I have heard some hints of your retiring to Scotland—I should like to know your feeling on it—it seems rather remote. Perhaps Gleig will have a duty near you. I am not certain whether I shall be able to go any journey, on account of my Brother Tom, and a little indisposition of my own. If I do not you shall see me soon, if no on my return or I’ll quarter myself on you next winter. I had known my sister-in-law some time before she was my sister, and was very fond of her. I like her better and better. She is the most disinterested woman I ever knew—that is to say, she goes beyond degree in it. To see an entirely disinterested girl quite happy is the most pleasant and extraordinary thing in the world—It depends upon a thousand circumstances—On my word it is extraordinary. Women must want Imagination, and they may thank God for it; and so may we, that a delicate being can feel happy without any sense of crime. It puzzles me, and I have no sort of logic to comfort me—I shall think it over. I am not at home, and your letter being there I cannot look it over to answer any particular—only I must say I feel that passage of Dante. If I take any book with me it shall be those minute volumes of Carey, for they will go into the aptest corner.
Reynolds is getting, I may say, robust, his illness has been of service to him—like every one just recovered, he is high-spirited—I hear also good accounts of Rice. With respect to domestic literature, the Edinburgh Magazine, in another blow-up against Hunt, calls me “the amiable Mister Keats”—and I have more than a laurel from the Quarterly Reviewers for they have smothered me in “Foliage.” I want to read you my “Pot of Basil”—if you go to Scotland, I should much like to read it there to you, among the snows of next winter. My Brothers’ remembrances to you.
Your affectionate friend
John Keats.
LV.—TO JOHN TAYLOR.
[Hampstead,] Sunday Evening [June 21, 1818].
My dear Taylor—I am sorry I have not had time to call and wish you health till my return—Really I have been hard run these last three days—However, au revoir, God keep us all well! I start to-morrow Morning. My brother Tom will I am afraid be lonely. I can scarce ask a loan of books for him, since I still keep those you lent me a year ago. If I am overweening, you will I know be indulgent. Therefore when you shall write, do send him some you think will be most amusing—he will be careful in returning them. Let him have one of my books bound. I am ashamed to catalogue these messages. There is but one more, which ought to go for nothing as there is a lady concerned. I promised Mrs. Reynolds one of my books bound. As I cannot write in it let the opposite[68] be pasted in ’prythee. Remember me to Percy St.—Tell Hilton that one gratification on my return will be to find him engaged on a history piece to his own content—And tell Dewint I shall become a disputant on the landscape—Bow for me very genteelly to Mrs. D. or she will not admit your diploma. Remember me to Hessey, saying I hope he’ll Cary his point. I would not forget Woodhouse. Adieu!
Your sincere friend
John o’ Grots.