soul? Do you not remember forming to yourself the singer's face-more beautiful than it was possible, and yet, with the elevation of the moment, you did not think so? Even then you were mounted on the wings of Imagination, so high that the prototype must be hereafter that delicious face you will see. Sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex mind-one that is imaginative, and at the same time careful of its fruits,-who would exist partly on sensation, partly on thought-to whom it is necessary that "years should bring the philosophic mind?" Such a one I consider yours, and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness that you not only drink this old wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal musings upon earth, but also increase in knowledge, and know all things.

for

I am glad to hear that you are in a fair way Easter. You will soon get through your unpleasant reading, and then !—but the world is full of troubles, and I have not much reason to think myself pestered

with many.

or

I think has a better opinion of me than I deserve; for, really and truly, I do not think my brother's illness connected with mine. You know more of the real cause than they do; nor have I any chance of being rack'd as you have been. You

perhaps, at one time, thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out. You have of necessity, from your disposition, been thus led away. I scarcely remember counting upon any happiness. I look not for it if it be not in the present hour. Nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow were before my window, I take part in its existence, and pick about the gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hearing a misfortune having befallen another is this" Well, it cannot be helped: he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit ; and I beg now, my dear Bailey, that hereafter, should you observe anything cold in me, not to put it to the account of heartlessness, but abstraction; for I assure you I sometimes feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole week; and so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself, and the genuineness of my feelings at other times, thinking them a few barren tragedy-tears.

My brother Tom is much improved he is going to Devonshire-whither I shall follow him. At present, I am just arrived at Dorking, to change the scene, change the air, and give me a spur to wind up my poem, of which there are wanting 500 lines. I should have been here a day sooner, but the Reynoldses

persuaded me to stop in town to meet your friend
Christie. There were Rice and Martin. We talked
about ghosts. I will have some talk with Taylor,
and let you know, when, please God, I come down at
Christmas. I will find the
I will find the "Examiner," if possible.
My best regards to Gleig, my brothers, to you, and
Mrs. Bentley.

Your affectionate friend,

JOHN KEATS.

I want to say much more to you-a few hints will set me going.

MY DEAR REYNOLDS,

LEATHERHEAD, 22nd November, 1817.

E

There are two things which tease me
and the other that I cannot

here one of them
go with Tom into Devonshire. However, I hope to
do my duty to myself in a week or so; and then I'll
try what I can do for my neighbour-now, is not this
virtuous? On returning to town I'll damn all idle-
ness-indeed, in superabundance of employment, I
must not be content to run here and there on little
two-penny errands, but turn Rakehell, i. e. go a
masking, or Bailey will think me just as great a
promise-keeper as he thinks you; for myself I do
not, and do not remember above one complaint

it

Bailey writes so

against you for matter o' that. abominable a hand, to give his letter a fair reading requires a little time, so I had not seen, when I saw you last, his invitation to Oxford at Christmas. I'll

was. I do

go with you. You know how poorly not think it was all corporeal,-bodily pain was not used to keep him silent. I'll tell you what; he was hurt at what your sisters said about his joking with your mother. It will all blow over. God knows, my dear Reynolds, I should not talk any sorrow to you—you must have enough vexation, so I won't any more. If I ever start a rueful subject in a letter to you blow me! Why don't you?-Now I was going to ask you a very silly question, [which] neither you nor anybody else could answer, under a folio, or at least a pamphlet—you shall judge. Why don't you, as I do, look unconcerned at what may be called more particularly heart-vexations? They never surprise me. Lord! a man should have the fine point of his soul taken off, to become fit for this world.

I like this place very much. There is hill and dale, and a little river. I went up Box Hill this evening after the moon-" you a' seen the moon came down, and wrote some lines. Whenever I am separated from you, and not engaged in a continued poem, every letter shall bring you a lyric-but I am

too anxious for you to enjoy the whole to send you â particle. One of the three books I have with me is " Shakspeare's Poems: I never found so many beauties in the Sonnets; they seem to be full of fine things said unintentionally—in the intensity of working out conceits. Is this to be borne ?

Hark ye!

"When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the head,
And Summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly head."

He has left nothing to say about nothing or anything for look at snails-you know what he says about snails-you know when he talks about "cockled snails"—well, in one of these sonnets, he says-the chap slips into-no! I lie! this is in the "Venus and Adonis : the simile brought it to my mind.

"As the snail, whose tender horns being hit,
Shrinks back into his shelly cave with pain,
And there all smothered up in shade doth sit,
Long after fearing to put forth again;
So at his bloody view her eyes are fled,

Into the deep dark cabins of her head."

He overwhelms a genuine lover of poetry with all manner of abuse, talking about—