good God! what a short while you have known me! I feel it a sort of duty thus to recapitulate, however unpleasant it may be to you. You have been living for others more than any man I know. This is a vexation to me, because it has been depriving you, in the very prime of your life, of pleasures which it was your duty to procure. As I am speaking in general terms, this may appear nonsense; you, perhaps, will not understand it; but if you can go over, day by day, any month of the last year, you will know what I mean. On the whole, however, this is a subject that I cannot express myself upon. I speculate upon it frequently; and, believe me, the end of my speculations is always an anxiety for your happiness. This anxiety will not be one of the least incitements to the plan I purpose pursuing. I had got into a habit of mind of looking towards you as a help in all difficulties. This very habit would be the parent of idleness and difficulties. You will see it is a duty I owe myself to break the neck of it. I do nothing for my subsistence-make no exertion. At the end of another year you shall applaud me, not for verses, but for conduct. While I have some immediate cash,1 I had better settle myself quietly, and fag on as others do. I shall apply to Hazlitt, who knows the market as well as any one, for something to bring me in a few pounds as soon as possible. I shall not suffer my pride to hinder me. The whisper may go round; I shall not hear it. If I can get an article in the "Edinburgh," I will. One must not be delicate. Nor let this disturb you longer than a moment. I look forward, with a good hope that we shall one day be passing free, untrammelled, unanxious 1 "The cash," observes Mr. Dilke, "borrowed from Taylor-£30 a fortnight before-on the 5th." See page 325. time together. lump. I shall be expecting anxiously an answer from you. If it does not arrive in a few days this will have miscarried, and I shall come straight to before That can never be if I continue a dead I go to town, which you, I am sure, will agree had better be done while I still have some ready cash. By the middle of October I shall expect you in London. We will then set at the theatres. If you have anything to gainsay, I shall be even as the deaf adder which stoppeth her ears. CXII. To CHARLES ARMITAGE BROWN. Winchester, 23 September 1819. Do not suffer me to disturb you unpleasantly: I do not mean that you should not suffer me to occupy your thoughts, but to occupy them pleasantly; for, I assure you, I am as far from being unhappy as possible. Imaginary grievances have always been more my torment than real ones. You know this well. Real ones will never have any other effect upon me than to stimulate me to get out of or avoid them. This is easily accounted Between these two extracts, Lord Houghton notes-"On the same day he wrote another letter, having received one from Mr. Brown in the interval. He again spoke of his purpose." I suppose the blank for the name of a place in the first extract should be filled by Bedhampton. Brown was staying there with Mr. and Mrs. Snook. for. Our imaginary woes are conjured up by our passions, and are fostered by passionate feeling: our real ones come of themselves, and are opposed by an abstract exertion of mind. Real grievances are displacers of passion. The imaginary nail a man down for a sufferer, as on a cross; the real spur him up into an agent. I wish, at one view, you would see my heart towards you. 'Tis only from a high tone of feeling that I can put that word upon paper-out of poetry. I ought to have waited for your answer to my last before I wrote this. I felt, however, compelled to make a rejoinder to yours. I had written to Dilke on the subject of my last, I scarcely know whether I shall send my letter now. I think he would approve of my plan; it is so evident. Nay, I am convinced, out and out, that by prosing for a while in periodical works, I may maintain myself decently. Lord Houghton here adds :-"The gloomy tone of this correspondence soon brought Mr. Brown to Winchester. Up to that period Keats had always expressed himself most averse to writing for any periodical publication. The short contributions to the 'Champion' were rather acts of friendship than literary labours. But now Mr. Brown, knowing what his pecuniary circumstances were, and painfully conscious that the time spent in the creation of those works which were destined to be the delight and solace of thousands of his fellow-creatures, must be unprofitable to him in procuring the necessities of life, and, above all, estimating at its due value that spirit of independence which shrinks from materialising the obligations of friendship into daily bread, gave every encouragement to these designs, and only remonstrated against the project" of taking a solitary lodging in Westminster, " on account of the pain he would himself suffer from the privation of Keats's society," and "from the belief that the scheme of life would not be successful." CONTENTS OF THE APPENDIX. I. Analysis of Richard Duke of York, from Some Account of the English Stage, by Geneste. II. Extracts from The Examiner for the 4th of May 1817. Parting. IV. Letters from Scotland by Charles Armitage Brown. V. The "Cockney School” attack on Keats. VI. John Hamilton Reynolds on Keats and The Quarterly Review. VII. Two letters to the Editor of The Morning Chronicle on Keats and The Quarterly Review. VIII. Shelley's Letter to the Editor of The Quarterly Review concerning Keats. |