ii. 223.

3 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II. i. 175.

4 Wordsworth, ‘The Old Cumberland Beggar’, l. 77.

5 Acts xx 35.

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

You may be anxious to know for fact to what sentence in your Letter I allude. You say “I fear there is little chance of any thing else in this life.” You seem to have been going through with a more painful and acute zest the same labyrinth that I have – I have come to the same conclusion thus far. My Branchings out therefrom have been numerous: one of them is the consideration of Wordsworth’s genius and as a help, in the manner of gold being the meridian Line of wordly wealth, – how he differs from Milton. – And here I have nothing but surmises, from an uncertainty whether Miltons apparently less anxiety for Humanity proceeds from his seeing further or no than Wordsworth: And whether Wordsworth has in truth epic passion, and martyrs himself to the human heart, the main region of his song1 – In regard to his genius alone – we find what he says true as far as we have experienced and we can judge no further but by larger experience – for axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: We read fine – things but never feel them to thee [for the] full until we have gone the same steps as the Author. – I know this is not plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say, that now I shall relish Hamlet more than I ever have done – Or, better – You are sensible no man can set down Venery as a bestial or joyless thing until he is sick of it and therefore all philosophizing on it would be mere wording. Until we are sick, we understand not; – in fine, as Byron says, “Knowledge is Sorrow”;2 and I go on to say that “Sorrow is Wisdom” – and further for aught we can know for certainty! “Wisdom is folly” – So you see how I have run away from Wordsworth, and Milton; and shall still run away from what was in my head, to observe, that some kind of letters are good squares others handsome ovals, and others some orbicular, others spheroid – and why should there not be another species with two rough edges like a Rat-trap? I hope you will find all my long letters of that species, and all will be well; for by merely touching the spring delicately and etherially, the rough edged will fly immediately into a proper compactness, and thus you may make a good wholesome loaf, with your own leven in it, of my fragments – If you cannot find this said Rat-trap sufficiently tractable – alas for me, it being an impossibility in grain for my ink to stain otherwise: If I scribble long letters I must play my vagaries. I must be too heavy, or too light, for whole pages – I must be quaint and free of Tropes and figures – I must play my draughts as I please, and for my advantage and your erudition, crown a white with a black, or a black with a white, and move into black or white, far and near as I please – I must go from Hazlitt to Patmore,3 and make Wordsworth and Coleman4 play at leap-frog – or keep one of them down a whole half holiday at fly the garter5 – “From Gray to Gay, from Little to Shakespeare”6 – Also as a long cause requires two or more sittings of the Court, so a long letter will require two or more sittings of the Breech wherefore I shall resume after dinner. –

Have you not seen a Gull, an orc, a sea Mew,7 or any thing to bring this Line to a proper length, and also fill up this clear part; that like the Gull I may dip8 – I hope, not out of sight – and also, like a Gull, I hope to be lucky in a good sized fish – This crossing a letter is not without its association – for chequer work leads us naturally to a Milkmaid,9 a Milkmaid to Hogarth Hogarth to Shakespeare Shakespear to Hazlitt – Hazlitt to Shakespeare10 and thus by merely pulling an apron string we set a pretty peal of Chimes at work – Let them chime on while, with your patience, – I will return to Wordsworth – whether or no he has an extended vision or a circumscribed grandeur – whether he is an eagle in his nest, or on the wing – And to be more explicit and to show you how tall I stand by the giant, I will put down a simile of human life as far as I now perceive it; that is, to the point to which I say we both have arrived at –’ Well – I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments,11 two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me – The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think – We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle – within us – we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one’s vision into the heart and nature of Man – of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression – whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken’d and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open – but all dark – all leading to dark passages – We see not the ballance of good and evil. We are in a Mist – We are now in that state – We feel the “burden of the Mystery,”12 To this point was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive when he wrote ‘Tintern Abbey’ and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them. he is a Genius and superior [to] us, in so far as he can, more than we, make discoveries, and shed a light in them – Here I must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton – though I think it has depended more upon the general and gregarious advance of intellect, than individual greatness of Mind – From the Paradise Lost and the other Works of Milton, I hope it is not too presuming, even between ourselves to say, his Philosophy, human and divine, may be tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years, In his time englishmen were just emancipated from a great superstition – and Men had got hold of certain points and resting places in reasoning which were too newly born to be doubted, and too much opposed by the Mass of Europe not to be thought etherial and authentically divine – who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice, and Chastity in Comus, just at the time of the dismissal of Cod-pieces and a hundred other disgraces? who would not rest satisfied with his hintings at good and evil in the Paradise Lost, when just free from the inquisition and burrning in Smithfield? The Reformation produced such immediate and great benefits, that Protestantism was considered under the immediate eye of heaven, and its own remaining Dogmas and superstitions, then, as it were, regenerated, constituted those resting places and seeming sure points of Reasoning – from that I have mentioned, Milton, whatever he may have thought in the sequel, appears to have been content with these by his writings – He did not think into the human heart, as Wordsworth has done – Yet Milton as a Philosopher, had sure as great powers as Wordsworth – What is then to be inferr’d? O many things – It proves there is really a grand march of intellect –, It proves that a mighty providence subdues the mightiest Minds to the service of the time being, whether it be in human Knowledge or Religion – I have often pitied a Tutor who has to hear “Nome: Musa” – so often dinn’d into his ears – I hope you may not have the same pain in this scribbling – I may have read these things before, but I never had even a thus dim perception of them; and moreover I like to say my lesson to one who will endure my tediousness for my own sake – After all there is certainly something real in the World….

1 Cf. Wordsworth’s The Recluse, I. i. 793 ff.

2 Manfred, I. i. 10.

3 Peter George Patmore (1786–1855), minor author and friend of Hazlitt and Lamb.

4 George Colman the younger (1762–1836), playwright.

5 A child’s game.

6 Creative misquotation of Pope’s Essay on Man, IV, 380, ‘From grave to gay, from lively to severe’. Thomas Little was the pseudonym of Thomas Moore.

7 Cf. Paradise Lost, XI. 835.

8 Keats began to ‘cross’ his letter at this point, and makes a joke of doing so a few words later.

9 Cf. Milton, ‘L’Allegro’, ll. 65–6.

10 Keats relies on Reynolds’s knowledge of Hazlitt’s essays on Shakespeare.

11 Cf. John XIV 2.

12 Wordsworth, ‘Line Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey’, l. 38.

To Richard Woodhouse, 27 October 1818

My dear Woodhouse,

Your Letter gave me a great satisfaction; more on account of its friendliness, than any relish of that matter in it which is accounted so acceptable in the ‘genus irritabile’1 The best answer I can give you is in a clerklike manner to make some observations on two principle points, which seem to point like indices into the midst of the whole pro and con, about genius, and views and atchievements and ambition and cœtera. 1st As to the poetical Character itself, (I mean that sort of which, if I am any thing, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone2) it is not itself – it has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated – It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen.