, she looks like the sign of the crooked billet--or the frontispiece to Cinderella, or a tea-paper wood-cut of Mother Shipton at her studies; she is a make-believe--She is bona _s_ide a thin young 'oman--But this is mere talk of a fellow-creature; yet pardie I would not that Henry have her--Non volo ut eam possideat, nam, for, it would be a bam, for it would be a sham--

Don't think I am writing a pet.i.tion to the Governors of St. Luke--no, that would be in another style. May it please your Worships; forasmuch as the undersigned has committed, transferred, given up, made over, consigned, and aberrated himself, to the art and mystery of poetry; forasmuch as he hath cut, rebuffed, affronted, huffed, and shirked, and taken stint at, all other employments, arts, mysteries, and occupations, honest, middling, and dishonest; forasmuch as he hath at sundry times and in divers places, told truth unto the men of this generation, and eke to the women; moreover, forasmuch as he hath kept a pair of boots that did not fit, and doth not admire Sheil's play, Leigh Hunt, Tom Moore, Bob Southey, and Mr.

Rogers; and does admire Wm. Hazlitt; moreoverer for as more as he liketh half of Wordsworth, and none of Crabbe; moreover-est for as most as he hath written this page of penmanship--he prayeth your Worships to give him a lodging--Witnessed by Rd. Abbey and Co., c.u.m familiaribus et consanguineis (signed) Count de c.o.c.kaigne.

The nothing of the day is a machine called the velocipede. It is a wheel carriage to ride c.o.c.k-horse upon, sitting astride and pushing it along with the toes, a rudder wheel in hand--they will go seven miles an hour--A handsome gelding will come to eight guineas; however they will soon be cheaper, unless the army takes to them. I look back upon the last month, I find nothing to write about; indeed I do not recollect anything particular in it. It's all alike; we keep on breathing. The only amus.e.m.e.nt is a little scandal, of however fine a shape, a laugh at a pun--and then after all we wonder how we could enjoy the scandal, or laugh at the pun.

I have been at different times turning it in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a physician; I am afraid I should not take kindly to it; I am sure I could not take fees--and yet I should like to do so; it's not worse than writing poems, and hanging them up to be fly-blown on the Review shambles. Everybody is in his own mess. Here is the parson at Hampstead quarrelling with all the world, he is in the wrong by this same token; when the black cloth was put up in the Church for the Queen's mourning, he asked the workmen to hang it the wrong side outwards, that it might be better when taken down, it being his perquisite--Parsons will always keep up their character, but as it is said there are some animals the ancients knew which we do not, let us hope our posterity will miss the black badger with tri-cornered hat; Who knows but some Reviewer of Buffon or Pliny may put an account of the parson in the Appendix; No one will then believe it any more than we believe in the Phoenix. I think we may cla.s.s the lawyer in the same natural history of Monsters; a green bag will hold as much as a lawn sleeve. The only difference is that one is fustian and the other flimsy; I am not unwilling to read Church history at present and have Milner's in my eye; his is reckoned a very good one.

18th September 1819.

[In looking over some of my papers I found the above specimen of my carelessness. It is a sheet you ought to have had long ago--my letter must have appeared very unconnected, but as I number the sheets you must have discovered how the mistake happened. How many things have happened since I wrote it--How have I acted contrary to my resolves. The interval between writing this sheet and the day I put this supplement to it, has been completely filled with generous and most friendly actions of Brown towards me. How frequently I forget to speak of things which I think of and feel most. 'Tis very singular, the idea about Buffon above has been taken up by Hunt in the Examiner, in some papers which he calls "A Preter-natural History."][90]

Friday 19th March.

This morning I have been reading "the False One." Shameful to say, I was in bed at ten--I mean this morning. The Blackwood Reviewers have committed themselves in a scandalous heresy--they have been putting up Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, against Burns: the senseless villains! The Scotch cannot manage themselves at all, they want imagination, and that is why they are so fond of Hogg, who has a little of it. This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless--I long after a Stanza or two of Thomson's Castle of Indolence--my pa.s.sions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful sensation, about three degrees on this side of faintness.

If I had teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor, but as I am[B] I must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have any alertness of countenance as they pa.s.s by me; they seem rather like figures on a Greek vase--a Man and two women whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguis.e.m.e.nt.[91] This is the only happiness, and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body overpowering the Mind. I have this moment received a note from Haslam, in which he expects the death of his Father, who has been for some time in a state of insensibility; his mother bears up he says very well--I shall go to town to-morrow to see him. This is the world--thus we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure. Circ.u.mstances are like Clouds continually gathering and bursting--While we are laughing, the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events--while we are laughing it sprouts it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck. Even so we have leisure to reason on the misfortunes of our friends; our own touch us too nearly for words. Very few men have ever arrived at a complete disinterestedness of Mind: very few have been influenced by a pure desire of the benefit of others,--in the greater part of the Benefactors to Humanity some meretricious motive has sullied their greatness--some melodramatic scenery has fascinated them. From the manner in which I feel Haslam's misfortune I perceive how far I am from any humble standard of disinterestedness. Yet this feeling ought to be carried to its highest pitch, as there is no fear of its ever injuring society--which it would do, I fear, pushed to an extremity. For in wild nature the Hawk would lose his Breakfast of Robins and the Robin his of Worms--The Lion must starve as well as the swallow. The greater part of Men make their way with the same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye from their purposes, the same animal eagerness as the Hawk. The Hawk wants a Mate, so does the Man--look at them both, they set about it and procure one in the same manner. They want both a nest and they both set about one in the same manner--they get their food in the same manner. The n.o.ble animal Man for his amus.e.m.e.nt smokes his pipe--the Hawk balances about the Clouds--that is the only difference of their leisures. This it is that makes the Amus.e.m.e.nt of Life--to a speculative Mind--I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a Stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered gra.s.s--the creature hath a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along--to what? the Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. But then, as Wordsworth says, "we have all one human heart----" There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify--so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. I have no doubt that thousands of people never heard of have had hearts completely disinterested: I can remember but two--Socrates and Jesus--Their histories evince it. What I heard a little time ago, Taylor observe with respect to Socrates, may be said of Jesus--That he was so great a man that though he transmitted no writing of his own to posterity, we have his Mind and his sayings and his greatness handed to us by others. It is to be lamented that the history of the latter was written and revised by Men interested in the pious frauds of Religion. Yet through all this I see his splendour.

Even here, though I myself am pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal you can think of, I am, however young, writing at random, straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, without knowing the bearing of any one a.s.sertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I not in this be free from sin? May there not be superior beings amused with any graceful, though instinctive, att.i.tude my mind may fall into as I am entertained with the alertness of a Stoat or the anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel in the Streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest Man shows a grace in his quarrel.

By a superior Being our reasonings may take the same tone--though erroneous they may be fine. This is the very thing in which consists Poetry, and if so it is not so fine a thing as philosophy--For the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a thing as a truth. Give me this credit--Do you not think I strive--to know myself? Give me this credit, and you will not think that on my own account I repeat Milton's lines--

"How charming is divine Philosophy, Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, But musical as is Apollo's lute."

No--not for myself--feeling grateful as I do to have got into a state of mind to relish them properly. Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced--Even a Proverb is no proverb to you till your Life has ill.u.s.trated it. I am ever afraid that your anxiety for me will lead you to fear for the violence of my temperament continually smothered down: for that reason I did not intend to have sent you the following sonnet--but look over the two last pages and ask yourselves whether I have not that in me which will bear the buffets of the world. It will be the best comment on my sonnet; it will show you that it was written with no Agony but that of ignorance; with no thirst of anything but Knowledge when pushed to the point though the first steps to it were through my human pa.s.sions--they went away and I wrote with my Mind--and perhaps I must confess a little bit of my heart--

Why did I laugh to-night? No voice will tell: No G.o.d, no Deamon of severe response Deigns to reply from heaven or from h.e.l.l.-- Then to my human heart I turn at once-- Heart! thou and I are here sad and alone; Say, wherefore did I laugh? O mortal pain!

O Darkness! Darkness! ever must I moan, To question Heaven and h.e.l.l and Heart in vain!