Wednesday--
My dear Haydon,
I am glad you were pleased with my
nonsense and if it so happen that the humour takes me when I have set
down to prose to you I will not gainsay it. I should be (god forgive me)
ready to swear because I cannot make use of you[r] assistance in going
through Devon if I was not in my own Mind determined to visit it
thoroughly at some more favorable time of the year. But now Tom (who is
getting greatly better) is anxious to be in Town therefore I put off my
threading the County. I purpose within a Month to put my knapsack at my
back and make a pedestrian tour through the North of England, and part
of Scotland--to make a sort of Prologue to the Life I intend to
pursue--that is to write, to study and to see all Europe at the lowest
expence. I will clamber through the Clouds and exist. I will get such an
accumulation of stupendous recollolections that as I walk through the
suburbs of London I may not see them--I will stand upon Mount Blanc and
remember this coming Summer when I intend to straddle ben Lomond--with
my Soul!-galligaskins are out of the Question--I am nearer myself to
hear your Christ is being tinted into immortality--Believe me Haydon
your picture is a part of myself--I have ever been too sensible of the
labyrinthian path to eminence in Art (judging from Poetry) ever to think
I understood the emphasis of Painting. The innumerable compositions and
decompositions which take place between the intellect and its thousand
materials before it arrives at that trembling delicate and snail-horn
perception of Beauty. I know not you[r] many havens of intenseness--nor
ever can know them--but for this I hope no[ugh]t you adchieve is lost
upon me: for when a Schoolboy the abstract Idea I had of an heroic
painting--was what I cannot describe I saw it somewhat sideways large
prominent round and colour'd with magnificence--somewhat like the feel I
have of Anthony and Cleopatra. Or of Alcibiades, leaning on his Crimson
Couch in his Galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with the
Sea--That [for What] passage in Shakspeare is finer than this
'See how the surly Warwick mans the
Wall',
I like your consignment of Corneille--that's
the humor of it --They shall be called your Posthumous Works. I don't
understand you[r] bit of Italian. I hope she will awake from her dream
and flourish fair--my respects to her. The Hedges by this time are
beginn[in]g to leaf--Cats are becoming more vociferous--young Ladies
that wear Watches are always looking at them--Women about forty five
think the Season very backward--Ladie's Mares have but half an allowance
of food--It rains here again, has been doing so for three days--however
as I told you I'll take a trial in June July or August next year.
I am affraid Wordsworth went rather
huff'd out of Town --I am sorry for it. he cannot expect his fireside
Divan to be infallible he cannot expect but that every Man of worth is
as proud as himself. O that he had not fit with a Warrener that is din'd
at Kingston's. I shall be in town in about a fortnight and then we will
have a day or so now and then before I set out on my northern
expedition--we will have no more abominable Rows--for they leave one is
[for in] a fearful silence having settled the Methodists let us
be rational--not upon compulsion--no if it will out let it--but I will
not play the Basson any more delibe[r]ately --Remember me to Hazlitt,
and Bewick --
Your affectionate friend
John Keats