and cheapness are the essentials; but as I shall, with Brown, be returned by next Friday, you cannot, in that space, have sufficient time to make any choice selection, and need not be very particular, as I can, when on the spot, suit myself at leisure. Brown bids me remind you not to send the "Examiners" after the third. Tell Mrs. D. I am obliged to her for the late ones, which I see are directed in her hand. Excuse this mere business-letter, for I assure you I have not a syllable at hand on any subject in the world. Your sincere friend, JOHN KEATS. The friends returned to town together, and Keats took possession of his new abode. But he had miscalculated his own powers of endurance: the enforced absence from his friends was too much for him, and a still stronger impulse drew him back again to Hampstead. She, whose name "Was ever on his lips But never on his tongue," exercised too mighty a control over his being for him to remain at a distance, which was neither absence nor presence, and he soon returned to where at least he could rest his eyes on her habitation, and enjoy each chance opportunity of her society. I find a fragment written about this date, and under this inspiration, but it is still an interesting study of the human heart, to see how few traces remain in his outward literary life of that passion which was his real existence. ΤΟ What can I do to drive away Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen, Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen! Touch has a memory. O say, love, say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty? When every fair one that I saw was fair, Amince? 4es. When, howe'er poor or particolor'd things, My muse had wings, And ever ready was to take her course Whither I bent her force, Unintellectual, yet divine to me ; Divine, I say!-What sea-bird o'er the sea Winging along where the great water throes? How shall I do To get anew Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more The reach of fluttering Love, And make him cower lowly while I soar? Foisted into the canon law of love ;— Seize on me unawares, Where shall I learn to get my peace again? Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods, O, for some sunny spell To dissipate the shadows of this hell! Say they are gone,-with the new dawning light Steps forth my lady bright! O, let me once more rest My soul upon that dazzling breast! Let once again these aching arms be placed, The tender gaolers of thy waist! And let me feel that warm breath here and there To spread a rapture in my very hair, O, the sweetness of the pain! Give me those lips again! Enough! Enough! it is enough for me WENTWORTH PLACE, Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.] MY DEAR TAYLOR, I have come to a determination not to publish any thing I have now ready written; but, for all that, to publish a poem before long, and that I hope to make a fine one. As the marvelous is the most enticing, and the surest guarantee of harmonious numbers, I have been endeavoring to persuade myself to untether Fancy, and to let her manage for herself. I and myself cannot agree about this at all. Wonders are no wonders to me. I am more at home amongst men and women. I would rather read Chaucer and Ariosto. The little dramatic skill I may as yet have, however badly it might show in a drama, would, I think, be sufficient for a poem. I wish to diffuse the coloring of St. Agnes' Eve throughout a poem in which character and sentiment would be the figures to such drapery. Two or three such poems, if God should spare me, written in the course of the next six years, would be a famous Gradus ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays-my greatest ambition, when I do feel ambitious. I am sorry to say that is very seldom. The subject we have once or twice talked of appears a promising one -the Earl of Leicester's history. I am this morning reading Holingshed's "Elizabeth." You had some books awhile ago, you promised to send me, illustrative of my subject. If you can lay hold of them, or any other which may be serviceable to me, I know you will encourage my low-spirited muse by sending them, or rather by letting me know where our errand-cart man shall call with my little box. I will endeavor to set myself selfishly at work on this poem that is to be. Your sincere friend, Abou this time he wrote this to his brother George : "From the time you left us our friends say I have altered so completely I am not the same person. I dare say you have altered also. Mine is not the same hand I clenched at Hammond.* We are like the relic garments of a saint, the same and not the same; for the careful monks patch it and patch it till there is not a thread of the original in it, and still they show it for St. Anthony's shirt. This is the reason why men who have been bosomfriends for a number of years afterwards meet coldly, neither of them know why. Some think I have lost that poetic fire and ardor they say I once had. The fact is, I perhaps have, but instead of that I hope I shall substitute a more thoughtful and quiet power. I am more contented to read and think, but seldom haunted with ambitious thoughts. I am scarcely content to write the best verse from the fever they leave behind. I want to compose without this fever; I hope I shall one day. "You cannot imagine how well I can live alone. I told the servant to-day I was not at home to any one that called. I am not sure how I shall endure loneliness and bad weather at the same time. It is beautiful weather now. I walk for an hour every day before dinner. My dear sister, I have all the "Examiners" ready for you. I will pack them up when the business with Mr. Abbey comes to a conclusion. I have dealt out your best wishes like a pack of cards, but, being always given to cheat, I have turned up ace. You see I am making game of you. I see you are not happy in America. As for pun-making, I wish it were as profitable as pin-making. There is but little business of that sort going on now. We struck for wages like the Manchester weavers, but to no purpose, for we are all out of employ. I am more lucky than some, you see, as I have an opportunity of exporting a pun,-getting into a little foreign trade, which is a comfortable thing. You have heard of Hook the farce-writer. Horace Smith was asked if he knew him. 'Oh yes,' says he, Hook and I are very intimate.' Brown has been taking French lessons at the cheap rate of two-and-sixpence a page, and *The surgeon to whom he was apprenticed. Reynolds observed, 'Gad, the man sells his lessons so cheap, he must have stolen them.' I wish you could get change for a pun in silver currency, and get with three-and-a-half every night in Drury pit." In the beginning of the winter George Keats suddenly appeared in England, but remained only for a short period. On his arrival in America, with his wife, he found that their limited means required an immediate retirement into, what were then, the solitudes of the far West, but which the labor of enterprising men has now peopled with life and planted with civilization. From Philadelphia these two children of the old world, and nearly children in life, (she was just sixteen,) proceeded to Pittsburgh and descended the Ohio to Cincinnati. Down that beautiful river, then undisturbed by the panting of the steamboat or the tumult of inhabited shores, their lonely boat found its way to Cincinnati, where they resided for some time. George Keats paid a visit shortly after to Kentucky, where he lived in the same house with Audubon the naturalist, who, seeing him one day occupied in chopping a log, after watching him with a curious interest, exclaimed, "You will do well in this country; I could chop that log in ten minutes; you have taken near an hour; but your persistence is worth more than my expertness." A boat in which he invested his money completely failed as a speculation, and his voyage to England seems to have been undertaken in the hope of raising capital for some more successful venture. I am unable to determine whether he took, back with him any portion of what remained of John's fortune, but he did receive his share of his brother Tom's property, and he may possibly have repaid himself for what he had spent for John out of John's share. John's professional education had been so expensive that it only required a certain amount of that carelessness in money-matters incidental to men of higher natures to account for the continual embarrassment in which he found himself, without having indulged in any profligate habits. Tom's long sickness was also a great expense to the family, so that the assistance of the more prudent and fortunate brother was frequently required to make up deficiencies. |
