XIX-TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.

:

[Hampstead about November 1, 1817.] My dear Bailey-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.'s1 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. Saturday evening was my first day in town, when I went to Rice's-as we intend to do every Saturday till we know not when. We hit upon an old gent we had known some few years ago, and had a very pleasante daye. In this world there is no quiet,nothing but teasing 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 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 particularising them.

Thus far had I written when I received your last, which made me at the sight of the direction caper for 1 Reynolds and Rice.

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-spiritualised 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, their voices, were all in harmony with the evenings. It is a bold thing to say—and I would not say it in print-but it seems to me that if Wordsworth had thought a little deeper at that moment, he would not have written the poem at all. I should judge it to have been written in one of the most comfortable moods of his life—it is a kind of sketchy intellectual landscape, not a search after truth, nor is it fair to attack him on such a subject; for it is with the critic as with the poet; had Hazlitt thought a little deeper, and been in a good temper, he would never have spied out imaginary faults there. The Sunday before last I asked Haydon to dine with me, when I thought of settling all matters with him in regard to Cripps, and let you know about it. Now, although I engaged him a fortnight before, he sent illness as an excuse. He never will come. I have not

been well enough to stand the chance of a wet night, and so have not seen him, nor been able to expurgatorise more masks for you; but I will not speak-your speakers are never doers. Then Reynolds,-every time I see him and mention you, he puts his hand to his head and looks like a son of Niobe's; but he'll write soon.

Rome, you know, was not built in a day. I shall be able, by a little perseverance, to read your letters off-hand. I am afraid your health will suffer from over study before your examination. I think you might regulate the thing according to your own pleasure, and I would too. They were talking of your being up at Christmas. Will it be before you have passed? There is nothing, my dear Bailey, I should rejoice at more than to see you comfortable with a little Peona wife; an affectionate wife, I have a sort of confidence, would do you a great happiness. May that be one of the many blessings I wish you. Let me be but the one-tenth of one to you, and I shall think it great. My brother George's kindest wishes to you.

My dear Bailey, I am,

Your affectionate friend

JOHN KEATS.

I should not like to be pages in your way; when in a tolerable hungry mood you have no mercy. Your teeth are the Rock Tarpeian down which you capsize epic poems like mad. I would not for forty shillings be Coleridge's Lays in your way. I hope you will soon get through this abominable writing in the schools, and be able to keep the terms with more comfort in the hope of retiring to a comfortable and quiet home out of the way of all Hopkinses and black beetles. When you are settled, I will come and take a peep at your church, your house; try whether I shall have grown too lusty for my chair by the fireside, and take a peep at my earliest bower. A question is the best beacon towards a little speculation. Then ask me after my health and spirits. This question ratifies in my mind what I have said above. Health and spirits can only belong unalloyed to the selfish man

-the man who thinks much of his fellows can never be in spirits. You must forgive, although I have only written three hundred lines; they would have been five, but I have been obliged to go to town. Yesterday I called at Lamb's. St. Jane looked very flush when I first looked in, but was much better before I left.

XX. -TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.

[Fragment from an outside sheet: postmark London, November 5, 1817.]

I will speak of something else, or my spleen will get higher and higher-and I am a bearer of the twoedged sword.-I hope you will receive an answer from Haydon soon -if not, Pride! Pride! Pride! I have received no more subscription-but shall soon have a full health, Liberty and leisure to give a good part of my time to him. I will certainly be in time for him. We have promised him one year let that have elapsed, then do as we think proper. If I did not know how impossible it is, I should say "do not at this time of disappointments, disturb yourself about others.”

There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the Endinburgh Magazine. I never read anything so virulent-accusing him of the greatest Crimes, depreciating his Wife, his Poetry, his Habits, his Company, his Conversation. These Philippics are to come out in numbers -called "the Cockney School of Poetry." There has been but one number published-that on Hunt to which they have prefixed a motto from one Cornelius Webb Poetaster-who unfortunately was of our party occasionally at Hampstead and took it into his head to write the following,-something about "we'll talk on Wordsworth, Byron, a theme we never tire on ;" and so forth till he comes to Hunt and Keats. In the Motto they have put Hunt and Keats in large lettersI have no doubt that the second number was intended for me but have hopes of its non-appearance, from the

following Advertisement in last Sunday's Examiner :"To Z.-The Writer of the Article signed Z., in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for October 1817 is invited to send his address to the printer of the Examiner, in order that Justice may be Executed on the proper person." I don't mind the thing much—but if he should go to such lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must infallibly call him to an Account if he be a human being, and appears in Squares and Theatres, where we might possibly meet-I don't relish his abuse.

XXI. TO CHARLES WENTWORTH DILKE.

[Hampstead, November 1817.]

My dear Dilke-Mrs. Dilke or Mr. Wm. Dilke, whoever of you shall receive this present, have the kindness to send pr. bearer Sibylline Leaves, and your petitioner shall ever pray as in duty bound.

Given under my hand this Wednesday morning of Novr. 1817.

Vivant Rex et Regina―amen.

JOHN KEATS.

XXII. TO BENJAMIN BAILEY.

[Burford Bridge, November 22, 1817.]

My dear Bailey—I will get over the first part of this (unsaid 1) Letter as soon as possible, for it relates to the affairs of poor Cripps.-To a Man of your nature such a Letter as Haydon's must have been extremely cutting— What occasions the greater part of the World's Quarrels? -simply this-two Minds meet, and do not understand each other time enough to prevent any shock or surprise at the conduct of either party-As soon as I had known Haydon three days, I had got enough of his Character not to have been surprised at such a Letter as he has hurt you

1 Sic: for "unpaid"?