to ease the Burden of the Mystery:2 a thing I begin to understand a little, and
which weighed upon you in the most gloomy and true sentence in your Letter.
The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me
this?in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep
and being blown up again without wings3 and with all [the] horror of a Case
bare shoulderd Creature?in the former case, our shoulders are fledged4 and
we go thro' the same Ftr air and space without fear. * * * You say 'I fear there is little chance of any thing else in this life.' You seem
by that to have been going through with a more painful and acute test zest the
same labyrinth that I have?I have come to the same conclusion thus far. My
Branchings out therefrom have been numerous: one of them is the consider
ation of Wordsworth's genius and as a help, in the manner of gold being the
meridian Line of worldly wealth,?how he differs from Milton.5?And here I
have nothing but surmises, from an uncertainty whether Miltons apparently
less anxiety for Humanity proceeds from his seeing further or no than Words-
worth: And whether Wordsworth has in truth epic passions, and martyrs him
self to the human heart, the main region of his song6?In regard to his genius
alone?we find what he says true as far as we have experienced and we can
1. Apparently 'a small-scale layman.' James Rice, Observatory, England, is the reference for measura lawyer, was one of Keats's favorite friends. ing degrees of longitude), so Milton is the standard 2. Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey,' line 38. of poetic value, by which we may measure Words3. Recalls the description of Satan's flight through worth. Chaos (Milton, Paradise Lost 2.933-34). 6. In the Prospectus to The Recluse, Wordsworth, 4. Grow wings. laying out his poetic program, had identified 'the 5. I.e., as gold is the standard of material wealth Mind of Man' as 'My haunt, and the main region (in the way that the meridian line of Greenwich of my song' (lines 40?41).
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94 6 / JOHN KEATS
judge no further but by larger experience?for axioms in philosophy are not
axioms until they are proved upon our pulses: We read fine things but
never feel them to [the] full until we have gone the same steps as the Author.?
I know this is not plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say, that
now I shall relish Hamlet more than I ever have done?Or, better?You are
sensible no man can set down Venery7 as a bestial or joyless thing until he is
sick of it and therefore all philosophizing on it would be mere wording. Until
we are sick, we understand not;?in fine, as Byron says, 'Knowledge is Sor
row';8 and I go on to say that 'Sorrow is Wisdom'?and further for aught we
can know for certainty! 'Wisdom is folly.' * * * 1 will return to Wordsworth?whether or no he has an extended vision or a
circumscribed grandeur?whether he is an eagle in his nest, or on the wing?
And to be more explicit and to show you how tall I stand by the giant, I will
put down a simile of human life as far as I now perceive it; that is, to the point
to which I say we both have arrived at?Well?I compare human life to a large
Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of
the rest being as yet shut upon me?The first we step into we call the infant
or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think?We
remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Cham
ber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to
it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking
principle?within us?we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which 1
shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought,9 than we become intoxicated with
the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think
of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing
is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the head
heart and nature of Man?of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of
