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allegorical poem, called "The Dun," where we would have the Castle of Carelessness, the Drawbridge of Credit, Sir Novelty Fashion's expedition against the City of Tailors, &c., &c. I went day by day at my poem for a month; at the end of which time, the other day, I found my brain so overwrought, that I had neither rhyme nor reason in it, so was obliged to give up for a few days. I hope soon to be able to resume my work. I have endeavoured to do so once or twice; but to no purpose. Instead of poetry, I have a swimming in my head, and feel all the effects of a mental debauch, lowness of spirits, anxiety to go on, without the power to do so, which does not at all tend to my ultimate progression. However, to-morrow I will begin my next month. This evening I go to Canterbury, having got tired of Margate; I was not right in my head when I came. At Canterbury I hope the remembrance of Chaucer will set me forward like a billiard ball. I have some idea of seeing the Continent some time this summer.

In repeating how sensible I am of your kindness, I remain, your obedient servant and friend,

JOHN KEATS.

I shall be happy to hear any little intelligence in the literary or friendly way when you have time to scribble.

MY DEAR SIR,

10th July, 1817.

A couple of Duns that I thought would be silent till the beginning, at least, of next month, (when I am certain to be on my legs, for certain sure,) have opened upon me with a cry most "untunable ;" never did you hear such

"ungallant chiding." Now, you must know, I am not desolate, but have, thank God, twenty-five good notes in my fob. But then, you know, I laid them by to write with, and would stand at bay a fortnight ere they should quit me. In a month's time I must pay, but it would relieve my mind if I owed you, instead of these pelican duns.

I am afraid you will say I have "wound about with circumstance," when I should have asked plainly. However, as I said, I am a little maidenish or so, and I feel my virginity come strong upon me, the while I request the loan of a 20/. and a 10., which, if you would enclose to me, I would acknowledge and save myself a hot forehead. I am sure you are confident of my responsibility, and in the sense of squareness that is always in me.

Your obliged friend,

JOHN KEATS.

He had made a valuable acquaintance in Mr. Bailey, who was at this time at Oxford, reading for the Church, and who, after many changes of clerical life, became Archdeacon of Colombo, in Ceylon, where he won much affection and esteem. Keats visited him in the September of this year, and wrote from thence :

"Poor Bailey, scarcely ever well, has gone to bed, pleased that I am writing to you. To your brother John (whom henceforth I shall consider as mine) and to you, my dear friends, I shall ever feel grateful for having made known to me so real a fellow as Bailey. He delights me in the selfish and (please God) the disinterested part of my disposition. If the old Poets have any pleasure in looking down at the

enjoyers of their works, their eyes must bend with a double satisfaction upon him. I sit as at a feast when he is over them, and pray that if, after my death, any of my labours should be worth saving, they may have so 'honest a chronicler' as Bailey. Out of this, his enthusiasm in his own pur-‘ suit and for all good things is of an exalted kind-worthy a more healthful frame and an untorn spirit. He must have happy years to come-'he shall not die, by God.'"

During the months he spent at Oxford, Mr. Bailey thus describes his habits of composition: "He wrote and I read-sometimes at the same table, sometimes at separate desks-from breakfast till two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task, which was about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his letters. Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, 'that if Poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a tree, it had better not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself. When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." It was in this summer that he first visited Stratford-on-Avon, and added his name to the thousands inscribed on Shakspeare's walls.

About this time he sends to Reynolds an angry tirade against the female writers of the age, "who having taken a snack or luncheon of literary scraps, set themselves up for

towers of Babel in languages, Sapphos in poetry, Euclids in geometry, and everything in nothing." He contrasts their productions with those of the accomplished ladies of an elder period, and transcribes for his friend's pleasure the neat lines of Mrs. Philips, "The Matchless Orinda," beginning

"I have examined and do find,

Of all that favour me,

There's none I grieve to leave behind,
But only, only thee:

To part with thee I needs must die,

Could parting sep'rate thee and I."

He then mentions that he is getting on with "Endymion," and in another letter to Haydon announces

You will be glad to hear that within these last three weeks I have written 1000 lines, which are the third book of my Poem. My ideas of it, I assure you, are 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.

Yours eternally,

JOHN KEATS.

The three first books of "Endymion" were finished in September, and portions of the Poem had come to be seen and canvassed by literary friends. With a singular anticipation of the injustice and calumny he should be subject to as

belonging to "the Cockney School," Keats stood up most stoutly for the independence of all personal association with which the poem has been composed, and admiring as he did the talents and spirit of his friend Hunt, he expresses himself almost indignantly, in his correspondence, at the thought that his originality, whatever it was, should be suffered to have been marred by the assistance, influence, or counsel of Hunt, or any one else. "I refused," he writes to Mr. Bailey, (Oct. 8th), "to visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfettered scope ;" and proceeds to transcribe some reflections on his undertaking, which he says he wrote to his brother George in the spring, and which are well worth the repetition.

"As to what you say about my being a Poet, I can return no answer but by saying that the high idea I have of poetical fame makes me think I see it towering too high above me. At any rate I have no right to talk until 'Endymion' is finished. It will be a test, a trial of my powers of imagination, and chiefly of my invention-which is a rare thing indeed-by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry. And when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the Temple of Fame,-it makes me say-God forbid that I should be without such a task!' I have heard Hunt say, and [I] may be asked, 'Why endeavour after a long poem?' To which I should answer, 'Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a little region to wander in, where they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a

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