I and myself cannot agree about this at all.
Wonders are no wonders to me. I am more at home amongst Men and
Women. I would rather read Chaucer than Ariosto. The little dramatic
skill I may as yet have, however badly it might show in a Drama,
would, I think, be sufficient for a Poem. I wish to diffuse the
colouring of St Agnes Eve throughout a poem in which Character and
Sentiment would be the figures to such drapery. Two or three such
poems if God should spare me, written in the course of the next six
years would be a famous gradus ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they
would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays--my greatest
ambition--when I do feel ambitious....'
No letter could be saner, nor more indicative of calm resolve. Yet the
precise determination is that nothing that went to make the 1820 volume
should be published, neither Odes, nor Tales, nor 'Hyperion.' This is
that mood of Keats which Sir Sidney Colvin, in his comment upon a
passage in the revised Induction, calls one of 'fierce injustice to his
own achievements and their value.
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