Chapter XXVII: Letter 419: To Mr. Shelley

"Ravenna, April 26. 1821.

"The child continues doing well, and the accounts are regular and
favourable. It is gratifying to me that you and Mrs. Shelley do not
disapprove of the step which I have taken, which is merely
temporary.

"I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats--is it actually
true? I did not think criticism had been so killing. Though I
differ from you essentially in your estimate of his performances, I
so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I would rather he had been
seated on the highest peak of Parnassus than have perished in such
a manner. Poor fellow! though with such inordinate self-love he
would probably have not been very happy. I read the review of
'Endymion' in the Quarterly. It was severe,--but surely not so
severe as many reviews in that and other journals upon others.

"I recollect the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it
was rage, and resistance, and redress--but not despondency nor
despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this
world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing,
a man should calculate upon his powers of _resistance_ before he
goes into the arena.

"'Expect not life from pain nor danger free,
Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.'

"You know my opinion of that _second-hand_ school of poetry. You
also know my high opinion of your own poetry,--because it is of
_no_ school. I read Cenci--but, besides that I think the _subject_
essentially _un_dramatic, I am not an admirer of our old
dramatists, _as models_. I deny that the English have hitherto had
a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power, and
poetry. As to _my_ drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being
as free as I have been with yours.

"I have not yet got your Prometheus, which I long to see. I have
heard nothing of mine, and do not know that it is yet published. I
have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will
not like. Had I known that Keats was dead--or that he was alive and
so sensitive--I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry,
to which I was provoked by his _attack_ upon _Pope_, and my
disapprobation of _his own_ style of writing.

"You want me to undertake a great poem--I have not the inclination
nor the power. As I grow older, the indifference--_not_ to life,
for we love it by instinct--but to the stimuli of life, increases.
Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly
disappointed me for many reasons,--some public, some personal. My
respects to Mrs. S.

"Yours ever.

"P.S. Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not
you take a run here _alone_?"

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