in:' but I would rather not show my face in Town till the end of the Year-if that will be time enough-if not I shall be disappointed if you do not write for me even when you think best. I never quite despair and I read Shakespeare-indeed I shall I think never read any other Book much. Now this might lead me into a long Confab but I desist. I am very near agreeing with Hazlitt that Shakespeare is enough for us. By the by what a tremendous Southean article his last was-I wish he had left out "grey hairs." It was very gratifying to meet your remarks on the manuscript-I was reading Anthony and Cleopatra when I got the Paper and there are several Passages applicable to the events you commentate. You say that he arrived by degrees and not by any single struggle to the height of his ambition-and that his Life had been as common in particulars as other Men's. Shakespeare makes Enobarb sayWhere's Antony?

2

Eros-He's walking in the garden, and spurns
The rush that lies before him; cries, Fool, Lepidus!

In the same scene we find—

Let determined things

To destiny hold unbewailed their way.

Dolabella says of Anthony's Messenger,
An argument that he is pluck'd when hither
He sends so poor a pinion of his wing.

Then again

Eno.-I see Men's Judgments are

A parcel of their fortunes; and things outward

1 The portraits of Wordsworth and Keats in the picture of the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, now in Philadelphia.

2 In the original, of; but I presume Lord Houghton was right in substituting on. See Appendix on The Examiner for the 4th of May 1817.

Do draw the inward quality after them,

To suffer all alike.

The following applies well to Bertrand: '

Yet he that can endure

To follow with allegiance a fallen Lord,

Does conquer him that did his Master conquer,

And earns a place i' the story.

But how differently does Buonap[arte] bear his fate from Anthony!

'Tis good, too, that the Duke of Wellington has a good Word or so in the Examiner. A Man ought to have the Fame he deserves-and I begin to think that detracting from him as well as from Wordsworth is the same thing. I wish he had a little more taste-and did not in that respect "deal in Lieutenantry." You should have heard from me before this-but in the first place I did not like to do so before I had got a little way in the First Book, and in the next as G. told me you were going to write I delayed till I had heard from you. Give my Respects the next time you write to the North and also to John Hunt. Remember me to Reynolds and tell him to write. Ay, and when you send Westward tell your Sister that I mentioned her in this. So now in the name of Shakespeare, Raphael and all our Saints, I commend you to the care of heaven!

Your everlasting friend
John Keats-

1 In the original Bertram; but the reference is clearly to General Bertrand.

My dear Sir,

X.

To JOHN TAYLOR.

Margate, 16 May 1817.

I am extremely indebted to you for your liberality in the shape of manufactured rag, value 20., and shall immediately proceed to destroy some of the minor heads of that hydra the Dun; to conquer which the knight need have no sword, shield, cuirass, cuisses, herbadgeon, spear, casque, greaves, paldrons, spurs, chevron, or any other scaly commodity, but he need only take the Bank-note of Faith and Cash of Salvation, and set out against the monster, invoking the aid of no Archimago or Urganda, but finger me the paper, light as the Sybil's leaves in Virgil, whereat the fiend skulks off with his tail between his legs. Touch him with this enchanted paper, and he whips you his head away as fast as a snail's

Having now started upon Endymion, Keats had, as Lord Houghton records, "come to an arrangement with Messrs. Taylor and Hessey (who seem to have cordially appreciated his genius) respecting its publication." In regard to the "tangible proofs of their interest in his welfare" indicated in the following letters, his Lordship observes that Keats's "reliance on their generosity was, probably, only equal to his trust in his own abundant powers of repayment. The physical symptoms he alludes to had nothing dangerous about them and merely suggested some prudence in his mental labours. Nor had he then experienced the harsh repulse of ungenial criticism, but, although never unconscious of his own deficiencies, nor blind to the jealousies and spites of others, still believed himself to be accompanied on his path to fame by the sympathies and congratulations of all the fellow-men he cared for and they were many." I do not know whether there is any old authority for spelling habergeon as it is spelt at the beginning of this letter.