*

*

I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this. I saw Kean return to the public in "Richard III.," and finely he did it, and, at the request of Reynolds, I went to criticize his Duke. The critique is in to-day's "Champion," which I send you, with the "Examiner," in which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of Christmas gambols and pastimes but it was mixed up with so much egotism of that drivelling nature that all pleasure is entirely lost. Hone, the publisher's trial, you must find very amusing, and, as Englishmen, very encouraging: his Not Guilty is a thing, which not to have been, would have dulled still more Liberty's emblazoning. Lord Ellenborough has been paid in his own coin. Wooler and Hone have done us an essential service. I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke, yesterday and to-day, and am at this moment just come from him, and feel in the humour to go on with this, begun in the morning, and from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells,' and went next morning to see "Death on the Pale Horse." It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; but there is nothing to be intense upon, no women one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into

1 Charles Wells, the author of Stories after Nature and Joseph and his Brethren. See the sonnet to him in Volume I (page 68).

reality. The excellence of every art is its intensity,) capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth. Examine “King Lear," and you will find this exemplified throughout but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness. The picture is larger than "Christ Rejected."

I dined with Haydon the Sunday after you left, and had a very pleasant day. I dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith, and met his two brothers, with Hill and Kingston, and one Du Bois. They only served to convince me how superior humour( is to wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have all a mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere handling a decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company. "Would I were with that company instead of yours," said I to myself! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me, and yet I am going to Reynolds on Wednesday. Brown and Dilke walked with me and back to the Christmas pantomine. I had not a dispute, but a disquisition, with Dilke upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously-I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the penetralium of Mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through y

volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great Poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. Shelley's poem' is out, and there are words about its being objected to as much as "Queen Mab" was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his quota of good qualities. Write soon to your most sincere friend and affectionate brother, John.

XXIII.

To BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON.

Lisson Grove North, Paddington.

Saturday Morn.

My dear Haydon,

[Postmark, Hampstead 10 January 1818.]

I should have seen you ere this, but on account of my sister being in Town: so that when I have sometimes made ten paces towards you, Fanny has called me into the City; and the Christmas Holydays are your only time to see Sisters, that is if they are so situated as mine. I will be with you early next week-to night it should be, but we have a sort of a Club every Saturday evening-tomorrow, but I have on that day an insuper

1 Laon and Cythna.

(XXIII) Haydon's journal contains what appears to be the rough draft of his answer to this letter. He begins with the closing theme, thus:

My dear Keats,

I feel greatly delighted by your high opinion, allow me to add sincerely a fourth to be proud of John Keats' genius !—This I speak from my heart.-You and Bewick are the only men I ever liked with all my heart, for Wordsworth being older, there is no

able engagement. Crip[p]s has been down to me, and appears sensible that a binding to you would be of the greatest advantage to him-if such a thing be done it cannot be before 150£ or 200£ are secured in subscriptions to him. I will write to Bailey about it, give a Copy of the Subscribers' names to every one I know who is likely to get a 5£ for him. I will leave a Copy at Taylor and Hessey's, Rodwell and Martin, and will ask Kingston and Co. to cash up.

Your friendship for me is now getting into its teensand I feel the past. Also every day older I get-the greater is my idea of your atchievements in Art: and I am convinced that there are three things to rejoice at in this Age-The Excursion, Your Pictures, and Hazlitt's depth of Taste.

Yours affectionately
John Keats-

equality tho' I reverence him and love him devotedly—and now you know my peculiar feelings in wishing to have a notice when you cannot keep an engagement with me; there can never be as long as we live any ground of dispute between us. My friendship for you is beyond its teens, and beginning to ripen to maturity—I always saw through your nature at once and you shall always find me a devoted and affectionate brother.- -With respect to Cripps,

I sincerely think it would be for our mutual advantage to have him bound, I would instruct him for the first two years, and then in the last he would be a great assistance to me. I will subscribe 5£-it is all I can afford, and all which ought to be expected of me, as I will do all in my power to inform him—I like him much, he is docile and industrious and improves rapidly-I hope we shall succeed in getting the money-do your utmost and so will I.—In the mean time I will go on with his Studies.-With respect to our meeting, the sooner my dear Keats the better-but accept this engagement as long as we live-every Sunday at three I shall be happy to see you as long as I live and you live, and as long as I have a bit of beef to give you. When you have other engagements more important come the Sunday following.

XXIV.

To GEORGE AND THOMAS KEATS.

My dear Brothers,

Hampstead,

21 January [1818].

I am certain, I think, of having a letter to-morrow morning; for I expected one so much this morning, having been in town two days, at the end of which my expectations began to get up a little. I found two on the table, one from Bailey and one from Haydon. I am quite perplexed in a world of doubts and fancies; there is nothing stable in the world; uproar's your only music. I don't mean to include Bailey in this, and so I dismiss him from this, with all the opprobrium he deserves; that is, in so many words, he is one of the noblest men alive at the present day. In a note to Haydon, about a week ago (which I wrote with a full sense of what he had done, and how he had never manifested any little mean drawback in his value of me), I said, if there were three things superior in the modern world, they were "The Excursion," Haydon's Pictures, and Hazlitt's depth of Taste. So I believe-not thus speaking with any poor vanity that works of genius are the first things in this world. No! for that sort of probity and disinterestedness which such men as Bailey possess does hold and grasp the tip-top of any spiritual honors that can

This letter as given by Lord Houghton is dated the 21st of April, probably by accident. It must clearly belong to January, as it refers to the preceding letter to Haydon; and the allusion to the second Book of Endymion in the next letter seems to imply that the first was delivered as intended.