ravely up under bad circumstances. The state
of his finances occupies a good portion of his letters, and it is
often very pleasantly stated. As early as 1817, he speaks of receiving
a note for L20, and avows his intention of destroying with it "some of
the minor heads of that hydra, the dun;" to conquer which he says, the
knight need have no sword or shield, but only 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. . . I think," he adds, "I could make a nice little
allegorical poem, called "The Dun," where we would have the Castle of
Carelessness, the Drawbridge of Credit, Sir Novelty Fashion's
expedition against the City of Tailors, &c., &c." There is a good deal
of this coquetry with indigence in the volume.

There is one curious letter to Reynolds, referring to Wordsworth's
calling the exquisite Hymn to Pan, in "Endymion," "a pretty piece of
Paganism." Keats took the words in a contemptuous sense, and wrote a
letter from the feelings it excited, reminding us in its style of an
essay by Emerson. We extract it as almost the best thing in the book.

_Hampstead, February 3, 1818._

MY DEAR REYNOLDS,--I thank you for your dish of
filberts. Would I could get a basket of them by way of
dessert every day for the sum of two pence, (two
sonnets on Robin Hood, sent by the two penny post.)
Would we were a sort of athereal pigs, and turned loose
to feed upon spiritual mast and acorns! which would be
merely a squirrel and feeding upon filberts; for what
is a squirrel but an airy pig, or a filbert but a sort
of archangelical acorn? About the nuts being worth
cracking, all I can say is, that where there are a
throng of delightful images ready drawn, simplicity is
the only thing. It may be said that we ought to read
our contemporaries, that Wordsworth, &c., should have
their due from us. But, for the sake of a few fine
imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied
into a certain philosophy engendered in the whims of an
egotist? Every man has his speculations, but every man
does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a
false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can
travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet