foreign trade, which is a comfortable thing. I wish one could get change for a pun in silver currency. I would give three and a half any night to get into Drury pit, but they won't ring at all. No more will notes you will say; but notes are different things, though they make together a pun-note as the term goes. If I were your son, I shouldn't mind you, though you rapt me with the scissors. But, Lord! I should be out of favour when the little un be comm'd. You have made an uncle of me, you have, and I don't know what to make of myself. I suppose next there will be a nevey. You say in my last, write directly. I have not received your letter above ten days. The thought of your little girl puts me in mind of a thing I heard a Mr. Lamb say. A child in arms was passing by towards its mother, in the nurse's arms. Lamb took hold of the long clothes, saying: 'Where, God bless me, where does it leave off?”

Saturday [September 25].

If you would prefer a joke or two to anything else, I have two for you, fresh hatched, just ris, as the bakers' wives say by the rolls. The first I played off on Brown; the second I played on myself. Brown, when he left me, "Keats," says he, "my good fellow" (staggering upon his left heel and fetching an irregular pirouette with his right); "Keats," says he (depressing his left eyebrow and elevating his right one), though by the way at the moment I did not know which was the right one; "Keats," says he (still in the same posture, but furthermore both his hands in his waistcoat pockets and putting out his stomach), "Keats-my-go-o-ood fello-o-ooh," says he (interlarding his exclamation with certain ventriloquial parentheses),-no, this is all a lieHe was as sober as a judge, when a judge happens to be sober, and said: "Keats, if any letters come for me, do not forward them, but open them and give me the marrow of them in a few words." At the time I wrote my first to him no letter had arrived. I thought I would invent

one, and as I had not time to manufacture a long one, I dabbed off a short one, and that was the reason of the joke succeeding beyond my expectations. Brown let his house to a Mr. Benjamin-a Jew. Now, the water which furnishes the house is in a tank, sided with a composition of lime, and the lime impregnates the water unpleasantly. Taking advantage of this circumstance, I pretended that Mr. Benjamin had written the following short note

Sir-By drinking your damn'd tank water I have got the gravel. What reparation can you make to me and my family? NATHAN BENJAMIN.

By a fortunate hit, I hit upon his right-heathen

name- -his right pronomen. Brown in consequence, it appears, wrote to the surprised Mr. Benjamin the following

Sir-I cannot offer you any remuneration until your gravel shall have formed itself into a stone-when I will cut you with pleasure. C. BROWN.

;

This of Brown's Mr. Benjamin has answered, insisting on an explanation of this singular circumstance. B. says: "When I read your letter and his following, I roared and in came Mr. Snook, who on reading them seem'd likely to burst the hoops of his fat sides." So the joke has told well.

Now for the one I played on myself. I must first give you the scene and the dramatis personæ. There are an old major and his youngish wife here in the next apartments to me. His bedroom door opens at an angle with my sitting-room door. Yesterday I was reading as demurely as a parish clerk, when I heard a rap at the door. I got up and opened it; no one was to be seen. I listened, and heard some one in the major's room. Not content with this, I went upstairs and down, looked in the cupboards and watch'd. At last I set myself to

read again, not quite so demurely, when there came a louder rap. I was determined to find out who it was. I looked out; the staircases were all silent. "This must be the major's wife," said I. "At all events I I will see the truth." So I rapt me at the major's door and went in, to the utter surprise and confusion of the lady, who was in reality there. After a little explanation, which I can no more describe than fly, I made my retreat from her, convinced of my mistake. She is to all appearance a silly body, and is really surprised about it. She must have been, for I have discovered that a little girl in the house was the rapper. I assure you she has nearly made me sneeze. If the lady tells tits, I shall put a very grave and moral face on the matter with the old gentleman, and make his little boy a present of a humming top.

[Monday, September 27.]

My dear George-This Monday morning, the 27th, I have received your last, dated 12th July. You say you have not heard from England for three months. Then my letter from Shanklin, written, I think, at the end of June, has not reach'd you. You shall not have cause to think I neglect you. I have kept this back a little time in expectation of hearing from Mr. Abbey. You will say I might have remained in town to be Abbey's messenger in these affairs. That I offered him, but he in his answer convinced me that he was anxious to bring the business to an issue. He observed, that by being himself the agent in the whole, people might be more expeditious. You say you have not heard for three months, and yet your letters have the tone of knowing how our affairs are situated, by which I conjecture I acquainted you with them in a letter previous to the Shanklin one. That I may not have done. To be certain, I will here state that it is in consequence of Mrs. Jennings threatening a chancery suit that you have been kept from the receipt of monies, and myself deprived of any help from Abbey. I am glad you say you keep up

your spirits. I hope you make a true statement on that score. Still keep them up, for we are all young. I can only repeat here that you shall hear from me again immediately. Notwithstanding this bad intelligence, I have experienced some pleasure in receiving so correctly two letters from you, as it gives me, if I may so say, a distant idea of proximity. This last improves upon my little niece-kiss her for me. Do not fret yourself about the delay of money on account of my immediate opportunity being lost, for in a new country whoever has money must have an opportunity of employing it in many ways. The report runs now more in favour of Kean stopping in England. If he should, I have confident hopes of our tragedy. If he invokes the hotblooded character of Ludolph,—and he is the only actor that can do it,--he will add to his own fame and improve my fortune. I will give you a half-dozen lines of it before I part as a specimen

Not as a swordsman would I pardon crave,

But as a son the bronz'd Centurion,

Long-toil'd in foreign wars, and whose high deeds

Are shaded in a forest of tall spears,

Known only to his troop, hath greater plea

Of favour with my sire than I can have.

Believe me, my dear brother and sister, your affec tionate and anxious Brother

JOHN KEATS.

you

CXVII. TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS.

Winchester, September 22, 1819.

My dear Reynolds-I was very glad to hear from Woodhouse that you would meet in the country. I hope will pass some pleasant time together. Which I wish to make pleasanter by a brace of letters, very highly to be estimated, as really I have had very bad luck with this sort of game this season. I "kepen in solitarinesse," for Brown has gone a-visiting. I am surprised myself at

:

the pleasure I live alone in. I can give you no news of the place here, or any other idea of it but what I have to this effect written to George. Yesterday I say to him was a grand day for Winchester. They elected a Mayor. It was indeed high time the place should receive some sort of excitement. There was nothing going on : all asleep not an old maid's sedan returning from a card party and if any old woman got tipsy at Christenings they did not expose it in the streets. The first night though of our arrival here, there was a slight uproar took place at about 10 o' the Clock. We heard distinctly a noise pattering down the High Street as of a walking cane of the good old Dowager breed; and a little minute after we heard a less voice observe "What a noise the ferril made it must be loose." Brown wanted to call the constables, but I observed 'twas only a little breeze and would soon pass over. The side streets here are excessively maiden-lady-like: the door-steps always fresh from the flannel. The knockers have a staid serious, nay almost awful quietness about them. I never saw so quiet a collection of Lions' and Rams' heads. The doors are most part black, with a little brass handle just above the keyhole, so that in Winchester a man may very quietly shut himself out of his own house. How beautiful the season is now-How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather-Dian skies-I never liked stubble-fields so much as now-Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm-in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.1

I hope you are better employed than in gaping after weather. I have been at different times so happy as not to know what weather it was-No I will not copy a

1 The beautiful Ode to Autumn, the draft of which Keats had copied in a letter (unluckily not preserved) written earlier in the same day to Woodhouse.