Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends Part 9

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, What Elysium have ye known, Happy field, or mossy cavern, Fairer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Have ye tippled drink more fine Than mine Host's Canary wine?

Or are fruits of paradise Sweeter than those dainty pies Of Venison? O generous food Drest as though bold Robin Hood Would with his Maid Marian, Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that, on a day, Mine host's sign-board flew away, No body knew whither, till An astrologer's old Quill To a sheepskin gave the story, Said he saw you in your glory, Underneath a new old-sign Sipping beverage divine, And pledging with contented smack, The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone, Are the winds a sweeter home?

Richer is uncellar'd cavern, Than the merry mermaid Tavern?[46]

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 amus.e.m.e.nt for you this Evening, I remain, copying on the Hill,

Your sincere friend and Co-scribbler

JOHN KEATS.

x.x.xV.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.

Fleet Street, Thursday Morn [February 5, 1818].

My dear Taylor--I have finished copying my Second Book--but I want it for one day to overlook it. And moreover this day I have very particular employ in the affair of Cripps--so I trespa.s.s 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.

x.x.xVI.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.

Hampstead, Sat.u.r.day 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 circ.u.mstances 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 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 ma.n.u.script 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.[47] 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.[48] The Wednesday before last Sh.e.l.ley, 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

JOHN.

x.x.xVII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

[Hampstead, February 19, 1818.]

My dear Reynolds--I had an idea that a Man might pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.sive 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 s.p.a.ce 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 common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these suppositions. It is however quite the contrary. Minds would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child would talk together and the old man be led on his path and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute or a.s.sert, but whisper results to his Neighbour, and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould ethereal every human might become great, and humanity instead of being a wide heath of furze and briars, with here and there a remote Oak or Pine, would become a grand democracy of forest trees. It has been an old comparison for our urging on--the beehive--however it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the Bee--for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving--no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee--its leaves blush deeper in the next spring--and who shall say between Man and Woman which is the most delighted? Now it is more n.o.ble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury:--let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like, buzzing here and there impatiently from a knowledge of what is to be arrived at. But let us open our leaves like a flower, and be pa.s.sive and receptive; budding patiently under the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every n.o.ble insect that favours us with a visit--Sap will be given us for meat, and dew for drink. I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of Idleness. I have not read any Books--the Morning said I was right--I had no idea but of the Morning, and the Thrush said I was right--seeming to say,

"O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind, Whose eye has seen the snow-clouds hung in Mist, And the black Elmtops 'mong the freezing stars: To thee the Spring will be a harvest-time-- O thou, whose only book has been the light Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on Night after night, when Phoebus was away, To thee the Spring shall be a triple morn-- O fret not after knowledge--I have none, And yet my song comes native with the warmth.

O fret not after knowledge--I have none, And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens At thought of idleness cannot be idle, And he's awake who thinks himself asleep."

Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication (however it may neighbour to any truths), to excuse my own indolence--So I will not deceive myself that Man should be equal with Jove--but think himself very well off as a sort of scullion-Mercury or even a humble-bee. It is no matter whether I am right or wrong either one way or another, if there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders--

Your affectionate friend

JOHN KEATS.

x.x.xVIII.--TO GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.

Hampstead, Sat.u.r.day [February 21, 1818].

My dear Brothers--I am extremely sorry to have given you so much uneasiness by not writing; however, you know good news is no news or vice versa. I do not like to write a short letter to you, or you would have had one long before. The weather although boisterous to-day has been very much milder; and I think Devonshire is not the last place to receive a temperate Change. I have been abominably idle since you left, but have just turned over a new leaf, and used as a marker a letter of excuse to an invitation from Horace Smith. The occasion of my writing to-day is the enclosed letter--by Postmark from Miss W----[49] Does she expect you in town George? I received a letter the other day from Haydon, in which he says, his Essays on the Elgin Marbles are being translated into Italian, the which he superintends. I did not mention that I had seen the British Gallery, there are some nice things by Stark, and Bathsheba by Wilkie, which is condemned. I could not bear Alston's Uriel.

Reynolds has been very ill for some time, confined to the house, and had leeches applied to his chest; when I saw him on Wednesday he was much the same, and he is in the worst place for amendment, among the strife of women's tongues, in a hot and parch'd room: I wish he would move to Butler's for a short time. The Thrushes and Blackbirds have been singing me into an idea that it was Spring, and almost that leaves were on the trees. So that black clouds and boisterous winds seem to have mustered and collected in full Divan, for the purpose of convincing me to the contrary.

Taylor says my poem shall be out in a month, I think he will be out before it....

The thrushes are singing now as if they would speak to the winds, because their big brother Jack, the Spring, was not far off. I am reading Voltaire and Gibbon, although I wrote to Reynolds the other day to prove reading of no use; I have not seen Hunt since, I am a good deal with Dilke and Brown, we are very thick; they are very kind to me, they are well. I don't think I could stop in Hampstead but for their neighbourhood. I hear Hazlitt's lectures regularly, his last was on Gray, Collins, Young, etc., and he gave a very fine piece of discriminating Criticism on Swift, Voltaire, and Rabelais. I was very disappointed at his treatment of Chatterton. I generally meet with many I know there. Lord Byron's 4th Canto is expected out, and I heard somewhere, that Walter Scott has a new Poem in readiness.

I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression wherever he visited in town by his egotism, Vanity, and bigotry. Yet he is a great poet if not a philosopher. I have not yet read Sh.e.l.ley's Poem, I do not suppose you have it yet, at the Teignmouth libraries. These double letters must come rather heavy, I hope you have a moderate portion of cash, but don't fret at all, if you have not--Lord! I intend to play at cut and run as well as Falstaff, that is to say, before he got so l.u.s.ty.

I remain praying for your health my dear Brothers

Your affectionate Brother

JOHN.

x.x.xIX.--TO JOHN TAYLOR.

Hampstead, February 27 [1818].

My dear Taylor--Your alteration strikes me as being a great Improvement--And now I will attend to the punctuations you speak of--The comma should be at _soberly_, and in the other pa.s.sage, the Comma should follow _quiet_. I am extremely indebted to you for this alteration, and also for your after admonitions. It is a sorry thing for me that any one should have to overcome prejudices in reading my verses--that affects me more than any hypercriticism on any particular pa.s.sage--In Endymion, I have most likely but moved into the go-cart from the leading-strings--In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre.

1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; It should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.