Keats reviewed his performance, and that as Luke in Sir J. B. Burges’s Riches, in The Champion, 21 December 1817.

3 William Hone (1780–1842), radical journalist, was tried on 18–20 December 1817 for blasphemous libel. Lord Ellenborough (1750–1818) presided over the second and third trials. Thomas Wooler (1786?-1853), radical politician and journalist, had been tried and acquitted for libel on 5 June.

4 Like Death on the Pale Horse, by Benjamin West, President of the Royal Academy.

5 Shelley’s publishers attempted to recall Laon and Cyntha because it dealt with incest. He was forced to revise it as The Revolt of Islam.

To J. H. Reynolds, 3 February 1818 (excerpt)

My dear Reynolds,

I thank you for your dish of Filberts – Would I could get a basket of them by way of desert every day for the sum of two pence –1 Would we were a sort of ethereal Pigs, & turn’d loose to feed upon spiritual Mast & Acorns – which would be merely being a squirrel & feed [for feeding] upon filberts, for what is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort of archangelical acorn. About the nuts being worth cracking, all I can say is that where there are a throng of delightful Images ready drawn simplicity is the only thing. the first is the best on account of the first line, and the “arrow – foil’d of its antler’d food”2 – and moreover (and this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more because I have had so much reason to shun it as a quicksand) the last has “tender and true”3 – We must cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the like – It may be said that we ought to read our Contemporaries. that Wordsworth &c should have their due from us. but for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist – Every man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself – Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven,4 and yet want confidence to put down his halfseeing. Sancho will invent a Journey heavenward as well as any body. We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us – and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one’s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject. – How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, “admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose! Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this. Each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state, & knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all his dominions & has a continual itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: the antients were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them. – I will cut all this – I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular – Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? why should we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be Eagles? Why be teased with “nice Eyed wagtails,”5 when we have in sight “the Cherub Contemplation”?6 – Why with Wordsworths “Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand”7 when we can have Jacques “under an oak &c”8 – The secret of the Bough of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it – Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, & because he happens in an Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old man – he must stamp it down in black & white, and it is henceforth sacred – I don’t mean to deny Wordsworth’s grandeur & Hunt’s merit, but I mean to say we need not be teazed with grandeur & merit – when we can have them uncontaminated & unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets, & robin Hood Your letter and its sonnets gave me more pleasure than will the 4th Book of Childe Harold9 & the whole of any body’s life & opinions. In return for your dish of filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope they’ll look pretty.10

1 Reynolds had sent Keats two sonnets on Robin Hood by the twopenny post.

2 A quotation from the first of Reynolds’s sonnets.

3 A quotation from the second of Reynolds’s sonnets.

4 Hamlet, III. i. 79f.

5 Leigh Hunt, ‘The Nymphs’, II, 170.

6 ‘Il Penseroso’, l. 54.

7 Wordsworth, ‘The Two April Mornings’, ll. 59, 60.

8 As You Like It, II. i. 31.

9 The fourth canto of Byron’s poem appeared in April 1818.

10 Keats enclosed ‘Robin Hood’ and ‘Lines on the Mermaid Tavern’.

To J. H. Reynolds, 19 February 1818 (excerpt)

My dear Reynolds,

I have an idea that a Man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner – let him on any 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 – untill it becomes stale – but when will it do so? Never – When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all “the two-and thirty Pallaces”1 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 them – a strain of musick conducts to ‘an odd angle of the Isle’2 and when the leaves whisper it puts a ‘girdle round the earth.3 Nor will this sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverance to their Writers – for perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the Benefit done by great Works to the ‘Spirit and pulse of good’4 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 Webb 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 wandering 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 all [for at] last greet each other at the Journeys end – A 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 might become great, and Humanity instead of being a wide heath of Furse 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 giving5 – no the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits – The f[l]ower 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 that [for than] to fly like Mercury – let us not therefore go hurrying about and collecting honey-bee like, buzzing here and there impatiently from 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 evey noble insect that favors us with a visit – sap will be given us for Meat and dew for drink –

1 Of Bhuddist doctrine.

2 The Tempest, I.