It is difficult to add anything to the passages in these letters, which show the spirit in which “Endymion" was written and published. This first sustained work of a man whose undoubted genius was idolised by a circle of affectionate friends, whose weaknesses were rather encouraged than repressed by the intellectual atmosphere in which he lived, who had rarely been enabled to measure his spiritual stature with that of persons of other schools of thought and habits of mind, appears to have been produced with a humility that the severest criticism might not have engendered. Keats, it is clear, did not require to be told how far he was from the perfect Poet. The very consciousness of the capability to do something higher and better, which accompanies. the lowly estimate of his work, kept the ideal ever before him, and urged him to complete it rather as a process of poetical education, than as a triumph of contented power. Never was less presumption exhibited - ne never the sharp stroke of contemptuous censure less required. His own dissatisfaction with his book, and his brother's ill-health, cast over his mind the gloom which he hardly conceals in the letters of this period, though it is remarkable how free they are, at all times, from any merely querulous expressions, and from the vague sentimentality attributed to some of his literary associates. TEIGNMOUTH, MY DEAR REYNOLDS, What I complain of is, that I have been in so uneasy a state of mind as not to be fit to write to an invalid. I cannot write to any length under a disguised feeling. I should have loaded you with an addition of gloom, which I am sure you do not want. I am now, thank God, in a humour to give you a good groat's worth; for Tom, after a night without a wink of sleep, and over-burthened with ever, has got up, after a refreshing day-sleep, and is better than he has been for a long time. And you, I trust, have been again round the Common without any effect but refreshment. As to the matter, I hope I can say, with Sir Andrew, "I have matter enough in my head," in your favour. And now, in the second place, for I reckon that I have finished my Imprimis, I am glad you blow up the weather. All through your letter there is a leaning towards a climatecurse; and you know what a delicate satisfaction there is in having a vexation anathematised. One would think there has been growing up, for these last four thousand years, a grand-child scion of the old forbidden tree, and that some modern Eve had just violated it; and that there was come, with double charge, "Notus and Afer black with thunderous clouds from Serraliona." Tom wants to be in town: we will have some such days upon the heath like that of last summer --and why not with the same book? or what say you to a black-letter Chaucer, printed in 1596? Aye, I have got one, huzza! I shall have it bound in Gothique-a nice sombre binding; it will go a little way to unmodernize. And, also, I see no reason, because I have been away this last month, why I should not have a peep at your Spenserian—notwithstanding you speak of your office, in my thought, a little too early; for I do not see why a mind like yours is not capable of harbouring and digesting the whole mystery of Law as easily as Parson Hugh does pippins, which did not hinder him from his poetic canary. Were I to study Physic, or rather Medicine again, I feel it would not make the least difference in my poetry; when the mind is in its infancy a bias is in reality a bias, but when we have acquired more / strength, a bias becomes no bias. Every department of knowledge we see excellent and calculated towards a great whole. I am so convinced of this that I am glad at not having given away my medical books, which I shall again look over, to keep alive the little I know thitherwards; and moreover intend, through you and Rice, to become a sort of pip-civilian. An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people; it takes away the heat and fever, and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the Mystery, a thing I begin to understand a little, and which weighed upon you in the most gloomy and true sentence in your letter. The difference of high sensations, with and without knowledge, appears to me this: in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep, and being blown up again, without wings, and with all [the] horror of a bareshouldered creature; in the former case, our shoulders are fledged, and we go through the same air and space without fear. This is running one's rigs on the score of abstracted benefit; when we come to human life and the affections, it is impossible to know how a parallel of breast and head can be drawn, (you will forgive me for thus privately treading out [of] my depth, and take it for treading as school-boys tread the water); it is impossible to know how far knowledge will console us for the death of a friend, and the "ill that flesh is heir to." With respect to the affections and poetry, you must know by a sympathy my thoughts that way, and I dare say these few lines will be but a ratification. I wrote them on May-day, and intend to finish the ode all in good time. Mother of Hermes! and still youthful Maia! As thou wast hymned on the shores of Baix ? In earlier Sicilian? or thy smiles Seek as they once were sought, in Grecian isles, O, give me their old vigour, and unheard Rounded by thee, my song should die away Rich in the simple worship of a day.* You may perhaps be anxious to know for fact to what sentence in your letter I allude. You say, "I fear there is little chance of anything else in this life." You seem by that to have been going through, with a more painful and acute zest, the same labyrinth that I have-I have come to the same conclusion thus far. My branchings-out therefrom have been numerous one of them is the consideration of Wordsworth's genius, and as a help, in the manner of gold being the meridian line of worldly wealth, how he differs * It is much to be regretted he did not finish this Ode; this commencement is in his best manner: the sentiment and expression perfect. from Milton. And here I have nothing but surmises, from an uncertainty whether Milton's apparently less anxiety for humanity proceeds from his seeing further or no than Wordsworth, and whether Wordsworth has, in truth, epic passion, and martyrs himself to the human heart, the main region of his song. In regard to his genius alone, we find what he says true, as far as we have experienced, and we can judge no further but by larger experience; for axioms in philosophy are not axioms till they are proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never feel them to the full until we have gone [over] the same steps as the author. I know this is not plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say that now I shall relish "Hamlet" more than I ever have done -or better. Until we are sick, we understand not; in fine, as Byron says, "Knowledge is sorrow ;" and I go on to say that "Sorrow is wisdom ;" and further, for aught we can know for certainty, "Wisdom is folly." So you see how I have run away from Wordsworth and Milton, and shall still run away from what was in my head to observe, that some kind of letters are good squares, others handsome ovals, others orbicular, others spheroid-and why should there not be another species with two rough edges, like a rat-trap? I hope you will find all my long letters of that species, and all will be well; for by merely touching the spring delicately and ethereally, the rough-edged will fly immediately into a proper compactness; and thus you may make a good wholesome loaf, with your own leaven in it, of my fragments. If you cannot find this said rat-trap sufficiently tractable, alas! for me, it being an impossibility in grain for my ink to stain otherwise. If I scribble long letters, I must play my |