In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a few catkins. I hope they 'll look pretty. "No, those days are gone away," &c. 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 66 * Mr. Reynolds had inclosed Keats some Sonnets on Robin Hood, to which these fine lines are an answer. 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. [POSTMARK, HAMPSTEAD. Feb. 19, 1818.] MY DEAR REYNOLDS, 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 from 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 startingpost towards all "the two-and-thirty palaces." How happy is such a voyage of conception, what delicious diligent 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 6 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 honours paid by man to 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 neighbour, 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 briars, 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 woman, 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 favours 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, And he's awake who thinks himself asleep." Now I am sensible all this is a mere sophistication, (however it may neighbour to any truths) 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. |