The Gisbornes are arrived, and have brought news of you, and some books, the principal part of which, however, are yet to arrive by sea.  Keats’s new volume has arrived to us, and the fragment called Hyperion promises for him that he is destined to become one of the first writers of the age.  His other things are imperfect enough, and, what is worse, written in the bad sort of style which is becoming fashionable among those who fancy that they are imitating Hunt and Wordsworth.  But of all these things nothing is worse than ——­, in spite of Hunt’s extracting the only good stanzas, with his usual good nature.  Indeed, I ought not to complain of Hunt’s good nature, for no one owes so much to it.  Is not the vulgarity of these wretched imitations of Lord Byron carried to a pitch of the sublime?  His indecencies, too, both against sexual nature, and against human nature in general, sit very awkwardly upon him.  He only affects the libertine:  he is, really, a very amiable, friendly, and agreeable man, I hear.  But is not this monstrous?  In Lord Byron all this has an analogy with the general system of his character, and the wit and poetry which surround hide with their light the darkness of the thing itself.  They contradict it even; they prove that the strength and beauty of human nature can survive and conquer all that appears most inconsistent with it.  But for a writer to be at once filthy and dull is a crime against gods, men, and columns.  For Heaven’s sake do not show this to any one but Hunt, for it would irritate the wasp’s nest of the irritable race of poets.

Where is Keats now?  I am anxiously expecting him in Italy, when I shall take care to bestow every possible attention on him.  I consider his a most valuable life, and I am deeply interested in his safety.  I intend to be the physician both of his body and his soul, to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish.  I am aware, indeed, in part, that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me; and this is an additional motive, and will be an added pleasure.

We are at this moment removing from the Bagni to Pisa, for the Serchio has broken its banks, and all the country about is under water.  An old friend and fellow-townsman of mine, Captain Medwin, is on a visit to us at present, and we anxiously expect Keats, to whom I would write if I knew where to address.

Adieu, my dear Marianne.  Write soon; kiss all the babes for me, and tell me news of them, and give my love to Bessy and Hunt.

To LEIGH HUNT

A literary collaboration

Pisa, 26 Aug. 1821.

MY DEAREST FRIEND,

Since I last wrote to you, I have been on a visit to Lord Byron at Ravenna.  The result of this visit was a determination, on his part, to come and live at Pisa; and I have taken the finest palace on the Lung’ Arno for him.  But the material part of my visit consists in a message which he desires me to give you, and which, I think, ought to add to your determination—­for such a one I hope you have formed—­of restoring your shattered health and spirits by a migration to these ‘regions mild of calm and serene air’.