Evil before good

In Keats Epistle to John H. Reynolds he attempts to cheer up his friend by mocking the views of society in how they treat people according to social classes. He refers to great philosophers, poets, and artists as “Making the best of ways towards Soho”(Epistle to John :line 12),meaning that even the greatest of people go through social alienation and are miserable at first in order to achieve great admiration. “Things cannot to the will be settled, but they tease us out of thought; Or is it that imagination brought beyond its proper bound, yet still confin’d lost in a sort of purgatory blind” (E to J 76-80) & “In happiness, to see beyond our bourn it forces us in summer skies to mourn” (E to J 83-84) both of this confirm Keats view of how first you must go through unhappiness in order to be happy. This can be compared to Elizabeth Hamilton’s, Translation of the letters of a Hindoo Rajah and her outside view into the Hindu religion. According to the Hindu religion people are born into their social classes and can never be reversed or altered but none of them hate or envy one another. They are conformed and content to their class because” They believe that the human soul must be purified by suffering, and that it is not till after having undergone this expiatory discipline through a series of different bodies, that it becomes worthy of admission to eternal happiness.”(Letters of Hinddo Rajah). By Keats choosing to end the poem to his friend with a quote from the twelfth night he left the decision to John Reynolds to think about how his illness is the worst part and soon happiness will come “ thou art made, if thou desir’st to be so”.