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ous of good? I am glad you say every man of great views is at times tormented as I am.

(Sunday after.) This morning I received a letter from George, by which it appears that money troubles are to follow up for some time to come-perhaps for always: those vexations are a great hinderance to one; they are not, like envy and detraction, stimulants to further exertions, as being immediately relative and reflected on at the same time with the prime object; but rather like a nettle-leaf or two in your bed. So now I revoke my promise of finishing my Poem by autumn, which I should have done had I gone on as I have done. But I cannot write while my spirit is fevered in a contrary direction, and I am now sure of having plenty of it this summer; at this moment I am in no enviable situation. I feel that I am not in a mood to write any to-day, and it appears that the loss of it is the beginning of all sorts of irregularities. I am extremely glad that a time must come when every hing will leave not a wreck behind. You tell me never to despair. I wish it was as easy for me to observe this saying: truth is, I have a horrid morbidity of temperament, which has shown itself at intervals; it is, I have no doubt, the greatest stumbling-block I have to fear; I may surer say, it is likely to be the cause of my disappointment. However, every ill has its share of good; this, my bane, would at any time enable me to look with an obstinate eye on the very devil himself; or, to be as proud to be the lowest of the human race, as Alfred would be in being of the highest. I am very sure that you do love me as your very brother. I have seen it in your continual anxiety for me, and I assure you that your welfare and fame is, and will be, a chief pleasure to me all my life. I know no one but you who can be fully aware of the turmoil and anxiety, the sacrifice of all that is called comfort, the readiness to measure time by what is done, and to die in six hours, could plans be brought to conclusions; the looking on the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth, and its contents, as materials to form greater things, that is to say, ethereal things-but here I am talking like a madman,greater things than our Creator himself made.

I wrote to

yesterday: scarcely know what I said in it; I could not talk about poetry in the way I should have liked, for

I was not in humor with either his or mine. There is no greater sin, after the seven deadly, than to flatter one's self into the idea of being a great poet, or one of those beings who are privileged to wear out their lives in the pursuit of honor. How comfortable a thing it is to feel that such a crime must bring its heavy penalty, that if one be a self-deluder, accounts must be balanced! I am glad you are hard at work; it will now soon be done. I long to see Wordsworth's, as well as to have mine in; but I would rather not show my face in town till the end of the year, if that would be time enough; if not, I shall be disappointed if you do not write me ever when you think best. I never quite despair, and I read Shakspeare, indeed, I shall, I think, never read any other book much; now this might lead me into a very long confab, but I desist. I am very near agreeing with Hazlitt, that Shakspeare is enough for us. By the by, what a tremendous Southean article this last was. I wish he had left out " gray hairs." It was very gratifying to meet your remarks on the manuscript. I was reading Antony and Cleopatra when I got the paper, and there are several passages applicable to the events you commentate. You say that he arrived by degrees, and not by any single struggle, to the height of his ambition, and that his life had been as common in particular as other men's. makes Enobarbus say,

"Where's Antony?

Eros. He's walking in the garden, and spurns
The rush before him; cries, Fool, Lepidus!"

In the same scene we find

"Let determined things

To destiny hold unbewailed their way."

Dolabella says of Antony's messenger,

"An argument that he is plucked, when hither
He sends so poor a pinion of his wing."

Then again Enobarbus:

Shakspeare

"men's judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,
To suffer all alike."

The following applies well to Bertrand :

"Yet he that can endure

To follow with allegiance a fallen Lord,

Does conquer him, that did his master conquer,

And earns a place i' the story."

'Tis good, too, that the Duke of Wellington has a good word or so in the "Examiner ;" a man ought to have the fame he deserves; and I begin to think that detracting from him is the same thing as from Wordsworth. I wish he (Wordsworth) had a little more taste, and did not in that respect "deal in Lieutenantry." You should have heard from me before this; but, in the first place, I did not like to do so, before I had got a little way in the first Book, and in the next, as G. told me you were going to write, I delayed till I heard from you. So now in the name of Shakspeare, Raphael, and all our Saints, I commend you to the care of Heaven.

Your everlasting friend,

JOHN KEATS.

In the early part of May, it appears from the following extract of a letter to Mr. Hunt,* written from Margate, that the sojourn in the Isle of Wight had not answered his expectations: the solitude, or rather the company of self, was too much for him.

"I went to the Isle of Wight, thought so much about poetry, so long together, that I could not get to sleep at night; and, moreover, I know not how it is, I could not get wholesome food. By this means, in a week or so, I became not over capable in my upper stories, and set off pell-mell for Margate, at least a hundred and fifty miles, because, forsooth, I fancied I should like my old lodgings here, and could continue to do without trees. Another

* Given entire in the first volume of "Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries."

How

thing, I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought as an only resource. ever, Tom is with me at present, and we are very comfortable. We intend, though, to get among some trees. How have you got on among them? How are the nymphs?—I suppose they have led you a fine dance. Where are you now?

"I have asked myself so often why I should be a Poet more than other men, seeing how great a thing it is, how great things are to be gained by it, what a thing to be in the mouth of Fame, that at last the idea has grown so monstrously beyond my seeming power of attainment, that the other day I nearly consented with myself to drop into a Phaeton. Yet 'tis a disgrace to fail even in a huge attempt, and at this moment I drive the thought from me. I begun my poem about a fortnight since, and have done some every day, except traveling ones. Perhaps I may

have done a good deal for the time, but it appears such a pin's point to me, that I will not copy any out. When I consider that

so many of these pin-points go to form a bodkin-point, (God send I end not my life with a bare bodkin, in its modern sense,) and that it requires a thousand bodkins to make a spear bright enough to throw any light to posterity, I see nothing but continnal up-hill journeying. Nor is there any thing more unpleasant (it may come among the thousand and one) than to be so journeying and to miss the goal at last. But I intend to whistle all these cogitations into the sea, where I hope they will breed storms violent enough to block up all exit from Russia.

"Does Shelley go on telling 'strange stories of the deaths of kings ?** Tell him there are strange stories of the death of

* Mr. Hunt mentions that Shelley was fond of quoting the passage in Shakspeare, and of applying it in an unexpected manner. Traveling with him once to town in the Hampstead stage, in which their only companion was an old lady, who sat silent and stiff, after the English fashion, Shelley startled her into a look of the most ludicrous astonishment, by saying abruptly,

"Hist!

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground,

And tell strange stories of the deaths of kings."

The old lady looked on the coach floor, expecting them to take their seats accordingly.

poets. Some have died before they were conceived. you make that out, Master Vellum ?" "

'How do

This letter is signed "John Keats alias Junkets," an appellation given him in play upon his name, and in allusion to his friends of Fairy-land.

The poem here begun was "Endymion." Endymion." In the first poem of the early volume some lines occur showing that the idea had long been germinating in his fancy; and how suggestive of a multitude of images is one such legend to an earnest and constructive mind!

"He was a poet, sure a lover too,

Who stood on Latmos' top, what time there blew
Soft breezes from the myrtle vale below;

And brought, in faintness, solemn, sweet, and slow
A hymn from Dian's temple-while upswelling,
The incense went to her own starry dwelling.-
But, though her face was clear as infants' eyes,
Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice,
The Poet wept at her so piteous fate,
Wept that such beauty should be desolate :
So, in fine wrath, some golden sounds he won,
And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion."

And the description of the effect of the union of the Poet and the Goddess on universal nature is equal in vivacity and tenderness to any thing in the maturer work.

"The evening weather was so bright and clear

That men of health were of unusual cheer,
Stepping like Homer at the trumpet's call,
Or young Apollo on the pedestal ;

And lovely woman there is fair and warm,
As Venus looking sideways in alarm. .
The breezes were ethereal and pure,
And crept through half-closed lattices, to cure
The languid sick; it cooled their fevered sleep,
And soothed them into slumbers full and deep.
Soon they awoke, clear-eyed, nor burnt with thirsting,
Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting,

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