ladies, this one of meeting you on the desert shore, and greeting you in his name. He sends you moreover this little scroll.' My dear girls, I send you, per favor of Endymion, the assurance of my esteem for you, and my utmost wishes for your health and pleasure, being ever, "Your affectionate brother, "JOHN KEATS." This is of about the same date:- OXFORD, Sunday Morning. MY DEAR REYNOLDS, So you are determined to be my mortal foedraw a sword at me, and I will forgive-put a bullet in my brain, and I will shake it out as a dew-drop from the lion's mane-put me on a gridiron and I will fry with great complacency-butoh, horror! to come upon me in the shape of a dun!-send me bills! As I say to my tailor, send me bills and I'll never employ you more. However, needs must, when the devil drives: and for fear of "before and behind Mr. Honeycomb," I'll proceed. I have not time to elucidate the forms and shapes of the grass and trees; for, rot it! I forgot to bring my mathematical case with me, which unfortunately contained my triangular prisms; so that the hues of the grass cannot be dissected for you. For these last five or six days we have had regularly a boat on the Isis, and explored all the streams about, which are more in number than your eyelashes. We sometimes skim into a bed of rushes, and there become naturalized river-folks. There is one particularly nice nest, which we have christened "Reynolds' Cove," in which we have read Wordsworth, and talked as may be. *** Failings I am always rather rejoiced to find in a man than sorry for; they bring us to a level. has them, but then his makes-up are very good. agrees with the Northern Poet in this, "He is not one of those who much delight to season their fireside with personal talk." I must confess, however, having a little itch that way, and at this present moment I have a few neighborly remarks to make. The world, and especially our England, has, within the last thirty years, been vexed and teased by a set of devils, whom I detest so much that I almost hunger after an Acherontic promotion to a Torturer, purposely for their accommodation. These devils are a set of women, who have taken a snack or luncheon of literary scraps, set themselves up for towers of Babel in languages, Sapphos in poetry, Euclids in geometry, and every thing in nothing. The thing has made a very uncomfortable impression on me. I had longed for some real feminine modesty in these things, and was therefore gladdened in the extreme, on opening, the other day, one of Bayley's books—a book of poetry written by one beautiful Mrs. Philips, a friend of Jeremy Taylor's, and called "The Matchless Orinda." You must have heard of her, and most likely read her poetry-I wish you have not, that I may have the pleasure of treating you with a few stanzas. I do it at a venture. You will not regret reading them once more. The following, to her friend Mrs. M. A., at parting, you will judge of. I have examined and do find, Of all that favor me, There's none I grieve to leave behind, But only, only thee: To part with thee I needs must die, But neither chance nor compliment Us from the Quire above. That friendship Fortune did create Still fears a wound from Time or Fate. Our changed and mingled souls are grown To such acquaintance now, That, if each would resume her own, Alas! we know not how, We have each other so engrost That each is in the union lost. And thus we can no absence know, Our active souls will daily go To learn each other's mind. Nay, should we never meet to sense Inspired with a flame divine, I scorn to court a stay; For from that noble soul of thine I ne'er can be away. But I shall weep when thou dost grieve, Nor can I die whilst thou dost live. By my own temper I shall guess And only like my happiness, Our hearts at any time will tell All honor sure I must pretend, She that would be Rosannia's friend, If I have any bravery, 'Tis 'cause I have so much of thee. Thy lieger soul in me shall lie, Thus still to one another tend: Such is the sacred name of friend. Thus our twin souls in one shall grow, Redeem the age and sex, and show A dew shall dwell upon our tomb That fighting armies thither come Shall reconciled be. We'll ask no epitaph, but say, Orinda and Rosannia." *"A compleat friend"-this line sounded very oddly to me at first. In other of her poems there is a most delicate fancy of the Fletcher kind-which we will con over together. So Haydon is in town. I had a letter from him yesterday. We will contrive as the winter comes on-but that is neither here nor there. Have you heard from Rice? Has Martin met with the Cumberland Beggar, or been wondering at the old Leechgatherer? Has he a turn for fossils? that is, is he capable of sinking up to his middle in a morass? How is Hazlitt? We were reading his Table (Round Table) last night. I know he thinks himself not estimated by ten people in the world. I wish he knew he is. I am getting on famous with my third book— have written 800 lines thereof, and hope to finish it next week. Bailey likes what I have done very much. Believe me, my dear Reynolds, one of my chief layings-up is the pleasure I shall have in showing it to you, I may now say, in a few days. I have heard twice from my brothers; they are going on very well, and send their remembrances to you. We expected to have had notices from little Hampton this morning-we must wait till Tuesday. I am glad of their days with the Dilkes. You are, I know, very much teased in that precious London, and want all the rest possible; so [I] shall be contented with as brief a scrawl -a word or two, till there comes a pat hour. Send us a few of your stanzas to read in "Reynolds' Cove." Give my love and respects to your mother, and remember me kindly to all at home. Yours faithfully, JOHN KEATS. I have left the doublings for Bailey, who is going to say that he will write to you to-morrow. From a letter to Haydon. "You will be glad to hear that within these last three weeks I have written 1000 lines, which are the third book of my Poem. My ideas of it, I assure you, are very low, and I would write the subject thoroughly again, but I am tired of it, and think the time would be better spent in writing a new romance, which I have in my eye for next summer. Rome was not built in a day, and all the good I expect from my employment this summer is the fruit of experience, which I hope to gather in my next Poem. "Yours eternally, "JOHN KEATS." The three first books of "Endymion" were finished in September, and portions of the Poem had come to be seen and canvassed by literary friends. With a singular anticipation of the injustice and calumny he should be subject to as belonging to "the Cockney School," Keats stood up most stoutly for the independence of all personal association with which the poem has been composed, and admiring as he did the talents and spirit of his friend Hunt, he expresses himself almost indignantly, in his correspondence, at the thought that his originality, whatever it was, should be suffered to have been marred by the assistance, influence, or counsel of Hunt, or any one else. "I refused," he writes to Mr. Bailey, (Oct. 8th,) "to visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfettered scope ;" and proceeds to transcribe some reflections on his undertaking, which he says he wrote to his brother George in the spring, and which are well worth the repetition. "As to what you say about my being a Poet, I can return no answer but by saying that the high idea I have of poetical fame makes me think I see it towering too high above me. At any rate I have no right to talk until 'Endymion' is finished. It will be a test, a trial of my powers of imagination, and chiefly of my invention-which is a rare thing indeed-by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry. And when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the Temple of Fameit makes me say-' God forbid that I should be without such a task!' I have heard Hunt say, and [I] may be asked, Why endeavor after a long poem ?' To which I should answer, 'Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a little region to wander in, where they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a second reading-which may be food for a week's stroll in the summer?' |