Last evening wrought me up, and I cannot forbear sending you the following. Yours imperfectly, JOHN KEATS. "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning, The social smile, the chain for freedom's sake: Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb." MY DEAR SIR, From KEATS. Thursday afternoon, 20th November, 1816. Your letter has filled me with a proud pleasure, and shall be kept by me as a stimulus to exertion. I begin to fix my eye upon one horizon. My feelings entirely fall in with VOL. II. B yours in regard to the ellipsis, and I glory in it. The idea of your sending it to Wordsworth put me out of breath. You know with what reverence I would send my well-wishes to him. Yours sincerely, TO KEATS. JOHN KEATS. MY DEAR KEATS, March, 1817. Many thanks, my dear fellow, for your two noble sonnets. I know not a finer image than the comparison of a poet unable to express his high feelings to a sick eagle looking at the sky, where he must have remembered his former towerings amid the blaze of dazzling sunbeams, in the pure expanse of glittering clouds; now and then passing angels, on heavenly errands, lying at the will of the wind with moveless wings, or pitching downward with a fiery rush, eager and intent on objects of their seeking. . . . I feel deeply the high and enthusiastic praise with which you have spoken of me in the first sonnet. Be assured you shall never repent it. The time shall come, if God spare my life, when you will remember it with delight. God bless you! TO KEATS. B. R. HAYDON. MY DEAR KEATS, 11th May, 1817. I have been intending to write to you every hour this week, but have been so interrupted that the postman rang his bell every night in vain, and with a sound that made my heart quake. I think you did quite right to leave the Isle of Wight if you felt no relief; and being quite alone, after study you can now devote your eight hours a-day with just as much seclusion as ever. Do not give way to any forebodings. They are nothing more than the over-eager anxieties of a great spirit stretched beyond its strength, and then relapsing for a time to languid inefficiency. Every man of great views is, at times, thus tormented, but begin again where you left off without hesitation or fear. Trust in God with all your might, my dear Keats. This dependence, with your own energy, will give you strength, and hope, and comfort. I am always in trouble, and wants, and distresses; here I found a refuge. From my soul I declare to you I never applied for help, or for consolation, or for strength, but I found it. I always rose up from my knees with a refreshed fury, an iron-clenched firmness, a crystal piety of feeling that sent me streaming on with a repulsive power against the troubles of life. Never despair while there is this path open to you. By habitual exercise you will have habitual intercourse and constant companionship; and at every want turn to the Great Star of your hopes with a delightful confidence that will never be disappointed. I love you like my own brother. Beware, for God's sake, of the delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality of our friend! He will go out of the world the victim of his own weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the contempt of his enemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character.* I wish you would come up to town for a day or two that I may put your head in my picture. I have rubbed in Wordsworth's, and advanced the whole. God bless you, my dear Keats! do not despair; collect incident, study character, read Shakespeare, and trust in Providence, and you will do, you must. Ever affectionately yours, To KEATS. B. R. HAYDON. MY DEAR KEATS, 17th September, 1817. I am delighted to hear that you are getting on with your poem. Success to it and to you, with all my heart and soul. Will you oblige me by going to Magdalen College and inquiring of the porter there about a young man who, when I was lately at Oxford, was copying the altar-piece at Magdalen by Morales. I am anxious to know about that young man—the copy promised something. Will you, if you can, see the young man, and ascertain what his wishes in Art are? if he has ambition and seems to possess power? all of which you can soon discover. In these cases should any friend be disposed to assist him up to London and to support him for a year, I will This is in reference to Leigh Hunt.-ED. train him in the Art with no further remuneration than the pleasure of seeing him advance. I will put him in the right way, and do all I can to advance him. Do oblige me by exerting yourself in this case for me. Perhaps Mr. Bailey may also feel interest. Remember me to him. Yours sincerely, From KEATS. B. R. HAYDON. MY DEAR HAYDON, Oxford, 28th September. I read your letter to the young man, whose name is Cripps. He seemed more than ever anxious to avail himself of your offer. He does not possess the philosopher's stone, nor Fortunatus' purse, nor Gyges' ring; but at Bailey's suggestion, who, I assure you, is a very capital fellow, we have strummed up a kind of contrivance whereby he will be enabled to do himself the benefits you will lay in his path. I have a great idea that he will be a tolerably neat brush. It is, perhaps, the finest thing that will befall him this many a year, for he is just of an age to get grounded in bad habits from which you will pluck him. He brought a copy of Mary Queen of Scots. It appears to me that he has copied the bad style of the painting, as well as coloured the eye-balls yellow, like the original. He has also the fault that you pointed out to me in Hazlitt on the constringing and diffusion of substance. However, I really believe that he will take fire at the sight of your picture and set about things. If he can get ready in time to return to town with me, which will be in a few days, I will bring him to you. You will be glad to hear that within these last three weeks I have written a thousand lines, which are the third book of my poem. My ideas with respect to it are, I assure you, very low; and I would write the subject thoroughly again but I am tired of it, and think the time would be better spent in writing a new romance which I have in my eye for next summer. Rome was not built in a day; and all the good I expect from my employment this summer is the fruit of experience, which I hope to gather in my next poem. Bailey's kindest wishes and my vow of being, JOHN KEATS. MY DEAR HAYDON, From KEATS. Wentworth Place, Hampstead, 1818. My throat has not suffered me yet to expose myself to the night air. However, I have been to town in the day-time; have had several interviews with my guardian; have written him rather a plain-spoken letter, which has had its effect, and he now seems inclined to put no stumbling-block in my way. The difficulty is whether I can inherit what belonged to poor Tom before my sister is of age-a period of six years. Should it not be so, I must incontinently take to corduroy trousers. But I am nearly confident it is all a Bam! I shall see you soon; but do let me have a line to-day or to-morrow concerning your health and spirits. Ever your sincere friend, TO KEATS. JOHN KEATS. MY DEAR KEATS, 10th March, 1818. I have been long, long convinced of the paltry subterfuge of conversation to weaken the effect of unwelcome truth, and have left company where truth is never found; of this be assured, effect and effect only, self-consequence and dictatorial constraint, are what those love who shine in conversation at the expense of truth, principle, and everything else which interferes with their appetite for dominion. I am most happy you approve of my last Sunday's defence, and I hope you will like the next equally well. . . . . I shall come and see you as soon as this contest is clear of my hands. I cannot before, every moment is so precious. Take care of precious. Take care of your throat, and Believe me, my dear fellow, Truly and affectionately your friend, B. R. HAYDON. P.S.-At any rate, finish your present great intention of a poem. It is as fair a subject as can be. Once more, adieu ! B. R. H. |