My dear Jane, LXXI. To JANE REYNOLDS. Well Walk, Sept. 1st [1818]. Certainly your kind note would rather refresh than trouble me, and so much the more would your coming if as you say, it could be done without agitating my Brother too much. Receive on your Hearth our deepest thanks for your Solicitude concerning us. I am glad John is not hurt, but gone safe into Devonshire-I shall be in great expectation of his Letter-but the promise of it in so anxious and friendly a way I prize more than a hundred. I shall be in town to-day on some business with my guardian ‘as was'1 with scarce a hope of being able to call on you. For these two last days Tom has been more cheerful: you shall hear again soon how he will be. Remember us particularly to your Mother. Your sincere friend John Keats LXXII. To CHARLES WENTWORTh Dilke. [Postmark, Hampstead, 21 September 1818.] My dear Dilke, According to the Wentworth place Bulletin you have left Brighton much improved: therefore now a few lines will be more of a pleasure than a bore. I have · Mr. Abbey. things to say to you, and would fain begin upon them in this fourth line: but I have a Mind too well regulated to proceed upon any thing without due preliminary remarks. You may perhaps have observed that in the simple process of eating radishes I never begin at the root but constantly dip the little green head in the salt -that in the Game of Whist if I have an ace I constantly play it first. So how can I with any face begin without a dissertation on letter-writing? Yet when I consider that a sheet of paper contains room only for three pages and a half, how can I do justice to such a pregnant subject? However, as you have seen the history of the world stamped as it were by a diminishing glass in the form of a chronological Map, so will I "with retractile claws" draw this into the form of a table-whereby it will occupy merely the remainder of this first page Folio-Parsons, Lawyers, Statesmen, Physicians out of place-ut-Eustace-Thornton-out of practice or on their travels. Foolscap-1. Superfine-Rich or noble poets-ut Byron. 2. common ut egomet. Quarto-Projectors, Patentees, Presidents, Potato growers. Bath-Boarding schools, and suburbans in general. Gilt edge-Dandies in general, male, female and literary. Octavo or tears-All who make use of a lascivious seal. Duodec.-May be found for the most part on Milliners' and Dressmakers' Parlour tables. Strip-At the Playhouse-doors, or any where. Snip So called from its size being disguised by a twist. I suppose you will have heard that Hazlitt has on foot a prosecution against Blackwood. I dined with him a few days since at Hessey's-there was not a word said about it, though I understand he is excessively vexed. Reynolds, by what I hear, is almost over-happy,' and Rice is in town. I have not seen him, nor shall I for some time, as my throat has become worse after getting well, and I am determined to stop at home till I am quite well. I was going to Town to-morrow with Mrs. D. but I thought it best to ask her excuse this morning. I wish I could say Tom was any better. His identity presses upon me so all day that I am obliged to go out and although I intended to have given some time to study alone, I am obliged to write and plunge into abstract images to ease myself of his countenance, his voice, and feebleness-so that I live now in a continual fever. It must be poisonous to life, although I feel well. Imagine "the hateful siege of contraries if I think of fame, of poetry, it seems a crime to me, and yet I must do so or suffer. I am sorry to give you pain -I am almost resolved to burn this-but I really have not self-possession and magnanimity enough to manage the thing otherwise-after all it may be a nervousness proceeding from the Mercury. I Bailey I hear is gaining his spirits, and he will yet be what I once thought impossible, a cheerful Man-I think he is not quite so much spoken of in Little Britain. forgot to ask Mrs. Dilke if she had any thing she wanted to say immediately to you. This morning look'd so unpromising that I did not think she would have gonebut I find she has, on sending for some volumes of Gibbon. I was in a little funk yesterday, for I sent in 1 Presumably concerning his marriage. an unseal'd note of sham abuse, until I recollected, from what I heard Charles say, that the servant could neither read nor write-not even to her Mother as Charles observed. I have just had a Letter from Reynolds-he is going on gloriously. The following is a translation of a line of Ronsard Love poured her beauty into my warm veins. You have passed your Romance, and I never gave in to it, or else I think this line a feast for one of your Lovers. How goes it with Brown? Believe me I have rather rejoiced at your happiness than fretted at your silence. Indeed I am grieved on your account that I am not at the same time happy. But I conjure you to think at present of nothing but pleasure "Gather the rose, &c."-gorge the honey of life. I pity you as much that it cannot last for ever, as I do myself now drinking bitters. Give yourself up to it— you cannot help it-and I have a consolation in thinking so. I never was in love-yet the voice and shape of a Woman 1 has haunted me these two days—at such a time, when the relief, the feverous relief of Poetry seems 1 Jane Cox, a cousin of the Reynoldses. a much less crime. This morning Poetry has conquered -I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life-I feel escaped from a new strange and threatening sorrow-and I am thankful for it. There is an awful warmth about my heart like a load of Immortality. Poor Tom-that woman-and Poetry were ringing changes in my senses. Now I am in comparison happy -I am sensible this will distress you-you must forgive me. Had I known you would have set out so soon I could have sent you the "Pot of Basil" for I had copied it out ready. Here is a free translation of a Sonnet of Ronsard, which I think will please you-I have the loan of his works they have great Beauties. Nature withheld Cassandra in the skies, For more adornment, a full thousand years She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes, And shap'd and tinted her above all Peers: Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings, And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes With such a richness that the cloudy Kings Of high Olympus utter'd slavish sighs. When from the Heavens I saw her first descend, I had not the original by me when I wrote it, and did not recollect the purport of the last lines. I should have seen Rice ere this but I am confined by Sawrey's mandate in the house now, and have as yet only gone out in fear of the damp night.-You know what an undangerous matter it is. I shall soon be quite recovered. Your offer I shall remember as though |