The Life and Letters of John Keats

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ...you are in; the cliffs are of a fine deep colour, but then the clouds are continually vieing with them. The women like your London people in a sort of negative way--because the native men are the poorest creatures in England--because government never have thought it worth while to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworth's Sonnet, Vanguard of Liberty! ye men of Kent! the degenerated race about me are pulvis Ipecac, simplex--a strong dose. Were I a corsair, I'd make a descent on the south coast of Devon; if I did not run the chance of having cowardice imputed to me. As for the men, they'd run away into the Methodist meeting-houses; and the women would be glad of it. Had England been a large Devonshire, we should not have won the Battle of Waterloo. There are knotted oaks, there are lusty rivulets, there are meadows such as are not elsewhere, --but there are no thews and sinews. Moore's Almanack is here a curiosity: arms, neck, and shoulders may at least be seen there, and the ladies read it as some out-of-the-way romance. Such a quelling power have these thoughts over me that I fancy the very air of a deteriorating quality. I fancy the flowers, all precocious, have an Acrasian spell about them; I feel able to beat off the Devonshire waves like soap-froth. I think it well, for the honour of Britain, that Julius Caesar did not first land in this county. A Devonshirer, standing on his native hills, is not a distinct object; he does not show against the light; a wolf or two would dispossess him. I like, I love England--I like its living men--give me a long brown plain for my money, so I may meet with some of Edmund Ironside's descendants; give me a barren mould, so I may meet with some shadowing of Alfred in the shape of a...