Winchester, September 22, 1819.

My dear Reynolds--I was very glad to hear from Woodhouse that you would meet in the country. I hope you will pass some pleasant time together. Which I wish to make pleasanter by a brace of letters, very highly to be estimated, as really I have had very bad luck with this sort of game this season. I "kepen in solitarinesse," for Brown has gone a-visiting. I am surprised myself at the pleasure I live alone in. I can give you no news of the place here, or any other idea of it but what I have to this effect written to George. Yesterday I say to him was a grand day for Winchester. They elected a Mayor. It was indeed high time the place should receive some sort of excitement. There was nothing going on: all asleep: not an old maid's sedan returning from a card party: and if any old woman got tipsy at Christenings they did not expose it in the streets. The first night though of our arrival here, there was a slight uproar took place at about 10 o' the Clock. We heard distinctly a noise pattering down the High Street as of a walking cane of the good old Dowager breed; and a little minute after we heard a less voice observe "What a noise the ferril made--it must be loose." Brown wanted to call the constables, but I observed 'twas only a little breeze and would soon pass over.--The side streets here are excessively maiden-lady-like: the door-steps always fresh from the flannel. The knockers have a staid serious, nay almost awful quietness about them. I never saw so quiet a collection of Lions' and Rams' heads. The doors are most part black, with a little brass handle just above the keyhole, so that in Winchester a man may very quietly shut himself out of his own house. How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.

I hope you are better employed than in gaping after weather. I have been at different times so happy as not to know what weather it was--No I will not copy a parcel of verses. I always somehow associate Chatterton with autumn. He is the purest writer in the English Language. He has no French idiom or particles, like Chaucer--'tis genuine English Idiom in English words. I have given up Hyperion--there were too many Miltonic inversions in it--Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and put a mark x to the false beauty proceeding from art, and one || to the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul 'twas imagination--I cannot make the distinction--Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation--But I cannot make the division properly. The fact is, I must take a walk: for I am writing a long letter to George: and have been employed at it all the morning. You will ask, have I heard from George. I am sorry to say not the best news--I hope for better. This is the reason, among others, that if I write to you it must be in such a scrap-like way. I have no meridian to date interests from, or measure circumstances-- To-night I am all in a mist; I scarcely know what's what--But you knowing my unsteady and vagarish disposition, will guess that all this turmoil will be settled by to-morrow morning. It strikes me to-night that I have led a very odd sort of life for the two or three last years--Here and there--no anchor--I am glad of it.--If you can get a peep at Babbicombe before you leave the country, do.--I think it the finest place I have seen, or is to be seen, in the South. There is a Cottage there I took warm water at, that made up for the tea. I have lately shirk'd some friends of ours, and I advise you to do the same, I mean the blue-devils--I am never at home to them. You need not fear them while you remain in Devonshire--there will be some of the family waiting for you at the Coach office--but go by another Coach.

I shall beg leave to have a third opinion in the first discussion you have with Woodhouse--just half-way, between both. You know I will not give up my argument--In my walk to-day I stoop'd under a railing that lay across my path, and asked myself "Why I did not get over." "Because," answered I, "no one wanted to force you under." I would give a guinea to be a reasonable man--good sound sense--a says what he thinks and does what he says man--and did not take snuff. They say men near death, however mad they may have been, come to their senses--I hope I shall here in this letter--there is a decent space to be very sensible in--many a good proverb has been in less--nay, I have heard of the statutes at large being changed into the Statutes at Small and printed for a watch paper.

Your sisters, by this time, must have got the Devonshire "ees"--short ees--you know 'em--they are the prettiest ees in the language. O how I admire the middle-sized delicate Devonshire girls of about fifteen. There was one at an Inn door holding a quartern of brandy--the very thought of her kept me warm a whole stage--and a 16 miler too--"You'll pardon me for being jocular."

Ever your affectionate friend

JOHN KEATS.