My dear Taylor-- ... Brown and I have together been engaged (this I should wish to remain secret) on a Tragedy which I have just finished and from which we hope to share moderate profits.... I feel every confidence that, if I choose, I may be a popular writer. That I will never be; but for all that I will get a livelihood. I equally dislike the favour of the public with the love of a woman. They are both a cloying treacle to the wings of Independence. I shall ever consider them (People) as debtors to me for verses, not myself to them for admiration--which I can do without. I have of late been indulging my spleen by composing a preface AT them: after all resolving never to write a preface at all. "There are so many verses," would I have said to them, "give so much means for me to buy pleasure with, as a relief to my hours of labour"--You will observe at the end of this if you put down the letter, "How a solitary life engenders pride and egotism!" True--I know it does: but this pride and egotism will enable me to write finer things than anything else could--so I will indulge it. Just so much as I am humbled by the genius above my grasp am I exalted and look with hate and contempt upon the literary world.--A drummer-boy who holds out his hand familiarly to a field Marshal,--that drummer-boy with me is the good word and favour of the public. Who could wish to be among the common-place crowd of the little famous--who are each individually lost in a throng made up of themselves? Is this worth louting or playing the hypocrite for? To beg suffrages for a seat on the benches of a myriad-aristocracy in letters? This is not wise.--I am not a wise man--'Tis pride--I will give you a definition of a proud man--He is a man who has neither Vanity nor Wisdom--One filled with hatreds cannot be vain, neither can he be wise. Pardon me for hammering instead of writing. Remember me to Woodhouse Hessey and all in Percy Street. Ever yours sincerely JOHN KEATS. CXII.--TO JOHN HAMILTON REYNOLDS. Winchester, August 25 [1819].