:

Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream he awoke and found it truth. I am more zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning, and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts! It is "a Vision in the form of Youth," a shadow of reality to come-and this consideration has further convinced me, -for it has come as auxiliary to another favourite speculation of mine,—that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we called happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone. And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in Sensation, rather than hunger, as you do, after Truth. Adam's dream will do here, and seems to be a conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflexion is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the simple imaginative mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent working coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness. To compare great things with small, have you never, by being surprised with an old melody, in a delicious place, by a delicious voice, felt over again your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your soul? Do you not remember forming to yourself the singer's face-more beautiful than it was possible, and yet, with the elevation of the moment, you did not think so? Even then you were mounted on the wings of Imagination, so high that the prototype must be hereafter that delicious face you will see. Sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex mind-one that is imaginative, and at the same time careful of its fruits,who would exist partly on sensation, partly on thought

1

-to whom it is necessary that "years should bring the philosophic mind?" Such a one I consider yours, and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness that you not only drink this old wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal musings upon earth, but also increase in knowledge, and know all things.

I am glad to hear that you are in a fair way for Easter. You will soon get through your unpleasant reading, and then !-but the world is full of troubles, and I have not much reason to think myself pestered with many.

or

I think has a better opinion of me than I deserve; for, really and truly, I do not think my brother's illness connected with mine. You know more of the real cause than they do; nor have I any chance of being rack'd as you have been. You perhaps, at one time, thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out. You have of necessity, from your disposition, been thus led away. I scarcely remember counting upon any happiness. I look not for it if it be not in the present hour. Nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence, and pick about the gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hearing a misfortune having befallen another is this“Well, it cannot be helped: he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit ;" and I beg now, my dear Bailey, that hereafter, should you observe anything

"Mr. Bailey well remembered", says Lord Houghton, "the exceeding delight that Keats took in Wordsworth's 'Ode to Immortality.' He was never weary of repeating it."

cold in me, not to put it to the account of heartlessness, but abstraction; for I assure you I sometimes feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole week; and so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself, and the genuineness of my feelings at other times, thinking them a few barren tragedy-tears.

My brother Tom is much improved-he is going to Devonshire-whither I shall follow him. At present, I am just arrived at Dorking, to change the scene, change the air, and give me a spur to wind up my poem, of which there are wanting 500 lines. I should have been here a day sooner, but the Reynoldses persuaded me to stop in town to meet your friend Christie.' There were Rice and Martin. We talked about ghosts. I will have some talk with Taylor, and let you know when, please God, I come down at Christmas. I will find the "Examiner," if possible. My best regards to Gleig, my brothers, to you, and Mrs. Bentley.

Your affectionate friend,

John Keats.

I want to say much more to you-a few hints will set me going.

1 Mr. Dilke notes-" This Christie was I think Lockhart's friend -who was unhappily drawn into Lockhart's quarrel with John Scott and killed him. Strange that this quarrel and the consequent loss of life of Scott, the Editor of the London Magazine, is not once alluded to [in the Life, Letters &c.], although the quarrel originated in the attack on Lockhart as the writer of the articles on the Cockney School, or as Editor of Blackwood. Christie I had met before and have since the duel: and he appeared to be a mild amiable man."

XXI.

To BENJAMIN BAILEY.

My dear Bailey,

[No Date.]

Saturday evening

So you have got a Curacy-good, but I suppose you will be obliged to stop among your Oxford favourites during Term time. Never mind. When do you preach your first sermon ?-tell me, for I shall propose to the two R.'s to hear it, so don't look into any of the old corner oaken pews, for fear of being put out by us. Poor Johnny Moultrie can't be there. He is ill, I expect—but that's neither here nor there. All I can say, I wish him as well through it as I am like to be. For this fortnight I have been confined at Hampstead. was my first day in town, when I went to Rice's, -as we intend to do1 every Saturday till we know not when. We hit upon an old gent we had known some few years ago, and had a veiry pleasante daye. In this world there is no quiet, nothing but teazing and snubbing and vexation. My brother Tom looked very unwell yesterday, and I am for shipping him off to Lisbon. Perhaps I ship there with him. I have not seen Mrs. Reynolds since I left you, wherefore my conscience smites me. I think of seeing her to-morrow; have you any message? I hope Gleig came soon after I left. I don't suppose I've

2

1 Lord Houghton has as in place of do, which I have substituted on the ground that the two words are often alike in Keats's writing, and do makes the better sense.

2 The Rev. George Robert Gleig, author of The Subaltern, and many other well-known works, and until recently Chaplain General of the Forces.

written as many lines as you have read volumes, or at least chapters,, since I saw you. However, I am in a fair way now to come to a conclusion in at least three weeks, when I assure you I shall be glad to dismount for a month or two; although I'll keep as tight a rein as possible till then, nor suffer myself to sleep. I will copy for you the opening of the Fourth Book, in which you will see from the manner I had not an opportunity of mentioning any poets, for fear of spoiling the effect of the passage by particularizing them.

Thus far had I written when I received your last, which made me at the sight of the direction caper for despair; but for one thing I am glad that I have been neglectful, and that is, therefrom I have received a proof of your utmost kindness, which at this present I feel very much, and I wish I had a heart always open to such sensations; but there is no altering a man's nature, and mine must be radically wrong, for it will lie dormant a whole month. This leads me to suppose that there are no men thoroughly wicked, so as never to be self-spiritualized into a kind of sublime misery; but, alas! 'tis but for an hour. He is the only Man "who has kept watch on man's mortality," who has philanthropy enough to overcome the disposition to an indolent enjoyment of intellect, who is brave enough to volunteer for uncomfortable hours. You remember in Hazlitt's essay on commonplace people he says, "they read the Edinburgh and Quarterly, and think as they do." Now, with respect to Wordsworth's "Gipsy," I think he is right, and yet I think Hazlitt is right, and yet I think Wordsworth is rightest. If Wordsworth had not been idle, he had not been without his task; nor had the "Gipsies "—they in the visible world had been as picturesque an object as he in the invisible. The smoke of their fire, their attitudes,