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want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a journey heavenward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! How would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!" Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this each of the moderns, like an Elector of Hanover, governs his petty state, and knows how many straws are swept daily from the causeways in all his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the housewives should have their coppers well scoured. The ancients were Emperors of vast provinces; they had only heard of the remote ones, and scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this. I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the pricks when we can walk on roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teazed with "nice-eyed wagtails," when we have in sight "the cherub Contemplation?" Why with Wordsworth's "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand," when we can have Jacques" under an oak," &c.? The secret of the "bough of wilding" will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, and because he happens in an evening walk to imagine the figure of the old man, he must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say

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we need not be teazed with grandeur and merit when we can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive.1 Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood. Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the Fourth Book of " Childe Harold," and the whole of anybody's life and opinions.

In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a few catkins. I hope they'll look pretty.

2

I hope you will like them-they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry. Here are the Mermaid lines.3

In the hope that these scribblings will be some amusement for you this evening, I remain, copying on the hill,

Your sincere friend and co-scribbler,

John Keats.

'Lord Houghton comments on this passage thus :-" Keats was perhaps unconsciously swayed in his estimate of Wordsworth at this moment, by an incident which had occurred at Mr. Haydon's. The young Poet had been induced to repeat to the elder the fine 'Hymn to Pan,' out of 'Endymion,' which Shelley, who did not much like the poem, used to speak of as affording the 'surest promise of ultimate excellence;' Wordsworth only remarked, 'it was a pretty piece of Paganism.' The mature and philosophic genius, penetrated with Christian associations, probably intended some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer, whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas, that to him appeared merely sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith, as in his own 'Dion' and 'Laodamia."" Mr. Dilke adds-"When Keats first called on Wordsworth he was kept waiting for a long time, and when Wordsworth entered he was in full flower, kneebreeches, silk stockings &c., and in a great hurry as he was going to dine with one of the Commissioners of Stamps. As Keats told this story, and with something of anger the circumstance perhaps had unconsciously &c."

2 A modest way of referring to the charming poem Robin Hood, given at pages 132-6 of Volume II.

3 They will be found in Volume II, pages 130-1.

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When once a man delays a letter beyond the proper time, he delays it longer, for one or two reasons; first, because he must begin in a very common-place style, that is to say, with an excuse; and secondly, things and circumstances become so jumbled in his mind, that he knows not what, or what not, he has said in his last. I shall visit you as soon as I have copied my Poem all out. I am now much beforehand with the printers: they have done none yet, and I am half afraid they will let half the season by before the printing. I am determined they shall not trouble me when I have copied it all. Hazlitt's last lecture was on Thomson, Cowper, and Crabbe. He praised Thomson and Cowper, but he gave Crabbe an unmerciful licking. I saw "Fazio"1 the first night; it hung rather heavily on me. I am in the high way of being introduced to a squad of people, Peter Pindar, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Scott. Mr. Robinson, a great friend of Coleridge's, called on me. Richards tells me that my Poems are known in the west country, and that he saw a very clever copy of verses headed with a motto from my sonnet to George. Honors rush so thickly upon me that I shall not be able to bear up against them.

1

By the Rev. Henry (afterwards Dean) Milman.

2 Henry Crabb Robinson, I presume; but I do not find of the visit in the published Diary.

any notice

What think you-am I to be crowned in the Capitol? Am I to be made a Mandarin? No! I am to be invited, Mrs. Hunt tells me, to a party at Ollier's, to keep Shakespeare's birthday. Shakespeare would stare to see me there. The Wednesday before last, Shelley, Hunt, and I, wrote each a sonnet on the river Nile: some day you shall read them all. I saw a sheet of "Endymion," and have all reason to suppose they will soon get it done; there shall be nothing wanting on my part. I have been writing, at intervals, many songs and sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth to read them over to you; however, I think I had better wait till this book is off my mind; it will not be long first.

Reynolds has been writing two very capital articles, in the "Yellow Dwarf," on Popular Preachers.

Your most affectionate brother

John

1 Shakespeare's reason for staring may be found in the letter from Messrs. Ollier to George Keats, given in the Appendix to Volume I.

2 See Volume II, pages 254 and 566-7.

XXXII.

To JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

[Postmark, Hampstead, 19 February 1818.]

My dear Reynolds,

I had an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner-let him on a certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and let him wander with it, and muse upon it, and reflect upon it, and bring home to it, and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it, until it becomes stale-but when will it do so? Never. When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting-post towards all "the two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent Indolence! A doze upon a sofa does not hinder it, and a nap upon Clover engenders ethereal finger-pointings-the prattle of a child gives it wings, and the converse of middle-age a strength to beat them a strain of music conducts to "an odd angle of the Isle," and when the leaves whisper it puts a girdle round the earth. Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers-for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called knowledge. Many have original minds who do not think it-they are led away by Custom. Now it appears to me that almost any Man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy Citadelthe points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful

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