Brown's kindest remembrances to you-and I am ever your most sincere friend, John Keats. A haunting Music sole perhaps and lone Of Palm and Plantain met from either side In the high midst in honour of the Bride- All down the aisled place—and beneath all There ran a stream of lamps straight on from wall to wall. Teeming a perfume. Lamia regal drest And shut the Chamber up close hush'd and still; When dreadful guests would come to spoil her solitude. This is a good sample of the story. Brown is gone to Chichester a-visiting-I shall be alone here for 3 weeks, expecting accounts of your health. CXXX. To FANNY BRAWNE. Fleet Street, Monday Morn [13 September 1819]. [Postmark, Lombard Street, 14 September 1819.] My dear Girl, I have been hurried to town by a Letter from my brother George; it is not of the brightest intelligence. Am I mad or not? I came by the Friday night coach and have not yet been to Hampstead. Upon my soul it is not my fault. I cannot resolve to mix any pleasure with my days: they go one like another, undistinguishable. If I were to see you to-day it would destroy the half comfortable sullenness I enjoy at present into downright perplexities. I love you too much to venture to Hampstead, I feel it is not paying a visit, but venturing into a fire. Que feraije? as the french novel writers say in fun, and I in earnest : really what can I do? Knowing well that my life must be passed in fatigue and trouble, I have been endeavouring to wean myself from you: for to myself alone what can be much of a misery? As far as they regard myself I can despise all events: but I cannot cease to love you. This morning I scarcely know what I am doing. I am going to Walthamstow. I shall return to Winchester to-morrow; whence you shall hear from me in a few days. I am a Coward, I cannot bear the pain of being 1 He must, I think, have waited till the day after he would seem to have gone to Winchester again on the 15th of September. See page 391. happy: 'tis out of the question: I must admit no thought I was very glad to hear from Woodhouse that you would meet in the country. I hope you will pass some pleasant time together. Which I wish to make pleasanter by a brace of letters, very highly to be estimated, as really I have had very bad luck with this sort of game this season. I "kepen in solitarinesse," for Brown has gone a-visiting. I am surprised myself at the pleasure I live alone in. I can give you no news of the place here, or any other idea of it but what I have to this effect written to George. Yesterday I say to him was a grand day for Winchester. They elected a mayor. It was indeed high time the place should receive some sort of excitement. There was nothing going on: all asleep not an old maid's sedan returning from a cardparty and if any old women got tipsy at Christenings they did not expose it in the streets. The first night tho' of our arrival here there was a slight uproar took place at about 10 o' the Clock. We heard distinctly a noise patting down the High Street as of a walking cane of the good old Dowager breed; and a little minute after we heard a less voice observe "What a noise the ferril made-it must be loose." Brown wanted to call the constables, but I observed it was only a little breeze, and would soon pass over.-The side streets here are excessively maiden-ladylike: the door-steps always fresh from the flannel. The knockers have a staid, serious, nay almost awful quietness about them. I never saw so quiet a collection of Lions' and Rams' heads. The doors are most part black, with a little brass handle just above the keyhole, so that in Winchester a man may very quietly shut himself out of his own house. How beautiful the season is now-How fine the air-a temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather-Dian skies-I never liked stubble-fields so much as now-Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm-in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.' I hope you are better employed than in gaping after weather. I have been at different times so happy as not to know what weather it was-No I will not copy a parcel of verses. I always somehow associate Chatterton with autumn. He is the purest writer in the English Language. He has no French idiom or particles, like Chaucer-'tis genuine English Idiom in English words. I have given up Hyperion-there were too many Miltonic inversions in it-Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one || to the true voice of feeling. 1 He composed the ode To Autumn and had written it out in a letter to Woodhouse of the same day, which is not known to be extant. Upon my soul 'twas imagination-I cannot make the distinction-Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation-But I cannot make the division properly. The fact is, I must take a walk; for I am writing a long letter to George and have been employed at it all the morning. You will ask, have I heard from George. I am sorry to say not the best news-I hope for better. This is the reason, among others, that if I write to you it must be in such a scrap-like way. I have no meridian to date interests from, or measure circumstances. Tonight I am all in a mist; I scarcely know what's what. But you knowing my unsteady and vagarish disposition, will guess that all this turmoil will be settled by to-morrow morning. It strikes me to-night that I have led a very odd sort of life for the two or three last years-Here and there no anchor-I am glad of it.-If you can get a peep at Babbicombe before you leave the country, do.-I think it the finest place I have seen, or is to be seen, in the South. There is a Cottage there I took warm water at, that made up for the tea. I have lately shirk'd some friends of ours, and I advise you to do the same, I mean the blue-devils-I am never at home to them. You need not fear them while you remain in Devonshire. There will be some of the family waiting for you at the Coach office-but go by another Coach. I shall beg leave to have a third opinion in the first discussion you have with Woodhouse-just half-way,. between both. You know I will not give up my argument-In my walk to-day I stoop'd under a railing that lay across my path, and asked myself "Why I did not get over." Because," answered I, "no one wanted to force you under." I would give a guinea to be a reasonable man-good sound sense-a says what he thinks. and does what he says man-and, did not take snuff. They say men near death, however mad they may have ་་ |