['As Hermes once took to his feathers light,' p. 138.] I want very very much a little of your wit, my dear Sister- a Letter or two of yours just to bandy back a pun or two across the Atlantic, and send a quibble over the Floridas. Now you have by this time crumpled up your large Bonnet, what do you wear a cap? do you put your hair in papers of a night? do you pay the Miss Birkbecks a morning visit - have you any tea? or do you milk-and-water with them What place of Worship do you go to - the Quakers, the Moravians, the Unitarians, or the Methodists? Are there any flowers in bloom you likeany beautiful heaths any streets full of Corset Makers? What sort of shoes have you to fit those pretty feet of yours? Do you desire Compliments to one another? Do you ride on Horseback? What do you have for breakfast, dinner, and supper? without mentioning lunch and bever [a bite between meals] and wet and snack - and a bit to stay one's stomach? Do you get any Spirits now you might easily distill some whiskey and going into the woods, set up a whiskey shop for the MonkeysDo you and the Miss Birkbecks get groggy on anything a little so-soish so as to be obliged to be seen home with a Lantern? You may perhaps have a game at puss in the corner— Ladies are warranted to play at this game though they have not whiskers. Have you a fiddle in the Settlement -or at any rate a Jew's harp which will play in spite of one's teeth- When you have nothing else to do for a whole day I tell you how you may employ it First get up and when you are dressed, as it would be pretty early with a high wind in the woods, give George a cold Pig with my Compliments. Then you may saunter into the nearest coffee-house, and after taking a dram and a look at the Chronicle- go and frighten the wild boars upon the strength - -you may as well bring one home for breakfast, serving up the hoofs garnished with bristles and a grunt or two to accompany the singing of the kettle - then if George is not up give him a colder Pig always with my Compliments When you are both set down to breakfast I advise you to eat your full share, but leave off immediately on feeling yourself inclined to anything on the other side of the puffy. avoid that, for it does not become young women-After you have eaten your breakfast keep your eye upon dinner it is the safest way You should keep a Hawk's eye over your dinner and keep hovering over it till due time then pounce taking care not to break any plates. While you are hovering with your dinner in prospect you may do a thousand things put a hedgehog into George's hat - pour a little water into his rifle - soak his boots in a pail of water - cut his jacket round into shreds like a Roman kilt or the back of my grandmother's stays - Sew off his buttons [Later, April 21 or 22.] -So we played Yesterday I could not write a line I was so fatigued, for the day before I went to town in the morning, called on your Mother, and returned in time for a few friends we had to dinner. These were Taylor, Woodhouse, Reynolds: we began cards at about 9 o'clock, and the night coming on, and continuing dark and rainy, they could not think of returning to townat Cards till very daylight- and yesterday I was not worth a sixpence. Your Mother was very well but anxious for a Letter. We had half an hour's talk and no more, for I was obliged to be home. Mrs. and Miss Millar were well, and so was Miss Waldegrave. I have asked your Brothers here for next Sunday. When Reynolds was here on Monday he asked me to give Hunt a hint to take notice of his Peter Bell in the Examiner - the best thing I can do is to write a little notice of it myself, which I will do here, and copy out if it should suit my Purpose Peter Bell. There have been lately ad vertised two Books both Peter Bell by name; what stuff the one was made of might be seen by the motto 'I am the real Simon Pure.' This false Florimel has hurried from the press and obtruded herself into public notice, while for aught we know the real one may be still wandering about the woods and mountains. Let us hope she may soon appear and make good her right to the magic girdle. The Pamphleteering Archimage, we can perceive, has rather a splenetic love than a downright hatred to real Florimels- if indeed they had been so christened. - or had even a pretention to play at bob cherry with Barbara Lewthwaite but he has a fixed aversion to those three rhyming Graces Alice Fell, Susan Gale and Betty Foy; and now at length especially to Peter Bell fit Apollo. It may be seen from one or two Passages in this little skit, that the writer of it has felt the finer parts of Mr. Wordsworth, and perhaps expatiated with his more remote and sublimer muse. This as far as it relates to Peter Bell is unlucky. The more he may love the sad embroidery of the Excursion, the more he will hate the coarse Samplers of Betty Foy and Alice Fell; and as they come from the same hand, the better will he be able to imitate that which can be imitated, to wit Peter Bellas far as can be imagined from the obstinate Name. We repeat, it is very unlucky this real Simon Pure is in parts the very Man there is a pernicious likeness in the scenery, a pestilent humour' in the rhymes, and an inveterate cadence in some of the Stanzas, that must be lamented. If we are one part amused with this we are three parts sorry that an appreciator of Wordsworth should show so much temper at this really provoking name of Peter Bell! This will do well enough I have copied it and enclosed it to Hunt. You will call it a little politic-seeing I keep clear of all parties. I say something for and against both parties and suit it to the tune of the - we saw Examiner - I meant to say I do not unsuit it and I believe I think what I say, nay I am sure I do — I and my conscience are in luck to-day which is an excellent thing. The other night I went to the Play with Rice, Reynolds, and Martina new dull and half-damn'd opera call'd the Heart of Midlothian,' that was on Saturday I stopt at Taylor's on Sunday with Woodhouse and passed a quiet sort of pleasant day. I have been very much pleased with the Panorama of the Ship at the North Pole- with the icebergs, the - --- Why four kisses you will say - why four, because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse she would have fain said 'score' without hurting the rhyme but we must temper the Imagination, as the Critics say, with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even number, that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven there would have been three and a half a piece -a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side [Later.] CHORUS OF FAIRIES. 4- FIRE, AIR, EARTH, AND WATER SALAMANDER, ZEPHYR, DUSKETHA, BREAMA. [Keats here copies the verses given on pp. 140, 141.] I have been reading lately two very different books, Robertson's America and Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV. It is like - walking arm and arm between Pizarro and the great-little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we see the great body of the people in both instances; in the first, where Men might seem to inherit quiet of Mind from unsophisticated senses; from uncontamination of civilisation, and especially from their being, as it were, estranged from the mutual helps of Society and its mutual injuries- and thereby more immediately under the Protection of Providence- even there they had mortal pains to bear as bad, or even worse than Bailiffs, Debts, and Poverties of civilised Life. The whole appears to resolve into this that Man is originally a poor forked creature subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of some kind or other. If he improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comfortsat each stage, at each ascent there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances he is mortal, and there is still a heaven with its Stars above his head. The most interesting question that can come before us is, How far by the persevering endeavours of a seldom appearing Socrates Mankind may be made happy I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme, but what must it end in? Death—and who could in such a case bear with death? The whole troubles of life, which are now frittered away in a series of years, would then be accumulated for the last days of a being who instead of hailing its approach would leave this world as Eve left Paradise. But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility the nature of the world will not admit of it-the inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself. Let the fish Philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in winter time, and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of sumLook at the Poles and at the Sands of Africa, whirlpools and volcanoes Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness. The mer. point at which Man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature, and no further. For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning, it enjoys itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances - they are as native to the world as itself: no more can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will prey upon his nature. Tho common cognomen of this world among th misguided and superstitious is 'a vale of tears,' from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven- What a little circumscribed straightened notion! Call the world if you please 'The vale of Soulmaking.' Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speaking now in the highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck me concerning it) I say 'Soulmaking' - Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception they know and they see and they are pure, in short they are God-how then are Souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them SO as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How, but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander system of salvation than the Christian religion—or rather it is a system of Spirit-creation - This is effected by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series of years These three Materials are the Intelligence the human heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind), and the World or Elemental space suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of forming the Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of Identity. I can scarcely express what I but dimly perceive — and yet I think I perceive it that you may judge the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read - I will call the human heart the horn Book used in that School and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made from that School and its horn book. Do you not see how necessary a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways. Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Mind's Bible, it is the Mind's experience, it is the text from which the Mind or Intelligence sucks its identity. As various as the Lives of Men are - so various become their souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence. This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not offend our reason and humanity - I am convinced that many difficulties which Christians labour under would vanish before it there is one which even now strikes me the salvation of Children. In them the spark or intelligence returns to God without any identity - it having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart - or seat of the human Passions. It is pretty generally suspected that the Christian scheme has been copied from the ancient Persian and Greek Philosophers. Why may they not have made this simple thing even more simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and Personages, in the same manner as in the heathen mythology abstractions are personified? Seriously I think it probable that this system of Soul-making may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and personal schemes of Redemption among the Zoroastrians the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the human species must have their carved Jupiter; so another part must have the palpable and named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ, their Oromanes, and their Vishnu. If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts I mean I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances — and what are circumstances but touchstones of his heart? and what are touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul? and what was his Soul before it came into the world and had these provings and alterations and perfectionings? An intelligence without Identity - and how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium of the Heart? and how is the heart to become this Medium but in a world of Circumstances? You must pay no attention to Mrs. Abbey's unfeeling and ignorant gabble. You can't stop an old woman's crying more than you can a Child's. The old woman is the greatest nuisance because she is too old for the rod. Many people live opposite a Blacksmith's till they cannot hear the hammer. I have been in Town for two or three days and came back last night. I have been a little concerned at not hearing from George I continue in daily expectation. Keep on reading and play as much on the music and the grassplot as you can. I should like to take possession of those Grassplots for a Month or so; and send Mrs. A. to Town to count coffee berries instead of currant Bunches, for I want you to teach me a few common dancing steps - and I would buy a Watch box to practise them in by myself. I think I had better always pay the postage of these Letters. I shall send you another book the first time I am in Town early enough to book it with one of the morning Walthamstow Coaches. You did not say a word about your Chillblains. Write me directly and let me know about them - Your Letter shall be answered like an echo. Your affectionate Brother JOHN 96. TO BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON Wentworth Place, [Postmark, March 8, 1819.] MY DEAR HAYDON, - You must be wondering where I am and what I am about! I am mostly at Hampstead, and about nothing; being in a sort of qui bono temper, not exactly on the road to an epic poem. Nor must you think I have forgotten you. No, I have about every three days been to Abbey's and to the Law[y]ers. Do let me know how you have been getting cn, and in what spirits you are. You got out gloriously in yesterday's Examiner. What a set of little people we live amongst! I went the other day into an ironmonger's shop without any change - |