fellow-creatures, must be unprofitable to him in procuring the necessities of life, and, above all, estimating at its due value that spirit of independence which shrinks from materialising the obligations of friendship into daily bread, gave every encouragement to these designs, and only remonstrated against the project of the following note, both on account of the pain he would himself suffer from the privation of Keats's society, but from the belief that the scheme of life would not be successful.

WINCHESTER,

Oct. 1st, [1819.]

MY DEAR DILKE,

For sundry reasons which I will explain to you when I come to town, I have to request you will do me a great favour, as I must call it, knowing how great a bore it is. That your imagination may not have time to take too great an alarm, I state immediately that I want you to hire me a couple of rooms (a sitting-room and bed-room for myself alone) in Westminster. Quietness and cheapness are the essentials; but as I shall, with Brown, be returned by next Friday, you cannot, in that space, have sufficient time to make any choice selection, and need not be very particular, as I can, when on the spot, suit myself at leisure. Brown bids me remind

you not to send the

Tell Mrs. D. I am

66

Examiners" after the third.

obliged to her for the late ones, which I see are directed in her hand. Excuse this mere business-letter, for I assure you I have not a syllable at hand on any subject in the world.

Your sincere friend,

JOHN KEATS.

The friends returned to town together, and Keats took possession of his new abode. But he had miscalculated his own powers of endurance: the enforced absence from his friends was too much for him, and a still stronger impulse drew him back again to Hampstead. She, whose name

"Was ever on his lips

But never on his tongue,"

exercised too mighty a control over his being for him to remain at a distance, which was neither absence nor presence, and he soon returned to where at least he could rest his eyes on her habitation, and enjoy each chance opportunity of her society. I find a fragment written about this date, and under this inspiration, but it is still an interesting study of the human heart, to see how few traces remain in his outward literary life of that passion which was his real existence.

ΤΟ

What can I do to drive away

Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen,
Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queen!
Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free
In my old liberty?

When every fair one that I saw was fair,
Enough to catch me in but half a snare,
Not keep me there :

When, howe'er poor or particolour'd things,
My muse had wings,

And ever ready was to take her course
Whither I bent her force,

Unintellectual, yet divine to me;—

Divine, I say!What sea-bird o'er the sea
Is a philosopher the while he goes

Winging along where the great water throes?

How shall I do

To get anew

Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more
Above, above

The reach of fluttering Love,

And make him cower lowly while I soar?

Shall I gulp wine? No, that is vulgarism,

A heresy and schism,

Foisted into the canon law of love ;

No, wine is only sweet to happy men ;
More dismal cares

Seize on me unawares,

Where shall I learn to get my peace again?

To banish thoughts of that most hateful land,
Dungeoner of my friends, that wicked strand
Where they were wreck'd and live a wrecked life;

That monstrous region, whose dull rivers pour,
Ever from their sordid urns unto the shore,
Unown'd of any weedy-haired gods;

Whose winds, all zephyrless, hold scourging rods,
Iced in the great lakes, to afflict mankind;

Whose rank-grown forests, frosted, black, and blind,
Would fright a Dryad ; whose harsh herbaged meads
Make lean and lank the starv'd ox while he feeds;
There bad flowers have no scent, birds no sweet song,
And great unerring Nature once seems wrong.

O, for some sunny spell

To dissipate the shadows of this hell!

Say they are gone,—with the new dawning light

Steps forth my lady bright!

O, let me once more rest

My soul upon that dazzling breast!

Let once again these aching arms be placed,

The tender gaolers of thy waist!

And let me feel that warm breath here and there

To spread a rapture in my very hair,—

O, the sweetness of the pain!

Give me those lips again!

Enough! Enough! it is enough for me
To dream of thee!

MY DEAR TAYLOR,

WENTWORTH PLACE, Hampstead, 17th Nov. [1819.]

I have come to a determination not to publish anything I have now ready written; but, for all that, to publish a poem before long, and that I hope to make a fine one. As the marvellous is the most

enticing, and the surest guarantee of harmonious numbers, I have been endeavouring to persuade myself to untether Fancy, and to let her manage for herself. I and myself cannot agree about this at all. Wonders are no wonders to me. I am more at home amongst men and women. I would rather read Chaucer than Ariosto. The little dramatic skill I may as yet have, however badly it might shew in a drama, would, I think, be sufficient for a poem. I wish to diffuse the colouring of St. Agnes' Eve throughout a poem in which character and sentiment would be the figures to such drapery. Two or three such poems, if God should spare me, written in the course of the next six years, would be a famous Gradus ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays -my greatest ambition, when I do feel ambitious. I am sorry to say that is very seldom. The subject we have once or twice talked of appears a promising one -the Earl of Leicester's history. I am this morning reading Holingshed's "Elizabeth." Elizabeth." You had some books awhile ago, you promised to send me, illustrative of my subject. If you can lay hold of them, or any other which may be serviceable to me, I know you will encourage my low-spirited muse by sending them, or rather by letting me know where our errand-cart man shall call with my little box.