Keats's letter to J. H. Reynold, 14 March 1818
This brief letter contains one of Keats's few discussions of the "supernatural" (rather broadly defined).
Text: from John Keats: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Ed. Elizabeth Cook. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. The Oxford Authors. P. 384
A Literary Gothic
etext.
--so we look upon a brook in these parts as you look upon a dash1 in your Country--there must be something to support this, aye fog, hail, snow rain--Mist--blanketing up three parts of the year--This devonshire is like Lydia Languish,2 very entertaining when at smiles, but cursedly subject to sympathetic moisture. You have the sensation of walking under one great Lamplighter: and you cant go on the other side of the ladder to keep your frock clean, and cosset your superstition. Buy a girdle--put a pebble in your Mouth--loosen your Braces--for I am going among Scenery whence I intend to tip you the Damosel Radcliffe--I'll cavern you, and grotto you, and waterfall you, and wood you, and water you, and immense-rock you, and tremendous sound you, and solitude you. Ill make a lodgment on your glacis by a row of Pines, and storm your covered way with bramble Bushes. Ill have at you with hip and haw smallshot, and cannonade you with Shingles--Ill be witty upon salt fish, and impede your cavalry with clotted cream.
1: dash = "sudden heavy rainfall" (Cook 621)
2: character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (Cook 621)