would at any time enable me to look with an obstinate eye on the very devil himself; or, to be as proud to be the lowest of the human race, as Alfred would be in being of the highest. 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 aware of the turmoil and anxiety, the sacrifice of all that 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 on 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 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 humour with either his or mine. There is no greater sin, after the seven deadly, than to flatter one's self into the idea of being a great poet, or one of those beings who are privileged to wear out their lives in the pursuit of honour. How comfortable a thing it is to feel that such a crime must bring its heavy penalty, that if one be a self-deluder, accounts must be balanced! I am glad you are hard at work; it will now soon be

done. I long to see Wordsworth's, as well as to have mine in; but I would rather not show. my face in town till the end of the year, if that would be time enough; if not, I shall be disappointed if you do not write me ever when you think best. I never quite despair, and I read Shakespeare,—indeed, I shall, I think, never read any other book much; now this might lead me into a very long confab, but I desist. I am very near agreeing with Hazlitt, that Shakespeare is enough for us. By-the-bye, what a tremendous Southean article this last was. I wish he had

left out " grey hairs." It was very gratifying to meet your remarks on the manuscript. I was reading Antony and Cleopatra when I got the paper, and there are several passages applicable to the events you commentate. You say that he arrived by degrees, and not by any single struggle, to the height of his ambition, and that his life had been as common in particular as other men's. Shakespeare makes

Enobarbus say,

"Where's Antony?

Eros. He's walking in the garden, and spurns
The rush before him; cries, Fool, Lepidus!"

In the same scene we find

"Let determined things

To destiny hold unbewailed their way."

Dolabella says of Antony's messenger,

"An argument that he is plucked, when hither
He sends so poor a pinion of his wing."

Then again Enobarbus:

"men's judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward
Do draw the inward quality after them,

To suffer all alike."

The following applies well to Bertrand:

"Yet he that can endure

To follow with allegiance a fallen Lord,
Does conquer him, that did his master conquer,
And earns a place i' the story."

'Tis good, too, that the Duke of Wellington has a good word or so in the Examiner ; a man ought to have the fame he deserves; and I begin to think that detracting from him is the same thing as from Wordsworth. I wish he (Wordsworth) had a little more taste, and did not in that respect "deal in Lieutenantry." You should have heard from me before this; but, in the first place, I did not like to do so, before I had got a little way in the first Book, and in the next, as G. told me you were going to write, I delayed till I heard from you. So now in the name of Shakespeare, Raphael, and all our Saints, I commend you to the care of Heaven.

Your everlasting friend,
JOHN KEATS.

In the early part of May, it appears from the following extract of a letter to Mr. Hunt, * written from Margate, that the sojourn in the Isle of Wight had not answered his expectations: the solitude, or rather the company of self, was too much for him,

know not how it

I went to the Isle of Wight, thought so much about poetry, so long together, that I could not get to sleep at night; and moreover, I is, I could not get wholesome food. By this means, in a week or so, I became not over capable in my upper stories, and set off pell-mell for Margate, at least a hundred and fifty miles, because, forsooth, I fancied I should like my old lodgings here, and could continue to do without trees. Another thing, I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought as an only resource. However, Tom is with me at present, and we are very comfortable. We intend, though, to get among some trees. How have you got on among them? How are the nymphs?—I suppose they have led you a fine dance. Where are you now?

"I have asked myself so often why I should be a Poet more than other men, seeing how great a thing it is, how great things are to be gained by it, what a thing to be in the mouth of Fame, that at last the

* Given entire in the first volume of " Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries."

idea has grown so monstrously beyond my seeming power of attainment, that the other day I nearly consented with myself to drop into a Phaeton. Yet 'tis a disgrace to fail even in a huge attempt, and at this moment I drive the thought from me. I begun my poem about a fortnight since, and have done some every day, except travelling ones. Perhaps I may have done a good deal for the time, but it appears such a pin's point to me, that I will not copy any out. When I consider that so many of these pin-points go to form a bodkin-point (God send I end not my life with a bare bodkin, in its modern sense), and that it requires a thousand bodkins to make a spear bright enough to throw any light to posterity, I see nothing but continual up-hill journeying. Nor is there anything more unpleasant (it may come among the thousand and one) than to be so journeying and to miss the goal at last. But I intend to whistle all these cogitations into the sea, where I hope they will breed storms violent enough to block up all exit from Russia.

"Does Shelley go on telling 'strange stories of the deaths of kings?'* Tell him there are strange

* Mr. Hunt mentions that Shelley was fond of quoting the passage in Shakespeare, and of applying it in an unexpected manner. Travelling with him once to town in the Hampstead stage, in which their only companion was an old lady, who sat