Oxford, September 5, 1817.

My dear Friends--You are I am glad to hear comfortable at Hampton, where I hope you will receive the Biscuits we ate the other night at Little Britain. I hope you found them good. There you are among sands, stones, Pebbles, Beeches, Cliffs, Rocks, Deeps, Shallows, weeds, ships, Boats (at a distance), Carrots, Turnips, sun, moon, and stars and all those sort of things--here am I among Colleges, halls, Stalls, Plenty of Trees, thank God--Plenty of water, thank heaven--Plenty of Books, thank the Muses--Plenty of Snuff, thank Sir Walter Raleigh--Plenty of segars,--Ditto--Plenty of flat country, thank Tellus's rolling-pin. I'm on the sofa--Buonaparte is on the snuff-box--But you are by the seaside--argal, you bathe--you walk--you say "how beautiful"--find out resemblances between waves and camels--rocks and dancing-masters-- fireshovels and telescopes--Dolphins and Madonas--which word, by the way, I must acquaint you was derived from the Syriac, and came down in a way which neither of you I am sorry to say are at all capable of comprehending. But as a time may come when by your occasional converse with me you may arrive at "something like prophetic strain," I will unbar the gates of my pride and let my condescension stalk forth like a ghost at the Circus.--The word Ma-don-a, my dear Ladies--or--the word Mad--Ona--so I say! I am not mad--Howsumever when that aged Tamer Kewthon sold a certain camel called Peter to the overseer of the Babel Sky-works, he thus spake, adjusting his cravat round the tip of his chin--"My dear Ten-story-up-in-air! this here Beast, though I say it as shouldn't say't, not only has the power of subsisting 40 days and 40 nights without fire and candle but he can sing.--Here I have in my Pocket a Certificate from Signor Nicolini of the King's Theatre; a Certificate to this effect----" I have had dinner since I left that effect upon you, and feel too heavy in mentibus to display all the Profundity of the Polygon--so you had better each of you take a glass of cherry Brandy and drink to the health of Archimedes, who was of so benign a disposition that he never would leave Syracuse in his life--So kept himself out of all Knight-Errantry.--This I know to be a fact; for it is written in the 45th book of Winkine's treatise on garden-rollers, that he trod on a fishwoman's toe in Liverpool, and never begged her pardon. Now the long and short is this--that is by comparison--for a long day may be a short year--A long Pole may be a very stupid fellow as a man. But let us refresh ourself from this depth of thinking, and turn to some innocent jocularity--the Bow cannot always be bent--nor the gun always loaded, if you ever let it off--and the life of man is like a great Mountain--his breath is like a Shrewsbury cake--he comes into the world like a shoeblack, and goes out of it like a cobbler--he eats like a chimney-sweeper, drinks like a gingerbread baker--and breathes like Achilles--so it being that we are such sublunary creatures, let us endeavour to correct all our bad spelling--all our most delightful abominations, and let us wish health to Marian and Jane, whoever they be and wherever.

Yours truly

JOHN KEATS.