fog, hail, snow, rain, mist, blanketing up three parts of the year. This Devonshire is like Lydia Languish, very entertaining when it smiles, but cursedly subject to sympathetic moisture. You have the sensation of walking under one great Lamp-lighter: and you can't go on the other side of the ladder to keep your frock clean. Buy a girdle, put a pebble in your mouth, loosen your braces-for I am going among scenery whence I intend to tip you the Damosel Radcliffe. I'll cavern you, and grotto you, and water-fall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and tremendous-sound you, and solitude you. I'll make a lodgment on your glacis by a row of pines, and storm your covered way with bramble-bushes. I'll have at you with hip-and-haw small-shot, and cannonade you with shingles. I'll be witty upon salt fish, and impede your cavalry with clotted-cream. But, ah! Coward! to talk at this rate to a sick man, or, I hope, to one that was sick for I hope by this you stand on your right foot. If you are not-that's all-I intend to cut all sick people if they do not make up their minds to cut Sickness-a fellow to whom I have a complete aversion, and who, strange to say, is harbored and countenanced in several houses where I visit: he is sitting now, quite impudent, between me and Tom; he insults me at poor Jem Rice's; and you have seated him before now, between us at the Theatre, when I thought he looked with a longing eye at poor Kean. I shall say, once for all, to my friends, generally and severally, cut that fellow, or I cut you.

I went to the Theatre here the other night, which I forgot to tell George, and got insulted, which I ought to remember to forget to tell any body; for I did not fight, and as yet have had no redress-" Lie thou there, sweetheart!" I wrote to Bailey yesterday, obliged to speak in a high way, and a damme, who's afraid? for I had owed him [a letter] so long: however, he shall see I will be better in future. Is he in town yet? I have directed to Oxford as the better chance.

I have copied my fourth Book, and shall write the Preface soon. I wish it was all done; for I want to forget it, and make my mind free for something new. Atkins, the coachman, Bartlett, the surgeon, Simmons, the barber, and the girls over at the bonnet shop, say we shall now have a month of seasonable weather -warm, witty, and full of invention.

Write to me, and tell me that you are well, or thereabouts; or, by the holy Beaucœur, which I suppose is the Virgin Mary, or the repented Magdalen, (beautiful name, that Magdalen,) I'll take to my wings and fly away to any where, but old or Nova Scotia.

I wish I had a little bit of innocent metaphysic in my head, to criss-cross the letter: but you know a favorite tune is hardest to be remembered when one wants it most; and you, I know, have, long ere this, taken it for granted that I never have any speculations without associating you in them, where they are of a pleasant nature and you know enough of me to tell the places where I haunt most, so that if you think for five minutes after having read this, you will find it a long letter, and see written in the air before you.

Your affectionate friend,

JOHN KEATS.

MY DEAR REYNolds,

TEIGNMOUTH, 25 March, 1818.

In hopes of cheering you through a minute or two, I was determined, will he nill he, to send you some lines, so you will excuse the unconnected subjects and careless verse. You know, I am sure, Leland's "Enchanted Castle," and I wish you may be pleased with my remembrance of it. The rain is come on again. I think with me Devonshire stands a very poor chance. I shall damn it up hill and down dale, if it keep up to the average of six fine days in three weeks. Let me hear better news of you. Your affectionate friend,

JOHN KEATS.

Dear Reynolds! as last night I lay in bed,
There came before my eyes that wonted thread
Of shapes, and shadows, and remembrances,

That every other minute vex and please :

Things all disjointed come from north and south,

Two Witch's eyes above a Cherub's mouth,
Voltaire with casque and shield and habergeon,
And Alexander with his night-cap on;

Old Socrates a tying his cravat,

And Hazlitt playing with Miss Edgeworth's Cat;

And Junius Brutus, pretty well, so so,
Making the best of's way towards Soho.

Few are there who escape these visitingsPerhaps one or two whose lives have patent wings, And thro' whose curtains peeps no hellish nose, No wild-boar tushes, and no Mermaid's toes; But flowers bursting out with lusty pride, And young Æolian hearts personified; Some Titian colors touch'd into real lifeThe sacrifice goes on; the pontiff knife Gleams in the Sun, the milk-white heifer lows, The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows:

A white sail shows above the green-head cliff,

Moves round the point, and throws her anchor stiff; The mariners join hymn with those on land.

You know the enchanted Castle,-it doth stand Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake, Nested in trees, which all do seem to shake From some old magic-like Urganda's Sword. O Phœbus! that I had thy sacred word To show this Castle, in fair dreaming wise, Unto my friend, while sick and ill he lies!

You know it well enough, where it doth seem
A mossy place, a Merlin's Hall, a dream;
You know the clear Lake, and the little Isles,
The mountains blue, and cold near neighbor rills,
All which else where are but half animate ; *
There do they look alive to love and hate,
To smiles and frowns; they seem a lifted mound
Above some giant, pulsing underground.

Part of the Building was a chosen See,
Built by a banished Santon of Chaldee;
The other part, two thousand years from him,
Was built by Cuthbert de Saint Aldebrim;
Then there's a little wing, far from the Sun,
Built by a Lapland Witch turn'd maudlin Nun;
And many other juts of aged stone
Founded with many a mason-devil's groàn.

The doors all look as if they oped themselves, The windows as if latched by Fays and Elves,

And from them comes a silver flash of light,
As from the westward of a Summer's night;
Or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes
Gone mad thro' olden songs and poesies.

See! what is coming from the distance dim!
A golden Galley all in silken trim!

Three rows of oars are lightening, moment whiles,
Into the verd❜rous bosoms of those isles;
Towards the shade, under the Castle wall,
It comes in silence,-now 'tis hidden all.
The Clarion sounds, and from a Postern-gate
An echo of sweet music doth create
A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring,—
He tells of the sweet music, and the spot,
To all his friends, and they believe him not.

O, that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colors from the sunset take
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle, but my flag is not unfurl'd
On the Admiral-staff,—and so philosophize
I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize,
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;
Or is it that imagination brought
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin'd,
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,
Cannot refer to any standard law

Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn,-
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.

Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale,
And cannot speak it: the first page I read
Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breakers; 'twas a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did wave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam

Along the flat brown sand; I was at home

85

And should have been most happy,-but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every man
The greater on the less feeds evermore,—
But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.

Still am I sick of it, and tho', to-day,

I've gathered young spring-leaves, and flowers gay
Of periwinkle and wild strawberry,

Still do I that most fierce destruction see,-

The Shark at savage prey,-the Hawk at pounce,--
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,

Ravening a Worm,--Away, ye horrid moods!

Moods of one's mind! You know I hate them well,

You know I'd sooner be a clapping Bell

To some Kamtchatcan Missionary Church,

Than with these horrid moods be left i' the lurch.

TEIGNMOUTH, 25 March, 1818.

MY DEAR RICE,

Being in the midst of your favorite Devon, I should not, by right, pen one word but it should contain a vast portion of wit, wisdom, and learning; for I have heard that Milton, ere he wrote his answer to Salmasius, came into these parts, and for one whole month, rolled himself, for three whole hours a day, in a certain meadow hard by us, where the mark of his nose at equidistances is still shown. The exhibitor of the said meadow further saith, that, after these rollings, not a nettle sprang up in all the seven acres, for seven years, and that from the said time a new sort of plant was made from the whitethorn, of a thornless nature, very much used by the bucks of the present day to rap their boots withal. This account made me very naturally suppose that the nettles and thorns etherealized by the scholar's rotatory motion, and garnered in his head, thence flew, after a process of fermentation, against the luckless Salmasius, and occasioned his well-known and unhappy end. What a happy thing it would be if we could settle our thoughts and make our minds up on any matter in five minutes, and remain content, that is, build a sort of mental cottage of feelings, quiet and pleasant-to have a sort of