I suppose you will have heard that Hazlitt has on foot a prosecution against Blackwood. I dined with him a few days since at Hessey's--there was not a word said about it, though I understand he is excessively vexed. Reynolds, by what I hear, is almost over-happy, and Rice is in town. I have not seen him, nor shall I for some time, as my throat has become worse after getting well, and I am determined to stop at home till I am quite well. I was going to Town to-morrow with Mrs. D. but I thought it best to ask her excuse this morning. I wish I could say Tom was any better. His identity presses upon me so all day that I am obliged to go out--and although I intended to have given some time to study alone, I am obliged to write and plunge into abstract images to ease myself of his countenance, his voice, and feebleness--so that I live now in a continual fever. It must be poisonous to life, although I feel well. Imagine "the hateful siege of contraries"--if I think of fame, of poetry, it seems a crime to me, and yet I must do so or suffer. I am sorry to give you pain--I am almost resolved to burn this--but I really have not self-possession and magnanimity enough to manage the thing otherwise--after all it may be a nervousness proceeding from the Mercury. Bailey I hear is gaining his spirits, and he will yet be what I once thought impossible, a cheerful Man--I think he is not quite so much spoken of in Little Britain. I forgot to ask Mrs. Dilke if she had anything she wanted to say immediately to you. This morning look'd so unpromising that I did not think she would have gone--but I find she has, on sending for some volumes of Gibbon. I was in a little funk yesterday, for I sent in an unseal'd note of sham abuse, until I recollected, from what I heard Charles say, that the servant could neither read nor write--not even to her Mother as Charles observed. I have just had a Letter from Reynolds--he is going on gloriously. The following is a translation of a line of Ronsard-- Love pour'd her beauty into my warm veins. You have passed your Romance, and I never gave in to it, or else I think this line a feast for one of your Lovers. How goes it with Brown? Your sincere friend JOHN KEATS. LXX.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. [Hampstead, about September 22, 1818.]