Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression?whereby This Cham
ber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on
all sides of it many doors are set open?but all dark?all leading to dark pas
sages?We see not the ballance of good and evil. We are in a Mist?We are
now in that state?We feel the 'burden of the Mystery,' To this point was
Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive when he wrote 'Tintern Abbey'
and it seems to me that his Genius is explorative of those dark Passages. Now
if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them, he is a Genius and
superior [to] us, in so far as he can, more than we, make discoveries, and shed
a light in them?Here I must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton?
though I think it has depended more upon the general and gregarious advance
of intellect, than individual greatness of Mind?From the Paradise Lost and
the other Works of Milton, I hope it is not too presuming, even between
ourselves to say, his Philosophy, human and divine, may be tolerably under
stood by one not much advanced in years, In his time englishmen were just
emancipated from a great superstition?and Men had got hold of certain
points and resting places in reasoning which were too newly born to be
doubted, and too much oppressed opposed by the Mass of Europe not to be
thought etherial and authentically divine?who could gainsay his ideas on
virtue, vice, and Chastity in Comus, just at the time of the dismissal of Cod
pieces' and a hundred other disgraces? who would not rest satisfied with his
7. Sexual indulgence. in 'maiden voyage') of a first undertaking. 8. Manfred 1. 1.10: 'Sorrow is knowledge.' 1. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the codpiece 9. I.e., innocent thought, with the implication (as was a flap, often ornamental, that covered an open
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LETTERS / 95 1
hintings at good and evil in the Paradise Lost, when just free from the inqui
sition and burrning in Smithfield?2 The Reformation produced such immedi
ate and great benefits, that Protestantism was considered under the immediate
eye of heaven, and its own remaining Dogmas and superstitions, then, as it
were, regenerated, constituted those resting places and seeming sure points
of Reasoning?from that I have mentioned, Milton, whatever he may have
thought in the sequel,3 appears to have been content with these by his writ
ings?He did not think into the human heart, as Wordsworth has done?Yet
Milton as a Philosop[h]er, had sure as great powers as Wordsworth?What is
then to be inferr'd? O many things?It proves there is really a grand march of
intellect?, It proves that a mighty providence subdues the mightiest Minds
to the service of the time being, whether it be in human Knowledge or Reli
gion? 41 * * Tom4 has spit a leetle blood this afternoon, and that is rather a
damper?but I know?the truth is there is something real in the World Your
third Chamber of Life shall be a lucky and a gentle one?stored with the wine
of love?and the Bread of Friendship? * * *
Your affectionate friend
John Keats.
To Richard Woodhouse1
[A POET HAS NO IDENTITY]
[October 27, 1818] My dear Woodhouse, Your Letter gave me a great satisfaction; more on account of its friendliness,
than any relish of that matter in it which is accounted so acceptable in the
'genus irritabile'2 The best answer 1 can give you is in a clerklike manner to
make some observations on two principle points, which seem to point like
