When last the winds of Heaven were unbound. O ye! whose Ears are dinn'd with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired. April 18th [1817]. Will you have the goodness to do this? Borrow a Botanical Dictionary-turn to the words Laurel and Prunus, show the explanations to your sisters and Mrs. Dilke and without more ado let them send me the Cups, Basket and Books they trifled and put off and off while I was in Town. Ask them what they can say for themselves ask Mrs. Dilke wherefore she does so distress me -let me know how Jane has her health-the Weather is unfavourable for her.-Tell George and Tom to write. I'll tell you what-on the 23d was Shakespeare born. Now if I should receive a letter from you, and another from my Brothers on that day 'twould be a parlous good thing. Whenever you write say a word or two on some Passage in Shakespeare that may have come rather new to you, which must be continually happening, notwithstanding that we read the same Play forty times-for instance, the following from the Tempest never struck me so forcibly as at present, "Urchins Shall, for the vast of night that they may work, How can I help bringing to your mind the line "In the dark backward and abysm of time." I find I cannot exist without Poetry-without eternal Poetry-half the day will not do the whole of it-I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan. I had become all in a Tremble from not having written anything of late-the Sonnet over-leaf did me good. I slept the better last night for it—this Morning, however, I am nearly as bad again. Just now I opened Spenser, and the first Lines I saw were these "The noble heart that harbours virtuous thought, Let me know particularly about Haydon, ask him to write to me about Hunt, if it be only ten lines-I hope all is well-I shall forthwith begin my Endymion,' which I hope I shall have got some way with by the time you come, when we will read our verses in a delightful place I have set my heart upon, near the Castle. Give my Love to your Sisters severally-to George and Tom. Remember me to Rice, Mr. and Mrs. Dilke and all we know. Your sincere friend Direct J. Keats, Mrs. Cook's, New Village, Carisbrooke. This refers to the real Endymion, to be published in the following year. My dear Hunt, IX. To LEIGH HUNT. Margate, 10 May 1817. The little gentleman that sometimes lurks in a gossip's bowl, ought to have come in the very likeness of a roasted crab, and choaked me outright for not answering your letter ere this: however, you must not suppose that I was in town to receive it: no, it followed me to the Isle of Wight, and I got it just as I was going to pack up for Margate, for reasons which you anon shall hear. On arriving at this treeless affair, I wrote to my brother George to request C[harles] C[owden] C[larke] to do the thing you wot of respecting Rimini; and George tells me he has undertaken it with great pleasure; so I hope there has been an understanding between you for many proofs C. C. C. is well acquainted with Bensley. Now why did you not send the key of your cupboard, which, I know, was full of papers? We would have locked them all in a trunk, together with those you told me to destroy, which indeed I did not do, for fear of demolishing receipts, there not being a more unpleasant thing in the world (saving a thousand and one others) than to pay a bill twice. Mind you, old Wood's a "very varmint," shrouded in covetousness:-and now I am upon a horrid subject-what a horrid one you were upon last Sunday, and well you handled it. The last Examiner was a battering-ram against Christianity, blasphemy, Tertullian, Erasmus, Sir Philip Sidney; and then the dreadful Petzelians and their expiation by blood; and do Christians shudder at the same thing in a newspaper which they attribute to their God in its most aggravated form? |