County. I purpose within a month to put my knapsack at my back and make a pedestrian tour through the North of England, and part of Scotland-to make a sort of Prologue to the Life I intend to pursue that is to write, to study and to see all Europe at the lowest expence. I will clamber through the Clouds and exist. I will get such an accumulation of stupendous recollections that as I walk through the suburbs of London I may not see them-I will stand upon Mount Blanc and remember this coming Summer when I intend to straddle BenLomond-with my soul!-galligaskins are out of the Question. I am nearer myself to hear your Christ is being tinted into immortality. Believe me Haydon your picture is part of myself-I have ever been too sensible of the labyrinthian path to eminence in Art (judging from Poetry) ever to think I understood the emphasis of painting. The innumerable compositions and decompositions which take place between the intellect and its thousand materials before it arrives at that trembling delicate and snail-horn perception of beauty. I know not you[r] many havens of intenseness-nor ever can know them but for this I hope not you achieve is lost upon me for when a Schoolboy the abstract Idea I had of an heroic painting-was what I cannot describe. I saw it somewhat sideways, large, prominent, round, and colour'd with magnificence-somewhat like the feel I have of Anthony and Cleopatra. Or of Alcibiades leaning on his Crimson Couch in his Galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with the Sea. That passage in Shakespeare is finer than this

See how the surly Warwick mans the Wall.

1 Such is the phrase in the letter. I suppose the sense is "but for all this I hope what you achieve is not lost upon me."

I like your consignment of Corneille-that's the humour of it. They shall be called your Posthumous Works. I don't understand you[r] bit of Italian.' I hope she will awake from her dream and flourish fair-my respects to her. The Hedges by this time are beginning to leaf-Cats are becoming more vociferous-young Ladies who wear Watches are always looking at them. Women about forty five think the Season very backward-Ladies' Mares have but half an allowance of food. It rains here again, has been doing so for three days-however as I told you I'll take a trial in June, July, or August next year.

I am afraid Wordsworth went rather huff'd out of Town-I am sorry for it-he cannot expect his fireside Divan to be infallible-he cannot expect but that every man of worth is as proud as himself. O that he had not fit with a Warrener-that is din'd at Kingston's. I shall be in town in about a fortnight and then we will have a day or so now and then before I set out on my northern expedition-we will have no more abominable Rowsfor they leave one in a fearful silence-having settled the Methodists let us be rational-not upon compulsion-no —if it will out let it but I will not play the Bassoon any more deliberately. Remember me to Hazlitt, and Bewick

Your affectionate friend

John Keats

The allusion to Mrs. Scott's black eyes-page 131, where also will be found the reference to Corneille. The next passage, on the season, should be compared with A Now, pages 33-9 of this volume.

2 Mr. F. W. Haydon says in the Correspondence, Volume II, page 11, that Keats "appears to allude here to the violent political and religious discussions of the set, as much as to an absurd practice they had, when they met, of amusing themselves after dinner by a

XLII.

To JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

Teignmouth,

9 April 1818.

My dear Reynolds,

1

Since you all agree that the thing is bad, it must be so-though I am not aware there is anything like Hunt in it (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt). Look it over again, and examine into the motives, the seeds, from which any one sentence sprung.

I have not the slightest feel of humility towards the public, or to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of great Men. When I am writing for myself, for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course

concert, each imitating a different instrument. The fun was as boisterous by all accounts as the discussion was heated." The next trace I find of the correspondence with the painter is a letter in Haydon's journal dated the 8th of May 1817 or 1818, the final figure of the year-date being altered and uncertain; but it is inserted opposite to a letter of May 1818, and clearly points to Endymion: it is as follows:

My dear Keats,

I have read your delicious Poem, with exquisite enjoyment, it is the most delightful thing of the time-you have taken up the great trumpet of nature and made it sound with a voice of your own —I write in a great hurry-You will realize all I wish or expect— Success attend you my glorious fellow-& Believe me

ever & ever yours

B. R. Haydon

1 The first Preface to Endymion, given at pages 115-17 of

Volume I.

with me; but a Preface is written to the public-a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility. If I write a Preface in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character with me as a public speaker.

I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing me; but among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping; I hate the idea of humility to them.

I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least. shadow of public thought.

Forgive me for vexing you, and making a Trojan horse of such a trifle, both with respect to the matter in question, and myself; but it eases me to tell you: I could not live without the love of my friends; I would jump down Ætna for any great public good-but I hate a mawkish popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about pictures and books. I see swarms of porcupines with their quills erect "like limetwigs set to catch my winged book," and I would fright them away with a torch. You will say my Preface is not much of a torch. It would have been too insulting "to begin from Jove," and I could not [set] a golden head upon a thing of clay. If there is any fault in the Preface it is not affectation, but an undersong of disrespect to the public. If I write another Preface it must be done without a thought of those people. I will think about it. If it should not reach you in four or five days,

1 As to the Preface to Endymion, Lord Houghton remarks-" He did 'think about it,' and within the next twenty-four hours he produced in its stead one of the most beautiful' Introductions' in the range of our literature. The personal circumstance is touched with a delicacy and tenderness that could only be overlooked by

tell Taylor to publish it without a Preface, and let the Dedication simply stand-"Inscribed to the Memory of Thomas Chatterton."

I had resolved last night to write to you this morning -I wish it had been about something else-something to greet you towards the close of your long illness. I have had one or two intimations of your going to Hampstead for a space; and I regret to see your confounded rheumatism keeps you in Little Britain, where I am sure the air is too confined.

Devonshire continues rainy. As the drops beat against the window, they give me the same sensation as a quart of cold water offered to revive a half-drowned devil-no feel of the clouds dropping fatness; but as if the roots of the earth were rotten, cold, and drenched. I have not been able to go to Kent's ca[ve?] at Babbicomb; however, on one very beautiful day I had a fine clamber over the rocks all along as far as that place.

I shall be in town in about ten days. We go by way of Bath on purpose to call on Bailey. I hope soon to be writing to you about the things of the north, purposing to wayfare all over those parts. I have settled my accoutrements in my own mind, and will go to gorge wonders. However, we'll have some days together before I set out.

I have many reasons for going wonder-ways; to make my winter chair free from spleen; to enlarge my vision; to escape disquisitions on poetry, and Kingston-criti

stupidity, or misrepresented by malice, and the deep truth of the latter periods implies a justice of psychological intuition as surprising as anything in the poem itself. What might one not be authorized to expect from a genius that could thus gauge its own capacity, and, in the midst of the consciousness of its power, apprehend so wisely the sources and extent of its deficiencies?"