could receive-no chill'd red noses-no shivering-but fair atmosphere to think in-a clean towel mark'd with the mangle and a basin of clear Water to drench one's face with ten times a day: no need of much exercise-a Mile a day being quite sufficient. My greatest regret is that I have not been well enough to bathe though I have been two Months by the sea side and live now close to delicious bathing-Still I enjoy the Weather—I adore fine Weather as the greatest blessing I can have. Give me Books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a little music out of doors, played by somebody I do not know not pay the price of one's time for a jig-but a little chance music: and I can pass a summer very quiety without caring much about Fat Louis,1 fat Regent or the Duke of Wellington. Why have you not written to me? Because you were in expectation of George's Letter and so waited? Mr. Brown is copying out our Tragedy of Otho the Great in a superb style-better than it deserves

there as I said is labour in vain for the present. I had hoped to give Kean another opportunity to shine. What can we do now? There is not another actor of Tragedy in all London or Europe. The Covent Garden Company is execrable. Young is the best among them and he is a ranting coxcombical tasteless Actor-a Disgust, a Nausea-and yet the very best after Kean. What a set of barren asses are actors! I should like now to

promenade round your Gardens-apple-tastingpear-tasting-plum-judging-apricot nibbling-peachscrunching-nectarine-sucking and Melon-carving. I have also a great feeling for antiquated cherries full of sugar cracks and a white currant tree kept for company. I admire lolling on a lawn by a water lillied pond to eat white currants and see gold fish: and go to the Fair

1 Louis XVIII of France.

in the Evening if I'm good. There is not hope for that -one is sure to get into some mess before evening. Have these hot days I brag of so much been well or ill for your health? Let me hear soon

Brown and I have been employed for these 3 weeks past from time to time in writing to our different friends a dead silence is our only answer-we wait morning after morning. Tuesday is the day for the Examiner to arrive, this is the 2d Tuesday which has been barren even of a Newspaper-Men should be in imitation of Spirits "responsive to each other's note ". Instead of that I pipe and no one hath danced. We have been cursing like Mandeville and Lisle. With this I shall send by the same post a 3d letter to a friend of mine who though it is of consequence has neither answered right or left. We have been much in want of news from the Theatres having heard that Kean is going to America-but no-not a word. Why I should come on you with all these complaints I cannot explain to myself, especially as I suspect you must be in the country. Do answer me soon for I really must know something. I must steer myself by the rudder of Information.

ever yours sincerely John Keats.

CXXIX.

To JOHN TAYLOR.

My dear Taylor,

Winchester,

5 September [1819].

This morning I received yours of the 2d, and with it a letter from Hessey inclosing a Bank post Bill of £30, an ample sum I assure you-more I had no thought of. -You should not have delayed so long in Fleet St[reet] -leading an inactive life as you did was breathing poison: you will find the country air do more for you than you expect. But it must be proper country air. You must choose a spot. What sort of a place is Retford? You should have a dry, gravelly, barren, elevated country, open to the currents of air, and such a place is generally furnished with the finest springs. The neighbourhood of a rich inclosed fulsome manured arable land, especially in a valley and almost as bad on a flat, would be almost as bad as the smoke of Fleet St[reet].-Such a place as this was Shanklin, only open to the south-east, and surrounded by hills in every other direction. From this south-east came the damps of the sea; which, having no egress, the air would for days together take on an unhealthy idiosyncrasy altogether enervating and weakening as a city smoke-I felt it very much. Since I have been here at Winchester I have been improving in health -it is not so confined—and there is on one side of the City a dry chalky down, where the air is worth Sixpence a pint. So if you do not get better at Retford, do not impute it to your own weakness before you have well considered the Nature of the air and soil-especially as Autumn is encroaching-for the Autumn fog over a rich

land is like the steam from cabbage water. What makes the great difference between valesmen, flatlandmen and mountaineers? The cultivation of the earth in a great measure. Our health, temperament and disposition, are taken more (notwithstanding the contradiction of the history of Cain and Abel) from the air we breathe, than is generally imagined. See the difference between a Peasant and a Butcher.-I am convinced a great cause of it is the difference of the air they breathe the one takes his mingled with the fume of slaughter, the other from the dank exhalement from the glebe; the teeming damp that comes up from the plough-furrow is of more effect in taming the fierceness of a strong man-more than his labour. Let him be mowing furze upon a mountain, and at the day's end his thoughts will run upon a pick-axe if he ever had handled one;-let him leave the plough, and he will think quietly of his supper. Agriculture is the tamer of men-the steam from the earth is like drinking their Mother's milk-it enervates their nature. This appears a great cause of the imbecility of the Chinese: and if this sort of atmosphere is a mitigation to the energy of a strong man, how much more must it injure a weak one unoccupied, unexercised. For what is the cause of so many men maintaining a good state in Cities, but occupation? An idle man, a man who is not sensitively alive to self-interest in a city cannot continue long in good health. This is easily explained. If you were to walk leisurely through an unwholesome path in the fens, with a little horror of them, you would be sure to have your ague. But let Macbeth cross the same path, with the dagger in the air leading him on, and he would never have an ague or anything like it. You should give these things a serious consideration. Notts, I believe, is a flat county. You should be on the slope of one of the dry barren hills in

over me.

Somersetshire. I am convinced there is as harmful air to be breathed in the country as in town. I am greatly obliged to you for your letter. Perhaps, if you had had strength and spirits enough, you would have felt offended by my offering a note of hand, or rather expressed it. However, I am sure you will give me credit for not in anywise mistrusting you; or imagining that you would take advantage of any power I might give you No-it proceeded from my serious resolve not to be a gratuitous borrower, from a great desire to be correct in money matters, to have in my desk the Chronicles of them to refer to, and know my worldly non-estate : besides in case of my death such documents would be but just, if merely as memorials of the friendly turns I had done to me. Had I known of your illness I should not have written in such fiery phrase in my first letter. I hope that shortly you will be able to bear six times as much. Brown likes the tragedy very much: but he is not a fit judge of it, as I have only acted as midwife to his plot; and of course he will be fond of his child. I do not think I can make you any extracts without spoiling the effect of the whole when you come to read it-I hope you will then not think my labour misspent. Since I finished it, I have finished Lamia, and am now occupied in revising St. Agnes's Eve, and studying Italian. Ariosto I find as diffuse, in parts, as SpenserI understand completely the difference between them. I will cross the letter with some lines from Lamia.1

1

The holograph of this letter not being at present available for reference, it is not certain what was the state of the passage he "cross-scribed." An early manuscript in Lord Houghton's collection has been drawn on to supply the passage, with its variations from the finished poem, as far as possible. See Poetry and Prose by John Keats (1890), pages 5—9.