At Hampstead that winter he was correcting "Endymion" and exchanging verses with his friend John Hamilton Reynolds. Reynolds sent him two sonnets on Robin Hood. Keats replied with
and, inspired by the metre, wrote also the lines on the Mermaid Tavern. A Hampstead thrush sang well in February, and the poet enjoyed a "delicious diligent indolence" in obedience to the thrush's words:
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge — I have none;
March, April, and part ot May, 1819, he spent at Teignmouth, where he wrote most of " Isabella " and the prefaces to "Endymion," and some doggerel, but had too much rain to like Devonshire. Already he was planning a Northern tour with his friend Charles Armitage Brown. He wanted to gain experience, rub off prejudice, enlarge his vision, load himself with finer mountains, strengthen his poetry, make his "winter-chair free from spleen," escape literary disquisitions, and "promote digestion and economize shoe-leather." Starting in June from Lancaster, they zigzagged through August and part of September to Cromarty, where Keats had to take ship home with a bad cold and toothache. They visited Wordsworth's, Scott's, and Burns's country. They climbed Skiddaw and Ben Nevis. They crossed to Ireland, and to Mull, Iona, and Staffa. They saw mountains and mountaineers, cataracts, great waters, and eagles. Keats
