Other actors are continually thinking of their sum-total effect throughout a play. Kean delivers himself up to the instant feeling, without a shadow of a thought about any thing else. He feels his being as deeply as Wordsworth, or any other of our intellectual monopolists. From all his comrades he stands alone, reminding us of him, whom Dante has so finely described in his Hell:

And sole apart retir’d, the Soldan fierce.

[Inferno IV, 126; Henry Carey’s translation (1814)]

Although so many times he has lost the battle of Bosworth Field, we can easily conceive him really expectant of victory, and a different termination of the piece. Yet we are as moths about a candle in speaking of this great man. ‘Great, let us call him, for he has conquered us!’ [Edward Young, The Revenge]. We will say no more. Kean! Kean! have a carefulness of thy health, an in-nursed respect for thy own genius, a pity for us in these cold and enfeebling times! Cheer us a little in the failure of our days! for romance lives but in books. The goblin is driven from the heath, and the rainbow is robbed of its mystery!1

APPENDIX 6

Selection of Keats’s Letters

To Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817

My dear Bailey,

I will get over the first part of this (unsaid) Letter as soon as possible for it relates to the affair of poor Crips – To a Man of your nature, such a Letter as Haydon’s must have been extremely cutting – What occasions the greater part of the World’s Quarrels? simply this, two Minds meet and do not understand each other time enough to p[r]aevent any shock or surprise at the conduct of either party – As soon as I had known Haydon three days I had got enough of his character not to have been surp[r]ised at such a Letter as he has hurt you with. Nor when I knew it was it a principle with me to drop his acquaintance although with you it would have been an imperious feeling. I wish you knew all that I think about Genius and the Heart – and yet I think you are thoroughly acquainted with my innermost breast in that respect or you could not have known me even thus long and still hold me worthy to be your dear friend. In passing however I must say of one thing that has pressed upon me lately and encreased my Humility and capability of submission and that is this truth – Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect – by [for but] they have not any individuality, any determined Character. I would call the top and head of those who have a proper self Men of Power –

But I am running my head into a Subject which I am certain I could not do justice to under five years s[t]udy and 3 vols octavo – and moreover long to be talking about the Imagination – so my dear Bailey do not think of this unpleasant affair if possible – do not – I defy any ha[r]m to come of it – I defy – I’ll shall write to Crips this Week and reque[s]t him to tell me all his goings on from time to time by Letter whererever I may be – it will all go on well – so dont because you have suddenly discover’d a Coldness in Haydon suffer yourself to be teased. Do not my dear fellow. O I wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not for – I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty – In a Word, you may know my favorite Speculation by my first Book1 and the little song2 I sent in my last – which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these Matters – The Imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream – he awoke and found it truth. I am the more zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how any thing can be known for truth by consequitive reasoning – and yet it must be – Can it be that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections – However it may be, O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! It is ‘a Vision in the form of Youth’ a Shadow of reality to come – and this consideration has further conv[i]nced me for it has come as auxiliary to another favorite Speculation of mine, that we shall enjoy ourselves here after by having what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated – And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in sensation rather than hunger as you do after Truth – Adam’s dream will do here and seems to be a conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as human Life and its spiritual repetition. But as I was saying – the simple imaginative Mind may have its rewards in the repeti[ti]on of its own silent Working coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness – to compare great things with small – have you never by being surprised with an old Melody – in a delicious place – by a delicious voice, fe[l]t over again your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated on your soul – do you not remember forming to yourself the singer’s face more beautiful that [for 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 here after – that delicious face you will see – What a time! I am continually running away from the subject – 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 an one I consider your’s 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 on Earth; but also increase in knowledge and know all things. I am glad to hear you are in a fair Way for 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 pesterd with many – I think Jane or Marianne has a better opinion of me than I deserve – for really and truly I do not think my Brothers 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 come before my Window I take part in its existince and pick about the Gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hea[r]ing a Misfortune having befalled another is this. ‘Well it cannot be helped. – he will have the pleasure of trying the resourses of his spirit, and I beg now my dear Bailey that hereafter should you observe any thing cold in me not to but [for 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 genuiness 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.3 I should have been here a day sooner but the Reynoldses persuaded me to spop [sic] 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 a[t] Christmas – I will find that 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 Direct Burford Bridge near dorking

1 That is, the ‘fellowship with essence’ passage in Endymion, I, 777–843.

2 The version of Endymion, IV, 146–81, Keats copied into a letter to Bailey, 3 November 1817.

3 Keats noted at the end of the draft of Endymion ‘Burford Bridge, Nov. 28, 1817.’

To George and Tom Keats, 21, 27(?) December 1817

My dear Brothers

I must crave your pardon for not having written ere this & &1 I saw Kean return to the public in Richard III, & finely he did it, & at the request of Reynolds I went to criticise his Luke in Riches – the critique is in todays champion,2 which I send you with the Examiner in which you will find very proper lamentation on the obsoletion of christmas Gambols & pastimes: but it was mixed up with so much egotism of that drivelling nature that pleasure is entirely lost. Hone the publisher’s trial, you must find very amusing; & 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 & Hone have done us an essential service3 – I have had two very pleasant evenings with Dilke yesterday & today; & am at this moment just come from him & feel in the humour to go on with this, began in the morning, & from which he came to fetch me. I spent Friday evening with Wells & went the 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 Beauty & Truth – Examine King Lear & you will find this examplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness – The picture is larger than Christ rejected4 – I dined with Haydon the sunday after you left, & had a very pleasant day, I dined too (for I have been out too much lately) with Horace Smith & met his two Brothers with Hill & Kingston & one Du Bois, they only served to convince me, how superior humour 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 a mannerism in their very eating & drinking, in their mere handling a Decanter – They talked of Kean & 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 & yet I am going to Reynolds, on wednesday – Brown & Dilke walked with me & back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare posessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & 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 & there are words about its being objected too, as much as Queen Mab was.5 Poor Shelley I think he has his Quota of good qualities, in sooth la!! Write soon to your most sincere friend & affectionate Brother

(Signed) John

1 Marks an omission by Jeffrey, the copyist, who also misdated the letter.

2 Kean returned to the stage on 15 December as Richard III.