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

"Souls of Poets dead and gone," &c.

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.

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 ;" but, assuredly, the phrase could not have been meant contemptuously, as Keats took it, and was far more annoyed at it than at pages of "Quarterly" abuse, or "Blackwood's" ridicule.

MY DEAR REYNOLDS,

[POSTMARK, HAMPSTEAD. Feb. 19, 1818.]

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 will it do so? Never. When man has arrived at a certain ripeness of 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 dili

gent 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 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 citadel. The points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine web of his soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean-full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wanderings, of distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different, and bent on such diverse journeys, that it may at first appear impossible for any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three under these suppositions. It is however quite the contrary. Minds would leave each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child would talk together, and the old man be led on his path and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute or assert but whisper results to his neighbor, and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould ethereal, every human [being] might become great, and humanity, instead of being a wide heath of furze and briers, with here and there a remote oak or pine, would become a grand democracy of forest trees! It has been an old comparison for our urging on-the bee-hive; however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the bee. For it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving-no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the bee. Its leaves blush deeper in the next spring. And who shall say, between man and wo

man, which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit like Jove than to fly like Mercury :-let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is to be arrived at; but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favors us with a visit. Sap will be given us for meat, and dew for drink.

I was led into these thoughts, my dear Reynolds, by the beauty of the morning operating on a sense of idleness. I have not read any books-the morning said I was right—I had no idea but of the morning, and the thrush said I was right-seeming to say,

"O thou whose face hath felt the Winter's wind,
Whose eye hath seen the snow-clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm-tops among the freezing stars;
To thee the Spring will be a harvest-time.
O thou! whose only book hath been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night, when Phoebus was away,
To thee the Spring will be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge !--I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.

O fret not after knowledge!- I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,

And he's awake who thinks himself asleep."

Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication, (however it may neighbor to any truth) to excuse my own indulgence. So I will not deceive myself that man should be equal with Jove— but think himself very well off as a sort of scullion-mercury, or even a humble-bee. It is no matter whether I am right or wrong, either one way or another, if there is sufficient to lift a little time from your shoulders.

Your affectionate friend,

JOHN KEATS.

With his brothers at Teignmouth he kept up an affectionate correspondence, of which some specimens remain, and he visited them thrice in the early part of the year. The "Champion"

herein mentioned was a periodical of considerable merit, in which Mr. Reynolds was engaged, and the article on Kean alluded to, as well as a later criticism of Keats on the same actor, are well worth preserving, both for their acute appreciation of a remarkable artist, and for their evidence that the genius and habit of poetry had produced its customary effect of making the Poet a good writer of prose. Mr. Brown, whose name now frequently occurs, was a retired merchant, who had been the neighbor of the Keats's since the summer, and his congeniality of tastes and benevolence of disposition had made them intimates and friends. It will be often repeated in these pages-the oftener as they advance; and, in unison with that of the painter Severn, will close the series of honorable friendships associated with a Poet's fame.

MY DEAR BROTHERS,

HAMPSTEAD, 22d December, 1817.

I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this. * * * I saw Kean return to the public in "Richard III," and finely he did it, and, at the request of Reynolds, I went to criticise his Duke. The critique is in to-day's "Champion," which I send you, with the "Examiner," in which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of Christmas gambols and pastimes: but it was mixed up with so much egotism of that driveling nature that all pleasure is entirely lost. Hone, the publisher's trial, you must find very amusing, and, as Englishmen, very encouraging : his Not Guilty is a thing, which not to have been, would have dulled still more Liberty's emblazoning. Lord Ellenborough has been paid in his own coin. Wooler and Hone have done us essential service. I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke, yesterday and to-day, and am at this moment just come from him, and feel in the humor to go on with this, begun in the morning, and from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells, and went next morning to see "Death on the Pale Horse." It is a wonderful picture, when West's age is considered; but there is nothing to be intense upon, no women one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality. The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close relationship with

beaaty and truth. Examine "King Lear," and you will find this exemplified throughout: but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depths of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness. The picture is larger than "Christ Rejected."

I dined with Haydon the Sunday after you left, and had a very pleasant day. I dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith, and met his two brothers, with Hill and Kingston, and one Du Bois. They only served to convince me how superior humor is to wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start, without making one feel; they are all alike; their manners are alike; they all know fashionables; they have all a mannerism in their very eating and drinking, in their mere handling a decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company. "Would I were with that company instead of yours," said I to myself! I know such like acquaintance will never do for me, and yet I am going to Reynolds on Wednesday. Brown and Dilke walked with me and back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute, but a disquisition, with Dilke upon various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to -form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakspeare possessed so enormously-I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the penetralium of Mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great Poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. Shelley's poem is out, and there are words about its being objected to as much as "Queen Mab" was. Poor Shelley, I think he has his quota of good qualities. Write soon to your most sincere JOHN.

friend and affectionate brother,