ceived. "How do you make that out, Master Vellum ?" Does Mrs. S. cut bread and butter as neatly as ever? Tell her to procure some fatal scissors, and cut the thread of life of all to-be-disappointed poets. Does Mrs. Hunt tear linen as straight as ever? Tell her to tear from the book of life all blank leaves. Remember me to them all; to Miss Kent and the little ones all. Your sincere friend John Keats alias Junkets You shall hear where we move. IX. To BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON. 41 Great Marlborough Street, London. My dear Haydon, Margate Saturday Eve [10 May 1817]. [Postmark, 13 May 1817.] Let Fame, that all pant after in their lives, When spite of cormorant devouring time The endeavour of this present breath may buy That Honor which shall bate his Scythe's keen edge To think that I have no right to couple myself with you in this speech would be death to me, so I have e'en made in so good-humoured a manner." He explains that Junkets was "an appellation that was given him in play upon his name, and in allusion to his friends of Fairy-land." In the quotation from the opening speech in Love's Labour's written it, and I pray God that our "brazen tombs" be nigh neighbours. It cannot be long first; the "endeavour of this present breath" will soon be over, and yet it is as well to breathe freely during our sojourn—it is as Lost, pant in line 1 should be hunt, and so in line 3 should be then. Lord Houghton says of the reference to the "brazen tombs❞— "To the copy of this letter, given me by Mr. Haydon on the 14th of May, 1846, a note was affixed at this place, in the words 'Perhaps they may be."" On the original letter stands the note "I wonder if they will be B. R. Haydon." In Haydon's Correspondence and Table-Talk, Volume II, pages 2 and 3, is a letter to Keats dated the 11th of May, to which this is an obvious rejoinder. It would seem that there was some mistake about the day on one side or the other. This is an excellent example of the kind of influence the painter exercised on the poet, to whom he says " I have been intending to write to you every hour this week, but have been so interrupted that the postman rang his bell every night in vain, and with a sound that made my heart quake. I think you did quite right to leave the Isle of Wight if you felt no relief; and being quite alone, after study you can now devote your eight hours a day with just as much seclusion as ever. Do not give way to any forebodings. They are nothing more than the over-eager anxieties of a great spirit stretched beyond its strength, and then relapsing for a time to languid inefficiency. Every man of great views is, at times, thus tormented, but begin again where you off without hesitation or fear. Trust in God with all your might, my dear Keats. This dependence, with your own energy, will give you strength, and hope, and comfort. I am always in trouble, and wants, and distresses; here I found a refuge. From my soul I declare to you I never applied for help, or for consolation, or for strength, but I found it. I always rose up from my knees with a refreshed fury, an iron-clenched firmness, a crystal piety of feeling that sent me streaming on with a repulsive power against the troubles of life. Never despair while there is this path open to you. By habitual exercise you will have habitual intercourse and constant companionship; and at every want turn to the Great Star of your hopes with a delightful confidence that will never be disappointed. I love you like my own brother: Beware, for God's sake, of the delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality of our friend! He will go out of the world the victim of his own weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the left well as if you have not been teazed with that Money affair, that bill-pestilence. However, I must think that difficulties nerve the Spirit of a Man-they make our Prime Objects a Refuge as well as a Passion. The Trumpet of Fame is as a tower of Strength, the ambitious bloweth it and is safe. I suppose, by your telling me not to give way to forebodings, George has mentioned to you what I have lately said in my Letters to himtruth is I have been in such a state of Mind as to read over my Lines and hate them. I am one that "gathers Samphire, dreadful trade"-the Cliff of Poesy towers above me yet when Tom who meets with some of Pope's Homer in Plutarch's Lives reads some of those to me they seem like Mice to mine. I read and write about eight hours a day. There is an old saying "well begun is half done"-'tis a bad one. I would use instead, "Not begun at all till half done;" so according to that I have not begun my Poem and consequently (à priori) can say nothing about it. Thank God! I do begin arduously where I leave off, notwithstanding occasional depressions; and I hope for the support of a High Power while I climb this little eminence, and especially in my Years of more momentous Labor. I remember your saying that you had notions of a good Genius presiding over you. I have of late had the same thought, for things which [I] do half at Random are afterwards confirmed contempt of his enemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character. I wish you would come up to town for a day or two that I may put your head in my picture. I have rubbed in Wordsworth's, and advanced the whole. God bless you, my dear Keats! do not despair; collect incident, study character, read Shakespeare, and trust in Providence, and you will do, you must." Mr. Frederick Wordsworth Haydon says the passage about " our friend" and his sophistications "is in reference to Leigh Hunt." by my judgment in a dozen features of Propriety. Is it too daring to fancy Shakespeare this Presider? When in the Isle of Wight I met with a Shakespeare in the Passage of the House at which I lodged-it comes nearer to my idea of him than any I have seen-I was but there a Week, yet the old woman made me take it with me though I went off in a hurry. Do you not think this is ominous of good? I am glad you say every man of great views is at times tormented as I am. Sunday after [11 May 1817]. This Morning I received a letter from George by which it appears that Money Troubles are to follow us up for some time to come-perhaps for always-these vexations are a great hindrance to one-they are not like Envy and detraction stimulants to further exertion as being immediately relative and reflected on at the same time with the prime object -but rather like a nettle leaf or two in your bed. So now I revoke my Promise of finishing my Poem by the Autumn which I should have done had I gone on as I have done-but I cannot write while my spirit is fevered in a contrary direction and I am now sure of having plenty of it this Summer.. At this moment I am in no enviable Situation-I feel that I am not in a Mood to write any to day; and it appears that the loss of it is the beginning of all sorts of irregularities. I am extremely glad that a time must come when every thing will leave not a wrack behind. You tell me never to despair-I wish it was as easy for me to observe the saying-truth is I have a horrid Morbidity of Temperament which has shown itself at intervals-it is I have no doubt the greatest Enemy and stumbling block I have to fear-I may even say that it is likely to be the cause of my disappointment. However every ill has its share of good-this very bane would at any time enable me to look with an obstinate eye on the Devil Himself-aye to be as proud of being the lowest of the human race as Alfred could be in being of the highest. I feel confident I should have been a rebel angel had the opportunity been mine. I am very sure that you do love me as your very Brother-I have seen it in your continual anxiety for me—and I assure you that your welfare and fame is and will be a chief pleasure to me all my Life. I know no one but you who can be fully sensible of the turmoil and anxiety, the sacrifice of all what is called comfort, the readiness to measure time by what is done and to die in six hours could plans be brought to conclusions-the looking upon the Sun, the Moon, the Stars, the Earth and its contents, as materials to form greater things-that is to say ethereal things-but here I am talking like a Madman,greater things than our Creator himself made!! I wrote to Hunt yesterday-scarcely know what I said in it. I could not talk about Poetry in the way I should have liked for I was not in humor with either his or mine. His self delusions are very lamentable-they have inticed him into a Situation which I should be less eager after than that of a galley Slave—what you observe thereon is very true must be in time. Perhaps it is a self delusion to say so-but I think I could not be deceived in the manner that Hunt is— may I die tomorrow if I am to be. There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into an idea of being a great Poet-or one of those beings who are privileged to wear out their Lives in the pursuit of Honor-how comfortable a feel it is to feel that such a Crime must bring its heavy Penalty? That if one be a Self-deluder accounts must be balanced? am glad you are hard at Work-'t will now soon be done --I long to see Wordsworth's as well as to have mine I |