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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/31682-8.txt b/31682-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..087272c --- /dev/null +++ b/31682-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7477 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Life of John Keats, by William Michael Rossetti + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life of John Keats + +Author: William Michael Rossetti + +Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN KEATS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + LIFE OF JOHN KEATS. + + BY + + WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. + + + LONDON + WALTER SCOTT + 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW + + 1887 + + (_All rights reserved._) + + + * * * * * + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. PAGE + + Keats's grandfather Jennings; his father and mother; Keats + born in London, October 31, 1795; his brothers and sister; + goes to the school of John Clarke at Enfield, and is tutored + by Charles Cowden Clarke; death of his parents; is + apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond; leaves Hammond, + and studies surgery; reads Spenser, and takes to poetry; + his literary acquaintances--Leigh Hunt, Haydon, J. + Hamilton Reynolds, Dilke, &c.; Keats's first volume, + "Poems," 1817 11 + + +CHAPTER II. + + Keats begins "Endymion," May 1817; his health suffers in + Oxford; finishes "Endymion" in November; his friend, + Charles Armitage Brown; his brother George marries + and emigrates to America; Keats and Brown make a + walking tour in Scotland and Ireland; returns to Hampstead, + owing to a sore throat; death of his brother Tom; + his description of Miss Cox ("Charmian"), and of Miss + Brawne, with whom he falls in love; a difference with + Haydon; visits Winchester; George Keats returns for + a short while from America, but goes away again without + doing anything to relieve John Keats from straits in + money matters. 23 + + +CHAPTER III. + + Keats's consumptive illness begins, February 1820; he rallies, + but has a relapse in June; he stays with Leigh Hunt, and + leaves him suddenly; publication of his last volume, + "Lamia" &c.; returns to Hampstead before starting + for Italy; his love-letters to Miss Brawne--extracts; + Haydon's last sight of him; he sails for Italy with Joseph + Severn; letter to Brown; Naples and Rome; extracts from + Severn's letters; Keats dies in Rome, February 23, 1821. 40 + + +CHAPTER IV. + + Keats rhymes in infancy; his first writings, the "Imitation + of Spenser," and some sonnets; not precocious as a poet; + his sonnet on Chapman's Homer; contents of his first + volume, "Poems," 1817; Hunt's first sight of his poems + in MS.; "Sleep and Poetry," extract regarding poetry + of the Pope school, &c.; the publishers, Messrs. Ollier, + give up the volume as a failure. 64 + + +CHAPTER V. + + "Endymion"; Keats's classical predilections; extract (from + "I stood tiptoe" &c.) about Diana and Endymion; details + as to the composition of "Endymion," 1817; preface to + the poem; the critique in _The Quarterly Review_; attack + in _Blackwood's Magazine_; question whether Keats broke + down under hostile criticism; evidence on this subject in + his own letters, and by Shelley, Lord Houghton, Haydon, + Byron, Hunt, George Keats, Cowden Clarke, Severn; + conclusion. 73 + + +CHAPTER VI. + + Poems included in the "Lamia" volume, 1820; "Isabella"; + "The Eve of St. Agnes"; "Hyperion"; "Lamia"; + five odes; other poems--sonnet on "The Nile"; "The + Eve of St. Mark," "Otho the Great," "La Belle Dame + sans Merci," "The Cap and Bells," final sonnet, &c.; + prose writings. 107 + + +CHAPTER VII. + + Keats's grave in Rome; projects of Brown and others for + writing his Life; his brother George, and his sister, Mrs. + Llanos; Miss Brawne; discussion as to Hunt's friendship + to Keats; other friends--Bailey, Haydon, Shelley. 118 + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + Keats's appearance; portraits; difficulties in estimating his + character; his poetic ambition, and feeling on subjects of + historical or public interest; his intensity of thought; + moral tone; question as to his strength of character--Haydon's + opinion; demeanour among friends; studious + resolves; suspicious tendency; his feeling toward women--poem + quoted; love of flowers and music; politics; + irritation against Leigh Hunt; his letters; antagonism + to science; remarks on contemporary writers; axioms on + poetry; self-analysis as to his perceptions as a poet; feelings + as to painting; sense of humour, punning, &c.; indifference + in religious matters; his sentiments as to the + immortality of the soul; fondness for wine and game; + summary. 124 + + +CHAPTER IX. + + Influence of Spenser discussed; flimsiness of Keats's first + volume; early sonnets; "Endymion"; Shelley's criticisms + of this poem; detailed argument of the poem; estimate + of "Endymion" as to invention and execution; + estimate of "Isabella"; of "The Eve of St. Agnes"; of + "The Eve of St. Mark"; of "Hyperion"; of "Otho the + Great"; of "Lamia"; "La Belle Dame sans Merci" + quoted and estimated; Keats's five great odes--extracts; + "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"; imagination in verbal + form distinctive of Keats; discussion of the term "faultless" + applied to Keats; details of execution in the "Ode + to a Nightingale"; other odes, sonnets, and lyrics; treatment + of women in Keats's last volume; his references to + "swooning"; his sensuousness and its correlative sentiment; + superiority of Shelley to Keats; final remarks as to + the quality of Keats's poetry. 163 + + +INDEX 211 + + + + +NOTE. + + +In all important respects I leave this brief "Life of Keats" to speak +for itself. There is only one point which I feel it needful to dwell +upon. In the summer of 1886 I was invited to undertake a life of Keats +for the present series, and I assented. Some while afterwards it was +publicly announced that a life of Keats, which had been begun by Mr. +Sidney Colvin long before for a different series, would be published at +an early date. I read up my materials, began in March 1887 the writing +of my book, finished it on June 3rd, and handed it over to the editor. +On June 10th Mr. Colvin's volume was published. I at once read it, and +formed a high opinion of its merits, and I found in it some new details +which could not properly be ignored by any succeeding biographer of the +poet. I therefore got my MS. back, and inserted here and there such +items of fresh information as were really needful for the true +presentment of my subject-matter. In justice both to Mr. Colvin and to +myself I drew upon his pages for only a minimum, not a maximum, of the +facts which they embody; and in all matters of opinion and criticism I +left my MS. exactly as it stood. The reader will thus understand that +the present "Life of Keats" is, in planning, structure, execution, and +estimate, entirely independent of Mr. Colvin's; but that I have +ultimately had the advantage of consulting Mr. Colvin's book as one of +my various sources of information--the latest and within its own lines +the completest of all. + + + + +LIFE OF KEATS. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +A truism must do duty as my first sentence. There are long lives, and +there are eventful lives: there are also short lives, and uneventful +ones. Keats's life was both short and uneventful. To the differing +classes of lives different modes of treatment may properly be applied by +the biographer. In the case of a writer whose life was both long and +eventful, I might feel disposed to carry the whole narrative forward +_pari passu_, and to exhibit in one panorama the outward and the inward +career, the incidents and the product, the doings and environment, and +the writings, acting and re-acting upon one another. In the instance of +Keats this does not appear to me to be the most fitting method. It may +be more appropriate to apportion his Life into two sections: and to +treat firstly of his general course from the cradle to the grave, and +secondly of his performances in literature. The two things will +necessarily overlap to some extent, but I shall keep them apart so far +as may be convenient. When we have seen what he did and what he wrote, +we shall be prepared to enter upon some analysis of his character and +personality. This will form my third section; and in a fourth I shall +endeavour to estimate the quality and value of his writings, in +particular and in general. Thus I address myself in the first instance +to a narrative of the outer facts of his life. + + * * * * * + +John Keats came of undistinguished parentage. No biographer carries his +pedigree further than his maternal grandfather, or alleges that there +was any trace, however faint or remote, of ancestral eminence. The +maternal grandfather was a Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable, +called the Swan and Hoop, in the Pavement, Moorfields, London, opposite +the entrance to Finsbury Circus. The principal stableman or assistant in +the business was named Thomas Keats, of Devonshire or Cornish parentage. +He was a well-conducted, sensible, good-looking little man, and won the +favour of Jennings's daughter, named Frances or Fanny: they married, and +this rather considerable rise in his fortunes left Keats unassuming and +manly as before. He appears to have been a natural gentleman. Jennings +was a prosperous tradesman, and might have died rich (his death took +place in 1805) but for easy-going good-nature tending to the gullible. +Mrs. Keats seems to have been in character less uniform and +single-minded than her husband. She is described as passionately fond of +amusement, prodigal, dotingly attached to her children, more especially +John, much beloved by them in return, sensible, and at the same time +saturnine in demeanour: a personable tall woman with a large oval face. +Her pleasure-seeking tendency probably led her into some imprudences, +for her first baby, John, was a seven months' child. + +John Keats was born at the Moorfields place of business on the 31st of +October 1795. This date of birth is established by the register of +baptisms at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate: the date usually assigned, the +29th of October, appears to be inaccurate, though Keats himself, and +others of the family, believed in it. There were three other children of +the marriage--or four if we reckon a a son who died in infancy: George, +Thomas, and lastly Fanny, born in March 1803. An anecdote is told of +John when in the fifth year of his age, purporting to show forth the +depth of his childish affection for his mother. It is said that she then +lay seriously ill; and John stood sentinel at her chamber-door, holding +an old sword which he had picked up about the premises, and he remained +there for hours to prevent her being disturbed. One may fear, however, +that this anecdote has taken an ideal colouring through the lens of a +partial biographer. The painter Benjamin Robert Haydon--who, as we shall +see in the sequel, was extremely well acquainted with John Keats, and +who heard the story from his brother Thomas--records it thus: "He was, +when an infant, a most violent and ungovernable child. At five years of +age or thereabouts he once got hold of a naked sword, and, shutting the +door, swore nobody should go out. His mother wanted to do so; but he +threatened her so furiously she began to cry, and was obliged to wait +till somebody, through the window, saw her position, and came to her +rescue." It can scarcely be supposed that there were two different +occasions when the quinquennial John Keats superintended his mother and +her belongings with a naked sword--once in ardent and self-oblivious +affection, and once in petulant and froward excitement. + +The parents would have liked to send John to Harrow school: but, this +being finally deemed too expensive, he was placed in the Rev. John +Clarke's school at Enfield, then in high repute, and his brothers +followed him thither. The Enfield schoolhouse was a fine red-brick +building of the early eighteenth century, said to have been erected by a +retired West India merchant; the materials "moulded into designs +decorating the front with garlands of flowers and pomegranates, together +with heads of cherubim over two niches in the centre of the building." +This central part of the façade was eventually purchased for the South +Kensington Museum, and figures there as a screen in the structural +division. The schoolroom was forty feet long; the playground was a +spacious courtyard between the schoolroom and the house itself; a +garden, a hundred yards in length, stretched beyond the playground, +succeeded by a sweep of greensward, with a "lake" or well-sized pond: +there was also a two-acre field with a couple of cows. In this +commodious seat of sound learning, well cared for and well instructed so +far as his school course extended, John Keats remained for some years. +He came under the particular observation of the headmaster's son, Mr. +Charles Cowden Clarke, not very many years his senior. He was born in +1787, fostered Keats's interest in literature, became himself an +industrious writer of some standing, and died in 1877. Keats at school +did not show any exceptional talent, but he was, according to Mr. Cowden +Clarke's phrase, "a very orderly scholar," and got easily through his +tasks. In the last eighteen months of his schooling he took a new lease +of assiduity: he read a vast deal, and would keep to his book even +during meals. For two or three successive half-years he obtained the +first prize for voluntary work; and was to be found early and late +attending to some translation from the Latin or the French, to which he +would, when allowed his own way, sacrifice his recreation-time. He was +particularly fond of Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary," Tooke's +"Pantheon," and Spence's "Polymetis": a line of reading presageful of +his own afterwork in the region of Greek mythology. Of the Grecian +language, however, he learned nothing: in Latin he proceeded as far as +the Æneid, and of his own accord translated much of that epic in +writing. Two of his favourite books were "Robinson Crusoe" and +Marmontel's "Incas of Peru." He must also have made some acquaintance +with Shakespeare, as he told a younger schoolfellow that he thought no +one durst read "Macbeth" alone in the house at two in the morning. Not +indeed that these bookish leanings formed the whole of his personality +as a schoolboy. He was noticeable for beauty of face and expression, +active and energetic, intensely pugnacious, and even quarrelsome. He was +very apt to get into a fight with boys much bigger than himself. Nor was +his younger brother George exempted: John would fight fiercely with +George, and this (if we may trust George's testimony) was always owing +to John's own unmanageable temper. The two brothers were none the less +greatly attached, both at school and afterwards. The youngest brother, +Thomas (always called Tom in family records), is reported to have been +as pugilistic as John; whereas George, when allowed his own way, was +pacific, albeit resolute. The ideal of all the three boys was a maternal +uncle, a naval officer of very stalwart presence, who had been in +Admiral Duncan's ship in the famous action off Camperdown; where he had +distinguished himself not only by signal gallantry, but by not getting +shot, though his tall form was a continual mark for hostile guns. + +While still a schoolboy at Enfield, John Keats lost both his parents. +The father died on the 16th of April 1804, in returning from a visit to +the school: a detail which serves to show us (for I do not find it +otherwise affirmed) that John could at the utmost have been only in the +ninth year of his age, possibly even younger, when his schooling began. +On leaving Enfield, the father dined at Southgate, and, going late +homewards, his horse fell in the City Road, and the rider's skull was +fractured. He was found about one o'clock in the morning speechless, and +expired towards eight, aged thirty-six. The mother suffered from +rheumatism, and later on from consumption; of which she died in February +1810. "John," so writes Haydon, "sat up whole nights with her in a great +chair, would suffer nobody to give her medicine or even cook her food +but himself, and read novels to her in her intervals of ease." She had +been an easily consoled widow, for, within a year from the decease of +her first husband, she married another, William Rawlings, who had +probably succeeded to the management of the business. She soon, however, +separated from Rawlings, and lived with her mother at Edmonton. After +her death Keats hid himself for some days in a nook under his master's +desk, passionately inconsolable. The four children, who inherited from +their grandparents (chiefly from their grandmother) a moderate fortune +of nearly £8,000 altogether, in which the daughter had the largest +share, were then left under the guardianship of Mr. Abbey, a city +merchant residing at Walthamstow. At the age of fifteen, or at some date +before the close of 1810, John quitted his school. + +A little stave of doggrel which Keats wrote to his sister, probably in +July 1818, gives a glimpse of what he was like at the time when he and +his brothers were living with their grandmother. + + "There was a naughty boy, + And a naughty boy was he: + He kept little fishes + In washing-tubs three, + In spite + Of the might + Of the maid, + Nor afraid + Of his granny good. + He often would + Hurly-burly + Get up early + And go + By hook or crook + To the brook, + And bring home + Miller's-thumb, + Tittlebat, + Not over fat, + Minnows small + As the stall + Of a glove, + Not above + The size + Of a nice + Little baby's + Little fingers." + +He was fond of "goldfinches, tomtits, minnows, mice, +ticklebacks, dace, cock-salmons, and all the whole tribe of the bushes +and the brooks." + +A career in life was promptly marked out for the youth. While still aged +fifteen, he was apprenticed, with a premium of £210, to Mr. Hammond, a +surgeon of some repute at Edmonton. Mr. Cowden Clarke says that this +arrangement evidently gave Keats satisfaction: apparently he refers +rather to the convenient vicinity of Edmonton to Enfield than to the +surgical profession itself. The indenture was to have lasted five years; +but, for some reason which is not wholly apparent, Keats left Hammond +before the close of his apprenticeship.[1] If Haydon was rightly +informed (presumably by Keats himself), the reason was that the youth +resented surgery as the antagonist of a possible poetic vocation, and +"at last his master, weary of his disgust, gave him up his time." He +then took to walking St. Thomas's Hospital; and, after a short stay at +No. 8 Dean Street, Borough, and next in St. Thomas's Street, he resided +along with his two brothers--who were at the time clerks in Mr. Abbey's +office--in the Poultry, Cheapside, over the passage which led to the +Queen's Arms Tavern. Two of his surgical companions were Mr. Henry +Stephens, who afterwards introduced creosote into medical practice, and +Mr. George Wilson Mackereth. Keats attended the usual lectures, and made +careful annotations in a book still preserved. Mr. Stephens relates that +Keats was fond of scribbling rhyme of a sort among professional notes, +especially those of a fellow-student, and he sometimes showed graver +verses to his associates. Finally, in July 1815, he passed the +examination at Apothecaries' Hall with considerable credit--more than +his familiars had counted upon; and in March 1816 he was appointed a +dresser at Guy's under Mr. Lucas. Cowden Clarke once inquired how far +Keats liked his studies at the hospital. The youth replied that he did +not relish anatomy: "The other day, for instance, during the lecture, +there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of +creatures floating in the ray, and I was off with them to Oberon and +fairyland." + +Readers of Keats's poetry will have no difficulty in believing that, +ever since his first introduction into a professional life, surgery and +literature had claimed a divided allegiance from him. When at Edmonton +with Mr. Hammond, he kept up his connection with the Clarke family, +especially with Charles Cowden Clarke. He was perpetually borrowing +books; and at last, about the beginning of 1812 he asked for Spenser's +"Faery Queen," rather to the surprise of the family, who had no idea +that that particular book could be at all in his line. The effect, +however, was very noticeable. Keats walked to Enfield at least once a +week, for the purpose of talking over Spenser with Cowden Clarke. "He +ramped through the scenes of the romance," said Clarke, "like a young +horse turned into a spring meadow." A fine touch of description or of +imagery, or energetic epithets such as "the sea-shouldering whale," +would light up his face with ecstasy. His leisure had already been given +to reading and translation, including the completion of his rendering of +the Æneid. A literary craving was now at fever-heat, and he took to +writing verses as well as reading them. Soon surgery and letters were to +conflict no longer--the latter obtaining, contrary to the liking of Mr. +Abbey, the absolute and permanent mastery. Keats indeed always denied +that he abandoned surgery for the express purpose of taking to poetry: +he alleged that his motive had been the dread of doing some mischief in +his surgical operations. His last operation consisted in opening a +temporal artery; he was entirely successful in it, but the success +appeared to himself like a miracle, the recurrence of which was not to +be reckoned on. + +While surgery was waning with Keats, and finally dying out--an upshot +for which the exact date is not assigned, nor perhaps assignable--he was +making, at first through his intimacy with Cowden Clarke, some good +literary acquaintances. The brothers John and Leigh Hunt were the centre +of the circle to which Keats was thus admitted. John was the publisher, +and Leigh the editor, of _The Examiner_. They had both been lately +fined, and imprisoned for two years, for a libel on the Prince Regent, +George IV.; it was perhaps legally a libel, and was certainly a +castigation laid on with no indulgent hand. Leigh Hunt (born in 1784, +and therefore Keats's senior by some eleven years) is known to us all as +a fresh and airy essayist, a fresh and airy poet, a liberal thinker in +the morals both of society and of politics (hardly a politician in the +stricter sense of the term), a charming companion, a too-constant +cracker of genial jocosities and of puns. He understood good literature +both instinctively and critically; but was too full of tricksy +mannerisms, and of petted byways in thought and style, to be an +altogether safe associate for a youthful literary aspirant, whether as +model or as Mentor. Leigh Hunt first saw Keats in the spring of 1816, +not at his residence in Hampstead as has generally been supposed, but at +No. 8 York Buildings, New Road.[2] The earliest meeting of Keats with +Haydon was in November 1816, at Hunt's house; Haydon born in 1786, the +zealous and impatient champion of high art, wide-minded and combative, +too much absorbed in his love for art to be without a considerable +measure of self-seeking for art's apostle, himself. He painted into his +large picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem the head of Keats, along +with those of Wordsworth and others. Another acquaintance was Mr. +Charles Ollier, the publisher, who wrote verse and prose of his own. The +Ollier firm in the early spring of 1817 became the publishers of Keats's +first volume of poems, of which more anon. Still earlier than the +Hunts, Haydon, and Ollier, Keats had known John Hamilton Reynolds, his +junior by a year, a poetical writer of some mark, now too nearly +forgotten, author of "The Garden of Florence," "The Fancy," and the +prose tale, "Miserrimus"; he was the son of the writing-master at Christ +Hospital, and Keats became intimate with the whole family, though not +invariably well pleased with them all. One of the sisters married Thomas +Hood. Through Reynolds Keats made acquaintance with Mr. Benjamin Bailey, +born towards 1794, then a student at Oxford reading for the Church, +afterwards Archdeacon of Colombo in Ceylon. Charles Wentworth Dilke, +born in 1789, the critic, and eventually editor of _The Athenæum_, was +another intimate; and in course of time Keats knew Charles Wells, seven +years younger than himself, the author of the dramatic poem "Joseph and +his Brethren," and of the prose "Stories after Nature." Other friends +will receive mention as we progress. I have for the present said enough +to indicate what was the particular niche in the mansion of English +literary life in which Keats found himself housed at the opening of his +career. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +We have now reached the year 1817 and the month of May, when Keats was +in the twenty-second year of his age. He then wrote that he had +"forgotten all surgery," and was beginning at Margate his romantic epic +of "Endymion," reading and writing about eight hours a day. Keats had +previously been at Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight, but had run away +from there, finding that the locality, while it charmed, also depressed +him. He had left London for the island, apparently with the view of +having greater leisure for study and composition. His brother Tom was +with him at Carisbrooke and at Margate. He was already provided with a +firm of publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, willing to undertake the +risk of "Endymion," and they advanced him a sum sufficient for +continuing at work on it with comfort. In September he went with Mr. +Benjamin Bailey to Oxford: they made an excursion to Stratford-on-Avon, +and Keats was back at Hampstead by the end of the month. It would appear +that in Oxford Keats, in the heat of youthful blood, committed an +indiscretion of which we do not know the details, nor need we give them +if we knew them; for on the 8th of October he wrote to Bailey in these +terms: "The little mercury I have taken has corrected the poison and +improved my health,[3] though I feel, from my employment, that I shall +never again be secure in robustness." The residence of Keats and his +brother Tom in Hampstead, a first-floor lodging, was in Well Walk, No. +1, next to the Wells Tavern, which was then called the Green Man. The +reader who has a head for localities should bear this point well in +mind, should carefully discriminate the house in Well Walk from another +house, Wentworth Place, afterwards tenanted by Keats and others at +Hampstead, and, every time that the question occurs to his thought, +should pass a mental vote of thanks to Mr. Buxton Forman for the great +pains which he took to settle the point, and the lucid and pleasant +account which he has given of it. Keats was at Leatherhead in November; +finished the first draft of "Endymion" at Burford Bridge, near Dorking, +on the 28th of that month, and returned to Hampstead for the winter. +Two anecdotes which have often been repeated belong apparently to about +this date. One of them purports that Keats gave a sound drubbing in +Hampstead to a butcher, or a butcher's boy, who was ill-treating a small +boy, or else a cat. Hunt simply says that the butcher "had been +insolent,"--by implication, to Keats himself. The "butcher's boy" has +obtained traditional currency; but, according to George Keats, the +offender was "a scoundrel in livery," the locality "a blind alley at +Hampstead." Clarke says that the stand-up fight lasted nearly an hour. +Keats was an undersized man, in fact he was not far removed from the +dwarfish, being barely more than five feet high, and this small feat of +stubborn gallantry deserves to be appraised and praised accordingly. The +other anecdote is that Coleridge met Keats along with Leigh Hunt in a +lane near Highgate, "a loose, slack, not well-dressed youth," and after +shaking hands with Keats, he said aside to Hunt, "There is death in that +hand." Nothing is extant to show that at so early a date as this, or +even for some considerable while after, any of Keats's immediate friends +shared the ominous prevision of Coleridge. + +In March 1818 Keats joined his brothers at Teignmouth in Devonshire, and +in April "Endymion" was published. In June he set off on a pedestrian +tour of some extent with a friend whose name will frequently recur from +this point forwards, Charles Armitage Brown. One is generally inclined +to get some idea of what a man was like; if one knows what he was +_un_like much the same purpose is served. In April 1819 Keats wrote +some bantering verses about Brown, which are understood to go mainly by +contraries we therefore infer Brown to have presented a physical and +moral aspect the reverse of the following-- + + "He is to meet a melancholy carle, + Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair, + As hath the seeded thistle when a parle + It holds with Zephyr ere it sendeth fair + Its light balloons into the summer air. + Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom; + No brush had touched his chin, or razor sheer; + No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom, + But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom. + + "Ne carèd he for wine or half-and-half, + Ne carèd he for fish or flesh or fowl, + And sauces held he worthless as the chaff; + He 'sdained the swine-head at the wassail bowl. + Ne with lewd ribalds sat he cheek by jowl, + Ne with sly lemans in the scorner's chair; + But after water-brooks this pilgrim's soul + Panted, and all his food was woodland air, + Though he would oft-times feast on gillyflowers rare. + + "The slang of cities in no wise he knew; + 'Tipping the wink' to him was heathen Greek. + He sipped no olden Tom or ruin blue, + Or Nantz or cherry-brandy, drank full meek + By many a damsel brave and rouge of cheek. + Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat; + Nor in obscurèd purlieus would he seek + For curlèd Jewesses with ankles neat, + Who, as they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet." + +Mr. Brown, son of a London stockbroker from Scotland, was a man several +years older than Keats, born in 1786. He was a Russia merchant retired +from business, of much culture and instinctive sympathy with genius, and +he enjoyed assisting the efforts of young men of promise. He had +produced the libretto of an opera, "Narensky," and he eventually +published a book on the Sonnets of Shakespeare. From the date we have +now reached, the summer of 1818, which was more than a year following +their first introduction, Brown may be regarded as the most intimate of +all Keats's friends, Dilke coming next to him. + +The pedestrian tour with Brown was the sequel of a family leave-taking +at Liverpool. George Keats, finding in himself no vocation for trade, +with its smug compliances and sleek assiduities (and John agreed with +him in these views), had determined to emigrate to America, and rough it +in a new settlement for a living, perhaps for fortune; and, as a +preliminary step, he had married Miss Georgiana Augusta Wylie, a girl of +sixteen, daughter of a deceased naval officer. The sonnet "Nymph of the +downward smile" &c. was addressed to her. John Keats and Brown, +therefore, accompanied George and his bride to Liverpool, and saw them +off. They then started as pedestrians into the Lake country, the land of +Burns, Belfast, and the Western Highlands. Before starting on the trip +Keats had often been in such a state of health as to make it prudent +that he should not hazard exposure to night air; but in his excursion he +seems to have acted like a man of sound and rather hardy physique, +walking from day to day about twenty miles, and sometimes more, and his +various records of the trip have nothing of a morbid or invaliding tone. +This was not, however, to last long; the Isle of Mull proved too much +for him. On the 23rd of July, writing to his brother Tom, he describes +the expedition thus: "The road through the island, or rather track, is +the most dreary you can think of; between dreary mountains, over bog and +rock and river, with our breeches tucked up and our stockings in +hand.... We had a most wretched walk of thirty-seven miles across the +island of Mull, and then we crossed to Iona." In another letter he says: +"Walked up to my knees in bog; got a sore throat; gone to see Icolmkill +and Staffa." From this time forward the mention of the sore throat +occurs again and again; sometimes it is subsiding, or as good as gone; +at other times it has returned, and causes more or less inconvenience. +Brown wrote of it as "a violent cold and ulcerated throat." The latest +reference to it comes in December 1819, only two months preceding the +final and alarming break-down in the young poet's health. In Scotland, +at any rate, amid the exposure and exertion of the walking tour, the +sore throat was not to be staved off; so, having got as far as +Inverness, Keats, under medical advice, reluctantly cut his journey +short, parted from Brown, and went on board the smack from Cromarty. A +nine days' passage brought him to London Bridge, and on the 18th of +August he presented himself to the rather dismayed eyes of Mrs. Dilke. +"John Keats," she wrote, "arrived here last night, as brown and as +shabby as you can imagine: scarcely any shoes left, his jacket all torn +at the back, a fur cap, a great plaid, and his knapsack. I cannot tell +what he looked like." More ought to be said here of the details of +Keats's Scottish and Irish trip; but such details, not being of +essential importance as incidents in his life, could only be given +satisfactorily in the form of copious extracts from his letters, and for +these--readable and picturesque as they are--I have not adequate space. +He preferred, on the whole, the Scotch people to the little which he saw +of the Irish. Just as Keats was leaving Scotland, because of his own +ailments, he had been summoned away thence on account of the more +visibly grave malady of his brother Tom, who was in an advanced stage of +consumption; but it appears that the letter did not reach his hands at +the time. + +The next three months were passed by Keats along with Tom at their +Hampstead lodgings. Anxiety and affection--warm affection, deep +anxiety--were of no avail. Tom died at the beginning of December, aged +just twenty, and was buried on the 7th of that month. The words in "King +Lear," "Poor Tom," remain underlined by the surviving brother. + +John Keats was now solitary in the world. Tom was dead, George and his +bride in America, Fanny, his girlish sister, a permanent inmate of the +household of Mr. and Mrs. Abbey at Walthamstow. In December he quitted +his lodgings at Hampstead, and set up house along with Mr. Brown in what +was then called Wentworth Place, Hampstead, now Lawn Bank; Brown being +rightly the tenant, and Keats a paying resident with Brown. Wentworth +Place consisted of only two houses. One of them was thus inhabited by +Brown and Keats, the other by the Dilkes. In the first of these houses, +when Brown and Keats were away, and afterwards in the second, there was +also a well-to-do family of the name of Brawne,--a mother, with a son +and two daughters. Lawn Bank is the penultimate house on the right of +John Street, next to Wentworth House: Dr. Sharpey passed some of his +later years in it. This is, beyond all others, the dwelling which +remains permanently linked with the memory of Keats. + +While Tom was still lingering out the days of his brief life, Keats made +the acquaintance of two young ladies. He has left us a description of +both of them. His portraiture of the first, Miss Jane Cox, is written in +a tone which might seem the preliminary to a _grande passion_; but this +did not prove so; she rapidly passed out of his existence and out of his +memory. His portraiture of the second, Miss Fanny Brawne, does not +suggest anything beyond a tepid liking which might perhaps merge into a +definite antipathy; this also was delusive, for he was from the first +smitten with Miss Brawne, and soon profoundly in love with her--I might +say desperately in love, for indeed desperation, which became despair, +was the main ingredient in his passion, in all but its earliest stages. +I shall here extract these two passages, for both of them are of +exceptional importance for our biography--one as acquainting us with +Keats's general range of feeling in relation to women, and the other as +introducing the most serious and absorbing sentiment of the last two +years of his life. On October 29, 1818, he wrote as follows to his +brother George and his wife in America:-- + + "The Misses Reynolds are very kind to me.... On my return, the + first day I called [this was probably towards the 20th of + September], they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a + cousin of theirs, Miss Cox, who, having fallen out with her + grandpapa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs. Reynolds to + take asylum in her house. She is an East Indian, and ought to be + her grandfather's heir.... From what I hear she is not without + faults of a real kind; but she has others which are more apt to + make women of inferior claims hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, + but is at least a Charmian; she has a rich Eastern look; she has + fine eyes and fine manners. When she comes into the room she + makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is + too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may + address her; from habit she thinks that nothing particular. I + always find myself more at ease with such a woman; the picture + before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot + possibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times too much + occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble; I forget + myself entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time + think I am in love with her; so, before I go any further, I will + tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of + Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an + amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation + with an imperial woman, the very yes and no of whose lips[4] is + to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon home with me in my + pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her, and her + like, because one has no _sensations_; what we both are is taken + for granted. You will suppose I have by this time had much talk + with her. No such thing; there are the Misses Reynolds on the + look out. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at + her; they call her a flirt to me--what a want of knowledge! She + walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn to her + with a magnetic power; this they call flirting! They do not know + things; they do not know what a woman is. I believe, though, she + has faults, the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had. + Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are + two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things:--the + worldly, theatrical, and pantomimical; and the unearthly, + spiritual, and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, + and this Charmian, hold the first place in our mind; in the + latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, + and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of + the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal + being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, + and I should like you to save me." + +So much for Miss Cox, the Charmian whom Keats was not in love with. This +is not absolutely the sole mention of her in his letters, but it is the +only one of importance. We now turn to Miss Brawne, the young lady with +whom he had fallen very much in love at a date even preceding that to +which the present description must belong. The description comes from a +letter to George and Georgiana Keats, written probably towards the +middle of December 1818. It is true that the name Brawne does not appear +in the printed version of the letter, but the "very positive +conviction" expressed by Mr. Forman that that name really does stand in +the MS., a conviction "shared by members of her family," may safely be +adopted by all my readers. I therefore insert the name where a blank had +heretofore appeared in print. + + "Perhaps, as you are fond of giving me sketches of characters, + you may like a little picnic of scandal, even across the + Atlantic. Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She is about my height, + with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort. She + wants sentiment in every feature. She manages to make her hair + look well; her nostrils are very fine, though a little painful; + her mouth is bad, and good; her profile is better than her full + face, which indeed is not 'full,' but pale and thin, without + showing any bone; her shape is very graceful, and so are her + movements; her arms are good, her hands bad-ish, her feet + tolerable. She is not seventeen [Keats, if he really wrote 'not + seventeen,' was wrong here; 'not nineteen' would have been + correct, as she was born on August 9, 1800.] But she is ignorant, + monstrous in her behaviour, flying out in all directions; calling + people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the + term 'minx.' This is, I think, from no innate vice, but from a + penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am, however, tired of + such style, and shall decline any more of it. She had a friend to + visit her lately. You have known plenty such. She plays the + music, but without one sensation but the feel of the ivory at her + fingers. She is a downright Miss, without one set-off. We hated + her ["We" would apparently be Keats, Brown, and the Dilkes], and + smoked her, and baited her, and I think drove her away. Miss + Brawne thinks her a paragon of fashion, and says she is the only + woman in the world she would change persons with. What a stupe! + She is as superior as a rose to a dandelion." + +At the time when Keats wrote these words he had known Miss Brawne for a +couple of months, more or less, having first seen her in October or +November at the house of the Dilkes. It might seem that he was about +this time in a state of feeling propense to love. _Some_ woman was +required to fill the void in his heart. The woman might have been Miss +Cox, whom he met in September. As the event turned out, it was not she, +but it _was_ Miss Brawne, whom he met in October or November. Fanny +Brawne was the elder daughter of a gentleman of independent means, who +died while she was still a child; he left another daughter and a son +with their mother; and the whole family, as already mentioned, lived at +times in the same house which the Dilkes occupied in Wentworth-place, +Hampstead, and at other times in the adjoining house, while not tenanted +by Brown and Keats. Miss Brawne (I quote here from Mr. Forman) "had much +natural pride and buoyancy, and was quite capable of affecting higher +spirits and less concern than she really felt. But, as to the +genuineness of her attachment to Keats, some of those who knew her +personally have no doubt whatever."[5] If so--or indeed whether so or +not--it is a pity that she was wont, after Keats's death, to speak of +him (as has been averred) as "that foolish young poet who was in love +with me." That Keats was a poet and a young poet is abundantly true; but +that he was a foolish one had even before his death, and especially very +soon after it, been found out to be a gross delusion by a large number +of people, and might just as well have been found out by his betrothed +bride in addition. I know of only one portrait of Miss Brawne; it is a +silhouette by Edouart, engraved in two of Mr. Forman's publications. A +silhouette is one of the least indicative forms of portraiture for +enabling one to judge whether the sitter was handsome or not. This +likeness shows a very profuse mass of hair, a tall, rather sloping, +forehead, a long and prominent aquiline nose, a mouth and chin of the +_petite_ kind, a very well-developed throat, and a figure somewhat small +in proportion to the head. The face is not of the sort which I should +suppose to have ever been beautiful in an artist's eyes, or in a poet's +either; and indeed Keats's description of Miss Brawne, which I have just +cited, is qualified, chilly, and critical, with regard to beauty. +Nevertheless, his love-letters to Miss Brawne, most of which have been +preserved and published, speak of her beauty very emphatically. "The +very first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal;" "I cannot +conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you, but beauty;" "all +I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your beauty." It seems +probable that Keats was the declared lover of Miss Brawne in April 1819 +at the latest--more probably in February; and when his first published +letter to her was written, July 1819, he and she must certainly have +been already engaged, or all but engaged, to marry. This was contrary to +Mrs. Brawne's liking. They appear to have contemplated--anything but +willingly on the poet's part--a tolerably long engagement; for he was a +young man of twenty-three, with stinted means, no regular profession, +and no occupation save that of producing verse derided in the high +places of criticism. He spoke indeed of re-studying in Edinburgh for the +medical profession: this was a vague notion, with which no practical +beginning was made. An early marriage, followed by a year or so of +pleasuring and of intellectual advancement in some such place as Rome or +Zurich, was what Keats really longed for. + +We must now go back a little--to December 1818. Haydon was then still +engaged upon his picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and found his +progress impeded by want of funds, and by a bad attack, from which he +frequently suffered, of weakness of eyesight. On the 22nd of the month, +Keats, with conspicuous generosity--and although he had already lent +nearly £200 to various friends--tendered him any money-aid which might +be in his power; asking merely that his friend would claim the +fulfilment of his promise only in the last resort. On January 7, 1819, +Haydon definitely accepted his offer; and Keats wrote back, hoping to +comply, and refusing to take any interest. His own money affairs were, +however, at this time almost at a deadlock, controlled by lawyers and by +his ex-guardian Mr. Abbey; and the amount which he had expected to +command as coming to him after his brother Tom's death was not +available. He had to explain as much in April 1819 to Haydon, who wrote +with some urgency. Eventually he did make a small loan to the +painter--£30; but very shortly afterwards (June 17th) was compelled to +ask for a reimbursement--"do borrow or beg somehow what you can for me." +There was a chancery-suit of old standing, begun soon after the death of +Mr. Jennings in 1805, and it continued to obstruct Keats in his money +affairs. The precise facts of these were also but ill-known to the poet, +who had potentially at his disposal certain funds which remained _perdu_ +and unused until two years after his death. On September 20, 1819, he +wrote to his brother George in America that Haydon had been unable to +make the repayment; and he added, "He did not seem to care much about +it, and let me go without my money with almost nonchalance, when he +ought to have sold his drawings to supply me. I shall perhaps still be +acquainted with him, but, for friendship, that is at an end." And in +fact the hitherto very ardent cordiality between the poet and the +painter does seem to have been materially damped after this date; Keats +being somewhat reserved towards Haydon, and Haydon finding more to +censure than to extol in the conduct of Keats. We can feel with both of +them; and, while we pronounce Keats blameless and even praiseworthy +throughout, may infer Haydon to have been not greatly blameable. + +Towards the end of June 1819 Keats went to Shanklin; his first +companion there being an invalid but witty and cheerful friend, James +Rice, a solicitor, and his second, Brown, who co-operated at this time +with the poet in producing the drama "Otho the Great." Next, the two +friends went to Winchester, "chiefly," wrote Keats to his sister Fanny, +"for the purpose of being near a tolerable library, which after all is +not to be found in this place. However, we like it very much; it is the +pleasantest town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations of +any." One of his letters from here (September 21) speaks of his being +now almost as well acquainted with Italian as with French, and he adds, +"I shall set myself to get complete in Latin, and there my learning must +stop. I do not think of venturing upon Greek." It is stated that he +learned Italian with uncommon quickness. + +Early in the winter which closed 1819 George Keats came over for a short +while from America, his main object being to receive his share of the +money accruing from the decease of his brother Tom, to the cost of whose +illness he had largely contributed. He had been in Cincinnati, and had +engaged in business, but as yet without any success. In some lines which +John Keats addressed to Miss Brawne in October there is an energetic and +no doubt consciously overloaded denunciation of "that most hateful land, +dungeoner of my friends, that monstrous region," &c., &c. John, it +appears, concealed from George, during his English visit, the fact that +he himself was then much embarrassed in money-matters, and almost wholly +dependent upon his friends for a subsistence meanwhile; and George left +England again without doing anything for his brother's relief or +convenience. He took with him £700, some substantial part of which +appears to have been the property of John, absolutely or contingently; +and he undertook to remit shortly to his brother £200, to be raised by +the sale of a boat which he owned in America; but months passed, and the +£200 never came, no purchaser for the boat being procurable. Out of the +£1,100 which Tom Keats had left, George received £440, John hardly more +than £200, George thus repaying himself some money which had been +previously advanced for John's professional education. For all this he +has been very severely censured, Mr. Brown being among his sternest and +most persistent assailants. It must seemingly have been to George Keats, +and yet not to him exclusively, that Colonel Finch referred in the +letter which reached Shelley's eyes, saying that John had been +"infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued +from want and woe;" and Shelley re-enforced this accusation in his +preface to "Adonais"--"hooted from the stage of life, no less by those +on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he +had lavished his fortune and his care." From these painful charges +George Keats eventually vindicated himself with warmth of feeling, and +with so much solidity of demonstration as availed to convince Mr. Dilke, +and also Mr. Abbey. Who were the other offenders glanced at by Colonel +Finch, as also in one of Severn's letters, I have no distinct idea. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +From this point forwards nothing but misery remains to be recorded of +John Keats. The narrative becomes depressing to write and depressing to +read. The sensation is like that of being confined in a dark vault at +noonday. One knows, indeed, that the sun of the poet's genius is blazing +outside, and that, on emerging from the vault, we shall be restored to +light and warmth; but the atmosphere within is not the less dark and +laden, nor the shades the less murky. In tedious wretchedness, racked +and dogged with the pang of body and soul, exasperated and protesting, +raging now, and now ground down into patience and acceptance, Keats +gropes through the valley of the shadow of death. + +Before detailing the facts, we must glance for a minute at the position. +Keats had a passionate ambition and a passionate love--the ambition to +be a poet, the love of Fanny Brawne. At the beginning of 1820, he was +conscious of his authentic vocation as a poet, and conscious also that +this vocation, though recognized in a small and to some extent an +influential circle, was publicly denied and ridiculed; his portion was +the hiss of the viper and the gander, the hooting of the impostor and +the owl. His forthcoming volume was certain to share the same fate; he +knew its claims would be perversely resisted and cruelly repudiated. If +he could make no serious impression as a poet, not only was his leading +ambition thwarted, but he would also be impeded in getting any other and +more paying literary work to do--regular profession or employment he had +none. He was at best a poor man, and, for the while, almost bereft of +any command of funds. So long as this state of things, or anything like +it, continued, he would be unable to marry the woman of his heart. While +sickness kept him a prisoner, he was torn by ideas of her volatility and +fickleness. Disease was sapping his vitals, pain wrung him, Death +beckoned him with finger more and more imperative. Poetic fame became +the vision of Tantalus, and love the clasp of Ixion. + +Such was the life, or such the incipient death, of Keats, in the last +twelvemonth of his brief existence. + +For half a year prior to February 1820 he had been unrestful and +cheerless. "Either that gloom overspread me," so he wrote to James Rice, +"or I was suffering under some passionate feeling, or, if I turned to +versify, that exacerbated the poison of either sensation." He began +taking laudanum at times, but was induced by Brown, towards the end of +1819, to promise to give up this insidious practice. Then came the +crash: it was at Hampstead, on the night of the 3rd of February. + + "One night, about eleven o'clock," I quote the words of Lord + Houghton, which have become classical, "Keats returned home[6] + in a state of strange physical excitement; it might have + appeared, to those who did not know him, one of fierce + intoxication. He told his friend [Brown] he had been outside the + stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered; + but added: 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go + to bed; and, as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head + was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and said: 'That is blood + from my mouth. Bring me the candle: let me see this blood.' He + gazed steadfastly some moments at the ruddy stain, and then, + looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden + calmness never to be forgotten, said: 'I know the colour of that + blood--it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. + That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.'" + +A surgeon arrived shortly, bled Keats, and pronounced the rupture to be +unimportant, but the patient was not satisfied. He wrote to Miss Brawne +some few days afterwards, "So violent a rush of blood came to my lungs +that I felt nearly suffocated." By the 6th of the month, however, he was +already better, and he then said in a letter to his sister: "From +imprudently leaving off my great-coat in the thaw, I caught cold, which +flew to my lungs." Later on he suffered from palpitation of the heart; +but was so far recovered by the 25th of March as to be able to go to +town to the exhibition of Haydon's picture, Christ's Entry into +Jerusalem, and early in April he could take a walk of five miles. In +March he had written that he was then picking up flesh, and, if he could +avoid inflammation for six weeks, might yet do well; in April his doctor +assured him that his only malady was nervous irritability and general +weakness, caused by anxiety and by the excitement of poetry. At an +untoward time for his health, about the first week in May, Keats was +obliged to quit his residence in Hampstead; as Brown was then leaving +for Scotland, and, according to his wont, let the house. Keats +accordingly went to live in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town. A letter which +he wrote just before his departure speaks of his uncertain outlook; he +might be off to South America, or, more likely, embarking as surgeon on +a vessel trading to the East Indies. This latter idea had been in his +mind for about a year past, off and on. What he could have contemplated +doing in South America is by no means apparent. On the 7th of May Keats +parted at Gravesend from Brown, and they never met again. The hand with +which he grasped Brown's, and which he had of old "clenched against +Hammond's," was now, according to his own words, "that of a man of +fifty." + +Things had thus gone on pretty well with Keats's health, since he first +began to rally from the blood-spitting attack of the 3rd of February; +but this was not to continue. On the 22nd of June he again broke a +blood-vessel, and vomited blood morning and evening. Leigh Hunt thought +it high time to intervene, and removed the patient to his house, No. 13 +Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town. By the 7th of July--just about the time +when Keats's last volume was published, the one containing "Lamia," +"Hyperion," and all his best works--the physician had told him that he +must not remain in England, but go to Italy. On the 12th, Mrs. Gisborne, +the friend of Godwin and of Shelley, saw him at Hunt's house, looking +emaciated, and "under sentence of death from Dr. Lamb." Three days +afterwards he wrote to Haydon "I am afraid I shall pop off just when my +mind is able to run alone." The stay at Leigh Hunt's house came to an +end in a way which speaks volumes for the shattered nerves, and +consequent morbid susceptibility, of Keats. On the 10th of August a note +for him written by Miss Brawne, which "contained not a word of the least +consequence," arrived at the house. Keats was then resting in his own +room, and Mrs. Hunt, who was occupied, desired a female servant to give +it to him. The servant quitted the household on the following day; and, +in leaving, she handed the letter to Thornton Hunt, then a mere child, +asking him to reconsign it to his mother. When Thornton did this on the +12th, the letter was open; opened (one assumes) either by the servant +through idle curiosity, or by Thornton through simple childishness. +"Poor Keats was affected by this inconceivable circumstance beyond what +can be imagined. He wept for several hours, and resolved, +notwithstanding Hunt's entreaties, to leave the house. He went to +Hampstead that same evening." In Hampstead he had at least the solace of +being received into the dwelling occupied by the Brawne family, being +the same dwelling (next door to that of Brown and Keats) which had been +recently tenanted by the Dilkes; yet the excitement of feeling, +consequent on the continual presence of Miss Brawne, was perhaps harmful +to him. Here he remained until the time for journeying to Italy arrived. +He was still, it seems, left in some uncertainty as to the precise +nature and gravity of his disease, for on the 14th of August he wrote to +his sister: "'Tis not yet consumption, I believe; but it would be, were +I to remain in this climate all the winter." Anyhow, his expectations of +recovery, or of marked benefit from the Italian sojourn, were but faint. + +Something may here be said of the love-letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne. +They begin (as already stated) on the 1st of July 1819, and end at some +date between his leaving Hampstead, early in May 1820, and quitting +Hunt's house in August. We may assume the 10th July 1820, or +thereabouts, as the date of the last letter. I cannot say that the +character of Keats gains to my eyes from the perusal of this +correspondence. Love-letters are not expected to be models of +self-regulation and "the philosophic mind"; they would be bad +love-letters, or letters of a bad specimen of a lover, if they were so. +Still, one wants a man to show himself, _quâ_ lover, at his highest in +letters of this stamp; one wants to find in them his noblest self, his +steadiest as his most ardent aspirations, in one direction. Keats seems +to me, throughout his love-letters, unbalanced, wayward, and profuse; he +exhibits great fervour of temperament, and abundant caressingness, +without the inner depth of tenderness and regard. He lives in his +mistress, for himself. As the letters pass further and further into the +harsh black shadows of disease, he abandons all self-restraint, and +lashes out right and left; he wills that his friends should have been +disloyal to him, as the motive for his being disloyal to them. To make +allowance for all this is possible, and even necessary; but to treat it +as not needing that any allowance should be made would seem to me +futile. In the earlier letters of the series we have to note a few +points of biographic interest. He says that he believes Miss Brawne +liked him for himself, not for his writings, and he loves her the more +for it; that, on first falling in love with her, he had written to +declare himself, but he burned the letter, fancying that she had shown +some dislike to him; that he had all his life been indifferent to money +matters, but must be chary of the resources of his friends; that he was +afraid of her "being a little inclined to the Cressid"--one of the +various passages which show that he chafed at her girlish liking for +general society and diversions. On the 10th of October 1819 he had had +"a thousand kisses" from her, and was resolved not to dispense with the +thousand and first. Early in June 1820 he speaks of her having "been in +the habit of flirting with Brown," who "did not know he was doing me to +death by inches."--It may be well to give three of the letters as +specimens:-- + +(I.) + + "25 College Street. + + "[Postmark] _13 October 1819._ + + "My dearest Girl,--This moment I have set myself to copy some + verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I + must write you a line or two, and see if that will assist in + dismissing you from my mind for ever so short a time. Upon my + soul I can think of nothing else. The time is past when I had + power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of + my life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you; + I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again; my life seems + to stop there--I see no further. You have absorbed me; I have a + sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving. I + should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing + you; I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet + Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no + limit now to my love. + + "Your note came in just here. I cannot be 'happier' away from + you; 'tis richer than an argosy of pearls. Do not threat me, even + in jest. I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for + religion--I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more; I could be + martyred for _my_ religion. Love is my religion--I could die for + that; I could die for you. My creed is love, and you are its only + tenet. You have ravished me away by a power I cannot resist; and + yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you + I have endeavoured often 'to reason against the reasons of my + love.' I can do that no more, the pain would be too great. My + love is selfish; I cannot breathe without you." + + +(II.) + + [Date uncertain--say towards June 15, 1820.] + + "My dearest Fanny,--My head is puzzled this morning, and I scarce + know what I shall say, though I am full of a hundred things. 'Tis + certain I would rather be writing to you this morning, + notwithstanding the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than + enjoy any other pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with + you. Upon my soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish you + could know the tenderness with which I continually brood over + your different aspects of countenance, action, and dress. I see + you come down in the morning; I see you meet me at the window; I + see everything over again eternally that I ever have seen. If I + get on the pleasant clue, I live in a sort of happy misery; if on + the unpleasant, 'tis miserable misery. + + "You complain of my ill-treating you in word, thought, and + deed.[7] I am sorry--at times I feel bitterly sorry that I ever + made you unhappy. My excuse is that those words have been wrung + from me by the sharpness of my feelings. At all events, and in + any case, I have been wrong: could I believe that I did it + without any cause, I should be the most sincere of penitents. I + could give way to my repentant feelings now, I could recant all + my suspicions, I could mingle with you heart and soul, though + absent, were it not for some parts of your letters. Do you + suppose it possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think + of myself, and what of you: you know that I should feel how much + it was my loss, and how little yours. + + "'My friends laugh at you.' I know some of them: when I know them + all, I shall never think of them again as friends, or even + acquaintance. My friends have behaved well to me in every + instance but one; and there they have become tattlers, and + inquisitors into my conduct--spying upon a secret I would rather + die than share it with anybody's confidence. For this I cannot + wish them well; I care not to see any of them again. If I am the + theme, I will not be the friend of idle gossips. Good gods, what + a shame it is our loves should be so put into the microscope of a + coterie! Their laughs should not affect you--(I may perhaps give + you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people + to hate me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who have + pretended a great friendship for me)--when in competition with + one who, if he never should see you again, would make you the + saint of his memory. These laughers, who do not like you, who + envy you for your beauty, who would have God-blessed me from you + for ever, who were plying me with discouragements with respect to + you eternally! People are revengeful: do not mind them. Do + nothing but love me: if I knew that for certain, life and health + will in such event be a heaven, and death itself will be less + painful. I long to believe in immortality: I shall never be able + to bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with + you here, how short is the longest life! I wish to believe in + immortality--I wish to live with you for ever. Do not let my name + ever pass between you and those laughers: if I have no other + merit than the great love for you, that were sufficient to keep + me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I have been cruel + and unjust, I swear my love has ever been greater than my + cruelty--which lasts but a minute, whereas my love, come what + will, shall last for ever. If concession to me has hurt your + pride, God knows I have had little pride in my heart when + thinking of you. Your name never passes my lips--do not let mine + pass yours. Those people do not like me. + + "After reading my letter, you even then wish to see me. I am + strong enough to walk over: but I dare not--I shall feel so much + pain in parting with you again. My dearest love, I am afraid to + see you: I am strong, but not strong enough to see you. Will my + arm be ever round you again, and, if so, shall I be obliged to + leave you again? + + "My sweet love, I am happy whilst I believe your first letter. + Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul, and I + could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If you think + me cruel, if you think I have slighted you, do muse it over + again, and see into my heart. My love to you is 'true as truth's + simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth'--as I think I + once said before. How could I slight you? how threaten to leave + you? Not in the spirit of a threat to you--no, but in the spirit + of wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious, my angel + Fanny, do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will be as + patient in illness and as believing in love as I am able." + + +(III.) + + +(This is the last letter of the series. Its date is uncertain; but may, +as already intimated, be towards July 10, 1820. It follows next after +our No. 2.) + + "My dearest Girl,--I wish you could invent some means to make me + at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more + concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my + mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy. The fact is, I + cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute's content + until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I + will not go on at this rate. A person in health, as you are, can + have no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like + mine go through. + + "What island do your friends propose retiring to? I should be + happy to go with you there alone, but in company I should object + to it: the backbitings and jealousies of new colonists, who have + nothing else to amuse themselves, is unbearable. Mr. Dilke came + to see me yesterday, and gave me a very great deal more pain than + pleasure. I shall never be able any more to endure the society of + any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage[8] and Wentworth + Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my palate. If I + cannot live with you, I will live alone. + + "I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated + from you. For all this, I am averse to seeing you: I cannot bear + flashes of light, and return into my glooms again. I am not so + unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you yesterday. To be + happy with you seems such an impossibility: it requires a luckier + star than mine--it will never be. + + "I enclose a passage from one of your letters which I want you to + alter a little: I want (if you will have it so) the matter + expressed less coldly to me. + + "If my health would bear it, I could write a poem which I have in + my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a + situation as mine. I would show some one in love, as I am, with a + person living in such liberty as you do.[9] Shakespeare always + sums up matters in the most sovereign manner. Hamlet's heart was + full of such misery as mine is, when he said to Ophelia, 'Go to a + nunnery, go, go!' Indeed, I should like to give up the matter at + once--I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world you + are smiling with. I hate men, and women more. I see nothing but + thorns for the future: wherever I may be next winter, in Italy + or nowhere, Brown will be living near you, with his indecencies. + I see no prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome. Well, I should + there see you, as in a magic glass, going to and from town at all + hours--I wish I could infuse a little confidence of human nature + into my heart: I cannot muster any. The world is too brutal for + me. I am glad there is such a thing as the grave--I am sure I + shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate, I will + indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any of + their friends. I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or + that a thunderbolt would strike me.--God bless you. + + "J. K." + +It is seldom one reads a letter (not to speak of a love-letter) more +steeped than this in wretchedness and acrimony; wretchedness for which +the cause was but too real and manifest; acrimony for which no ground +has been shown or is to be surmised. What Mr. Dilke had done, or could +be supposed to have done, to merit the invalid's ire, is unapparent. Mr. +Brown may be inferred, from the verses of Keats already quoted, to have +had the general character and bearing of a _bon vivant_ or "jolly dog"; +sufficiently versed in the good things of this world, whether fish, +flesh, or womankind; jocose, or on occasion slangy. But Keats himself, +in the nearly contemporary letter in which he arraigned Miss Brawne for +"flirting with Brown," had said: "I know his love and friendship for +me--at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his +assistance;" and we refuse to think that any contingency could be likely +to arise in which his "indecencies" would put Miss Brawne to the blush. +Be it enough for us to know that Keats, in the drear prospect of +expatriation and death, wrote in this strain, and to wish it were +otherwise. + +The time had now arrived when Keats was to go to Italy. It was on the +18th of September 1820 that he embarked on the _Maria Crowther_ from +London. Haydon gives us a painful glimpse of the poet shortly before his +departure: "The last time I saw him was at Hampstead, lying on his back +in a white bed, helpless, irritable, and hectic. He had a book, and, +enraged at his own feebleness, seemed as if he were going out of the +world, with a contempt of this, and no hopes of a better. He muttered as +I stood by him that, if he did not recover, he would 'cut his throat.' I +tried to calm him, but to no purpose. I left him, in great depression of +spirit to see him in such a state." Another attached friend, of whom I +have not yet made mention, accompanied him; and in the annals of +watchful and self-oblivious friendship there are few records more +touching than the one which links with the name of John Keats that of +Joseph Severn. Severn, two years older than Keats, had known him as far +back as 1813, being introduced by Mr. William Haslam. Keats was then +studying at Guy's Hospital, but none the less gave Severn "the complete +idea of a poet." The acquaintance does not seem to have proceeded far at +that date; but, through the intervention of Mr. Edward Holmes (author of +a "Life of Mozart," and "A Ramble among the Musicians of Germany") was +renewed whilst the poet was composing "Endymion"; and Severn may +probably have co-operated in some minor degree with Haydon in training +Keats to a perception of the great things in plastic art. In 1820 +Severn, a student-painter at the Royal Academy, had won the gold medal +by his picture of The Cave of Despair, from Spenser, entitling him to +the expenses of a three years' stay in Italy, for advancement in his +art. He had an elegant gift in music, as well as in painting; and it is +a satisfaction to learn that at this period he had "great animal +spirits," for without these what he went through during the ensuing five +months would have been but too likely to break him down. I must make +room here for another letter from Keats, one addressed to his good +friend Brown, deeply pathetic, and serving to assuage whatever may have +been like "brass upon our palate" in the last-quoted letter to Fanny +Brawne. + + "_Saturday, September 28._ + + "_Maria Crowther_, off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. + + "My dear Brown,--The time has not yet come for a _pleasant_ + letter from me. I have delayed writing to you from time to time, + because I felt how impossible it was to enliven you with one + heartening hope of my recovery. This morning in bed the matter + struck me in a different manner. I thought I would write 'while I + was in some liking,' or I might become too ill to write at all, + and then, if the desire to have written should become strong, it + would be a great affliction to me. I have many more letters to + write, and I bless my stars that I have begun, for time seems to + press--this may be my best opportunity. + + "We are in a calm, and I am easy enough this morning. If my + spirits seem too low you may in some degree impute it to our + having been at sea a fortnight without making any way. I was very + disappointed at not meeting you at Bedhampton, and am very + provoked at the thought of you being at Chichester to-day.[10] I + should have delighted in setting off for London for the sensation + merely--for what should I do there? I could not leave my lungs or + stomach or other worse things behind me. + + "I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much. There + is one I must mention, and have done with it. Even if my body + would recover of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing + which I want to live most for will be a great occasion of my + death. I cannot help it--who can help it? Were I in health, it + would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? I daresay + you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping: you know + what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at + your house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me + from these pains; and then I wish death away, for death would + destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and + sea, weakness and decline, are great separators; but death is the + great divorcer for ever. When the pang of this thought has passed + through my mind, I may say the bitterness of death is past. I + often wish for you, that you might flatter me with the best. + + "I think, without my mentioning it, for my sake you would be a + friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You think she has many + faults: but for my sake think she has not one. If there is + anything you can do for her by word or deed, I know you will do + it. I am in a state at present in which woman, merely as woman, + can have no more power over me than stocks and stones; and yet + the difference of my sensations with respect to Miss Brawne and + my sister is amazing. The one seems to absorb the other to a + degree incredible. I seldom think of my brother and sister in + America. The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything + horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see + her figure eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in + the habit of using during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring + in my ears. Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all + this a dream? There must be--we cannot be created for this sort + of suffering. The receiving this letter is to be one of yours. + + "I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather yours to me, + more than that, as you deserve to escape, you will never be so + unhappy as I am. I should think of--you[11] in my last moments. I + shall endeavour to write to Miss Brawne if possible to-day.[12] A + sudden stop to my life in the middle of one of these letters + would be no bad thing, for it keeps one in a sort of fever + awhile. + + "Though fatigued with a letter longer than any I have written for + a long while, it would be better to go on for ever than awake to + a sense of contrary winds. We expect to put into Portland Roads + to-night. The captain, the crew, and the passengers are all + ill-tempered and weary. I shall write to Dilke. I feel as if I + was closing my last letter to you." + +The ship at last proceeded on her voyage, and in the Bay of Biscay +encountered a severe squall. Keats soon afterwards read the storm-scene +in Byron's "Don Juan": he threw the book away in indignation, denouncing +the author's perversity of mind which could "make solemn things gay, and +gay things solemn." Late in October he reached the harbour of Naples, +and had to perform a tedious quarantine of ten days. After landing on +the 31st,[13] he received a second letter from Shelley, then at Pisa, +urging him to come to that city. The first letter on this subject, +dated in July, had invited Keats to the hospitality of Shelley's own +house; but in November this project had been given up, as "we are not +rich enough for that sort of thing"--although Shelley still intended (so +he wrote to Leigh Hunt) "to be the physician both of his body and his +soul,--to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish." +Keats, however, had brought with him a letter of introduction to Dr. +(afterwards Sir James) Clark, in Rome,--or indeed he may have met him +before leaving England--and he decided to proceed to Rome rather than +Pisa. Dr. Clark engaged for him a lodging opposite his own: it was in +the first house on the right as you ascend the steps of the Trinità del +Monte. The precise date when Keats reached Rome, his last place of +torture and of rest, does not appear to be recorded: it was towards the +middle of November. He was at first able to walk out a little, and +occasionally to ride. Dr. Clark attended his sick bed with the most +exemplary assiduity and kindness. He pronounced (so Keats wrote to Brown +in a letter of November 30th, which is perhaps the last he ever penned) +that the lungs were not much amiss, but the stomach in a very bad +condition: perhaps this was a kindly equivocation, for by this time--as +was ascertained after his death--Keats can have had scarcely any lungs +at all. The patient was under no illusion as to his prospects, and he +more than once asked the physician "When will this posthumous life of +mine come to an end?" + +The only words in which the last days of Keats can be adequately +recorded are those of Severn: our best choice would be between extract +and silence. There were oscillations from time to time, from bad to less +bad, but generally the tendency of the disease was steadily downwards. +The poet's feelings regarding Fanny Brawne were so acute and harrowing +that he never mentioned her to his friend. I give a few particulars from +Severn's contemporary letters--the person addressed being not always +known. + + "_December 14._ His suffering is so great, so continued, and his + fortitude so completely gone, that any further change must make + him delirious. + + "_December 17._ Not a moment can I be from him. I sit by his bed + and read all day, and at night I humour him in all his + wanderings.... He rushed out of bed and said 'This day shall be + my last,' and but for me most certainly it would. The blood broke + forth in similar quantity the next morning, and he was bled + again. I was afterwards so fortunate as to talk him into a little + calmness, and he soon became quite patient. Now the blood has + come up in coughing five times. Not a single thing will he + digest, yet he keeps on craving for food. Every day he raves he + will die from hunger, and I've been obliged to give him more than + was allowed.... Dr. Clark will not say much.... All that can be + done he does most kindly; while his lady, like himself in refined + feeling, prepares all that poor Keats takes, for--in this + wilderness of a place for an invalid--there was no alternative. + + [To Mrs. Brawne.] "_January 11._ He has now given up all + thoughts, hopes, or even wish, for recovery. His mind is in a + state of peace, from the final leave he has taken of this world, + and all its future hopes.... I light the fire, make his + breakfast, and sometimes am obliged to cook; make his bed, and + even sweep the room.... Oh I would my unfortunate friend had + never left your Wentworth Place for the hopeless advantages of + this comfortless Italy! He has many many times talked over 'the + few happy days at your house, the only time when his mind was at + ease'.... Poor Keats cannot see any letters--at least he will + not; they affect him so much, and increase his danger. The two + last I repented giving: he made me put them into his box, unread. + + "_January 15._ Torlonia the banker has refused us any more money. + The bill is returned unaccepted, and to-morrow I must pay my last + crown for this cursed lodging-place: and what is more, if he + dies, all the beds and furniture will be burnt, and the walls + scraped, and they will come on me for a hundred pounds or + more.... You see my hopes of being kept by the Royal Academy will + be cut off unless I send a picture in the spring. I have written + to Sir T. Lawrence. + + "_February 12._ At times I have hoped he would recover; but the + doctor shook his head, and Keats would not hear that he was + better; the thought of recovery is beyond everything dreadful to + him. + + [To Mrs. Brawne.] "_February 14._ His mind is growing to great + quietness and peace. I find this change has its rise from the + increasing weakness of his body; but it seems like a delightful + sleep to me, I have been beating about in the tempest of his mind + so long. To-night he has talked very much to me, but so easily + that he at last fell into a pleasant sleep. He seems to have + comfortable dreams without nightmare. This will bring on some + change: it cannot be worse--it may be better. Among the many + things he has requested of me to-night, this is the + principal--that on his grave shall be this, 'Here lies one whose + name was writ in water.'... Such a letter has come! I gave it to + Keats, supposing it to be one of yours; but it proved sadly + otherwise. The glance of that letter tore him to pieces. The + effects were on him for many days. He did not read it--he could + not; but requested me to place it in his coffin, together with a + purse and letter (unopened) of his sister's: since which time he + has requested me not to place _that_ letter in his coffin, but + only his sister's purse and letter, with some hair. Then he found + many causes of his illness in the exciting and thwarting of his + passions; but I persuaded him to feel otherwise on this delicate + point.... I have got an English nurse to come two hours every + other day.... He has taken half a pint of fresh milk: the milk + here is beautiful to all the senses--it is delicious. For three + weeks he has lived on it, sometimes taking a pint and a half in a + day. + + "_February 22._ This morning, by the pale daylight, the change in + him frightened me: he has sunk in the last three days to a most + ghastly look.... He opens his eyes in great doubt and horror; + but, when they fall upon me, they close gently, open quietly, and + close again, till he sinks to sleep. + + "_February 27._ He is gone. He died with the most perfect + ease--he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23rd, about four, the + approaches of death came on. 'Severn--I--lift me up. I am + dying--I shall die easy. Don't be frightened: be firm, and thank + God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed + boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he + gradually sank into death, so quiet that I still thought he + slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down by four nights' + watching, no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days + since the body was opened: the lungs were completely gone. The + doctors could not imagine how he had lived these two months. I + followed his dear body to the grave on Monday [February 26th], + with many English.... The letters I placed in the coffin with my + own hand." + +No words of mine shall be added here to tarnish upon the mirror of +memory this image of a sacred death and a sacred friendship. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +We have now reached the close of a melancholy history--that of the +extinction, in a space of less than twenty-six years, of a bright life +foredoomed by inherited disease. We turn to another subject--the +intellectual development and the writings of Keats, what they were, and +how they were treated. Here again there are some sombre tints. + +A minute anecdote, apparently quite authentic, shows that a certain +propensity to the jingle of rhyme was innate in Keats: Haydon is our +informant. "An old lady (Mrs. Grafty, of Craven Street, Finsbury) told +his brother George--when, in reply to her question what John was doing, +he told her he had determined to become a poet--that this was very odd; +because when he could just speak, instead of answering questions put to +him, he would always make a rhyme to the last word people said, and then +laugh." This, however, is the only rhyming-anecdote that we hear of +Keats's childhood or mere boyhood: there is nothing to show that at +school he made the faintest attempt at verse-spinning. The earliest +known experiment of his is the "Imitation of Spenser"--four Spenserian +stanzas, beginning-- + + "Now Morning from her orient chamber came," + +and very poor stanzas they are. This Imitation was written while he was +living at Edmonton, in his nineteenth year, and thus there was nothing +singularly precocious in Keats, either in the age at which he began +versifying, or in the skill with which he first addressed himself to the +task. I might say more of other verses, juvenile in the amplest sense of +the term, but such remarks would belong more properly to a later section +of this volume. I will therefore only observe here that the earliest +poems of his in which I can discern anything even distantly approaching +to poetic merit or to his own characteristic style (and these distantly +indeed) are the lines "To ----" + + "Hadst thou lived in days of old," + +and "Calidore, a Fragment," + + "Young Calidore is paddling o'er the lake." + +The dates of these two compositions are not stated, but they were +probably later than the opening of 1815, and if so Keats would have been +nearly or quite twenty when he wrote them--and this is far remote from +precocity. Let us say then, once for all, that, whatever may be the +praise and homage due to Keats for ranking as one of the immortals when +he died aged twenty-five, no sort of encomium can be awarded to him on +the ground that, when he first began, he began early and well. All his +rawest attempts, be it added to his credit, appear to have been kept to +himself; for Cowden Clarke, who was certainly his chief literary +confidant in those tentative days, says that until Keats produced to him +his sonnet "written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left prison" the +youth's attempts at verse-writing were to him unknown. The 3rd of +February 1815 was the day of Hunt's liberation, so that the endeavour +had by this time been going on in silence for something like a year or +more. + +It was not till 1816--or let us say when he was just of age--that Keats +produced a truly excellent thing. This is the sonnet "On first looking +into Chapman's Homer." A copy of Chapman's translation had been lent to +Cowden Clarke; he and Keats sat up till daylight reading it, the young +poet shouting with delight, and by ten o'clock on the following morning +Keats sent the sonnet to Clarke. It was therefore a sudden immediate +inspiration, a little rill of lava flowing out of a poetic volcano, +solidified at once. This is not only the first excellent thing written +by Keats--it is the _only_ excellent thing contained in his first volume +of verse. + +This volume came out (as already mentioned) in the early spring of 1817. +The sonnet dedicating the book to Leigh Hunt, written off at a moment's +notice "when the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer," was +evidently composed in winter-time. The title of the volume is "Poems by +John Keats." The motto on its title-page is from Spenser-- + + "What more felicity can fall to creature + Than to enjoy delight with liberty?" + +--a motto embodying with considerable completeness the feeling which is +predominant in the volume, and generally in Keats's poetic works. We +always feel "delight" to be his true element, whatever may be the +undertone of pathos opposed to it by poetic development and treatment, +and by adverse fate. "Liberty" also--a free flight of the faculties, a +rejection of conventional trammels, whether in life or in verse--was +highly characteristic of him; and perhaps the youthful friend of Hunt +intended the word "liberty" to be understood by his readers as having a +certain political flavour as well. In addition to some writings just +specified, the volume contained "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill"; the +three epistles "To George Felton Mathew" (who was a gentleman of +literary habits, afterwards employed in administering the Poor Law), "To +my brother George," and "To Charles Cowden Clarke"; sixteen sonnets; and +"Sleep and Poetry." The question of the poetic deservings of these +compositions belongs more properly to our final chapter. I shall here +give only a few details bearing upon the circumstances of their +production. The poem "I stood tiptoe" &c. was written beside a gate near +Caen Wood, Highgate. It must have been begun in a summer, no doubt that +of 1816, and was still uncompleted in the middle of December of that +year. "The Epistle to Mathew," dated November 1815, testifies to the +early admiration of Keats for Thomas Chatterton; though the dedication +of "Endymion," "Inscribed to the memory of Thomas Chatterton," was but +poorly forestalled by such lines as the following-- + + "Where we may soft humanity put on, + And sit and rhyme, and think on Chatterton, + And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him + Four laurelled spirits heavenward to entreat him." + +Moreover, the first of his youthful sonnets is addressed to +Chatterton. The "Epistle to George," August 1816, opens with a reference +to "many a dreary hour" which John Keats has passed, fearing he would +never be able to write good poetry, however much he might gaze on sky, +honey-bees, and the beauty of woman. The "Epistle to Clarke," September +1816, pays ample tribute to the guidance which he had afforded to Keats +into the realms of poetry, and contains a couplet which has of late been +very often quoted-- + + "Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly + Up to its climax, and then dying proudly?" + +The sonnet-- + + "O Solitude, if I must with thee dwell," + +is the first thing that Keats ever published. It had previously appeared +in _The Examiner_ for May 5, 1816, and is clearly one of the best of +these early sonnets. The sonnet which begins with the unmetrical line-- + + "How many bards gild the lapses of time" + +was included in the very first batch of verses by Keats which Cowden +Clarke showed to Leigh Hunt. Hunt expressed "unhesitating and prompt +admiration" of some other one among the compositions; and Horace Smith, +who was present, reading out the sonnet now before us, praised as "a +well-condensed expression" the contorted and inefficient line-- + + "That distance of recognizance bereaves," + +_i.e._ [sounds] which distance bereaves of recognizance, or, in plain +English, which are too distant to be recognized. Two other sonnets are +addressed to Haydon in a tone of glowing laudation. + +"Sleep and Poetry" is (if we except the sonnet upon Chapman's Homer) by +far the most important poem in the volume. It was written partly in +Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hampstead, in the library-room, where a sofa-bed +had on one occasion been made up for Keats's convenience, and the latter +lines in the poem refer to objects of art which were kept in the room. +Apart from the impressive line which all readers remember, saying of +poetry-- + + "'Tis might half-slumbering on its own right arm," + +there are several passages interesting as showing Keats's enthusiasm for +the art in which he was now a beginner, soon to be an adept-- + + "Oh for ten years that I may overwhelm + Myself in poesy!" + +also + + "The great end + Of poesy, that it should be a friend + To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man;" + +and again + + "They shall be accounted poet-kings + Who simply tell the most heart-easing things"-- + +both of these being definitions in which we might imagine Leigh Hunt to +have borne his part, or at least notified his concurrence. The +following well-known diatribe is also important, and should be kept in +mind when we come to speak of the reception accorded to Keats by +established critics, more or less of the old school. He has been +dilating on the splendours of British poetry of the great era, say +Spenser to Milton, and then proceeds-- + + "Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism + Nurtured by foppery and barbarism + Made great Apollo blush for this his land. + Men were thought wise who could not understand + His glories: with a puling infant's force + They swayed about upon a rocking-horse, + And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal-souled! + The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled + Its gathering waves--ye felt it not; the blue + Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew + Of summer-night collected still to make + The morning precious. Beauty was awake-- + Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead + To things ye knew not of--were closely wed + To musty laws lined out with wretched rule + And compass vile; so that ye taught a school + Of dolts to smoothe, inlay, and chip, and fit, + Till--like the certain wands of Jacob's wit-- + Their verses tallied. Easy was the task; + A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask + Of Poesy. Ill-fated impious race, + That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face, + And did not know it! No, they went about + Holding a poor decrepit standard out + Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large + The name of one Boileau." + +Zeal is generally pardonable. Keats's was manifestly honest zeal, and +flaming forth in the right direction. Yet it would have been well for +him to remember and indicate that amid his "school of dolts," bearing +the flag of Boileau, there had been some very strong and capable men, +notably Dryden and Pope, who could do several things besides inlaying +and clipping; nor could it be said that the beauty of the world had been +wholly blinked by so pre-eminently descriptive a poet as Thomson; and, +if we were to read Boileau--which few of us do now-a-days, and I daresay +Keats was not one of the few--we should probably find that his "mottoes" +were much less concerned with inlaying and clipping than with solid +meaning and studious congruity--qualities not totally contemptible, but +(be it acknowledged) very largely contemned by Keats in that first +slender performance of his adolescence named "Poems, 1817." + +It has been said that this volume hardly went beyond the circle of +Keats's personal friends; nor do I think this statement can be far +wrong, although one inquirer avers that the book was "constantly alluded +to in the prominent periodicals." The dictum of Keats himself stands +thus: "It was read by some dozen of my friends, who liked it; and some +dozen whom I was unacquainted with, who did not." Shelley cannot have +been among the friends who liked the volume, for he had recommended +Keats not to give it to the press. At any rate the publishers, Messrs. +Ollier, would after a very short while sell it no more. Their letter to +George Keats--who seems to have been acting for John during the absence +of the latter in the Isle of Wight or at Margate--is too amusing to be +omitted:-- + + "We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish his + book, or that our opinion of its talent should have led us to + acquiesce in undertaking it. We are, however, much obliged to you + for relieving us from the unpleasant necessity of declining any + further connexion with it, which we must have done, as we think + the curiosity is satisfied and the sale has dropped. By far the + greater number of persons who have purchased it from us have + found fault with it in such plain terms that we have in many + cases offered to take the book back rather than be annoyed with + the ridicule which has time after time been showered upon it. In + fact, it was only on Sunday last that we were under the + mortification of having our own opinion of its merits flatly + contradicted by a gentleman who told us he considered it 'no + better than a take-in.' These are unpleasant imputations for any + one in business to labour under; but we should have borne them + and concealed their existence from you had not the style of your + note shown us that such delicacy would be quite thrown away. We + shall take means without delay for ascertaining the number of + copies on hand, and you shall be informed accordingly. + + "3 Welbeck Street, 29th April 1817." + +I do not find that the after-fate of the "Poems" is recorded: probably +they were handed over to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who undertook the +publication of "Endymion." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +To "Endymion" we now have to turn. The early verses of Keats (as well as +the later ones) contain numerous allusions to Grecian mythology--Muses, +Apollo, Pan, Narcissus, Endymion and Diana, &c. For the most part these +early allusions are nothing more than tawdry conventionalisms; so indeed +are some of the later ones, as for instance in the drama of "King +Stephen," written in 1819, the schoolboy classicism of "2nd Captain"-- + + "Royal Maud + From the thronged towers of Lincoln hath looked down, + Like Pallas from the walls of Ilion;" + +and we cannot discover that any more credit is due to Keats for +dribbling out his tritenesses about Apollo and the Muses than to any +Akenside, Mason, or Hayley, of them all. At times, however, there is a +genuine tone of _enjoyment_ in these utterances sufficient to persuade +us that the subject had really taken possession of his mind, and that he +could feel Grecian mythology, not merely as a convenient vehicle for +rhetorical personifications, but as an ever-vital embodiment of ideas of +beauty in forms of beauty. In the early and partly boyish poem, "I +stood tip-toe upon a little hill," a good deal of space is devoted to +showing that classical myths are an outcome of eager sensitiveness to +the lovely things of Nature: the tales of Psyche, Pan and Sirynx, +Narcissus, are cited in confirmation--and finally Diana and Endymion, in +the following lines:-- + + "Where had he been from whose warm head outflew + That sweetest of all songs, that ever new, + That aye-refreshing pure deliciousness + Coming ever to bless + The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing + Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing + From out the middle air, from flowery nests, + And from the pillowy silkiness that rests + Full in the speculation of the stars. + Ah surely he had burst our mortal bars: + Into some wondrous region he had gone + To search for thee, divine Endymion. + He was a poet, sure a lover too, + Who stood on Latmus' top what time there blew + Soft breezes from the myrtle-vale below, + And brought--in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow-- + A hymn from Dian's temple, while upswelling + The incense went to her own starry dwelling. + But, though her face was clear as infants' eyes, + Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, + The poet wept at her so piteous fate-- + Wept that such beauty should be desolate; + So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won, + And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. + Queen of the wide air, thou most lovely queen + Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen, + As thou exceedest all things in thy shine, + So every tale does this sweet tale of thine. + Oh for three words of honey that I might + Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night! + Where distant ships do seem to show their keels + Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels, + And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes + Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. + * * * * * + Cynthia, I cannot tell the greater blisses + That followed thine and thy dear shepherd's kisses: + Was there a poet born?" + +Readers often go at a skating-pace over passages of this kind, without +very clearly realizing to themselves the gist of the whole matter. I +will therefore put the thing into the most prosaic form, and say that +what Keats substantially intimates here is as follows:--The inventor of +the myth of Artemis and Endymion must have been a poet and lover, who, +standing on the hill of Latmos, and hearing thence a sweet hymn wafted +from the low-lying temple of Artemis, while the pure maiden-like moon +was shining resplendently, felt a pang of pity for this loveless moon or +Artemis, and invented for her a lover in the person of Endymion; and +ever since then the myth has lent additional beauty to the effects, +beautiful as in themselves they are, of moonlight. Without tying down +Keats too rigidly to this view of the genesis of the myth, I may +nevertheless point out that he wholly ignores as participants both the +spirit of religious devoutness, and the device of allegorizing natural +phænomena: the inventor is simply a poet and lover, who thinks it a +world of pities that such a sweet maiden as Artemis should not have a +lover sooner or later. Invention prompted by warmth of feeling is thus +the sole motive-power recognized. The final phrase "Was there a poet +born?" may without violence be understood as implying, "Ought not the +loves of Artemis and Endymion to beget their poet, and why should not I +be that poet?" At all events, Keats determined that he _would_ be that +poet; and, contemplating the original invention of the myth from the +point of view which we have just analysed, he not unnaturally treated it +from a like point of view. The tale of Diana and Endymion was not to be +a monument of classic antiquity re-stated in the timid, formal spirit of +a school-exercise, but an invention of a poet and lover, who, acting +under the spell of natural beauty, re-informs his theme with poetic +fancy, amorous ardour, and Nature's profusion of object and of imagery. +And in this Keats thought--and surely he rightly thought--that he would +be getting closer to the spirit of a Grecian myth than by any +cut-and-dry process of tame repetition or pulseless decorum. He wanted +the dell of wild flowers, and not the _hortus siccus_. + +"Endymion" was actually begun in the spring of 1817, much about the same +time when the volume "Poems" was published. The first draft was +completed (as we have said) on the 28th of November 1817, and by the end +of the winter which opened the year 1818 no more probably remained to be +done to it. The MS. was subjected to much revision and excision, so that +it cannot be alleged that Keats worked in a reckless temper, or without +such self-criticism as he could at that date bring to bear. It would +even appear, moreover, from the terms of a letter which he addressed to +Mr. Taylor, on April 27, 1818, that he allowed that gentleman to make +some volunteer corrections of his own. Haydon had spurred him on to the +ambitious attempt, which Hunt on the contrary deprecated. Shelley--so +the story goes--agreed with Keats that each of them should write an epic +within a space of six months. Shelley produced "The Revolt of Islam," +Keats the "Endymion." Shelley proved to be the more rapid writer of the +two; for his poem of 4815 lines was finished by the early autumn of +1817, while Keats's, numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter +which opened 1818. A good deal of it had been done during Keats's +sojourn with Mr. Bailey, in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Afterwards, on 8th +October 1817, he wrote to Bailey--"I refused to visit Shelley, that I +might have my own unfettered scope;" an expression which one might be +inclined to understand as showing that Shelley, having now completed +"The Revolt of Islam," had invited Keats to visit him at Marlow, and +there to proceed with "Endymion,"--not without the advantage it may well +be supposed, of Shelley's sympathizing but none the less stringent +counsel. Bailey's account of the facts may be given here. "He wrote and +I read--sometimes at the same table, sometimes at separate desks--from +breakfast till two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task, which was +about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as +much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his +letters. Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, 'That, +if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a tree, it had better +not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not +often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself. +When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over +to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." The +first book of the poem was delivered into the hands of the publisher, +Mr. Taylor, in the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a +finished chalk-sketch of the author's head, to be prefixed to the +volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the volume, an octavo, +appeared in April without any portrait. We all know the now proverbial +first line in "Endymion," + + "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." + +This seems to have been an inspiration of long anterior date; for Mr. +Stephens, the surgical fellow-student and fellow-lodger of Keats, says +that in one twilight when they were together the youthful poet produced +the line-- + + "A thing of beauty is a constant joy;" + +which, failing wholly to satisfy its author's ear, was immediately +afterwards improved into its present form. Even before handing over any +part of his MS. to the printer, Keats, at the "immortal dinner" which +came off in Haydon's painting-room, on the 28th of December 1817, and at +which Wordsworth, Lamb, and others, were present, had bespoken a strange +and heroic fate for one copy of his book; for he made Mr. Ritchie, who +was about to set forth on an African exploration, promise that he would +carry the volume "to the great desert of Sahara, and fling it in the +midst." + +"Invention" was the quality which Keats most sought for in his +"Endymion," as shown in his letter to Mr. Bailey, already cited. He +said--"It ['Endymion'] will be a test of my powers of imagination, and +chiefly of my invention--which is a rare thing indeed--by which I must +make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry.... +A long poem is a test of Invention, which I take to be the polar star of +poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder.... This same +Invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a +poetical excellence." The term "invention" might be used in various +senses. Keats seems to have meant the power of producing a great number +of minor incidents, illustrative images, and other particulars, all +tending to reinforce and fill out the main conception and +subject-matter. + +Keats wrote a preface to "Endymion" on March 19, 1818, which was +objected to by Hamilton Reynolds, and by his friends generally. It was +certainly off-hand and unconciliating, and some readers would have +regarded it as defiant. Its general purport was that the poem was +faulty, but the author would not keep it back for revision, which would +make the performance a tedium to himself, "I have written to please +myself, and in hopes to please others, and for a love of fame." There +was a good deal more, jaunty and provocative enough. Keats was not well +inclined to suppress this preface. He replied on April 9th to Reynolds +in a letter from which some weighty words must be quoted:-- + + "I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards the public, + or to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the principle + of Beauty, and the memory of great men.... A preface is written + to the public--a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, + and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.... I + would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing + me; but among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping--I + hate the idea of humility to them. I never wrote one single line + of poetry with the least shadow of public thought.... I hate a + mawkish popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory + would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about + pictures and books." + +Keats, however, yielded to his censors, and wrote a rather shorter +preface, by far a better one. It bears the date of April 10th, being the +very next day after he had written to Reynolds in so unsubmissive a +tone. This second preface says substantially much the same thing as the +first, but without any aggressive or "devil-may-care" addenda. It is too +important to be omitted here:-- + + "Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been + produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it + public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who + must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every + error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed + accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I + feel sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their + passing the press; nor should they, if I thought a year's + castigation would do them any good. It will not: the foundations + are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away--a + sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that, while it is + dwindling, I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit + to live. + + "This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a + punishment. But no feeling man will be forward to inflict it; he + will leave me alone with the conviction that there is not a + fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not + written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of + course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are + competent to look, and who do look, with a zealous eye to the + honour of English literature. + + "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination + of a man is healthy. But there is a space of life between in + which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way + of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted. Thence proceeds + mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak + of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. + + "I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful + mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness; for I wish to try + once more before I bid it farewell." + +No one can deny that this is a modest preface; it is in fact too modest, +and concedes to the adversary the utmost which could possibly be at +issue, viz., whether the poem was worth publishing or not. The only +scintilla of self-assertion in it is the hope expressed-"_some_ +hope"--that the writer might eventually produce "verses fit to live;" +and less than that no man who puts a poem before the public could be +expected to postulate. Keats must therefore be expressly acquitted of +having done anything to excite animosity or retaliation on the part of +his critics; the sole thing which could be attacked was the poem +itself--too frankly pronounced indefensible--or else something in the +author which did not appear within the covers of his volume. The preface +is indeed manly as well as modest; there is not a servile or obsequious +word in it; yet I cannot help thinking that Keats, when later on he +found "Endymion" denounced as drivel, must at times have wished that he +had been a little less deferential to Reynolds's objections, and had not +so explicitly admitted that not one of the four books of the poem was +qualified to "pass the press." An adverse reviewer was sure to take +advantage of that admission, and did so. + +It would be interesting to compare with the preface which Keats printed +for "Endymion" the one which Shelley printed for "The Revolt of Islam." +Shelley, like Keats, was modest; he left his readers to settle any +question as to his poetic claims (although "Alastor," previously +published, might pretty well have vouched for these); but he resolutely +explained that reviewers would find in him no subject for bullying. I +can only make room for a few sentences:-- + + "The experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in + themselves constitute men poets, but only prepare them to be the + auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess + that more essential attribute of poetry, the power of awakening + in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is + that which, to speak sincerely, I know not, and which, with an + acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the + effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.... It + is the misfortune of this age that its writers, too thoughtless + of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or + blame. They write with the fear of reviews before their eyes. + This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when + poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate + and limit its powers, cannot subsist together.... I have sought, + therefore, to write (as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and + Milton wrote) in utter disregard of anonymous censure." + +The publisher of "Endymion" (Mr. Taylor is probably meant) was nervous +as to the reception which potent critics would accord to the volume. He +went to William Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to +bespeak indulgence, but found a Cerberus who rejected every sop. In the +number of the _Quarterly_ for April 1818--not actually published, it +would seem, until September--appeared a critique branded into +ignominious permanence by the name and fame of Keats. Gifford himself is +regarded as its author. As an account of Keats's career would for +various reasons be incomplete in the absence of this critique, I +reproduce it here. It has the merit of brevity, and lends itself hardly +at all to curtailment, but I miss one or two details, relating chiefly +to Leigh Hunt. + + "Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works + which they affected to criticize. On the present occasion we + shall anticipate the author's complaint, and honestly confess + that we have not read his work. Not that we have been wanting in + our duty; far from it; indeed, we have made efforts, almost as + superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it: + but, with the fullest stretch of our perseverance, we are forced + to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the + first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We + should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may + be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that + we are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through + which we have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the + three which we have not looked into. + + "It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we + almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name + to such a rhapsody)--it is not, we say, that the author has not + powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius. He has + all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of + what has been somewhere called 'Cockney Poetry,' which may be + defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most + uncouth language. + + "Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former + number, aspires to be the hierophant.... This author is a copyist + of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, + twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd, than + his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself + in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his + own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had + advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples. His + nonsense, therefore, is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its + own sake, and, being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, + more than rivals the insanity of his poetry. + + "Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under + peculiar circumstances. 'Knowing within myself,' he says, 'the + manner [&c., down to 'a deed accomplished']. We humbly beg his + pardon, but this does not appear to us to be 'quite so clear;' we + really do not know what he means. But the next passage is more + intelligible. 'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I + feel sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their + passing the press.' Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his + own judgment, unfit to appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, + in the same condition; and, as two and two make four, and as that + is the whole number of books, we have a clear, and we believe a + very just, estimate of the entire work. + + "Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and + feverish work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently + feverish; and we confess that we should have abstained from + inflicting upon him any of the tortures of the 'fierce hell' of + criticism[14] which terrify his imagination if he had not begged + to be spared in order that he might write more; if we had not + observed in him a certain degree of talent which deserves to be + put in the right way, or which at least ought to be warned of the + wrong; and if finally he had not told us that he is of an age and + temper which imperiously require mental discipline. + + "Of the story we have been able to make out but little. It seems + to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana + and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has + altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of + certainty, and must therefore content ourselves with giving some + instances of its diction and versification. And here again we are + perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats + had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an + immeasurable game at _bouts rimés_; but, if we recollect rightly, + it is an indispensable condition at this play that the rhymes, + when filled up, shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have + already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at + random, and then he follows, not the thought excited by this + line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. + There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in + the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the + association, not of ideas, but of sounds; and the work is + composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced + themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on + which they turn. + + "We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that + least liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the + poem. + + 'Such the sun, the moon, + Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon + For simple sheep; and such are daffodils, + With the green world they live in; and clear rills + That for themselves a cooling covert make + 'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake + Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms; + And such too is the grandeur of the dooms + We have imagined for the mighty dead,' &c. + + Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_, + produces the simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the + _dooms_ of the mighty dead' would never have intruded themselves + but for the 'fair musk-rose _blooms_.' + + "Again-- + + 'For 'twas the morn. Apollo's upward fire + Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre + Of brightness so unsullied that therein + A melancholy spirit well might win + Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine + Into the winds. Rain-scented eglantine + Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; + The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run + To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass; + Man's voice was on the mountains: and the mass + Of Nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold + To feel this sunrise and its glories old.' + + Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_--a silvery pyre--of + clouds, _wherein_ a spirit might _win_ oblivion, and melt his + essence _fine_; and scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the + _sun_, and cold springs had _run_ into the _grass_; and then the + pulse of the _mass_ pulsed _tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of + the new-born day, &c. + + "One example more-- + + 'Be still the unimaginable lodge + For solitary thinkings, such as dodge + Conception to the very bourne of heaven, + Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven + That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth, + Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.' + + _Lodge_, _dodge_--_heaven_, _leaven_--_earth_, _birth_--such, in + six words, is the sum and substance of six lines. + + "We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot + indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a + line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial + notions of our English heroic metre: + + 'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, + The passion poesy, glories infinite. + + 'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots. + + 'Of some strange history, potent to send. + + 'Before the deep intoxication. + + 'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion. + + 'The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared. + + 'Endymion, the cave is secreter + Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir + No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise + Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys + And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.' + + "By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the + meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines. We now + present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation + of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language. + + "We are told that turtles _passion_ their voices; that an arbour + was _nested_, and a lady's locks _gordianed_ up; and, to supply + the place of the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats, with great + fecundity, spawns new ones, such as men-slugs and human + _serpentry_, the _honey-feel_ of bliss, wives prepare + _needments_, and so forth. + + "Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their + natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads. + Thus the wine out-sparkled, the multitude up-followed, and night + up-took; the wind up-blows, and the hours are down-sunken. But, + if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the + language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the + parent stock. Thus a lady whispers _pantingly_ and close, makes + _hushing_ signs, and steers her skiff into a _ripply_ cove, a + shower falls _refreshfully_, and a vulture has a _spreaded_ tail. + + "But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If any one + should be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so + much more patient than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, + and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him + to make us acquainted with his success. We shall then return to + the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make + all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers." + +Such is the too famous article in _The Quarterly Review_. If its +contents are to be assessed with perfect calmness, I should have to say +that it is not mistaken in alleging that the poem of "Endymion" is +rambling and indistinct; that Keats allowed himself to drift too readily +according to the bidding of his rhymes (Leigh Hunt has acknowledged as +much, in independent remarks of his own); that many words are coined, +and badly coined; and that the versification is not free from +blemishes--although several of the lines quoted by _The Quarterly_ as +unmetrical, are, when read with the right emphasis, blameless, or even +sonorous. But the article is none the less a despicable and odious +performance; partly as being a sneering depreciation of a work showing +rich poetic endowment, and partly as being, not a deliberate and candid +(however severe) estimate of Keats as a poet, but really an utterance of +malice prepense, and hardly disguised, against Hunt as a hostile +politician who wrote poetry, and against any one who consorted with him. +The inverting of the due balance between the merits and the defects of +"Endymion," would have been at best an act of stupidity; at second best, +after the author's preface had been laid to heart, an act of brutalism; +and at worst, when the venom of abuse was poured into the poetic cup of +Keats as an expedient for drugging the political cup of Hunt, an act of +partisan turpitude. No more words need be wasted upon a proceeding of +which the abiding and unevadeable literary record is graven in the brass +of Shelley's "Adonais." + +The attack in _The Quarterly Review_ was accompanied by attacks in +_Blackwood's Magazine_. If _The Quarterly_ was carping and ill-natured, +_Blackwood_ was basely insulting. A series of articles "On the Cockney +School of Poetry" began in the Scotch magazine in October 1817, being +directed mainly, and with calumnious virulence, against Leigh Hunt. No. +4 of the series came out in August 1818, and formed a vituperation of +Keats. I will not draw upon its stores of underbred jocularity, so as to +show that the best raillery which _Blackwood_ could get up consisted of +terming him Johnny Keats, and referring to his having been assistant to +an "apothecary." The author of these papers signed himself Z, being no +doubt too noble and courageous to traduce people without muffling +himself in anonymity; nor did he consent to uncloak, though vigorously +pressed by Hunt to do so. It is affirmed that Z was Lockhart, the +son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards editor of _The Quarterly +Review_; and an unpleasant adjunct to this statement--we would gladly +disbelieve it--is that Scott himself lent active aid in concocting the +articles. A different account is that Z was at first John Wilson +(Christopher North), revised by William Blackwood, but that the article +on Keats was due to Lockhart. + +Few literary questions of the last three-quarters of a century have been +regarded from more absolutely different points of view than the +problem--How did Keats receive the attacks made upon his poem and +himself? From an early date in the controversy three points seem to have +been very generally agreed upon: (1) That "Endymion" is (as Shelley +judiciously phrased it), "a poem considerably defective;" (2) that the +attacks upon it were, in essence, partly true, but so biassed--so keen +of scent after defects, and so dull of vision for beauties--as to be +practically unfair and perverse in a marked degree; and (3) that the +unfairness and perversity _quoad_ Keats were wilful devices of literary +and especially of political spite _quoad_ a knot of writers among whom +Leigh Hunt was the central figure. The question remains--In what spirit +did Keats meet his critics? Was he greatly distressed, or defiant and +retaliatory, or substantially indifferent? + +Among the documents of Keats's life I find few records strictly +contemporary with the events themselves, serving to settle this point. +When the abuse of Z against Hunt began, Keats was indignant and +combative. He said in a letter which may belong to October 1817-- + + "There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the Edinburgh + magazine.... There has been but one number published--that on + Hunt, to which they have prefixed a motto by one Cornelius Webb, + 'Poetaster,' who unfortunately was one of our party occasionally + at Hampstead, and took it into his head to write the following + (something about)-- + + 'We'll talk on Wordsworth, Byron, + A theme we never tire on,' + + and so forth till he came to Hunt and Keats. In the motto they + have put 'Hunt and Keats' in large letters. I have no doubt that + the second number was intended for me, but have hopes of its + non-appearance.... I don't mind the thing much; but, if he should + go to such lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must + infallibly call him to an account, if he be a human being, and + appears in squares and theatres where we might 'possibly meet.' I + don't relish his abuse." + +It is worth observing also that, in a paper "On Kean as Richard Duke of +York" which Keats published on December 28, 1817, he wrote: "The English +people do not care one fig about Shakespeare, only as he flatters their +pride and their prejudices;... it is our firm opinion." If he thought +that English indifference to Shakespeare was of this degree of density, +he must surely have been prepared for a considerable amount of apathy in +relation to any poem by John Keats. + +On October 9, 1818, just after the spiteful notices of himself in +_Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_ had appeared, and had been replied to in +_The Morning Chronicle_ by two correspondents signing J. S. and R. B., +Keats wrote as follows to his publisher Mr. Hessey; and to treat the +affair in a more self-possessed, measured, and dignified spirit, would +not have been possible:-- + + "You are very good in sending me the letters from _The + Chronicle_, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a + kindness sooner; pray forgive me. It has so chanced that I have + had that paper every day. I have seen to-day's. I cannot but feel + indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the + rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and + weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man + whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on + his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain + without comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or _The Quarterly_ + could possibly inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no + external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary + reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly + right in regard to the 'slipshod "Endymion."'[15] That it is so + is no fault of mine. No; though it may sound a little + paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. + Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that + view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not + have been written, for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will + write independently. I have written independently, _without + judgment_: I may write independently, and _with judgment_, + hereafter. The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation + in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by + sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must + create itself. In 'Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea, and + thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the + quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green + shore and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable + advice. I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail + than not be among the greatest. But I am nigh getting into a + rant; so, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse, &c., I am + yours very sincerely, + + "John Keats." + + + +This letter, equally moderate and wide-reaching, proves conclusively +that Keats, at the time when he wrote it, treated depreciatory criticism +in exactly the right spirit; acknowledging that it was not without a +certain _raison d'être_, but affirming that he could for himself see +much further and much deeper in the same direction, and in others as +well. On October 29, 1818, he wrote to his brother George:-- + + "Reynolds... persuades me to publish my 'Pot of Basil' as an + answer to the attack made on me in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and + _The Quarterly Review_.... I think I shall be among the English + poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest, the + attempt to crush me in _The Quarterly_ has only brought me more + into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, 'I + wonder _The Quarterly_ should cut its own throat.' It does me not + the least harm in society to make me appear little and + ridiculous. I know when a man is superior to me, and give him all + due respect; he will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the + rest, I feel that I make an impression upon them which ensures me + personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when + my back is turned.... The only thing that can ever affect me + personally for more than one short passing day is any doubt about + my powers for poetry. I seldom have any; and I look with hope to + the nighing time when I shall have none." + +Towards December 1818 he wrote in a similarly contented strain to George +Keats and his wife: "You will be glad to hear that Gifford's attack upon +me has done me service; it has got my book among several _sets_." The +same letter mentions a sonnet, and a bank-note for £25 received from an +unknown admirer. However, the next letter to the same correspondents, +February 19, 1819, clearly attests some annoyance. + + "My poem has not at all succeeded.... The reviewers have + enervated men's minds, and made them indolent; few think for + themselves. These reviews are getting more and more powerful, + especially _The Quarterly_. They are like a superstition which, + the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the + more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing + weakness. I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do + now) all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would + scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the + Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not care who + wins or who loses.... I have been at different times turning it + in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a + physician.... It is not worse than writing poems, and hanging + them up to be fly-blown in the Review shambles." + +We find in Keats's letters nothing further about the criticisms; but, +when he replied in August 1820 to Shelley's first invitation to Italy, +he referred to "Endymion" itself: "I am glad you take any pleasure in my +poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if +possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation." We must +also take into account the publishers' advertisement (not Keats's own) +to the "Lamia" volume, saying of "Hyperion"--"The poem was intended to +have been of equal length with 'Endymion,' but the reception given to +that work discouraged the author from proceeding." It can scarcely be +supposed that the publishers printed this without Keats's express +sanction; yet he never assigned elsewhere any similar reason for +discontinuing "Hyperion," nor was "Hyperion" open to exception on any +such grounds as had been urged against "Endymion." + +The earliest written reference which I can trace to any serious +despondency of Keats consequent upon the attacks of reviewers (if we +except a less strongly worded statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted +further on) is in a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually +send, to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_. It was written after +Shelley had seen the "Lamia" volume, and can hardly, I suppose, date +earlier than October 1820, two full years after the publication of the +_Quarterly_ (and also the _Blackwood_) tirades against "Endymion." +Shelley adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the _Quarterly_ +critique, and then proceeds-- + + "Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this + review, which I am persuaded was not written with any intention + of producing the effect (to which it has at least greatly + contributed) of embittering his existence, and inducing a disease + from which there are now but faint hopes of his recovery. The + first effects are described to me to have resembled insanity, and + it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from + effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at + length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and + the usual process of consumption appears to have begun." + +The informants of Shelley with regard to Keats's acute feelings and +distress were (it is stated) the Gisbornes, and possibly Leigh Hunt may +have confirmed them in some measure; but the Gisbornes knew nothing +directly of what had been taking place in England in or about the autumn +of 1818, and that which Hunt published regarding Keats is far from +corroborating so extreme a view of the facts. Later on Shelley received +from Mr. Gisborne a letter written by Colonel Finch, the date of which +would perhaps be in May 1821 (three months after the death of Keats). +This letter appears to have been one of his principal incentives for the +indignation expressed in the preface to "Adonais," but not in the poem +itself, which had been completed before Shelley saw the letter; and it +is remarkable that Colonel Finch's expressions, when one scrutinizes +them, do not really say anything about mental anguish caused to Keats by +any review, but only by ill-treatment of a different kind--seemingly +that of his brother George and others, as previously detailed. The +following is the only relevant passage: "He left his native shores by +sea in a merchant vessel for Naples, where he arrived, having received +no benefit during the passage, and brooding over the most melancholy and +mortifying reflections, and nursing a deeply-rooted disgust to life and +to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the very +persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe." Shelley +however put into print in the preface to "Adonais" the same view of the +blighting of Keats's life by the _Quarterly_ critique (he seems to have +known nothing of the _Blackwood_ scurrility), which had appeared in his +undespatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly_-- + + "The savage criticism on his 'Endymion' which appeared in _The + Quarterly Review_ produced the most violent effect on his + susceptible mind. The agitation thus originated ended in the + rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs. A rapid consumption + ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid + critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to + heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.... Miserable man! you, + one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest + specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse + that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but used + none." + +Thus far we have found no strong evidence (only assertions) that Keats +took greatly to heart the attacks upon him, whether in the _Quarterly_ +or in _Blackwood_. Shelley seems to be the principal authority, and +Shelley, unless founding upon some adequate information, is next to no +authority at all. He had left England in March 1818, five months before +the earlier--printed in August--of these spiteful articles. Were there +nothing further, we should be more than well pleased to rally to the +opinion of Lord Houghton, who came to the conclusion that the idea of +Keats's extreme sensitiveness to criticism was a positive delusion--that +he paid little heed to it, and pursued his own course much as if no +reviewer had tried to be provoking. But there is, in fact, a direct +witness of high importance--Haydon. Haydon knew Keats very intimately, +and saw a great deal of him; he admired and loved him, and had a +vigorous, discerning insight into character and habit of mind, such as +makes his observations about all sorts of men substantial testimony and +first-rate reading. He took forcible views of many things, and sometimes +exaggerated views: but, when he attributed to Keats a particular mood of +feeling, I should find it very difficult to think that he was either +unfairly biassed or widely mistaken. In his reminiscences proper to the +year 1817-18 occurs the following passage:-- + + "The assaults on Hunt in _Blackwood_ at this time, under the + signature of Z, were incessant. Who Z was nobody knew, but I + myself strongly suspect him to have been Terry the actor. Leigh + Hunt had exasperated Terry by neglecting to notice his theatrical + efforts. Terry was a friend of Sir Walter's, shared keenly his + political hatreds, and was also most intimate with the Blackwood + party, which had begun a course of attacks on all who showed the + least liberalism of thinking, or who were praised by or known to + _The Examiner_. Hunt had addressed a sonnet to me. This was + enough: we were taken to be of the same clique of rebels, + rascals, and reformers, who were supposed to support that + production of so much power and talent. On Keats the effect was + melancholy. He became morbid and silent; would call and sit + whilst I was painting, for hours, without speaking a word." + +This counts for something--not very much. But another passage forming an +entry in Haydon's diary, written on March 29, 1821, perhaps as soon as +he had heard of Keats's death, carries the matter much further-- + + "He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, and ungovernable, + expecting the world to fall at once beneath his powers. Poor + fellow! his genius had no sooner begun to bud than hatred and + malice spat their poison on its leaves, and, sensitive and young, + it shrivelled beneath their effusions. Unable to bear the sneers + of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind + enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine and present + nothing but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, and + flew to dissipation as a relief, which, after a temporary + elevation of spirits, plunged him into deeper despondency than + ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober, and (to show what a + man does to gratify his appetites when once they get the better + of him) once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could + reach with cayenne pepper in order to appreciate the 'delicious + coldness[16] of claret in all its glory'--his own expression." + +Immediately afterwards, April 21, 1821, Haydon wrote a letter to Miss +Mitford, repeating, with some verbal variations, what is said above, and +adding several other particulars concerning Keats. The opening phrase +runs thus: "Keats was a victim to personal abuse, and want of nerve to +bear it. Ought he to have sunk in that way because a few quizzers told +him that he was an apothecary's apprentice?" And further on--"I +remonstrated on his absurd dissipation, but to no purpose." The reader +will observe that this dissipation, six weeks of insobriety, is alleged +to have occurred after Keats "began to despond." The precise time when +he began to despond is not defined, but we may suppose it to have been +in the late autumn of 1818. If so, it was much about the same period +when he first made Miss Brawne's acquaintance. + +It is true that Mr. Cowden Clarke, when he published certain +"Recollections" in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1874, strongly +contested these statements of Haydon's; he disbelieved the cayenne +pepper and the dissipation, and had "never perceived in Keats even a +tendency to imprudent indulgence." The "Recollections" were afterwards +reproduced as a volume, and in the volume the confutation of Haydon +disappeared; whether because Clarke had eventually changed his opinion, +or for what other reason, I am unable to say. Anyhow, Haydon's evidence +remains; it relates to a period of Keats's life when Haydon no doubt saw +him much oftener than Clarke did, and we must observe that he refers to +"Keats's own expression" as to the claret ensuing after the cayenne +pepper, and affirms that he himself remonstrated in vain against the +"dissipation," which means apparently excess in drinking alone. + +To advert to what Lord Byron wrote about Keats as having been killed by +_The Quarterly Review_ is hardly worth while. His first reference to the +subject is in a letter to Mr. Murray (publisher of _The Quarterly_) +dated April 26, 1821. In this he expressly names Shelley as his +informant, and with Shelley as an authority for the allegation I have +already dealt. + +There are two writings of Leigh Hunt in which the question of Keats and +his critics is touched upon. The first is the review, August 1820, of +the "Lamia" volume. In speaking of the "Ode to a Nightingale" he says-- + + "The poem will be the more striking to the reader when he + understands, what we take a friend's liberty in telling him, that + the author's powerful mind has for some time past been inhabiting + a sickened and shaken body; and that in the meanwhile it has had + to contend with feelings that make a fine nature ache for its + species, even when it would disdain to do so for itself--we mean + critical malignity, that unhappy envy which would wreak its own + tortures upon others, especially upon those that really feel for + it already." + +Hunt's posthumous Memoir of Keats was first published in 1828. He refers +to the attack in _Blackwood_ upon himself and upon Keats, and says: "I +little suspected, as I did afterwards, that the hunters had struck him; +that a delicate organization, which already anticipated a premature +death, made him feel his ambition thwarted by these fellows; and that +the very impatience of being impatient was resented by him and preyed on +his mind." Hunt also says regarding Byron--"I told him he was mistaken +in attributing Keats's death to the critics, though they had perhaps +hastened and certainly embittered it." + +Another item of evidence may be cited. It is from a letter written by +George Keats to Mr. Dilke in April 1824, and refers to the insolences of +_Blackwood's Magazine_. George, it will be remembered, was already out +of England before the articles appeared in _Blackwood_ and in _The +Quarterly_, and he only saw a little of John Keats at the close of the +ensuing year, 1819. "_Blackwood's Magazine_ has fallen into my hands. I +could have walked 100 miles to have dirked him _à l'Américaine_ for his +cruelly associating John in the Cockney School, and other +blackguardisms. Such paltry ridicule will have wounded deeper than the +severest criticisms, particularly as he regarded what is called the +cockneyism of the coterie with so much disgust. He either knew John +well, and touched him in the tenderest place purposely; or knew nothing +of him, and supposed he went all lengths with the set in their festering +opinions and cockney affectations." And from a later letter dated in +April 1825: "After all, _Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_, associated with +our family disease, consumption, were ministers of death sufficiently +venomous, cruel, and deadly, to have consigned one of less sensibility +to a premature grave.... John was the very soul of courage and +manliness, and as much like the Holy Ghost as 'Johnny Keats.'" + +The evidence of latest date on this subject (there is none such in +Severn's correspondence[17]) is that of Cowden Clarke. In his +"Recollections," already mentioned, he refers to the attacks upon Keats, +having his eye, it would seem, rather upon those in _Blackwood_ than in +_The Quarterly_, and he remarks: "To say that these disgusting +misrepresentations did not affect the consciousness and self-respect of +Keats would be to under-rate the sensitiveness of his nature. He did +feel and resent the insult, but far more the _injustice_ of the +treatment he had received. They no doubt had injured him in the most +wanton manner; but, if they or my Lord Byron ever for one moment +supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he +had received, never were they more deluded." + +I have now given all the evidence at first or second hand which seems to +be producible on that much-vexed question--Was Keats (to adopt Byron's +phrase) "snuffed out by an article"? The upshot appears to me to be as +follows. In his inmost mind Keats was from first to last raised very far +above that level where the petty gales of review-criticism blow, puffing +out the canvas of feeble reputations, and fraying that of strong ones. +Nevertheless he was sensitive to derisive criticism, and more especially +to personal ridicule, and even (as Haydon records) gave way to his +feelings of irritation with reckless and culpable self-abandonment. This +passed off partially, and would have passed off entirely--it has left in +his letters no trace worth mentioning, and in his poetry no trace at +all, other than that of executive power braced up to do constantly +better and yet better; but then, about a year and a half after the +reviews, supervened his fatal illness (which cannot be reasonably +supposed to have had its root in any critiques), and all the heartache +of his unsatisfied love. This last formed the real agony of his waning +life: it must have been reinforced to some extent by resentment against +a mode of reviewing which would contribute to the thwarting of his +poetic ambition, and make him go down into the grave with a "name writ +in water;" but the reviews themselves counted for very little in the +last wrestlings of his spirit with death and nothingness. By general +constitution of mind few men were less adapted than Keats for being +"snuffed out by an article," or more certain to snuff one out and leave +all its ill-savour to its scribe. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +The first important poem to which Keats sets his hand after finishing +"Endymion" was "Isabella, or The Pot of Basil." This was completed by +April 27, 1818, the same month in which "Endymion" was published. +Hamilton Reynolds had suggested the project of producing a volume of +tales in verse, founded upon stories in Boccaccio's "Decameron"; some of +the tales would have been executed by Reynolds himself, who did in fact +produce on this plan the two poems named collectively "The Garden of +Florence." As it turned out, however, Keats's tale appeared in a volume +of his own, 1820, and Reynolds's two came out independently in the +succeeding year. + +"The Eve of St. Agnes" was written in the winter beginning the year +1819. Then came "Hyperion," of which two versions remain, both +fragmentary. The first version (begun perhaps as early as October or +September 1818), the only one which Keats himself published, is in all +respects by far the better. He was much under the spell of Milton while +he wrote it; and finally he gave it up in September 1819, declaring that +"there were too many Miltonic inversions in it." He went so far as to +say in a letter written in the same month that "the 'Paradise Lost,' +though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language--a northern +dialect accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and +intonations." "Hyperion" was included in Keats's third volume at the +request of the publishers, contrary to the author's own preference. One +may readily infer that it was to "Hyperion" that he referred when, in +the preface to "Endymion," he spoke of returning to Grecian mythology +for another subject: the full length of the poem was to have been ten +books. + +"Lamia" was the last poem of considerable length which Keats brought to +completion and published. It seems to have been begun towards the summer +of 1819, and was written with great care, after a heedful study of +Dryden's methods of composition. On September 18, 1819, Keats wrote: "I +am certain there is that sort of fire in it which must take hold of +people in some way, give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensations." +The subject was taken from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," in which +there is a reference to the "Life of Apollonius" by Philostratus as the +original source of the legend. + +The volume--entitled "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other +Poems"--came out towards the beginning of July 1820, when the malady of +Keats had reached an advanced and alarming stage. At the beginning of +September Keats wrote to Brown--"The sale of my book is very slow, +though it has been very highly rated." I am not aware that there is any +other record to show how far the publication may ultimately have +approached towards becoming a commercial success; nor indeed would it be +altogether easy to define the date at which Keats became a recognized +and uncontested poet of high rank, and his works a solid property. His +early death, at the beginning of 1821, must have formed a +turning-point--not to speak of the favourable notice of "Endymion," and +subordinately of the "Lamia" volume, which appeared in _The Edinburgh +Review_, Jeffrey being the critic, in August 1820. Perhaps Jeffrey's +praise may have facilitated an arrangement which Keats made in September +1820--the sale of the copyright of "Endymion" to Messrs. Taylor and +Hessey for £100; no second edition of the poem appeared, however, while +he was alive. I should presume that, within five or six years after +Keats's decease, ridicule and rancour were already much in the minority; +and that, by some such date as 1835 to 1840, they had finally "hidden +their diminished heads," living only, with too persistent a life, in the +retributive memory of men. + +Some of the shorter poems in the "Lamia" volume must receive brief +mention here. The "Ode to Psyche" was written in February 1819, and was +termed by Keats the first poem with which he had taken pains--"I have +for the most part dashed off my lines in a hurry." "To Autumn," the "Ode +on Melancholy," and the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," succeeded. The "Ode to a +Nightingale" was composed at Hampstead in the spring of 1819 _after +breakfast_, forming two or three hours' work: thus we see that the +nocturnal imagery of the ode was a general or a particular reminiscence, +not actual to the very moment of composition. This poem and the "Ode on +a Grecian Urn" were recited by Keats to Haydon in a chaunting tone in +Kilburn meadows, and were published in the serial entitled "Annals of +the Fine Arts." The urn thus immortalized may probably be one preserved +in the garden of Holland House. + +With the "Lamia" volume we have come to the close of what Keats +published during his lifetime. Something remains to be said of other +writings of his--almost all of them earlier in date than the publication +of that volume--which remained imprinted or uncollected at the time of +his death. + +In February 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, undertook to write a +sonnet each upon the river Nile. In order of merit, the three sonnets +are the reverse of what one might have been willing to forecast. I at +least am clearly of opinion that Hunt's sonnet is the best (though with +a weak ending), Keats's the second, and Shelley's a decidedly bad third. +The leading thought in each sonnet is characteristic of its author. +Keats adheres to the simple natural facts of the case, while Hunt and +Shelley turn the Nile into a moral or intellectual symbol. Keats says +essentially that to associate the Nile with ideas of antique desolation +is but a delusion of ignorance, for this river is really rich and fresh +like others. Hunt makes the Egyptian stream an emblem of history tending +towards the progress of the individual and the race; while Shelley reads +into the Nile a lesson of the good and the evil inhering in knowledge. + +"The Eve of St. Mark"--a fragment which very few of Keats's completed +poems can rival in point of artist-like feeling and writing--belongs to +the years 1818-9. I find nothing in print to account for his leaving it +unfinished. + +In May 1819 Keats had an idea of inventing a new structure of +sonnet-rhyme; and he sent to his brother and sister-in-law a sonnet +composed accordingly, beginning-- + + "If by dull rhymes our English must be chained." + +He wrote: "I have been endeavouring to discover a better sonnet-stanza +than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language well, from the +pouncing rhymes. The other appears too elegiac, and the couplet at the +end of it has seldom a pleasing effect. I do not pretend to have +succeeded." Keats's experiment reads agreeably. It comprises five rhymes +altogether; the first rhyme being repeated thrice at arbitrary +intervals; and the last rhyme twice in lines twelve and fourteen. + +The tragedy of "Otho the Great" was written by Keats (as already +referred to) in July and August 1819, in co-operation with Armitage +Brown. The diction of the play is, it would appear, Keats's entirely; +whereas the invention and development of plot in the first four acts is +wholly due to Brown. The two friends sat together; Brown described each +successive scene, and Keats turned it into verse, without troubling his +head as to the subject-matter for the scene next ensuing. When it came +to the fifth act, however, Keats inquired what would be the conclusion +of the play; and, not being satisfied with Brown's project which he +deemed too humorous and too melodramatic, he both invented and wrote a +fifth act for himself. He felt sure that "Otho the Great" was "a +tolerable tragedy," and set his heart upon getting it acted--Kean was +well inclined to take the principal character, Prince Ludolph; and it +became his greatest ambition to write fine plays. "Otho" was in fact +accepted for Drury Lane Theatre, on the offer of Brown, who left Keats's +authorship in the background; but, as both the writers were impatient of +delay, Brown, in February 1820, took away the MS., and Covent Garden +Theatre was thought of instead--without any practical result. As soon as +"Otho" was finished, Brown suggested King Stephen as the subject of +another drama; and Keats, without any further collaboration from his +friend, composed the few scenes of it which remain. "One of my +ambitions" (writes Keats to Bailey in August 1819), "is to make as great +a revolution in modern dramatic writing as Kean has done in acting." + +The ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci," than which Keats did nothing more +thrilling or more perfect, may perhaps have been written in the earlier +half of 1819; it was published in 1820, in Hunt's _Indicator_ for May +10th, under the signature "Caviare"; the same signature which was +adopted for the sonnet, "A dream, after reading Dante's episode of Paolo +and Francesca." Keats may probably have meant to imply, in some +bitterness of spirit, that his poems were "caviare to the general." The +title of this ballad was suggested to Keats by seeing it at the head of +a translation from Alain Chartier in a copy of Chaucer. As to the +"Dream" sonnet he wrote in April 1819:-- + + "The 5th canto of Dante pleases me more, and more; it is that one + in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca. I had passed many + days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I + dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the + most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about + the wheeling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful + figure, to whose lips mine were joined, it seemed for an age; and + in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm. + Ever-flowery tree-tops sprang up, and we rested on them, + sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us + away again. I tried a sonnet on it; there are fourteen lines in + it, but nothing of what I felt. Oh that I could dream it every + night!" + +The last long work which Keats undertook, and he wrote it with extreme +facility, was "The Cap and Bells; or The Jealousies, a Fairy Tale," in +the Spenserian stanza. What remains is probably far less than Keats +intended the tale to amount to, but it is enough to enable us to +pronounce upon its merits. The poem was begun soon after Keats's first +attack of blood-spitting in February 1820. It seems singular that under +such depressing conditions he should have written in so frivolous and +jaunty a spirit, and provoking that his last long work (the last, that +is, if we except the recast of "Hyperion") should be about the most +valueless which he produced, at any date after commencing upon +"Endymion." This poem has been said to be written in the spirit of +Ariosto; a statement which, in justice to the brilliant Italian, cannot +be admitted. It may well be, however, as Lord Houghton suggests, that +the general notion was suggested by Brown, who had translated the first +five cantos (not indeed of Ariosto, but) of the "Orlando Innamorato" of +Bojardo. "The Cap and Bells" appears to be destitute of distinct plan, +though some sort of satirical allusion to the marital and extra-marital +exploits of George IV. is traceable in it; meagre and purposeless in +invention; a poor farrago of pumped-up and straggling jocosity. Perhaps +a hearty laugh has never been got out of it; although there are points +here and there at which a faint snigger may be permissible, and the +concluding portion improves somewhat. Keats seems to have intended to +publish it under a pseudonym, Lucy Vaughan Lloyd; and Hunt gave, in _The +Indicator_ of August 23, 1820, some taste of its quality, possibly +meaning to print more of it anon. + +The last verses which Keats ever wrote formed the sonnet here ensuing. +He composed this late in September 1820, after landing on the +Dorsetshire coast, probably near Lulworth, and returning to the ship +which bore him to his doom in Italy; and he wrote it down on a blank +page in Shakespeare's Poems, facing "A Lover's Complaint." + + "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art; + Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, + And watching with eternal lids apart, + Like Nature's patient sleepless eremite, + The moving waters at their priestlike task + Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, + Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask + Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:-- + No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, + Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, + To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, + Awake for ever in a sweet unrest; + Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, + And so live ever--or else swoon to death." + +Of poetic projects which remained unfulfilled when Keats died we +hear--leaving out of count the works which he had begun and left +uncompleted--of only one. During his voyage to Naples he often spoke of +wishing to write the story of Sabrina, as indicated in Milton's "Comus," +connecting it with some points in English history and character. + +In prose--apart from his letters, which are noticeably various in mood, +matter, and manner, and contain many admirable things--Keats wrote +extremely little. In a weekly paper with which Reynolds was connected, +_The Champion_, December 1817, he published two articles on "Kean as a +Shakespearean Actor:" they are not remarkable. With the above-named +articles are now associated some "Notes on Shakespeare," not written +with a view to publication; these appear to me somewhat strained and +bloated. There are also some "Notes on Milton's 'Paradise Lost.'" On +September 22, 1819, Keats addressed to Mr. Dilke a letter, which however +does not appear to have been actually sent off. As it shows a definite +intention of writing in prose for regular publication and for an income, +a few sentences are worth quoting. + + "It concerns a resolution I have taken to endeavour to acquire + something by temporary writing in periodical works. You must + agree with me how unwise it is to keep feeding upon hopes which, + depending so much on the state of temper and imagination, appear + gloomy or bright, near or afar off, just as it happens.... You + may say I want tact; that is easily acquired.... I should, a year + or two ago, have spoken my mind on every subject with the utmost + simplicity. I hope I have learned a little better, and am + confident I shall be able to cheat as well as any literary Jew of + the market, and shine up an article on anything without much + knowledge of the subject--aye, like an orange. I would willingly + have recourse to other means. I cannot; I am fit for nothing but + literature.... Notwithstanding my 'aristocratic' temper, I cannot + help being very much pleased with the present public proceedings. + I hope sincerely I shall be able to put a mite of help to the + liberal side of the question before I die." + +On the following day Keats wrote to Brown on the same subject-- + + "I will write on the liberal side of the question for whoever + will pay me. I have not known yet what it is to be diligent. I + purpose living in town in a cheap lodging, and endeavouring, for + a beginning, to get the theatricals of some paper.... I shall + apply to Hazlitt, who knows the market as well as any one, for + something to bring me in a few pounds as soon as possible. I + shall not suffer my pride to hinder me. The whisper may go + round--I shall not hear it. If I can get an article in _The + Edinburgh_, I will. One must not be delicate." + +In pursuance of this plan, Keats did, for a few days in October, take a +lodging in Westminster. He then reverted to Hampstead, and finally the +scheme came to nothing, principally perhaps because his fatal illness +began, and everything had to be given up which was not directly +controlled by considerations of health. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +Having now gone through the narrative of Keats's life and death, and +also the narrative of his literary work, we have before us the more +delicate and exacting task of forming some judgment of both,--to +estimate his character, and appraise his writings. But first I pause a +brief while for the purpose of relating a little that took place after +his decease, and mentioning a few particulars regarding his surviving +relatives and friends. + +Keats was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome amid the overgrown +ruins of the Honorian walls, surmounted by the pyramid-tomb of Caius +Cestius, a Tribune of the People whose monument has long survived his +fame: this used to be traditionally called the Tomb of Remus. There were +but few graves on the spot when Keats was laid there. In recent years +the portion of the cemetery where he reposes has been cut off by a +fortification. A little altar-tomb was set up for him, sculptured with a +Greek lyre, and inscribed with his name and his own epitaph, "Here lies +one whose name was writ in water." Severn attended affectionately to all +this, and the whole was completed about two years after the poet's +death. In 1875 General Sir Vincent Eyre and some other Englishmen and +Americans repaired the stone, and placed on an adjacent wall a medallion +portrait of Keats, presented by its sculptor, Mr. Warrington Wood. +Severn, who died in August 1879, having been British Consul in Rome for +many years, now lies in close proximity to his friend. Shelley's remains +are interred hard by, but in the new cemetery,--not the old one, which +received the bones of Keats. As early as 1836 Severn was able to attest +that his connection with the poet had been of benefit to his own +professional career. The friend and death-bed companion of Keats had by +that time become a personage, apart from the merit, be it greater or +less, of his performances as a painter. + +Severn's letters addressed to Armitage Brown show that it was expected +that Brown should write a Life of Keats. The non-appearance of any such +work was made a matter of remonstrance in 1834; and at one time George +Keats, though conscious of not being quite the right man for the +purpose, thought of supplying the deficiency. Severn also had had a +similar idea. Brown was in Italy in 1832, and there he met Mr. Richard +Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. He returned to England some +three years later, and was about to produce the desired Life when a new +project entered his mind, and he emigrated to New Zealand. He then +handed over to Mr. Milnes all his collections of Keats's writings, and +the biographical notices which he had compiled, and these furnished a +substantive basis for Mr. Milnes's work published in 1848--a work +written with abundant sympathy, invaluable at its own date and ever +since to all lovers of the poet's writings. Brown died towards 1842. + +George Keats voluntarily paid all the debts left by his brother. These +have not been precisely detailed: but it appears that Messrs. Taylor and +Hessey had made an advance of £150, and there must have been something +not inconsiderable due to Brown, and probably also to Dilke, who assured +George that John Keats had known nothing of direct want of either money +or friends. George, who has been described as "the most manly and +self-possessed of men," settled at Louisville, Kentucky, where he became +a prominent citizen, and left a family creditably established. He died +in 1841, and his widow remarried with a Mr. Jeffrey. In one of his +letters addressed to his sister, April 1824, there is a pleasant little +critique of "Don Quixote." It gives one so prepossessing an idea of its +writer that I am tempted to extract it:-- + + "Your face is decidedly not Spanish, but English all over. If I + fancied you to resemble Don Quixote, I should fancy a handsome, + intelligent, melancholy countenance, with something wild but + benevolent about the eyes, a lofty forehead but not very broad, + with finely-arched eyebrows, denoting candour and generosity. He + is an immense favourite of mine; and I cannot help feeling angry + with the great Cervantes for bringing him into situations where + he is the laughing-stock of minds so inferior to his own. It is + evident he was a great favourite of the author, and it is evident + _he_ was united with the chivalric spirits he so wittily + ridicules. He is made to speak as much sound sense, elevated + morality, and true piety, as any divine who ever wrote. If I were + to meet such a man, I should almost hate myself for laughing at + his eccentricities." + +The opening reference here to a Spanish face must relate to the fact +that Miss Fanny Keats, who in girlhood had been the recipient of many +affectionate and attentive letters from her brother John, was engaged +to, and eventually married, a Spanish gentleman, Senhor Llanos, author +of "Don Esteban," "Sandoval the Freemason," and other books illustrating +the modern history of his country. He was a Liberal, and in the time of +the Spanish Republic represented his Government at the Court of Rome. +Mrs. Llanos is still living at a very advanced age. A few years ago a +pension on the Civil List was conferred upon her, in national +recognition of what is due to the sister of John Keats. There is a +pathetic reference to her appearance at the close of the very last +letter which he wrote: "My sister, who walks about my imagination like a +ghost, she is so like Tom." + +Miss Brawne married a Mr. Lindon some years after the death of Keats. I +do not know how many years, but it must have been later than June 1825. +She died in 1865. + +The sincerity or otherwise of Leigh Hunt as a personal, and more +especially a literary, friend of Keats, has been a good deal canvassed +of late. It has been said that he showed little staunchness in +championing the cause of Keats at the time--towards the close of +1818--when detraction was most rampant, and when support from a man +occupying the position of editor of _The Examiner_ would have been most +serviceable. But one must not hurry to assume that Hunt was seriously in +the wrong, whether we regard the question as one of individual +friendship or of literary policy. The attacks upon Keats were in great +measure flank-attacks upon Hunt himself. Keats was abused on the ground +that he wrote bad poetry through imitating Hunt's bad poetry--that he +out-Heroded Herod, or out-Hunted Hunt. Obviously it was a delicate task +which would have lain before the elder poet: for any direct defence of +Keats must have been conducted on the thesis either that the faults were +not there (when indeed they _were_ there to a large extent); or else +that the faults were in fact beauties, an allegation which would only +have riveted the charge that they were Leigh-Huntish mannerisms; or +finally that they were not due to Hunt's influence or example, but were +proper to Keats in person, and this would have been more in the nature +of censure than of vindication. A defence on general grounds, upholding +the poems without any discussion of the particular faults alleged, would +also, as coming from Hunt, have been a difficult thing to manage: it +would rather have inflamed than abated the rancour of the enemy. +Besides, we must remember that Keats's first volume, though very warmly +accepted and praised by Hunt, was really but beginner's work, imperfect +in the last degree; while the second volume, "Endymion," was viewed by +Hunt as a hazardous and immature attempt notwithstanding its many +beauties, and incapable of being upheld beyond a certain limit. There +was not at that date any third volume to be put forward in proof of +faculty, or in arrest of judgment. Mr. Forman, than whom no man looks +with more patience into the evidence on a question such as this of +Hunt's friendship, or is more likely to pronounce a sound judgment upon +it, wholly scouts the accusation; and I am quite content to range myself +on the same side as Mr. Forman. + +Of Keats's friends in general it may be said that the one whom he +respected very highly in point of character was Bailey: the one who had +a degree of genius fully worthy, whatever its limitations and defects, +of communing with his own, was Haydon. Shelley can hardly be reckoned +among his friends, though very willing and even earnest to be such, both +in life and after death. Keats held visibly aloof from Shelley, more +perhaps on the ground of his being a man of some family and position +than from any other motive. Shortly after the publication of "The Revolt +of Islam," Keats's rather naïve expression was, "Poor Shelley, I think +he has his quota of good qualities." Neither did he show any warm or +frank admiration of Shelley's poetry. On receiving a copy of "The +Cenci," he urged its author to "curb his magnanimity, and be more of an +artist, and load every rift of his subject with ore." We should not +ascribe this to any mean-spirited jealousy, but to that sense, which +grew to a great degree of intensity in Keats, that the art of +composition and execution is of paramount importance in poetry, and must +supersede all considerations of abstract or proselytizing intention. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +I must next proceed to offer some account of Keats's person, character, +and turn of mind. + +As I have already said, Keats was a very small man, barely more than +five feet in height. He was called "Little Keats" by his surgical +fellow-students. Archdeacon Bailey has left a good description of him in +brief:-- + + "There was in the character of his countenance the femineity + which Coleridge thought to be the mental constitution of true + genius. His hair was beautiful, and, if you placed your hand upon + his head, the curls fell round it like a rich plumage. I do not + particularly remember the thickness of the upper lip so generally + described; but the mouth was too wide, and out of harmony with + the rest of his face, which had a peculiar sweetness of + expression, with a character of mature thought, and an almost + painful sense of suffering." + +Leigh Hunt should also be heard:-- + + "His lower limbs were small in comparison with the upper, but + neat and well-turned. His shoulders were very broad for his + size. He had a face in which energy and sensibility were + remarkably mixed up--an eager power checked and made impatient by + ill-health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately + alive. If there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, + which was not without something of a character of pugnacity. His + face was rather long than otherwise. The upper lip projected a + little over the under; the chin was bold, the cheeks sunken; the + eyes mellow and glowing--large, dark, and sensitive. At the + recital of a noble action or a beautiful thought, they would + suffuse with tears, and his mouth trembled. In this there was + ill-health as well as imagination, for he did not like these + betrayals of emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral + courage. His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and hung in + natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists, + being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity which he had + in common with Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on. + Keats was sensible of the disproportion above noticed between his + upper and lower extremities; and he would look at his hand, which + was faded, and swollen in the veins, and say it was the hand of a + man of fifty." + +Cowden Clarke confirms Hunt in stating that Keats's hair was brown, and +he assigns the same colour, or dark hazel, to his eyes: confuting the +"auburn" and "blue" of which Mrs. Procter had spoken. It is rather +remarkable that, while Hunt speaks of the projection of the _upper_ +lip--a detail which is fully verified in a charcoal drawing by +Severn--Lord Houghton observes upon "the undue prominence of the +_lower_ lip," which point I cannot trace clearly in any one of the +portraits. Keats himself, in one of his love-letters (August 1819), +says, "I do not think myself a fright." According to Clarke, John Keats +was the only one of the family who resembled the father in person and +feature, while the other three resembled the mother. George Keats does +not wholly coincide in this, for he says, "My mother resembled John very +much in the face;" at the same time he would not have been qualified to +deny a likeness to the father, of whom he remembered nothing except that +he had dark hair. The lady who saw Keats's hair and eyes of the wrong +colour saw at any rate his face to some effect, having left it recorded +thus: "His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and +brightness; it had an expression as if he had been looking on some +glorious sight." In a like spirit, Haydon speaks of Keats as having "an +eye that had an inward look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess +who saw visions." His voice was deep and grave. + +Let us now turn to the portraits, which are as numerous and as good as +could fairly be expected under the circumstances. + +The earliest in date, and certainly one of the best from an art point of +view, is a sketch in profile done by Haydon preparatory to introducing +Keats's head into the picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. The +sketch dates in November 1816, just after Keats had come of age. The +picture is in Philadelphia, and I cannot speak of the head as it appears +there. In the sketch we see abundant wavy hair; a forehead and nose +sloping forward to the nasal tip in a nearly uniform curve; a dark, +set, speaking eye; a mouth tolerably well moulded, the upper lip being +fully long enough, and noticeably overhanging the lower lip, upon which +the chin--large, full, and rounded--closely impinges. The whole face +partakes of the Raphaelesque cast of physiognomy. At some time, which +may have been the autumn of 1817, some one, most probably Haydon, took a +mask of the face of Keats. In respect of actual form, this is +necessarily the final test of what the poet was like--but masks are +often only partially true to the _impression_ of a face. This mask +confirms Haydon's sketch markedly; allowing only for the points that +Haydon has rather emphasized the length of the nose, and attenuated (so +far as one can judge from a profile) its thickness, and has given very +much more of the overhanging of the upper lip--but this last would, by +the very conditions of mask-taking, be there reduced to a minimum. On +the whole we may say that, after considering reciprocally Haydon's +sketch and the mask, we know very adequately what Keats's face was--he +had ample reason for acquitting himself of being "a fright." We come +still closer to a firm conclusion upon taking into account, along with +these two records, two of the portraits left to us by Severn. One is a +miniature, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, and which +we may surmise to have been painted in that year, or late in 1818: the +well-known likeness which represents Keats in three-quarters face, +looking earnestly forwards, and resting his chin upon his left hand. +Here the eyes are larger than in Haydon's sketch, and the upper lip +shorter, while the forehead seems straighter; but, as to those matters +of lip and forehead, a profile tells the plainer tale. The whole aspect +of the face is not greatly unlike Byron's. There is also the earlier +charcoal drawing by Severn, the best of all for enabling us to judge of +the beautiful rippling long hair; it is a profile, and extremely like +Haydon's profile, except for the greater straightness of the forehead, +and the decided smallness of the chin, points on which the mask shows +conclusively that Haydon was in the right. Most touching of all as a +reminiscence is the Indian-ink drawing which Severn made of his dying +friend on "28 Jan^y. 1821, 3 o'clock morn^g.," as he lay asleep, with +the death-damp on his dark hair. It exhibits the attenuation of disease, +but without absolute painfulness, and produces, fully as much as any of +the other portraits, the impression of a fine and distinguished mould of +face. Severn left yet other likenesses of Keats--posthumous, and of +inferior interest. There is moreover a chalk drawing by the painter +Hilton, who used to meet Keats at the house of the publisher Mr. Taylor. +It has an artificial air, and conveys a notion of the general character +of the face different from the other records, but may assist us towards +estimating what Keats was like about, or very soon before, the +commencement of his fatal illness. Lastly, though the list of extant +portraits is not even thus exhausted, I mention the medallion by +Girometti, which is to all appearance a posthumous performance. Its +lines correspond pretty well with the profile sketch by Haydon, while in +character it assimilates more to Hilton's drawing. To me it seems of +very little importance as a document, but Hamilton Reynolds thought it +the best likeness of all. Mrs. Llanos was in favour of the mask; Mr. +Cowden Clarke, of the crayon drawing by Severn--which, indeed, conveys a +bright impression of eager, youthful impulsiveness. + +The character of Keats appears to me not a very easy one to expound. To +begin with, it stands to reason that a man who died at the age of +twenty-five can only have half evolved and evinced himself; there must +have been a great deal which time and trial, had these been granted, +would have developed, but which untimely fate left to conjecture. We are +thus compelled to judge of an apprentice in the severe school of life as +if he had gone through its full course; many things about him may, in +their real nature, have been fleeting and tentative, which to us pass +for final and established. This difficulty has to be allowed for, but +cannot be got over; the only Keats with whom we have to deal is the +Keats who had not completed his twenty-sixth year. For him, as for other +youths, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had budded apace; the +fruit remained for ever unmatured. Another gravely deflecting force in +our estimation of the character of Keats consists in the fact that what +we really care for in him is his poetry. We admire his poetry, and +condole his inequitable treatment, and his hard and premature fate, and +are disposed to see his life in the light of his verse and his +sufferings. Hence arises a facile and perhaps vapid enthusiasm, with an +inclination to praise through thick and thin, or to ignore such points +as may not be susceptible of praise. The sympathetic biographer is a +very pleasant fellow; but the truthful biographer also has something to +say for himself in the long run. I aspire to the part of the truthful +biographer, duly sympathetic. + +We have already seen that Keats in early childhood was vehement and +ungovernable. His sensibility displayed itself in the strongest +contrasts, and he would be convulsed with laughter or with tears, +rapidly interchanged. At school his skill in bodily exercises, and his +marked generosity of spirit, made him very popular--his comrades +surmising that he would turn out superior in some active career, such as +soldiering. To be rated as a good boy was not his ambition; but, as +previously stated, he settled down into a very attentive scholar. Later +on, his friend Bailey liked "the simplicity of his character," and his +winning affectionate manner. "Simplicity" means, I suppose, frankness or +straightforwardness; for I cannot see that Keats's character was at any +time particularly simple--I should rather say that it was complex and +many-sided. + +The one great craving of Keats, before the love for Miss Brawne +engrossed him, was the desire to become an excellent poet; to do great +things in poesy, and leave a name among the immortals. At times he was +conscious of some presumption in this craving; but mostly it seems to +have held such plenary possession of him that the question of +presumption or otherwise hardly arose. Whether he felt very strongly +upon any matters of intellectual or general concern other than poetic +ones may admit of some doubt. In Book II. of "Endymion" he openly +proclaims that poetic love-making is the one thing needful to the +susceptible mind; the Athenian admiral and his auspicious owl, the +Indian expeditions of Alexander, Ulysses and the Cyclops, the death-day +of empires, are as nothing to Juliet's passion, Hero's tears, Imogen's +swoon, and Pastorella in the bandits' den. He does indeed, in one of his +letters (April 1818), aver "I would jump down Ætna for any great public +good"; but it may perhaps be permissible to think that he would at all +events have postponed the Empedoclean feat until he had written and +ensured the publishing of some poem upon which he could be content to +stake his claim to permanent poetic renown. His tension of thought was +great. In a letter which he addressed in May 1817 to Leigh Hunt there is +a little passage which may be worth quoting here, along with Mr. Dilke's +comment upon it: + + "I went to the Isle of Wight. Thought so much about poetry so + long together that I could not get to sleep at night; and + moreover, I know not how it was, I could not get wholesome food. + By this means, in a week or so, I became not over-capable in my + upper stories, and set off pell-mell for Margate, at least a + hundred and fifty miles, because forsooth I fancied that I should + like my old lodging here, and could continue to do without trees. + Another thing, I was too much in solitude, and consequently was + obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only + resource." + +This passage Mr. Dilke considered "an exact picture of the man's mind +and character," adding: "He could at any time have 'thought himself +out,' mind and body. Thought was intense with him, and seemed at times +to assume a reality that influenced his conduct, and, I have no doubt, +helped to wear him out." + +Whether Keats should be regarded as a young man tolerably regular in his +mode of life, or manifestly tending to the irregular, is a question not +entirely clear. We have seen something of a sexual misadventure in +Oxford, and of six weeks of hard drinking, attested by Haydon; and it +should be added that two or three of Keats's minor poems have a certain +unmistakable twang of erotic laxity. Lord Houghton thought that in the +winter of 1817-18 the poet had indulged somewhat "in that dissipation +which is the natural outlet for the young energies of ardent +temperaments;" but he held that it all amounted to no more than "a +little too much rollicking" (Keats's own phrase), and he would not allow +that either drinking or gaming had proceeded to any serious extent, +"for, in his letters to his brothers, he speaks of having drunk too much +as a rare piece of joviality, and of having won £10 at cards as a great +hit." Medical students, it may be added, are not, as a rule, conspicuous +for mortifying the flesh; Keats, however, according to Mr. Stephens, did +not indulge in any vice during his term of studentship. He was eminently +open, as his writings evidence, to impressions of enjoyment; and one may +not unnaturally suppose that the joys of sense numbered him, no less +than the average of young men, among their votaries--not indeed among +their slaves. He had not, I think, any taste for those "manly +recreations" which consist chiefly in making the lower animals +uncomfortable, or in putting a quietus to their comforts and discomforts +along with their lives. I only observe one occasion on which he went +out with a gun. He then (towards the close of 1818) accompanied Mr. +Dilke in shooting on Hampstead Heath, and his trophy was a solitary +tomtit. + +As to strength or stability of character, it is rather amusing to find +Keats picking a hole in Haydon, while Haydon could probe a joint in the +armour of Keats. In November 1817 Haydon had been playing rather fast +and loose (so at least it seemed to Keats and to his friend Bailey) with +a pictorial aspirant named Cripps, and Keats wrote to Bailey in the +following terms: + + "To a man of your nature such a letter as Haydon's must have been + extremely cutting.... As soon as I had known Haydon three days, I + had got enough of his character not to have been surprised at + such a letter as he has hurt you with. Nor, when I knew it, was + it a principle with me to drop his acquaintance, although with + you it would have been an imperious feeling.... I must say one + thing that has pressed upon me lately, and increased my humility + and capability of submission, and that is this truth: _Men of + genius_ are great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on a + mass of neutral intellect; but they _have not any individuality, + any determined character_." + +The following also, from a letter of January 1818 to the same +correspondent, relates partly to Haydon: + + "The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man's faults, and then + be passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him, + then you have no power to break the link." + +Haydon's verdict upon Keats is no doubt extremely important. I give here +the whole entry in his diary, 29th of March 1821, omitting only two +passages which have been already extracted in their more essential +context:-- + + "Keats, too, is gone! He died at Rome, the 23rd February, aged + twenty-five. A genius more purely poetical never existed. In + fireside conversation he was weak and inconsistent, but he was in + his glory in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a + flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature + tremble; then his eyes flashed, his cheeks glowed, his mouth + quivered. He was the most unselfish of human creatures; unadapted + to this world, he cared not for himself, and put himself to any + inconvenience for the sake of his friends. He was haughty, and + had a fierce hatred of rank [this corresponds with Hunt's remark, + that Keats looked upon a man of birth as his natural enemy], but + he had a kind, gentle heart, and would have shared his fortune + with any man who wanted it. His classical knowledge was + inconsiderable, but he could feel the beauties of the classical + writers. He had an exquisite sense of humour, and too refined a + notion of female purity to bear the little sweet arts of love + with patience. _He had no decision of character_, and, having no + object upon which to direct his great powers, was at the mercy of + every pretty theory Hunt's ingenuity might start. One day he was + full of an epic poem; the next day epic poems were splendid + impositions on the world. Never for two days did he know his own + intentions.... The death of his brother wounded him deeply, and + it appeared to me that he began to droop from that hour. I was + much attracted to Keats, and he had a fellow-feeling for me. I + was angry because he would not bend his great powers to some + definite object, and always told him so. Latterly he grew + irritated because I would shake my head at his irregularities, + and tell him that he would destroy himself.... Poor dear Keats! + had nature given you firmness as well as fineness of nerve, you + would have been glorious in your maturity as great in your + promise. May your kind and gentle spirit be now mingling with + those of Shakespeare and Milton, before whose minds you have so + often bowed! May you be considered worthy of admission to share + their musings in heaven, as you were fit to comprehend their + imaginations on earth! Dear Keats, hail and adieu for some six or + seven years, and I shall meet you. I have enjoyed Shakespeare + more with Keats than with any other human creature." + +In writing to Miss Mitford, Haydon added: + + "His ruin was owing to _his want of decision of character, and + power of will_, without which genius is a curse." + +It will be seen that Haydon's character of Keats is in some respects +very highly laudatory: he speaks of the poet's unselfishness and +generosity in terms which may possibly run into excess, but cannot +assuredly have fallen short. What he remarks as to "irregularities" +seems to show that these had (at least in Haydon's opinion) taken +somewhat firm root with Keats, and had not merely come and gone with a +spurt, as a relief from feelings of depression or mortification; nor can +we altogether forget the statement that, on the night of February 3, +1820, which closed with the first attack of blood-spitting, Keats +"returned home in a state of strange physical excitement--it might have +appeared to those who did not know him one of fierce intoxication." +Physical excitement which looks like fierce intoxication, without being +really anything of the sort, can be but a comparatively rare phænomenon; +nor do I suppose that an impending attack of blood-spitting would +account for such an appearance. Brown, however, was still more positive +than Lord Houghton in excluding the idea of intoxication on that +occasion; he even says, "Such a state in him, I knew, was +impossible"--an assertion which we have to balance against the general +averments of Haydon. Keats's irritation at the remonstrances which +Haydon addressed to him upon irregularities, real or assumed, is +mentioned by the painter without any seeming knowledge of the fact that +Keats had (as shown by his letter of September 20, 1819, already cited, +to his brother George) cooled down very greatly in his cordiality to his +monitor; and he may perhaps have received the remonstrances in a spirit +of stubbornness, or of apparent irritation, more because he was out of +humour with Haydon than because he could not confute the allegations, +had he been so minded. As to the charge of want of decision of +character, want of power of will, we must try to understand what is the +exact sense in which Haydon applies these terms. He appears from the +context to refer more to indefiniteness of literary aim, combined with +sensitiveness to critical detraction and ridicule, than to anything +really affecting the basis of a man's character in his general walk of +life and commerce with the world. A few words on both these aspects of +the question will not be wasted. We need not, however, recur to the +allegation of over-sensitiveness to criticism, or of being "snuffed out +by an article," which has already been sufficiently debated. + +Indefiniteness of literary aim must be assessed in relation to a man's +faculties, and in especial to his age and experience. A beginner is +naturally indefinite in aim, in the sense that he tries his hand at +various things, and only after making several experiments does he learn +which things he can manage well, and which less than well. Keats, in his +first two volumes, was but a beginner, and a youthful beginner. If they +show indefiniteness of aim--though indeed they hardly _do_ show that in +any marked degree--one cannot regard the fact as derogatory to the +author. With his third volume, he was getting some assurance of the +direction in which his power lay. It is certainly true that, after +producing one epic (if such it can be called), "Endymion," and after +commencing another, "Hyperion," he laid the second aside, for whatever +reason; partly, it would seem, because the harsh reception of "Endymion" +discouraged him, and partly because he considered the turn of diction +too obviously Miltonic; and no doubt, as his mood varied, he must have +expressed to Haydon very divergent opinions as to the expediency of +writing epics. But, apart from this special matter, the third volume +shows no uncertainty or infirmity of purpose. It contains three +narrative poems--"Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Lamia"--some +odes, and a few minor lyrics. The very fact that he continued writing +poetry so persistently, maugre _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The Quarterly +Review_, speaks to some decision of character and power of will in +literary matters; and the immense advance in executive force tells the +same tale aboundingly. Therefore, while laying great stress upon +Haydon's view so far as it concerns certain shifting currents of thought +and of talk, I cannot find that Keats is fairly open to the charge of +want of decision or of will in the literary relation. Then as to the +larger question of his character generally, Keats appears to me to have +been eminently wilful, and somewhat wayward to boot. He had the +temperament of a man of genius, liable to sudden and sharp impressions, +and apt to go considerable lengths at the beck of an impulse, or even of +a caprice. Wilfulness along with waywardness is certainly not quite the +same thing as "power of will," but it testifies to a will which can +exert itself steadily if it likes. The very short duration of Keats's +life, and the painful conjuncture of circumstances which made his last +year a despairing struggle between a passionate love and an inexorable +disease, preclude our forming a very distinct opinion of what his power +of will might naturally have become. If I may venture a surmise, I would +say that he had within him the stuff of ample determination and +high-heartedness in any matters upon which he was in earnest, mingled +however with deficient self-control, and with a perilous facility for +seeing the seamy side of life. + +Lord Houghton gives an attractive picture of Keats at what was probably +his happiest time, the winter of 1817-18, when "Endymion" was preparing +for the press. I cannot condense it to any purpose, and certainly cannot +improve it, so I reproduce the passage as it stands: + + "Keats passed the winter of 1817-18 at Hampstead, gaily enough + among his friends. His society was much sought after, from the + delightful combination of earnestness and pleasantry which + distinguished his intercourse with all men. There was no effort + about him to say fine things, but he _did_ say them most + effectively, and they gained considerably by his happy transition + of manner. He joked well or ill as it happened, and with a laugh + which still echoes sweetly in many ears; but at the mention of + oppression or wrong, or at any calumny against those he loved, he + rose into grave manliness at once, and seemed like a tall man. + His habitual gentleness made his occasional looks of indignation + almost terrible. On one occasion, when a gross falsehood + respecting the young artist, Severn, was repeated and dwelt upon, + he left the room, declaring 'he should be ashamed to sit with men + who could utter and believe such things.'" + +Severn himself avers that Keats never spoke of any one unless by way of +saying something in his favour. + +Cowden Clarke's anecdote tells in the same direction, that once, when +some local tyranny was being discussed, Keats amused the party by +shouting: "Why is there not a human dust-hole into which to tumble such +fellows?" His own Carlylean phrase seems to have tickled Keats as well +as others, for he repeated it in a field walk with Haydon: "Haydon, what +a pity it is there is not a human dust-hole!" + +To this may be added a few words from a letter addressed from Teignmouth +by Keats to Mr. Taylor in April 1818:-- + + "I know nothing, I have read nothing: and I mean to follow + Solomon's directions, 'Get learning, get understanding.' I find + earlier days are gone by; I find that I can have no enjoyment in + the world but continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no + worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good to the world. Some + do it with their society, some with their wit, some with their + benevolence, some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and + good humour on all they meet--and in a thousand ways, all dutiful + to the command of great Nature. There is but one way for me: the + road lies through application, study, and thought. I will pursue + it; and for that end purpose retiring for some years. I have been + hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the + luxurious and a love for philosophy. Were I calculated for the + former, I should be glad; but, as I am not, I shall turn all my + soul to the latter." + +This "exquisite sense of the luxurious" must have prompted an +interjection of Keats in a rather earlier letter to Bailey (November +1817): "Oh for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!" + +One does not usually associate the suspicious character with the +unselfish and generous character. Even apart from Haydon's, there is +ample evidence to show that Keats was generous, and, in a sense, +unselfish; although a man of creative or productive genius, intent upon +his own work, and subordinating everything else to it, is seldom +unselfish in the fullest ordinary sense of the term. But he was +certainly suspicious. Of this temper we have already seen some painful +ebullitions in his letters to Fanny Brawne. These might be ascribed +mainly to the acute feelings of a lover, the morbid impressions of an +invalid. But, in truth, Keats always was and had been suspicious. In a +letter to his brothers, dated in January 1818, he refers, in a tone of +some soreness, to objections which Hunt had raised against points of +treatment in the first Book of "Endymion," adding: "The fact is, he and +Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed them the +affair officiously; and, from several hints I have had, they appear much +disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made." +Still earlier, writing to Haydon, he had confessed to "a horrid +morbidity of temperament." In a letter of June 1818 to Bailey he says: +"You have all your life (I think so) believed everybody: I have +suspected everybody." By January 1820 he has got into a condition of +decided _ennui_, not far removed from misanthropy, and the company of +acquaintances, and even of friends, is a tedium to him. This was a month +before the beginning of his fatal illness. It is true, he was then in +love. He writes to Mrs. George Keats:-- + + "I dislike mankind in general.... The worst of men are those + whose self-interests are their passions; the next, those whose + passions are their self-interest. Upon the whole, I dislike + mankind. Whatever people on the other side of the question may + advance, they cannot deny that we are always surprised at hearing + of a good action, and never of a bad one.... If you were in + England, I dare say you would be able to pick out more amusement + from society than I am able to do. To me it is as dull as + Louisville is to you. [Then follow several remarks on Hunt, + Haydon, the Misses Reynolds, and Dilke.] 'Tis best to remain + aloof from people, and like their good parts, without being + eternally troubled with the dull processes of their everyday + lives. When once a person has smoked the vapidness of the routine + of society, he must have either some self-interest or the love of + some sort of distinction to keep him in good humour with it. All + I can say is that, standing at Charing Cross, and looking east, + west, north, and south, I see nothing but dulness." + +"I carry all things to an extreme," he had written to Bailey in July +1818, "so that when I have any little vexation it grows in five minutes +into a theme fit for Sophocles. Then and in that temper if I write to +any friend, I have so little self-possession that I give him matter for +grieving, at the very time perhaps when I am laughing at a pun." A +phrase which Keats used in a letter of the 24th of October 1820, +addressed to Mrs. Brawne, may also be, in the main, a true item of +self-portraiture: "If ever there was a person born without the faculty +of hoping, I am he." Too much weight, however, should not be given to +this, as the poet's disease had then brought him far onward towards his +grave. Severn does not seem to have regarded such a tendency as innate +in Keats, for he wrote, at a far later date, "No mind was ever more +exultant in youthful feeling." + +Keats's sentiment towards women appears to have been that of a shy youth +who was at the same time a critical man. Miss Brawne enslaved him, but +did not inspire him with that tender and boundless confidence which the +accepted and engaged lover of a virtuous girl naturally feels. With one +woman, Miss Cox, he seems to have been thoroughly at his ease; and one +can gather from his expressions that this unusual result depended upon a +fair counterbalance of claims. While she was self-centred in her beauty +and attractiveness, he was self-centred in his intellect and +aspirations. There is an early poem of his--the reverse of a good +one--which seems worth quoting here. I presume he may have been in his +twenty-first year or so when he wrote it:-- + + "Woman, when I behold thee flippant, vain, + Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies; + Without that modest softening that enhances + The downcast eye, repentant of the pain + That its mild light creates to heal again; + E'en then elate my spirit leaps and prances, + E'en then my soul with exultation dances, + For that to love so long I've dormant lain. + But, when I see thee meek and kind and tender, + Heavens! how desperately do I adore + Thy winning graces! To be thy defender + I hotly burn--to be a Calidore, + A very Red-cross Knight, a stout Leander-- + Might I be loved by thee like these of yore. + + Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair, + Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast, + Are things on which the dazzled senses rest + Till the fond fixèd eyes forget they stare. + From such fine pictures, Heavens! I cannot dare + To turn my admiration, though unpossessed + They be of what is worthy--though not dressed + In lovely modesty and virtues rare. + Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark; + These lures I straight forget--e'en ere I dine + Or thrice my palate moisten. But, when I mark + Such charms with mild intelligences shine, + My ear is open like a greedy shark + To catch the tunings of a voice divine. + + Ah who can e'er forget so fair a being? + Who can forget her half-retiring sweets? + God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats + For man's protection. Surely the All-seeing, + Who joys to see us with His gifts agreeing, + Will never give him pinions who entreats + Such innocence to ruin--who vilely cheats + A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing + One's thoughts from such a beauty. When I hear + A lay that once I saw her hand awake, + Her form seems floating palpable and near. + Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take + A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear, + And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake." + +From the opening lines of this poem I gather that Keats, when he wrote +it, had never been in love; but that he had a feeling towards pure, +sweet-minded, lovely women, which made him, in idea, their champion and +votary. Later on, in June 1818, he wrote to Bailey that his love for his +brothers had "always stifled the impression that any woman might +otherwise have made upon him." And in July of the same year, also to +Bailey:-- + + "I am certain that our fair friends [_i.e._ the Misses Reynolds] + are glad I should come for the mere sake of my coming; but I am + certain I bring with me a vexation they are better without.... I + am certain I have not a right feeling towards women: at this + moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it + because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I + was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure goddess; my mind + was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew + it not. I have no right to expect more than their reality. I + thought them ethereal--above men; I find them perhaps + equal--great by comparison is very small. Insult may be inflicted + in more ways than by word or action. One who is tender of being + insulted does not like to _think_ an insult against another. I do + not like to think insults in a lady's company; I commit a crime + with her which absence would not have known.... When I am among + women I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be + silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; + I am in a hurry to be gone. You must be charitable, and put all + this perversity to my being disappointed since my boyhood.... + After all, I do think better of womankind than to suppose they + care whether Mister John Keats, five feet high, likes them or + not." + +In his letter about Miss Cox as "Charmian," written perhaps just before +he knew Miss Brawne, Keats said: "I hope I shall never marry.... The +mighty abstract idea of Beauty in all things I have stifles the more +divided and minute domestic happiness. An amiable wife and sweet +children I contemplate as part of that Beauty, but I must have a +thousand of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart.... These +things, combined with the opinion I have formed of the generality of +women, who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a +sugar-plum than my time, form a barrier against matrimony which I +rejoice in." + +We have seen, in one of Keats's letters to Miss Brawne, that he shrank +from the thought of having their mutual love made known to any of their +friends. But he went further than this. As well after as before he had +fallen in love with Miss Brawne, and had become engaged to her, he could +express a contrary state of feeling. Thus, in addressing Mr. Taylor, on +August 23, 1819, he says: "I equally dislike the favour of the public +with the love of a woman; they are both a cloying treacle to the wings +of independence." And to his brother George, September 17, 1819: +"Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. +A man in love, I do think, cuts the sorriest figure in the world. Even +when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it, I could burst out +laughing in his face; his pathetic visage becomes irresistible." The +letters to George, in fact, give no hint of any love for Miss Brawne, +still less of an engagement. + +From all these details it would appear that Keats was by no means an +ardent devotee of the feminine type of character. He thought there was +but little congruity between the Ideal and the Real of womanhood. He +parted company, in this regard, with Shakespeare and Shelley, and +adhered rather to Milton. So it was before he was in love; and to be in +love was not the occasion of any essential alteration of view. He +ascribed to Fanny Brawne the same volatile appetite for amusement, the +same propensity for flirtation, the same comparative shallowness of +heart-affection, which he imputed to her sex in general. He loved her +passionately: he believed in her not passionately, nor even intensely. +That he was hard hit by the blind and winged archer was a patent fact; +but he still knew the archer to be blind. + +In a room, says Keats's surgical fellow-student, Mr. Stephens, he was +always at the window peering out into space, and it was customary to +call the window-seat "Keats's place." In his last illness he told Severn +that the intensest of his pleasures had been to watch the growth of +flowers; and, after lying quiet one day, he whispered, "I feel the +daisies [or "the flowers"] growing over me." In an early stage of his +fatal illness, February 16, 1820, he had written pathetically to James +Rice: "How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a +sense of its natural beauties upon us! Like poor Falstaff, though I do +not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest +affection on every flower I have known from my infancy--their shapes +and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a +superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the most +thoughtless and the happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign +flowers in hot-houses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a +straw for them. The simple flowers of our spring are what I want to see +again." Music was another of his great enjoyments. He would sit for +hours while Miss Charlotte Reynolds played to him on the pianoforte; and +a wrong note in an orchestra has been known to rouse his pugnacity, and +make him wish to "go down and smash all the fiddles." Haydn's symphonies +were among his prime favourites, and Purcell's songs from Shakespeare. +"Give me," he wrote from Winchester to his sister, in August 1819, +"books, fruit, French wine, and fine weather, and a little music out of +doors, played by somebody I do not know, and I can pass a summer very +quietly." He would also listen long to Severn's playing, following the +air with a low kind of recitative; and could himself "produce a pleasing +musical effect, though possessing hardly any voice." + +Closely though he was mixed up with Leigh Hunt and his circle, Keats +had, in fact, not much sympathy with their ideas on literary topics, nor +with Hunt's own poetry, still less with their views on political matters +of the time, in which he took but very faint interest. Cowden Clarke +thought that the poet's "whole civil creed was comprised in the +master-principle of universal liberty, viz., equal and stern justice to +all, from the duke to the dustman." He was, however, a liberal by +temperament, and, I suppose, by conviction as well. One of the really +puerile and nonsensical passages in "Endymion" is that which opens book +iii. He told his friend Richard Woodhouse (a barrister, connected with +the firm of Taylor and Hessey) that it expressed his opinion of the Tory +Ministry then in office:-- + + "There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men + With most prevailing tinsel; who unpen + Their baaing vanities to browse away + The comfortable green and juicy hay + From human pastures; or, oh torturing fact! + Who through an idiot blink will see unpacked + Fire-branded foxes to scar up and singe + Our gold and ripe-eared hopes. With not one tinge + Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight + Able to face an owl's, they still are dight + By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests, + And crowns and turbans. With unladen breasts, + Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount + To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, + Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones, + Amid the fierce intoxicating tones + Of trumpets, shoutings, and belaboured drums, + And sudden cannon." + +A rather more sensible embodiment of his political feelings is a stanza +which he wrote, perhaps in 1818, at the close of canto 5, book ii. of +"The Faery Queen." In this stanza the revolutionary Giant, who had been +suppressed by Artegall and Talus, is represented as being pieced +together again by Typographus, the Printing-press, and so trained up as +to become more than a match for his former victors. There is also, in a +letter to George Keats dated in September 1819, a rather long and +detailed passage on politics covering a wide period in English and +European history, on the oscillations of governmental and popular power +&c., and on the writer's sympathy with the enlightenment and progress of +the people. It closes with an admiring description of Sandt, the +assassin of Kotzebue, as pourtrayed in a profile likeness. As to Hunt, +some expressions in a letter from George Keats to Dilke are decidedly +strong:--"I should be extremely sorry that poor John's name should go +down to posterity associated with the littlenesses of Leigh Hunt--an +association of which he was so impatient in his lifetime. He speaks of +him patronizingly; that he would have defended him against the reviewers +if he had known his nervous irritation at their abuse of him, and says +that on that point only he was reserved to him. The fact was, he more +dreaded Hunt's defence than their abuse. You know all this as well as I +do." + +Apart from his own special capability for poetry, Keats had a mind both +active and capacious. The depth, pregnancy, and incisiveness, of many of +the remarks in his letters, glancing along a considerable range of +subject-matter, are highly noticeable. If some one were to take the +pains of extracting and classifying them, he would do a good service to +readers. It does not appear, however, that Keats took much interest in +any kind of knowledge which could not be made applicable or subservient +to the purposes of poetry. Many will remember the anecdote, proper to +Haydon's "immortal dinner" (December 1817), of Keats's joining with +Charles Lamb in denouncing Sir Isaac Newton for having destroyed all +the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours; the +whole company had to drink "Newton's health, and confusion to +mathematics." This was a freak, yet not so mere a freak but that the +poet--in one of his most elaborated and heedful compositions, +"Lamia"--could revert to the same idea-- + + "Do not all charms fly + At the mere touch of cold philosophy? + There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: + We know her woof, her texture--she is given + In the dull catalogue of common things. + Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, + Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, + Empty the haunted air and gnomèd mine, + Unweave a rainbow." + +In a letter to his brother, December 1817, Keats observes:-- + + "The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making + all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close + relationship with beauty and truth. Examine 'King Lear,' and you + will find this exemplified throughout.... It struck me what + quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in + literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously. I mean + _negative capability_; that is, when a man is capable of being in + uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching + after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a + fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the penetralium of + mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with + half-knowledge. This, pursued through volumes, would perhaps take + us no further than this: that with a great poet the sense of + beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates + all consideration." + +Keats did not very often in his letters remark upon the work of his +poetic contemporaries. We have just read a reference to Coleridge. In +another letter addressed to Haydon, January 1818, he shows that his +admiration of Wordsworth's "Excursion" was great, coupling that poem +with Haydon's pictures, and with "Hazlitt's depth of taste," as "three +things to rejoice at in this age." + +Soon afterwards, February 1818, while "Endymion" was passing through the +press, he wrote to Mr. Taylor:-- + + "In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am + from their centre. 1st, I think poetry should surprise by a fine + excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a + wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a + remembrance. 2nd, Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, + thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The + rise, the progress, the setting, of imagery, should, like the + sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly + although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. + But it is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it. + And this leads me to another axiom--That, if poetry comes not as + naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at + all." + +Keats held that the melody of verse is founded on the adroit management +of open and close vowels. He thought that vowels can be as skilfully +combined and interchanged as differing notes of music, and that monotony +should only be allowed when it subserves some special purpose. + +The following, from a letter to Mr. Woodhouse, October 1818 (soon after +the abusive reviews had appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The +Quarterly_), is a remarkable piece of self-analysis. As we read it, we +should bear in mind what Haydon said of Keats's want of decision of +character. I am not indeed clear that Keats has here pourtrayed himself +with marked accuracy. It may appear that he ascribes to himself too much +of absorption into the object or the personage which he contemplates; +whereas it might, with fully as much truth, be advanced that he was wont +to assimilate the personage or the object to himself. I greatly doubt +whether in Keats's poems we see the object or the personage the clearer +because his faculty transpires through them: rather, we see the object +or the personage through the haze of Keats. His range was not extremely +extensive (whatever it might possibly have become, with a longer lease +of life), nor was his personality by any means occulted. But in any +event his statement here is of great importance as showing what he +thought of the poetic phase of mind and working. + + "As to the poetical character itself (I mean that sort of which, + if I am anything, I am a member--that sort distinguished from the + Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime, which is a thing _per se_, + and stands alone), it is not itself--it has no self. It is + everything, and nothing--it has no character. It enjoys light, + and shade. It lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, + rich or poor, mean or elevated--it has as much delight in + conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous + philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its + relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste + for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet + is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has + no identity: he is continually in for, and filling, some other + body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men and women who are + creatures of impulse, are poetical, and have about them an + unchangeable attribute: the poet has none, no identity. He is + certainly the most unpoetical of all God's creatures. If then he + has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I + should say I would write no more? Might I not at that very + instant have been cogitating on the characters of Saturn and Ops? + It is a wretched thing to confess, but it is a very fact, that + not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion + growing out of my identical nature. How can it when I have _no_ + nature? When I am in a room with people, if I ever am free from + speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes + home to myself, but the identity of every one in the room begins + to press upon me [so] that I am in a very little time + annihilated. Not only among men; it would be the same in a + nursery of children." + +Elsewhere Keats says, November 1817: "Nothing startles me beyond the +moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights; or if a sparrow +come before my window, I take part in its existence, and pick about the +gravel." + +For painting Keats had a good deal of taste, largely fostered, no doubt, +by his intimacy with Haydon. This came to him gradually. Towards the +beginning of 1818 he was, according to his own account, quite unable to +appreciate Raphael's Cartoons, but afterwards gained an insight into +them through contrasting them with some maudlin saints by Guido. It is +interesting to find him entering warmly into the beauties of the earlier +Italian art, as indicated in a book of prints from some church in Milan +(so he says, but perhaps it should rather be Pisa or Florence). "I do +not think I ever had a greater treat out of Shakespeare; full of romance +and the most tender feeling; magnificence of drapery beyond everything I +ever saw, not excepting Raphael's, but grotesque to a curious pitch--yet +still making up a fine whole, even finer to me than more accomplished +works, as there was left so much room for imagination." + +Here is a small trait of character, recorded by Keats in a letter to +George, from Winchester, September 1819. "I feel I can bear real ills +better than imaginary ones. Whenever I find myself growing vapourish, I +rouse myself, wash, and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, +tie my shoe-strings neatly, and in fact adonize as if I were going out; +then, all clean and comfortable, I sit down to write. This I find the +greatest relief." + +Haydon, as we have seen, said that Keats had an exquisite sense of +humour. There are few things more difficult to analyse than the sense +of humour; few points as to which different people will vary more in +opinion than the possession, by any particular man, of a sense of +humour, or the account, good or bad, to which he turned this sense. +Certainly there is a large amount of jocularity in the familiar writings +of Keats--often a quick perception of the ridiculous or the risible, +sometimes a telling jest or _jeu d'esprit_. I confess, however, that to +myself most of Keats's fun appears forced or inept, wanting in fineness +of taste and manner, and tending towards the vulgar; a jangling jingle +of word and notion. Punning plays a large part in it, as it did in Leigh +Hunt's familiar converse. Some specimens of Keats's funning or punning +seem to me a humiliating exhibition, as, for instance, a letter, January +1819, which Armitage Brown addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Dilke, with +interpolations by Keats. No doubt both the friends were resolutely bent +upon being silly on that occasion; but to be silly is not fully +tantamount to being "a fellow of infinite jest," or having an exquisite +sense of humour. There is some very exasperating writing also in a +letter to Reynolds (May 1818), about "making Wordsworth and Colman play +at leap-frog, or keeping one of them down a whole half-holiday at +fly-the-garter," &c., &c. A feeling for the inappropriate is perhaps one +element of jocoseness; if so, Keats may have been genuinely jocose when +(as he wrote in his very last letter to Brown) he "at his worst, even in +quarantine [in Naples Harbour], summoned up more puns, in a sort of +desperation, in one week than in any year of his life." He had a good +power of mimicry, as well as of dramatic recital. He did indisputably, +towards September 1819, play off one practical joke--Brown was the +victim--with eminent success; pretending that a certain Mr. Nathan +Benjamin, who was then renting Brown's house at Hampstead, had written a +letter complaining of illness--gravel, caused by some lime-tainted water +on the premises. But the success depended upon a very singular +coincidence, viz., that by mere chance Keats had happened to give the +tenant's name correctly. The angry reply of Brown to the angry +supposititious letter of Benjamin, and the astonishment of Benjamin upon +receiving Brown's retort, are fertile of laughter. + +Keats does not appear to have ever made any pretence to defined +religious belief of any sort, nor seriously to have debated the subject, +or troubled his mind about it one way or the other. He was certainly not +a Christian. His early friend, Mr. Felton Mathew, speaks of him as "of +the sceptical and republican school." On Christmas Eve, 1816, soon after +he had come of age, he wrote the following sonnet-- + + "The church-bells toll a melancholy round, + Calling the people to some other prayers, + Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, + More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound. + Surely the mind of man is closely bound + In some black spell: seeing that each one tears + Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs, + And converse high of those with glory crowned. + + Still, still they toll: and I should feel a damp, + A chill as from a tomb, did I not know + That they are dying like an outburnt lamp,-- + That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go + Into oblivion,--that fresh flowers will grow, + And many glories of immortal stamp." + +His sonnet on Ben Nevis, 1818, is also an utterance of +scepticism--speaking of heaven and hell as misty surmises, and of "the +world of thought and mental might" as a realm of nebulosity. A letter to +Leigh Hunt, May 1817, contains a phrase arraigning the God of +Christians. To the clerical student Bailey, September 1818, he spoke +out: "You know my ideas about religion. I do not think myself more in +the right than other people, that nothing in this world is proveable." +The latter clause appears to be carelessly elliptical in expression, the +real meaning being "I think [not "I do _not_ think"] that nothing in +this world is proveable." To Fanny Brawne, towards May 1820, he appealed +"by the blood of that Christ you believe in." Haydon tells a noticeable +anecdote--the only one, I think, which exhibits Keats as an admirer of +that anti-imaginative order of intellect of which Voltaire was a +prototype-- + + "He had a tending to religion when first I knew him [autumn of + 1816], but Leigh Hunt soon forced it from his mind. Never shall I + forget Keats once rising from his chair, and approaching my last + picture, Entry into Jerusalem. He went before the portrait of + Voltaire, placed his hand on his heart, and, bowing low, + + 'In reverence done, as to the power + That dwelt within, whose presence had infused + Into the plant sciential sap derived + From nectar, drink of gods,' + + + (as Milton says of Eve after she had eaten the apple), 'That's + the being to whom _I_ bend,' said he; alluding to the bending of + the other figures in the picture, and contrasting Voltaire with + our Saviour, and his own adoration with that of the crowd." + +Notwithstanding the general vagueness or indifference of his mind in +religious matters, Keats seems to have been at most times a believer in +the immortality of the soul. Following that phrase of his already quoted +(from a letter to Bailey, November 1817) "Oh for a life of sensations +rather than of thoughts!" he proceeds: "It is 'a vision in the form of +youth,' a shadow of reality to come. And this consideration has further +convinced me--for it has come as auxiliary to another favourite +speculation of mine--that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having +what we call happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone. And yet such a +fate can only befall those who delight in sensation, rather than hunger, +as you do, after truth. Adam's dream will do here: and seems to be a +conviction that imagination, and its empyreal reflexion, is the same as +human life, and its spiritual repetition." This allusion to "Adam's +dream" refers back to a fine phrase which had occurred shortly before in +the same letter--"Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream; he awoke, +and found it truth." In a letter written to George Keats and his wife, +shortly after the death of Tom, comes a very positive assertion--"I have +a firm belief in immortality, and so had Tom." This firm belief, +however, must certainly have faltered later on; for, as we have already +seen, one of Keats's letters to Miss Brawne, written in 1820, contains +the phrase "I long to believe in immortality." The reader may also refer +to the letter to Armitage Brown, September 1820, extracted in a previous +page. Of superstitious feeling I observe only one instance in Keats. +After Tom's death, a white rabbit appeared in the garden of Mr. Dilke, +and was shot by him: Keats would have it that this rabbit was the spirit +of Tom, and he persisted in the fancy with not a little earnestness. + +Of Keats's fondness for wine--his appreciation of it as a flavour +grateful to the palate, and to the abstract sense of enjoyment--there +are numerous traces throughout his writings. We all remember the famous +lines in his "Ode to a Nightingale"-- + + "Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been + Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,... + Oh for a beaker full of the warm South!" &c.-- + +lines which seem a little forced into their context, and of which the +only tangible meaning there is that the luxury and dreamy inspiration of +wine-drinking would relieve the poet's mind from the dull and painful +realities of life, and assist his imagination into the dim vocal haunts +of the nightingale. There is also in "Lamia" a conspicuous passage +celebrating "The happy vintage--merry wine, sweet wine." On claret--as +to which we have heard the evidence of Haydon--there is a long tirade in +a letter addressed to George Keats and his wife in February 1819. I give +it in a condensed form:-- + + "I never drink above three glasses of wine, and never any + spirits and water.... How I like claret! When I can get claret, I + must drink it. 'Tis the only palate affair that I am at all + sensual in.... It fills one's mouth with a gushing + freshness--then goes down cool and feverless: then you do not + feel it quarrelling with one's liver.... Other wines of a heavy + and spirituous nature transform a man into a Silenus: this makes + him a Hermes, and gives a woman the soul and immortality of an + Ariadne.... I said this same claret is the only palate-passion I + have: I forgot game. I must plead guilty to the breast of a + partridge, the back of a hare, the backbone of a grouse, the wing + and side of a pheasant, and a woodcock _passim_." + +At a rather later date, October 1819, Keats had "left off animal food, +that my brains may never henceforth be in a greater mist than is theirs +by nature." But I presume this form of abstinence did not last long. + +I have now gone through the principal points which appear to me to +identify Keats as a man, and to throw light upon his character and +habits. He entered on life high-spirited, ardent, impulsive, vehement; +with plenty of self-confidence, ballasted with a large capacity (though +he did not always exercise it to a practical result) for self-criticism; +longing to be a poet, and firmly believing that he could and would be +one; resolute to be a man--unselfish, kindly, and generous. But, though +kindly, he was irritable; though unselfish and generous, wilful and +suspicious. An affront was what he would not bear; and, when he found +himself affronted in a form--that of press ridicule and +detraction--which could not be resented in person, nor readily +retaliated in any way, it is abundantly probable that the indignity +preyed upon his mind and spirits, and contributed to embitter the days +cut short by disease, the messenger of despair to that passionate love +which had become the single intense interest of his life. The single +intense interest, along with poetry--both of them hurrying without +fruition to the grave. Keats seems to me to have been naturally a man of +complex character, many-mooded, with a tendency to perverse +self-conflict. The circumstances of his brief career--his poetic +ambition, his want of any definite employment, his association with men +of literary occupation or taste whom he only half approved, the critical +venom poured forth against him, his love thwarted by a mortal +malady--all these things tended to bring out the unruly or morbid, and +to deplete the many fine and solid, elements in his nature. With the +personal character of Keats, as with his writings, we may perhaps deal +most fairly by saying that his outburst and his reserve of faculty were +such that, in the narrow space allotted to him, youth had not advanced +far enough to disentangle the rich and various material. But his latest +years, which enabled his poetry to find full and deathless voice, were +so loaded with suffering and perturbation as to leave the character less +lucidly and harmoniously developed than even in the days of adolescence. +From "Endymion" to "Lamia" and the "Eve of St. Mark," we have, in +poetry, advanced greatly towards the radiant meridian: in life, from +1818 to 1821, we have receded to a baffling dusk. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +We have seen what John Keats did in the shifting scene of the world, and +in the high arena of poesy; we have seen what were the qualities of +character and of mind which enabled him to bear his part in each. His +work as a poet is to us the thing of primary importance: and it remains +for us to consider what this poetic work amounts to in essence and in +detail. The critic who _is_ a critic--and not a _Quarterly_ or a +_Blackwood_ reviewer or lampooner--is well aware of the disproportion +between his power of estimation, and the demand which such a genius as +that of Keats, and such work as the maturest which he produced, make +upon the estimating faculty. But this consideration cannot be allowed to +operate beyond a certain point: the estimate has to be given--and given +candidly and distinctly, however imperfectly. I shall therefore proceed +to express my real opinion of Keats's poems, whether an admiring opinion +or otherwise; and shall write without reiterating--what I may +nevertheless feel--a sense of the presumption involved in such a +process. I shall in the main, as in previous chapters, follow the +chronological order of the poems. + +As we have seen, Keats began versifying chiefly under a Spenserean +influence; and it has been suggested that this influence remained +puissant for harm as well as for good up to the close of his poetic +career. I do not see much force in the suggestion: unless in this +limited sense--that Spenser, like other Elizabethan and Jacobean poets +his successors, allowed himself very considerable latitude in saying +whatever came into his head, relevant or irrelevant, appropriate or +jarring, obvious or far-fetched, simple or grandiose, according to the +mood of the moment and the swing of composition, and thus the whole +strain presents an aspect more of rich and arbitrary picturesqueness +than of ordered suavity. And Keats no doubt often did the same: but not +in the choicest productions of his later time, nor perhaps so much under +incitement from Spenser as in pursuance of that revolt from a factitious +and constrained model of work in which Wordsworth in one direction, +Coleridge in another, and Leigh Hunt in a third, had already come +forward with practice and precept. Making allowance for a few early +attempts directly referable to Spenser, I find, even in Keats's first +volume, little in which that influence is paramount. He seems to have +written because his perceptions were quick, his sympathies vivid in +certain directions, and his energies wound up to poetic endeavour. The +mannerisms of thought, method, and diction, are much more those of Hunt +than of Spenser; and it is extremely probable that the soreness against +Hunt which Keats evidenced at a later period was due to his perceiving +that that kindly friend and genial literary ally had misled him into +some poetic trivialities and absurdities, not less than to anything in +himself which could be taken hold of for complaint. + +Keats's first volume would present nothing worthy of permanent memory, +were it not for his after achievements, and for the single sonnet upon +Chapman's Homer. Several of the compositions are veritable rubbish: +probably Keats knew at the time that they were not good, and knew soon +afterwards that they were deplorably bad. Such are the address "To Some +Ladies" who had sent the author a shell; that "On Receiving a Curious +Shell and a Copy of Verses [Moore's "Golden Chain"] from the same +Ladies;" the "Ode to Apollo" (in which Homer, Virgil, Milton, +Shakespeare, Spenser, and Tasso, are commemorated); the "Hymn to +Apollo;" the lines "To Hope" (in which there is a patriotic aspiration, +mingled with scorn for the gauds of a Court). "Calidore" has a certain +boyish ardour, clearly indicated if not well expressed. The verses "I +stood tiptoe upon a little hill" are very far from good, and are stuffed +with affectations, but do nevertheless show a considerable spice of the +real Keats. Some lines have already been quoted from this effusion, +about "flowery nests," and "the pillowy silkiness that rests full in the +speculation of the stars." It is only by an effort that we can attach +any meaning to either of these childish Della-Cruscanisms: the "pillowy +silkiness" may perhaps be clouds intermingled with stars, and the +"flowery nests" may, by a great wrenching of English, be meant for +"flowery nooks"--nests or nooks of flowers. "Sleep and Poetry" contains +various fine lines, telling and suggestive images, and luscious +descriptive snatches, and is interesting as showing the bent of the +writer's mind, and a sense of his mission begun. Serious metrical flaws +are perceptible in it here and there, and throughout this first volume +of verse--and indeed in "Endymion" as well. One metrical weakness of +which he never got rid is the accenting of the preterite or participial +form "ed" (in such words as "resolved," &c.), where its sound ekes out +with feeble stress the prosody of a line. Two songs which have genuine +lyric grace--dated in 1817, but not included in the volume of +"Poems"--are those which begin "Think not of it, sweet one, so," and +"Unfelt, unheard, unseen." The volume contains sixteen sonnets, besides +the grand one on "Chapman's Homer." The best are those which begin "Keen +fitful gusts are whispering here and there," and "Happy is England," and +the "Grasshopper and Cricket," which was written in competition with +Hunt. It seems to me that Keats's production has more of poetry, Hunt's +of finish. The sonnet "On leaving some friends at an early hour" is +characteristic enough. This is as much detail as need be given here to +the "Poems" of 1817. The sonnet on Chapman's Homer revealed a hand which +might easily prove to be a master's. All else was prentice-work, with +some melody, some richness and freshness, some independence, much +enthusiasm; also many solecisms and perversities of diction, imagery, +and method: and not a few pieces were included which only self-conceit, +or torpor of the critical faculty, or the mis-persuasion of friends, +could have allowed to pass muster. But Keats chose to publish--to +exhibit his poetic identity at this stage and in this guise; and of +course we can see, in the light of his after-work, that the experiment +was rather a rash forestalling than a positive mistake. + +There are a few other sonnets which Keats wrote in 1817, or, in general +terms, between the publishing dates of the "Poems" volume and of +"Endymion." Those "On a Picture of Leander," and "On the Sea," and the +one which begins "After dark vapours have oppressed our plains," rank +among the best of his juvenile productions. A general observation, +applicable to all the early work, whether printed at the time or +unprinted, is that the ideas are constantly _expressed_ in an imperfect +way. There are perceptions, thoughts, and emotions; but the vehicle of +words is, as a rule, huddled and approximate. + +"Endymion" now claims our attention. I believe that no better criticism +of "Endymion" has ever been written than that which Shelley supplied in +a letter dated in September 1819. Certainly no criticism which is +equally short is also equally good. I therefore extract it here, and +shall have little to say about the poem which is not potentially +condensed into Shelley's brief utterance. "I have read Keats's poem," he +wrote: "much praise is due to me for having read it, the author's +intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end +of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of +poetry; indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet +which is described in it. I think if he had printed about fifty pages of +fragments from it I should have been led to admire Keats as a poet more +than I ought, of which there is now no danger." In July 1820 Shelley +wrote to Keats himself on the subject, furnishing almost the only +addendum which could have been needed to the preceding remarks: "I have +lately read your 'Endymion' again, and even with a new sense of the +treasures of poetry it contains, though treasures poured forth with +indistinct profusion." As Shelley shared with Gifford the conviction +that it is difficult to read "Endymion" from book 1, line 1, to book 4, +line 1003, and as human nature has not changed essentially since the +time of that pre-eminent poet and that rather less eminent critic, I +daresay that there are at this day several Keats-enthusiasts who know +_in foro conscientiæ_, though they may not avow in public, that they +have left "Endymion" unread, or only partially read. Others have perused +it, but have found in it so much "indistinct profusion" that they also +remain after a while with rather a vague impression of the course of the +story; although they agree with Gifford, and even exceed him in the +assurance, that "it seems to be mythological, and probably relates to +the loves of Diana and Endymion." As the poem is an extremely important +one in relation to the life-work of Keats, I think it may not be out of +place if I here give a succinct account of what the narrative really +amounts to. This may be all the more desirable as Keats has not followed +the convenient if prosaic practice of several other epic poets by +prefixing to the several books of his long poem an "argument" of their +respective contents. + +_Book 1._ On a lawn within a forest upon a slope of Mount Latmos was +held one morning a festival to Pan. The young huntsman-chieftain +Endymion attended, but his demeanour betrayed a secret preoccupation +and trouble. After the rites were over, his sister Peona addressed him, +and gradually won him to open his heart to her. He told her that at a +certain spot by the river, one of his favourite haunts, he had lately +seen a sudden efflorescence of dittany and poppies (the flowers sacred +to Diana). He fell asleep there, and had a dream or vision of entering +the gates of heaven, seeing the moon in transcendent splendour, and then +being accosted by a woman or goddess lovely beyond words, who pressed +his hand. He seemed to faint, and to be upborne into the upper regions +of the sky, where he gave the beauty a rapturous kiss, and then they +both paused upon a mountain-side. Next he dreamed that he fell asleep. +This was the prelude to his actual waking out of the vision. Ever since +he had retained a mysterious sense that the dream had not been all a +dream. This was confirmed by various incidents of obscure suggestion, +and especially by his hearing in a cavern the words (we have read them +already, beslavered by the "human serpentry" of criticism, but they +remain delicious words none the less)-- + + "Endymion, the cave is secreter + Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir + No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise + Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys + And trembles through my labyrinthine hair." + +As nothing further, however, had happened, Endymion promised Peona that +he would henceforth cease to live a life of feverish expectation, and +would resume the calm tenor of his days. + +_Book 2._--Endymion's promise had not been strictly fulfilled; he was +still restless and craving. One day he plucked a rosebud: it suddenly +blossomed, and a butterfly emerged from it, with strangely-charactered +wings. He pursued the butterfly, which led him to a fountain by a +cavern, and then disappeared. A naiad thereupon addressed him, saying +that he must wander far before he could be reunited to his mystic fair +one. He then appealed to the moon-goddess for some aid, was rapt into a +dizzy vision as if he were sailing through heaven in her car, and heard +a voice from the cavern bidding him descend into the entrails of the +earth. He eagerly obeyed, and passed through a region of twilight +dimness starred with gems, until he reached a natural temple enshrining +a statue of Diana. An awful sense of solitude weighed upon him, and he +implored the goddess to restore him to his earthly home. A profusion of +flowers budded forth before his feet, followed by music as he resumed +his journey. At last he came to a verdant space, peopled with slumbering +Cupids. Here in a beautiful chamber he found Adonis lying tranced on a +couch, attended by other Cupids.[18] One of them gave him wine and +fruit, and explained to him the winter-sleep and summer-life of Adonis; +and at this moment Adonis woke up from his trance, and Venus came to +solace him with love. Venus spoke soothingly also to Endymion, telling +him that she knew of his love for some one of the immortals, but who +this was she had failed to fathom. She promised that one day he should +be blessed, and with Adonis she then rose heavenward in her car. The +earth closed, and Endymion gladly pursued his way through caves, jewels, +and water-springs. Cybele passed on her lion-drawn chariot. The diamond +path ended in middle air; Endymion invoked Jupiter, an eagle swooped and +bore him down through darkness into a mossy jasmine-bower. With a sense +of ecstasy, chequered by an unsatisfied longing for his unknown love, +Endymion prepared himself to sleep: + + "And, just into the air + Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss! + A naked waist. 'Fair Cupid, whence is this?' + A well-known voice sighed, 'Sweetest, here am I!'" + +The lovers indulged their passion in kisses and caresses; he urgent to +know who she might be, and she confessing herself a goddess hitherto +awful in loveless chastity, but not naming herself, though perhaps her +avowals were sufficiently indicative,[19] and she promised to exalt him +ere long to Olympus. The rapturous interview ended with the sleep of +Endymion, and awaking he found himself alone. He strayed out, and +reached an enormous grotto. Two springs of water gushed forth--the +springs of Arethusa and Alpheus, whose loves found voice in words. +Endymion, sending up a prayer for their union, stepped forward and found +himself beneath the sea. + +_Book 3._ Soothed by a moonbeam which greeted him through the waters, +Endymion pursued his course. Upon a rock within the sea he encountered +an old, old man, with wand and book. The ancient man started up as from +a trance, declaring that he should now be young again and happy. This +was Glaucus, who imparted to Endymion the story of his ill-omened love +for Scylla (it is told at considerable length, but need not be detailed +here), the witchcraft of Circe which had doomed him to a ghastly marine +life of a thousand years, and how, after a shipwreck, he came into +possession of a book of magic, which revealed to him that at some +far-off day a youth should make his appearance and break the accursed +spell. In Endymion, Glaucus recognized the predicted youth. Glaucus then +led Endymion to an edifice in which he had preserved the corpse of +Scylla, and thousands of other corpses, being those of lovers who had +been shipwrecked during his many cycles of sea-dwelling doom. Glaucus +tore his scroll into fragments, bound his cloak round Endymion, and +waved his wand nine times. He then instructed Endymion to unwind a +tangled thread, read the markings on a shell, break the wand against a +lyre, and strew the fragments of the scroll upon Glaucus himself, and +upon the dead bodies. As the final act was performed, Glaucus resumed +his youth, and Scylla and the drowned lovers returned to life. The whole +joyous company then rushed off, and paid their devotions to Neptune in +his palace. Cupid and Venus were also present here; and the goddess of +love spoke words of comfort to Endymion, assuring him that his long +expectancy would soon find its full reward. She had by this time probed +the secret of Diana, but she refrained from naming that deity to +Endymion. She invited him and his bride to pass a portion of their +honeymoon in Cythera,[20] with Adonis and Cupid. A stupendous festival +in Neptune's palace succeeded. Endymion finally sank down in a trance; +Nereids conveyed him up to a forest by a lake; and as he floated +earthwards he heard in dream words promising that his goddess would soon +waft him up into heaven. He awoke in the sylvan scene. + +_Book 4._ The first sound that Endymion heard was a female voice; the +wail of a damsel who had followed Bacchus from the banks of the Ganges, +and who longed to be at home again, if only to die there. Unseen +himself, he saw a beautiful girl, who lay bemoaning her loveless lot. He +at once felt that, if he adored his unknown goddess, he loved also his +Indian Bacchante. He sprang forward and declared his passion.[21] She, +after chaunting her long journeyings in the train of Bacchus, explained +that, being sick-hearted and weary, she had strayed away in the forest, +and was now but the votary of sorrow. Endymion continued to woo her with +sweet words and hot: he heard a dismal voice, "Woe to Endymion!" echoing +through the forest. Mercury descended and touched the ground with his +wand, and two winged horses sprang out of the earth. Endymion seated his +Bacchante upon one horse and mounted the other; they flew upward, +eagle-high. In the air they passed Sleep, who had heard a report that a +mortal was to wed a daughter of Jove, and who desired to hearken to the +marriage ditties before he returned to his cave. The influence of Sleep +made the winged horses drowse, and also Endymion and the Bacchante. +Endymion then dreamed of being in heaven, the mate of gods and +goddesses, Diana among them. In dream he sprang towards Diana, and so +awoke; but awake he still saw the same vision. Diana was there in +heaven; his Bacchante was beside him lying on the horse's pinions. He +kissed the Bacchante, and almost in the same breath protested to Diana +his unshaken constancy. The Bacchante then awoke. Endymion, dazed in +mind with his divided allegiance, urged her to be gone, and the winged +horses resumed their flight. They advanced towards the galaxy, the moon +peeped out of the sky, the Bacchante faded away in the moonbeams. Her +steed dropped down to the earth; while the one which bore Endymion +continued mounting upwards, and he again fell into a sort of trance. He +heard not the celestial messengers bespeaking guests to Diana's wedding. +The winged horse then carried Endymion down to a hill-top. Here once +more he found his beautiful Indian, and for her sake forswore all +præterhuman passion. She, however, declared to him that a divine terror +forbade her to be his. His sister Peona now re-appeared. She rallied him +and the Bacchante on their love and melancholy, both equally obvious, +and bade him attend at night a festival to Diana, whom the soothsayers +had pronounced to be in a mood peculiarly propitious. Endymion announced +his resolution to abandon the world, and live an eremitic life: Peona +and the fair Indian should both be his sisters. The Indian vowed +lifelong chastity, devoted to Diana. Both the women then retired. The +day passed over Endymion motionless and mute. At eventide he walked +towards the temple: he heeded not the hymning to Diana. Peona, +companioned by the Indian damsel, accosted him. He replied, "Sister, I +would have command, if it were heaven's will, on our sad fate." The +Indian replied that this he should assuredly have; as she spoke she +changed semblance, and stood revealed as Diana herself. She laid upon +her own fears and upon fate the blame of past delays, and told Endymion +that it had also been fitting that he should be spiritualized out of +mortality by some unlooked-for change. As Endymion kneeled and kissed +her hands, they both vanished away. The last words of the poem are-- + + "Peona went + Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment:" + +words which may perhaps be modelled upon the grave and subdued +conclusion of "Paradise Lost." + +This is a bald outline of the thread of story which meanders through +that often-skimmed, seldom-read, not easily readable poem--in snatches +alluring, in entirety disheartening--the "Endymion" of Keats. It will be +perceived that the poet keeps throughout tolerably close to his main and +professed subject matter--the loves of Diana and Endymion, although the +episode of Glaucus, which is brought within the compass of the amorous +quest, is certainly a very long and extraneous one. As we have seen, +Keats, when well advanced with this poem, spoke of it as a test of his +inventive faculty: and truly it is such, but I am not sure that his +inventive faculty has come extremely well out of the ordeal. The best +part which invention could take in such an attempt would be a vigorous, +sane, and adequate conception of the imaginable relation between a +loving goddess and her human lover; her emotion towards him, and his +emotion towards her; and his ultimate semi-spiritualized and semi-human +mode of existence in the divine conclave; along with a chain of +incidents--partly of mythologic tradition, partly the poet's own--which +should illustrate these essential elements of the legend, and take +possession of the reader's mind, for their own sake at the moment, and +for the sake of the main conception as ultimate result. Of all this we +find little in Keats's poem. Diana figures as a very willing woman, +passing out of the stage of maidenly coyness. Endymion talks indeed at +times of the exaltation of a passion transcending the bounds of +mortality, but his conduct and demeanour go little beyond those of an +adventurous lover of the knight-errant sort who, having taken the first +leap in the dark, follows where Fortune leads him--and assuredly she +leads him a very curious dance, where one cannot make out how his human +organism, with respirative and digestive processes, continues to exist. +Moreover, the last book of the poem spoils all that has preceded, so far +as continuity of feeling is concerned; for here we learn that no sooner +does Endymion see a pretty Indian Bacchante than he falls madly in love +with her, and casts to the winds every shred and thought of Diana, +already his bride or quasi-bride; she goes out like a cloud-veiled +glimpse of moonlight. True, the Bacchante is in fact Diana herself; but +of this Endymion knows nothing at all, and he deliberately--or rather +with fatuous precipitancy--gives up the glorious goddess for the +sentimental and beguiling wine-bibber. Diana, when she re-assumes her +proper person, has not a word of reproach to level at him. This may +possibly be true to the nature of a goddess--it is certainly not so to +that of a woman; and it is the only crisis at which she shows herself +different from womanhood--shall we say superior to it? + +In another and minor sense there is no lack of invention in this Poetic +Romance. So far as I know, there is nothing in Grecian mythology +furnishing a nucleus for the incidents of Endymion's descending into the +bowels of the earth, passing thence beneath the sea, meeting Glaucus, +and restoring to life the myriads of drowned lovers, encountering the +Indian Bacchante, and taking with her an aërial voyage upon winged +coursers. These incidents--except indeed that of the Bacchante--are +passing strange, and could not be worked out in a long narrative poem +without a lavish command of fanciful and surprising touches. The tale +of the aërial voyage seems abortive; its natural _raison d'être_ and +needful sequel would appear to be that Diana, having thus launched +Endymion along with herself into the heavenly regions, should bear him +straight onward to the high court of the gods; but, instead of that, the +horses and their riders return to earth, the air has been traversed to +no purpose and with no ostensible result, and Endymion is allowed again +to forswear Diana for the Bacchante before the consummation is reached. +Presumably Morpheus (Sleep) is responsible for this mishap. His untoward +presence in the sky sent the Bacchante, as well as Endymion, to sleep +for awhile: when they awoke, Diana had to leave the form of the +Bacchante, and, in her character of Phoebe, regulate the nascent moon; +though a goddess, she could not be in two places at once, and so the +winged horses descended _re infectâ_. This is an ingenious point of +incident enough; but it is just one of those points which indicate that +the poet's mind moved in a region of scintillating details rather than +of large and majestic contours. + +Such is in fact the quality of "Endymion" throughout. Everything is done +for the sake of variegation and embroidery of the original fabric; or we +might compare it to a richly-shot silk which, at every rustling +movement, catches the eye with a change of colour. Constant as they are, +the changes soon become fatiguing, and in effect monotonous; one colour, +varied with its natural light and shade, would be more restful to the +sight, and would even, in the long run, leave a sense of greater, +because more congruous and harmonized, variety. Luscious and luxuriant +in intention--for I cannot suppose that Keats aimed at being exalted or +ideal--the poem becomes mawkish in result: he said so himself, and we +need not hesitate to repeat it. Affectations, conceits, and puerilities, +abound, both in thought and in diction: however willing to be pleased, +the reader is often disconcerted and provoked. The number of clever +things said cleverly, of rich things richly, and of fine things finely, +is however abundant and superabundant; and no one who peruses "Endymion" +with a true sense for poetic endowment and handling can fail to see that +it is peculiarly the work of a poet. The versification, though far from +faultless, is free, surging, and melodious--one of the devices which the +author most constantly employs with a view to avoiding jogtrot +uniformity being that of beginning a new sentence with the second line +of a couplet. On every page the poet has enjoyed himself, and on most of +them the reader can joy as well. The lyrical interludes, especially the +hymn to Pan, and the chaunt of the Bacchante (which comprises a sort of +verse-transcript of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne"), are singularly +wealthy in that fancy which hovers between description and emotion. The +hymn to Pan was pronounced by Wordsworth, _vivâ voce_, to be "a pretty +piece of paganism"--a comment which annoyed Keats not a little. Shelley +(in his undispatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_) +pointed out, as particularly worthy of attention, the passages--"And +then the forest told it in a dream" (book ii.); "The rosy veils mantling +the East" (book iii.); and "Upon a weeded rock this old man sat" (book +iii.) The last--relating to Glaucus and his pictured cloak--is +certainly remarkable; the other two, I should say, not more remarkable +than scores of others--as indeed Shelley himself implied. + +To sum up, "Endymion" is an essentially poetical poem, which sins, and +greatly or even grossly does it sin, by youthful indiscipline and by +excess. To deny these blemishes would be childish--they are there, and +must be not only admitted, but resented. The faults, like the beauties, +of the poem, are positive--not negative or neutral. The work was in fact +(as Keats has already told us) a venture of an experimental kind. At the +age of twenty-one to twenty-two he had a mind full of poetic material; +he turned out his mind into this poetic romance, conscious that, if some +things came right, others would come wrong. We are the richer for his +rather overweening experiment; we are not to ignore its conditions, nor +its partial failure, but we have to thank him none the less. If "a thing +of beauty is a joy for ever," a thing of alloyed beauty is a joy in its +minor degree. + +The next long poem of Keats--"Isabella, or the Pot of Basil"--is a vast +advance on "Endymion" in sureness of hand and moderation of work: it is +in all respects the better poem, and justifies what Keats said (in his +letter of October 9, 1818, quoted in our Chapter v.) of the experience +which he was sure to gain by the adventurous plunge he had made in +"Endymion." Of course it was a less arduous attempt; the subject being +one of directly human passion, the story ready-furnished to him by +Boccaccio, and the narrative much briefer. Except in altering the +locality from Messina to Florence (a change which seems objectless), +Keats has adhered faithfully enough to the sweet and sad story of +Boccaccio; he has however amplified it much in detail, for the Italian +tale is a short one. "Isabella" has always been a favourite with the +readers of Keats, and deservedly so; it is tender, touching, and +picturesque. Yet I should not place it in the very first rank of the +poet's works--the treatment seems to me at once more ambitious and less +masculine than is needed. The writer seems too conscious that he has set +himself to narrating something pathetic; he tells the story _ab extra_, +and enlarges on "the pity of it," instead of leaving the pity to speak +to the heart out of the very circumstances themselves. The brothers may +have been "ledger-men" and "money-bags" (Boccaccio does not insist upon +any such phase of character), and they certainly became criminals, +though the Italian author treats their murder of Lorenzo as if it were a +sufficiently obvious act in vindication of the family honour; but, when +Keats "again asks aloud" why these commercial brothers were proud, he +seems to intrude upon us overmuch the personality of the narrator of a +tragic story, and pounds away at his text like a pulpiteer. This is only +one instance of the flaw which runs through the poem--that it is all +told as with a direct appeal to the reader to be sympathetic--indignant +now, and now compassionate. Leigh Hunt has pointed out the absurdity of +putting into the mouth of one of the brother "money-bags," just as they +are about to execute their plot for murdering Lorenzo, the lines (though +he praises the pretty conceit in itself)-- + + "Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count + His dewy rosary on the eglantine." + +The author's invocation to Melancholy, Music, Echo, Spirits in grief, +and Melpomene, to condole the approaching death of Isabella, seems to me +a _fadeur_ hardly more appropriate than the money-bag's epigram upon the +"dewy rosary." But the reader is probably tired of my qualifying clauses +for the admiration with which he regards "The Pot of Basil." He thinks +it both beautiful and pathetic--and so do I. + +"Isabella" is written in the octave stanza; "The Eve of St. Agnes" in +the Spenserean. This difference of metre corresponds very closely to the +difference of character between the two poems. "Isabella" is a narrative +poem of event and passion, in which the incidents are presented so as +chiefly to subserve purposes of sentiment; "The Eve of St. Agnes," +though it assumes a narrative form, is hardly a narrative, but rather a +monody of dreamy richness, a pictured and scenic presentment, which +sentiment again permeates and over-rules. I rate it far above +"Isabella"--and indeed above all those poems of Keats, not purely +lyrical, in which human or quasi-human agents bear their part, except +only the ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and the uncompleted "Eve of +St. Mark." "Hyperion" stands aloof in lonely majesty; but I think that, +in the long run, even "Hyperion" represents the genius of Keats less +adequately, and past question less characteristically, than "The Eve of +St. Agnes." The story of this fascinating poem is so meagre as to be +almost nugatory. There is nothing in it but this--that Keats took hold +of the superstition proper to St. Agnes' Eve, the power of a maiden to +see her absent lover under certain conditions, and added to it that a +lover, who was clandestinely present in this conjuncture of +circumstances, eloped with his mistress. This extreme tenuity of +constructive power in the poem, coupled with the rambling excursiveness +of "Endymion," and the futility of "The Cap and Bells," might be held to +indicate that Keats had very little head for framing a story--and indeed +I infer that, if he possessed any faculty in that direction, it remained +undeveloped up to the day of his death. One of the few subsidiary +incidents introduced into "The Eve of St. Agnes" is that the lover +Porphyro, on emerging from his hiding-place while his lady is asleep, +produces from a cupboard and marshals to sight a large assortment of +appetizing eatables. Why he did this no critic and no admirer has yet +been able to divine; and the incident is so trivial in itself, and is +made so much of for the purpose of verbal or metrical embellishment, as +to reinforce our persuasion that Keats's capacity for framing a story +out of successive details of a suggestive and self-consistent kind was +decidedly feeble. The power of "The Eve of St. Agnes" lies in a wholly +different direction. It lies in the delicate transfusion of sight and +emotion into sound; in making pictures out of words, or turning words +into pictures; of giving a visionary beauty to the closest items of +description; of holding all the materials of the poem in a long-drawn +suspense of music and reverie. "The Eve of St. Agnes" is _par +excellence_ the poem of "glamour." It means next to nothing; but means +that little so exquisitely, and in so rapt a mood of musing or of +trance, that it tells as an intellectual no less than a sensuous +restorative. Perhaps no reader has ever risen from "The Eve of St. +Agnes" dissatisfied. After a while he can question the grounds of his +satisfaction, and may possibly find them wanting; but he has only to +peruse the poem again, and the same spell is upon him. + +"The Eve of St. Mark" was begun at much the same date as "The Eve of St. +Agnes," rather the earlier of the two. Its relation to other poems by +the author is singular. In "Endymion" he had been a prodigal of +treasures--some of them genuine, others spurious; in "The Eve of St. +Agnes" he was at least opulent, a magnate superior to sumptuary laws; +but in "The Eve of St. Mark" he subsides into a delightful simplicity--a +simplicity full, certainly, of "favour and prettiness," but chary of +ornament. It comes perfectly natural to him, and promises the most +charming results. The non-completion of "The Eve of St. Mark" is the +greatest grievance of which the admirers of Keats have to complain. I +should suppose that, in the first instance, he advisedly postponed the +eve of one saint, Mark, to the eve of the other, Agnes; and that he did +not afterwards find a convenient opportunity for resuming the +uncompleted poem. The superstition connected with St. Mark's vigil is +not wholly unlike that pertaining to St. Agnes's. In the former instance +(I quote from Dante Rossetti), "it is believed that, if a person placed +himself near the church porch when twilight was thickening, he would +behold the apparition of those persons in the parish who were to be +seized with any severe disease that year go into the church. If they +remained there, it signified their death; if they came out again, it +portended their recovery; and, the longer or shorter the time they +remained in the building, the severer or less dangerous their illness." +The same writer, forecasting the probable course of the story,[22] +surmised that "the heroine, remorseful after trifling with a sick and +now absent lover, might make her way to the minster porch to learn his +fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not return." If +this was really to have been the sequel, we can perceive that the +unassuming simplicity of the poem at its commencement would, ere its +close, have deepened into a different sort of simplicity--emotional, and +even tragic. As it stands, the simplicity of "The Eve of St. Mark" is +full-blooded as well as quaint--there is nothing starved or threadbare +about it. Diverse though it is from Coleridge's "Christabel," we seem to +feel in it something of the like possessing or haunting quality, +modified by Keats's own distinctive genius. In this respect, and in +perfectness of touch, we link it with "La Belle Dame sans Merci." + +"Hyperion" has next to be considered. This was the only poem by Keats +which Shelley admired in an extreme degree. He wrote at different dates: +"The fragment called 'Hyperion' promises for him that he is destined to +become one of the first writers of the age.... It is certainly an +astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I +confess I had not before.... If the 'Hyperion' be not grand poetry, none +has been produced by our contemporaries.... The great proportion of this +piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry." Byron, who had +been particularly virulent against Keats during his lifetime, wrote +after his death a much more memorable phrase: "His fragment of +'Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as +Æschylus." Mr. Swinburne has written of the poem more at length, and +with carefully weighed words: + + "The triumph of 'Hyperion' is as nearly complete as the failure + of 'Endymion.' Yet Keats never gave such proof of a manly + devotion and rational sense of duty to his art as in his + resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; not (as we may + gather from his correspondence on the subject) for the pitiful + reason assigned by his publishers, that of discouragement at the + reception given to his former work, but on the solid and + reasonable ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very + scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign + influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length as was + implied by his original design. Fortified and purified as it had + been on a first revision, when much introductory allegory and + much tentative effusion of sonorous and superfluous verse had + been rigorously clipped down or pruned away, it could not long + have retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy body + of a subject so little charged with tangible significance." + +Mr. Swinburne is a critic with whom one may well be content to go +astray, if astray it is. I will therefore say that I entirely agree with +him in this estimate of "Hyperion," and of the sound discretion which +Keats exercised in giving it up. To deal with the gods of Olympus is no +easy task--it had decidedly overtaxed Keats in "Endymion," though he +limited himself to the two goddesses Diana and Venus, and casually the +gods Neptune and Mercury; but to deal with the elder gods--Saturn, Ops, +Hyperion--and with the Titans, on the scale of a long epic narration, is +a task which may well be pronounced unachievable. The Olympian gods +would also have had to be introduced: Apollo already appears in the +poem, not too promisingly. The elder gods are necessarily mere +figure-heads of bulk, might, majesty, and antiquity; to get any +character out of them after these "property" attributes have been +exhausted to the mind's eye, to "set them going" in act, and doing +something apportionable into cantos, and readable by human energies, was +not a problem which could be solved by a poet of the nineteenth century. +Past question, Keats started grandly, and has left us a monument of +Cyclopean architecture in verse almost impeccable--a Stonehenge of +reverberance; he has made us feel that his elder gods were profoundly +primæval, powers so august and abstract-natured as to have become +already obsolete in the days of Zeus and Hades: his Titans, too, were so +vast and muscular that no feat would have been difficult to them except +that of interesting us. This sufficed for the first book of the poem; in +the second book, the enterprise is already revealing itself as an +impossible one, for the council at which Oceanus and others speak is +reminiscent of the Pandæmonic council in Milton, and clearly very +inferior to that. It could not well help resembling the scene in +"Paradise Lost," nor yet help being inferior; besides, even were it +equal or preferable, Milton had done the thing first. The "large +utterance of the early gods," large though it be, tends to monotony. In +book iii., we go off to Mnemosyne and Apollo; but of this section little +remains, and we close the poem with a conviction that Keats, if he had +succeeded in writing "a _fragment_ as sublime as Æschylus," was both +prudent and fortunate in leaving it a fragment. To say that "Hyperion" +is after all a semi-artificial utterance of the grand would be harsh, +and ungrateful for so noble an effort of noble faculty; but to say that, +by being prolonged, its grandeur must infallibly have partaken more and +more of an artificial infusion, appears to me criticism entirely sound +and safe. + +Mr. Woodhouse has informed us: "The poem, if completed, would have +treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by +Apollo; and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by +Jupiter, &c., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's +re-establishment; with other events of which we have but very dark hints +in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome. In fact, the incidents +would have been pure creations of the poet's brain." Here again Keats +would have been partly forestalled by Milton: the combat of the Giants +with the Olympian gods must have borne a very appreciable resemblance to +the combat of Satan and his legions with the hosts of heaven. How far +Keats's "invention" would have sufficed to filling in this vast canvas +may be questioned. The precedent of "Endymion," in which he had +attempted something of the same kind, was not wholly encouraging. The +method and tone would of course have been very different; in what +remains of "Hyperion," the general current of diction is as severe as in +"Endymion" it had been florid. + +The other commencement of "Hyperion" (alluded to in my sixth chapter) +was a later version, done in November and December 1819; it presents a +great deal of poetic or scenic machinery in which the author's +personality was copiously introduced. This recast contains impressive +things; but the prominence given to the author as spectator or +participant of what he pictures forth was fulsome and fatal. Mr. +Swinburne is in error (along with most other writers) in supposing this +to be the earlier version of the two. + +The tragedy of "Otho the Great," written on a peculiar system of +collaboration to which I have already referred, succeeded "Hyperion." It +is a tragedy on the Elizabethan model, and we find in scene i. a curious +instance of Elizabethan contempt of chronology--a reference to +"Hungarian petards." The main factors in the plot are a fierce and +fervent love-passion of the man, and an unscrupulous ambition of the +woman, reddened with crime. Webster may perhaps have been taken by Keats +as his chief prototype. To call "Otho the Great" an excellent drama +would not be possible; but it can be read without tedium, and contains +vigorous passages, and lines and images moulded with a fine poetic +ardour. The action would be sufficient for stage-representation at a +time when an audience come prepared to like a play if it is good in +verse and strong in romantic emotion; under such conditions, while it +could not be a great success, it need not nevertheless fall manifestly +flat. Under any other conditions, such as those which prevail nowadays, +this tragedy would necessarily run no chance at all. In a copy of Keats +which belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti I find the following note of +his, which may bear extracting: "This repulsive yet powerful play is of +course in draft only. It is much less to be supposed that it would have +been left so imperfect than to be surmised, from its imperfection, how +very gradual the maturing of Keats's best work probably may have been. +It gives after all, perhaps, the strongest proof of _robustness_ that +Keats has left; and as a tragedy is scarcely more deficient than +'Endymion' as a poem. Both, viewed as wholes, are quite below Keats's +three masterpieces;[23] yet 'Otho,' as well as 'Endymion,' gives proof +of his finest powers." Another note from the same hand remarks: "The +character and conduct of Albert [the lover of Auranthe murdered to clear +the way for her ambition] are the finest point in the play." + +Of the later drama, "King Stephen," so little was written that I need +not dwell upon it here. + +"Lamia" was begun about the same time as "Otho the Great," but finished +afterwards. The influence of Dryden, under which it was composed, has +told strongly upon its versification, as marked especially in the very +free use of alexandrines--generally the third line of a triplet, +sometimes even the second line of a couplet. You might search "Endymion" +in vain for alexandrines; and I will admit that their frequency appears +to me to give an artificial tone to "Lamia." The view which Keats has +elected to take of his subject is worth considering. The heroine is a +serpent-woman, or a double-natured being who can change from serpent +into woman and _vice versâ_. In the female form she beguiles a young +student of philosophy, Lycius, lives with him in a splendid palace, and +finally celebrates their marriage-feast. The philosopher Apollonius +attends among the guests, perceives her to be "human serpentry," and, +gazing on her with ruthless fixity, he compels her and all her apparatus +of enchantment to vanish. This is the act for which (in lines partly +quoted in these pages) Keats arraigns philosophy, and its power of +stripping things bare of their illusions. No doubt a poet has a right to +treat a legend of this sort from such point of view as he likes; it is +for him, and not for his reader, to take the bull by the horns. But it +does look rather like taking the bull by the weaker horn to contend that +the philosopher who saves a youthful disciple from the wiles of a +serpent is condemnably prosaic--a grovelling spirit that denudes life of +its poetry. Conveniently for Keats's theory, Lycius is made to die +forthwith after the vanishing of his Lamia. If we invent a different +finale to the poem, and say that Lycius fell down on his knees, and +thanked Apollonius for saving him from such pestilent delusions and +perilous blandishments, and ever afterwards looked out for the cloven +tongue (if not the cloven hoof) when a pretty woman made advances to +him, we may perhaps come quite as near to a right construction of so +strange a series of events, and to the true moral of the story. But +Keats's championship was for the enjoying aspects of life; he may be +held to have exercised it here rather perversely. "Lamia" is one of his +completest and most finished pieces of writing--perhaps in this respect +superior to all his other long poems, if we except "Hyperion"; it closes +the roll of them with an affluence, even an excess, of sumptuous +adornment. "Lamia" leaves on the mental palate a rich flavour, if not an +absolutely healthy one. + +Passing from the long compositions, we find the cream of Keats's poetry +in the ballad of "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and in the five odes--"To +Psyche," "To Autumn," "On Melancholy," "To a Nightingale," and "On a +Grecian Urn." "La Belle Dame sans Merci" may possibly have been written +later than any of the odes, but this point is uncertain. I give it here +as marking the highest point of romantic imagination to which Keats +attained in dealing with human or quasi-human personages, and also his +highest level of simplicity along with completeness of art. + + "Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,[24] + Alone and palely loitering? + The sedge is withered from the lake, + And no birds sing. + + "Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, + So haggard and so woe-begone? + The squirrel's granary is full, + And the harvest's done. + + "I see a lily on thy brow, + With anguish moist and fever-dew; + And on thy cheeks a fading rose + Fast withereth too." + + "I met a lady in the meads, + Full beautiful, a faery's child; + Her hair was long, her foot was light, + And her eyes were wild. + + "I made a garland for her head, + And bracelets too, and fragrant zone: + She looked at me as she did love, + And made sweet moan. + + "I set her on my pacing steed, + And nothing else saw all day long; + For sideways would she lean and sing + A faery's song. + + "She found me roots of relish sweet, + And honey wild, and manna-dew; + And sure in language strange she said-- + 'I love thee true.' + + "She took me to her elfin grot, + And there she gazed and sighèd deep, + And there I shut her wild sad eyes-- + So kissed to sleep. + + "And there we slumbered on the moss, + And there I dreamed--ah woe betide!-- + The latest dream I ever dreamed + On the cold hill-side. + + "I saw pale kings and princes too, + Pale warriors--death-pale were they all; + They cried--'La Belle Dame sans Merci + Hath thee in thrall.' + + "I saw their starved lips in the gloam + With horrid warning gapèd wide; + And I awoke, and found me here + On the cold hill-side. + + "And this is why I sojourn here, + Alone and palely loitering; + Though the sedge is withered from the lake, + And no birds sing." + +This is a poem of _impression_. The impression is immediate, final, and +permanent; and words would be more than wasted upon pointing out to the +reader that such and such are the details which have conduced to impress +him. + +In the five odes there is naturally some diversity in the degrees of +excellence. I have given their titles above in the probable (not +certain) order of their composition. Considered intellectually, we might +form a kind of symphony out of them, and arrange it thus--1, "Grecian +Urn"; 2, "Psyche"; 3, "Autumn"; 4, "Melancholy"; 5, "Nightingale"; and, +if Keats had left us nothing else, we should have in this symphony an +almost complete picture of his poetic mind, only omitting, or +representing deficiently, that more instinctive sort of enjoyment which +partakes of gaiety. Viewing all these wondrous odes together, the +predominant quality which we trace in them is an extreme susceptibility +to delight, close-linked with afterthought--pleasure with pang--or that +poignant sense of ultimates, a sense delicious and harrowing, which +clasps the joy in sadness, and feasts upon the very sadness in joy. The +emotion throughout is the emotion of beauty: beauty intensely +perceived, intensely loved, questioned of its secret like the sphinx, +imperishable and eternal, yet haunted (as it were) by its own ghost, the +mortal throes of the human soul. As no poet had more capacity for +enjoyment than Keats, so none exceeded him in the luxury of sorrow. Few +also exceeded him in the sense of the one moment irretrievable; but this +conception in its fulness belongs to the region of morals yet more than +of sensation, and the spirit of Keats was almost an alien in the region +of morals. As he himself wrote (March 1818)-- + + "Oh never will the prize, + High reason, and the love of good and ill, + Be my award!" + +I think it will be well to cull out of these five odes--taken in the +symphonic order above noted--the phrases which constitute the strongest +chords of emotion and of music. + + (1) "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard + Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; + Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, + Pipe, to the spirit, ditties of no tone. + + "Human passion far above + That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, + A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. + + "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all + Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. + + (2) "Too late for antique vows, + Too too late for the fond believing lyre, + When holy were the haunted forest boughs, + Holy the air, the water, and the fire. + + "Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane + In some untrodden region of my mind, + Where branchèd thoughts new-grown with pleasant pain, + Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind. + + (3) "Where are the songs of spring--ay, where are they? + Think not of them: thou hast thy music too, + While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day, + And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. + + (4) "But, when the melancholy fit shall fall + Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, + That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, + And hides the green hill in an April shroud, + Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, + Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave. + + "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; + And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips + Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, + Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips + Ay, in the very temple of Delight + Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine. + + (5) "That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, + And with thee fade away into the forest dim: + Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget + What thou among the leaves hast never known, + The weariness, the fever, and the fret, + Here where men sit and hear each other groan; + Where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs; + Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies; + Where but to think is to be full of sorrow + And leaden-eyed despairs; + Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, + Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. + + "Darkling I listen: and for many a time + I have been half in love with easeful Death,-- + Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme + To take into the air my quiet breath. + Now more than ever seems it rich to die, + To cease upon the midnight with no pain, + While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad + In such an ecstasy. + + "The same that oft-times hath + Charmed magic casements opening on the foam + Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. + Forlorn! the very word is like a bell + To toll me back from thee to my sole self. + + "Was it a vision or a waking dream? + Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?" + +To one or two of these phrases a few words of comment may be given. That +axiom which concludes the "Ode on a Grecian Urn"-- + + "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all + Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," + +is perhaps the most important contribution to thought which the poetry +of Keats contains: it pairs with and transcends + + "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." + +I am not prepared to say whether Keats was the first writer to formulate +any axiom to this effect,--I should rather presume not; but at any rate +it comes with peculiar appropriateness in the writings of a poet who +might have varied the dictum of Iago, and said of himself + + "For I am nothing if not beautiful." + +In the Ode, the axiom is put forward as the message of the sculptured +Grecian Urn "to man," and is thus propounded as being of universal +application. It amounts to saying--"Any beauty which is not truthful (if +any such there be), and any truth which is not beautiful (if any such +there be), are of no practical importance to mankind in their mundane +condition: but in fact there are none such, for, to the human mind, +beauty and truth are one and the same thing." To debate this question on +abstract grounds is not in my province: all that I have to do is to +point out that Keats's perception and thought crystallized into this +axiom as the sum and substance of wisdom for man, and that he has +bequeathed it to us to ponder in itself, and to lay to heart as the +secret of his writings. Those other lines, from the "Ode on Melancholy," +where he says of Melancholy-- + + "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; + And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips + Bidding adieu"-- + +appear to me unsurpassable in the whole range of his poetry--as intense +in imagery as supreme in diction and in music. They pair with the other +celebrated verses from the "Ode to a Nightingale"-- + + "Now more then ever seems it rich to die, + To cease upon the midnight with no pain;" + +and-- + + "Charmed magic casements opening on the foam + Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn." + +The phrase "_rich_ to die" is of the very essence of Keats's emotion; +and the passage about "magic casements" shows a reach of expression +which might almost be called the Pillars of Hercules of human language. +Far greater things have been said by the greatest minds: but nothing +more perfect in form has been said--nothing wider in scale and closer in +utterance--by any mind of whatsoever pitch of greatness. + +And here we come to one of the most intrinsic properties of Keats's +poetry. He is a master of _imagination in verbal form_: he gifts us with +things so finely and magically said as to convey an imaginative +impression. The imagination may sometimes be in the substance of the +thought, as well as in its wording--as it is in the passage just quoted: +sometimes it resides essentially in the wording, out of which thought +expands in the reader, who is made + + "To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, + Awake for ever in a sweet unrest." + +From wealth of perception, at first confused or docked in the +expression, he rose into a height of verbal embodiment which has seldom +been equalled and seldomer exceeded. His conception of poetry as an +ideal, his sense of poetry as an art, spurred him on to artistic +achievement; and in the later stages of his work the character of the +Artist is that which marks him most strongly. As one of his own letters +says, he "looks upon fine phrases like a lover." + +According to Mr. Swinburne, "the faultless force and profound subtlety +of this deep and cunning instinct for the absolute expression of +absolute natural beauty is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or +power which denotes him as a poet among all his equals." We may safely +accept this verdict of poet upon poet as a true one: yet I should be +inclined to demur to such strong adjectives as "faultless" and +"absolute." Beautiful as several of them are, I might hesitate to say +that even one poem by Keats exhibits this his special characteristic in +a faultless degree, or expresses absolutely throughout a natural beauty +of absolute quality. To the last, he appears to me to have been somewhat +wanting in those faculties of selection and of discipline which we sum +up, by a rough-and-ready process, in the word "taste." He had done a +great deal in this direction, and would probably, with a few years more +of life, have done all that was needed; but we have to take him as he +stands, with those few years denied. Unless perhaps in "La Belle Dame +sans Merci," Keats has not, I think, come nearer to perfection than in +the "Ode to a Nightingale." It is with some trepidation that I recur to +this Ode, for the invidious purpose of testing its claim to be adjudged +"faultless," for in so doing I shall certainly lose the sympathy of some +readers, and strain the patience of many. The question, however, seems +to be a very fair one to raise, and the specimen a strong one to try it +by, and so I persevere. The first point of weakness--excess which +becomes weak in result--is a surfeit of mythological allusions: Lethe, +Dryad (the nightingale is turned into a "light-wingèd Dryad of the +trees"--which is as much as to say, a light-wingèd _Oak_-nymph of the +_trees_), Flora, Hippocrene, Bacchus, the Queen-moon (the Queen-moon +appears at first sight to be the classical Phoebe, who is here +"clustered around by all her starry Fays," spirits proper to a Northern +mythology; but possibly Keats thought more of a Faery-queen than of +Phoebe). Then comes the passage (already cited in these pages) about +the poet's wish for a draught of wine, to help him towards spiritual +commune with the nightingale. Some exquisite phrases in this passage +have endeared it to all readers of Keats; yet I cannot but regard it as +very foreign to the main subject-matter. Surely nobody wants wine as a +preparation for enjoying a nightingale's music, whether in a literal or +in a fanciful relation. Taken in detail, to call wine "the true, the +blushful Hippocrene"--the veritable fount of poetic inspiration--seems +both stilted and repulsive, and the phrase "with beaded bubbles winking +at the brim" is (though picturesque) trivial, in the same way as much of +Keats's earlier work. Far worse is the succeeding image, "Not charioted +by Bacchus and his pards"--_i.e._, not under the inspiration of wine: +the poet will fly to the nightingale, but not in a leopard-drawn +chariot. Further on, as if we had not already had enough of wine and its +associations, the coming musk-rose is described as "full of dewy +wine"--an expression of very dubious appositeness: and the like may be +said of "become a sod," in the sense of "become a corpse--earth to +earth." The renowned address-- + + "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! + No hungry generations tread thee down," + +seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a palpable +fact that this address, according to its place in the context, is a +logical solecism. While "Youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies," +while the poet would "become a sod" to the requiem sung by the +nightingale, the nightingale itself is pronounced immortal. But this +antithesis cannot stand the test of a moment's reflection. Man, as a +race, is as deathless, as superior to the tramp of hungry generations, +as is the nightingale as a race: while the nightingale as an individual +bird has a life not less fleeting, still more fleeting, than a man as an +individual. We have now arrived at the last stanza of the ode. Here the +term "deceiving elf," applied to "the fancy," sounds rather petty, and +in the nature of a make-rhyme: but this may possibly be a prejudice. + +Having thus--in the interest of my reader as a critical appraiser of +poetry--burned my fingers a little at the clear and perennial flame of +the "Ode to a Nightingale," I shall quit that superb composition, and +the whole quintett of odes, and shall proceed to other phases of my +subject. The "Ode to Indolence," and the fragment of an "Ode to Maia," +need not detain us; the former, however, is important as indicating a +mood of mind--too vaguely open to the influences of the moment for +either love, ambition, or poesy--to which we may well suppose that Keats +was sufficiently prone. The few poems which remain to be mentioned were +all printed posthumously. + +There are four addresses to Fanny Brawne, dating perhaps from early till +late in 1819; two of them are irregular lyrics, and two sonnets. The +best of the four is the sonnet, "The day is gone, and all its sweets are +gone," which counts indeed among the better sonnets of Keats. Taken +collectively, all four supply valuable evidence as to the poet's love +affair, confirmatory of what appears in his letters; they exhibit him +quelled by the thought of his mistress and her charms, and jealous of +her mixing in or enjoying the company of others. + +Keats wrote some half-hundred of sonnets altogether, some of them among +his very earliest and most trifling performances, others up to his +latest period, including the last of all his compositions. +Notwithstanding his marked growth in love of form, and his ultimate +surprising power of expression--both being qualities peculiarly germane +to this form of verse--his sonnets appear to me to be seldom masterly. A +certain freakishness of disposition, and liability to be led astray by +some point of detail into side-issues, mar the symmetry and +concentration of his work. Perhaps the sonnet on "Chapman's Homer," +early though it was, remains the best which he produced; it is at any +rate pre-eminent in singleness of thought, illustrated by a definite and +grand image. It has a true opening and a true climax, and a clear link +of inventive association between the thing mentally signified in chief, +and the modes of its concrete presentment. In points of this kind Keats +is seldom equally happy in his other sonnets; sometimes not happy at +all, but distinctly at fault. There is a second Homeric sonnet, +"Standing aloof in giant ignorance" (1818), which contains one line +which has been very highly praised, + + "There is a budding morrow in midnight:" + +but, regarded as a whole, it is a weakling in comparison with the +Chapman sonnet. The sonnets, "To Sleep" ("O soft embalmer of the still +midnight"), "Why did I laugh to-night?" and "On a Dream" ("As Hermes +once took to his feathers light")--all of them dated in 1819--are +remarkable; the third would indeed almost be excellent were it not for +the inadmissible laxity of an alexandrine last line. This is the sonnet +of which we have already spoken, the dream of Paolo and Francesca. The +"Why did I laugh to-night?" is a strange personal utterance, in which +the poet (not yet attacked by his mortal illness) exalts death above +verse, fame, and beauty, in the same mood of mind as in the lovely +passage of the "Ode to a Nightingale"; but the sonnet, considered as an +example of its own form of art, is too exclamatory and uncombined. + +There are several minor poems by Keats of which--though some of them are +extremely dear to his devotees--I have made no mention. Such are +"Teignmouth," "Where be you going, you Devon maid?" "Meg Merrilies," +"Walking in Scotland," "Staffa," "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," "Robin +Hood," "To Fancy," "To the Poets," "In a drear-nighted December," "Hush, +hush, tread softly," four "Faery Songs." Most of these pieces seem to me +over-rated. As a rule they have lyrical impulse, along with the +brightness or the tenderness which the subject bespeaks; but they are +slight in significance and in structure, pleasurable but not memorable +work. One enjoys them once and again, and then their office is over; +they have not in them that stuff which can be laid to heart, nor that +spherical unity and replenishment which can make of a mere snatch of +verse an inscription for the adamantine portal of time. + +The feeling with which Keats regarded women in real life has been +already spoken of. As to the tone of his poems respecting them we have +his own evidence. A letter of his to Armitage Brown, dated towards the +first days of September 1820, says, in reference to the "Lamia" volume: +"One of the causes, I understand from different quarters, of the +unpopularity of this new book, is the offence the ladies take at me. On +thinking that matter over, I am certain that I have said nothing in a +spirit to displease any woman I would care to please; but still there is +a tendency to class women in my books with roses and sweetmeats; they +never see themselves dominant." The long poems in the volume in question +were "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia." In +"Hyperion" women are of course not dominant; but, as regards the other +three poems, they are surely dominant enough in one sense. In "Isabella" +the heroine is the sole figure of prime importance--so also in "Lamia"; +and in the "Eve of St. Agnes" she counts for much more than Porphyro, +though the number of stanzas about her may be fewer. Nevertheless it +might be that the women in the three poems, though "dominant," are +"classed with roses and sweetmeats." I do not see, however, that this +can fairly be said of Madeline in the "Eve of St. Agnes"; she is made a +very charming and loveable figure, although she does nothing very +particular except to undress without looking behind her, and to elope. +Again, Isabella, amenable as she may be to the censure of the severely +virtuous, plays a part which takes her very considerably out of affinity +to roses and sweetmeats. To Lamia the objection applies clearly enough; +but then she is not exactly a woman, and Keats resents so fiercely the +far from indefensible line of conduct which Apollonius adopts in +relation to her that it seems hard if the ladies owed the poet a grudge. +On the whole I incline to think that they must have been misreported; +but the statement in Keats's letter remains not the less significant as +a symptom of his real underlying feeling about women. + +It has often been pointed out that Keats's lovers have a habit of +"swooning," and the fact has sometimes been remarked upon as evidencing +a certain want of virility in himself. I cannot affect to be, so far, of +a different opinion. The incident and the phrase do manifestly tend to +the namby-pamby. This may have been more a matter of affected or +self-willed diction on his part--and diction of that kind appears +constantly in his earlier poems, and not seldom in his later ones--than +of actual character chargeable against himself; yet I would not entirely +disregard it in the latter relation either. Keats was a very young man, +with a limited experience of life. He had to picture to himself how his +lovers would be likely to behave under given conditions; and, if he +thought they would be likely to swoon, the probability is that he also, +under parallel conditions, would have been likely to swoon--or at least +supposed he would be likely. Because he thrashed a butcher-boy, or was +indignant at backbiting and meanness, we are not to credit him with an +unmingled fund of that toughness which distinguishes the English middle +class. The English middle-class man is not habitually addicted to +writing an "Endymion," an "Eve of St. Agnes," or an "Ode on +Melancholy." + +Sensuousness has been frequently defined as the paramount bias of +Keats's poetic genius. This is, in large measure, unassailably true. He +was a man of perception rather than of contemplation or speculation. +Perception has to do with perceptible things; perceptible things must be +objects of sense, and the mind which dwells on objects of sense must +_ipso facto_ be a mind of the sensuous order. But the mind which is +mainly sensuous by direct action may also work by reflex action, and +pass from sensuousness into sentiment. It cannot fairly be denied that +Keats's mind continually did this; it had direct action potently, and +reflex action amply. He saw so far and so keenly into the sensuous as to +be penetrated with the sentiment which, to a healthy and large nature, +is its inseparable outcome. We might say that, if the sensuous was his +atmosphere, the breathing apparatus with which he respired it was +sentiment. In his best work--for instance, in all the great odes--the +two things are so intimately combined that the reader can only savour +the sensuous nucleus through the sentiment, its medium or vehicle. One +of the most compendious and elegant phrases in which the genius of Keats +has been defined is that of Leigh Hunt: "He never beheld an oak tree +without seeing the Dryad." In immediate meaning Hunt glances here at the +mythical sympathy or personifying imagination of the poet; but, if we +accept the phrase as applying to the sensuous object-painting, along +with its ideal aroma or suggestion in his finest work, we shall still +find it full of right significance. We need not dwell upon other less +mature performances in which the two things are less closely interfused. +Certainly some of his work is merely, and some even crudely, sensuous: +but this is work in which the poet was trying his materials and his +powers, and rising towards mastery of his real faculty and ultimate +function. + +While discriminating between what was excellent in Keats, and what was +not excellent, or was merely tentative in the direction of final +excellence, we must not confuse endowments, or the homage which is due +to endowments, of a radically different order. Many readers, and there +have been among them several men highly qualified to pronounce, have set +Keats beside his great contemporary Shelley, and indeed above him. I +cannot do this. To me it seems that the primary gift of Shelley, the +spirit in which he exercised it, the objects upon which he exercised it, +the detail and the sum of his achievement, the actual produce in +appraisable work done, the influence and energy of the work in the +future, were all superior to those of Keats, and even superior beyond +any reasonable terms of comparison. If Shelley's poems had +defects--which they indisputably had--Keats's poems also had defects. +After all that can be said in their praise--and this should be said in +the most generous or rather grateful and thankful spirit--it seems to me +true that not many of Keats's poems are highly admirable; that most of +them, amid all their beauty, have an adolescent and frequently a morbid +tone, marking want of manful thew and sinew and of mental balance; that +he is not seldom obscure, chiefly through indifference to the thought +itself and its necessary means of development; that he is emotional +without substance, and beautiful without control; and that personalism +of a wilful and fitful kind pervades the mass of his handiwork. We have +already seen, however, that there is a certain not inconsiderable +proportion of his poems to which these exceptions do not apply, or apply +only with greatly diminished force; and, as a last expression of our +large and abiding debt to him and to his well-loved memory, we recur to +his own words, and say that he has given us many a "thing of beauty," +which will remain "a joy for ever." By his early death he was doomed to +be the poet of youthfulness; by being the poet of youthfulness he was +privileged to become and to remain enduringly the poet of rapt +expectation and passionate delight. + + +THE END. + + + + +INDEX. + + +A. + + Abbey, Guardian of Keats, 17, 19, 20, 29, 37, 39 + + "Adonais," by Shelley, 39, 90, 98, 170 + + Æschylus, 186 + + "Agnes, The Eve of St.," 107, 138; + critical estimate of the poem, 182-184; 190, 206 + + "Alastor," by Shelley, 82 + + "Annals of the Fine Arts," 110 + + Ariosto, 113 + + _Asclepiad, The_, 24 + + _Athenæum, The_, 23 + + "Autumn, Ode to," by Keats, 109, 192, 194 + + +B. + + Bailey, Archdeacon Benjamin, 23, 77, 78, 112, 123; + his description of Keats, 124; 130, 133, 141, 142, 145, 158, 159 + + "Belle Dame (La) sans Merci," by Keats, 112, 182, 185, 190; + quoted, 192, &c.; 200 + + Benjamin, Nathan, 157 + + Bion, Idyll on "Adonis," by, 170 + + Blackwood, William, 91 + + _Blackwood's Magazine_, 90; + articles in by Z, on The Cockney School of Poetry, 91; 92, 93, 95, 97, + 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 153 + + Boccaccio's "Decameron," 107, 180, 181 + + Boileau, 70 + + Bojardo's "Orlando Innamorato," 114 + + Brawne, Fanny, engaged to Keats, 30, 32; + Keats's description of her, 33; 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 45; + Keats's love-letters to her, 45-46, &c.; 53, 57, 60, 62, 102; + her marriage to Mr. Lindon, 121; 130, 141, 143, 146, 147, 158, 160; + poems to, 202 + + Brawne, Mrs., 29, 34, 36, 60, 61, 143 + + Brown, Charles Armitage, friend of Keats, 25; + Keats's verses on, 26; 27, 28, 29, 33, 38, 39, 41, + 42, 43, 46, 48, 53; + letter from Keats to, 55-56, 59, 108, 111, 112, 114, 116, 119; + his death, 120; 136, 156, 157, 160, 206 + + Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," 108 + + Byron, Lord, 32, 102, 103, 105, 125, 128, 185 + + Byron's "Don Juan," 58 + + +C. + + Caius Cestius, 118 + + "Calidore," by Keats, 65, 165 + + "Cap and Bells, The," by Keats, 113, 183 + + "Caviare" (pseudonym of Keats), 112 + + "Cenci, The," by Shelley, 123 + + _Champion, The_, 115 + + "Chapman's Homer," sonnet by Keats, 66, 69, 165, 166, 203 + + Chartier, Alain, 112 + + Chatterton, 67, 68 + + Chaucer, 112 + + Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, picture by Haydon, 21, 36, 43, + 126, 158 + + "Christmas Eve," sonnet by Keats, quoted, 157 + + Clark, Mrs., 60 + + Clark, Sir James, 59, 60 + + Clarke, Charles Cowden, preceptor and friend of Keats, 14, 18, 19, + 20, 25, 65, 66; + his "Recollections," 102; 104, 125, 126, 129, 140, 148 + + Clarke, Epistle to, by Keats, 67, 68 + + Clarke, Rev. John, Keats's schoolmaster, 14 + + Coleridge, 25, 151, 164 + + Coleridge's "Christabel," 185 + + Colman, 156 + + Colvin's, Mr., "Life of Keats," 9, 35, 42 + + "Comus," by Milton, 115 + + Cox, Miss Jane ["Charmian"], 30, 31, 32, 34, 143, 146 + + Cripps, 133 + + +D. + + Dante, 112, 113 + + Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 23, 27, 29, 34, 39, 51, 53, 58, 103, + 115, 120, 131, 133, 142, 150, 156, 160 + + Dilke, Mrs., 28 + + "Dream, A," sonnet by Keats, 112, 204 + + Dryden, 70, 108, 190 + + Duncan, Admiral, 16 + + +E. + + _Edinburgh Review_, 109, 117 + + Edouart, 35 + + "Endymion," by Keats, 23, 24, 25, 54, 67, 72; + details as to the composition of, 76; + preface to, 79, 80; + criticism upon in _The Quarterly Review_, 83; + Keats's feeling as to this and other criticisms, 91-106; 107, + 108, 109, 122, 130, 137, 139, 141, 149, 152, 166; + Shelley's opinion of, 167; + summary of the poem, 168-175; + critical estimate of it, 176-180; 182, 186, 188, 189, 190 + + _Examiner, The_, 21, 68, 100 + + Eyre, Sir Vincent, 119 + + +F. + + "Fancy, The," by Reynolds, 22 + + Finch, Colonel, 39, 98 + + "Florence, The Garden of," by Reynolds, 22, 107 + + Forman, Mr. H. Buxton, 18, 25, 33, 34, 35, 52, 123 + + +G. + + _Gentleman's Magazine, The_, 102 + + George IV., 21, 114 + + Gifford, William, 83, 95, 168 + + Girometti, 128 + + Gisborne, Mrs., 44, 98 + + Grafty, Mrs., 64 + + "Grasshopper and Cricket, The," sonnets by Keats and Hunt, 166 + + "Grecian Urn, Ode on a," by Keats, 109, 110, 192, 194-198 + + Guido, 155 + + +H. + + Hammond, Surgeon, 18, 19 + + Haslam, William, 54 + + Haydn, 148 + + Haydon, Benjamin Robert, the painter, friend of John Keats, 13, 16, + 18, 21, 36, 37, 44; + his last interview with Keats, 54, 55, 64, 69, 76, 78, 99; + his view as to Keats's feeling regarding critical attacks, 100, &c.; + 105, 110, 123, 126, 127, 128, 132, 133; + his view of Keats's character, 134-135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, + 142, 150, 152, 153, 155, 158 + + Hazlitt, 116, 152 + + Hilton, 128 + + Holmes, Edward, 54 + + Homer, 165 + + Hood, Mrs. (Miss Reynolds), 23 + + Hood, Thomas, 23 + + Hooker, Bishop, 32 + + Houghton, Lord, 41, 42, 58, 99, 114, 119, 125, 132, 136, 139 + + Howard, John, 32 + + Hunt, John, 20 + + Hunt, Leigh, 20, 21, 25, 44, 59, 66-69, 77, 83, 84, 85, 89-92, + 97, 98, 100; + his view as to Keats's sensitiveness to criticism, 102; 110, + 112, 114, 121, 122, 123; + his description of Keats, 124; 125, 131, 134, 141, 142, 148, + 150, 156, 158, 164, 166, 181, 207 + + Hunt, Leigh, dedicatory sonnet to, by Keats, 66 + + Hunt, Leigh, leaving prison, sonnet by Keats, 66 + + Hunt, Mrs., 44 + + Hunt, Thornton, 44 + + "Hyperion," by Keats, 96, 97, 107, 108, 113, 137, 182; + critical estimate of the poem, 185-189; + recast of, 189; 190, 192, 206 + + +I. + + "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill," poem by Keats, 67; + extract from, 74; 165 + + _Indicator, The_, 112, 114 + + "Indolence, Ode to," by Keats, 202 + + "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil," by Keats, 95, 107, 138; + critical estimate of the poem, 180-182; 206 + + "Islam, The Revolt of," by Shelley, 77, 82, 123 + + +J. + + J. S., 93, 94 + + Jeffrey, Lord, 109 + + Jeffrey, Mr., 120 + + Jennings, grandfather of Keats, 12, 37 + + Jennings, Captain, 16 + + Jennings, Mrs., 16 + + "Joseph and his Brethren," by Wells, 23 + + +K. + + Kean as Richard Duke of York, + critique by Keats, 93, 115 + + Kean, Edmund, 112 + + Keats, Fanny, sister of the poet, 13, 29, 38, 43, 45, 57, 62, + 120, 121, 129, 148 + + Keats, Frances, mother of the poet, 12; + her death, 16; 25, 126 + + Keats, George, brother of the poet, 13, 15, 18, 19, 25, 27, 30, + 32, 37, 38, 64, 71, 95, 98; + his view as to John Keats's sensitiveness to criticism, 103; 111, + 119, 120, 126, 136, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 155, 159, 160 + + Keats, George, Epistle to, by John Keats, 67, 68 + + Keats, John, his parentage, 12; + his birth in London, October 31, 1795, 13; + anecdote of his childhood, 13; + goes to the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield, 14; + his studies, pugnacity, &c., 15; + death of his parents, 16; + apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond, 18; + leaves Hammond, and walks the hospitals, 18, 19; + reads Spenser's "Faery Queen," and drops surgical study, 20; + makes acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, Haydon, and others, 20, 21, 22; + his first volume, Poems, 1817, 22; + writes "Endymion," 23; + his health suffers in Oxford, 24; + anecdotes (Coleridge, &c.), 25; + makes a pedestrian tour in Scotland &c. with + Charles Armitage Brown, 25-29; + takes leave of his brother George and his wife, 27; + his brother Tom dies, 29; + lodges with Brown at Hampstead, 29; + meets Miss Cox ("Charmian") and Miss Brawne, and falls in love + with the latter, 30-35; + their engagement, 36; + his friendship towards Haydon cools, 36, 37; + at Shanklin and Winchester, 37, 38; + sees his brother George again, and is left by him in pecuniary + straits, 38, 39; + the painful circumstances of his closing months, owing to illness, + his love affair, and the depreciation of his poems, 40, 41; + beginning of his consumptive illness, 41, 42; + removes to Kentish Town, 43, 44; + returns to Mrs. Brawne's house at Hampstead, 45; + his love-letters, 45-54; + travels to Italy with Joseph Severn, 54-59; + Severn's account of his last days in Rome, 60, 61; + his death there, February 23, 1821, 62, 63; + his early turn for mere rhyming, 64; + his early writings, and first volume, 65, 69; + diatribe against Boileau, and poets of that school, 70; + the publishers relinquish sale of the volume, 72; + "Endymion," and passage from an early poem forecasting + this attempt, 73-76; + details as to composition of "Endymion," 76-79; + prefaces to the poem, 79-83; + adverse critique in _The Quarterly Review_, 83-91; + question debated whether this and other attacks affected Keats + deeply, 91-97; + statements by Shelley, 97; + and by Haydon, 99; + other evidence, 102; + conclusion as to this point, 105; + Keats writes "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and + "Hyperion," 107; + "Lamia," 108; + and publishes the volume containing these poems, 1820, 108; + other poems in the volume, 109; + posthumous poems of Keats, "The Eve of St. Mark," "Otho the Great," + "The Cap and Bells," &c., 110-115; + his letters and other prose writings, 115-117; + Keats's burial-place, 118-119; + projects for writing his life, accomplished finally by + Lord Houghton, 119; + his relations with Hunt, Shelley, and others, 121-123; + Keats's small stature and personal appearance, 124-126; + the portraits of him, 126-129; + difficulty of clearly estimating his character, 129; + his poetic ambition and intensity of thought, 130, 131; + his moral tone, 132; + his character ("no decision" &c.,) estimated by Haydon, 133-139; + Lord Houghton's account of his manner in society, 139; + his suspiciousness, 141; + and dislike of mankind, 142; + his feeling towards women, 143-146; + and towards Miss Brawne, 147, 148; + his habits, opinions, likings, &c., 148-155; + humour and jocularity, 155-157; + negative turn in religious matters, 157-160; + wine and diet, 160, 161; + conclusion as to his character, 161, 162; + his early tone in poetry, 164; + critical estimate of his first volume, Poems, 1817, 165-166; + of "Endymion," 167, 168; + narrative of this poem, 168-175; + defects and beauties of "Endymion," 176-180; + critical estimate of "Isabella," 180; + "Eve of St. Agnes," 182; + "Eve of St. Mark," 184; + "Hyperion," 185; + "Otho the Great," 189; + "Lamia," 190; + "Belle Dame sans Merci" (quoted), 192; + the five chief Odes, 194; + analysis of the "Ode to a Nightingale," 200; + various posthumous lyrics, sonnets, &c., 202; + Keats's feeling towards women, as developed in his poems, 205; + "swooning," 206; + sensuousness and sentiment, 207; + comparison between Keats and Shelley, and final remarks, 208 + + Keats, Mrs. George, 27, 32, 95, 120 + + Keats, Thomas, father of the poet, 12; + his death, 16; 126 + + Keats, Thomas, brother of the poet, 13, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25, 28; + his death, 29; 37, 38, 39, 121, 135, 159, 160 + + "King Stephen," by Keats, 73, 112, 190 + + Kotzebue, 150 + + +L. + + Lamb, Charles, 78, 150 + + Lamb, Dr., 44 + + "Lamia," by Keats, 108, 138, 151, 160; + critical estimate of the poem, 190, &c.; 206 + + "Lamia, and other Poems," by Keats (1820), 44, 97, 103, 108, + 109, 110, 206 + + Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 61 + + Lemprière's "Classical Dictionary," 15 + + Lindon, Mrs. (_see_ Brawne, Fanny) + + Llanos, 121 + + Lockhart, 91 + + Lucas, 19 + + Lucy Vaughan Lloyd (pseudonym of Keats), 114 + + Lyrics (various) by Keats, 204 + + +M. + + Mackereth, George Wilson, 19 + + "Maia, Ode to," by Keats, 202 + + "Mark, Eve of St.," by Keats, 52, 110, 182; + critical estimate of the poem, 184-185; 190 + + Marmontel's "Incas of Peru," 15 + + Mathew, George Felton, Epistle to, by Keats, 67; 157 + + Medwin's "Life of Shelley," 34 + + "Melancholy, Ode on," by Keats, 109, 192, 194-199 + + Milton, 107, 135, 147, 159, 165, 186, 188 + + "Miserrimus," by Reynolds, 23 + + Mitford, Miss, 101, 135 + + Moore, Thomas, 165 + + _Morning Chronicle, The_, 93 + + Murray, John, 102 + + +N. + + Napoleon I., 32 + + "Narensky," opera by C. A. Brown, 27 + + Newton, Sir Isaac, 151 + + "Nightingale, Ode to a," by Keats, 103, 109, 160, 192, 194-202; + analysed, 200-202; 204 + + "Nile," Sonnets on the, by Keats, &c.; 110 + + +O. + + Ollier, Charles, 21, 71 + + "Otho the Great," by Keats, 38, 111, 112; + critical estimate of, 189 + + +P. + + "Paradise Lost," 108, 175, 187 + + "Paradise Lost," Notes on, by Keats, 115 + + Philostratus's "Life of Apollonius," 108 + + "Poems" (1817), by Keats, 23, 66; + letter regarding this volume, by the publishers, 72; 122, 164-167 + + Pope, 70 + + Procter, Mrs., 125, 126 + + Purcell, 148 + + "Psyche, Ode to," by Keats, 109, 192, 194-199 + + +Q. + + _Quarterly Review, The_, 83; + its critique of "Endymion" extracted, 83-91; 93, 95, 96, 97, + 98, 99, 102, 104, 153, 179 + + "Quixote, Don," 120 + + +R. + + R. B., 93 + + Raphael, 155 + + Rawlings, William, 16 + + Reynolds, John Hamilton, 22, 79, 95, 107, 115, 128, 156 + + Reynolds, Misses, 30, 31, 142, 145, 148 + + Reynolds, Mrs., 31 + + Rice, James, 38, 41, 147 + + Richardson, Dr., 25 + + Ritchie, 78 + + Robinson Crusoe, 15 + + Robinson, H. Crabb, 104 + + Rossetti, Dante G., 52, 184, 185, 190 + + +S. + + Sandt, 150 + + Scott, Sir Walter, 91, 100 + + Severn, Joseph, 39; + leaves England with Keats for Italy, 54; 59; + his narrative of Keats's last days, 60, &c.; 104, 118, 119, 125; + his portraits of Keats, 127-129; 139, 143, 147, 148 + + Shakespeare (Macbeth), 15; + (Hamlet), 52; 93, 114, 135, 147; + (King Lear), 151; 155, 165 + + Shakespeare, Notes on, by Keats, 115 + + Shakespeare's sonnets, Book on, by C. A. Brown, 27 + + Sharpey, Dr., 30 + + Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 39, 58, 59, 71, 77, 82, 91, 96; + his references to "Endymion," and _The Quarterly + Review_, 97-99; 102, 110, 119, 123, 125, 141, 147, + 167, 179, 180, 185; + comparison between Shelley and Keats, 208 + + "Sleep and Poetry," by Keats, 67, 69; + extract from, 70; 165 + + Smith, Horace, 68 + + Snook, 56 + + Sonnet by Keats ("Bright Star," &c.), 114 + + Sonnets (various) by Keats, 164, 167, 203, &c. + + Spence's "Polymetis," 15 + + Spenser, Edmund, 66, 164, 165 + + Spenser's Cave of Despair, picture by Severn, 55 + + Spenser's "Faery Queen," 20, 149 + + "Spenser, Imitation of," by Keats, 64 + + Stephens, Henry, 19, 78, 132, 147 + + "Stories after Nature," by Wells, 23 + + Swinburne, Mr. (on "Hyperion"), 186; 189, 199 + + +T. + + Tasso, 165 + + Taylor and Hessey, 23, 72, 76, 78, 83, 93, 96, 109, 120, 128, + 140, 146, 149, 152 + + Terry, 100 + + Thomson, James, 70 + + Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," 179 + + Tooke's "Pantheon," 15 + + Torlonia, 61 + + +V. + + Virgil, 165 + + Virgil's Æneid, 15, 20 + + Voltaire, 158 + + +W. + + Webb, Cornelius, 92 + + Webster, 189 + + Wells, Charles, 23 + + Wilson, John, 91 + + "Woman, when I behold thee" &c., poem by Keats, quoted, 143 + + Wood, Warrington, 119 + + Woodhouse, Richard, 94, 149, 153, 188 + + Wordsworth, 21, 78; ("The Excursion,") 152; 153, 156, 164, 179 + + +Z. + + Z (probably Lockhart), 91, 92, 100. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY. + +BY + +JOHN P. ANDERSON + +(British Museum). + + + I. Works. + II. Poetical Works. + III. Single Works. + IV. Letters, etc. + V. Miscellaneous. + VI. Appendix-- + Biography, Criticism, etc. + Magazine Articles. + VII. Chronological List of Works. + + + +I. WORKS. + +The Poetical Works and other Writings of John Keats, now first brought +together, including poems and numerous letters not before published. +Edited, with notes and appendices, by H. B. Forman. 4 vols. London, +1883, 8vo. + +The Letters of John Keats. Edited by J. G. Speed. (The Poems of +J. Keats, with the annotations of Lord Houghton, and a memoir by +J. G. Speed.) 3 vols. New York, 1883, 8vo. + + A number of letters now included in this work were first + published in the New York _World_ of June 25-6, 1877, and + afterwards reprinted in the _Academy_, vol. xii., 1877, + pp. 38-40, 65-67. + + +II. POETICAL WORKS. + +The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. In one volume. +Paris, 1829, 8vo. + + John Keats (including Memoir), i.-vii. and 1-75. + +Standard Library. The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1840, 8vo. + + The first _collected_ edition of Keats's Works. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1840, 8vo. + + With an engraved frontispiece from the portrait in chalk + by Hilton. This book, although dated 1840, was not issued + until the following year. The frontispiece is dated + correctly. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1841, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. A new edition. London, 1851, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With Memoir by R. M. Milnes [Lord Houghton]. +Illustrated by a portrait and 120 designs by George Scharf, Jun. London, +1854, 8vo. + + A small number of copies were struck off upon large + paper. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With a life [signed J. R. L.--_i.e._, James +Russell Lowell]. Boston [U.S.], 1854, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With a Memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes +[Lord Houghton]. A new edition. London, 1861, 8vo. + + Upon the reverse of the half-title to the "Memoir" is a + wood-cut profile of Keats. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W. M. +Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1872], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with an introductory memoir and +illustrations, by William B. Scott. London [1873], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With a memoir by James Russell Lowell. +Portrait and 10 illustrations. New York, 1873, 8vo. + + The Memoir was afterwards reprinted in "Among my Books," + second series, 1876, pp. 303-327. + +The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted from the early editions, with +memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (_Chandos Classics._) London [1874], +8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Chronologically arranged and edited, with a +memoir, by Lord Houghton. (_Aldine Edition._) London, 1876, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of Coleridge and Keats, with a memoir of each. +(_Riverside Edition._) 4 vols. in 2. New York, 1878, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. London [1878], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with an introductory memoir, by +W. B. Scott. (_Excelsior Series._) London [1880], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W. M. +Rossetti. [Portrait, fac-simile, and six illustrations by Thomas +Seccombe.] (_Moxon's Popular Poets._) London [1880], 8vo. + + The same as the edition of 1872. The Memoir was reprinted + in "Lives of Famous Poets." + +The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted from the original editions, with +notes, by F. T. Palgrave. (_Golden Treasury Series._) London, 1884, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited by W. T. Arnold. London, 1884, 8vo. + + There was a large paper edition, consisting of fifty + copies, numbered and signed. + +The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by H. B. Forman. London, 1884, +8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With an introductory sketch by John Hogben. +(_Canterbury Poets._) London, 1885, 8vo. + + +III. SINGLE WORKS. + +Poems, by John Keats. London, 1817, 16mo. + + The Museum copy contains a MS. note by F. Locker. + +Endymion; a Poetic Romance. By J. K. London, 1818, 8vo. + +Endymion. Illustrated by F. Joubert. From paintings by E. J. Poynter. +London, 1873, fol. + +The Eve of St. Agnes. By J. K. With 20 illustrations by E. H. Wehnert. +London, 1856, 8vo. + +The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated by E. H. Wehnert. London [1875], 8vo. + +The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated by nineteen etchings by Charles O. +Murray. London, 1830, fol. + +The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. Illustrated. Boston [U.S.], 1876, +24mo. + +Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society. London, 1856-7, 8vo. + + Vol. iii. contains "Another version of Keats's _Hyperion, + a Vision_," edited, with an introduction, by R. M. Milnes + (Lord Houghton). + +Keatsii Hyperionis. Libri i-ii. Latine reddidit Carolus Merivale. +Cambridge, 1862, 8vo. + +Keats's Hyperion. Book I. With notes [life and introduction]. London +[1877], 8vo. + +Keats's Hyperion. Book I. With introduction, elucidatory notes, and an +appendix of exercises. London [1878], 8vo. + +Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. By J. K. London, +1820, 12mo. + +Lamia. With illustrative designs by W. H. Low. Philadelphia, 1885, fol. + +Ode to a Nightingale. By J. K. Edited, with an introduction, by Thomas +J. Wise. London, 1884, 8vo. + + Printed for private distribution, and issued in parchment + wrappers. Four copies on vellum and twenty-five on paper + only printed. + + +IV. LETTERS, ETC. + +Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of J. K. Edited by R. M. Milnes. +2 vols. London, 1848, 16mo. + +Life and Letters of John Keats. A new and completely revised edition. +Edited by Lord Houghton. London, 1867, 8vo. + +Letters of J. K. to Fanny Brawne, written in the years 1819 and 1820, +and now given from the original manuscripts, with introduction and +notes, by Harry Buxton Forman. London, 1878, 8vo. + + In addition to the ordinary issue, the following special + copies were "printed for private distribution"--In 8vo on + Whatman's hand-made paper 60 copies, on vellum 2 copies; + in post 8vo there were 6 copies with title-page set up in + different style, and 2 copies of coloured bank-note + paper, one blue and the other yellow. + + +V. MISCELLANEOUS. + +CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAGAZINES. + +_Annals of the Fine Arts. A quarterly magazine, edited by James Elmes_-- + + "Ode to the Nightingale," vol. iv., 1820, pp. 354-356. + The first appearance of this poem, which was afterwards + included in the "Lamia" volume, 1820, pp. 107-112. + + "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Appeared first in the "Annals of + the Fine Arts" vol. iv., 1820, pp. 638, 639, afterwards + included in the Lamia volume. + +_The Athenæum_-- + + First appearance of the Sonnet "On hearing the Bag-pipe + and seeing 'The Stranger' played at Inverary," June 7, + 1873, p. 725. + +_The Champion_-- + + "On Edmund Kean as a Shakesperian actor, and on Kean in + 'Richard, Duke of York.'" Appeared on the 21st and 28th + Dec. 1817. + +_The Dial_-- + + "Notes on Milton's Paradise Lost." In vol. iii., 1843, + pp, 500-504; reprinted by Lord Houghton. + +_The Examiner_-- + + The "Sonnet to Solitude," Keats's first published poem, + according to Charles Cowden Clarke, appeared on the 5th + of May 1816, signed J. K., p. 282. + + The first appearance of the sonnet "To Kosciusko," Feb. + 16, 1817, p. 107. + + The first appearance of the sonnet, "After dark vapors + have oppress'd our plains," etc., Feb. 23, 1817, p. 124. + + Two sonnets "To Haydon, with a Sonnet written on seeing + the Elgin Marbles," and "On seeing the Elgin Marbles" + appear for the first time, March 9, 1817, p. 155. In 1818 + they were reprinted in the _Annals of the Fine Arts_, No. + 8. + + The first appearance of the sonnet, "Written on a blank + space at the end of Chaucer's tale of 'The Floure and the + Lefe,'" March 16, 1817, p. 173. + + Sonnet "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" appeared on the + 21st Sept. 1817, p. 599. + +_The Gem, a Literary Annual, Edited by Thomas Hood_-- + + The sonnet "On a picture of Leander" appeared for the + first time in 1829, p. 108. + +_Hood's Comic Annual_-- + + "Sonnet to a Cat," 1830, p. 14. + +_Hood's Magazine_-- + + In vol. ii., 1844, p. 240, the sonnet "Life's sea hath + been five times at its slow ebb" appears for the first + time; included by Lord Houghton in the Literary Remains. + + In vol. ii., 1844, p. 562, the poem "Old Meg," written + during a tour in Scotland, appears for the first time. + +_The Indicator. Edited by Leigh Hunt_-- + + In vol. i., 1820, p. 120. there are thirty-four lines, + headed _Vox et præterea nihil_, supposed by Mr. Forman to + be a cancelled passage of Endymion, and reprinted by him + in his edition of Keats, 1883, vol. i, p. 221. + + In vol. i. 1820, pp. 246-248, the poem "La Belle Dame Sans + Merci" first appeared, and signed "Caviare." + + First appearance of the sonnet, "A Dream after reading + Dante's Episode of 'Paolo and Francesca,'" signed + "Caviare," vol. i. 1820, p. 304. + +_Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket Book_-- + + First appearance of the sonnets, "To Ailsa Rock" and "The + Human Season" in 1819. + + +VI. APPENDIX. + +BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. + +Armstrong, Edmund J.--Essays and Sketches of Edmund J. Armstrong. +London, 1877, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 176-179. + +Atlantic Monthly.--Boston, 1858, 8vo. + + "The Poet Keats." Seven stanzas, vol. ii., pp. 531-532. + +Belfast, Earl of.--Poets and Poetry of the xixth century. A course of +lectures. London, 1852, 8vo. + + Moore, Keats, Scott, pp. 59-131. + +Best Bits.--Best Bits. London, 1884, 8vo. + + "The Last Moments of Keats," vol. ii., p. 119. + +Biographical Magazine.--Lives of the Illustrious (The Biographical +Magazine). London, 1853, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 260-271. + +Caine, T. Hall. Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London, +1882, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 167-183. + +Caine, T. Hall.--Cobwebs of Criticism, etc. London, 1883, 8vo. Keats, +pp. 158-190. + +Carr, J. Comyns.--Essays on Art. London, 1879, 8vo. + + The artistic spirit in Modern English Poetry, pp. 3-34. + +Clarke, Charles Cowden.--The Riches of Chaucer, in which his impurities +have been expunged, etc. 2 vols. London, 1835, 12mo. + + John Keats, vol. i., pp. 52, 53. + +---- Recollections of Writers. London, 1878, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 120-157. + +Colvin, Sidney.--Keats (_English Men of Letters_). London, 1887, 8vo. + +Cotterill, H. B.--An Introduction to the Study of Poetry. London, +1882, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 242-268. + +Courthope, William J.--The Liberal Movement in English Literature. +London, 1885, 8vo. + + Poetry, Music, and Painting. Coleridge and Keats, pp. + 159-194. + +Cunningham, Allan.--Biographical and Critical History of the British +Literature of the last fifty years. [Reprinted from the "Athenæum."] +Paris, 1834, 12mo. + + Keats, pp. 102-104. + +Dennis, John.--Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 365-373. + +De Quincey, Thomas.--Essays on the Poets, and other English Writers. +Boston, 1853, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 75-97. + +---- De Quincey's Works. 16 vols. Edinburgh, 1862-71, 12mo. + + John Keats, vol. v, pp. 269-288. + +Devey, J.--A comparative estimate of Modern English Poetry. London, +1873, 8vo. + + Alexandrine Poets. Keats, pp. 263-274. + +Dilke, Charles Wentworth.--The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the +writings of the late Charles W. Dilke. 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. i., pp. 2-14. + +Encyclopædia Britannica.--Encyclopædia Britannica. Eighth edition. +Edinburgh, 1857, 4to. + + John Keats, vol. xiii., pp. 55-57. + +---- Ninth edition. Edinburgh, 1882, 4to. + + John Keats, by Algernon C. Swinburne, vol. xiv., + pp. 22-24. + +English Writers.--Essays on English Writers. By the author of "The +Gentle Life." London, 1869, 8vo. + + Shelley, Keats, etc., pp. 338-349. + +Gilfillan, George.--A Gallery of Literary Portraits. Edinburgh, +1845, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 372-385. + +Gossip.--The Gossip. London, 1821, 8vo. + + Three Stanzas, signed G. V. D., May 19, 1821, p. 96, "On + Reading Lamia and other poems, by John Keats." + +Griswold, Rufus W.--The Poets and Poetry of England in the Nineteenth +Century. New York, 1875, 8vo. + + John Keats, with portrait, pp. 301-311. + +Haydon, Benjamin Robert,--Life of B. R. Haydon. Edited and compiled by +Tom Taylor. 3 vols. London, 1853, 8vo. + + Numerous references to Keats. + +---- Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a memoir by his son, F. W. +Haydon. 2 vols. London, 1876, 8vo. + + Contains ten letters and two extracts from letters to + Haydon, and ten letters from Haydon to Keats, vol. ii., + pp. 1-17. + +Hinde, F.--Essays and Poems. Liverpool, 1864, 8vo. + + The life and works of the poet Keats: a paper read before + the Liverpool Philomathic Society, April 15, 1862, + pp. 57-95. + +Hoffmann, Frederick A.--Poetry, its origin, nature, and history, etc. +London, 1884, 8vo. + + Keats, vol. i., pp. 483-491. + +Howitt, William.--Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets. +Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 292-300. + +---- The Northern Heights of London, etc. London, 1869, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 95-103. + +Hunt, Leigh.--Imagination and Fancy; or, selections from the English +Poets. London, 1844, 12mo. + + Keats, born 1796, died 1821, pp. 312-345. + +---- Foliage, or Poems original and translated. London, 1818, 8vo. + + Contains four sonnets; "To John Keats," "On receiving a + Crown of Ivy from the same," "On the same," "To the + Grasshopper and the Cricket." + +---- Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries; with recollections of +the author's life, and of his visit to Italy. London, 1826, 4to. + + John Keats, pp. 246-268. + +---- The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt; with reminiscences of friends and +contemporaries. In three volumes. London, 1850, 8vo. + + The references to John Keats, vol. ii., pp. 201-216, etc. + are substantially reproduced from the preceding work. + +Hutton, Laurence.--Literary Landmarks of London. London, [1885], 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 177-182. + +Jeffrey, Francis.--Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. London, +1853, 8vo. + + John Keats. Review of Endymion and Lamia, pp. 526-534. + +Lester, John W.--Criticisms. Third edition, London, 1853, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 343-349. + +Lowell, James Russell.--Among my Books. Second series. London, +1876, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 303-327. + +---- The Poetical Works of J. R. L. New revised edition. Boston [U.S.], +1882, 8vo. + + Sonnet "To the Spirit of Keats," p. 20. + +Maginn, William.--Miscellanies: prose and verse. Edited by R. W. +Montagu. 2 vols. London, 1885; 8vo. + + Remarks on Shelley's Adonais, vol. ii., pp. 300-311. + +Mario, Jessie White.--Sepoleri Inglesi in Roma. (Estratto dalla _Nuova +Antologia_, 15 Maggio, 1879.) Roma, 1879, 8vo. + + On Keats and Shelley. + +Mason, Edward T.--Personal Traits of British Authors. New York, 1885, +8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 195-207. + +Masson, David.--Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays. London, +1874, 8vo. + + "The Life and Poetry of Keats," pp. 143-191. + +Medwin, Thomas.--Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: noted +during a residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the years 1821 and +1822. By T. Medwin. London, 1824, 4to. + + John Keats, pp. 143, 237-240, 255, etc. + +Milnes, Richard Monckton, _Lord Houghton_.--Life, Letters, and Literary +Remains of John Keats. In two volumes. London, 1848, 8vo. + +---- Life and Letters of John Keats. A new and completely revised +edition. Edited by Lord Houghton, London, 1867, 8vo. + +Mitford, Mary Russell.--Recollections of a Literary Life, etc. 3 vols. +London, 1852, 8vo. + + Shelley and Keats, vol. ii., pp. 183-192. + +Moir, D. M.--Sketches of the poetical literature of the past +half-century. London, 1851, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 215-221. + +Noel, Hon. Roden.--Essays on poetry and poets. London, 1886, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 150-171. + +Notes and Queries.--General Index to Notes and Queries. 5 series. +London, 1856-80, 4to. + + Numerous references to John Keats. + +Olio.--The Olio. London [1828]. 8vo. + + "Recollections of Books and their Authors," No. 6, "John + Keats, the Poet," vol. i., pp. 391-394. + +Oliphant, Mrs.--The Literary History of England, etc. 3 vols. London, +1885, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 133-155. + +Owen, Frances Mary.--John Keats. A Study. London, 1880, 8vo. + + Reviewed in the _Academy_, July 5 1884, p. 2. + +Payn, James.--Stories from Boccaccio, and other Poems. London, +1852, 8vo. + + Sonnet to John Keats, p. 97. + +Phillips, Samuel.--Essays from "The Times." Being a selection from the +literary papers which have appeared in that journal. London, 1851, 8vo. + + "The Life of John Keats," pp. 255-269. This article + originally appeared in "The Times" on Sept. 17, 1849. + +---- New Edition. 2 vols. London, 1871, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. i., pp. 255-269. + +Richardson, David Lester.--Literary Chit-Chat, etc. Calcutta, 1848, 8vo. + + Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, pp. 271-281. + +Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.--Ballads and Sonnets. London, 1881, 8vo. + + Sonnets "To Five English Poets." No. iv., John Keats, + p. 316. + +Rossetti, William Michael.--Lives of Famous Poets. London [1885], 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 349-361. + +Sarrazin, Gabriel.--Poètes Modernes de l'Angleterre. Paris, 1885, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 131-152. + +Scott, William Bell.--Poems, Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc. +Illustrated by seventeen etchings by the author and L. Alma Tadema. +London, 1875, 8vo. + + An etching by the author of Keats' Grave, p. 177; sonnet + "On the Inscription, Keats' Tombstone," p. 179. An Ode + "To the memory of John Keats," pp. 226-230. + +Scribner's Monthly Magazine.--Scribner's Monthly Magazine. New York, +1880, 1887, 8vo. + + The No. for June 1880 contains fourteen lines "To the + Immortal memory of Keats," and the May No. for 1887, p. + 110, "Keats" (ten verses) by Robert Burns Wilson. + +Shelley, Percy Bysshe.--Adonais. An elegy on the death of John Keats, +author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. Pisa, 1821, 4to. + +---- Adonais. An elegy on the death of John Keats, etc. Cambridge, +1829, 8vo. + +---- Adonais. Edited, with notes, by H. Buxton Forman. London, +1880, 8vo. + +Shelley, Lady.--Shelley Memorials; from authentic sources. Edited by +Lady Shelley. London, 1859, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 74, 150-152, 155, 156, 200, 203. + +Stedman, Edmund Clarence.--Victorian Poets. London, 1876, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 18, 104, 106, 155, 367, etc. + +Swinburne, Algernon Charles.--Miscellanies. London, 1886, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 210-218. Originally appeared in the + Encyclopædia Britannica. + +Tuckerman, Henry T.--Characteristics of Literature, illustrated by the +genius of distinguished men. Philadelphia, 1849, 8vo. + + Final Memorials of Lamb and Keats, pp. 256-269. + +---- Thoughts on the Poets. London [1852], 12mo. + + Keats, pp. 212-226. + +Verdicts.--Verdicts. [Verse.] London, 1852, 8vo. + + John Keats, occupies 93 lines, pp. 28-32. + +Ward, Thomas H.--The English Poets, etc. 4 vols. London, 1883, 8vo. + + John Keats, by Matthew Arnold, vol. iv., pp. 427-464. + +Willis, N. P.--Pencillings by the Way. A new edition. London, 1844, 8vo. + + "Keats's Poems," pp. 84-88. + +Wiseman, Cardinal.--On the Perception of Natural Beauty by the Ancients +and the Moderns, etc. London, 1856, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 13, 14; reviewed by Leigh Hunt in _Fraser's + Magazine_ for December, 1859. + + +MAGAZINE ARTICLES. + +Keats, John + + --Examiner, June 1, 1817, p. 345, July 6, 1817, pp. 428, 429, + July 13, 1817, pp. 443, 444. + + --Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 3, 1818, pp. 519-524. + + --Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 7, 1820, p. 665; + vol. 27, 1830, p. 633. + + --Indicator, by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352. + + --Quarterly Review, vol. 37, 1828, pp. 416-421. + + --Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T. Tuckerman, vol. 8, + 1842, pp. 37-41. + + --Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by T. De Quincey, vol. 13, N.S., + 1846, pp. 249-254; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 8, + pp. 202-209. + + --Democratic Review, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429. + + --United States Magazine, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429; + vol. 26, N.S., 1850, pp. 415-421. + + --Hogg's Weekly Instructor, with portrait, vol. 1, 1848, + pp. 145-148; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 14, + pp. 409-415. + + --Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, vol. 10, N.S., 1848, + pp. 376-380. + + --Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 56-60. + + --Knickerbocker, vol. 55, 1860, pp. 392-397. + + --Temple Bar, vol. 38, 1873, pp. 501-512. + + --Edinburgh Review, July 1876, pp. 38-42. + + --Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40. 1870, pp. 523-525 + and vol. 55, 1877, by E. F. Madden, pp. 357-361, + illustrated. + + --Scribner's Monthly, by R. H. Stoddard, vol. 15, 1877, + pp. 203-213. + + --American Bibliopolist, vol. 7, p. 94, etc., and vol. 8, + p. 94, etc. + + --_La Revue Politique et Littéraire_, by Léo Quesnel, 1877, + pp. 61-65. + + --Argonaut, by Reginald W. Corlass, vol. 2, 1875, pp. 172-178. + + --Canadian Monthly, by Edgar Fawcett, vol. 2, 1879, + pp. 449-454. + + --_Century_, by Edmund C. Stedman, illustrated, vol. 27, 1884, + pp. 599-602. + + ---- _and his Critics._ Dial, vol. 1, 1881, pp. 265, 266. + + ---- _and Joseph Severn._ Dublin University Magazine, by + E. S. R., vol. 96, 1880, pp. 37-39. + + ---- _and Lamb._ Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T. + Tuckerman, vol. 14, 1848, pp. 711-715. + + ---- _and Shelley._ To-Day, June 1883, pp. 188-206, etc. + + ---- _and the Quarterly Review._ Morning Chronicle, Oct. 3 and + 8, 1818 (two letters). Examiner, 11 Oct., 1818, pp. 648, + 649. + + ---- _an Esculapian Poet._ Asclepiad, with portrait on steel, + vol. 1, 1884, pp. 138-155. + + ---- _Art of._ Our Corner, by J. Robertson, vol. 4, 1884, + pp. 40-45, 72-76. + + ---- _Cardinal Wiseman on._ Fraser's Magazine, by Leigh Hunt, + vol. 60, 1859, pp. 759, 760. + + ---- _daintiest of Poets._ Victoria Magazine, vol. 15, 1870, + pp. 55-67. + + ---- _Death of._ London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821, pp. 426, + 427. + + ---- _Verses on death of._ London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821, + p. 526. + + ---- _Did he really care for music._ Manchester Quarterly, by + John Mortimer, vol 2, 1883, pp. 11-17. + + ---- _Endymion._ Quarterly Review, by Gifford, vol. 19, 1818, + pp. 204-208.--London Magazine, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 380-389. + + ---- _Forman's Edition of._ Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 49, + 1884, pp. 330-341.--Times, Aug. 7, 1884. + + ---- _Fragment from._ Gentleman's Magazine, by Grant Allen, + vol. 244, 1879, pp. 676-686. + + ---- _Genius of._ Christian Remembrancer, vol. 6, N.S., 1843, + pp. 251-263. + + ---- _Holman Hunt's "Isabel."_ Fortnightly Review, by + B. Cracroft, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 648-657. + + ---- _Hyperion._ American Whig Review, vol. 14, 1851, + pp. 311-322. + + ---- _Hyperionis, Libri i-ii._ Saturday Review, April 26, 1862, + pp. 477, 478. + + ---- _in Cloudland._ A poem of thirty-one verses. St. James's + Magazine, by R. W. Buchanan, vol. 7, 1863, pp. 470-475. + + ---- _Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems._ + London Magazine, vol. 2, 1820, pp. 315-321.--Indicator, + by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352.--Monthly + Review, vol. 92, N.S., 1820, pp. 305-310.--Eclectic + Review, vol. 14 N.S., 1820, 158-171. + + ---- _Leigh Hunt's Farewell Words to._ Indicator, September 20, + 1820. + + ---- _Letters to Fanny Brawne._ Athenæum, July 14, p. 50, July + 21, pp. 80, 81, and July 28, 1877, pp. 114, + 115.--Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 57, 1878, + p. 466.--Eclectic Magazine, vol. 27, N.S., 1878, pp. 495-498 + (from the Academy).--Appleton's Journal, by R. H. + Stoddard, vol. 4, N.S., 1878, pp. 379-382. + + ---- _Life and Poems of._ Macmillan's Magazine, by D. Masson, + vol. 3, 1860, pp. 1-16. + + ---- _Marginalia made by Dante G. Rossetti in a copy of Keats' + Poems._ Manchester Quarterly, by George Milner, vol. 2, + 1883, pp. 1-10. + + ---- _Milnes' Life of._ American Review, by C. A. Bristed, vol. + 8, 1848, pp. 603-610.--Littell's Living Age, vol. 19, + 1848, pp. 20-24.--United States Magazine, vol. 23, N.S., + 1848, pp. 375-377.--Athenæum, Aug. 12, 1848, pp. + 824-827.--Revue des Deux Mondes, by Philarète Chasles, + Tom. 24, Série 5, 1848, pp. 584-607.--Eclectic Review, + vol. 24, N.S., 1848, pp. 533-552.--Dublin Review, vol. + 25, 1848, pp. 164-179.--British Quarterly Review, vol. 8, + 1848, pp. 328-343.--Prospective Review, vol. 4, 1848, + pp. 539-555.--Democratic Review, vol. 23, N.S., 1848, + pp. 375-377.--Westminster Review, vol. 50, 1849, + pp. 349-371.--Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, + pp. 56-60.--North British Review, vol. 10, 1848, pp. 69-96; + same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 16, + pp. 145-159.--New Monthly Magazine, vol. 84, 1848, + pp. 105-115; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15, + pp. 340-343.--Dublin University Magazine, vol. 33, 1849, + pp. 28-35.--Democratic Review, vol. 26, N.S., 1850, + pp. 415-421. + + ---- _My Copy of._ Tinsley's Magazine, by Richard Dowling, + vol. 25, 1879, pp. 427-436. + + ---- _New Editions of._ Dial, by W. M. Payne, vol. 4, 1884, + pp. 255, 256. + + ---- _Le Paganisme poétique en Angleterre._ Revue des Deux + Mondes, by Louis Étienne, Tom. 69, période 2, pp. + 291-317.--Eclectic Review, vol. 8, 1817, pp. 267-275. + + ---- _Poems of._ Examiner, by Leigh Hunt, June 1, July 6 and + 13, 1817.--Edinburgh Review, by F. Jeffrey, vol. 34, + 1820, pp. 203-213.--Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 8, + N.S., 1841, pp. 650, 651.--Dublin University Magazine, + vol. 21, 1843, pp. 690-703.--Edinburgh Review, vol. 90, + 1849, pp. 424-430.--Massachusetts Quarterly Review, vol. + 2, 1849, pp. 414-428.--Dublin University Magazine, vol. + 83, 1874, pp. 699-706.--North American Review, vol. 124, + 1877, pp. 500-501. + + ---- _Poetry, Music, and Painting: Coleridge and Keats._ + National Review, by W. J. Courthope, vol. 5, 1885, + pp. 504-518. + + ---- _Recollections of._ Gentleman's Magazine, by Charles + Cowden Clarke, vol. 12, N.S., 1874, pp. 177-204; same + article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 121, pp. 174-188; + Every Saturday, vol. 16, p. 262, etc., 669, + etc.--Atlantic Monthly, by C. C. Clarke, vol. 7, 1861, + pp. 86-100. + + ---- _School House of, at Enfield._ St. James's Magazine + Holiday Annual, 1875, by Charles Cowden Clarke. + + ---- _Thoughts on._ New Dominion Monthly (portrait), by Robert + S. Weir, 1877, pp. 293-300. + + ---- _Unpublished Notes on Milton._ Athenæum, Oct. 26, 1872, + pp. 529, 530. + + ---- _Unpublished Notes on Shakespeare._ Athenæum, Nov. 16, + 1872, p. 634. + + ---- _Vicissitudes of his fame._ Atlantic Monthly, by + J. Severn, vol. 11, 1863, pp. 401-407; same article, + Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 34, N.S., 1869, + pp. 246-249. + + +VII.--CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. + + Poems 1817 + + Endymion 1818 + + Lamia, etc. 1820 + + Life, letters, and literary remains 1848 + + Letters to Fanny Brawne 1878 + + Letters 1883 + + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: A small point here may deserve a note. A letter from John +Keats to his brother George, under date of September 21st, 1819, +contains the following words: "Our bodies, every seven years, are +completely fresh-materialed: seven years ago it was not this hand that +clenched itself against Hammond." Another version of the same letter +(the true wording of which is matter of some dispute) substitutes: "Mine +is not the same hand I clenched at Hammond's." Mr. Buxton Forman, who +gives the former phrase as the genuine one, thinks that "this phrase +points to a serious rupture as the cause of his quitting his +apprenticeship to Hammond." My own inclination is to surmise that the +accurate reading may be--"It was not this hand that clenched itself +against Hammond's"; indicating, not any quarrel, but the friendly +habitual clasp of hand against hand. "Seven years ago" would reach back +to September 1812: whereas Keats did not part from Hammond until 1814.] + +[Footnote 2: This is Hunt's own express statement. It has been disputed, +but I am not prepared to reject it.] + +[Footnote 3: Biographers have been reticent on this subject. Keats's +statement however speaks for itself, and a high medical authority, Dr. +Richardson, writing in _The Asclepiad_ for April 1884, and reviewing the +whole subject of the poet's constitutional and other ailments, says that +Keats in Oxford "runs loose, and pays a forfeit for his indiscretion +which ever afterwards physically and morally embarrasses him." He +pronounces that Keats's early death was "expedited, perhaps excited, by +his own imprudence," but was substantially due to hereditary disease. +His mother, as we have already seen, had died of the malady which killed +the poet, consumption. It is not clear to me what Keats meant by saying +that "from his _employment_" his health would be insecure. One might +suppose that he was thinking of the long and haphazard working hours of +a young surgeon or medical man; in which case, this seems to be the +latest instance in which he spoke of himself as still belonging to that +profession.] + +[Footnote 4: Hitherto printed "life"; it seems to me clear that "lips" +is the right word.] + +[Footnote 5: In Medwin's "Life of Shelley," vol. ii. pp. 89 to 92, are +some interesting remarks upon Keats's character and demeanour, written +in a warm and sympathetic tone. Some of them were certainly penned by +Miss Brawne (Mrs. Lindon), and possibly all of them. Mr. Colvin (p. 233 +of his book) has called special attention to these remarks: I forbear +from quoting them. A leading point is to vindicate Keats from the +imputation of "violence of temper."] + +[Footnote 6: This passage is taken from Lord Houghton's "Life, &c., of +Keats," first published in 1848, and by "home" he certainly means +Wentworth Place, Hampstead. Yet in his Aldine Edition of Keats, his +lordship says that the poet "was at that time, very much against Mr. +Brown's desire and advice, living alone in London." This latter +statement may possibly be correct--I question it. The passage, as +written by Lord Houghton, is condensed from the narrative of Brown. The +latter is given verbatim in Mr. Colvin's "Keats," and is, of course, the +more important and interesting of the two. I abstain from quoting it, +solely out of regard to Mr. Colvin's rights of priority.] + +[Footnote 7: Apparently Miss Brawne had remonstrated against the +imputation of "flirting with Brown," and much else to like effect in a +recent letter from Keats.] + +[Footnote 8: I observe this name occurring once elsewhere in relation to +Keats, but am not clear whose house it represents.] + +[Footnote 9: It has been suggested (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as +printed in Mr. Forman's edition of Keats) that the poem here referred to +is "The Eve of St. Mark." Keats had begun it fully a year and a half +before the date of this letter, but, not having continued it, he might +have spoken of "having it in his head."] + +[Footnote 10: This may require a word of explanation. Keats, detained at +Portsmouth by stress of weather, had landed for a day, and seen his +friend Mr. Snook, at Bedhampton. Brown was then in Chichester, only ten +miles off, but of this Keats had not at the time been aware.] + +[Footnote 11: The -- before "you" appears in the letter, as printed in +Mr. Forman's edition of Keats. It might seem that Keats hesitated a +moment whether to write "you" or "Miss Brawne."] + +[Footnote 12: No such letter is known. It has been stated that Keats, +after leaving home, could never summon up resolution enough to write to +Miss Brawne: possibly this statement ought to be limited to the time +after he had reached Italy.] + +[Footnote 13: Lord Houghton says that Keats in Naples "could not bear to +go to the opera, on account of the sentinels who stood constantly on the +stage:" he spoke of "the continual visible tyranny of this government," +and said "I will not leave even my bones in the midst of this +despotism." Sentinels on the stage have, I believe, been common in +various parts of the continent, as a mere matter of government parade, +or of routine for preserving public order. The other points (for which +no authority is cited by Lord Houghton) must, I think, be over-stated. +In November 1820 the short-lived constitution of the kingdom of Naples +was in full operation, and neither tyranny nor despotism was in the +ascendant--rather a certain degree of popular license.] + +[Footnote 14: The reader of Keats's preface will note that this is a +misrepresentation. Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism, +nor did he ask to remain uncriticized in order that he might write more. +What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of him for +hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be aware that +Keats's own sense of failure in "Endymion" was as fierce a hell as he +could be chastised by.] + +[Footnote 15: This phrase stands printed with inverted commas, as a +quotation. It is not, however, a quotation from the letter of J. S.] + +[Footnote 16: "Coolness" (which seems to be the right word) in the +letter to Miss Mitford.] + +[Footnote 17: Severn's view of the matter some years afterwards has +however received record in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson. Under the +date May 6, 1837, we read--"He [Severn] denies that Keats's death was +hastened by the article in the _Quarterly_."] + +[Footnote 18: The passage which begins-- + + "Hard by + Stood serene Cupids watching silently" + +has some affinity with a passage in Shelley's "Adonais." The latter +passage is, however, more directly based upon one in the Idyll of Bion +on Adonis.] + +[Footnote 19: I do not clearly understand from the poem whether Endymion +does or does not know, until the story nears its conclusion, that the +goddess who favours him is Diana. He appears at any rate to _guess_ as +much, either during this present interview or shortly afterwards.] + +[Footnote 20: Keats has been laughed at for ignorance in printing "Visit +my Cytherea"; but it appears on good evidence that what he really wrote +was "Visit thou my Cythera." A false quantity in this same canto, +"Nèpt[)u]nus," cannot be explained away.] + +[Footnote 21: Declared it in some very odd lines; for instance-- + + "Do gently murder half my soul, and I + Shall feel the other half so utterly!"] + +[Footnote 22: See p. 52 as to Miss Brawne.] + +[Footnote 23: I presume the "three masterpieces" are "The Eve of St. +Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia"; this leaves out of count the short +"Belle Dame sans Merci," and the unfinished "Eve of St. Mark," but +certainly not because Dante Rossetti rated those lower than the three +others.] + +[Footnote 24: There are some various readings in this poem (as here, +"wretched wight"); I adopt the phrases which I prefer.] + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: + +Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, and inconsistent +hyphenation. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation have been +fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below: + +page 110: typo fixed + + In Feburary[February] 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, + undertook to write a sonnet each upon the river Nile. + +page 150: typo fixed + + which could not be made applicable or subservient to the purposes + of poetry. Many will remember the ancedote[ancedote], proper to + Haydon's "immortal dinner" + +page 201: typo fixed + + seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a + palpaple[palpable] fact that this address, according to its place + in + +In Footnote 20, [)u] indicates a u-breve. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of John Keats, by William Michael Rossetti + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN KEATS *** + +***** This file should be named 31682-8.txt or 31682-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31682/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life of John Keats + +Author: William Michael Rossetti + +Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN KEATS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>LIFE<br /><br /> +<small>OF</small><br /><br /> +JOHN KEATS.</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI.</h2> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p class="center">LONDON<br /> +WALTER SCOTT<br /> +24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW</p> + +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> + +<p class="center">1887<br /> +(<i>All rights reserved.</i>) +</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<div style="margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%"><p><span class="ralign"><small>PAGE</small></span></p> + +<h4>CHAPTER I.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Keats’s grandfather Jennings; his father and mother; Keats +born in London, October 31, 1795; his brothers and sister; +goes to the school of John Clarke at Enfield, and is tutored +by Charles Cowden Clarke; death of his parents; is +apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond; leaves Hammond, +and studies surgery; reads Spenser, and takes to poetry; +his literary acquaintances—Leigh Hunt, Haydon, J. +Hamilton Reynolds, Dilke, &c.; Keats’s first volume, +“Poems,†1817<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER II.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Keats begins “Endymion,†May 1817; his health suffers in +Oxford; finishes “Endymion†in November; his friend, +Charles Armitage Brown; his brother George marries +and emigrates to America; Keats and Brown make a +walking tour in Scotland and Ireland; returns to Hampstead, +owing to a sore throat; death of his brother Tom; +his description of Miss Cox (“Charmianâ€), and of Miss +Brawne, with whom he falls in love; a difference with +Haydon; visits Winchester; George Keats returns for +a short while from America, but goes away again without +doing anything to relieve John Keats from straits in +money matters.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER III.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Keats’s consumptive illness begins, February 1820; he rallies, +but has a relapse in June; he stays with Leigh Hunt, and +leaves him suddenly; publication of his last volume, +“Lamia†&c.; returns to Hampstead before starting +for Italy; his love-letters to Miss Brawne—extracts; +Haydon’s last sight of him; he sails for Italy with Joseph +Severn; letter to Brown; Naples and Rome; extracts from +Severn’s letters; Keats dies in Rome, February 23, 1821.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></span></p> + +<h4>CHAPTER IV.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Keats rhymes in infancy; his first writings, the “Imitation +of Spenser,†and some sonnets; not precocious as a poet; +his sonnet on Chapman’s Homer; contents of his first +volume, “Poems,†1817; Hunt’s first sight of his poems +in MS.; “Sleep and Poetry,†extract regarding poetry +of the Pope school, &c.; the publishers, Messrs. Ollier, +give up the volume as a failure.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_64">64</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER V.</h4> + +<p class="toc">“Endymionâ€; Keats’s classical predilections; extract (from +“I stood tiptoe†&c.) about Diana and Endymion; details +as to the composition of “Endymion,†1817; preface to +the poem; the critique in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>; attack +in <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>; question whether Keats broke +down under hostile criticism; evidence on this subject in +his own letters, and by Shelley, Lord Houghton, Haydon, +Byron, Hunt, George Keats, Cowden Clarke, Severn; +conclusion.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER VI.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Poems included in the “Lamia†volume, 1820; “Isabellaâ€; +“The Eve of St. Agnesâ€; “Hyperionâ€; “Lamiaâ€; +five odes; other poems—sonnet on “The Nileâ€; “The +Eve of St. Mark,†“Otho the Great,†“La Belle Dame +sans Merci,†“The Cap and Bells,†final sonnet, &c.; +prose writings.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER VII.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Keats’s grave in Rome; projects of Brown and others for +writing his Life; his brother George, and his sister, Mrs. +Llanos; Miss Brawne; discussion as to Hunt’s friendship +to Keats; other friends—Bailey, Haydon, Shelley.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_118">118</a></span></p> + + +<h4>CHAPTER VIII.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Keats’s appearance; portraits; difficulties in estimating his +character; his poetic ambition, and feeling on subjects of +historical or public interest; his intensity of thought; +moral tone; question as to his strength of character—Haydon’s +opinion; demeanour among friends; studious +resolves; suspicious tendency; his feeling toward women—poem +quoted; love of flowers and music; politics; +irritation against Leigh Hunt; his letters; antagonism +to science; remarks on contemporary writers; axioms on +poetry; self-analysis as to his perceptions as a poet; feelings +as to painting; sense of humour, punning, &c.; indifference +in religious matters; his sentiments as to the +immortality of the soul; fondness for wine and game; +summary.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_124">124</a></span></p> + +<h4>CHAPTER IX.</h4> + +<p class="toc">Influence of Spenser discussed; flimsiness of Keats’s first +volume; early sonnets; “Endymionâ€; Shelley’s criticisms +of this poem; detailed argument of the poem; estimate +of “Endymion†as to invention and execution; +estimate of “Isabellaâ€; of “The Eve of St. Agnesâ€; of +“The Eve of St. Markâ€; of “Hyperionâ€; of “Otho the +Greatâ€; of “Lamiaâ€; “La Belle Dame sans Merci†+quoted and estimated; Keats’s five great odes—extracts; +“Beauty is truth, truth beautyâ€; imagination in verbal +form distinctive of Keats; discussion of the term “faultless†+applied to Keats; details of execution in the “Ode +to a Nightingaleâ€; other odes, sonnets, and lyrics; treatment +of women in Keats’s last volume; his references to +“swooningâ€; his sensuousness and its correlative sentiment; +superiority of Shelley to Keats; final remarks as to +the quality of Keats’s poetry.<span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></span></p> + +<p><b>INDEX</b><span class="ralign"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></span></p> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="NOTE" id="NOTE"></a>NOTE.</h2> + + +<p>In all important respects I leave this brief “Life of +Keats†to speak for itself. There is only one point +which I feel it needful to dwell upon. In the summer +of 1886 I was invited to undertake a life of Keats for +the present series, and I assented. Some while afterwards +it was publicly announced that a life of Keats, which had +been begun by Mr. Sidney Colvin long before for a +different series, would be published at an early date. I +read up my materials, began in March 1887 the writing +of my book, finished it on June 3rd, and handed it over +to the editor. On June 10th Mr. Colvin’s volume was +published. I at once read it, and formed a high opinion +of its merits, and I found in it some new details which +could not properly be ignored by any succeeding biographer +of the poet. I therefore got my MS. back, and +inserted here and there such items of fresh information +as were really needful for the true presentment of my +subject-matter. In justice both to Mr. Colvin and to +myself I drew upon his pages for only a minimum, not a +maximum, of the facts which they embody; and in all +matters of opinion and criticism I left my MS. exactly as +it stood. The reader will thus understand that the +present “Life of Keats†is, in planning, structure, execution, +and estimate, entirely independent of Mr. Colvin’s; +but that I have ultimately had the advantage of consulting +Mr. Colvin’s book as one of my various sources of +information—the latest and within its own lines the completest +of all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2><a name="LIFE_OF_KEATS" id="LIFE_OF_KEATS"></a>LIFE OF KEATS.</h2> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p> +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2> + + +<p>A truism must do duty as my first sentence. +There are long lives, and there are eventful lives: +there are also short lives, and uneventful ones. Keats’s +life was both short and uneventful. To the differing +classes of lives different modes of treatment may properly +be applied by the biographer. In the case of a +writer whose life was both long and eventful, I might feel +disposed to carry the whole narrative forward <i>pari passu</i>, +and to exhibit in one panorama the outward and the +inward career, the incidents and the product, the doings +and environment, and the writings, acting and re-acting +upon one another. In the instance of Keats this does +not appear to me to be the most fitting method. It may +be more appropriate to apportion his Life into two sections: +and to treat firstly of his general course from the +cradle to the grave, and secondly of his performances in +literature. The two things will necessarily overlap to +some extent, but I shall keep them apart so far as may +be convenient. When we have seen what he did and +what he wrote, we shall be prepared to enter upon some +analysis of his character and personality. This will form<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +my third section; and in a fourth I shall endeavour to +estimate the quality and value of his writings, in particular +and in general. Thus I address myself in the first +instance to a narrative of the outer facts of his life.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>John Keats came of undistinguished parentage. No +biographer carries his pedigree further than his maternal +grandfather, or alleges that there was any trace, however +faint or remote, of ancestral eminence. The maternal +grandfather was a Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable, +called the Swan and Hoop, in the Pavement, +Moorfields, London, opposite the entrance to Finsbury +Circus. The principal stableman or assistant in the business +was named Thomas Keats, of Devonshire or Cornish +parentage. He was a well-conducted, sensible, good-looking +little man, and won the favour of Jennings’s +daughter, named Frances or Fanny: they married, and +this rather considerable rise in his fortunes left Keats +unassuming and manly as before. He appears to have +been a natural gentleman. Jennings was a prosperous +tradesman, and might have died rich (his death took +place in 1805) but for easy-going good-nature tending to +the gullible. Mrs. Keats seems to have been in character +less uniform and single-minded than her husband. +She is described as passionately fond of amusement, +prodigal, dotingly attached to her children, more especially +John, much beloved by them in return, sensible, and at +the same time saturnine in demeanour: a personable tall +woman with a large oval face. Her pleasure-seeking +tendency probably led her into some imprudences, for +her first baby, John, was a seven months’ child.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span></p> + +<p>John Keats was born at the Moorfields place of business +on the 31st of October 1795. This date of birth +is established by the register of baptisms at St. Botolph’s, +Bishopsgate: the date usually assigned, the 29th of +October, appears to be inaccurate, though Keats himself, +and others of the family, believed in it. There were three +other children of the marriage—or four if we reckon a +a son who died in infancy: George, Thomas, and lastly +Fanny, born in March 1803. An anecdote is told of John +when in the fifth year of his age, purporting to show forth +the depth of his childish affection for his mother. It is +said that she then lay seriously ill; and John stood +sentinel at her chamber-door, holding an old sword which +he had picked up about the premises, and he remained +there for hours to prevent her being disturbed. One may +fear, however, that this anecdote has taken an ideal +colouring through the lens of a partial biographer. The +painter Benjamin Robert Haydon—who, as we shall see +in the sequel, was extremely well acquainted with John +Keats, and who heard the story from his brother Thomas—records +it thus: “He was, when an infant, a most +violent and ungovernable child. At five years of age or +thereabouts he once got hold of a naked sword, and, +shutting the door, swore nobody should go out. His +mother wanted to do so; but he threatened her so +furiously she began to cry, and was obliged to wait till +somebody, through the window, saw her position, and +came to her rescue.†It can scarcely be supposed that +there were two different occasions when the quinquennial +John Keats superintended his mother and her belongings +with a naked sword—once in ardent and self-oblivious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +affection, and once in petulant and froward excitement.</p> + +<p>The parents would have liked to send John to Harrow +school: but, this being finally deemed too expensive, he +was placed in the Rev. John Clarke’s school at Enfield, +then in high repute, and his brothers followed him thither. +The Enfield schoolhouse was a fine red-brick building of +the early eighteenth century, said to have been erected +by a retired West India merchant; the materials “moulded +into designs decorating the front with garlands of flowers +and pomegranates, together with heads of cherubim over +two niches in the centre of the building.†This central +part of the façade was eventually purchased for the South +Kensington Museum, and figures there as a screen in the +structural division. The schoolroom was forty feet long; +the playground was a spacious courtyard between the +schoolroom and the house itself; a garden, a hundred +yards in length, stretched beyond the playground, succeeded +by a sweep of greensward, with a “lake†or well-sized +pond: there was also a two-acre field with a couple +of cows. In this commodious seat of sound learning, +well cared for and well instructed so far as his school +course extended, John Keats remained for some years. +He came under the particular observation of the headmaster’s +son, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke, not very many +years his senior. He was born in 1787, fostered Keats’s +interest in literature, became himself an industrious writer +of some standing, and died in 1877. Keats at school did +not show any exceptional talent, but he was, according to +Mr. Cowden Clarke’s phrase, “a very orderly scholar,†+and got easily through his tasks. In the last eighteen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +months of his schooling he took a new lease of assiduity: +he read a vast deal, and would keep to his book even +during meals. For two or three successive half-years he +obtained the first prize for voluntary work; and was to +be found early and late attending to some translation +from the Latin or the French, to which he would, when +allowed his own way, sacrifice his recreation-time. He +was particularly fond of Lemprière’s “Classical Dictionary,†+Tooke’s “Pantheon,†and Spence’s “Polymetisâ€: +a line of reading presageful of his own afterwork in the +region of Greek mythology. Of the Grecian language, +however, he learned nothing: in Latin he proceeded as +far as the Æneid, and of his own accord translated much +of that epic in writing. Two of his favourite books were +“Robinson Crusoe†and Marmontel’s “Incas of Peru.†+He must also have made some acquaintance with Shakespeare, +as he told a younger schoolfellow that he thought +no one durst read “Macbeth†alone in the house at two +in the morning. Not indeed that these bookish leanings +formed the whole of his personality as a schoolboy. He +was noticeable for beauty of face and expression, active +and energetic, intensely pugnacious, and even quarrelsome. +He was very apt to get into a fight with boys +much bigger than himself. Nor was his younger +brother George exempted: John would fight fiercely with +George, and this (if we may trust George’s testimony) +was always owing to John’s own unmanageable temper. +The two brothers were none the less greatly attached, +both at school and afterwards. The youngest brother, +Thomas (always called Tom in family records), is reported +to have been as pugilistic as John; whereas George, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +allowed his own way, was pacific, albeit resolute. The +ideal of all the three boys was a maternal uncle, a naval +officer of very stalwart presence, who had been in +Admiral Duncan’s ship in the famous action off Camperdown; +where he had distinguished himself not only by +signal gallantry, but by not getting shot, though his tall +form was a continual mark for hostile guns.</p> + +<p>While still a schoolboy at Enfield, John Keats lost both +his parents. The father died on the 16th of April 1804, in +returning from a visit to the school: a detail which serves +to show us (for I do not find it otherwise affirmed) that +John could at the utmost have been only in the ninth +year of his age, possibly even younger, when his schooling +began. On leaving Enfield, the father dined at Southgate, +and, going late homewards, his horse fell in the City +Road, and the rider’s skull was fractured. He was found +about one o’clock in the morning speechless, and expired +towards eight, aged thirty-six. The mother suffered from +rheumatism, and later on from consumption; of which +she died in February 1810. “John,†so writes Haydon, +“sat up whole nights with her in a great chair, would +suffer nobody to give her medicine or even cook her food +but himself, and read novels to her in her intervals of ease.†+She had been an easily consoled widow, for, within a year +from the decease of her first husband, she married another, +William Rawlings, who had probably succeeded to +the management of the business. She soon, however, +separated from Rawlings, and lived with her mother at +Edmonton. After her death Keats hid himself for some +days in a nook under his master’s desk, passionately inconsolable. +The four children, who inherited from their +grandparents (chiefly from their grandmother) a moderate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +fortune of nearly £8,000 altogether, in which the daughter +had the largest share, were then left under the guardianship +of Mr. Abbey, a city merchant residing at Walthamstow. +At the age of fifteen, or at some date before the +close of 1810, John quitted his school.</p> + +<p>A little stave of doggrel which Keats wrote to his +sister, probably in July 1818, gives a glimpse of what he +was like at the time when he and his brothers were living +with their grandmother.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“There was a naughty boy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a naughty boy was he:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He kept little fishes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In washing-tubs three,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In spite<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of the might<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of the maid,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Nor afraid<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of his granny good.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He often would<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hurly-burly<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Get up early<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And go<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By hook or crook<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the brook,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And bring home<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Miller’s-thumb,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Tittlebat,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not over fat,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Minnows small<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the stall<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of a glove,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not above<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The size<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of a nice<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Little baby’s<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Little fingers.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p> + +<p>He was fond of “goldfinches, tomtits, minnows, mice, +ticklebacks, dace, cock-salmons, and all the whole tribe of +the bushes and the brooks.â€</p> + +<p>A career in life was promptly marked out for the youth. +While still aged fifteen, he was apprenticed, with a premium +of £210, to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon of some +repute at Edmonton. Mr. Cowden Clarke says that this +arrangement evidently gave Keats satisfaction: apparently +he refers rather to the convenient vicinity of Edmonton +to Enfield than to the surgical profession itself. The +indenture was to have lasted five years; but, for some +reason which is not wholly apparent, Keats left Hammond +before the close of his apprenticeship.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> If Haydon was +rightly informed (presumably by Keats himself), the +reason was that the youth resented surgery as the antagonist +of a possible poetic vocation, and “at last his master, +weary of his disgust, gave him up his time.†He then +took to walking St. Thomas’s Hospital; and, after a short +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>stay at No. 8 Dean Street, Borough, and next in St. +Thomas’s Street, he resided along with his two brothers—who +were at the time clerks in Mr. Abbey’s office—in the +Poultry, Cheapside, over the passage which led to the +Queen’s Arms Tavern. Two of his surgical companions +were Mr. Henry Stephens, who afterwards introduced +creosote into medical practice, and Mr. George Wilson +Mackereth. Keats attended the usual lectures, and made +careful annotations in a book still preserved. Mr. +Stephens relates that Keats was fond of scribbling rhyme +of a sort among professional notes, especially those of a +fellow-student, and he sometimes showed graver verses to +his associates. Finally, in July 1815, he passed the examination +at Apothecaries’ Hall with considerable credit—more +than his familiars had counted upon; and in +March 1816 he was appointed a dresser at Guy’s under +Mr. Lucas. Cowden Clarke once inquired how far +Keats liked his studies at the hospital. The youth replied +that he did not relish anatomy: “The other day, +for instance, during the lecture, there came a sunbeam +into the room, and with it a whole troop of creatures +floating in the ray, and I was off with them to Oberon +and fairyland.â€</p> + +<p>Readers of Keats’s poetry will have no difficulty in +believing that, ever since his first introduction into a +professional life, surgery and literature had claimed a +divided allegiance from him. When at Edmonton +with Mr. Hammond, he kept up his connection with +the Clarke family, especially with Charles Cowden +Clarke. He was perpetually borrowing books; and at +last, about the beginning of 1812 he asked for Spenser’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +“Faery Queen,†rather to the surprise of the family, who +had no idea that that particular book could be at all +in his line. The effect, however, was very noticeable. +Keats walked to Enfield at least once a week, for the +purpose of talking over Spenser with Cowden Clarke. +“He ramped through the scenes of the romance,†said +Clarke, “like a young horse turned into a spring +meadow.†A fine touch of description or of imagery, or +energetic epithets such as “the sea-shouldering whale,†+would light up his face with ecstasy. His leisure had +already been given to reading and translation, including +the completion of his rendering of the Æneid. A +literary craving was now at fever-heat, and he took to +writing verses as well as reading them. Soon surgery +and letters were to conflict no longer—the latter obtaining, +contrary to the liking of Mr. Abbey, the absolute +and permanent mastery. Keats indeed always denied +that he abandoned surgery for the express purpose of +taking to poetry: he alleged that his motive had been +the dread of doing some mischief in his surgical operations. +His last operation consisted in opening a +temporal artery; he was entirely successful in it, but the +success appeared to himself like a miracle, the recurrence +of which was not to be reckoned on.</p> + +<p>While surgery was waning with Keats, and finally +dying out—an upshot for which the exact date is not +assigned, nor perhaps assignable—he was making, at first +through his intimacy with Cowden Clarke, some good +literary acquaintances. The brothers John and Leigh +Hunt were the centre of the circle to which Keats was +thus admitted. John was the publisher, and Leigh the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +editor, of <i>The Examiner</i>. They had both been lately +fined, and imprisoned for two years, for a libel on the +Prince Regent, George IV.; it was perhaps legally a +libel, and was certainly a castigation laid on with no +indulgent hand. Leigh Hunt (born in 1784, and therefore +Keats’s senior by some eleven years) is known to us +all as a fresh and airy essayist, a fresh and airy poet, a +liberal thinker in the morals both of society and of +politics (hardly a politician in the stricter sense of the +term), a charming companion, a too-constant cracker of +genial jocosities and of puns. He understood good +literature both instinctively and critically; but was too +full of tricksy mannerisms, and of petted byways in thought +and style, to be an altogether safe associate for a youthful +literary aspirant, whether as model or as Mentor. Leigh +Hunt first saw Keats in the spring of 1816, not at his +residence in Hampstead as has generally been supposed, +but at No. 8 York Buildings, New Road.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> The earliest +meeting of Keats with Haydon was in November 1816, +at Hunt’s house; Haydon born in 1786, the zealous and +impatient champion of high art, wide-minded and combative, +too much absorbed in his love for art to be without +a considerable measure of self-seeking for art’s +apostle, himself. He painted into his large picture of +Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem the head of Keats, along +with those of Wordsworth and others. Another acquaintance +was Mr. Charles Ollier, the publisher, who wrote +verse and prose of his own. The Ollier firm in the early +spring of 1817 became the publishers of Keats’s first +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>volume of poems, of which more anon. Still earlier +than the Hunts, Haydon, and Ollier, Keats had known +John Hamilton Reynolds, his junior by a year, a poetical +writer of some mark, now too nearly forgotten, author of +“The Garden of Florence,†“The Fancy,†and the prose +tale, “Miserrimusâ€; he was the son of the writing-master +at Christ Hospital, and Keats became intimate with the +whole family, though not invariably well pleased with +them all. One of the sisters married Thomas Hood. +Through Reynolds Keats made acquaintance with Mr. +Benjamin Bailey, born towards 1794, then a student at +Oxford reading for the Church, afterwards Archdeacon +of Colombo in Ceylon. Charles Wentworth Dilke, born +in 1789, the critic, and eventually editor of <i>The Athenæum</i>, +was another intimate; and in course of time Keats knew +Charles Wells, seven years younger than himself, the +author of the dramatic poem “Joseph and his Brethren,†+and of the prose “Stories after Nature.†Other friends +will receive mention as we progress. I have for the +present said enough to indicate what was the particular +niche in the mansion of English literary life in which +Keats found himself housed at the opening of his career.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2> + + +<p>We have now reached the year 1817 and the month +of May, when Keats was in the twenty-second +year of his age. He then wrote that he had “forgotten +all surgery,†and was beginning at Margate his romantic +epic of “Endymion,†reading and writing about eight +hours a day. Keats had previously been at Carisbrooke +in the Isle of Wight, but had run away from there, finding +that the locality, while it charmed, also depressed him. +He had left London for the island, apparently with the +view of having greater leisure for study and composition. +His brother Tom was with him at Carisbrooke and at +Margate. He was already provided with a firm of publishers, +Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, willing to undertake +the risk of “Endymion,†and they advanced him a sum +sufficient for continuing at work on it with comfort. In +September he went with Mr. Benjamin Bailey to Oxford: +they made an excursion to Stratford-on-Avon, and Keats +was back at Hampstead by the end of the month. It +would appear that in Oxford Keats, in the heat of youthful +blood, committed an indiscretion of which we do not +know the details, nor need we give them if we knew +them; for on the 8th of October he wrote to Bailey in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +these terms: “The little mercury I have taken has corrected +the poison and improved my health,<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> though I +feel, from my employment, that I shall never again be +secure in robustness.†The residence of Keats and his +brother Tom in Hampstead, a first-floor lodging, was in +Well Walk, No. 1, next to the Wells Tavern, which was +then called the Green Man. The reader who has a head +for localities should bear this point well in mind, should +carefully discriminate the house in Well Walk from +another house, Wentworth Place, afterwards tenanted by +Keats and others at Hampstead, and, every time that the +question occurs to his thought, should pass a mental vote +of thanks to Mr. Buxton Forman for the great pains +which he took to settle the point, and the lucid and +pleasant account which he has given of it. Keats was at +Leatherhead in November; finished the first draft of +“Endymion†at Burford Bridge, near Dorking, on the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>28th of that month, and returned to Hampstead for the +winter. Two anecdotes which have often been repeated +belong apparently to about this date. One of them +purports that Keats gave a sound drubbing in Hampstead +to a butcher, or a butcher’s boy, who was ill-treating a +small boy, or else a cat. Hunt simply says that the +butcher “had been insolent,‗by implication, to Keats +himself. The “butcher’s boy†has obtained traditional +currency; but, according to George Keats, the offender +was “a scoundrel in livery,†the locality “a blind alley +at Hampstead.†Clarke says that the stand-up fight +lasted nearly an hour. Keats was an undersized man, +in fact he was not far removed from the dwarfish, being +barely more than five feet high, and this small feat of +stubborn gallantry deserves to be appraised and praised +accordingly. The other anecdote is that Coleridge met +Keats along with Leigh Hunt in a lane near Highgate, +“a loose, slack, not well-dressed youth,†and after shaking +hands with Keats, he said aside to Hunt, “There is +death in that hand.†Nothing is extant to show that at +so early a date as this, or even for some considerable +while after, any of Keats’s immediate friends shared the +ominous prevision of Coleridge.</p> + +<p>In March 1818 Keats joined his brothers at Teignmouth +in Devonshire, and in April “Endymion†was +published. In June he set off on a pedestrian tour of +some extent with a friend whose name will frequently +recur from this point forwards, Charles Armitage Brown. +One is generally inclined to get some idea of what a man +was like; if one knows what he was <i>un</i>like much the +same purpose is served. In April 1819 Keats wrote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +some bantering verses about Brown, which are understood +to go mainly by contraries we therefore infer +Brown to have presented a physical and moral aspect +the reverse of the following—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“He is to meet a melancholy carle,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As hath the seeded thistle when a parle<br /></span> +<span class="i4">It holds with Zephyr ere it sendeth fair<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Its light balloons into the summer air.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">No brush had touched his chin, or razor sheer;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“Ne carèd he for wine or half-and-half,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ne carèd he for fish or flesh or fowl,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And sauces held he worthless as the chaff;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">He ’sdained the swine-head at the wassail bowl.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ne with lewd ribalds sat he cheek by jowl,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ne with sly lemans in the scorner’s chair;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">But after water-brooks this pilgrim’s soul<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Panted, and all his food was woodland air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though he would oft-times feast on gillyflowers rare.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">“The slang of cities in no wise he knew;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">‘Tipping the wink’ to him was heathen Greek.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He sipped no olden Tom or ruin blue,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Or Nantz or cherry-brandy, drank full meek<br /></span> +<span class="i4">By many a damsel brave and rouge of cheek.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor did he know each aged watchman’s beat;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Nor in obscurèd purlieus would he seek<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For curlèd Jewesses with ankles neat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who, as they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mr. Brown, son of a London stockbroker from Scotland, +was a man several years older than Keats, born in 1786.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +He was a Russia merchant retired from business, of +much culture and instinctive sympathy with genius, and +he enjoyed assisting the efforts of young men of promise. +He had produced the libretto of an opera, “Narensky,†+and he eventually published a book on the Sonnets of +Shakespeare. From the date we have now reached, the +summer of 1818, which was more than a year following +their first introduction, Brown may be regarded as the +most intimate of all Keats’s friends, Dilke coming next +to him.</p> + +<p>The pedestrian tour with Brown was the sequel of a +family leave-taking at Liverpool. George Keats, finding +in himself no vocation for trade, with its smug compliances +and sleek assiduities (and John agreed with him +in these views), had determined to emigrate to America, +and rough it in a new settlement for a living, perhaps for +fortune; and, as a preliminary step, he had married Miss +Georgiana Augusta Wylie, a girl of sixteen, daughter of a +deceased naval officer. The sonnet “Nymph of the +downward smile†&c. was addressed to her. John +Keats and Brown, therefore, accompanied George and +his bride to Liverpool, and saw them off. They then +started as pedestrians into the Lake country, the land of +Burns, Belfast, and the Western Highlands. Before +starting on the trip Keats had often been in such a state +of health as to make it prudent that he should not hazard +exposure to night air; but in his excursion he seems to +have acted like a man of sound and rather hardy physique, +walking from day to day about twenty miles, and sometimes +more, and his various records of the trip have +nothing of a morbid or invaliding tone. This was not,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +however, to last long; the Isle of Mull proved too much +for him. On the 23rd of July, writing to his brother +Tom, he describes the expedition thus: “The road +through the island, or rather track, is the most dreary +you can think of; between dreary mountains, over bog +and rock and river, with our breeches tucked up and our +stockings in hand.... We had a most wretched walk of +thirty-seven miles across the island of Mull, and then we +crossed to Iona.†In another letter he says: “Walked +up to my knees in bog; got a sore throat; gone to see +Icolmkill and Staffa.†From this time forward the mention +of the sore throat occurs again and again; sometimes +it is subsiding, or as good as gone; at other times it has +returned, and causes more or less inconvenience. Brown +wrote of it as “a violent cold and ulcerated throat.†The +latest reference to it comes in December 1819, only two +months preceding the final and alarming break-down in +the young poet’s health. In Scotland, at any rate, amid +the exposure and exertion of the walking tour, the sore +throat was not to be staved off; so, having got as far as +Inverness, Keats, under medical advice, reluctantly cut +his journey short, parted from Brown, and went on board +the smack from Cromarty. A nine days’ passage brought +him to London Bridge, and on the 18th of August he +presented himself to the rather dismayed eyes of Mrs. +Dilke. “John Keats,†she wrote, “arrived here last +night, as brown and as shabby as you can imagine: +scarcely any shoes left, his jacket all torn at the back, a +fur cap, a great plaid, and his knapsack. I cannot tell +what he looked like.†More ought to be said here of +the details of Keats’s Scottish and Irish trip; but such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +details, not being of essential importance as incidents in +his life, could only be given satisfactorily in the form of +copious extracts from his letters, and for these—readable +and picturesque as they are—I have not adequate space. +He preferred, on the whole, the Scotch people to the +little which he saw of the Irish. Just as Keats was +leaving Scotland, because of his own ailments, he had +been summoned away thence on account of the more +visibly grave malady of his brother Tom, who was in an +advanced stage of consumption; but it appears that the +letter did not reach his hands at the time.</p> + +<p>The next three months were passed by Keats along +with Tom at their Hampstead lodgings. Anxiety and +affection—warm affection, deep anxiety—were of no avail. +Tom died at the beginning of December, aged just +twenty, and was buried on the 7th of that month. The +words in “King Lear,†“Poor Tom,†remain underlined +by the surviving brother.</p> + +<p>John Keats was now solitary in the world. Tom was +dead, George and his bride in America, Fanny, his girlish +sister, a permanent inmate of the household of Mr. and +Mrs. Abbey at Walthamstow. In December he quitted +his lodgings at Hampstead, and set up house along with +Mr. Brown in what was then called Wentworth Place, +Hampstead, now Lawn Bank; Brown being rightly the +tenant, and Keats a paying resident with Brown. Wentworth +Place consisted of only two houses. One of them +was thus inhabited by Brown and Keats, the other by the +Dilkes. In the first of these houses, when Brown and +Keats were away, and afterwards in the second, there +was also a well-to-do family of the name of Brawne,—a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +mother, with a son and two daughters. Lawn Bank is +the penultimate house on the right of John Street, next +to Wentworth House: Dr. Sharpey passed some of his +later years in it. This is, beyond all others, the dwelling +which remains permanently linked with the memory of +Keats.</p> + +<p>While Tom was still lingering out the days of his brief +life, Keats made the acquaintance of two young ladies. +He has left us a description of both of them. His portraiture +of the first, Miss Jane Cox, is written in a tone +which might seem the preliminary to a <i>grande passion</i>; +but this did not prove so; she rapidly passed out of his +existence and out of his memory. His portraiture of the +second, Miss Fanny Brawne, does not suggest anything +beyond a tepid liking which might perhaps merge into +a definite antipathy; this also was delusive, for he was +from the first smitten with Miss Brawne, and soon +profoundly in love with her—I might say desperately in +love, for indeed desperation, which became despair, was +the main ingredient in his passion, in all but its earliest +stages. I shall here extract these two passages, for both +of them are of exceptional importance for our biography—one +as acquainting us with Keats’s general range of feeling +in relation to women, and the other as introducing the +most serious and absorbing sentiment of the last two +years of his life. On October 29, 1818, he wrote as +follows to his brother George and his wife in America:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The Misses Reynolds are very kind to me.... On +my return, the first day I called [this was probably towards +the 20th of September], they were in a sort of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +taking or bustle about a cousin of theirs, Miss Cox, who, +having fallen out with her grandpapa in a serious manner, +was invited by Mrs. Reynolds to take asylum in her +house. She is an East Indian, and ought to be her +grandfather’s heir.... From what I hear she is not +without faults of a real kind; but she has others which +are more apt to make women of inferior claims hate her. +She is not a Cleopatra, but is at least a Charmian; she +has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine +manners. When she comes into the room she makes the +same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is +too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man +who may address her; from habit she thinks that nothing +particular. I always find myself more at ease with such +a woman; the picture before me always gives me a life +and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything +inferior. I am at such times too much occupied in +admiring to be awkward or in a tremble; I forget myself +entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time +think I am in love with her; so, before I go any further, +I will tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, +as a tune of Mozart’s might do. I speak of the thing as a +pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none +deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the +very yes and no of whose lips<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> is to me a banquet. I +don’t cry to take the moon home with me in my pocket, +nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her, and +her like, because one has no <i>sensations</i>; what we both +are is taken for granted. You will suppose I have by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +this time had much talk with her. No such thing; there +are the Misses Reynolds on the look out. They think I +don’t admire her because I don’t stare at her; they call +her a flirt to me—what a want of knowledge! She walks +across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn to +her with a magnetic power; this they call flirting! They +do not know things; they do not know what a woman is. +I believe, though, she has faults, the same as Charmian +and Cleopatra might have had. Yet she is a fine thing, +speaking in a worldly way; for there are two distinct +tempers of mind in which we judge of things:—the worldly, +theatrical, and pantomimical; and the unearthly, spiritual, +and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, +and this Charmian, hold the first place in our mind; in +the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his +child’s cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering +feelings. As a man of the world, I love the rich talk +of a Charmian; as an eternal being, I love the thought of +you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like +you to save me.â€</p></div> + +<p>So much for Miss Cox, the Charmian whom Keats was +not in love with. This is not absolutely the sole mention +of her in his letters, but it is the only one of importance. +We now turn to Miss Brawne, the young lady with whom +he had fallen very much in love at a date even preceding +that to which the present description must belong. The +description comes from a letter to George and Georgiana +Keats, written probably towards the middle of December +1818. It is true that the name Brawne does not appear +in the printed version of the letter, but the “very positive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +conviction†expressed by Mr. Forman that that name +really does stand in the MS., a conviction “shared by +members of her family,†may safely be adopted by all +my readers. I therefore insert the name where a blank +had heretofore appeared in print.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Perhaps, as you are fond of giving me sketches of +characters, you may like a little picnic of scandal, even +across the Atlantic. Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She +is about my height, with a fine style of countenance of +the lengthened sort. She wants sentiment in every +feature. She manages to make her hair look well; her +nostrils are very fine, though a little painful; her mouth +is bad, and good; her profile is better than her full face, +which indeed is not ‘full,’ but pale and thin, without +showing any bone; her shape is very graceful, and so are +her movements; her arms are good, her hands bad-ish, +her feet tolerable. She is not seventeen [Keats, if he +really wrote ‘not seventeen,’ was wrong here; ‘not nineteen’ +would have been correct, as she was born on +August 9, 1800.] But she is ignorant, monstrous in her +behaviour, flying out in all directions; calling people such +names that I was forced lately to make use of the term +‘minx.’ This is, I think, from no innate vice, but from +a penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am, however, +tired of such style, and shall decline any more of it. +She had a friend to visit her lately. You have known +plenty such. She plays the music, but without one +sensation but the feel of the ivory at her fingers. She is +a downright Miss, without one set-off. We hated her +[“We†would apparently be Keats, Brown, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +Dilkes], and smoked her, and baited her, and I think +drove her away. Miss Brawne thinks her a paragon of +fashion, and says she is the only woman in the world she +would change persons with. What a stupe! She is as +superior as a rose to a dandelion.â€</p></div> + +<p>At the time when Keats wrote these words he had +known Miss Brawne for a couple of months, more or +less, having first seen her in October or November at the +house of the Dilkes. It might seem that he was about +this time in a state of feeling propense to love. <i>Some</i> +woman was required to fill the void in his heart. The +woman might have been Miss Cox, whom he met in +September. As the event turned out, it was not she, but +it <i>was</i> Miss Brawne, whom he met in October or +November. Fanny Brawne was the elder daughter of a +gentleman of independent means, who died while she +was still a child; he left another daughter and a son with +their mother; and the whole family, as already mentioned, +lived at times in the same house which the Dilkes +occupied in Wentworth-place, Hampstead, and at other +times in the adjoining house, while not tenanted by +Brown and Keats. Miss Brawne (I quote here from Mr. +Forman) “had much natural pride and buoyancy, and +was quite capable of affecting higher spirits and less +concern than she really felt. But, as to the genuineness +of her attachment to Keats, some of those who knew her +personally have no doubt whatever."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> If so—or indeed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +whether so or not—it is a pity that she was wont, after +Keats’s death, to speak of him (as has been averred) as +“that foolish young poet who was in love with me.†That +Keats was a poet and a young poet is abundantly true; +but that he was a foolish one had even before his death, +and especially very soon after it, been found out to be a +gross delusion by a large number of people, and might +just as well have been found out by his betrothed bride +in addition. I know of only one portrait of Miss Brawne; +it is a silhouette by Edouart, engraved in two of Mr. +Forman’s publications. A silhouette is one of the least +indicative forms of portraiture for enabling one to judge +whether the sitter was handsome or not. This likeness +shows a very profuse mass of hair, a tall, rather sloping, +forehead, a long and prominent aquiline nose, a mouth +and chin of the <i>petite</i> kind, a very well-developed throat, +and a figure somewhat small in proportion to the head. +The face is not of the sort which I should suppose to +have ever been beautiful in an artist’s eyes, or in a poet’s +either; and indeed Keats’s description of Miss Brawne, +which I have just cited, is qualified, chilly, and critical, +with regard to beauty. Nevertheless, his love-letters to +Miss Brawne, most of which have been preserved and +published, speak of her beauty very emphatically. “The +very first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal;†+“I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have +for you, but beauty;†“all I can bring you is a swooning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +admiration of your beauty.†It seems probable that +Keats was the declared lover of Miss Brawne in April +1819 at the latest—more probably in February; and +when his first published letter to her was written, July +1819, he and she must certainly have been already +engaged, or all but engaged, to marry. This was contrary +to Mrs. Brawne’s liking. They appear to have contemplated—anything +but willingly on the poet’s part—a +tolerably long engagement; for he was a young man of +twenty-three, with stinted means, no regular profession, +and no occupation save that of producing verse derided +in the high places of criticism. He spoke indeed of +re-studying in Edinburgh for the medical profession: +this was a vague notion, with which no practical beginning +was made. An early marriage, followed by a year +or so of pleasuring and of intellectual advancement in +some such place as Rome or Zurich, was what Keats +really longed for.</p> + +<p>We must now go back a little—to December 1818. +Haydon was then still engaged upon his picture of +Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, and found his progress +impeded by want of funds, and by a bad attack, from +which he frequently suffered, of weakness of eyesight. +On the 22nd of the month, Keats, with conspicuous +generosity—and although he had already lent nearly +£200 to various friends—tendered him any money-aid +which might be in his power; asking merely that his +friend would claim the fulfilment of his promise only in +the last resort. On January 7, 1819, Haydon definitely +accepted his offer; and Keats wrote back, hoping to +comply, and refusing to take any interest. His own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +money affairs were, however, at this time almost at a deadlock, +controlled by lawyers and by his ex-guardian Mr. +Abbey; and the amount which he had expected to +command as coming to him after his brother Tom’s +death was not available. He had to explain as much in +April 1819 to Haydon, who wrote with some urgency. +Eventually he did make a small loan to the painter—£30; +but very shortly afterwards (June 17th) was compelled +to ask for a reimbursement—“do borrow or beg somehow +what you can for me.†There was a chancery-suit of +old standing, begun soon after the death of Mr. Jennings in +1805, and it continued to obstruct Keats in his money +affairs. The precise facts of these were also but ill-known +to the poet, who had potentially at his disposal +certain funds which remained <i>perdu</i> and unused until +two years after his death. On September 20, 1819, he +wrote to his brother George in America that Haydon +had been unable to make the repayment; and he added, +“He did not seem to care much about it, and let me go +without my money with almost nonchalance, when he +ought to have sold his drawings to supply me. I shall +perhaps still be acquainted with him, but, for friendship, +that is at an end.†And in fact the hitherto very ardent +cordiality between the poet and the painter does seem to +have been materially damped after this date; Keats being +somewhat reserved towards Haydon, and Haydon finding +more to censure than to extol in the conduct of Keats. +We can feel with both of them; and, while we pronounce +Keats blameless and even praiseworthy throughout, may +infer Haydon to have been not greatly blameable.</p> + +<p>Towards the end of June 1819 Keats went to Shank<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>lin; +his first companion there being an invalid but witty +and cheerful friend, James Rice, a solicitor, and his +second, Brown, who co-operated at this time with the +poet in producing the drama “Otho the Great.†Next, +the two friends went to Winchester, “chiefly,†wrote +Keats to his sister Fanny, “for the purpose of being near +a tolerable library, which after all is not to be found in +this place. However, we like it very much; it is the +pleasantest town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations +of any.†One of his letters from here +(September 21) speaks of his being now almost as well +acquainted with Italian as with French, and he adds, “I +shall set myself to get complete in Latin, and there my +learning must stop. I do not think of venturing upon +Greek.†It is stated that he learned Italian with uncommon +quickness.</p> + +<p>Early in the winter which closed 1819 George Keats +came over for a short while from America, his main +object being to receive his share of the money accruing +from the decease of his brother Tom, to the cost of +whose illness he had largely contributed. He had been +in Cincinnati, and had engaged in business, but as yet +without any success. In some lines which John Keats +addressed to Miss Brawne in October there is an energetic +and no doubt consciously overloaded denunciation of +“that most hateful land, dungeoner of my friends, that +monstrous region,†&c., &c. John, it appears, concealed +from George, during his English visit, the fact +that he himself was then much embarrassed in money-matters, +and almost wholly dependent upon his friends +for a subsistence meanwhile; and George left England<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +again without doing anything for his brother’s relief or +convenience. He took with him £700, some substantial +part of which appears to have been the property of John, +absolutely or contingently; and he undertook to remit +shortly to his brother £200, to be raised by the sale of a +boat which he owned in America; but months passed, +and the £200 never came, no purchaser for the boat +being procurable. Out of the £1,100 which Tom Keats +had left, George received £440, John hardly more than +£200, George thus repaying himself some money which +had been previously advanced for John’s professional +education. For all this he has been very severely +censured, Mr. Brown being among his sternest and most +persistent assailants. It must seemingly have been to +George Keats, and yet not to him exclusively, that +Colonel Finch referred in the letter which reached +Shelley’s eyes, saying that John had been “infamously +treated by the very persons whom his generosity had +rescued from want and woe;†and Shelley re-enforced +this accusation in his preface to “Adonais‗“hooted +from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had +wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he +had lavished his fortune and his care.†From these painful +charges George Keats eventually vindicated himself with +warmth of feeling, and with so much solidity of demonstration +as availed to convince Mr. Dilke, and also Mr. +Abbey. Who were the other offenders glanced at by +Colonel Finch, as also in one of Severn’s letters, I have +no distinct idea.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2> + + +<p>From this point forwards nothing but misery remains +to be recorded of John Keats. The narrative +becomes depressing to write and depressing to read. +The sensation is like that of being confined in a dark +vault at noonday. One knows, indeed, that the sun of +the poet’s genius is blazing outside, and that, on emerging +from the vault, we shall be restored to light and warmth; +but the atmosphere within is not the less dark and +laden, nor the shades the less murky. In tedious wretchedness, +racked and dogged with the pang of body and +soul, exasperated and protesting, raging now, and now +ground down into patience and acceptance, Keats gropes +through the valley of the shadow of death.</p> + +<p>Before detailing the facts, we must glance for a minute +at the position. Keats had a passionate ambition and a +passionate love—the ambition to be a poet, the love of +Fanny Brawne. At the beginning of 1820, he was +conscious of his authentic vocation as a poet, and conscious +also that this vocation, though recognized in a +small and to some extent an influential circle, was +publicly denied and ridiculed; his portion was the hiss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +of the viper and the gander, the hooting of the impostor +and the owl. His forthcoming volume was certain to +share the same fate; he knew its claims would be perversely +resisted and cruelly repudiated. If he could +make no serious impression as a poet, not only was his +leading ambition thwarted, but he would also be impeded +in getting any other and more paying literary work to +do—regular profession or employment he had none. +He was at best a poor man, and, for the while, almost +bereft of any command of funds. So long as this state of +things, or anything like it, continued, he would be unable +to marry the woman of his heart. While sickness kept +him a prisoner, he was torn by ideas of her volatility and +fickleness. Disease was sapping his vitals, pain wrung +him, Death beckoned him with finger more and more +imperative. Poetic fame became the vision of Tantalus, +and love the clasp of Ixion.</p> + +<p>Such was the life, or such the incipient death, of +Keats, in the last twelvemonth of his brief existence.</p> + +<p>For half a year prior to February 1820 he had been +unrestful and cheerless. “Either that gloom overspread +me,†so he wrote to James Rice, “or I was suffering under +some passionate feeling, or, if I turned to versify, that exacerbated +the poison of either sensation.†He began taking +laudanum at times, but was induced by Brown, towards +the end of 1819, to promise to give up this insidious +practice. Then came the crash: it was at Hampstead, on +the night of the 3rd of February.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“One night, about eleven o’clock,†I quote the words +of Lord Houghton, which have become classical, “Keats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +returned home<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> in a state of strange physical excitement; +it might have appeared, to those who did not know him, +one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend [Brown] +he had been outside the stage-coach, had received a +severe chill, was a little fevered; but added: ‘I don’t +feel it now.’ He was easily persuaded to go to bed; +and, as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was +on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and said: ‘That is +blood from my mouth. Bring me the candle: let me +see this blood.’ He gazed steadfastly some moments at +the ruddy stain, and then, looking in his friend’s face +with an expression of sudden calmness never to be +forgotten, said: ‘I know the colour of that blood—it is +arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. +That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.’â€</p></div> + +<p>A surgeon arrived shortly, bled Keats, and pronounced +the rupture to be unimportant, but the patient was not +satisfied. He wrote to Miss Brawne some few days +afterwards, “So violent a rush of blood came to my +lungs that I felt nearly suffocated.†By the 6th of the +month, however, he was already better, and he then said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +in a letter to his sister: “From imprudently leaving off +my great-coat in the thaw, I caught cold, which flew to +my lungs.†Later on he suffered from palpitation of the +heart; but was so far recovered by the 25th of March +as to be able to go to town to the exhibition of Haydon’s +picture, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, and early in April +he could take a walk of five miles. In March he had +written that he was then picking up flesh, and, if he +could avoid inflammation for six weeks, might yet do +well; in April his doctor assured him that his only +malady was nervous irritability and general weakness, +caused by anxiety and by the excitement of poetry. At +an untoward time for his health, about the first week in +May, Keats was obliged to quit his residence in Hampstead; +as Brown was then leaving for Scotland, and, +according to his wont, let the house. Keats accordingly +went to live in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town. A letter +which he wrote just before his departure speaks of his +uncertain outlook; he might be off to South America, +or, more likely, embarking as surgeon on a vessel trading +to the East Indies. This latter idea had been in his mind +for about a year past, off and on. What he could have contemplated +doing in South America is by no means +apparent. On the 7th of May Keats parted at Gravesend +from Brown, and they never met again. The hand with +which he grasped Brown’s, and which he had of old +“clenched against Hammond’s,†was now, according to +his own words, “that of a man of fifty.â€</p> + +<p>Things had thus gone on pretty well with Keats’s +health, since he first began to rally from the blood-spitting +attack of the 3rd of February; but this was not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +to continue. On the 22nd of June he again broke a +blood-vessel, and vomited blood morning and evening. +Leigh Hunt thought it high time to intervene, and +removed the patient to his house, No. 13 Mortimer +Terrace, Kentish Town. By the 7th of July—just about +the time when Keats’s last volume was published, the +one containing “Lamia,†“Hyperion,†and all his best +works—the physician had told him that he must not +remain in England, but go to Italy. On the 12th, Mrs. +Gisborne, the friend of Godwin and of Shelley, saw him +at Hunt’s house, looking emaciated, and “under sentence +of death from Dr. Lamb.†Three days afterwards +he wrote to Haydon “I am afraid I shall pop off just +when my mind is able to run alone.†The stay at Leigh +Hunt’s house came to an end in a way which speaks +volumes for the shattered nerves, and consequent morbid +susceptibility, of Keats. On the 10th of August a note +for him written by Miss Brawne, which “contained not +a word of the least consequence,†arrived at the house. +Keats was then resting in his own room, and Mrs. Hunt, +who was occupied, desired a female servant to give it to +him. The servant quitted the household on the following +day; and, in leaving, she handed the letter to Thornton +Hunt, then a mere child, asking him to reconsign it to +his mother. When Thornton did this on the 12th, the +letter was open; opened (one assumes) either by the +servant through idle curiosity, or by Thornton through +simple childishness. “Poor Keats was affected by this +inconceivable circumstance beyond what can be imagined. +He wept for several hours, and resolved, notwithstanding +Hunt’s entreaties, to leave the house. He went to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +Hampstead that same evening.†In Hampstead he had +at least the solace of being received into the dwelling +occupied by the Brawne family, being the same dwelling +(next door to that of Brown and Keats) which had been +recently tenanted by the Dilkes; yet the excitement of +feeling, consequent on the continual presence of Miss +Brawne, was perhaps harmful to him. Here he remained +until the time for journeying to Italy arrived. He was +still, it seems, left in some uncertainty as to the precise +nature and gravity of his disease, for on the 14th of +August he wrote to his sister: “’Tis not yet consumption, +I believe; but it would be, were I to remain in this +climate all the winter.†Anyhow, his expectations of +recovery, or of marked benefit from the Italian sojourn, +were but faint.</p> + +<p>Something may here be said of the love-letters of +Keats to Fanny Brawne. They begin (as already stated) +on the 1st of July 1819, and end at some date between +his leaving Hampstead, early in May 1820, and quitting +Hunt’s house in August. We may assume the 10th July +1820, or thereabouts, as the date of the last letter. I cannot +say that the character of Keats gains to my eyes from the +perusal of this correspondence. Love-letters are not +expected to be models of self-regulation and “the philosophic +mindâ€; they would be bad love-letters, or letters +of a bad specimen of a lover, if they were so. Still, one +wants a man to show himself, <i>quâ</i> lover, at his highest in +letters of this stamp; one wants to find in them his +noblest self, his steadiest as his most ardent aspirations, +in one direction. Keats seems to me, throughout his +love-letters, unbalanced, wayward, and profuse; he ex<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>hibits +great fervour of temperament, and abundant +caressingness, without the inner depth of tenderness +and regard. He lives in his mistress, for himself. As +the letters pass further and further into the harsh black +shadows of disease, he abandons all self-restraint, and +lashes out right and left; he wills that his friends should +have been disloyal to him, as the motive for his being +disloyal to them. To make allowance for all this is +possible, and even necessary; but to treat it as not needing +that any allowance should be made would seem to +me futile. In the earlier letters of the series we have to +note a few points of biographic interest. He says that +he believes Miss Brawne liked him for himself, not for +his writings, and he loves her the more for it; that, on +first falling in love with her, he had written to declare +himself, but he burned the letter, fancying that she had +shown some dislike to him; that he had all his life been +indifferent to money matters, but must be chary of the +resources of his friends; that he was afraid of her “being +a little inclined to the Cressid‗one of the various +passages which show that he chafed at her girlish liking +for general society and diversions. On the 10th of +October 1819 he had had “a thousand kisses†from +her, and was resolved not to dispense with the thousand +and first. Early in June 1820 he speaks of her having +“been in the habit of flirting with Brown,†who “did not +know he was doing me to death by inches.‗It may be +well to give three of the letters as specimens:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>—</p> + + +<div class="blockquot1"><p class="center">(I.)</p> + +<p class="center"> +“<span class="smcap">25 College Street.</span><br /> +<br /></p> +<p><span class="ralign">“[Postmark] <i>13 October 1819.</i></span><br /> +</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dearest Girl</span>,—This moment I have set myself +to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with +any degree of content. I must write you a line or two, +and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my mind +for ever so short a time. Upon my soul I can think of +nothing else. The time is past when I had power to +advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of +my life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist +without you; I am forgetful of everything but seeing you +again; my life seems to stop there—I see no further. +You have absorbed me; I have a sensation at the +present moment as though I was dissolving. I should +be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing +you; I should be afraid to separate myself far from +you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? +My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love.</p> + +<p>“Your note came in just here. I cannot be ‘happier’ +away from you; ’tis richer than an argosy of pearls. Do +not threat me, even in jest. I have been astonished that +men could die martyrs for religion—I have shuddered at +it. I shudder no more; I could be martyred for <i>my</i> +religion. Love is my religion—I could die for that; I +could die for you. My creed is love, and you are its only +tenet. You have ravished me away by a power I cannot +resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even +since I have seen you I have endeavoured often ‘to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +reason against the reasons of my love.’ I can do that +no more, the pain would be too great. My love is +selfish; I cannot breathe without you.â€</p></div> + + +<div class="blockquot1"><p class="center">(II.)</p> + +<p class="center"> +[Date uncertain—say towards June 15, 1820.]<br /> +</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dearest Fanny</span>,—My head is puzzled this +morning, and I scarce know what I shall say, though +I am full of a hundred things. ’Tis certain I would +rather be writing to you this morning, notwithstanding +the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than enjoy any +other pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with you. +Upon my soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish +you could know the tenderness with which I continually +brood over your different aspects of countenance, action, +and dress. I see you come down in the morning; I see +you meet me at the window; I see everything over again +eternally that I ever have seen. If I get on the pleasant +clue, I live in a sort of happy misery; if on the unpleasant, +’tis miserable misery.</p> + +<p>“You complain of my ill-treating you in word, +thought, and deed.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> I am sorry—at times I feel bitterly +sorry that I ever made you unhappy. My excuse is that +those words have been wrung from me by the sharpness +of my feelings. At all events, and in any case, I have +been wrong: could I believe that I did it without any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +cause, I should be the most sincere of penitents. I +could give way to my repentant feelings now, I could +recant all my suspicions, I could mingle with you heart +and soul, though absent, were it not for some parts of +your letters. Do you suppose it possible I could ever +leave you? You know what I think of myself, and what +of you: you know that I should feel how much it was +my loss, and how little yours.</p> + +<p>“‘My friends laugh at you.’ I know some of them: +when I know them all, I shall never think of them again +as friends, or even acquaintance. My friends have +behaved well to me in every instance but one; and there +they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my +conduct—spying upon a secret I would rather die than +share it with anybody’s confidence. For this I cannot +wish them well; I care not to see any of them again. If +I am the theme, I will not be the friend of idle gossips. +Good gods, what a shame it is our loves should be so put +into the microscope of a coterie! Their laughs should +not affect you—(I may perhaps give you reasons some +day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people to hate +me well enough, <i>for reasons I know of</i>, who have pretended +a great friendship for me)—when in competition +with one who, if he never should see you again, would +make you the saint of his memory. These laughers, +who do not like you, who envy you for your beauty, who +would have God-blessed me from you for ever, who were +plying me with discouragements with respect to you +eternally! People are revengeful: do not mind them. +Do nothing but love me: if I knew that for certain, life +and health will in such event be a heaven, and death<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +itself will be less painful. I long to believe in immortality: +I shall never be able to bid you an entire farewell. +If I am destined to be happy with you here, how short +is the longest life! I wish to believe in immortality—I +wish to live with you for ever. Do not let my name ever +pass between you and those laughers: if I have no other +merit than the great love for you, that were sufficient to +keep me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I +have been cruel and unjust, I swear my love has ever +been greater than my cruelty—which lasts but a minute, +whereas my love, come what will, shall last for ever. If +concession to me has hurt your pride, God knows I have +had little pride in my heart when thinking of you. Your +name never passes my lips—do not let mine pass yours. +Those people do not like me.</p> + +<p>“After reading my letter, you even then wish to see +me. I am strong enough to walk over: but I dare not—I +shall feel so much pain in parting with you again. +My dearest love, I am afraid to see you: I am strong, +but not strong enough to see you. Will my arm be ever +round you again, and, if so, shall I be obliged to leave +you again?</p> + +<p>“My sweet love, I am happy whilst I believe your +first letter. Let me be but certain that you are mine +heart and soul, and I could die more happily than I could +otherwise live. If you think me cruel, if you think I +have slighted you, do muse it over again, and see into +my heart. My love to you is ‘true as truth’s simplicity, +and simpler than the infancy of truth’—as I think I once +said before. How could I slight you? how threaten to +leave you? Not in the spirit of a threat to you—no, but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +in the spirit of wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my +delicious, my angel Fanny, do not believe me such a +vulgar fellow. I will be as patient in illness and as +believing in love as I am able.â€</p></div> + + +<div class="blockquot1"><p class="center">(III.)</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>(This is the last letter of the series. Its date is uncertain; +but may, as already intimated, be towards +July 10, 1820. It follows next after our No. 2.)</p></div> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dearest Girl</span>,—I wish you could invent some +means to make me at all happy without you. Every +hour I am more and more concentrated in you; everything +else tastes like chaff in my mouth. I feel it almost +impossible to go to Italy. The fact is, I cannot leave +you, and shall never taste one minute’s content until it +pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I +will not go on at this rate. A person in health, as you +are, can have no conception of the horrors that nerves +and a temper like mine go through.</p> + +<p>“What island do your friends propose retiring to? I +should be happy to go with you there alone, but in +company I should object to it: the backbitings and +jealousies of new colonists, who have nothing else to +amuse themselves, is unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to +see me yesterday, and gave me a very great deal more +pain than pleasure. I shall never be able any more to +endure the society of any of those who used to meet at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +Elm Cottage<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> and Wentworth Place. The last two years +taste like brass upon my palate. If I cannot live with +you, I will live alone.</p> + +<p>“I do not think my health will improve much while I +am separated from you. For all this, I am averse to +seeing you: I cannot bear flashes of light, and return into +my glooms again. I am not so unhappy now as I should +be if I had seen you yesterday. To be happy with you +seems such an impossibility: it requires a luckier star +than mine—it will never be.</p> + +<p>“I enclose a passage from one of your letters which I +want you to alter a little: I want (if you will have it so) +the matter expressed less coldly to me.</p> + +<p>“If my health would bear it, I could write a poem +which I have in my head, which would be a consolation +for people in such a situation as mine. I would show +some one in love, as I am, with a person living in such +liberty as you do.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> Shakespeare always sums up matters +in the most sovereign manner. Hamlet’s heart was full of +such misery as mine is, when he said to Ophelia, ‘Go to a +nunnery, go, go!’ Indeed, I should like to give up the +matter at once—I should like to die. I am sickened at +the brute world you are smiling with. I hate men, and +women more. I see nothing but thorns for the future:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +wherever I may be next winter, in Italy or nowhere, Brown +will be living near you, with his indecencies. I see no +prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome. Well, I +should there see you, as in a magic glass, going to and from +town at all hours—I wish I could infuse a little confidence +of human nature into my heart: I cannot muster +any. The world is too brutal for me. I am glad there +is such a thing as the grave—I am sure I shall never +have any rest till I get there. At any rate, I will indulge +myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any +of their friends. I wish I was either in your arms full of +faith, or that a thunderbolt would strike me.—God bless +you. “J. K.â€</p> +</div> + +<p>It is seldom one reads a letter (not to speak of a love-letter) +more steeped than this in wretchedness and acrimony; +wretchedness for which the cause was but too real +and manifest; acrimony for which no ground has been +shown or is to be surmised. What Mr. Dilke had done, +or could be supposed to have done, to merit the invalid’s +ire, is unapparent. Mr. Brown may be inferred, from +the verses of Keats already quoted, to have had the +general character and bearing of a <i>bon vivant</i> or “jolly +dogâ€; sufficiently versed in the good things of this world, +whether fish, flesh, or womankind; jocose, or on +occasion slangy. But Keats himself, in the nearly contemporary +letter in which he arraigned Miss Brawne for +“flirting with Brown,†had said: “I know his love and +friendship for me—at this moment I should be without +pence were it not for his assistance;†and we refuse to +think that any contingency could be likely to arise in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +which his “indecencies†would put Miss Brawne to the +blush. Be it enough for us to know that Keats, in the +drear prospect of expatriation and death, wrote in this +strain, and to wish it were otherwise.</p> + +<p>The time had now arrived when Keats was to go to +Italy. It was on the 18th of September 1820 that he +embarked on the <i>Maria Crowther</i> from London. Haydon +gives us a painful glimpse of the poet shortly before his +departure: “The last time I saw him was at Hampstead, +lying on his back in a white bed, helpless, irritable, and +hectic. He had a book, and, enraged at his own feebleness, +seemed as if he were going out of the world, with a +contempt of this, and no hopes of a better. He muttered +as I stood by him that, if he did not recover, he +would ‘cut his throat.’ I tried to calm him, but to no +purpose. I left him, in great depression of spirit to see +him in such a state.†Another attached friend, of whom +I have not yet made mention, accompanied him; and in +the annals of watchful and self-oblivious friendship there +are few records more touching than the one which links +with the name of John Keats that of Joseph Severn. +Severn, two years older than Keats, had known him as far +back as 1813, being introduced by Mr. William Haslam. +Keats was then studying at Guy’s Hospital, but none the +less gave Severn “the complete idea of a poet.†The +acquaintance does not seem to have proceeded far at +that date; but, through the intervention of Mr. Edward +Holmes (author of a “Life of Mozart,†and “A Ramble +among the Musicians of Germanyâ€) was renewed whilst +the poet was composing “Endymionâ€; and Severn may +probably have co-operated in some minor degree with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +Haydon in training Keats to a perception of the great +things in plastic art. In 1820 Severn, a student-painter +at the Royal Academy, had won the gold medal by his +picture of The Cave of Despair, from Spenser, entitling +him to the expenses of a three years’ stay in Italy, +for advancement in his art. He had an elegant gift in +music, as well as in painting; and it is a satisfaction to +learn that at this period he had “great animal spirits,†for +without these what he went through during the ensuing +five months would have been but too likely to break him +down. I must make room here for another letter from +Keats, one addressed to his good friend Brown, deeply +pathetic, and serving to assuage whatever may have been +like “brass upon our palate†in the last-quoted letter to +Fanny Brawne.</p> + +<div class="blockquot1"><p class="center"> +“<i>Saturday, September 28.</i><br /> + +“<i>Maria Crowther</i>, off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight.<br /> +</p> + +<p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Brown</span>,—The time has not yet come for +a <i>pleasant</i> letter from me. I have delayed writing to you +from time to time, because I felt how impossible it was to +enliven you with one heartening hope of my recovery. +This morning in bed the matter struck me in a different +manner. I thought I would write ‘while I was in some +liking,’ or I might become too ill to write at all, and then, +if the desire to have written should become strong, it +would be a great affliction to me. I have many more +letters to write, and I bless my stars that I have begun, +for time seems to press—this may be my best opportunity.</p> + +<p>“We are in a calm, and I am easy enough this morning.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +If my spirits seem too low you may in some degree +impute it to our having been at sea a fortnight without +making any way. I was very disappointed at not meeting +you at Bedhampton, and am very provoked at the +thought of you being at Chichester to-day.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> I should +have delighted in setting off for London for the sensation +merely—for what should I do there? I could not +leave my lungs or stomach or other worse things behind +me.</p> + +<p>“I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me +much. There is one I must mention, and have done +with it. Even if my body would recover of itself, +this would prevent it. The very thing which I want to +live most for will be a great occasion of my death. I +cannot help it—who can help it? Were I in health, it +would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? +I daresay you will be able to guess on what subject I am +harping: you know what was my greatest pain during the +first part of my illness at your house. I wish for death +every day and night to deliver me from these pains; and +then I wish death away, for death would destroy even +those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and +sea, weakness and decline, are great separators; but +death is the great divorcer for ever. When the pang of +this thought has passed through my mind, I may say +the bitterness of death is past. I often wish for you, +that you might flatter me with the best.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p> + +<p>“I think, without my mentioning it, for my sake you +would be a friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. +You think she has many faults: but for my sake think +she has not one. If there is anything you can do for +her by word or deed, I know you will do it. I am in a +state at present in which woman, merely as woman, can +have no more power over me than stocks and stones; +and yet the difference of my sensations with respect to +Miss Brawne and my sister is amazing. The one seems +to absorb the other to a degree incredible. I seldom +think of my brother and sister in America. The thought +of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything horrible—the +sense of darkness coming over me—I eternally see +her figure eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she +was in the habit of using during my last nursing at +Wentworth Place ring in my ears. Is there another life? +Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must +be—we cannot be created for this sort of suffering. The +receiving this letter is to be one of yours.</p> + +<p>“I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather +yours to me, more than that, as you deserve to escape, +you will never be so unhappy as I am. I should think +of—you<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> in my last moments. I shall endeavour to +write to Miss Brawne if possible to-day.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> A sudden<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +stop to my life in the middle of one of these letters +would be no bad thing, for it keeps one in a sort of +fever awhile.</p> + +<p>“Though fatigued with a letter longer than any I have +written for a long while, it would be better to go on for +ever than awake to a sense of contrary winds. We +expect to put into Portland Roads to-night. The captain, +the crew, and the passengers are all ill-tempered +and weary. I shall write to Dilke. I feel as if I was +closing my last letter to you.â€</p></div> + +<p>The ship at last proceeded on her voyage, and in the +Bay of Biscay encountered a severe squall. Keats soon +afterwards read the storm-scene in Byron’s “Don Juan": +he threw the book away in indignation, denouncing the +author’s perversity of mind which could “make solemn +things gay, and gay things solemn.†Late in October he +reached the harbour of Naples, and had to perform a +tedious quarantine of ten days. After landing on the +31st,<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> he received a second letter from Shelley, then at +Pisa, urging him to come to that city. The first letter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +on this subject, dated in July, had invited Keats to the +hospitality of Shelley’s own house; but in November +this project had been given up, as “we are not rich +enough for that sort of thing‗although Shelley still +intended (so he wrote to Leigh Hunt) “to be the +physician both of his body and his soul,—to keep the +one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish.†+Keats, however, had brought with him a letter of introduction +to Dr. (afterwards Sir James) Clark, in Rome,—or +indeed he may have met him before leaving England—and +he decided to proceed to Rome rather than Pisa. +Dr. Clark engaged for him a lodging opposite his own: +it was in the first house on the right as you ascend the +steps of the Trinità del Monte. The precise date when +Keats reached Rome, his last place of torture and of +rest, does not appear to be recorded: it was towards the +middle of November. He was at first able to walk out +a little, and occasionally to ride. Dr. Clark attended +his sick bed with the most exemplary assiduity and kindness. +He pronounced (so Keats wrote to Brown in a +letter of November 30th, which is perhaps the last he +ever penned) that the lungs were not much amiss, but +the stomach in a very bad condition: perhaps this was a +kindly equivocation, for by this time—as was ascertained +after his death—Keats can have had scarcely any lungs +at all. The patient was under no illusion as to his +prospects, and he more than once asked the physician +“When will this posthumous life of mine come to an +end?â€</p> + +<p>The only words in which the last days of Keats can +be adequately recorded are those of Severn: our best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +choice would be between extract and silence. There +were oscillations from time to time, from bad to less bad, +but generally the tendency of the disease was steadily +downwards. The poet’s feelings regarding Fanny Brawne +were so acute and harrowing that he never mentioned +her to his friend. I give a few particulars from Severn’s +contemporary letters—the person addressed being not +always known.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“<i>December 14.</i> His suffering is so great, so continued, +and his fortitude so completely gone, that any further +change must make him delirious.</p> + +<p>“<i>December 17.</i> Not a moment can I be from him. I +sit by his bed and read all day, and at night I humour +him in all his wanderings.... He rushed out of bed and +said ‘This day shall be my last,’ and but for me most +certainly it would. The blood broke forth in similar +quantity the next morning, and he was bled again. I +was afterwards so fortunate as to talk him into a little +calmness, and he soon became quite patient. Now the +blood has come up in coughing five times. Not a +single thing will he digest, yet he keeps on craving for +food. Every day he raves he will die from hunger, and +I’ve been obliged to give him more than was allowed.... +Dr. Clark will not say much.... All that can be +done he does most kindly; while his lady, like himself +in refined feeling, prepares all that poor Keats takes, for—in +this wilderness of a place for an invalid—there was +no alternative.</p> + +<p>[To Mrs. Brawne.] “<i>January 11.</i> He has now +given up all thoughts, hopes, or even wish, for recovery.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +His mind is in a state of peace, from the final leave he +has taken of this world, and all its future hopes.... I +light the fire, make his breakfast, and sometimes am +obliged to cook; make his bed, and even sweep the +room.... Oh I would my unfortunate friend had never +left your Wentworth Place for the hopeless advantages of +this comfortless Italy! He has many many times talked +over ‘the few happy days at your house, the only time +when his mind was at ease’.... Poor Keats cannot +see any letters—at least he will not; they affect him so +much, and increase his danger. The two last I repented +giving: he made me put them into his box, unread.</p> + +<p>“<i>January 15.</i> Torlonia the banker has refused us +any more money. The bill is returned unaccepted, and +to-morrow I must pay my last crown for this cursed +lodging-place: and what is more, if he dies, all the beds +and furniture will be burnt, and the walls scraped, and +they will come on me for a hundred pounds or more.... +You see my hopes of being kept by the Royal +Academy will be cut off unless I send a picture in the +spring. I have written to Sir T. Lawrence.</p> + +<p>“<i>February 12.</i> At times I have hoped he would +recover; but the doctor shook his head, and Keats would +not hear that he was better; the thought of recovery is +beyond everything dreadful to him.</p> + +<p>[To Mrs. Brawne.] “<i>February 14.</i> His mind is +growing to great quietness and peace. I find this +change has its rise from the increasing weakness of his +body; but it seems like a delightful sleep to me, I have +been beating about in the tempest of his mind so long. +To-night he has talked very much to me, but so easily<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +that he at last fell into a pleasant sleep. He seems to +have comfortable dreams without nightmare. This will +bring on some change: it cannot be worse—it may be +better. Among the many things he has requested of me +to-night, this is the principal—that on his grave shall be +this, ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water.’... +Such a letter has come! I gave it to Keats, supposing +it to be one of yours; but it proved sadly otherwise. +The glance of that letter tore him to pieces. The effects +were on him for many days. He did not read it—he +could not; but requested me to place it in his coffin, +together with a purse and letter (unopened) of his sister’s: +since which time he has requested me not to place <i>that</i> +letter in his coffin, but only his sister’s purse and letter, +with some hair. Then he found many causes of his +illness in the exciting and thwarting of his passions; but +I persuaded him to feel otherwise on this delicate point.... +I have got an English nurse to come two hours every +other day.... He has taken half a pint of fresh milk: +the milk here is beautiful to all the senses—it is delicious. +For three weeks he has lived on it, sometimes taking a +pint and a half in a day.</p> + +<p>“<i>February 22.</i> This morning, by the pale daylight, +the change in him frightened me: he has sunk in the +last three days to a most ghastly look.... He opens his +eyes in great doubt and horror; but, when they fall upon +me, they close gently, open quietly, and close again, till +he sinks to sleep.</p> + +<p>“<i>February 27.</i> He is gone. He died with the most +perfect ease—he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23rd, +about four, the approaches of death came on. ‘Severn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>—I—lift +me up. I am dying—I shall die easy. Don’t +be frightened: be firm, and thank God it has come.’ +I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling +in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he +gradually sank into death, so quiet that I still thought +he slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down +by four nights’ watching, no sleep since, and my poor +Keats gone. Three days since the body was opened: +the lungs were completely gone. The doctors could not +imagine how he had lived these two months. I followed +his dear body to the grave on Monday [February 26th], +with many English.... The letters I placed in the +coffin with my own hand.â€</p></div> + +<p>No words of mine shall be added here to tarnish upon +the mirror of memory this image of a sacred death and +a sacred friendship.</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2> + + +<p>We have now reached the close of a melancholy +history—that of the extinction, in a space of +less than twenty-six years, of a bright life foredoomed +by inherited disease. We turn to another subject—the +intellectual development and the writings of Keats, +what they were, and how they were treated. Here again +there are some sombre tints.</p> + +<p>A minute anecdote, apparently quite authentic, shows +that a certain propensity to the jingle of rhyme was +innate in Keats: Haydon is our informant. “An old +lady (Mrs. Grafty, of Craven Street, Finsbury) told his +brother George—when, in reply to her question what +John was doing, he told her he had determined to become +a poet—that this was very odd; because when he +could just speak, instead of answering questions put to +him, he would always make a rhyme to the last word +people said, and then laugh.†This, however, is the only +rhyming-anecdote that we hear of Keats’s childhood or +mere boyhood: there is nothing to show that at school +he made the faintest attempt at verse-spinning. The +earliest known experiment of his is the “Imitation of +Spenser‗four Spenserian stanzas, beginning—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Now Morning from her orient chamber came,â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and very poor stanzas they are. This Imitation was +written while he was living at Edmonton, in his nineteenth +year, and thus there was nothing singularly precocious in +Keats, either in the age at which he began versifying, or +in the skill with which he first addressed himself to the +task. I might say more of other verses, juvenile in the +amplest sense of the term, but such remarks would +belong more properly to a later section of this volume. +I will therefore only observe here that the earliest poems +of his in which I can discern anything even distantly +approaching to poetic merit or to his own characteristic +style (and these distantly indeed) are the lines “To ——â€</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Hadst thou lived in days of old,â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and “Calidore, a Fragment,â€</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Young Calidore is paddling o’er the lake.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The dates of these two compositions are not stated, but +they were probably later than the opening of 1815, and +if so Keats would have been nearly or quite twenty when +he wrote them—and this is far remote from precocity. +Let us say then, once for all, that, whatever may be the +praise and homage due to Keats for ranking as one of +the immortals when he died aged twenty-five, no sort of +encomium can be awarded to him on the ground that, +when he first began, he began early and well. All his +rawest attempts, be it added to his credit, appear to have +been kept to himself; for Cowden Clarke, who was certainly +his chief literary confidant in those tentative days, +says that until Keats produced to him his sonnet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +“written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left prison†+the youth’s attempts at verse-writing were to him unknown. +The 3rd of February 1815 was the day of +Hunt’s liberation, so that the endeavour had by this time +been going on in silence for something like a year or +more.</p> + +<p>It was not till 1816—or let us say when he was just of +age—that Keats produced a truly excellent thing. This +is the sonnet “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer.†+A copy of Chapman’s translation had been lent to Cowden +Clarke; he and Keats sat up till daylight reading it, the +young poet shouting with delight, and by ten o’clock on +the following morning Keats sent the sonnet to Clarke. +It was therefore a sudden immediate inspiration, a little +rill of lava flowing out of a poetic volcano, solidified at +once. This is not only the first excellent thing written +by Keats—it is the <i>only</i> excellent thing contained in his +first volume of verse.</p> + +<p>This volume came out (as already mentioned) in the +early spring of 1817. The sonnet dedicating the book +to Leigh Hunt, written off at a moment’s notice “when +the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer,†was +evidently composed in winter-time. The title of the +volume is “Poems by John Keats.†The motto on its +title-page is from Spenser—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“What more felicity can fall to creature<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than to enjoy delight with liberty?â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—a motto embodying with considerable completeness the +feeling which is predominant in the volume, and generally +in Keats’s poetic works. We always feel “delight†to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +be his true element, whatever may be the undertone of +pathos opposed to it by poetic development and treatment, +and by adverse fate. “Liberty†also—a free +flight of the faculties, a rejection of conventional +trammels, whether in life or in verse—was highly +characteristic of him; and perhaps the youthful friend of +Hunt intended the word “liberty†to be understood by +his readers as having a certain political flavour as well. +In addition to some writings just specified, the volume +contained “I stood tiptoe upon a little hillâ€; the +three epistles “To George Felton Mathew†(who was a +gentleman of literary habits, afterwards employed in +administering the Poor Law), “To my brother George,†+and “To Charles Cowden Clarkeâ€; sixteen sonnets; and +“Sleep and Poetry.†The question of the poetic deservings +of these compositions belongs more properly to our +final chapter. I shall here give only a few details bearing +upon the circumstances of their production. The poem +“I stood tiptoe†&c. was written beside a gate near Caen +Wood, Highgate. It must have been begun in a summer, +no doubt that of 1816, and was still uncompleted in the +middle of December of that year. “The Epistle to +Mathew,†dated November 1815, testifies to the early +admiration of Keats for Thomas Chatterton; though the +dedication of “Endymion,†“Inscribed to the memory of +Thomas Chatterton,†was but poorly forestalled by such +lines as the following—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Where we may soft humanity put on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sit and rhyme, and think on Chatterton,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Four laurelled spirits heavenward to entreat him.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p> + +<p>Moreover, the first of his youthful sonnets is addressed +to Chatterton. The “Epistle to George,†August 1816, +opens with a reference to “many a dreary hour†which +John Keats has passed, fearing he would never be able +to write good poetry, however much he might gaze +on sky, honey-bees, and the beauty of woman. The +“Epistle to Clarke,†September 1816, pays ample tribute +to the guidance which he had afforded to Keats into the +realms of poetry, and contains a couplet which has of +late been very often quoted—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up to its climax, and then dying proudly?â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The sonnet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“O Solitude, if I must with thee dwell,â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is the first thing that Keats ever published. It had previously +appeared in <i>The Examiner</i> for May 5, 1816, and +is clearly one of the best of these early sonnets. The +sonnet which begins with the unmetrical line—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“How many bards gild the lapses of timeâ€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>was included in the very first batch of verses by Keats +which Cowden Clarke showed to Leigh Hunt. Hunt +expressed “unhesitating and prompt admiration†of some +other one among the compositions; and Horace Smith, +who was present, reading out the sonnet now before us, +praised as “a well-condensed expression†the contorted +and inefficient line—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“That distance of recognizance bereaves,â€<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></div></div> + +<p><i>i.e.</i> [sounds] which distance bereaves of recognizance, or, +in plain English, which are too distant to be recognized. +Two other sonnets are addressed to Haydon in a tone of +glowing laudation.</p> + +<p>“Sleep and Poetry†is (if we except the sonnet upon +Chapman’s Homer) by far the most important poem in +the volume. It was written partly in Leigh Hunt’s +cottage at Hampstead, in the library-room, where a sofa-bed +had on one occasion been made up for Keats’s convenience, +and the latter lines in the poem refer to objects +of art which were kept in the room. Apart from the impressive +line which all readers remember, saying of +poetry—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“’Tis might half-slumbering on its own right arm,â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>there are several passages interesting as showing Keats’s +enthusiasm for the art in which he was now a beginner, +soon to be an adept—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Oh for ten years that I may overwhelm<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Myself in poesy!â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>also</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">“The great end<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of poesy, that it should be a friend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man;â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and again</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“They shall be accounted poet-kings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who simply tell the most heart-easing things‗<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>both of these being definitions in which we might imagine +Leigh Hunt to have borne his part, or at least notified<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +his concurrence. The following well-known diatribe is +also important, and should be kept in mind when we +come to speak of the reception accorded to Keats by +established critics, more or less of the old school. He +has been dilating on the splendours of British poetry of +the great era, say Spenser to Milton, and then proceeds—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nurtured by foppery and barbarism<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made great Apollo blush for this his land.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men were thought wise who could not understand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His glories: with a puling infant’s force<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They swayed about upon a rocking-horse,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal-souled!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its gathering waves—ye felt it not; the blue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of summer-night collected still to make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The morning precious. Beauty was awake—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To things ye knew not of—were closely wed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To musty laws lined out with wretched rule<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And compass vile; so that ye taught a school<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of dolts to smoothe, inlay, and chip, and fit,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till—like the certain wands of Jacob’s wit—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their verses tallied. Easy was the task;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Poesy. Ill-fated impious race,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And did not know it! No, they went about<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Holding a poor decrepit standard out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The name of one Boileau.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Zeal is generally pardonable. Keats’s was manifestly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +honest zeal, and flaming forth in the right direction. Yet +it would have been well for him to remember and indicate +that amid his “school of dolts,†bearing the flag of Boileau, +there had been some very strong and capable men, +notably Dryden and Pope, who could do several things +besides inlaying and clipping; nor could it be said that +the beauty of the world had been wholly blinked by so +pre-eminently descriptive a poet as Thomson; and, if we +were to read Boileau—which few of us do now-a-days, +and I daresay Keats was not one of the few—we should +probably find that his “mottoes†were much less concerned +with inlaying and clipping than with solid meaning +and studious congruity—qualities not totally contemptible, +but (be it acknowledged) very largely contemned by +Keats in that first slender performance of his adolescence +named “Poems, 1817.â€</p> + +<p>It has been said that this volume hardly went beyond +the circle of Keats’s personal friends; nor do I think this +statement can be far wrong, although one inquirer avers +that the book was “constantly alluded to in the prominent +periodicals.†The dictum of Keats himself stands +thus: “It was read by some dozen of my friends, who +liked it; and some dozen whom I was unacquainted with, +who did not.†Shelley cannot have been among the +friends who liked the volume, for he had recommended +Keats not to give it to the press. At any rate the publishers, +Messrs. Ollier, would after a very short while sell +it no more. Their letter to George Keats—who seems +to have been acting for John during the absence of the +latter in the Isle of Wight or at Margate—is too amusing +to be omitted:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot1"><p>“We regret that your brother ever requested us to +publish his book, or that our opinion of its talent should +have led us to acquiesce in undertaking it. We are, +however, much obliged to you for relieving us from the +unpleasant necessity of declining any further connexion +with it, which we must have done, as we think the +curiosity is satisfied and the sale has dropped. By far +the greater number of persons who have purchased it +from us have found fault with it in such plain terms that +we have in many cases offered to take the book back +rather than be annoyed with the ridicule which has time +after time been showered upon it. In fact, it was only +on Sunday last that we were under the mortification of +having our own opinion of its merits flatly contradicted +by a gentleman who told us he considered it ‘no better +than a take-in.’ These are unpleasant imputations for +any one in business to labour under; but we should have +borne them and concealed their existence from you had +not the style of your note shown us that such delicacy +would be quite thrown away. We shall take means without +delay for ascertaining the number of copies on hand, +and you shall be informed accordingly.</p> + +<p>“3 Welbeck Street, 29th April 1817.â€</p></div> + +<p>I do not find that the after-fate of the “Poems†is +recorded: probably they were handed over to Messrs. +Taylor and Hessey, who undertook the publication of +“Endymion."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2> + + +<p>To “Endymion†we now have to turn. The early +verses of Keats (as well as the later ones) contain +numerous allusions to Grecian mythology—Muses, Apollo, +Pan, Narcissus, Endymion and Diana, &c. For the most +part these early allusions are nothing more than tawdry +conventionalisms; so indeed are some of the later ones, +as for instance in the drama of “King Stephen,†written +in 1819, the schoolboy classicism of “2nd Captain‗</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i16">“Royal Maud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the thronged towers of Lincoln hath looked down,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like Pallas from the walls of Ilion;â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and we cannot discover that any more credit is due to +Keats for dribbling out his tritenesses about Apollo and +the Muses than to any Akenside, Mason, or Hayley, of +them all. At times, however, there is a genuine tone of +<i>enjoyment</i> in these utterances sufficient to persuade us +that the subject had really taken possession of his mind, +and that he could feel Grecian mythology, not merely as +a convenient vehicle for rhetorical personifications, but +as an ever-vital embodiment of ideas of beauty in forms of +beauty. In the early and partly boyish poem, “I stood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +tip-toe upon a little hill,†a good deal of space is devoted +to showing that classical myths are an outcome of eager +sensitiveness to the lovely things of Nature: the tales of +Psyche, Pan and Sirynx, Narcissus, are cited in confirmation—and +finally Diana and Endymion, in the following +lines:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Where had he been from whose warm head outflew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That sweetest of all songs, that ever new,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That aye-refreshing pure deliciousness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Coming ever to bless<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From out the middle air, from flowery nests,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And from the pillowy silkiness that rests<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full in the speculation of the stars.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah surely he had burst our mortal bars:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into some wondrous region he had gone<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To search for thee, divine Endymion.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He was a poet, sure a lover too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who stood on Latmus’ top what time there blew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soft breezes from the myrtle-vale below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And brought—in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A hymn from Dian’s temple, while upswelling<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The incense went to her own starry dwelling.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, though her face was clear as infants’ eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though she stood smiling o’er the sacrifice,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The poet wept at her so piteous fate—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wept that such beauty should be desolate;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Queen of the wide air, thou most lovely queen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As thou exceedest all things in thy shine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So every tale does this sweet tale of thine.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh for three words of honey that I might<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where distant ships do seem to show their keels<br /></span> +<span class="i0">PhÅ“bus awhile delayed his mighty wheels,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"> * * * * * * * *<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cynthia, I cannot tell the greater blisses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That followed thine and thy dear shepherd’s kisses:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was there a poet born?â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Readers often go at a skating-pace over passages of this +kind, without very clearly realizing to themselves the gist +of the whole matter. I will therefore put the thing into +the most prosaic form, and say that what Keats substantially +intimates here is as follows:—The inventor of +the myth of Artemis and Endymion must have been a +poet and lover, who, standing on the hill of Latmos, and +hearing thence a sweet hymn wafted from the low-lying +temple of Artemis, while the pure maiden-like moon was +shining resplendently, felt a pang of pity for this loveless +moon or Artemis, and invented for her a lover in the +person of Endymion; and ever since then the myth +has lent additional beauty to the effects, beautiful as in +themselves they are, of moonlight. Without tying down +Keats too rigidly to this view of the genesis of the myth, +I may nevertheless point out that he wholly ignores as +participants both the spirit of religious devoutness, and +the device of allegorizing natural phænomena: the inventor +is simply a poet and lover, who thinks it a world +of pities that such a sweet maiden as Artemis should not +have a lover sooner or later. Invention prompted by +warmth of feeling is thus the sole motive-power recognized. +The final phrase “Was there a poet born?†may with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>out +violence be understood as implying, “Ought not the +loves of Artemis and Endymion to beget their poet, and +why should not I be that poet?†At all events, Keats +determined that he <i>would</i> be that poet; and, contemplating +the original invention of the myth from the point of +view which we have just analysed, he not unnaturally +treated it from a like point of view. The tale of Diana +and Endymion was not to be a monument of classic +antiquity re-stated in the timid, formal spirit of a school-exercise, +but an invention of a poet and lover, who, +acting under the spell of natural beauty, re-informs his +theme with poetic fancy, amorous ardour, and Nature’s +profusion of object and of imagery. And in this Keats +thought—and surely he rightly thought—that he would +be getting closer to the spirit of a Grecian myth than by +any cut-and-dry process of tame repetition or pulseless +decorum. He wanted the dell of wild flowers, and not +the <i>hortus siccus</i>.</p> + +<p>“Endymion†was actually begun in the spring of 1817, +much about the same time when the volume “Poems†+was published. The first draft was completed (as we have +said) on the 28th of November 1817, and by the end of +the winter which opened the year 1818 no more probably +remained to be done to it. The MS. was subjected to +much revision and excision, so that it cannot be alleged +that Keats worked in a reckless temper, or without such +self-criticism as he could at that date bring to bear. It +would even appear, moreover, from the terms of a letter +which he addressed to Mr. Taylor, on April 27, 1818, +that he allowed that gentleman to make some volunteer +corrections of his own. Haydon had spurred him on to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +the ambitious attempt, which Hunt on the contrary deprecated. +Shelley—so the story goes—agreed with Keats +that each of them should write an epic within a space of +six months. Shelley produced “The Revolt of Islam,†+Keats the “Endymion.†Shelley proved to be the more +rapid writer of the two; for his poem of 4815 lines was +finished by the early autumn of 1817, while Keats’s, +numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter which +opened 1818. A good deal of it had been done during +Keats’s sojourn with Mr. Bailey, in Magdalen Hall, +Oxford. Afterwards, on 8th October 1817, he wrote to +Bailey—“I refused to visit Shelley, that I might have +my own unfettered scope;†an expression which one +might be inclined to understand as showing that Shelley, +having now completed “The Revolt of Islam,†had invited +Keats to visit him at Marlow, and there to proceed with +“Endymion,‗not without the advantage it may well be +supposed, of Shelley’s sympathizing but none the less +stringent counsel. Bailey’s account of the facts may +be given here. “He wrote and I read—sometimes +at the same table, sometimes at separate desks—from +breakfast till two or three o’clock. He sat down to +his task, which was about fifty lines a day, with his paper +before him, and wrote with as much regularity and +apparently with as much ease as he wrote his letters. +Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, +‘That, if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a +tree, it had better not come at all.’ Sometimes he fell +short of his allotted task, but not often, and he would +make it up another day. But he never forced himself. +When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +read it over to me, and then read or wrote letters till we +went out for a walk.†The first book of the poem was +delivered into the hands of the publisher, Mr. Taylor, in +the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a +finished chalk-sketch of the author’s head, to be prefixed +to the volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the +volume, an octavo, appeared in April without any portrait. +We all know the now proverbial first line in “Endymion,â€</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This seems to have been an inspiration of long anterior +date; for Mr. Stephens, the surgical fellow-student and +fellow-lodger of Keats, says that in one twilight when they +were together the youthful poet produced the line—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A thing of beauty is a constant joy;â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which, failing wholly to satisfy its author’s ear, was immediately +afterwards improved into its present form. +Even before handing over any part of his MS. to the +printer, Keats, at the “immortal dinner†which came off +in Haydon’s painting-room, on the 28th of December +1817, and at which Wordsworth, Lamb, and others, were +present, had bespoken a strange and heroic fate for one +copy of his book; for he made Mr. Ritchie, who was +about to set forth on an African exploration, promise +that he would carry the volume “to the great desert of +Sahara, and fling it in the midst.â€</p> + +<p>“Invention†was the quality which Keats most sought +for in his “Endymion,†as shown in his letter to Mr. +Bailey, already cited. He said—“It [‘Endymion’] will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +be a test of my powers of imagination, and chiefly of +my invention—which is a rare thing indeed—by which I +must make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill +them with poetry.... A long poem is a test of Invention, +which I take to be the polar star of poetry, as Fancy +is the sails, and Imagination the rudder.... This +same Invention seems indeed of late years to have been +forgotten as a poetical excellence.†The term “invention†+might be used in various senses. Keats seems to +have meant the power of producing a great number of +minor incidents, illustrative images, and other particulars, +all tending to reinforce and fill out the main conception +and subject-matter.</p> + +<p>Keats wrote a preface to “Endymion†on March 19, +1818, which was objected to by Hamilton Reynolds, and +by his friends generally. It was certainly off-hand and +unconciliating, and some readers would have regarded it +as defiant. Its general purport was that the poem was +faulty, but the author would not keep it back for revision, +which would make the performance a tedium to himself, +“I have written to please myself, and in hopes to +please others, and for a love of fame.†There was a good +deal more, jaunty and provocative enough. Keats was +not well inclined to suppress this preface. He replied on +April 9th to Reynolds in a letter from which some weighty +words must be quoted:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards +the public, or to anything in existence but the Eternal +Being, the principle of Beauty, and the memory of great +men.... A preface is written to the public—a thing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which +I cannot address without feelings of hostility.... I +would be subdued before my friends, and thank them +for subduing me; but among multitudes of men I have +no feel of stooping—I hate the idea of humility to them. +I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least +shadow of public thought.... I hate a mawkish popularity. +I cannot be subdued before them. My glory +would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers +about pictures and books.â€</p></div> + +<p>Keats, however, yielded to his censors, and wrote a +rather shorter preface, by far a better one. It bears the +date of April 10th, being the very next day after he had +written to Reynolds in so unsubmissive a tone. This +second preface says substantially much the same thing as +the first, but without any aggressive or “devil-may-care†+addenda. It is too important to be omitted here:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Knowing within myself the manner in which this +poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of +regret that I make it public. What manner I mean will +be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive +great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a +feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished. The +two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible, +are not of such completion as to warrant their passing +the press; nor should they, if I thought a year’s castigation +would do them any good. It will not: the foundations +are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should +die away—a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +that, while it is dwindling, I may be plotting, and fitting +myself for verses fit to live.</p> + +<p>“This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may +deserve a punishment. But no feeling man will be forward +to inflict it; he will leave me alone with the conviction +that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure in +a great object. This is not written with the least atom +of purpose to forestall criticisms of course, but from the +desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to +look, and who do look, with a zealous eye to the honour +of English literature.</p> + +<p>“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature +imagination of a man is healthy. But there is a space of +life between in which the soul is in a ferment, the character +undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition +thick-sighted. Thence proceeds mawkishness, and all +the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must +necessarily taste in going over the following pages.</p> + +<p>“I hope I have not in too late a day touched the +beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness; +for I wish to try once more before I bid it farewell.â€</p></div> + +<p>No one can deny that this is a modest preface; it is in +fact too modest, and concedes to the adversary the utmost +which could possibly be at issue, viz., whether the +poem was worth publishing or not. The only scintilla +of self-assertion in it is the hope expressed-“<i>some</i> hope‗that +the writer might eventually produce “verses fit to +live;†and less than that no man who puts a poem before +the public could be expected to postulate. Keats must +therefore be expressly acquitted of having done anything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> +to excite animosity or retaliation on the part of his critics; +the sole thing which could be attacked was the poem +itself—too frankly pronounced indefensible—or else something +in the author which did not appear within the +covers of his volume. The preface is indeed manly as +well as modest; there is not a servile or obsequious word +in it; yet I cannot help thinking that Keats, when later +on he found “Endymion†denounced as drivel, must at +times have wished that he had been a little less deferential +to Reynolds’s objections, and had not so explicitly +admitted that not one of the four books of the poem was +qualified to “pass the press.†An adverse reviewer was +sure to take advantage of that admission, and did so.</p> + +<p>It would be interesting to compare with the preface +which Keats printed for “Endymion†the one which +Shelley printed for “The Revolt of Islam.†Shelley, like +Keats, was modest; he left his readers to settle any question +as to his poetic claims (although “Alastor,†previously +published, might pretty well have vouched +for these); but he resolutely explained that reviewers +would find in him no subject for bullying. I can only +make room for a few sentences:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The experience and the feelings to which I refer do +not in themselves constitute men poets, but only prepare +them to be the auditors of those who are. How far I +shall be found to possess that more essential attribute of +poetry, the power of awakening in others sensations like +those which animate my own bosom, is that which, to +speak sincerely, I know not, and which, with an acquiescent +and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now +address.... It is the misfortune of this age that its +writers, too thoughtless of immortality, are exquisitely +sensible to temporary praise or blame. They write with +the fear of reviews before their eyes. This system of +criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when poetry +was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate +and limit its powers, cannot subsist together.... I have +sought, therefore, to write (as I believe that Homer, +Shakespeare, and Milton wrote) in utter disregard of +anonymous censure.â€</p></div> + +<p>The publisher of “Endymion†(Mr. Taylor is probably +meant) was nervous as to the reception which potent +critics would accord to the volume. He went to William +Gifford, the editor of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, to bespeak +indulgence, but found a Cerberus who rejected every sop. +In the number of the <i>Quarterly</i> for April 1818—not +actually published, it would seem, until September—appeared +a critique branded into ignominious permanence +by the name and fame of Keats. Gifford himself +is regarded as its author. As an account of Keats’s +career would for various reasons be incomplete in the +absence of this critique, I reproduce it here. It has the +merit of brevity, and lends itself hardly at all to curtailment, +but I miss one or two details, relating chiefly to +Leigh Hunt.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not +reading the works which they affected to criticize. On +the present occasion we shall anticipate the author’s +complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +his work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty; +far from it; indeed, we have made efforts, almost as superhuman +as the story itself appears to be, to get through it: +but, with the fullest stretch of our perseverance, we are +forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle +beyond the first of the four books of which this Poetic +Romance consists. We should extremely lament this +want of energy, or whatever it may be, on our parts, +were it not for one consolation—namely, that we are no +better acquainted with the meaning of the book through +which we have so painfully toiled than we are with that +of the three which we have not looked into.</p> + +<p>“It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, +for we almost doubt that any man in his senses would +put his real name to such a rhapsody)—it is not, we say, +that the author has not powers of language, rays of fancy, +and gleams of genius. He has all these; but he is unhappily +a disciple of the new school of what has been +somewhere called ‘Cockney Poetry,’ which may be +defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the +most uncouth language.</p> + +<p>“Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a +former number, aspires to be the hierophant.... This +author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, +almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times +more tiresome and absurd, than his prototype, who, +though he impudently presumed to seat himself in the +chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his +own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. +Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to +support by examples. His nonsense, therefore, is quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> +gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten +by Mr. Leigh Hunt’s insane criticism, more than rivals +the insanity of his poetry.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Keats’s preface hints that his poem was produced +under peculiar circumstances. ‘Knowing within myself,’ +he says, ‘the manner [&c., down to ‘a deed accomplished’]. +We humbly beg his pardon, but this does +not appear to us to be ‘quite so clear;’ we really do not +know what he means. But the next passage is more +intelligible. ‘The two first books, and indeed the two +last, I feel sensible, are not of such completion as to +warrant their passing the press.’ Thus ‘the two first +books’ are, even in his own judgment, unfit to appear, +and ‘the two last’ are, it seems, in the same condition; +and, as two and two make four, and as that is the whole +number of books, we have a clear, and we believe a very +just, estimate of the entire work.</p> + +<p>“Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this +‘immature and feverish work’ in terms which are themselves +sufficiently feverish; and we confess that we should +have abstained from inflicting upon him any of the tortures +of the ‘fierce hell’ of criticism<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> which terrify his +imagination if he had not begged to be spared in order +that he might write more; if we had not observed in him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +a certain degree of talent which deserves to be put in the +right way, or which at least ought to be warned of the +wrong; and if finally he had not told us that he is of an +age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.</p> + +<p>“Of the story we have been able to make out but +little. It seems to be mythological, and probably relates +to the loves of Diana and Endymion; but of this, as the +scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we cannot +speak with any degree of certainty, and must therefore +content ourselves with giving some instances of its diction +and versification. And here again we are perplexed +and puzzled. At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats +had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with +an immeasurable game at <i>bouts rimés</i>; but, if we recollect +rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play that +the rhymes, when filled up, shall have a meaning; and +our author, as we have already hinted, has no meaning. +He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he +follows, not the thought excited by this line, but that +suggested by the <i>rhyme</i> with which it concludes. There +is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in +the whole book. He wanders from one subject to +another, from the association, not of ideas, but of +sounds; and the work is composed of hemistichs which, +it is quite evident, have forced themselves upon the +author by the mere force of the catchwords on which +they turn.</p> + +<p>“We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but +as that least liable to suspicion, a passage from the +opening of the poem.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">‘Such the sun, the moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For simple sheep; and such are daffodils,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the green world they live in; and clear rills<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That for themselves a cooling covert make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And such too is the grandeur of the dooms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We have imagined for the mighty dead,’ &c.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, <i>moon</i>, +produces the simple sheep and their shady <i>boon</i>, and that +‘the <i>dooms</i> of the mighty dead’ would never have intruded +themselves but for the ‘fair musk-rose <i>blooms</i>.’</p> + +<p>“Again—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘For ’twas the morn. Apollo’s upward fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of brightness so unsullied that therein<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A melancholy spirit well might win<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into the winds. Rain-scented eglantine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man’s voice was on the mountains: and the mass<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Nature’s lives and wonders pulsed tenfold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To feel this sunrise and its glories old.’<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here Apollo’s <i>fire</i> produces a <i>pyre</i>—a silvery pyre—of +clouds, <i>wherein</i> a spirit might <i>win</i> oblivion, and melt his +essence <i>fine</i>; and scented <i>eglantine</i> gives sweets to the +<i>sun</i>, and cold springs had <i>run</i> into the <i>grass</i>; and then +the pulse of the <i>mass</i> pulsed <i>tenfold</i> to feel the glories <i>old</i> +of the new-born day, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>&c.</p> + +<p>“One example more—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Be still the unimaginable lodge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For solitary thinkings, such as dodge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conception to the very bourne of heaven,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gives it a touch ethereal—a new birth.’<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>Lodge</i>, <i>dodge</i>—<i>heaven</i>, <i>leaven</i>—<i>earth</i>, <i>birth</i>—such, in six +words, is the sum and substance of six lines.</p> + +<p>“We come now to the author’s taste in versification. +He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may +be able to spin a line. Let us see. The following are +specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic +metre:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The passion poesy, glories infinite.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Of some strange history, potent to send.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Before the deep intoxication.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘Endymion, the cave is secreter<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.’<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>“By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied +as to the meaning of his sentences and the structure of +his lines. We now present them with some of the new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he +adorns our language.</p> + +<p>“We are told that turtles <i>passion</i> their voices; that an +arbour was <i>nested</i>, and a lady’s locks <i>gordianed</i> up; and, +to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. +Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new ones, such as +men-slugs and human <i>serpentry</i>, the <i>honey-feel</i> of bliss, +wives prepare <i>needments</i>, and so forth.</p> + +<p>“Then he has formed new verbs by the process of +cutting off their natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing +them to their foreheads. Thus the wine out-sparkled, the +multitude up-followed, and night up-took; the wind up-blows, +and the hours are down-sunken. But, if he sinks +some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language +with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the +parent stock. Thus a lady whispers <i>pantingly</i> and close, +makes <i>hushing</i> signs, and steers her skiff into a <i>ripply</i> +cove, a shower falls <i>refreshfully</i>, and a vulture has a +<i>spreaded</i> tail.</p> + +<p>“But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple +neophyte. If any one should be bold enough to purchase +this ‘Poetic Romance,’ and so much more patient +than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, and so +much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat +him to make us acquainted with his success. We shall +then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, +and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats +and to our readers.â€</p></div> + +<p>Such is the too famous article in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>. +If its contents are to be assessed with perfect calmness,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +I should have to say that it is not mistaken in alleging +that the poem of “Endymion†is rambling and indistinct; +that Keats allowed himself to drift too readily according +to the bidding of his rhymes (Leigh Hunt has acknowledged +as much, in independent remarks of his own); +that many words are coined, and badly coined; and that +the versification is not free from blemishes—although +several of the lines quoted by <i>The Quarterly</i> as unmetrical, +are, when read with the right emphasis, blameless, or even +sonorous. But the article is none the less a despicable +and odious performance; partly as being a sneering +depreciation of a work showing rich poetic endowment, +and partly as being, not a deliberate and candid (however +severe) estimate of Keats as a poet, but really an utterance +of malice prepense, and hardly disguised, against +Hunt as a hostile politician who wrote poetry, and against +any one who consorted with him. The inverting of the +due balance between the merits and the defects of +“Endymion,†would have been at best an act of stupidity; +at second best, after the author’s preface had been laid +to heart, an act of brutalism; and at worst, when the +venom of abuse was poured into the poetic cup of Keats +as an expedient for drugging the political cup of Hunt, +an act of partisan turpitude. No more words need be +wasted upon a proceeding of which the abiding and unevadeable +literary record is graven in the brass of +Shelley’s “Adonais.â€</p> + +<p>The attack in <i>The Quarterly Review</i> was accompanied +by attacks in <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>. If <i>The Quarterly</i> +was carping and ill-natured, <i>Blackwood</i> was basely insulting. +A series of articles “On the Cockney School of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +Poetry†began in the Scotch magazine in October +1817, being directed mainly, and with calumnious virulence, +against Leigh Hunt. No. 4 of the series came +out in August 1818, and formed a vituperation of +Keats. I will not draw upon its stores of underbred +jocularity, so as to show that the best raillery which +<i>Blackwood</i> could get up consisted of terming him +Johnny Keats, and referring to his having been +assistant to an “apothecary.†The author of these +papers signed himself Z, being no doubt too noble and +courageous to traduce people without muffling himself in +anonymity; nor did he consent to uncloak, though +vigorously pressed by Hunt to do so. It is affirmed that +Z was Lockhart, the son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and +afterwards editor of <i>The Quarterly Review</i>; and an unpleasant +adjunct to this statement—we would gladly +disbelieve it—is that Scott himself lent active aid in concocting +the articles. A different account is that Z was at +first John Wilson (Christopher North), revised by William +Blackwood, but that the article on Keats was due to +Lockhart.</p> + +<p>Few literary questions of the last three-quarters of a +century have been regarded from more absolutely different +points of view than the problem—How did Keats +receive the attacks made upon his poem and himself? +From an early date in the controversy three points seem +to have been very generally agreed upon: (1) That +“Endymion†is (as Shelley judiciously phrased it), “a +poem considerably defective;†(2) that the attacks upon +it were, in essence, partly true, but so biassed—so keen of +scent after defects, and so dull of vision for beauties—as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +to be practically unfair and perverse in a marked degree; +and (3) that the unfairness and perversity <i>quoad</i> Keats +were wilful devices of literary and especially of political +spite <i>quoad</i> a knot of writers among whom Leigh Hunt +was the central figure. The question remains—In what +spirit did Keats meet his critics? Was he greatly distressed, +or defiant and retaliatory, or substantially indifferent?</p> + +<p>Among the documents of Keats’s life I find few records +strictly contemporary with the events themselves, serving +to settle this point. When the abuse of Z against Hunt +began, Keats was indignant and combative. He said in +a letter which may belong to October 1817—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the +Edinburgh magazine.... There has been but one +number published—that on Hunt, to which they have +prefixed a motto by one Cornelius Webb, ‘Poetaster,’ +who unfortunately was one of our party occasionally at +Hampstead, and took it into his head to write the following +(something about)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">‘We’ll talk on Wordsworth, Byron,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A theme we never tire on,’<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so forth till he came to Hunt and Keats. In the +motto they have put ‘Hunt and Keats’ in large letters. +I have no doubt that the second number was intended +for me, but have hopes of its non-appearance.... I +don’t mind the thing much; but, if he should go to such +lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must infallibly +call him to an account, if he be a human being,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +and appears in squares and theatres where we might +‘possibly meet.’ I don’t relish his abuse.â€</p></div> + +<p>It is worth observing also that, in a paper “On Kean +as Richard Duke of York†which Keats published on +December 28, 1817, he wrote: “The English people do +not care one fig about Shakespeare, only as he flatters +their pride and their prejudices;... it is our firm +opinion.†If he thought that English indifference to +Shakespeare was of this degree of density, he must surely +have been prepared for a considerable amount of apathy +in relation to any poem by John Keats.</p> + +<p>On October 9, 1818, just after the spiteful notices of +himself in <i>Blackwood</i> and <i>The Quarterly</i> had appeared, +and had been replied to in <i>The Morning Chronicle</i> by +two correspondents signing J. S. and R. B., Keats wrote +as follows to his publisher Mr. Hessey; and to treat the +affair in a more self-possessed, measured, and dignified +spirit, would not have been possible:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“You are very good in sending me the letters from +<i>The Chronicle</i>, and I am very bad in not acknowledging +such a kindness sooner; pray forgive me. It has so +chanced that I have had that paper every day. I have +seen to-day’s. I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen +who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin +to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. +Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the +man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a +severe critic on his own works. My own domestic +criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond +what <i>Blackwood</i> or <i>The Quarterly</i> could possibly inflict;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +and also, when I feel I am right, no external praise can +give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and +ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in +regard to the ‘slipshod “Endymion.â€â€™<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> That it is so is +no fault of mine. No; though it may sound a little +paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by +myself. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect +piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled +over every page, it would not have been written, for it is +not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. +I have written independently, <i>without judgment</i>: I may +write independently, and <i>with judgment</i>, hereafter. The +genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a +man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by +sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is +creative must create itself. In ‘Endymion’ I leaped +headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better +acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the +rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and +piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. +I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than +not be among the greatest. But I am nigh getting into +a rant; so, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse, +&c., I am yours very sincerely,</p> + +<p class="ralign1"> +“<span class="smcap">John Keats.</span>†+</p></div> + +<p>This letter, equally moderate and wide-reaching, proves +conclusively that Keats, at the time when he wrote it, +treated depreciatory criticism in exactly the right spirit;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +acknowledging that it was not without a certain <i>raison +d’être</i>, but affirming that he could for himself see much +further and much deeper in the same direction, and in +others as well. On October 29, 1818, he wrote to his +brother George:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Reynolds... persuades me to publish my ‘Pot of +Basil’ as an answer to the attack made on me in <i>Blackwood’s +Magazine</i> and <i>The Quarterly Review</i>.... I think +I shall be among the English poets after my death. Even +as a matter of present interest, the attempt to crush me +in <i>The Quarterly</i> has only brought me more into notice, +and it is a common expression among book-men, ‘I +wonder <i>The Quarterly</i> should cut its own throat.’ It +does me not the least harm in society to make me appear +little and ridiculous. I know when a man is superior to +me, and give him all due respect; he will be the last to +laugh at me; and as for the rest, I feel that I make an +impression upon them which ensures me personal respect +while I am in sight, whatever they may say when my back +is turned.... The only thing that can ever affect me +personally for more than one short passing day is any +doubt about my powers for poetry. I seldom have any; +and I look with hope to the nighing time when I shall +have none.â€</p></div> + +<p>Towards December 1818 he wrote in a similarly contented +strain to George Keats and his wife: “You will +be glad to hear that Gifford’s attack upon me has done +me service; it has got my book among several <i>sets</i>.†The +same letter mentions a sonnet, and a bank-note for £25<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +received from an unknown admirer. However, the next +letter to the same correspondents, February 19, 1819, +clearly attests some annoyance.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“My poem has not at all succeeded.... The reviewers +have enervated men’s minds, and made them indolent; +few think for themselves. These reviews are getting +more and more powerful, especially <i>The Quarterly</i>. They +are like a superstition which, the more it prostrates the +crowd and the longer it continues, the more it becomes +powerful, just in proportion to their increasing weakness. +I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do now) +all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would +scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the +Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not +care who wins or who loses.... I have been at different +times turning it in my head whether I should go to +Edinburgh and study for a physician.... It is not +worse than writing poems, and hanging them up to be +fly-blown in the Review shambles.â€</p></div> + +<p>We find in Keats’s letters nothing further about the +criticisms; but, when he replied in August 1820 to +Shelley’s first invitation to Italy, he referred to “Endymion†+itself: “I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor +poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite +if possible, did I care so much as I have done about +reputation.†We must also take into account the +publishers’ advertisement (not Keats’s own) to the +“Lamia†volume, saying of “Hyperion‗“The poem +was intended to have been of equal length with +‘Endymion,’ but the reception given to that work<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +discouraged the author from proceeding.†It can +scarcely be supposed that the publishers printed this +without Keats’s express sanction; yet he never assigned +elsewhere any similar reason for discontinuing “Hyperion,†+nor was “Hyperion†open to exception on +any such grounds as had been urged against “Endymion.â€</p> + +<p>The earliest written reference which I can trace to any +serious despondency of Keats consequent upon the +attacks of reviewers (if we except a less strongly worded +statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted further on) is in +a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually send, +to the editor of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>. It was written +after Shelley had seen the “Lamia†volume, and can +hardly, I suppose, date earlier than October 1820, two +full years after the publication of the <i>Quarterly</i> (and also +the <i>Blackwood</i>) tirades against “Endymion.†Shelley +adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the <i>Quarterly</i> +critique, and then proceeds—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind +by this review, which I am persuaded was not written +with any intention of producing the effect (to which it +has at least greatly contributed) of embittering his existence, +and inducing a disease from which there are now +but faint hopes of his recovery. The first effects are +described to me to have resembled insanity, and it was +by assiduous watching that he was restrained from effecting +purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at +length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the +lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to +have begun.â€</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> + +<p>The informants of Shelley with regard to Keats’s acute +feelings and distress were (it is stated) the Gisbornes, +and possibly Leigh Hunt may have confirmed them in +some measure; but the Gisbornes knew nothing directly +of what had been taking place in England in or about +the autumn of 1818, and that which Hunt published +regarding Keats is far from corroborating so extreme a +view of the facts. Later on Shelley received from Mr. +Gisborne a letter written by Colonel Finch, the date of +which would perhaps be in May 1821 (three months +after the death of Keats). This letter appears to have +been one of his principal incentives for the indignation +expressed in the preface to “Adonais,†but not in the +poem itself, which had been completed before Shelley +saw the letter; and it is remarkable that Colonel Finch’s +expressions, when one scrutinizes them, do not really say +anything about mental anguish caused to Keats by any +review, but only by ill-treatment of a different kind—seemingly +that of his brother George and others, as +previously detailed. The following is the only relevant +passage: “He left his native shores by sea in a merchant +vessel for Naples, where he arrived, having received no +benefit during the passage, and brooding over the most +melancholy and mortifying reflections, and nursing a +deeply-rooted disgust to life and to the world, owing to +having been infamously treated by the very persons whom +his generosity had rescued from want and woe.†Shelley +however put into print in the preface to “Adonais†the +same view of the blighting of Keats’s life by the <i>Quarterly</i> +critique (he seems to have known nothing of the <i>Blackwood</i> +scurrility), which had appeared in his undespatched +letter to the editor of the <i>Quarterly</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The savage criticism on his ‘Endymion’ which +appeared in <i>The Quarterly Review</i> produced the most +violent effect on his susceptible mind. The agitation +thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in +the lungs. A rapid consumption ensued, and the +succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics of +the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal +the wound thus wantonly inflicted.... Miserable man! +you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of +the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor +shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you are, you +have spoken daggers but used none.â€</p></div> + +<p>Thus far we have found no strong evidence (only +assertions) that Keats took greatly to heart the attacks +upon him, whether in the <i>Quarterly</i> or in <i>Blackwood</i>. +Shelley seems to be the principal authority, and Shelley, +unless founding upon some adequate information, is next +to no authority at all. He had left England in March +1818, five months before the earlier—printed in August—of +these spiteful articles. Were there nothing further, we +should be more than well pleased to rally to the opinion +of Lord Houghton, who came to the conclusion that the +idea of Keats’s extreme sensitiveness to criticism was a +positive delusion—that he paid little heed to it, and pursued +his own course much as if no reviewer had tried to +be provoking. But there is, in fact, a direct witness of +high importance—Haydon. Haydon knew Keats very +intimately, and saw a great deal of him; he admired and +loved him, and had a vigorous, discerning insight into +character and habit of mind, such as makes his observa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>tions +about all sorts of men substantial testimony and +first-rate reading. He took forcible views of many +things, and sometimes exaggerated views: but, when he +attributed to Keats a particular mood of feeling, I should +find it very difficult to think that he was either unfairly +biassed or widely mistaken. In his reminiscences +proper to the year 1817-18 occurs the following +passage:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The assaults on Hunt in <i>Blackwood</i> at this time, +under the signature of Z, were incessant. Who Z was +nobody knew, but I myself strongly suspect him to have +been Terry the actor. Leigh Hunt had exasperated +Terry by neglecting to notice his theatrical efforts. Terry +was a friend of Sir Walter’s, shared keenly his political +hatreds, and was also most intimate with the Blackwood +party, which had begun a course of attacks on all who +showed the least liberalism of thinking, or who were +praised by or known to <i>The Examiner</i>. Hunt had +addressed a sonnet to me. This was enough: we were +taken to be of the same clique of rebels, rascals, and +reformers, who were supposed to support that production +of so much power and talent. On Keats the effect was +melancholy. He became morbid and silent; would call +and sit whilst I was painting, for hours, without speaking +a word.â€</p></div> + +<p>This counts for something—not very much. But +another passage forming an entry in Haydon’s diary, +written on March 29, 1821, perhaps as soon as he had +heard of Keats’s death, carries the matter much further<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, and +ungovernable, expecting the world to fall at once beneath +his powers. Poor fellow! his genius had no sooner +begun to bud than hatred and malice spat their poison +on its leaves, and, sensitive and young, it shrivelled +beneath their effusions. Unable to bear the sneers of +ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of +mind enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine +and present nothing but his prickles to his enemies, he +began to despond, and flew to dissipation as a relief, +which, after a temporary elevation of spirits, plunged him +into deeper despondency than ever. For six weeks he +was scarcely sober, and (to show what a man does to +gratify his appetites when once they get the better of him) +once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could +reach with cayenne pepper in order to appreciate the +‘delicious coldness<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> of claret in all its glory'—his own +expression.â€</p></div> + +<p>Immediately afterwards, April 21, 1821, Haydon wrote +a letter to Miss Mitford, repeating, with some verbal +variations, what is said above, and adding several other +particulars concerning Keats. The opening phrase runs +thus: “Keats was a victim to personal abuse, and want +of nerve to bear it. Ought he to have sunk in that way +because a few quizzers told him that he was an apothecary's +apprentice?†And further on—“I remonstrated +on his absurd dissipation, but to no purpose.†The +reader will observe that this dissipation, six weeks of +insobriety, is alleged to have occurred after Keats<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +“began to despond.†The precise time when he began +to despond is not defined, but we may suppose it to have +been in the late autumn of 1818. If so, it was much +about the same period when he first made Miss Brawne's +acquaintance.</p> + +<p>It is true that Mr. Cowden Clarke, when he published +certain “Recollections†in <i>The Gentleman’s Magazine</i> in +1874, strongly contested these statements of Haydon’s; +he disbelieved the cayenne pepper and the dissipation, +and had “never perceived in Keats even a tendency to +imprudent indulgence.†The “Recollections†were +afterwards reproduced as a volume, and in the volume +the confutation of Haydon disappeared; whether because +Clarke had eventually changed his opinion, or for what +other reason, I am unable to say. Anyhow, Haydon’s +evidence remains; it relates to a period of Keats’s life +when Haydon no doubt saw him much oftener than +Clarke did, and we must observe that he refers to +“Keats’s own expression†as to the claret ensuing after +the cayenne pepper, and affirms that he himself remonstrated +in vain against the “dissipation,†which means +apparently excess in drinking alone.</p> + +<p>To advert to what Lord Byron wrote about Keats as +having been killed by <i>The Quarterly Review</i> is hardly +worth while. His first reference to the subject is in a +letter to Mr. Murray (publisher of <i>The Quarterly</i>) dated +April 26, 1821. In this he expressly names Shelley as +his informant, and with Shelley as an authority for the +allegation I have already dealt.</p> + +<p>There are two writings of Leigh Hunt in which the +question of Keats and his critics is touched upon. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +first is the review, August 1820, of the “Lamia†volume. +In speaking of the “Ode to a Nightingale†he says—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The poem will be the more striking to the reader when +he understands, what we take a friend’s liberty in telling +him, that the author’s powerful mind has for some time +past been inhabiting a sickened and shaken body; and +that in the meanwhile it has had to contend with feelings +that make a fine nature ache for its species, even when +it would disdain to do so for itself—we mean critical +malignity, that unhappy envy which would wreak its own +tortures upon others, especially upon those that really feel +for it already.â€</p></div> + +<p>Hunt’s posthumous Memoir of Keats was first published +in 1828. He refers to the attack in <i>Blackwood</i> +upon himself and upon Keats, and says: “I little suspected, +as I did afterwards, that the hunters had struck +him; that a delicate organization, which already anticipated +a premature death, made him feel his ambition +thwarted by these fellows; and that the very impatience +of being impatient was resented by him and preyed on +his mind.†Hunt also says regarding Byron—“I told +him he was mistaken in attributing Keats’s death to the +critics, though they had perhaps hastened and certainly +embittered it.â€</p> + +<p>Another item of evidence may be cited. It is from a +letter written by George Keats to Mr. Dilke in April +1824, and refers to the insolences of <i>Blackwood’s +Magazine</i>. George, it will be remembered, was already +out of England before the articles appeared in <i>Blackwood</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +and in <i>The Quarterly</i>, and he only saw a little of John +Keats at the close of the ensuing year, 1819. “<i>Blackwood’s +Magazine</i> has fallen into my hands. I could +have walked 100 miles to have dirked him <i>à l’Américaine</i> +for his cruelly associating John in the Cockney +School, and other blackguardisms. Such paltry ridicule +will have wounded deeper than the severest criticisms, +particularly as he regarded what is called the cockneyism +of the coterie with so much disgust. He either knew +John well, and touched him in the tenderest place purposely; +or knew nothing of him, and supposed he went +all lengths with the set in their festering opinions and +cockney affectations.†And from a later letter dated in +April 1825: “After all, <i>Blackwood</i> and <i>The Quarterly</i>, +associated with our family disease, consumption, were +ministers of death sufficiently venomous, cruel, and +deadly, to have consigned one of less sensibility to a +premature grave.... John was the very soul of courage +and manliness, and as much like the Holy Ghost as +‘Johnny Keats.’â€</p> + +<p>The evidence of latest date on this subject (there is +none such in Severn’s correspondence<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>) is that of +Cowden Clarke. In his “Recollections,†already mentioned, +he refers to the attacks upon Keats, having his +eye, it would seem, rather upon those in <i>Blackwood</i> than +in <i>The Quarterly</i>, and he remarks: “To say that these +disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the conscious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>ness +and self-respect of Keats would be to under-rate the +sensitiveness of his nature. He did feel and resent the +insult, but far more the <i>injustice</i> of the treatment he had +received. They no doubt had injured him in the most +wanton manner; but, if they or my Lord Byron ever for +one moment supposed that he was crushed or even cowed +in spirit by the treatment he had received, never were +they more deluded.â€</p> + +<p>I have now given all the evidence at first or second +hand which seems to be producible on that much-vexed +question—Was Keats (to adopt Byron’s phrase) “snuffed +out by an article"? The upshot appears to me to be as +follows. In his inmost mind Keats was from first to last +raised very far above that level where the petty gales of +review-criticism blow, puffing out the canvas of feeble +reputations, and fraying that of strong ones. Nevertheless +he was sensitive to derisive criticism, and more especially +to personal ridicule, and even (as Haydon records) gave +way to his feelings of irritation with reckless and culpable +self-abandonment. This passed off partially, and would +have passed off entirely—it has left in his letters no trace +worth mentioning, and in his poetry no trace at all, other +than that of executive power braced up to do constantly +better and yet better; but then, about a year and a +half after the reviews, supervened his fatal illness (which +cannot be reasonably supposed to have had its root in +any critiques), and all the heartache of his unsatisfied +love. This last formed the real agony of his waning life: +it must have been reinforced to some extent by resentment +against a mode of reviewing which would contribute +to the thwarting of his poetic ambition, and make him go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +down into the grave with a “name writ in water;†but the +reviews themselves counted for very little in the last +wrestlings of his spirit with death and nothingness. By +general constitution of mind few men were less adapted +than Keats for being “snuffed out by an article,†or +more certain to snuff one out and leave all its ill-savour +to its scribe.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2> + + +<p>The first important poem to which Keats sets his +hand after finishing “Endymion†was “Isabella, +or The Pot of Basil.†This was completed by April +27, 1818, the same month in which “Endymion†was +published. Hamilton Reynolds had suggested the project +of producing a volume of tales in verse, founded +upon stories in Boccaccio’s “Decameronâ€; some of the +tales would have been executed by Reynolds himself, +who did in fact produce on this plan the two poems +named collectively “The Garden of Florence.†As it +turned out, however, Keats’s tale appeared in a volume of +his own, 1820, and Reynolds’s two came out independently +in the succeeding year.</p> + +<p>“The Eve of St. Agnes†was written in the winter +beginning the year 1819. Then came “Hyperion,†of +which two versions remain, both fragmentary. The first +version (begun perhaps as early as October or September +1818), the only one which Keats himself published, is +in all respects by far the better. He was much under +the spell of Milton while he wrote it; and finally he +gave it up in September 1819, declaring that “there +were too many Miltonic inversions in it.†He went so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +far as to say in a letter written in the same month that +“the ‘Paradise Lost,’ though so fine in itself, is a corruption +of our language—a northern dialect accommodating +itself to Greek and Latin inversions and +intonations.†“Hyperion†was included in Keats’s +third volume at the request of the publishers, contrary +to the author’s own preference. One may readily infer +that it was to “Hyperion†that he referred when, in the +preface to “Endymion,†he spoke of returning to +Grecian mythology for another subject: the full length +of the poem was to have been ten books.</p> + +<p>“Lamia†was the last poem of considerable length +which Keats brought to completion and published. It +seems to have been begun towards the summer of 1819, +and was written with great care, after a heedful study of +Dryden’s methods of composition. On September 18, +1819, Keats wrote: “I am certain there is that sort of +fire in it which must take hold of people in some way, +give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensations.†The +subject was taken from Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,†+in which there is a reference to the “Life of +Apollonius†by Philostratus as the original source of the +legend.</p> + +<p>The volume—entitled “Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of +St. Agnes, and other Poems‗came out towards the +beginning of July 1820, when the malady of Keats had +reached an advanced and alarming stage. At the beginning +of September Keats wrote to Brown—“The sale +of my book is very slow, though it has been very highly +rated.†I am not aware that there is any other record +to show how far the publication may ultimately have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +approached towards becoming a commercial success; nor +indeed would it be altogether easy to define the date at +which Keats became a recognized and uncontested poet +of high rank, and his works a solid property. His early +death, at the beginning of 1821, must have formed a +turning-point—not to speak of the favourable notice of +“Endymion,†and subordinately of the “Lamia†volume, +which appeared in <i>The Edinburgh Review</i>, Jeffrey being +the critic, in August 1820. Perhaps Jeffrey’s praise +may have facilitated an arrangement which Keats made +in September 1820—the sale of the copyright of +“Endymion†to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey for £100; +no second edition of the poem appeared, however, while +he was alive. I should presume that, within five or six +years after Keats’s decease, ridicule and rancour were +already much in the minority; and that, by some such +date as 1835 to 1840, they had finally “hidden their +diminished heads,†living only, with too persistent a life, +in the retributive memory of men.</p> + +<p>Some of the shorter poems in the “Lamia†volume +must receive brief mention here. The “Ode to Psyche†+was written in February 1819, and was termed by Keats +the first poem with which he had taken pains—“I have +for the most part dashed off my lines in a hurry.†“To +Autumn,†the “Ode on Melancholy,†and the “Ode on +a Grecian Urn,†succeeded. The “Ode to a Nightingale†+was composed at Hampstead in the spring of +1819 <i>after breakfast</i>, forming two or three hours’ work: +thus we see that the nocturnal imagery of the ode was a +general or a particular reminiscence, not actual to the +very moment of composition. This poem and the “Ode<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +on a Grecian Urn†were recited by Keats to Haydon in +a chaunting tone in Kilburn meadows, and were published +in the serial entitled “Annals of the Fine Arts.†The +urn thus immortalized may probably be one preserved in +the garden of Holland House.</p> + +<p>With the “Lamia†volume we have come to the close +of what Keats published during his lifetime. Something +remains to be said of other writings of his—almost all of +them earlier in date than the publication of that volume—which +remained imprinted or uncollected at the time +of his death.</p> + +<p>In <a name="Page_110t" id="Page_110t"></a><a href="#Page_110tn">February</a> 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, +undertook to write a sonnet each upon the river Nile. +In order of merit, the three sonnets are the reverse of +what one might have been willing to forecast. I at +least am clearly of opinion that Hunt’s sonnet is the +best (though with a weak ending), Keats’s the second, +and Shelley’s a decidedly bad third. The leading +thought in each sonnet is characteristic of its author. +Keats adheres to the simple natural facts of the case, +while Hunt and Shelley turn the Nile into a moral or +intellectual symbol. Keats says essentially that to associate +the Nile with ideas of antique desolation is but a +delusion of ignorance, for this river is really rich and fresh +like others. Hunt makes the Egyptian stream an emblem +of history tending towards the progress of the individual +and the race; while Shelley reads into the Nile a lesson +of the good and the evil inhering in knowledge.</p> + +<p>“The Eve of St. Mark‗a fragment which very few of +Keats’s completed poems can rival in point of artist-like +feeling and writing—belongs to the years 1818–9. I find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +nothing in print to account for his leaving it unfinished.</p> + +<p>In May 1819 Keats had an idea of inventing a new +structure of sonnet-rhyme; and he sent to his brother +and sister-in-law a sonnet composed accordingly, beginning—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“If by dull rhymes our English must be chained.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He wrote: “I have been endeavouring to discover a +better sonnet-stanza than we have. The legitimate does +not suit the language well, from the pouncing rhymes. +The other appears too elegiac, and the couplet at the +end of it has seldom a pleasing effect. I do not pretend +to have succeeded.†Keats’s experiment reads agreeably. +It comprises five rhymes altogether; the first +rhyme being repeated thrice at arbitrary intervals; and +the last rhyme twice in lines twelve and fourteen.</p> + +<p>The tragedy of “Otho the Great†was written by +Keats (as already referred to) in July and August 1819, +in co-operation with Armitage Brown. The diction of +the play is, it would appear, Keats’s entirely; whereas +the invention and development of plot in the first four acts +is wholly due to Brown. The two friends sat together; +Brown described each successive scene, and Keats +turned it into verse, without troubling his head as to +the subject-matter for the scene next ensuing. When it +came to the fifth act, however, Keats inquired what +would be the conclusion of the play; and, not being +satisfied with Brown’s project which he deemed too +humorous and too melodramatic, he both invented and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +wrote a fifth act for himself. He felt sure that “Otho +the Great†was “a tolerable tragedy,†and set his heart +upon getting it acted—Kean was well inclined to take +the principal character, Prince Ludolph; and it became +his greatest ambition to write fine plays. “Otho†was +in fact accepted for Drury Lane Theatre, on the offer of +Brown, who left Keats’s authorship in the background; +but, as both the writers were impatient of delay, Brown, +in February 1820, took away the MS., and Covent +Garden Theatre was thought of instead—without any +practical result. As soon as “Otho†was finished, +Brown suggested King Stephen as the subject of another +drama; and Keats, without any further collaboration +from his friend, composed the few scenes of it which +remain. “One of my ambitions†(writes Keats to +Bailey in August 1819), “is to make as great a revolution +in modern dramatic writing as Kean has done in +acting.â€</p> + +<p>The ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci,†than which +Keats did nothing more thrilling or more perfect, may +perhaps have been written in the earlier half of 1819; it +was published in 1820, in Hunt’s <i>Indicator</i> for May +10th, under the signature “Caviareâ€; the same signature +which was adopted for the sonnet, “A dream, after +reading Dante’s episode of Paolo and Francesca.†Keats +may probably have meant to imply, in some bitterness of +spirit, that his poems were “caviare to the general.†+The title of this ballad was suggested to Keats by seeing +it at the head of a translation from Alain Chartier in a +copy of Chaucer. As to the “Dream†sonnet he wrote +in April 1819:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The 5th canto of Dante pleases me more, and more; +it is that one in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca. +I had passed many days in rather a low state of +mind, and in the midst of them I dreamt of being in +that region of Hell. The dream was one of the most +delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated +about the wheeling atmosphere, as it is described, +with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined, +it seemed for an age; and in the midst of all this cold +and darkness I was warm. Ever-flowery tree-tops sprang +up, and we rested on them, sometimes with the lightness +of a cloud, till the wind blew us away again. I tried a +sonnet on it; there are fourteen lines in it, but nothing +of what I felt. Oh that I could dream it every night!â€</p></div> + +<p>The last long work which Keats undertook, and he +wrote it with extreme facility, was “The Cap and Bells; +or The Jealousies, a Fairy Tale,†in the Spenserian stanza. +What remains is probably far less than Keats intended +the tale to amount to, but it is enough to enable us to +pronounce upon its merits. The poem was begun soon +after Keats’s first attack of blood-spitting in February +1820. It seems singular that under such depressing +conditions he should have written in so frivolous and +jaunty a spirit, and provoking that his last long work +(the last, that is, if we except the recast of “Hyperionâ€) +should be about the most valueless which he produced, +at any date after commencing upon “Endymion.†This +poem has been said to be written in the spirit of +Ariosto; a statement which, in justice to the brilliant +Italian, cannot be admitted. It may well be, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +as Lord Houghton suggests, that the general notion was +suggested by Brown, who had translated the first five +cantos (not indeed of Ariosto, but) of the “Orlando +Innamorato†of Bojardo. “The Cap and Bells†+appears to be destitute of distinct plan, though some +sort of satirical allusion to the marital and extra-marital +exploits of George IV. is traceable in it; meagre and +purposeless in invention; a poor farrago of pumped-up +and straggling jocosity. Perhaps a hearty laugh has +never been got out of it; although there are points here +and there at which a faint snigger may be permissible, +and the concluding portion improves somewhat. Keats +seems to have intended to publish it under a pseudonym, +Lucy Vaughan Lloyd; and Hunt gave, in <i>The Indicator</i> +of August 23, 1820, some taste of its quality, +possibly meaning to print more of it anon.</p> + +<p>The last verses which Keats ever wrote formed the +sonnet here ensuing. He composed this late in September +1820, after landing on the Dorsetshire coast, +probably near Lulworth, and returning to the ship which +bore him to his doom in Italy; and he wrote it down on +a blank page in Shakespeare’s Poems, facing “A +Lover’s Complaint.â€</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And watching with eternal lids apart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like Nature’s patient sleepless eremite,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The moving waters at their priestlike task<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And so live ever—or else swoon to death.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Of poetic projects which remained unfulfilled when +Keats died we hear—leaving out of count the works +which he had begun and left uncompleted—of only one. +During his voyage to Naples he often spoke of wishing +to write the story of Sabrina, as indicated in Milton’s +“Comus,†connecting it with some points in English +history and character.</p> + +<p>In prose—apart from his letters, which are noticeably +various in mood, matter, and manner, and contain many +admirable things—Keats wrote extremely little. In a +weekly paper with which Reynolds was connected, <i>The +Champion</i>, December 1817, he published two articles +on “Kean as a Shakespearean Actor:†they are not +remarkable. With the above-named articles are now +associated some “Notes on Shakespeare,†not written +with a view to publication; these appear to me somewhat +strained and bloated. There are also some “Notes +on Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’†On September 22, 1819, +Keats addressed to Mr. Dilke a letter, which however +does not appear to have been actually sent off. As it +shows a definite intention of writing in prose for regular +publication and for an income, a few sentences are worth +quoting.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>“It concerns a resolution I have taken to endeavour +to acquire something by temporary writing in periodical +works. You must agree with me how unwise it is to +keep feeding upon hopes which, depending so much on +the state of temper and imagination, appear gloomy or +bright, near or afar off, just as it happens.... You may +say I want tact; that is easily acquired.... I should, a +year or two ago, have spoken my mind on every subject +with the utmost simplicity. I hope I have learned a +little better, and am confident I shall be able to cheat as +well as any literary Jew of the market, and shine up an +article on anything without much knowledge of the +subject—aye, like an orange. I would willingly have +recourse to other means. I cannot; I am fit for nothing +but literature.... Notwithstanding my ‘aristocratic’ +temper, I cannot help being very much pleased with the +present public proceedings. I hope sincerely I shall be +able to put a mite of help to the liberal side of the +question before I die.â€</p></div> + +<p>On the following day Keats wrote to Brown on the +same subject—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I will write on the liberal side of the question for +whoever will pay me. I have not known yet what it is to +be diligent. I purpose living in town in a cheap lodging, +and endeavouring, for a beginning, to get the theatricals +of some paper.... I shall apply to Hazlitt, who knows +the market as well as any one, for something to bring me +in a few pounds as soon as possible. I shall not suffer +my pride to hinder me. The whisper may go round—I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +shall not hear it. If I can get an article in <i>The +Edinburgh</i>, I will. One must not be delicate.â€</p></div> + +<p>In pursuance of this plan, Keats did, for a few days +in October, take a lodging in Westminster. He then +reverted to Hampstead, and finally the scheme came to +nothing, principally perhaps because his fatal illness +began, and everything had to be given up which was not +directly controlled by considerations of health.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2> + + +<p>Having now gone through the narrative of Keats’s +life and death, and also the narrative of his +literary work, we have before us the more delicate and +exacting task of forming some judgment of both,—to +estimate his character, and appraise his writings. But +first I pause a brief while for the purpose of relating a +little that took place after his decease, and mentioning a +few particulars regarding his surviving relatives and +friends.</p> + +<p>Keats was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome +amid the overgrown ruins of the Honorian walls, surmounted +by the pyramid-tomb of Caius Cestius, a +Tribune of the People whose monument has long survived +his fame: this used to be traditionally called the +Tomb of Remus. There were but few graves on the +spot when Keats was laid there. In recent years the +portion of the cemetery where he reposes has been cut off +by a fortification. A little altar-tomb was set up for him, +sculptured with a Greek lyre, and inscribed with his name +and his own epitaph, “Here lies one whose name was +writ in water.†Severn attended affectionately to all this, +and the whole was completed about two years after the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +poet’s death. In 1875 General Sir Vincent Eyre and +some other Englishmen and Americans repaired the +stone, and placed on an adjacent wall a medallion +portrait of Keats, presented by its sculptor, Mr. Warrington +Wood. Severn, who died in August 1879, having +been British Consul in Rome for many years, now lies +in close proximity to his friend. Shelley’s remains +are interred hard by, but in the new cemetery,—not the +old one, which received the bones of Keats. As early +as 1836 Severn was able to attest that his connection +with the poet had been of benefit to his own professional +career. The friend and death-bed companion of Keats +had by that time become a personage, apart from the +merit, be it greater or less, of his performances as a +painter.</p> + +<p>Severn’s letters addressed to Armitage Brown show +that it was expected that Brown should write a Life of +Keats. The non-appearance of any such work was made +a matter of remonstrance in 1834; and at one time George +Keats, though conscious of not being quite the right man +for the purpose, thought of supplying the deficiency. +Severn also had had a similar idea. Brown was in Italy +in 1832, and there he met Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes, +afterwards Lord Houghton. He returned to England +some three years later, and was about to produce the +desired Life when a new project entered his mind, and he +emigrated to New Zealand. He then handed over to +Mr. Milnes all his collections of Keats’s writings, and the +biographical notices which he had compiled, and these +furnished a substantive basis for Mr. Milnes’s work published +in 1848—a work written with abundant sympathy,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +invaluable at its own date and ever since to all lovers of +the poet’s writings. Brown died towards 1842.</p> + +<p>George Keats voluntarily paid all the debts left by his +brother. These have not been precisely detailed: but it +appears that Messrs. Taylor and Hessey had made an +advance of £150, and there must have been something +not inconsiderable due to Brown, and probably also to +Dilke, who assured George that John Keats had known +nothing of direct want of either money or friends. George, +who has been described as “the most manly and self-possessed +of men,†settled at Louisville, Kentucky, where +he became a prominent citizen, and left a family creditably +established. He died in 1841, and his widow +remarried with a Mr. Jeffrey. In one of his letters +addressed to his sister, April 1824, there is a pleasant +little critique of “Don Quixote.†It gives one so prepossessing +an idea of its writer that I am tempted to +extract it:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Your face is decidedly not Spanish, but English all +over. If I fancied you to resemble Don Quixote, I +should fancy a handsome, intelligent, melancholy countenance, +with something wild but benevolent about the +eyes, a lofty forehead but not very broad, with finely-arched +eyebrows, denoting candour and generosity. He +is an immense favourite of mine; and I cannot help +feeling angry with the great Cervantes for bringing him +into situations where he is the laughing-stock of minds +so inferior to his own. It is evident he was a great +favourite of the author, and it is evident <i>he</i> was united +with the chivalric spirits he so wittily ridicules. He is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +made to speak as much sound sense, elevated morality, +and true piety, as any divine who ever wrote. If I were +to meet such a man, I should almost hate myself for +laughing at his eccentricities.â€</p></div> + +<p>The opening reference here to a Spanish face must +relate to the fact that Miss Fanny Keats, who in girlhood +had been the recipient of many affectionate and attentive +letters from her brother John, was engaged to, and +eventually married, a Spanish gentleman, Senhor Llanos, +author of “Don Esteban,†“Sandoval the Freemason,†+and other books illustrating the modern history of his +country. He was a Liberal, and in the time of the +Spanish Republic represented his Government at the +Court of Rome. Mrs. Llanos is still living at a very +advanced age. A few years ago a pension on the Civil +List was conferred upon her, in national recognition of +what is due to the sister of John Keats. There is a +pathetic reference to her appearance at the close of the +very last letter which he wrote: “My sister, who walks +about my imagination like a ghost, she is so like Tom.â€</p> + +<p>Miss Brawne married a Mr. Lindon some years after +the death of Keats. I do not know how many years, +but it must have been later than June 1825. She died +in 1865.</p> + +<p>The sincerity or otherwise of Leigh Hunt as a personal, +and more especially a literary, friend of Keats, has been +a good deal canvassed of late. It has been said that he +showed little staunchness in championing the cause of +Keats at the time—towards the close of 1818—when +detraction was most rampant, and when support from a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +man occupying the position of editor of <i>The Examiner</i> +would have been most serviceable. But one must not +hurry to assume that Hunt was seriously in the wrong, +whether we regard the question as one of individual +friendship or of literary policy. The attacks upon Keats +were in great measure flank-attacks upon Hunt himself. +Keats was abused on the ground that he wrote bad +poetry through imitating Hunt’s bad poetry—that he out-Heroded +Herod, or out-Hunted Hunt. Obviously it +was a delicate task which would have lain before the +elder poet: for any direct defence of Keats must have +been conducted on the thesis either that the faults were +not there (when indeed they <i>were</i> there to a large extent); +or else that the faults were in fact beauties, an allegation +which would only have riveted the charge that they were +Leigh-Huntish mannerisms; or finally that they were +not due to Hunt’s influence or example, but were proper +to Keats in person, and this would have been more in +the nature of censure than of vindication. A defence +on general grounds, upholding the poems without any +discussion of the particular faults alleged, would also, as +coming from Hunt, have been a difficult thing to manage: +it would rather have inflamed than abated the rancour of +the enemy. Besides, we must remember that Keats’s +first volume, though very warmly accepted and praised +by Hunt, was really but beginner’s work, imperfect in the +last degree; while the second volume, “Endymion,†was +viewed by Hunt as a hazardous and immature attempt +notwithstanding its many beauties, and incapable of +being upheld beyond a certain limit. There was not at +that date any third volume to be put forward in proof of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +faculty, or in arrest of judgment. Mr. Forman, than +whom no man looks with more patience into the evidence +on a question such as this of Hunt’s friendship, or is +more likely to pronounce a sound judgment upon it, +wholly scouts the accusation; and I am quite content to +range myself on the same side as Mr. Forman.</p> + +<p>Of Keats’s friends in general it may be said that the +one whom he respected very highly in point of character +was Bailey: the one who had a degree of genius fully +worthy, whatever its limitations and defects, of communing +with his own, was Haydon. Shelley can hardly +be reckoned among his friends, though very willing and +even earnest to be such, both in life and after death. +Keats held visibly aloof from Shelley, more perhaps on +the ground of his being a man of some family and +position than from any other motive. Shortly after the +publication of “The Revolt of Islam,†Keats’s rather +naïve expression was, “Poor Shelley, I think he has his +quota of good qualities.†Neither did he show any +warm or frank admiration of Shelley’s poetry. On +receiving a copy of “The Cenci,†he urged its author to +“curb his magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and +load every rift of his subject with ore.†We should not +ascribe this to any mean-spirited jealousy, but to that +sense, which grew to a great degree of intensity in +Keats, that the art of composition and execution is of +paramount importance in poetry, and must supersede all +considerations of abstract or proselytizing intention.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2> + + +<p>I must next proceed to offer some account of Keats’s +person, character, and turn of mind.</p> + +<p>As I have already said, Keats was a very small man, +barely more than five feet in height. He was called +“Little Keats†by his surgical fellow-students. Archdeacon +Bailey has left a good description of him in brief:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“There was in the character of his countenance the +femineity which Coleridge thought to be the mental +constitution of true genius. His hair was beautiful, and, +if you placed your hand upon his head, the curls fell +round it like a rich plumage. I do not particularly +remember the thickness of the upper lip so generally +described; but the mouth was too wide, and out of harmony +with the rest of his face, which had a peculiar +sweetness of expression, with a character of mature +thought, and an almost painful sense of suffering.â€</p></div> + +<p>Leigh Hunt should also be heard:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“His lower limbs were small in comparison with the +upper, but neat and well-turned. His shoulders were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +very broad for his size. He had a face in which energy +and sensibility were remarkably mixed up—an eager +power checked and made impatient by ill-health. Every +feature was at once strongly cut and delicately alive. +If there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, +which was not without something of a character of +pugnacity. His face was rather long than otherwise. +The upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin +was bold, the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and +glowing—large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a +noble action or a beautiful thought, they would suffuse +with tears, and his mouth trembled. In this there was +ill-health as well as imagination, for he did not like these +betrayals of emotion; and he had great personal as well +as moral courage. His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, +and hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for +the phrenologists, being remarkably small in the skull; a +singularity which he had in common with Byron and +Shelley, whose hats I could not get on. Keats was +sensible of the disproportion above noticed between his +upper and lower extremities; and he would look at his +hand, which was faded, and swollen in the veins, and say +it was the hand of a man of fifty.â€</p></div> + +<p>Cowden Clarke confirms Hunt in stating that Keats’s +hair was brown, and he assigns the same colour, or dark +hazel, to his eyes: confuting the “auburn†and “blue†+of which Mrs. Procter had spoken. It is rather remarkable +that, while Hunt speaks of the projection of the +<i>upper</i> lip—a detail which is fully verified in a charcoal +drawing by Severn—Lord Houghton observes upon “the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +undue prominence of the <i>lower</i> lip,†which point I cannot +trace clearly in any one of the portraits. Keats himself, +in one of his love-letters (August 1819), says, “I do not +think myself a fright.†According to Clarke, John Keats +was the only one of the family who resembled the father +in person and feature, while the other three resembled +the mother. George Keats does not wholly coincide in +this, for he says, “My mother resembled John very much +in the face;†at the same time he would not have been +qualified to deny a likeness to the father, of whom he +remembered nothing except that he had dark hair. The +lady who saw Keats’s hair and eyes of the wrong colour +saw at any rate his face to some effect, having left it +recorded thus: “His countenance lives in my mind as +one of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression +as if he had been looking on some glorious +sight.†In a like spirit, Haydon speaks of Keats as +having “an eye that had an inward look, perfectly +divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.†His +voice was deep and grave.</p> + +<p>Let us now turn to the portraits, which are as numerous +and as good as could fairly be expected under the circumstances.</p> + +<p>The earliest in date, and certainly one of the best from +an art point of view, is a sketch in profile done by +Haydon preparatory to introducing Keats’s head into +the picture of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem. The sketch +dates in November 1816, just after Keats had come of +age. The picture is in Philadelphia, and I cannot speak +of the head as it appears there. In the sketch we see +abundant wavy hair; a forehead and nose sloping forward<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +to the nasal tip in a nearly uniform curve; a dark, set, +speaking eye; a mouth tolerably well moulded, the upper +lip being fully long enough, and noticeably overhanging +the lower lip, upon which the chin—large, full, and +rounded—closely impinges. The whole face partakes +of the Raphaelesque cast of physiognomy. At some time, +which may have been the autumn of 1817, some one, +most probably Haydon, took a mask of the face of +Keats. In respect of actual form, this is necessarily the +final test of what the poet was like—but masks are often +only partially true to the <i>impression</i> of a face. This mask +confirms Haydon’s sketch markedly; allowing only for +the points that Haydon has rather emphasized the length +of the nose, and attenuated (so far as one can judge +from a profile) its thickness, and has given very much +more of the overhanging of the upper lip—but this last +would, by the very conditions of mask-taking, be there +reduced to a minimum. On the whole we may say that, +after considering reciprocally Haydon’s sketch and the +mask, we know very adequately what Keats’s face was—he +had ample reason for acquitting himself of being “a +fright.†We come still closer to a firm conclusion upon +taking into account, along with these two records, two +of the portraits left to us by Severn. One is a miniature, +which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, and +which we may surmise to have been painted in that year, +or late in 1818: the well-known likeness which represents +Keats in three-quarters face, looking earnestly forwards, +and resting his chin upon his left hand. Here the eyes +are larger than in Haydon’s sketch, and the upper lip +shorter, while the forehead seems straighter; but, as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +those matters of lip and forehead, a profile tells the plainer +tale. The whole aspect of the face is not greatly unlike +Byron’s. There is also the earlier charcoal drawing by +Severn, the best of all for enabling us to judge of the +beautiful rippling long hair; it is a profile, and extremely +like Haydon’s profile, except for the greater straightness +of the forehead, and the decided smallness of the chin, +points on which the mask shows conclusively that +Haydon was in the right. Most touching of all as a +reminiscence is the Indian-ink drawing which Severn +made of his dying friend on “28 Jan<span class="super">y.</span> 1821, 3 o’clock +morn<span class="super">g.</span>,†as he lay asleep, with the death-damp on his +dark hair. It exhibits the attenuation of disease, but +without absolute painfulness, and produces, fully as much +as any of the other portraits, the impression of a fine +and distinguished mould of face. Severn left yet other +likenesses of Keats—posthumous, and of inferior interest. +There is moreover a chalk drawing by the +painter Hilton, who used to meet Keats at the house +of the publisher Mr. Taylor. It has an artificial air, and +conveys a notion of the general character of the face +different from the other records, but may assist us +towards estimating what Keats was like about, or very +soon before, the commencement of his fatal illness. +Lastly, though the list of extant portraits is not even +thus exhausted, I mention the medallion by Girometti, +which is to all appearance a posthumous performance. +Its lines correspond pretty well with the profile sketch by +Haydon, while in character it assimilates more to Hilton’s +drawing. To me it seems of very little importance as a +document, but Hamilton Reynolds thought it the best<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> +likeness of all. Mrs. Llanos was in favour of the mask; +Mr. Cowden Clarke, of the crayon drawing by Severn—which, +indeed, conveys a bright impression of eager, +youthful impulsiveness.</p> + +<p>The character of Keats appears to me not a very easy +one to expound. To begin with, it stands to reason that +a man who died at the age of twenty-five can only have +half evolved and evinced himself; there must have been +a great deal which time and trial, had these been granted, +would have developed, but which untimely fate left to conjecture. +We are thus compelled to judge of an apprentice +in the severe school of life as if he had gone through +its full course; many things about him may, in their real +nature, have been fleeting and tentative, which to us pass +for final and established. This difficulty has to be allowed +for, but cannot be got over; the only Keats with whom +we have to deal is the Keats who had not completed his +twenty-sixth year. For him, as for other youths, the tree +of the knowledge of good and evil had budded apace; +the fruit remained for ever unmatured. Another gravely +deflecting force in our estimation of the character of Keats +consists in the fact that what we really care for in him is +his poetry. We admire his poetry, and condole his inequitable +treatment, and his hard and premature fate, +and are disposed to see his life in the light of his verse +and his sufferings. Hence arises a facile and perhaps +vapid enthusiasm, with an inclination to praise through +thick and thin, or to ignore such points as may not be +susceptible of praise. The sympathetic biographer is a +very pleasant fellow; but the truthful biographer also has +something to say for himself in the long run. I aspire<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> +to the part of the truthful biographer, duly sympathetic.</p> + +<p>We have already seen that Keats in early childhood +was vehement and ungovernable. His sensibility displayed +itself in the strongest contrasts, and he would be +convulsed with laughter or with tears, rapidly interchanged. +At school his skill in bodily exercises, and +his marked generosity of spirit, made him very popular—his +comrades surmising that he would turn out superior +in some active career, such as soldiering. To be rated +as a good boy was not his ambition; but, as previously +stated, he settled down into a very attentive scholar. +Later on, his friend Bailey liked “the simplicity of his +character,†and his winning affectionate manner. “Simplicity†+means, I suppose, frankness or straightforwardness; +for I cannot see that Keats’s character was at any +time particularly simple—I should rather say that it was +complex and many-sided.</p> + +<p>The one great craving of Keats, before the love for +Miss Brawne engrossed him, was the desire to become an +excellent poet; to do great things in poesy, and leave +a name among the immortals. At times he was conscious +of some presumption in this craving; but mostly +it seems to have held such plenary possession of him +that the question of presumption or otherwise hardly +arose. Whether he felt very strongly upon any matters +of intellectual or general concern other than poetic ones +may admit of some doubt. In Book II. of “Endymion†+he openly proclaims that poetic love-making is the one +thing needful to the susceptible mind; the Athenian +admiral and his auspicious owl, the Indian expeditions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +of Alexander, Ulysses and the Cyclops, the death-day of +empires, are as nothing to Juliet’s passion, Hero’s tears, +Imogen’s swoon, and Pastorella in the bandits’ den. +He does indeed, in one of his letters (April 1818), +aver “I would jump down Ætna for any great public +goodâ€; but it may perhaps be permissible to think that +he would at all events have postponed the Empedoclean +feat until he had written and ensured the publishing +of some poem upon which he could be content to stake +his claim to permanent poetic renown. His tension of +thought was great. In a letter which he addressed in +May 1817 to Leigh Hunt there is a little passage which +may be worth quoting here, along with Mr. Dilke’s comment +upon it:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I went to the Isle of Wight. Thought so much about +poetry so long together that I could not get to sleep at +night; and moreover, I know not how it was, I could +not get wholesome food. By this means, in a week or +so, I became not over-capable in my upper stories, and +set off pell-mell for Margate, at least a hundred and fifty +miles, because forsooth I fancied that I should like my +old lodging here, and could continue to do without trees. +Another thing, I was too much in solitude, and consequently +was obliged to be in continual burning of +thought, as an only resource.â€</p></div> + +<p>This passage Mr. Dilke considered “an exact picture +of the man’s mind and character,†adding: “He could +at any time have ‘thought himself out,’ mind and body. +Thought was intense with him, and seemed at times to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +assume a reality that influenced his conduct, and, I have +no doubt, helped to wear him out.â€</p> + +<p>Whether Keats should be regarded as a young man +tolerably regular in his mode of life, or manifestly tending +to the irregular, is a question not entirely clear. We +have seen something of a sexual misadventure in Oxford, +and of six weeks of hard drinking, attested by Haydon; +and it should be added that two or three of Keats’s minor +poems have a certain unmistakable twang of erotic +laxity. Lord Houghton thought that in the winter of +1817–18 the poet had indulged somewhat “in that +dissipation which is the natural outlet for the young +energies of ardent temperaments;†but he held that it +all amounted to no more than “a little too much rollicking†+(Keats’s own phrase), and he would not allow that +either drinking or gaming had proceeded to any serious +extent, “for, in his letters to his brothers, he speaks of +having drunk too much as a rare piece of joviality, and +of having won £10 at cards as a great hit.†Medical +students, it may be added, are not, as a rule, conspicuous +for mortifying the flesh; Keats, however, according to +Mr. Stephens, did not indulge in any vice during his +term of studentship. He was eminently open, as his +writings evidence, to impressions of enjoyment; and one +may not unnaturally suppose that the joys of sense +numbered him, no less than the average of young men, +among their votaries—not indeed among their slaves. +He had not, I think, any taste for those “manly recreations†+which consist chiefly in making the lower animals +uncomfortable, or in putting a quietus to their comforts +and discomforts along with their lives. I only observe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +one occasion on which he went out with a gun. He +then (towards the close of 1818) accompanied Mr. Dilke +in shooting on Hampstead Heath, and his trophy was a +solitary tomtit.</p> + +<p>As to strength or stability of character, it is rather +amusing to find Keats picking a hole in Haydon, while +Haydon could probe a joint in the armour of Keats. In +November 1817 Haydon had been playing rather fast +and loose (so at least it seemed to Keats and to his +friend Bailey) with a pictorial aspirant named Cripps, and +Keats wrote to Bailey in the following terms:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“To a man of your nature such a letter as Haydon’s +must have been extremely cutting.... As soon as I +had known Haydon three days, I had got enough of his +character not to have been surprised at such a letter as +he has hurt you with. Nor, when I knew it, was it a +principle with me to drop his acquaintance, although with +you it would have been an imperious feeling.... I +must say one thing that has pressed upon me lately, and +increased my humility and capability of submission, and +that is this truth: <i>Men of genius</i> are great as certain +ethereal chemicals operating on a mass of neutral +intellect; but they <i>have not any individuality, any determined +character</i>.â€</p></div> + +<p>The following also, from a letter of January 1818 to +the same correspondent, relates partly to Haydon:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man’s +faults, and then be passive. If after that he insensibly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> +draws you towards him, then you have no power to +break the link.â€</p></div> + +<p>Haydon’s verdict upon Keats is no doubt extremely +important. I give here the whole entry in his diary, +29th of March 1821, omitting only two passages which +have been already extracted in their more essential +context:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Keats, too, is gone! He died at Rome, the 23rd +February, aged twenty-five. A genius more purely +poetical never existed. In fireside conversation he was +weak and inconsistent, but he was in his glory in the +fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a flower, the +glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature tremble; +then his eyes flashed, his cheeks glowed, his mouth +quivered. He was the most unselfish of human +creatures; unadapted to this world, he cared not for +himself, and put himself to any inconvenience for the +sake of his friends. He was haughty, and had a fierce +hatred of rank [this corresponds with Hunt’s remark, +that Keats looked upon a man of birth as his natural +enemy], but he had a kind, gentle heart, and would have +shared his fortune with any man who wanted it. His +classical knowledge was inconsiderable, but he could feel +the beauties of the classical writers. He had an exquisite +sense of humour, and too refined a notion of +female purity to bear the little sweet arts of love with +patience. <i>He had no decision of character</i>, and, having no +object upon which to direct his great powers, was at the +mercy of every pretty theory Hunt’s ingenuity might start.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +One day he was full of an epic poem; the next day epic +poems were splendid impositions on the world. Never for +two days did he know his own intentions.... The death +of his brother wounded him deeply, and it appeared to +me that he began to droop from that hour. I was much +attracted to Keats, and he had a fellow-feeling for me. +I was angry because he would not bend his great powers +to some definite object, and always told him so. Latterly +he grew irritated because I would shake my head at his +irregularities, and tell him that he would destroy himself.... +Poor dear Keats! had nature given you +firmness as well as fineness of nerve, you would have +been glorious in your maturity as great in your promise. +May your kind and gentle spirit be now mingling with +those of Shakespeare and Milton, before whose minds +you have so often bowed! May you be considered +worthy of admission to share their musings in heaven, +as you were fit to comprehend their imaginations on +earth! Dear Keats, hail and adieu for some six or +seven years, and I shall meet you. I have enjoyed +Shakespeare more with Keats than with any other human +creature.â€</p></div> + +<p>In writing to Miss Mitford, Haydon added:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“His ruin was owing to <i>his want of decision of character, +and power of will</i>, without which genius is a +curse.â€</p></div> + +<p>It will be seen that Haydon’s character of Keats is in +some respects very highly laudatory: he speaks of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +poet’s unselfishness and generosity in terms which may +possibly run into excess, but cannot assuredly have fallen +short. What he remarks as to “irregularities†seems to +show that these had (at least in Haydon’s opinion) taken +somewhat firm root with Keats, and had not merely +come and gone with a spurt, as a relief from feelings of +depression or mortification; nor can we altogether forget +the statement that, on the night of February 3, 1820, +which closed with the first attack of blood-spitting, Keats +“returned home in a state of strange physical excitement—it +might have appeared to those who did not know +him one of fierce intoxication.†Physical excitement +which looks like fierce intoxication, without being really +anything of the sort, can be but a comparatively rare +phænomenon; nor do I suppose that an impending attack +of blood-spitting would account for such an appearance. +Brown, however, was still more positive than Lord +Houghton in excluding the idea of intoxication on that +occasion; he even says, “Such a state in him, I knew, +was impossible‗an assertion which we have to balance +against the general averments of Haydon. Keats’s +irritation at the remonstrances which Haydon addressed +to him upon irregularities, real or assumed, is mentioned +by the painter without any seeming knowledge of the +fact that Keats had (as shown by his letter of September +20, 1819, already cited, to his brother George) +cooled down very greatly in his cordiality to his monitor; +and he may perhaps have received the remonstrances in +a spirit of stubbornness, or of apparent irritation, more +because he was out of humour with Haydon than +because he could not confute the allegations, had he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +been so minded. As to the charge of want of decision +of character, want of power of will, we must try to understand +what is the exact sense in which Haydon applies +these terms. He appears from the context to refer +more to indefiniteness of literary aim, combined with +sensitiveness to critical detraction and ridicule, than to +anything really affecting the basis of a man’s character in +his general walk of life and commerce with the world. +A few words on both these aspects of the question will +not be wasted. We need not, however, recur to the +allegation of over-sensitiveness to criticism, or of being +“snuffed out by an article,†which has already been +sufficiently debated.</p> + +<p>Indefiniteness of literary aim must be assessed in relation +to a man’s faculties, and in especial to his age and +experience. A beginner is naturally indefinite in aim, in +the sense that he tries his hand at various things, and +only after making several experiments does he learn +which things he can manage well, and which less than +well. Keats, in his first two volumes, was but a beginner, +and a youthful beginner. If they show indefiniteness of +aim—though indeed they hardly <i>do</i> show that in any +marked degree—one cannot regard the fact as derogatory +to the author. With his third volume, he was getting +some assurance of the direction in which his power lay. +It is certainly true that, after producing one epic (if such +it can be called), “Endymion,†and after commencing +another, “Hyperion,†he laid the second aside, for whatever +reason; partly, it would seem, because the harsh +reception of “Endymion†discouraged him, and partly +because he considered the turn of diction too obviously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> +Miltonic; and no doubt, as his mood varied, he must +have expressed to Haydon very divergent opinions as to +the expediency of writing epics. But, apart from this +special matter, the third volume shows no uncertainty +or infirmity of purpose. It contains three narrative +poems—“Isabella,†“The Eve of St. Agnes,†and +“Lamia‗some odes, and a few minor lyrics. The +very fact that he continued writing poetry so persistently, +maugre <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> and <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, +speaks to some decision of character and power of will +in literary matters; and the immense advance in executive +force tells the same tale aboundingly. Therefore, +while laying great stress upon Haydon’s view so far as it +concerns certain shifting currents of thought and of talk, +I cannot find that Keats is fairly open to the charge of +want of decision or of will in the literary relation. Then +as to the larger question of his character generally, +Keats appears to me to have been eminently wilful, and +somewhat wayward to boot. He had the temperament +of a man of genius, liable to sudden and sharp impressions, +and apt to go considerable lengths at the beck of +an impulse, or even of a caprice. Wilfulness along with +waywardness is certainly not quite the same thing as +“power of will,†but it testifies to a will which can exert +itself steadily if it likes. The very short duration of +Keats’s life, and the painful conjuncture of circumstances +which made his last year a despairing struggle between a +passionate love and an inexorable disease, preclude our +forming a very distinct opinion of what his power of will +might naturally have become. If I may venture a surmise, +I would say that he had within him the stuff of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +ample determination and high-heartedness in any matters +upon which he was in earnest, mingled however with +deficient self-control, and with a perilous facility for seeing +the seamy side of life.</p> + +<p>Lord Houghton gives an attractive picture of Keats +at what was probably his happiest time, the winter of +1817-18, when “Endymion†was preparing for the +press. I cannot condense it to any purpose, and +certainly cannot improve it, so I reproduce the passage +as it stands:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“Keats passed the winter of 1817-18 at Hampstead, +gaily enough among his friends. His society was much +sought after, from the delightful combination of earnestness +and pleasantry which distinguished his intercourse +with all men. There was no effort about him to say fine +things, but he <i>did</i> say them most effectively, and they +gained considerably by his happy transition of manner. +He joked well or ill as it happened, and with a laugh +which still echoes sweetly in many ears; but at the mention +of oppression or wrong, or at any calumny against +those he loved, he rose into grave manliness at once, +and seemed like a tall man. His habitual gentleness +made his occasional looks of indignation almost terrible. +On one occasion, when a gross falsehood respecting the +young artist, Severn, was repeated and dwelt upon, he +left the room, declaring ‘he should be ashamed to sit +with men who could utter and believe such things.’â€</p></div> + +<p>Severn himself avers that Keats never spoke of any +one unless by way of saying something in his favour.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span></p> + +<p>Cowden Clarke’s anecdote tells in the same direction, +that once, when some local tyranny was being discussed, +Keats amused the party by shouting: “Why is there not +a human dust-hole into which to tumble such fellows?†+His own Carlylean phrase seems to have tickled Keats +as well as others, for he repeated it in a field walk with +Haydon: “Haydon, what a pity it is there is not a +human dust-hole!â€</p> + +<p>To this may be added a few words from a letter addressed +from Teignmouth by Keats to Mr. Taylor in +April 1818:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I know nothing, I have read nothing: and I mean +to follow Solomon’s directions, ‘Get learning, get understanding.’ +I find earlier days are gone by; I find that I +can have no enjoyment in the world but continual drinking +of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but +the idea of doing some good to the world. Some do it +with their society, some with their wit, some with their +benevolence, some with a sort of power of conferring +pleasure and good humour on all they meet—and in a +thousand ways, all dutiful to the command of great +Nature. There is but one way for me: the road lies +through application, study, and thought. I will pursue +it; and for that end purpose retiring for some years. I +have been hovering for some time between an exquisite +sense of the luxurious and a love for philosophy. Were +I calculated for the former, I should be glad; but, as I am +not, I shall turn all my soul to the latter.â€</p></div> + +<p>This “exquisite sense of the luxurious†must have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +prompted an interjection of Keats in a rather earlier +letter to Bailey (November 1817): “Oh for a life of +sensations rather than of thoughts!â€</p> + +<p>One does not usually associate the suspicious character +with the unselfish and generous character. Even apart +from Haydon’s, there is ample evidence to show that +Keats was generous, and, in a sense, unselfish; although +a man of creative or productive genius, intent upon his +own work, and subordinating everything else to it, is +seldom unselfish in the fullest ordinary sense of the term. +But he was certainly suspicious. Of this temper we have +already seen some painful ebullitions in his letters to +Fanny Brawne. These might be ascribed mainly to the +acute feelings of a lover, the morbid impressions of an +invalid. But, in truth, Keats always was and had been +suspicious. In a letter to his brothers, dated in January +1818, he refers, in a tone of some soreness, to objections +which Hunt had raised against points of treatment in the +first Book of “Endymion,†adding: “The fact is, he and +Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having +showed them the affair officiously; and, from several +hints I have had, they appear much disposed to dissect +and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made.†Still +earlier, writing to Haydon, he had confessed to “a +horrid morbidity of temperament.†In a letter of June +1818 to Bailey he says: “You have all your life (I +think so) believed everybody: I have suspected everybody.†+By January 1820 he has got into a condition +of decided <i>ennui</i>, not far removed from misanthropy, +and the company of acquaintances, and even of friends, +is a tedium to him. This was a month before the begin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>ning +of his fatal illness. It is true, he was then in love. +He writes to Mrs. George Keats:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I dislike mankind in general.... The worst of men +are those whose self-interests are their passions; the +next, those whose passions are their self-interest. Upon +the whole, I dislike mankind. Whatever people on the +other side of the question may advance, they cannot deny +that we are always surprised at hearing of a good action, +and never of a bad one.... If you were in England, +I dare say you would be able to pick out more amusement +from society than I am able to do. To me it is as +dull as Louisville is to you. [Then follow several +remarks on Hunt, Haydon, the Misses Reynolds, and +Dilke.] ’Tis best to remain aloof from people, and like +their good parts, without being eternally troubled with the +dull processes of their everyday lives. When once a +person has smoked the vapidness of the routine of +society, he must have either some self-interest or the love +of some sort of distinction to keep him in good humour +with it. All I can say is that, standing at Charing Cross, +and looking east, west, north, and south, I see nothing +but dulness.â€</p></div> + +<p>“I carry all things to an extreme,†he had written to +Bailey in July 1818, “so that when I have any little +vexation it grows in five minutes into a theme fit for +Sophocles. Then and in that temper if I write to any +friend, I have so little self-possession that I give him +matter for grieving, at the very time perhaps when I am +laughing at a pun.†A phrase which Keats used in a +letter of the 24th of October 1820, addressed to Mrs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +Brawne, may also be, in the main, a true item of self-portraiture: +“If ever there was a person born without +the faculty of hoping, I am he.†Too much weight, +however, should not be given to this, as the poet’s +disease had then brought him far onward towards his +grave. Severn does not seem to have regarded such a +tendency as innate in Keats, for he wrote, at a far later +date, “No mind was ever more exultant in youthful +feeling.â€</p> + +<p>Keats’s sentiment towards women appears to have been +that of a shy youth who was at the same time a critical +man. Miss Brawne enslaved him, but did not inspire +him with that tender and boundless confidence which +the accepted and engaged lover of a virtuous girl naturally +feels. With one woman, Miss Cox, he seems to +have been thoroughly at his ease; and one can gather +from his expressions that this unusual result depended +upon a fair counterbalance of claims. While she was +self-centred in her beauty and attractiveness, he was self-centred +in his intellect and aspirations. There is an +early poem of his—the reverse of a good one—which +seems worth quoting here. I presume he may have +been in his twenty-first year or so when he wrote it:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Woman, when I behold thee flippant, vain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Without that modest softening that enhances<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The downcast eye, repentant of the pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That its mild light creates to heal again;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">E’en then elate my spirit leaps and prances,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">E’en then my soul with exultation dances,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For that to love so long I’ve dormant lain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">But, when I see thee meek and kind and tender,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heavens! how desperately do I adore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy winning graces! To be thy defender<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I hotly burn—to be a Calidore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A very Red-cross Knight, a stout Leander—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Might I be loved by thee like these of yore.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are things on which the dazzled senses rest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the fond fixèd eyes forget they stare.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From such fine pictures, Heavens! I cannot dare<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To turn my admiration, though unpossessed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They be of what is worthy—though not dressed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In lovely modesty and virtues rare.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">These lures I straight forget—e’en ere I dine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or thrice my palate moisten. But, when I mark<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Such charms with mild intelligences shine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My ear is open like a greedy shark<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To catch the tunings of a voice divine.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah who can e’er forget so fair a being?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who can forget her half-retiring sweets?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For man’s protection. Surely the All-seeing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who joys to see us with His gifts agreeing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Will never give him pinions who entreats<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Such innocence to ruin—who vilely cheats<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One’s thoughts from such a beauty. When I hear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A lay that once I saw her hand awake,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her form seems floating palpable and near.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Had I e’er seen her from an arbour take<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And o’er my eyes the trembling moisture shake.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From the opening lines of this poem I gather that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> +Keats, when he wrote it, had never been in love; but +that he had a feeling towards pure, sweet-minded, lovely +women, which made him, in idea, their champion and +votary. Later on, in June 1818, he wrote to Bailey +that his love for his brothers had “always stifled the impression +that any woman might otherwise have made +upon him.†And in July of the same year, also to +Bailey:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“I am certain that our fair friends [<i>i.e.</i> the Misses +Reynolds] are glad I should come for the mere sake of +my coming; but I am certain I bring with me a vexation +they are better without.... I am certain I have not a +right feeling towards women: at this moment I am +striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because +they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When +I was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure +goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of +them slept, though she knew it not. I have no right to +expect more than their reality. I thought them ethereal—above +men; I find them perhaps equal—great by comparison +is very small. Insult may be inflicted in more +ways than by word or action. One who is tender of +being insulted does not like to <i>think</i> an insult against +another. I do not like to think insults in a lady’s +company; I commit a crime with her which absence +would not have known.... When I am among women +I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or +be silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen +to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone. You must be +charitable, and put all this perversity to my being dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>appointed +since my boyhood.... After all, I do think +better of womankind than to suppose they care whether +Mister John Keats, five feet high, likes them or not.â€</p></div> + +<p>In his letter about Miss Cox as “Charmian,†written +perhaps just before he knew Miss Brawne, Keats said: +“I hope I shall never marry.... The mighty abstract +idea of Beauty in all things I have stifles the more +divided and minute domestic happiness. An amiable +wife and sweet children I contemplate as part of that +Beauty, but I must have a thousand of those beautiful +particles to fill up my heart.... These things, combined +with the opinion I have formed of the generality of +women, who appear to me as children to whom I would +rather give a sugar-plum than my time, form a barrier +against matrimony which I rejoice in.â€</p> + +<p>We have seen, in one of Keats’s letters to Miss +Brawne, that he shrank from the thought of having their +mutual love made known to any of their friends. But +he went further than this. As well after as before he +had fallen in love with Miss Brawne, and had become +engaged to her, he could express a contrary state of +feeling. Thus, in addressing Mr. Taylor, on August 23, +1819, he says: “I equally dislike the favour of the public +with the love of a woman; they are both a cloying +treacle to the wings of independence.†And to his +brother George, September 17, 1819: “Nothing strikes +me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. A +man in love, I do think, cuts the sorriest figure in the +world. Even when I know a poor fool to be really in +pain about it, I could burst out laughing in his face; his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +pathetic visage becomes irresistible.†The letters to +George, in fact, give no hint of any love for Miss Brawne, +still less of an engagement.</p> + +<p>From all these details it would appear that Keats was +by no means an ardent devotee of the feminine type of +character. He thought there was but little congruity +between the Ideal and the Real of womanhood. He +parted company, in this regard, with Shakespeare and +Shelley, and adhered rather to Milton. So it was before +he was in love; and to be in love was not the occasion +of any essential alteration of view. He ascribed to +Fanny Brawne the same volatile appetite for amusement, +the same propensity for flirtation, the same comparative +shallowness of heart-affection, which he imputed to her +sex in general. He loved her passionately: he believed +in her not passionately, nor even intensely. That he +was hard hit by the blind and winged archer was a patent +fact; but he still knew the archer to be blind.</p> + +<p>In a room, says Keats’s surgical fellow-student, Mr. +Stephens, he was always at the window peering out into +space, and it was customary to call the window-seat +“Keats’s place.†In his last illness he told Severn that +the intensest of his pleasures had been to watch the +growth of flowers; and, after lying quiet one day, he +whispered, “I feel the daisies [or “the flowers"] growing +over me.†In an early stage of his fatal illness, +February 16, 1820, he had written pathetically to James +Rice: “How astonishingly does the chance of leaving +the world impress a sense of its natural beauties upon +us! Like poor Falstaff, though I do not ‘babble,’ I +think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +on every flower I have known from my infancy—their +shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just +created them with a superhuman fancy. It is because +they are connected with the most thoughtless and the +happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign +flowers in hot-houses, of the most beautiful nature, but +I do not care a straw for them. The simple flowers of +our spring are what I want to see again.†Music was +another of his great enjoyments. He would sit for hours +while Miss Charlotte Reynolds played to him on the +pianoforte; and a wrong note in an orchestra has been +known to rouse his pugnacity, and make him wish to +“go down and smash all the fiddles.†Haydn’s symphonies +were among his prime favourites, and Purcell’s +songs from Shakespeare. “Give me,†he wrote from +Winchester to his sister, in August 1819, “books, fruit, +French wine, and fine weather, and a little music out of +doors, played by somebody I do not know, and I can +pass a summer very quietly.†He would also listen long +to Severn’s playing, following the air with a low kind of +recitative; and could himself “produce a pleasing +musical effect, though possessing hardly any voice.â€</p> + +<p>Closely though he was mixed up with Leigh Hunt and +his circle, Keats had, in fact, not much sympathy with +their ideas on literary topics, nor with Hunt’s own +poetry, still less with their views on political matters of +the time, in which he took but very faint interest. +Cowden Clarke thought that the poet’s “whole civil +creed was comprised in the master-principle of universal +liberty, viz., equal and stern justice to all, from the duke +to the dustman.†He was, however, a liberal by tem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>perament, +and, I suppose, by conviction as well. One +of the really puerile and nonsensical passages in +“Endymion†is that which opens book iii. He told +his friend Richard Woodhouse (a barrister, connected +with the firm of Taylor and Hessey) that it expressed +his opinion of the Tory Ministry then in office:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“There are who lord it o’er their fellow-men<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With most prevailing tinsel; who unpen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their baaing vanities to browse away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The comfortable green and juicy hay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From human pastures; or, oh torturing fact!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who through an idiot blink will see unpacked<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fire-branded foxes to scar up and singe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our gold and ripe-eared hopes. With not one tinge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Able to face an owl’s, they still are dight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And crowns and turbans. With unladen breasts,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To their spirit’s perch, their being’s high account,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid the fierce intoxicating tones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of trumpets, shoutings, and belaboured drums,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sudden cannon.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>A rather more sensible embodiment of his political +feelings is a stanza which he wrote, perhaps in 1818, at +the close of canto 5, book ii. of “The Faery Queen.†In +this stanza the revolutionary Giant, who had been suppressed +by Artegall and Talus, is represented as being +pieced together again by Typographus, the Printing-press, +and so trained up as to become more than a match +for his former victors. There is also, in a letter to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> +George Keats dated in September 1819, a rather long +and detailed passage on politics covering a wide period +in English and European history, on the oscillations +of governmental and popular power &c., and on the +writer’s sympathy with the enlightenment and progress +of the people. It closes with an admiring description +of Sandt, the assassin of Kotzebue, as pourtrayed in a +profile likeness. As to Hunt, some expressions in a +letter from George Keats to Dilke are decidedly strong:—“I +should be extremely sorry that poor John’s name +should go down to posterity associated with the littlenesses +of Leigh Hunt—an association of which he was +so impatient in his lifetime. He speaks of him patronizingly; +that he would have defended him against the +reviewers if he had known his nervous irritation at their +abuse of him, and says that on that point only he was +reserved to him. The fact was, he more dreaded Hunt’s +defence than their abuse. You know all this as well as +I do.â€</p> + +<p>Apart from his own special capability for poetry, Keats +had a mind both active and capacious. The depth, +pregnancy, and incisiveness, of many of the remarks in +his letters, glancing along a considerable range of subject-matter, +are highly noticeable. If some one were to take +the pains of extracting and classifying them, he would do +a good service to readers. It does not appear, however, +that Keats took much interest in any kind of knowledge +which could not be made applicable or subservient to the +purposes of poetry. Many will remember the <a name="Page_150t" id="Page_150t"></a><a href="#Page_150tn">anecdote</a>, +proper to Haydon’s “immortal dinner†(December +1817), of Keats’s joining with Charles Lamb in denounc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>ing +Sir Isaac Newton for having destroyed all the poetry +of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours; +the whole company had to drink “Newton’s health, and +confusion to mathematics.†This was a freak, yet not so +mere a freak but that the poet—in one of his most +elaborated and heedful compositions, “Lamia‗could +revert to the same idea—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">“Do not all charms fly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At the mere touch of cold philosophy?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We know her woof, her texture—she is given<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the dull catalogue of common things.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Empty the haunted air and gnomèd mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unweave a rainbow.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In a letter to his brother, December 1817, Keats +observes:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable +of making all disagreeables evaporate from their being +in close relationship with beauty and truth. Examine +‘King Lear,’ and you will find this exemplified throughout.... +It struck me what quality went to form a man of +achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare +possessed so enormously. I mean <i>negative capability</i>; +that is, when a man is capable of being in +uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable +reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, +would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +the penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of +remaining content with half-knowledge. This, pursued +through volumes, would perhaps take us no further than +this: that with a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes +every other consideration, or rather obliterates all +consideration.â€</p></div> + +<p>Keats did not very often in his letters remark upon the +work of his poetic contemporaries. We have just read a +reference to Coleridge. In another letter addressed to +Haydon, January 1818, he shows that his admiration of +Wordsworth’s “Excursion†was great, coupling that poem +with Haydon’s pictures, and with “Hazlitt’s depth of +taste,†as “three things to rejoice at in this age.â€</p> + +<p>Soon afterwards, February 1818, while “Endymion†+was passing through the press, he wrote to Mr. Taylor:—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how +far I am from their centre. 1st, I think poetry should +surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it +should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest +thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. 2nd, Its +touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby +making the reader breathless instead of content. The +rise, the progress, the setting, of imagery, should, like the +sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly +although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of +twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be +than to write it. And this leads me to another axiom—That, +if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a +tree, it had better not come at all.â€</p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p> + +<p>Keats held that the melody of verse is founded on +the adroit management of open and close vowels. He +thought that vowels can be as skilfully combined and +interchanged as differing notes of music, and that monotony +should only be allowed when it subserves some +special purpose.</p> + +<p>The following, from a letter to Mr. Woodhouse, +October 1818 (soon after the abusive reviews had appeared +in <i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i> and <i>The Quarterly</i>), is a +remarkable piece of self-analysis. As we read it, we +should bear in mind what Haydon said of Keats’s want +of decision of character. I am not indeed clear that +Keats has here pourtrayed himself with marked accuracy. +It may appear that he ascribes to himself too much of +absorption into the object or the personage which he +contemplates; whereas it might, with fully as much truth, +be advanced that he was wont to assimilate the personage +or the object to himself. I greatly doubt whether in +Keats’s poems we see the object or the personage the +clearer because his faculty transpires through them: +rather, we see the object or the personage through +the haze of Keats. His range was not extremely +extensive (whatever it might possibly have become, with +a longer lease of life), nor was his personality by any +means occulted. But in any event his statement here is +of great importance as showing what he thought of the +poetic phase of mind and working.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“As to the poetical character itself (I mean that sort +of which, if I am anything, I am a member—that sort +distinguished from the Wordsworthian or egotistical sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>lime, +which is a thing <i>per se</i>, and stands alone), it is not +itself—it has no self. It is everything, and nothing—it +has no character. It enjoys light, and shade. It lives in +gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean +or elevated—it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago +as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher +delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its +relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its +taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. +A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in +existence, because he has no identity: he is continually +in for, and filling, some other body. The sun, the moon, +the sea, and men and women who are creatures of impulse, +are poetical, and have about them an unchangeable +attribute: the poet has none, no identity. He is certainly +the most unpoetical of all God’s creatures. If +then he has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the +wonder that I should say I would write no more? Might +I not at that very instant have been cogitating on the +characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a wretched thing to +confess, but it is a very fact, that not one word I ever +utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out +of my identical nature. How can it when I have <i>no</i> +nature? When I am in a room with people, if I ever +am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, +then not myself goes home to myself, but the identity of +every one in the room begins to press upon me [so] that +I am in a very little time annihilated. Not only among +men; it would be the same in a nursery of children.â€</p></div> + +<p>Elsewhere Keats says, November 1817: “Nothing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will +always set me to rights; or if a sparrow come before my +window, I take part in its existence, and pick about the +gravel.â€</p> + +<p>For painting Keats had a good deal of taste, largely +fostered, no doubt, by his intimacy with Haydon. This +came to him gradually. Towards the beginning of 1818 +he was, according to his own account, quite unable to +appreciate Raphael’s Cartoons, but afterwards gained an +insight into them through contrasting them with some +maudlin saints by Guido. It is interesting to find him +entering warmly into the beauties of the earlier Italian +art, as indicated in a book of prints from some church in +Milan (so he says, but perhaps it should rather be Pisa +or Florence). “I do not think I ever had a greater +treat out of Shakespeare; full of romance and the most +tender feeling; magnificence of drapery beyond everything +I ever saw, not excepting Raphael’s, but grotesque +to a curious pitch—yet still making up a fine whole, even +finer to me than more accomplished works, as there was +left so much room for imagination.â€</p> + +<p>Here is a small trait of character, recorded by Keats +in a letter to George, from Winchester, September 1819. +“I feel I can bear real ills better than imaginary ones. +Whenever I find myself growing vapourish, I rouse +myself, wash, and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair and +clothes, tie my shoe-strings neatly, and in fact adonize as if +I were going out; then, all clean and comfortable, I sit +down to write. This I find the greatest relief.â€</p> + +<p>Haydon, as we have seen, said that Keats had an +exquisite sense of humour. There are few things more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span> +difficult to analyse than the sense of humour; few points +as to which different people will vary more in opinion +than the possession, by any particular man, of a sense of +humour, or the account, good or bad, to which he turned +this sense. Certainly there is a large amount of jocularity +in the familiar writings of Keats—often a quick perception +of the ridiculous or the risible, sometimes a telling +jest or <i>jeu d’esprit</i>. I confess, however, that to myself +most of Keats’s fun appears forced or inept, wanting in +fineness of taste and manner, and tending towards the +vulgar; a jangling jingle of word and notion. Punning +plays a large part in it, as it did in Leigh Hunt’s familiar +converse. Some specimens of Keats’s funning or punning +seem to me a humiliating exhibition, as, for instance, +a letter, January 1819, which Armitage Brown addressed +to Mr. and Mrs. Dilke, with interpolations by Keats. +No doubt both the friends were resolutely bent upon +being silly on that occasion; but to be silly is not fully +tantamount to being “a fellow of infinite jest,†or having +an exquisite sense of humour. There is some very exasperating +writing also in a letter to Reynolds (May +1818), about “making Wordsworth and Colman play at +leap-frog, or keeping one of them down a whole half-holiday +at fly-the-garter,†&c., &c. A feeling for the +inappropriate is perhaps one element of jocoseness; if +so, Keats may have been genuinely jocose when (as he +wrote in his very last letter to Brown) he “at his worst, +even in quarantine [in Naples Harbour], summoned up +more puns, in a sort of desperation, in one week than in +any year of his life.†He had a good power of mimicry, +as well as of dramatic recital. He did indisputably,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +towards September 1819, play off one practical joke—Brown +was the victim—with eminent success; pretending +that a certain Mr. Nathan Benjamin, who was then +renting Brown’s house at Hampstead, had written a letter +complaining of illness—gravel, caused by some lime-tainted +water on the premises. But the success depended +upon a very singular coincidence, viz., that by mere +chance Keats had happened to give the tenant’s name +correctly. The angry reply of Brown to the angry supposititious +letter of Benjamin, and the astonishment of +Benjamin upon receiving Brown’s retort, are fertile of +laughter.</p> + +<p>Keats does not appear to have ever made any pretence +to defined religious belief of any sort, nor seriously to +have debated the subject, or troubled his mind about it +one way or the other. He was certainly not a Christian. +His early friend, Mr. Felton Mathew, speaks of him as +“of the sceptical and republican school.†On Christmas +Eve, 1816, soon after he had come of age, he wrote the +following sonnet—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“The church-bells toll a melancholy round,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Calling the people to some other prayers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More hearkening to the sermon’s horrid sound.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Surely the mind of man is closely bound<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In some black spell: seeing that each one tears<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And converse high of those with glory crowned.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Still, still they toll: and I should feel a damp,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A chill as from a tomb, did I not know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">That they are dying like an outburnt lamp,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That ’tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Into oblivion,—that fresh flowers will grow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many glories of immortal stamp.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His sonnet on Ben Nevis, 1818, is also an utterance of +scepticism—speaking of heaven and hell as misty surmises, +and of “the world of thought and mental might†+as a realm of nebulosity. A letter to Leigh Hunt, May +1817, contains a phrase arraigning the God of Christians. +To the clerical student Bailey, September 1818, he +spoke out: “You know my ideas about religion. I do +not think myself more in the right than other people, +that nothing in this world is proveable.†The latter +clause appears to be carelessly elliptical in expression, +the real meaning being “I think [not “I do <i>not</i> think"] +that nothing in this world is proveable.†To Fanny +Brawne, towards May 1820, he appealed “by the blood +of that Christ you believe in.†Haydon tells a noticeable +anecdote—the only one, I think, which exhibits Keats as +an admirer of that anti-imaginative order of intellect of +which Voltaire was a prototype—</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“He had a tending to religion when first I knew him +[autumn of 1816], but Leigh Hunt soon forced it from +his mind. Never shall I forget Keats once rising from +his chair, and approaching my last picture, Entry into +Jerusalem. He went before the portrait of Voltaire, +placed his hand on his heart, and, bowing low,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">‘In reverence done, as to the power<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That dwelt within, whose presence had infused<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into the plant sciential sap derived<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From nectar, drink of gods,’<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> +<p>(as Milton says of Eve after she had eaten the apple), +‘That’s the being to whom <i>I</i> bend,’ said he; alluding to +the bending of the other figures in the picture, and contrasting +Voltaire with our Saviour, and his own adoration +with that of the crowd.â€</p></div> + +<p>Notwithstanding the general vagueness or indifference +of his mind in religious matters, Keats seems to +have been at most times a believer in the immortality of +the soul. Following that phrase of his already quoted +(from a letter to Bailey, November 1817) “Oh for a life +of sensations rather than of thoughts!†he proceeds: “It +is ‘a vision in the form of youth,’ a shadow of reality to +come. And this consideration has further convinced me—for +it has come as auxiliary to another favourite speculation +of mine—that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter +by having what we call happiness on earth repeated in a +finer tone. And yet such a fate can only befall those +who delight in sensation, rather than hunger, as you do, +after truth. Adam’s dream will do here: and seems to +be a conviction that imagination, and its empyreal reflexion, +is the same as human life, and its spiritual +repetition.†This allusion to “Adam’s dream†refers +back to a fine phrase which had occurred shortly +before in the same letter—“Imagination may be compared +to Adam’s dream; he awoke, and found it truth.†+In a letter written to George Keats and his wife, shortly +after the death of Tom, comes a very positive assertion—“I +have a firm belief in immortality, and so had Tom.†+This firm belief, however, must certainly have faltered +later on; for, as we have already seen, one of Keats’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> +letters to Miss Brawne, written in 1820, contains the +phrase “I long to believe in immortality.†The reader +may also refer to the letter to Armitage Brown, September +1820, extracted in a previous page. Of superstitious +feeling I observe only one instance in Keats. After +Tom’s death, a white rabbit appeared in the garden of +Mr. Dilke, and was shot by him: Keats would have it +that this rabbit was the spirit of Tom, and he persisted +in the fancy with not a little earnestness.</p> + +<p>Of Keats’s fondness for wine—his appreciation of it as +a flavour grateful to the palate, and to the abstract sense +of enjoyment—there are numerous traces throughout +his writings. We all remember the famous lines in his +“Ode to a Nightingale‗</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,...<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh for a beaker full of the warm South!†&c.—<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>lines which seem a little forced into their context, and of +which the only tangible meaning there is that the luxury +and dreamy inspiration of wine-drinking would relieve +the poet’s mind from the dull and painful realities of life, +and assist his imagination into the dim vocal haunts of +the nightingale. There is also in “Lamia†a conspicuous +passage celebrating “The happy vintage—merry +wine, sweet wine.†On claret—as to which we have +heard the evidence of Haydon—there is a long tirade in +a letter addressed to George Keats and his wife in +February 1819. I give it in a condensed form:—</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span></p><div class="blockquot"><p>“I never drink above three glasses of wine, and never +any spirits and water.... How I like claret! When I +can get claret, I must drink it. ’Tis the only palate affair +that I am at all sensual in.... It fills one’s mouth with +a gushing freshness—then goes down cool and feverless: +then you do not feel it quarrelling with one’s liver.... +Other wines of a heavy and spirituous nature transform +a man into a Silenus: this makes him a Hermes, and +gives a woman the soul and immortality of an Ariadne.... +I said this same claret is the only palate-passion I +have: I forgot game. I must plead guilty to the breast +of a partridge, the back of a hare, the backbone of a +grouse, the wing and side of a pheasant, and a woodcock +<i>passim</i>.â€</p></div> + +<p>At a rather later date, October 1819, Keats had “left +off animal food, that my brains may never henceforth be +in a greater mist than is theirs by nature.†But I presume +this form of abstinence did not last long.</p> + +<p>I have now gone through the principal points which +appear to me to identify Keats as a man, and to throw +light upon his character and habits. He entered on life +high-spirited, ardent, impulsive, vehement; with plenty +of self-confidence, ballasted with a large capacity (though +he did not always exercise it to a practical result) for +self-criticism; longing to be a poet, and firmly believing +that he could and would be one; resolute to be a man—unselfish, +kindly, and generous. But, though kindly, he +was irritable; though unselfish and generous, wilful and +suspicious. An affront was what he would not bear; and, +when he found himself affronted in a form—that of press +ridicule and detraction—which could not be resented in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +person, nor readily retaliated in any way, it is abundantly +probable that the indignity preyed upon his mind and +spirits, and contributed to embitter the days cut short by +disease, the messenger of despair to that passionate love +which had become the single intense interest of his life. +The single intense interest, along with poetry—both of +them hurrying without fruition to the grave. Keats seems +to me to have been naturally a man of complex character, +many-mooded, with a tendency to perverse self-conflict. +The circumstances of his brief career—his poetic ambition, +his want of any definite employment, his association +with men of literary occupation or taste whom he only +half approved, the critical venom poured forth against +him, his love thwarted by a mortal malady—all these +things tended to bring out the unruly or morbid, and to +deplete the many fine and solid, elements in his nature. +With the personal character of Keats, as with his +writings, we may perhaps deal most fairly by saying that +his outburst and his reserve of faculty were such that, in +the narrow space allotted to him, youth had not advanced +far enough to disentangle the rich and various material. +But his latest years, which enabled his poetry to find full +and deathless voice, were so loaded with suffering and +perturbation as to leave the character less lucidly and +harmoniously developed than even in the days of adolescence. From “Endymion†to “Lamia†and the “Eve +of St. Mark,†we have, in poetry, advanced greatly towards +the radiant meridian: in life, from 1818 to 1821, +we have receded to a baffling dusk.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2> + + +<p>We have seen what John Keats did in the shifting +scene of the world, and in the high arena of +poesy; we have seen what were the qualities of character +and of mind which enabled him to bear his part in each. +His work as a poet is to us the thing of primary importance: +and it remains for us to consider what this poetic +work amounts to in essence and in detail. The critic +who <i>is</i> a critic—and not a <i>Quarterly</i> or a <i>Blackwood</i> +reviewer or lampooner—is well aware of the disproportion +between his power of estimation, and the demand +which such a genius as that of Keats, and such work as +the maturest which he produced, make upon the estimating +faculty. But this consideration cannot be allowed +to operate beyond a certain point: the estimate has to +be given—and given candidly and distinctly, however +imperfectly. I shall therefore proceed to express my real +opinion of Keats’s poems, whether an admiring opinion +or otherwise; and shall write without reiterating—what I +may nevertheless feel—a sense of the presumption involved +in such a process. I shall in the main, as in +previous chapters, follow the chronological order of the +poems.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p> + +<p>As we have seen, Keats began versifying chiefly under +a Spenserean influence; and it has been suggested that +this influence remained puissant for harm as well as for +good up to the close of his poetic career. I do not see +much force in the suggestion: unless in this limited sense—that +Spenser, like other Elizabethan and Jacobean +poets his successors, allowed himself very considerable +latitude in saying whatever came into his head, relevant +or irrelevant, appropriate or jarring, obvious or far-fetched, +simple or grandiose, according to the mood of +the moment and the swing of composition, and thus the +whole strain presents an aspect more of rich and arbitrary +picturesqueness than of ordered suavity. And +Keats no doubt often did the same: but not in the +choicest productions of his later time, nor perhaps so +much under incitement from Spenser as in pursuance of +that revolt from a factitious and constrained model of +work in which Wordsworth in one direction, Coleridge +in another, and Leigh Hunt in a third, had already come +forward with practice and precept. Making allowance +for a few early attempts directly referable to Spenser, I +find, even in Keats’s first volume, little in which that +influence is paramount. He seems to have written because +his perceptions were quick, his sympathies vivid in +certain directions, and his energies wound up to poetic +endeavour. The mannerisms of thought, method, and +diction, are much more those of Hunt than of Spenser; +and it is extremely probable that the soreness against +Hunt which Keats evidenced at a later period was due +to his perceiving that that kindly friend and genial +literary ally had misled him into some poetic trivialities<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> +and absurdities, not less than to anything in himself +which could be taken hold of for complaint.</p> + +<p>Keats’s first volume would present nothing worthy of +permanent memory, were it not for his after achievements, +and for the single sonnet upon Chapman’s +Homer. Several of the compositions are veritable +rubbish: probably Keats knew at the time that they +were not good, and knew soon afterwards that they +were deplorably bad. Such are the address “To Some +Ladies†who had sent the author a shell; that “On +Receiving a Curious Shell and a Copy of Verses [Moore’s +“Golden Chainâ€] from the same Ladies;†the “Ode to +Apollo†(in which Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakespeare, +Spenser, and Tasso, are commemorated); the “Hymn +to Apollo;†the lines “To Hope†(in which there is a +patriotic aspiration, mingled with scorn for the gauds of +a Court). “Calidore†has a certain boyish ardour, +clearly indicated if not well expressed. The verses “I +stood tiptoe upon a little hill†are very far from good, +and are stuffed with affectations, but do nevertheless +show a considerable spice of the real Keats. Some lines +have already been quoted from this effusion, about +“flowery nests,†and “the pillowy silkiness that rests full +in the speculation of the stars.†It is only by an effort +that we can attach any meaning to either of these +childish Della-Cruscanisms: the “pillowy silkiness†may +perhaps be clouds intermingled with stars, and the +“flowery nests†may, by a great wrenching of English, +be meant for “flowery nooks‗nests or nooks of +flowers. “Sleep and Poetry†contains various fine +lines, telling and suggestive images, and luscious descrip<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>tive +snatches, and is interesting as showing the bent of +the writer’s mind, and a sense of his mission begun. +Serious metrical flaws are perceptible in it here and +there, and throughout this first volume of verse—and +indeed in “Endymion†as well. One metrical weakness +of which he never got rid is the accenting of the preterite +or participial form “ed†(in such words as “resolved,†+&c.), where its sound ekes out with feeble stress the +prosody of a line. Two songs which have genuine lyric +grace—dated in 1817, but not included in the volume of +“Poems‗are those which begin “Think not of it, +sweet one, so,†and “Unfelt, unheard, unseen.†The +volume contains sixteen sonnets, besides the grand one +on “Chapman’s Homer.†The best are those which +begin “Keen fitful gusts are whispering here and there,†+and “Happy is England,†and the “Grasshopper and +Cricket,†which was written in competition with Hunt. +It seems to me that Keats’s production has more of +poetry, Hunt’s of finish. The sonnet “On leaving some +friends at an early hour†is characteristic enough. This +is as much detail as need be given here to the “Poems†+of 1817. The sonnet on Chapman’s Homer revealed a +hand which might easily prove to be a master’s. All +else was prentice-work, with some melody, some richness +and freshness, some independence, much enthusiasm; +also many solecisms and perversities of diction, imagery, +and method: and not a few pieces were included which +only self-conceit, or torpor of the critical faculty, or the +mis-persuasion of friends, could have allowed to pass +muster. But Keats chose to publish—to exhibit his +poetic identity at this stage and in this guise; and of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> +course we can see, in the light of his after-work, that the +experiment was rather a rash forestalling than a positive +mistake.</p> + +<p>There are a few other sonnets which Keats wrote in +1817, or, in general terms, between the publishing dates +of the “Poems†volume and of “Endymion.†Those +“On a Picture of Leander,†and “On the Sea,†and the +one which begins “After dark vapours have oppressed +our plains,†rank among the best of his juvenile productions. +A general observation, applicable to all the early +work, whether printed at the time or unprinted, is that +the ideas are constantly <i>expressed</i> in an imperfect way. +There are perceptions, thoughts, and emotions; but the +vehicle of words is, as a rule, huddled and approximate.</p> + +<p>“Endymion†now claims our attention. I believe +that no better criticism of “Endymion†has ever been +written than that which Shelley supplied in a letter dated +in September 1819. Certainly no criticism which is +equally short is also equally good. I therefore extract it +here, and shall have little to say about the poem which +is not potentially condensed into Shelley’s brief utterance. +“I have read Keats’s poem,†he wrote: “much praise is +due to me for having read it, the author’s intention +appearing to be that no person should possibly get to +the end of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and the +finest gleams of poetry; indeed, everything seems to be +viewed by the mind of a poet which is described in it. +I think if he had printed about fifty pages of fragments +from it I should have been led to admire Keats as a +poet more than I ought, of which there is now no danger.†+In July 1820 Shelley wrote to Keats himself on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> +subject, furnishing almost the only addendum which +could have been needed to the preceding remarks: “I +have lately read your ‘Endymion’ again, and even with +a new sense of the treasures of poetry it contains, though +treasures poured forth with indistinct profusion.†As +Shelley shared with Gifford the conviction that it is +difficult to read “Endymion†from book 1, line 1, to +book 4, line 1003, and as human nature has not changed +essentially since the time of that pre-eminent poet and +that rather less eminent critic, I daresay that there are +at this day several Keats-enthusiasts who know <i>in foro +conscientiæ</i>, though they may not avow in public, that +they have left “Endymion†unread, or only partially +read. Others have perused it, but have found in it so +much “indistinct profusion†that they also remain after +a while with rather a vague impression of the course of +the story; although they agree with Gifford, and even +exceed him in the assurance, that “it seems to be +mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and +Endymion.†As the poem is an extremely important +one in relation to the life-work of Keats, I think it may +not be out of place if I here give a succinct account of +what the narrative really amounts to. This may be all +the more desirable as Keats has not followed the +convenient if prosaic practice of several other epic poets by +prefixing to the several books of his long poem an +“argument†of their respective contents.</p> + +<p><i>Book 1.</i> On a lawn within a forest upon a slope of +Mount Latmos was held one morning a festival to Pan. +The young huntsman-chieftain Endymion attended, but +his demeanour betrayed a secret preoccupation and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> +trouble. After the rites were over, his sister Peona addressed +him, and gradually won him to open his heart to +her. He told her that at a certain spot by the river, one of +his favourite haunts, he had lately seen a sudden efflorescence +of dittany and poppies (the flowers sacred to +Diana). He fell asleep there, and had a dream or +vision of entering the gates of heaven, seeing the moon +in transcendent splendour, and then being accosted by a +woman or goddess lovely beyond words, who pressed his +hand. He seemed to faint, and to be upborne into the +upper regions of the sky, where he gave the beauty a +rapturous kiss, and then they both paused upon a mountain-side. +Next he dreamed that he fell asleep. This +was the prelude to his actual waking out of the vision. +Ever since he had retained a mysterious sense that the +dream had not been all a dream. This was confirmed +by various incidents of obscure suggestion, and especially +by his hearing in a cavern the words (we have read them +already, beslavered by the “human serpentry†of criticism, +but they remain delicious words none the less)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Endymion, the cave is secreter<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>As nothing further, however, had happened, Endymion +promised Peona that he would henceforth cease to live +a life of feverish expectation, and would resume the calm +tenor of his days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span></p> + +<p><i>Book 2.</i>—Endymion’s promise had not been strictly +fulfilled; he was still restless and craving. One day he +plucked a rosebud: it suddenly blossomed, and a butterfly +emerged from it, with strangely-charactered wings. +He pursued the butterfly, which led him to a fountain by +a cavern, and then disappeared. A naiad thereupon +addressed him, saying that he must wander far before he +could be reunited to his mystic fair one. He then +appealed to the moon-goddess for some aid, was rapt +into a dizzy vision as if he were sailing through heaven +in her car, and heard a voice from the cavern bidding +him descend into the entrails of the earth. He eagerly +obeyed, and passed through a region of twilight dimness +starred with gems, until he reached a natural temple +enshrining a statue of Diana. An awful sense of solitude +weighed upon him, and he implored the goddess to +restore him to his earthly home. A profusion of flowers +budded forth before his feet, followed by music as he +resumed his journey. At last he came to a verdant +space, peopled with slumbering Cupids. Here in a +beautiful chamber he found Adonis lying tranced on a +couch, attended by other Cupids.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> One of them gave +him wine and fruit, and explained to him the winter-sleep +and summer-life of Adonis; and at this moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> +Adonis woke up from his trance, and Venus came to +solace him with love. Venus spoke soothingly also to +Endymion, telling him that she knew of his love for some +one of the immortals, but who this was she had failed to +fathom. She promised that one day he should be +blessed, and with Adonis she then rose heavenward in +her car. The earth closed, and Endymion gladly pursued +his way through caves, jewels, and water-springs. +Cybele passed on her lion-drawn chariot. The diamond +path ended in middle air; Endymion invoked Jupiter, +an eagle swooped and bore him down through darkness +into a mossy jasmine-bower. With a sense of ecstasy, +chequered by an unsatisfied longing for his unknown +love, Endymion prepared himself to sleep:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">“And, just into the air<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A naked waist. ‘Fair Cupid, whence is this?’<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A well-known voice sighed, ‘Sweetest, here am I!’â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The lovers indulged their passion in kisses and caresses; +he urgent to know who she might be, and she confessing +herself a goddess hitherto awful in loveless +chastity, but not naming herself, though perhaps her +avowals were sufficiently indicative,<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a> and she promised to +exalt him ere long to Olympus. The rapturous inter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>view +ended with the sleep of Endymion, and awaking he +found himself alone. He strayed out, and reached an +enormous grotto. Two springs of water gushed forth—the +springs of Arethusa and Alpheus, whose loves found +voice in words. Endymion, sending up a prayer for +their union, stepped forward and found himself beneath +the sea.</p> + +<p><i>Book 3.</i> Soothed by a moonbeam which greeted him +through the waters, Endymion pursued his course. Upon +a rock within the sea he encountered an old, old man, +with wand and book. The ancient man started up as +from a trance, declaring that he should now be young +again and happy. This was Glaucus, who imparted to +Endymion the story of his ill-omened love for Scylla (it is +told at considerable length, but need not be detailed +here), the witchcraft of Circe which had doomed him to +a ghastly marine life of a thousand years, and how, after +a shipwreck, he came into possession of a book of magic, +which revealed to him that at some far-off day a youth +should make his appearance and break the accursed +spell. In Endymion, Glaucus recognized the predicted +youth. Glaucus then led Endymion to an edifice in +which he had preserved the corpse of Scylla, and thousands +of other corpses, being those of lovers who had +been shipwrecked during his many cycles of sea-dwelling +doom. Glaucus tore his scroll into fragments, bound +his cloak round Endymion, and waved his wand nine +times. He then instructed Endymion to unwind a +tangled thread, read the markings on a shell, break the +wand against a lyre, and strew the fragments of the scroll +upon Glaucus himself, and upon the dead bodies. As<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> +the final act was performed, Glaucus resumed his youth, +and Scylla and the drowned lovers returned to life. The +whole joyous company then rushed off, and paid their +devotions to Neptune in his palace. Cupid and Venus +were also present here; and the goddess of love spoke +words of comfort to Endymion, assuring him that his long +expectancy would soon find its full reward. She had by +this time probed the secret of Diana, but she refrained +from naming that deity to Endymion. She invited him +and his bride to pass a portion of their honeymoon in +Cythera,<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> with Adonis and Cupid. A stupendous festival +in Neptune’s palace succeeded. Endymion finally sank +down in a trance; Nereids conveyed him up to a forest +by a lake; and as he floated earthwards he heard in +dream words promising that his goddess would soon waft +him up into heaven. He awoke in the sylvan scene.</p> + +<p><i>Book 4.</i> The first sound that Endymion heard was a +female voice; the wail of a damsel who had followed +Bacchus from the banks of the Ganges, and who longed +to be at home again, if only to die there. Unseen himself, +he saw a beautiful girl, who lay bemoaning her +loveless lot. He at once felt that, if he adored his +unknown goddess, he loved also his Indian Bacchante. +He sprang forward and declared his passion.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> She, after<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +chaunting her long journeyings in the train of Bacchus, +explained that, being sick-hearted and weary, she had +strayed away in the forest, and was now but the votary +of sorrow. Endymion continued to woo her with sweet +words and hot: he heard a dismal voice, “Woe to +Endymion!†echoing through the forest. Mercury +descended and touched the ground with his wand, and +two winged horses sprang out of the earth. Endymion +seated his Bacchante upon one horse and mounted the +other; they flew upward, eagle-high. In the air they +passed Sleep, who had heard a report that a mortal was +to wed a daughter of Jove, and who desired to hearken +to the marriage ditties before he returned to his cave. +The influence of Sleep made the winged horses drowse, +and also Endymion and the Bacchante. Endymion then +dreamed of being in heaven, the mate of gods and +goddesses, Diana among them. In dream he sprang +towards Diana, and so awoke; but awake he still saw +the same vision. Diana was there in heaven; his Bacchante +was beside him lying on the horse’s pinions. He +kissed the Bacchante, and almost in the same breath +protested to Diana his unshaken constancy. The Bacchante +then awoke. Endymion, dazed in mind with his +divided allegiance, urged her to be gone, and the +winged horses resumed their flight. They advanced +towards the galaxy, the moon peeped out of the sky, the +Bacchante faded away in the moonbeams. Her steed +dropped down to the earth; while the one which bore +Endymion continued mounting upwards, and he again +fell into a sort of trance. He heard not the celestial +messengers bespeaking guests to Diana’s wedding. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +winged horse then carried Endymion down to a hill-top. +Here once more he found his beautiful Indian, and for +her sake forswore all præterhuman passion. She, however, +declared to him that a divine terror forbade her +to be his. His sister Peona now re-appeared. She +rallied him and the Bacchante on their love and melancholy, +both equally obvious, and bade him attend at +night a festival to Diana, whom the soothsayers had pronounced +to be in a mood peculiarly propitious. Endymion +announced his resolution to abandon the world, +and live an eremitic life: Peona and the fair Indian +should both be his sisters. The Indian vowed lifelong +chastity, devoted to Diana. Both the women then +retired. The day passed over Endymion motionless and +mute. At eventide he walked towards the temple: he +heeded not the hymning to Diana. Peona, companioned +by the Indian damsel, accosted him. He replied, +“Sister, I would have command, if it were heaven’s +will, on our sad fate.†The Indian replied that this he +should assuredly have; as she spoke she changed semblance, +and stood revealed as Diana herself. She laid +upon her own fears and upon fate the blame of past +delays, and told Endymion that it had also been fitting +that he should be spiritualized out of mortality by some +unlooked-for change. As Endymion kneeled and kissed +her hands, they both vanished away. The last words of +the poem are—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i14">“Peona went<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment:â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>words which may perhaps be modelled upon the grave +and subdued conclusion of “Paradise Lost.â€<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span></p> + +<p>This is a bald outline of the thread of story which +meanders through that often-skimmed, seldom-read, not +easily readable poem—in snatches alluring, in entirety +disheartening—the “Endymion†of Keats. It will be +perceived that the poet keeps throughout tolerably close +to his main and professed subject matter—the loves of +Diana and Endymion, although the episode of Glaucus, +which is brought within the compass of the amorous +quest, is certainly a very long and extraneous one. As +we have seen, Keats, when well advanced with this poem, +spoke of it as a test of his inventive faculty: and truly it +is such, but I am not sure that his inventive faculty has +come extremely well out of the ordeal. The best part +which invention could take in such an attempt would be +a vigorous, sane, and adequate conception of the imaginable +relation between a loving goddess and her human +lover; her emotion towards him, and his emotion towards +her; and his ultimate semi-spiritualized and semi-human +mode of existence in the divine conclave; along with a +chain of incidents—partly of mythologic tradition, partly +the poet’s own—which should illustrate these essential +elements of the legend, and take possession of the reader’s +mind, for their own sake at the moment, and for the sake +of the main conception as ultimate result. Of all this we +find little in Keats’s poem. Diana figures as a very willing +woman, passing out of the stage of maidenly coyness. +Endymion talks indeed at times of the exaltation of a +passion transcending the bounds of mortality, but his +conduct and demeanour go little beyond those of an +adventurous lover of the knight-errant sort who, having +taken the first leap in the dark, follows where Fortune<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> +leads him—and assuredly she leads him a very curious +dance, where one cannot make out how his human +organism, with respirative and digestive processes, continues +to exist. Moreover, the last book of the poem +spoils all that has preceded, so far as continuity of feeling +is concerned; for here we learn that no sooner does +Endymion see a pretty Indian Bacchante than he falls +madly in love with her, and casts to the winds every +shred and thought of Diana, already his bride or quasi-bride; +she goes out like a cloud-veiled glimpse of moonlight. +True, the Bacchante is in fact Diana herself; but +of this Endymion knows nothing at all, and he deliberately—or +rather with fatuous precipitancy—gives up the +glorious goddess for the sentimental and beguiling wine-bibber. +Diana, when she re-assumes her proper person, +has not a word of reproach to level at him. This may +possibly be true to the nature of a goddess—it is certainly +not so to that of a woman; and it is the only crisis at +which she shows herself different from womanhood—shall +we say superior to it?</p> + +<p>In another and minor sense there is no lack of invention +in this Poetic Romance. So far as I know, there is +nothing in Grecian mythology furnishing a nucleus for +the incidents of Endymion’s descending into the bowels +of the earth, passing thence beneath the sea, meeting +Glaucus, and restoring to life the myriads of drowned +lovers, encountering the Indian Bacchante, and taking +with her an aërial voyage upon winged coursers. These +incidents—except indeed that of the Bacchante—are +passing strange, and could not be worked out in a long +narrative poem without a lavish command of fanciful and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> +surprising touches. The tale of the aërial voyage seems +abortive; its natural <i>raison d’être</i> and needful sequel +would appear to be that Diana, having thus launched +Endymion along with herself into the heavenly regions, +should bear him straight onward to the high court of the +gods; but, instead of that, the horses and their riders +return to earth, the air has been traversed to no purpose +and with no ostensible result, and Endymion is allowed +again to forswear Diana for the Bacchante before the +consummation is reached. Presumably Morpheus (Sleep) +is responsible for this mishap. His untoward presence +in the sky sent the Bacchante, as well as Endymion, to +sleep for awhile: when they awoke, Diana had to leave +the form of the Bacchante, and, in her character of +PhÅ“be, regulate the nascent moon; though a goddess, +she could not be in two places at once, and so the winged +horses descended <i>re infectâ</i>. This is an ingenious point +of incident enough; but it is just one of those points +which indicate that the poet’s mind moved in a region of +scintillating details rather than of large and majestic +contours.</p> + +<p>Such is in fact the quality of “Endymion†throughout. +Everything is done for the sake of variegation and +embroidery of the original fabric; or we might compare it +to a richly-shot silk which, at every rustling movement, +catches the eye with a change of colour. Constant as +they are, the changes soon become fatiguing, and in +effect monotonous; one colour, varied with its natural +light and shade, would be more restful to the sight, and +would even, in the long run, leave a sense of greater, +because more congruous and harmonized, variety. Lus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>cious +and luxuriant in intention—for I cannot suppose +that Keats aimed at being exalted or ideal—the poem +becomes mawkish in result: he said so himself, and we +need not hesitate to repeat it. Affectations, conceits, +and puerilities, abound, both in thought and in diction: +however willing to be pleased, the reader is often disconcerted +and provoked. The number of clever things said +cleverly, of rich things richly, and of fine things finely, is +however abundant and superabundant; and no one who +peruses “Endymion†with a true sense for poetic endowment +and handling can fail to see that it is peculiarly the +work of a poet. The versification, though far from faultless, +is free, surging, and melodious—one of the devices +which the author most constantly employs with a view to +avoiding jogtrot uniformity being that of beginning a new +sentence with the second line of a couplet. On every +page the poet has enjoyed himself, and on most of them +the reader can joy as well. The lyrical interludes, especially +the hymn to Pan, and the chaunt of the Bacchante +(which comprises a sort of verse-transcript of Titian’s +“Bacchus and Ariadneâ€), are singularly wealthy in that +fancy which hovers between description and emotion. +The hymn to Pan was pronounced by Wordsworth, <i>vivâ +voce</i>, to be “a pretty piece of paganism‗a comment +which annoyed Keats not a little. Shelley (in his undispatched +letter to the editor of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>) +pointed out, as particularly worthy of attention, the passages—“And +then the forest told it in a dream†(book +ii.); “The rosy veils mantling the East†(book iii.); and +“Upon a weeded rock this old man sat†(book iii.) The +last—relating to Glaucus and his pictured cloak—is cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>tainly +remarkable; the other two, I should say, not more +remarkable than scores of others—as indeed Shelley himself +implied.</p> + +<p>To sum up, “Endymion†is an essentially poetical +poem, which sins, and greatly or even grossly does it sin, +by youthful indiscipline and by excess. To deny these +blemishes would be childish—they are there, and must be +not only admitted, but resented. The faults, like the +beauties, of the poem, are positive—not negative or neutral. +The work was in fact (as Keats has already told us) a +venture of an experimental kind. At the age of twenty-one +to twenty-two he had a mind full of poetic material; +he turned out his mind into this poetic romance, conscious +that, if some things came right, others would come +wrong. We are the richer for his rather overweening +experiment; we are not to ignore its conditions, nor its +partial failure, but we have to thank him none the less. +If “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever,†a thing of alloyed +beauty is a joy in its minor degree.</p> + +<p>The next long poem of Keats—“Isabella, or the Pot +of Basil‗is a vast advance on “Endymion†in sureness +of hand and moderation of work: it is in all respects the +better poem, and justifies what Keats said (in his letter of +October 9, 1818, quoted in our Chapter v.) of the experience +which he was sure to gain by the adventurous plunge +he had made in “Endymion.†Of course it was a less +arduous attempt; the subject being one of directly human +passion, the story ready-furnished to him by Boccaccio, +and the narrative much briefer. Except in altering the +locality from Messina to Florence (a change which seems +objectless), Keats has adhered faithfully enough to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> +sweet and sad story of Boccaccio; he has however amplified +it much in detail, for the Italian tale is a short one. +“Isabella†has always been a favourite with the readers +of Keats, and deservedly so; it is tender, touching, and +picturesque. Yet I should not place it in the very first +rank of the poet’s works—the treatment seems to me at +once more ambitious and less masculine than is needed. +The writer seems too conscious that he has set himself +to narrating something pathetic; he tells the story +<i>ab extra</i>, and enlarges on “the pity of it,†instead of +leaving the pity to speak to the heart out of the very circumstances +themselves. The brothers may have been +“ledger-men†and “money-bags†(Boccaccio does not +insist upon any such phase of character), and they certainly +became criminals, though the Italian author treats +their murder of Lorenzo as if it were a sufficiently obvious +act in vindication of the family honour; but, when Keats +“again asks aloud†why these commercial brothers were +proud, he seems to intrude upon us overmuch the personality +of the narrator of a tragic story, and pounds away at +his text like a pulpiteer. This is only one instance of +the flaw which runs through the poem—that it is all told +as with a direct appeal to the reader to be sympathetic—indignant +now, and now compassionate. Leigh Hunt has +pointed out the absurdity of putting into the mouth of +one of the brother “money-bags,†just as they are about +to execute their plot for murdering Lorenzo, the lines +(though he praises the pretty conceit in itself)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His dewy rosary on the eglantine.â€<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>The author’s invocation to Melancholy, Music, Echo, +Spirits in grief, and Melpomene, to condole the approaching +death of Isabella, seems to me a <i>fadeur</i> hardly +more appropriate than the money-bag’s epigram upon the +“dewy rosary.†But the reader is probably tired of my +qualifying clauses for the admiration with which he regards +“The Pot of Basil.†He thinks it both beautiful +and pathetic—and so do I.</p> + +<p>“Isabella†is written in the octave stanza; “The +Eve of St. Agnes†in the Spenserean. This difference +of metre corresponds very closely to the difference of +character between the two poems. “Isabella†is a narrative +poem of event and passion, in which the incidents +are presented so as chiefly to subserve purposes of sentiment; +“The Eve of St. Agnes,†though it assumes a +narrative form, is hardly a narrative, but rather a monody +of dreamy richness, a pictured and scenic presentment, +which sentiment again permeates and over-rules. I +rate it far above “Isabella‗and indeed above all those +poems of Keats, not purely lyrical, in which human or +quasi-human agents bear their part, except only the +ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci,†and the uncompleted +“Eve of St. Mark.†“Hyperion†stands aloof in +lonely majesty; but I think that, in the long run, even +“Hyperion†represents the genius of Keats less adequately, +and past question less characteristically, than “The Eve +of St. Agnes.†The story of this fascinating poem is so +meagre as to be almost nugatory. There is nothing in it +but this—that Keats took hold of the superstition proper +to St. Agnes’ Eve, the power of a maiden to see her +absent lover under certain conditions, and added to it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +that a lover, who was clandestinely present in this conjuncture +of circumstances, eloped with his mistress. +This extreme tenuity of constructive power in the poem, +coupled with the rambling excursiveness of “Endymion,†+and the futility of “The Cap and Bells,†might be held +to indicate that Keats had very little head for framing +a story—and indeed I infer that, if he possessed any +faculty in that direction, it remained undeveloped up +to the day of his death. One of the few subsidiary +incidents introduced into “The Eve of St. Agnes†is +that the lover Porphyro, on emerging from his hiding-place +while his lady is asleep, produces from a cupboard +and marshals to sight a large assortment of appetizing +eatables. Why he did this no critic and no admirer has +yet been able to divine; and the incident is so trivial in +itself, and is made so much of for the purpose of verbal +or metrical embellishment, as to reinforce our persuasion +that Keats’s capacity for framing a story out of successive +details of a suggestive and self-consistent kind +was decidedly feeble. The power of “The Eve of St. +Agnes†lies in a wholly different direction. It lies in the +delicate transfusion of sight and emotion into sound; in +making pictures out of words, or turning words into +pictures; of giving a visionary beauty to the closest +items of description; of holding all the materials of the +poem in a long-drawn suspense of music and reverie. +“The Eve of St. Agnes†is <i>par excellence</i> the poem +of “glamour.†It means next to nothing; but means +that little so exquisitely, and in so rapt a mood of musing +or of trance, that it tells as an intellectual no less than a +sensuous restorative. Perhaps no reader has ever risen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> +from “The Eve of St. Agnes†dissatisfied. After a while +he can question the grounds of his satisfaction, and may +possibly find them wanting; but he has only to peruse +the poem again, and the same spell is upon him.</p> + +<p>“The Eve of St. Mark†was begun at much the same +date as “The Eve of St. Agnes,†rather the earlier of the +two. Its relation to other poems by the author is +singular. In “Endymion†he had been a prodigal +of treasures—some of them genuine, others spurious; in +“The Eve of St. Agnes†he was at least opulent, a +magnate superior to sumptuary laws; but in “The Eve +of St. Mark†he subsides into a delightful simplicity—a +simplicity full, certainly, of “favour and prettiness,†+but chary of ornament. It comes perfectly natural to +him, and promises the most charming results. The non-completion +of “The Eve of St. Mark†is the greatest +grievance of which the admirers of Keats have to complain. +I should suppose that, in the first instance, he +advisedly postponed the eve of one saint, Mark, to the +eve of the other, Agnes; and that he did not afterwards +find a convenient opportunity for resuming the uncompleted +poem. The superstition connected with St. Mark’s +vigil is not wholly unlike that pertaining to St. Agnes’s. +In the former instance (I quote from Dante Rossetti), +“it is believed that, if a person placed himself near the +church porch when twilight was thickening, he would +behold the apparition of those persons in the parish who +were to be seized with any severe disease that year go +into the church. If they remained there, it signified +their death; if they came out again, it portended their +recovery; and, the longer or shorter the time they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> +remained in the building, the severer or less dangerous +their illness.†The same writer, forecasting the probable +course of the story,<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> surmised that “the heroine, +remorseful after trifling with a sick and now absent lover, +might make her way to the minster porch to learn his +fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not +return.†If this was really to have been the sequel, we +can perceive that the unassuming simplicity of the poem +at its commencement would, ere its close, have deepened +into a different sort of simplicity—emotional, and even +tragic. As it stands, the simplicity of “The Eve of St. +Mark†is full-blooded as well as quaint—there is nothing +starved or threadbare about it. Diverse though it is from +Coleridge’s “Christabel,†we seem to feel in it something +of the like possessing or haunting quality, modified by +Keats’s own distinctive genius. In this respect, and in +perfectness of touch, we link it with “La Belle Dame +sans Merci.â€</p> + +<p>“Hyperion†has next to be considered. This was the +only poem by Keats which Shelley admired in an extreme +degree. He wrote at different dates: “The +fragment called ‘Hyperion’ promises for him that he +is destined to become one of the first writers of the age.... +It is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, and +gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had +not before.... If the ‘Hyperion’ be not grand poetry, +none has been produced by our contemporaries.... The +great proportion of this piece is surely in the very +highest style of poetry.†Byron, who had been particularly +virulent against Keats during his lifetime, wrote<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> +after his death a much more memorable phrase: “His +fragment of ‘Hyperion’ seems actually inspired by the +Titans, and is as sublime as Æschylus.†Mr. Swinburne +has written of the poem more at length, and with carefully +weighed words:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>“The triumph of ‘Hyperion’ is as nearly complete as +the failure of ‘Endymion.’ Yet Keats never gave such +proof of a manly devotion and rational sense of duty to +his art as in his resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; +not (as we may gather from his correspondence +on the subject) for the pitiful reason assigned by his +publishers, that of discouragement at the reception given +to his former work, but on the solid and reasonable +ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very +scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign +influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length +as was implied by his original design. Fortified and +purified as it had been on a first revision, when much +introductory allegory and much tentative effusion of +sonorous and superfluous verse had been rigorously +clipped down or pruned away, it could not long have +retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy +body of a subject so little charged with tangible significance.â€</p></div> + +<p>Mr. Swinburne is a critic with whom one may well be +content to go astray, if astray it is. I will therefore +say that I entirely agree with him in this estimate of +“Hyperion,†and of the sound discretion which Keats +exercised in giving it up. To deal with the gods of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span> +Olympus is no easy task—it had decidedly overtaxed +Keats in “Endymion,†though he limited himself to the +two goddesses Diana and Venus, and casually the gods +Neptune and Mercury; but to deal with the elder gods—Saturn, +Ops, Hyperion—and with the Titans, on the +scale of a long epic narration, is a task which may well +be pronounced unachievable. The Olympian gods would +also have had to be introduced: Apollo already appears +in the poem, not too promisingly. The elder gods are +necessarily mere figure-heads of bulk, might, majesty, and +antiquity; to get any character out of them after these +“property†attributes have been exhausted to the mind’s +eye, to “set them going†in act, and doing something +apportionable into cantos, and readable by human +energies, was not a problem which could be solved +by a poet of the nineteenth century. Past question, +Keats started grandly, and has left us a monument +of Cyclopean architecture in verse almost impeccable—a +Stonehenge of reverberance; he has made us feel that his +elder gods were profoundly primæval, powers so august +and abstract-natured as to have become already obsolete +in the days of Zeus and Hades: his Titans, too, were so +vast and muscular that no feat would have been difficult +to them except that of interesting us. This sufficed for +the first book of the poem; in the second book, the +enterprise is already revealing itself as an impossible one, +for the council at which Oceanus and others speak is +reminiscent of the Pandæmonic council in Milton, and +clearly very inferior to that. It could not well help +resembling the scene in “Paradise Lost,†nor yet help +being inferior; besides, even were it equal or preferable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> +Milton had done the thing first. The “large utterance +of the early gods,†large though it be, tends to monotony. +In book iii., we go off to Mnemosyne and Apollo; but +of this section little remains, and we close the poem with +a conviction that Keats, if he had succeeded in writing +“a <i>fragment</i> as sublime as Æschylus,†was both prudent +and fortunate in leaving it a fragment. To say that +“Hyperion†is after all a semi-artificial utterance of the +grand would be harsh, and ungrateful for so noble an +effort of noble faculty; but to say that, by being +prolonged, its grandeur must infallibly have partaken more +and more of an artificial infusion, appears to me criticism +entirely sound and safe.</p> + +<p>Mr. Woodhouse has informed us: “The poem, if +completed, would have treated of the dethronement of +Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by Apollo; and +incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by +Jupiter, &c., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn’s re-establishment; +with other events of which we have but +very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and +Rome. In fact, the incidents would have been pure +creations of the poet’s brain.†Here again Keats would +have been partly forestalled by Milton: the combat of +the Giants with the Olympian gods must have borne a +very appreciable resemblance to the combat of Satan +and his legions with the hosts of heaven. How far +Keats’s “invention†would have sufficed to filling in this +vast canvas may be questioned. The precedent of +“Endymion,†in which he had attempted something of +the same kind, was not wholly encouraging. The method +and tone would of course have been very different; in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +what remains of “Hyperion,†the general current of +diction is as severe as in “Endymion†it had been florid.</p> + +<p>The other commencement of “Hyperion†(alluded to +in my sixth chapter) was a later version, done in November +and December 1819; it presents a great deal of poetic +or scenic machinery in which the author’s personality was +copiously introduced. This recast contains impressive +things; but the prominence given to the author as +spectator or participant of what he pictures forth was +fulsome and fatal. Mr. Swinburne is in error (along +with most other writers) in supposing this to be the +earlier version of the two.</p> + +<p>The tragedy of “Otho the Great,†written on a peculiar +system of collaboration to which I have already referred, +succeeded “Hyperion.†It is a tragedy on the Elizabethan +model, and we find in scene i. a curious instance +of Elizabethan contempt of chronology—a reference to +“Hungarian petards.†The main factors in the plot are +a fierce and fervent love-passion of the man, and an unscrupulous +ambition of the woman, reddened with crime. +Webster may perhaps have been taken by Keats as his +chief prototype. To call “Otho the Great†an excellent +drama would not be possible; but it can be read without +tedium, and contains vigorous passages, and lines and +images moulded with a fine poetic ardour. The action +would be sufficient for stage-representation at a time when +an audience come prepared to like a play if it is good in +verse and strong in romantic emotion; under such conditions, +while it could not be a great success, it need not +nevertheless fall manifestly flat. Under any other conditions, +such as those which prevail nowadays, this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span> +tragedy would necessarily run no chance at all. In a +copy of Keats which belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti +I find the following note of his, which may bear extracting: +“This repulsive yet powerful play is of course +in draft only. It is much less to be supposed that it +would have been left so imperfect than to be surmised, +from its imperfection, how very gradual the maturing of +Keats’s best work probably may have been. It gives after +all, perhaps, the strongest proof of <i>robustness</i> that Keats +has left; and as a tragedy is scarcely more deficient than +‘Endymion’ as a poem. Both, viewed as wholes, are +quite below Keats’s three masterpieces;<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> yet ‘Otho,’ as +well as ‘Endymion,’ gives proof of his finest powers.†+Another note from the same hand remarks: “The +character and conduct of Albert [the lover of Auranthe +murdered to clear the way for her ambition] are the +finest point in the play.â€</p> + +<p>Of the later drama, “King Stephen,†so little was +written that I need not dwell upon it here.</p> + +<p>“Lamia†was begun about the same time as “Otho the +Great,†but finished afterwards. The influence of Dryden, +under which it was composed, has told strongly upon its +versification, as marked especially in the very free use of +alexandrines—generally the third line of a triplet, sometimes +even the second line of a couplet. You might +search “Endymion†in vain for alexandrines; and I will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> +admit that their frequency appears to me to give an artificial +tone to “Lamia.†The view which Keats has +elected to take of his subject is worth considering. The +heroine is a serpent-woman, or a double-natured being who +can change from serpent into woman and <i>vice versâ</i>. In +the female form she beguiles a young student of philosophy, +Lycius, lives with him in a splendid palace, and +finally celebrates their marriage-feast. The philosopher +Apollonius attends among the guests, perceives her to be +“human serpentry,†and, gazing on her with ruthless +fixity, he compels her and all her apparatus of enchantment +to vanish. This is the act for which (in lines partly +quoted in these pages) Keats arraigns philosophy, and +its power of stripping things bare of their illusions. No +doubt a poet has a right to treat a legend of this sort +from such point of view as he likes; it is for him, and +not for his reader, to take the bull by the horns. But it +does look rather like taking the bull by the weaker horn +to contend that the philosopher who saves a youthful +disciple from the wiles of a serpent is condemnably +prosaic—a grovelling spirit that denudes life of its poetry. +Conveniently for Keats’s theory, Lycius is made to die +forthwith after the vanishing of his Lamia. If we invent +a different finale to the poem, and say that Lycius fell +down on his knees, and thanked Apollonius for saving +him from such pestilent delusions and perilous blandishments, +and ever afterwards looked out for the cloven +tongue (if not the cloven hoof) when a pretty woman +made advances to him, we may perhaps come quite as +near to a right construction of so strange a series of +events, and to the true moral of the story. But Keats’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> +championship was for the enjoying aspects of life; he +may be held to have exercised it here rather perversely. +“Lamia†is one of his completest and most finished +pieces of writing—perhaps in this respect superior to all +his other long poems, if we except “Hyperionâ€; it +closes the roll of them with an affluence, even an excess, +of sumptuous adornment. “Lamia†leaves on the mental +palate a rich flavour, if not an absolutely healthy one.</p> + +<p>Passing from the long compositions, we find the cream +of Keats’s poetry in the ballad of “La Belle Dame sans +Merci,†and in the five odes—“To Psyche,†“To +Autumn,†“On Melancholy,†“To a Nightingale,†and +“On a Grecian Urn.†“La Belle Dame sans Merci†+may possibly have been written later than any of the odes, +but this point is uncertain. I give it here as marking the +highest point of romantic imagination to which Keats +attained in dealing with human or quasi-human personages, +and also his highest level of simplicity along with +completeness of art.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alone and palely loitering?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sedge is withered from the lake,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And no birds sing.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So haggard and so woe-begone?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The squirrel’s granary is full,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the harvest’s done.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I see a lily on thy brow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With anguish moist and fever-dew;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on thy cheeks a fading rose<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fast withereth too.â€<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I met a lady in the meads,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Full beautiful, a faery’s child;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her hair was long, her foot was light,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And her eyes were wild.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I made a garland for her head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And bracelets too, and fragrant zone:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She looked at me as she did love,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And made sweet moan.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I set her on my pacing steed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And nothing else saw all day long;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For sideways would she lean and sing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A faery’s song.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“She found me roots of relish sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And honey wild, and manna-dew;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sure in language strange she said—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">‘I love thee true.’<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“She took me to her elfin grot,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there she gazed and sighèd deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there I shut her wild sad eyes—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So kissed to sleep.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“And there we slumbered on the moss,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there I dreamed—ah woe betide!—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The latest dream I ever dreamed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the cold hill-side.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I saw pale kings and princes too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pale warriors—death-pale were they all;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hath thee in thrall.’<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“I saw their starved lips in the gloam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With horrid warning gapèd wide;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I awoke, and found me here<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On the cold hill-side.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“And this is why I sojourn here,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alone and palely loitering;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though the sedge is withered from the lake,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And no birds sing.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is a poem of <i>impression</i>. The impression is immediate, +final, and permanent; and words would be +more than wasted upon pointing out to the reader that +such and such are the details which have conduced to +impress him.</p> + +<p>In the five odes there is naturally some diversity in the +degrees of excellence. I have given their titles above in +the probable (not certain) order of their composition. +Considered intellectually, we might form a kind of +symphony out of them, and arrange it thus—1, “Grecian +Urnâ€; 2, “Psycheâ€; 3, “Autumnâ€; 4, “Melancholyâ€; +5, “Nightingaleâ€; and, if Keats had left us nothing +else, we should have in this symphony an almost complete +picture of his poetic mind, only omitting, or +representing deficiently, that more instinctive sort of +enjoyment which partakes of gaiety. Viewing all these +wondrous odes together, the predominant quality which +we trace in them is an extreme susceptibility to delight, +close-linked with afterthought—pleasure with pang—or +that poignant sense of ultimates, a sense delicious and +harrowing, which clasps the joy in sadness, and feasts +upon the very sadness in joy. The emotion throughout +is the emotion of beauty: beauty intensely perceived,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> +intensely loved, questioned of its secret like the sphinx, +imperishable and eternal, yet haunted (as it were) by its +own ghost, the mortal throes of the human soul. As no +poet had more capacity for enjoyment than Keats, so +none exceeded him in the luxury of sorrow. Few also +exceeded him in the sense of the one moment irretrievable; +but this conception in its fulness belongs to +the region of morals yet more than of sensation, and +the spirit of Keats was almost an alien in the region of +morals. As he himself wrote (March 1818)—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">“Oh never will the prize,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High reason, and the love of good and ill,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be my award!â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I think it will be well to cull out of these five odes—taken +in the symphonic order above noted—the phrases +which constitute the strongest chords of emotion and of +music.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="linenum">(1)</span> +<span class="i0">“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pipe, to the spirit, ditties of no tone.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i9">“Human passion far above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="linenum">(2)</span> +<span class="i8"> “Too late for antique vows,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Too too late for the fond believing lyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When holy were the haunted forest boughs,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Holy the air, the water, and the fire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In some untrodden region of my mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where branchèd thoughts new-grown with pleasant pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="linenum">(3)</span> +<span class="i0">“Where are the songs of spring—ay, where are they?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Think not of them: thou hast thy music too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="linenum">(4)</span> +<span class="i0">“But, when the melancholy fit shall fall<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And hides the green hill in an April shroud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ay, in the very temple of Delight<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="linenum">(5)</span> +<span class="i0">“That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with thee fade away into the forest dim:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget<br /></span> +<span class="i4">What thou among the leaves hast never known,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The weariness, the fever, and the fret,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Here where men sit and hear each other groan;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Where but to think is to be full of sorrow<br /></span> +<span class="i8">And leaden-eyed despairs;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Darkling I listen: and for many a time<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I have been half in love with easeful Death,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Called him soft names in many a musèd rhyme<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To take into the air my quiet breath.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now more than ever seems it rich to die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cease upon the midnight with no pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In such an ecstasy.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i6">“The same that oft-times hath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Charmed magic casements opening on the foam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forlorn! the very word is like a bell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To toll me back from thee to my sole self.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Was it a vision or a waking dream?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fled is that music—do I wake or sleep?â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To one or two of these phrases a few words of comment +may be given. That axiom which concludes the +“Ode on a Grecian Urn‗</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>is perhaps the most important contribution to thought +which the poetry of Keats contains: it pairs with and +transcends</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I am not prepared to say whether Keats was the first +writer to formulate any axiom to this effect,—I should +rather presume not; but at any rate it comes with peculiar +appropriateness in the writings of a poet who might have +varied the dictum of Iago, and said of himself</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“For I am nothing if not beautiful.â€<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>In the Ode, the axiom is put forward as the message of +the sculptured Grecian Urn “to man,†and is thus propounded +as being of universal application. It amounts +to saying—“Any beauty which is not truthful (if any +such there be), and any truth which is not beautiful (if +any such there be), are of no practical importance to +mankind in their mundane condition: but in fact there +are none such, for, to the human mind, beauty and truth +are one and the same thing.†To debate this question +on abstract grounds is not in my province: all that I +have to do is to point out that Keats’s perception and +thought crystallized into this axiom as the sum and substance +of wisdom for man, and that he has bequeathed +it to us to ponder in itself, and to lay to heart as the +secret of his writings. Those other lines, from the “Ode +on Melancholy,†where he says of Melancholy—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bidding adieu‗<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>appear to me unsurpassable in the whole range of his +poetry—as intense in imagery as supreme in diction and +in music. They pair with the other celebrated verses +from the “Ode to a Nightingale‗</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Now more then ever seems it rich to die,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To cease upon the midnight with no pain;â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Charmed magic casements opening on the foam<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The phrase “<i>rich</i> to die†is of the very essence of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span> +Keats’s emotion; and the passage about “magic casements†+shows a reach of expression which might almost +be called the Pillars of Hercules of human language. +Far greater things have been said by the greatest minds: +but nothing more perfect in form has been said—nothing +wider in scale and closer in utterance—by any mind of +whatsoever pitch of greatness.</p> + +<p>And here we come to one of the most intrinsic +properties of Keats’s poetry. He is a master of <i>imagination +in verbal form</i>: he gifts us with things so finely and +magically said as to convey an imaginative impression. +The imagination may sometimes be in the substance of +the thought, as well as in its wording—as it is in the +passage just quoted: sometimes it resides essentially in +the wording, out of which thought expands in the reader, +who is made</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From wealth of perception, at first confused or docked +in the expression, he rose into a height of verbal embodiment +which has seldom been equalled and seldomer +exceeded. His conception of poetry as an ideal, his +sense of poetry as an art, spurred him on to artistic +achievement; and in the later stages of his work the +character of the Artist is that which marks him most +strongly. As one of his own letters says, he “looks +upon fine phrases like a lover.â€</p> + +<p>According to Mr. Swinburne, “the faultless force and +profound subtlety of this deep and cunning instinct for +the absolute expression of absolute natural beauty is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span> +doubtless the one main distinctive gift or power which +denotes him as a poet among all his equals.†We may +safely accept this verdict of poet upon poet as a true +one: yet I should be inclined to demur to such strong +adjectives as “faultless†and “absolute.†Beautiful as +several of them are, I might hesitate to say that even +one poem by Keats exhibits this his special characteristic +in a faultless degree, or expresses absolutely throughout +a natural beauty of absolute quality. To the last, he +appears to me to have been somewhat wanting in those +faculties of selection and of discipline which we sum up, +by a rough-and-ready process, in the word “taste.†He +had done a great deal in this direction, and would +probably, with a few years more of life, have done all +that was needed; but we have to take him as he stands, +with those few years denied. Unless perhaps in “La +Belle Dame sans Merci,†Keats has not, I think, come +nearer to perfection than in the “Ode to a Nightingale.†+It is with some trepidation that I recur to this Ode, for +the invidious purpose of testing its claim to be adjudged +“faultless,†for in so doing I shall certainly lose the +sympathy of some readers, and strain the patience of +many. The question, however, seems to be a very fair +one to raise, and the specimen a strong one to try it by, +and so I persevere. The first point of weakness—excess +which becomes weak in result—is a surfeit of mythological +allusions: Lethe, Dryad (the nightingale is turned into +a “light-wingèd Dryad of the trees‗which is as much +as to say, a light-wingèd <i>Oak</i>-nymph of the <i>trees</i>), Flora, +Hippocrene, Bacchus, the Queen-moon (the Queen-moon +appears at first sight to be the classical PhÅ“be,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span> +who is here “clustered around by all her starry Fays,†+spirits proper to a Northern mythology; but possibly +Keats thought more of a Faery-queen than of PhÅ“be). +Then comes the passage (already cited in these pages) +about the poet’s wish for a draught of wine, to help +him towards spiritual commune with the nightingale. +Some exquisite phrases in this passage have endeared it +to all readers of Keats; yet I cannot but regard it as +very foreign to the main subject-matter. Surely nobody +wants wine as a preparation for enjoying a nightingale’s +music, whether in a literal or in a fanciful relation. +Taken in detail, to call wine “the true, the blushful +Hippocrene‗the veritable fount of poetic inspiration—seems +both stilted and repulsive, and the phrase “with +beaded bubbles winking at the brim†is (though picturesque) +trivial, in the same way as much of Keats’s earlier +work. Far worse is the succeeding image, “Not charioted +by Bacchus and his pards‗<i>i.e.</i>, not under the inspiration +of wine: the poet will fly to the nightingale, but not +in a leopard-drawn chariot. Further on, as if we had +not already had enough of wine and its associations, the +coming musk-rose is described as “full of dewy wine‗an +expression of very dubious appositeness: and the +like may be said of “become a sod,†in the sense of +“become a corpse—earth to earth.†The renowned +address—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No hungry generations tread thee down,â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is +a <a name="Page_201t" id="Page_201t"></a><a href="#Page_201tn">palpable</a> fact that this address, according to its place in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span> +the context, is a logical solecism. While “Youth grows +pale and spectre-thin and dies,†while the poet would +“become a sod" to the requiem sung by the nightingale, +the nightingale itself is pronounced immortal. But this +antithesis cannot stand the test of a moment’s reflection. +Man, as a race, is as deathless, as superior to the tramp +of hungry generations, as is the nightingale as a race: +while the nightingale as an individual bird has a life not +less fleeting, still more fleeting, than a man as an +individual. We have now arrived at the last stanza of +the ode. Here the term “deceiving elf,†applied to “the +fancy,†sounds rather petty, and in the nature of a make-rhyme: +but this may possibly be a prejudice.</p> + +<p>Having thus—in the interest of my reader as a critical +appraiser of poetry—burned my fingers a little at the +clear and perennial flame of the “Ode to a Nightingale,†+I shall quit that superb composition, and the whole quintett +of odes, and shall proceed to other phases of my +subject. The “Ode to Indolence,†and the fragment of +an “Ode to Maia,†need not detain us; the former, however, +is important as indicating a mood of mind—too +vaguely open to the influences of the moment for either +love, ambition, or poesy—to which we may well suppose +that Keats was sufficiently prone. The few poems which +remain to be mentioned were all printed posthumously.</p> + +<p>There are four addresses to Fanny Brawne, dating +perhaps from early till late in 1819; two of them are +irregular lyrics, and two sonnets. The best of the four +is the sonnet, “The day is gone, and all its sweets are +gone,†which counts indeed among the better sonnets of +Keats. Taken collectively, all four supply valuable evi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>dence +as to the poet’s love affair, confirmatory of what +appears in his letters; they exhibit him quelled by the +thought of his mistress and her charms, and jealous of +her mixing in or enjoying the company of others.</p> + +<p>Keats wrote some half-hundred of sonnets altogether, +some of them among his very earliest and most trifling +performances, others up to his latest period, including +the last of all his compositions. Notwithstanding his +marked growth in love of form, and his ultimate surprising +power of expression—both being qualities peculiarly +germane to this form of verse—his sonnets appear +to me to be seldom masterly. A certain freakishness of +disposition, and liability to be led astray by some point +of detail into side-issues, mar the symmetry and concentration +of his work. Perhaps the sonnet on “Chapman’s +Homer,†early though it was, remains the best which he +produced; it is at any rate pre-eminent in singleness of +thought, illustrated by a definite and grand image. It +has a true opening and a true climax, and a clear link of +inventive association between the thing mentally signified +in chief, and the modes of its concrete presentment. In +points of this kind Keats is seldom equally happy in his +other sonnets; sometimes not happy at all, but distinctly +at fault. There is a second Homeric sonnet, “Standing +aloof in giant ignorance†(1818), which contains one line +which has been very highly praised,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“There is a budding morrow in midnight:â€<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but, regarded as a whole, it is a weakling in comparison +with the Chapman sonnet. The sonnets, “To<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span> +Sleep†(“O soft embalmer of the still midnightâ€), “Why +did I laugh to-night?†and “On a Dream†(“As Hermes +once took to his feathers lightâ€)—all of them dated in +1819—are remarkable; the third would indeed almost be +excellent were it not for the inadmissible laxity of an +alexandrine last line. This is the sonnet of which we +have already spoken, the dream of Paolo and Francesca. +The “Why did I laugh to-night?†is a strange personal +utterance, in which the poet (not yet attacked by his +mortal illness) exalts death above verse, fame, and beauty, +in the same mood of mind as in the lovely passage of +the “Ode to a Nightingaleâ€; but the sonnet, considered +as an example of its own form of art, is too exclamatory +and uncombined.</p> + +<p>There are several minor poems by Keats of which—though +some of them are extremely dear to his devotees—I +have made no mention. Such are “Teignmouth,†+“Where be you going, you Devon maid?†“Meg Merrilies,†+“Walking in Scotland,†“Staffa,†“Lines on the +Mermaid Tavern,†“Robin Hood,†“To Fancy,†“To +the Poets,†“In a drear-nighted December,†“Hush, +hush, tread softly,†four “Faery Songs.†Most of these +pieces seem to me over-rated. As a rule they have +lyrical impulse, along with the brightness or the tenderness +which the subject bespeaks; but they are slight in +significance and in structure, pleasurable but not memorable +work. One enjoys them once and again, and then +their office is over; they have not in them that stuff +which can be laid to heart, nor that spherical unity and +replenishment which can make of a mere snatch of verse +an inscription for the adamantine portal of time.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span></p> + +<p>The feeling with which Keats regarded women in real +life has been already spoken of. As to the tone of his +poems respecting them we have his own evidence. A +letter of his to Armitage Brown, dated towards the first +days of September 1820, says, in reference to the “Lamia†+volume: “One of the causes, I understand from different +quarters, of the unpopularity of this new book, is the +offence the ladies take at me. On thinking that matter +over, I am certain that I have said nothing in a spirit to +displease any woman I would care to please; but still +there is a tendency to class women in my books with +roses and sweetmeats; they never see themselves +dominant.†The long poems in the volume in question +were “Isabella,†“The Eve of St. Agnes,†“Hyperion,†+and “Lamia.†In “Hyperion†women are of course not +dominant; but, as regards the other three poems, they +are surely dominant enough in one sense. In “Isabella†+the heroine is the sole figure of prime importance—so +also in “Lamiaâ€; and in the “Eve of St. Agnes†she +counts for much more than Porphyro, though the number +of stanzas about her may be fewer. Nevertheless it +might be that the women in the three poems, though +“dominant,†are “classed with roses and sweetmeats.†+I do not see, however, that this can fairly be said of +Madeline in the “Eve of St. Agnesâ€; she is made a very +charming and loveable figure, although she does nothing +very particular except to undress without looking behind +her, and to elope. Again, Isabella, amenable as she +may be to the censure of the severely virtuous, plays a +part which takes her very considerably out of affinity to +roses and sweetmeats. To Lamia the objection applies<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span> +clearly enough; but then she is not exactly a woman, +and Keats resents so fiercely the far from indefensible +line of conduct which Apollonius adopts in relation to +her that it seems hard if the ladies owed the poet a +grudge. On the whole I incline to think that they must +have been misreported; but the statement in Keats’s +letter remains not the less significant as a symptom of +his real underlying feeling about women.</p> + +<p>It has often been pointed out that Keats’s lovers have +a habit of “swooning,†and the fact has sometimes been +remarked upon as evidencing a certain want of virility in +himself. I cannot affect to be, so far, of a different +opinion. The incident and the phrase do manifestly +tend to the namby-pamby. This may have been more a +matter of affected or self-willed diction on his part—and +diction of that kind appears constantly in his earlier +poems, and not seldom in his later ones—than of actual +character chargeable against himself; yet I would not +entirely disregard it in the latter relation either. Keats +was a very young man, with a limited experience of life. +He had to picture to himself how his lovers would be +likely to behave under given conditions; and, if he thought +they would be likely to swoon, the probability is that he +also, under parallel conditions, would have been likely +to swoon—or at least supposed he would be likely. +Because he thrashed a butcher-boy, or was indignant at +backbiting and meanness, we are not to credit him with +an unmingled fund of that toughness which distinguishes +the English middle class. The English middle-class man +is not habitually addicted to writing an “Endymion,†an +“Eve of St. Agnes,†or an “Ode on Melancholy.â€<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span></p> + +<p>Sensuousness has been frequently defined as the paramount +bias of Keats’s poetic genius. This is, in large +measure, unassailably true. He was a man of perception +rather than of contemplation or speculation. Perception +has to do with perceptible things; perceptible +things must be objects of sense, and the mind which +dwells on objects of sense must <i>ipso facto</i> be a mind of +the sensuous order. But the mind which is mainly +sensuous by direct action may also work by reflex action, +and pass from sensuousness into sentiment. It cannot +fairly be denied that Keats’s mind continually did this; +it had direct action potently, and reflex action amply. +He saw so far and so keenly into the sensuous as to be +penetrated with the sentiment which, to a healthy and +large nature, is its inseparable outcome. We might say +that, if the sensuous was his atmosphere, the breathing +apparatus with which he respired it was sentiment. In +his best work—for instance, in all the great odes—the +two things are so intimately combined that the reader +can only savour the sensuous nucleus through the sentiment, +its medium or vehicle. One of the most compendious +and elegant phrases in which the genius of Keats +has been defined is that of Leigh Hunt: “He never +beheld an oak tree without seeing the Dryad.†In immediate +meaning Hunt glances here at the mythical sympathy +or personifying imagination of the poet; but, if we accept +the phrase as applying to the sensuous object-painting, +along with its ideal aroma or suggestion in his finest +work, we shall still find it full of right significance. We +need not dwell upon other less mature performances in +which the two things are less closely interfused. Cer<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>tainly +some of his work is merely, and some even crudely, +sensuous: but this is work in which the poet was trying +his materials and his powers, and rising towards mastery +of his real faculty and ultimate function.</p> + +<p>While discriminating between what was excellent in +Keats, and what was not excellent, or was merely tentative +in the direction of final excellence, we must not +confuse endowments, or the homage which is due to +endowments, of a radically different order. Many +readers, and there have been among them several men +highly qualified to pronounce, have set Keats beside his +great contemporary Shelley, and indeed above him. I +cannot do this. To me it seems that the primary gift of +Shelley, the spirit in which he exercised it, the objects +upon which he exercised it, the detail and the sum of his +achievement, the actual produce in appraisable work +done, the influence and energy of the work in the future, +were all superior to those of Keats, and even superior +beyond any reasonable terms of comparison. If Shelley’s +poems had defects—which they indisputably had—Keats’s +poems also had defects. After all that can be said in +their praise—and this should be said in the most generous +or rather grateful and thankful spirit—it seems to +me true that not many of Keats’s poems are highly +admirable; that most of them, amid all their beauty, have +an adolescent and frequently a morbid tone, marking +want of manful thew and sinew and of mental balance; +that he is not seldom obscure, chiefly through indifference +to the thought itself and its necessary means of +development; that he is emotional without substance, +and beautiful without control; and that personalism of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span> +wilful and fitful kind pervades the mass of his handiwork. +We have already seen, however, that there is a certain +not inconsiderable proportion of his poems to which +these exceptions do not apply, or apply only with greatly +diminished force; and, as a last expression of our large +and abiding debt to him and to his well-loved memory, +we recur to his own words, and say that he has given us +many a “thing of beauty,†which will remain “a joy for +ever.†By his early death he was doomed to be the poet +of youthfulness; by being the poet of youthfulness he +was privileged to become and to remain enduringly the +poet of rapt expectation and passionate delight.</p> + + +<h4>THE END.</h4> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="INDEX" id="INDEX"></a>INDEX.</h2> + +<p> +A.<br /> +<br /> +Abbey, Guardian of Keats, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a><br /> +<br /> +“Adonais,†by Shelley, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br /> +<br /> +Æschylus, <a href="#Page_186">186</a><br /> +<br /> +“Agnes, The Eve of St.,†<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of the poem, <a href="#Page_182">182-184</a>; <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Alastor,†by Shelley, <a href="#Page_82">82</a><br /> +<br /> +“Annals of the Fine Arts,†<a href="#Page_110">110</a><br /> +<br /> +Ariosto, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Asclepiad, The</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Athenæum, The</i>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +“Autumn, Ode to,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +B.<br /> +<br /> +Bailey, Archdeacon Benjamin, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his description of Keats, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>; <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Belle Dame (La) sans Merci,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">quoted, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, &c.; <a href="#Page_200">200</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Benjamin, Nathan, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br /> +<br /> +Bion, Idyll on “Adonis,†by, <a href="#Page_170">170</a><br /> +<br /> +Blackwood, William, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Blackwood’s Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">articles in by Z, on The Cockney School of Poetry, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>; <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Boccaccio’s “Decameron,†<a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a><br /> +<br /> +Boileau, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +<br /> +Bojardo’s “Orlando Innamorato,†<a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +<br /> +Brawne, Fanny, engaged to Keats, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s description of her, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>; <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s love-letters to her, <a href="#Page_45">45-46</a>, &c.; <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her marriage to Mr. Lindon, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>; <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">poems to, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Brawne, Mrs., <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br /> +<br /> +Brown, Charles Armitage, friend of Keats, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s verses on, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>; <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter from Keats to, <a href="#Page_55">55-56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his death, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>; <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,†<a href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +<br /> +Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a><br /> +<br /> +Byron’s “Don Juan,†<a href="#Page_58">58</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +C.<br /> +<br /> +Caius Cestius, <a href="#Page_118">118</a><br /> +<br /> +“Calidore,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br /> +<br /> +“Cap and Bells, The,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a><br /> +<br /> +“Caviare†(pseudonym of Keats), <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +<br /> +“Cenci, The,†by Shelley, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Champion, The</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> +<br /> +“Chapman’s Homer,†sonnet by Keats, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a><br /> +<br /> +Chartier, Alain, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +<br /> +Chatterton, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br /> +<br /> +Chaucer, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +<br /> +Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, picture by Haydon, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br /> +<br /> +“Christmas Eve,†sonnet by Keats, quoted, <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br /> +<br /> +Clark, Mrs., <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> +<br /> +Clark, Sir James, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a><br /> +<br /> +Clarke, Charles Cowden, preceptor and friend of Keats, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his “Recollections,†<a href="#Page_102">102</a>; <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Clarke, Epistle to, by Keats, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br /> +<br /> +Clarke, Rev. John, Keats’s schoolmaster, <a href="#Page_14">14</a><br /> +<br /> +Coleridge, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a><br /> +<br /> +Coleridge’s “Christabel,†<a href="#Page_185">185</a><br /> +<br /> +Colman, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br /> +<br /> +Colvin’s, Mr., “Life of Keats,†<a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a><br /> +<br /> +“Comus,†by Milton, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> +<br /> +Cox, Miss Jane [“Charmian"], <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a><br /> +<br /> +Cripps, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +D.<br /> +<br /> +Dante, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a><br /> +<br /> +Dilke, Charles Wentworth, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a><br /> +<br /> +Dilke, Mrs., <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br /> +<br /> +“Dream, A,†sonnet by Keats, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> +<br /> +Dryden, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> +<br /> +Duncan, Admiral, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +E.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Edinburgh Review</i>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a><br /> +<br /> +Edouart, <a href="#Page_35">35</a><br /> +<br /> +“Endymion,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">details as to the composition of, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">preface to, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">criticism upon in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s feeling as to this and other criticisms, <a href="#Page_91">91-106</a>; <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Shelley’s opinion of, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">summary of the poem, <a href="#Page_168">168-175</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of it, <a href="#Page_176">176-180</a>; <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Examiner, The</i>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +<br /> +Eyre, Sir Vincent, <a href="#Page_119">119</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +F.<br /> +<br /> +“Fancy, The,†by Reynolds, <a href="#Page_22">22</a><br /> +<br /> +Finch, Colonel, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>“Florence, The Garden of,†by Reynolds, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a><br /> +<br /> +Forman, Mr. H. Buxton, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +G.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Gentleman’s Magazine, The</i>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br /> +<br /> +George IV., <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +<br /> +Gifford, William, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a><br /> +<br /> +Girometti, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br /> +<br /> +Gisborne, Mrs., <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a><br /> +<br /> +Grafty, Mrs., <a href="#Page_64">64</a><br /> +<br /> +“Grasshopper and Cricket, The,†sonnets by Keats and Hunt, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br /> +<br /> +“Grecian Urn, Ode on a,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194-198</a><br /> +<br /> +Guido, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +H.<br /> +<br /> +Hammond, Surgeon, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> +<br /> +Haslam, William, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br /> +<br /> +Haydn, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> +<br /> +Haydon, Benjamin Robert, the painter, friend of John Keats, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his last interview with Keats, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his view as to Keats’s feeling regarding critical attacks, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, &c.; <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his view of Keats’s character, <a href="#Page_134">134-135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Hazlitt, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> +<br /> +Hilton, <a href="#Page_128">128</a><br /> +<br /> +Holmes, Edward, <a href="#Page_54">54</a><br /> +<br /> +Homer, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br /> +<br /> +Hood, Mrs. (Miss Reynolds), <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Hood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Hooker, Bishop, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br /> +<br /> +Houghton, Lord, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a><br /> +<br /> +Howard, John, <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, John, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Leigh, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66-69</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89-92</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his view as to Keats’s sensitiveness to criticism, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>; <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his description of Keats, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>; <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Leigh, dedicatory sonnet to, by Keats, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Leigh, leaving prison, sonnet by Keats, <a href="#Page_66">66</a><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Mrs., <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +<br /> +Hunt, Thornton, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +<br /> +“Hyperion,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of the poem, <a href="#Page_185">185-189</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">recast of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>; <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +I.<br /> +<br /> +“I stood tiptoe upon a little hill,†poem by Keats, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extract from, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>; <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Indicator, The</i>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +<br /> +“Indolence, Ode to,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br /> +<br /> +“Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of the poem, <a href="#Page_180">180-182</a>; <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Islam, The Revolt of,†by Shelley, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +J.<br /> +<br /> +J. S., <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a><br /> +<br /> +Jeffrey, Lord, <a href="#Page_109">109</a><br /> +<br /> +Jeffrey, Mr., <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>Jennings, grandfather of Keats, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a><br /> +<br /> +Jennings, Captain, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br /> +<br /> +Jennings, Mrs., <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br /> +<br /> +“Joseph and his Brethren,†by Wells, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +K.<br /> +<br /> +Kean as Richard Duke of York,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critique by Keats, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Kean, Edmund, <a href="#Page_112">112</a><br /> +<br /> +Keats, Fanny, sister of the poet, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> +<br /> +Keats, Frances, mother of the poet, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">her death, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>; <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Keats, George, brother of the poet, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his view as to John Keats’s sensitiveness to criticism, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>; <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Keats, George, Epistle to, by John Keats, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br /> +<br /> +Keats, John, his parentage, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his birth in London, October 31, 1795, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">anecdote of his childhood, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">goes to the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his studies, pugnacity, &c., <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">death of his parents, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">leaves Hammond, and walks the hospitals, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">reads Spenser’s “Faery Queen,†and drops surgical study, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">makes acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, Haydon, and others, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his first volume, Poems, 1817, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">writes “Endymion,†<a href="#Page_23">23</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his health suffers in Oxford, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">anecdotes (Coleridge, &c.), <a href="#Page_25">25</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">makes a pedestrian tour in Scotland &c. with Charles Armitage Brown, <a href="#Page_25">25-29</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">takes leave of his brother George and his wife, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his brother Tom dies, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">lodges with Brown at Hampstead, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">meets Miss Cox (“Charmianâ€) and Miss Brawne, and falls in love with the latter, <a href="#Page_30">30-35</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">their engagement, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his friendship towards Haydon cools, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">at Shanklin and Winchester, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sees his brother George again, and is left by him in pecuniary straits, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the painful circumstances of his closing months, owing to illness, his love affair, and the depreciation of his poems, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">beginning of his consumptive illness, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">removes to Kentish Town, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">returns to Mrs. Brawne’s house at Hampstead, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his love-letters, <a href="#Page_45">45-54</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">travels to Italy with Joseph Severn, <a href="#Page_54">54-59</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Severn’s account of his last days in Rome, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his death there, February 23, 1821, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his early turn for mere rhyming, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his early writings, and first volume, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">diatribe against Boileau, and poets of that school, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the publishers relinquish sale of the volume, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Endymion,†and passage from an early poem forecasting this attempt, <a href="#Page_73">73-76</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">details as to composition of “Endymion,†<a href="#Page_76">76-79</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">prefaces to the poem, <a href="#Page_79">79-83</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">adverse critique in <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83-91</a>;</span><br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">question debated whether this and other attacks affected Keats deeply, <a href="#Page_91">91-97</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">statements by Shelley, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and by Haydon, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other evidence, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conclusion as to this point, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats writes “Isabella,†“The Eve of St. Agnes,†and “Hyperion,†<a href="#Page_107">107</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Lamia,†<a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and publishes the volume containing these poems, 1820, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">other poems in the volume, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">posthumous poems of Keats, “The Eve of St. Mark,†“Otho the Great,†“The Cap and Bells,†&c., <a href="#Page_110">110-115</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his letters and other prose writings, <a href="#Page_115">115-117</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s burial-place, <a href="#Page_118">118-119</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">projects for writing his life, accomplished finally by Lord Houghton, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his relations with Hunt, Shelley, and others, <a href="#Page_121">121-123</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s small stature and personal appearance, <a href="#Page_124">124-126</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the portraits of him, <a href="#Page_126">126-129</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">difficulty of clearly estimating his character, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his poetic ambition and intensity of thought, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his moral tone, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his character (“no decision†&c.,) estimated by Haydon, <a href="#Page_133">133-139</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lord Houghton’s account of his manner in society, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his suspiciousness, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and dislike of mankind, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his feeling towards women, <a href="#Page_143">143-146</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">and towards Miss Brawne, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his habits, opinions, likings, &c., <a href="#Page_148">148-155</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">humour and jocularity, <a href="#Page_155">155-157</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">negative turn in religious matters, <a href="#Page_157">157-160</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">wine and diet, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">conclusion as to his character, <a href="#Page_161">161</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his early tone in poetry, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of his first volume, Poems, 1817, <a href="#Page_165">165-166</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">of “Endymion,†<a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">narrative of this poem, <a href="#Page_168">168-175</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">defects and beauties of “Endymion,†<a href="#Page_176">176-180</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of “Isabella,†<a href="#Page_180">180</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Eve of St. Agnes,†<a href="#Page_182">182</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Eve of St. Mark,†<a href="#Page_184">184</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Hyperion,†<a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Otho the Great,†<a href="#Page_189">189</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Lamia,†<a href="#Page_190">190</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“Belle Dame sans Merci†(quoted), <a href="#Page_192">192</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">the five chief Odes, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">analysis of the “Ode to a Nightingale,†<a href="#Page_200">200</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">various posthumous lyrics, sonnets, &c., <a href="#Page_202">202</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Keats’s feeling towards women, as developed in his poems, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">“swooning,†<a href="#Page_206">206</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">sensuousness and sentiment, <a href="#Page_207">207</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">comparison between Keats and Shelley, and final remarks, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Keats, Mrs. George, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a><br /> +<br /> +Keats, Thomas, father of the poet, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his death, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>; <a href="#Page_126">126</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Keats, Thomas, brother of the poet, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his death, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>; <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_121">121</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“King Stephen,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> +<br /> +Kotzebue, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +L.<br /> +<br /> +Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +<br /> +Lamb, Dr., <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br /> +<br /> +“Lamia,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>;<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of the poem, <a href="#Page_190">190</a>, &c.; <a href="#Page_206">206</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Lamia, and other Poems,†by Keats (1820), <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br /> +<br /> +Lawrence, Sir Thomas, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br /> +<br /> +Lemprière’s “Classical Dictionary,†<a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /> +<br /> +Lindon, Mrs. (<i>see</i> Brawne, Fanny)<br /> +<br /> +Llanos, <a href="#Page_121">121</a><br /> +<br /> +Lockhart, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br /> +<br /> +Lucas, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> +<br /> +Lucy Vaughan Lloyd (pseudonym of Keats), <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +<br /> +Lyrics (various) by Keats, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +M.<br /> +<br /> +Mackereth, George Wilson, <a href="#Page_19">19</a><br /> +<br /> +“Maia, Ode to,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_202">202</a><br /> +<br /> +“Mark, Eve of St.,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of the poem, <a href="#Page_184">184-185</a>; <a href="#Page_190">190</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Marmontel’s “Incas of Peru,†<a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /> +<br /> +Mathew, George Felton, Epistle to, by Keats, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>; <a href="#Page_157">157</a><br /> +<br /> +Medwin’s “Life of Shelley,†<a href="#Page_34">34</a><br /> +<br /> +“Melancholy, Ode on,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194-199</a><br /> +<br /> +Milton, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_159">159</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br /> +<br /> +“Miserrimus,†by Reynolds, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Mitford, Miss, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br /> +<br /> +Moore, Thomas, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br /> +<br /> +<i>Morning Chronicle, The</i>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br /> +<br /> +Murray, John, <a href="#Page_102">102</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +N.<br /> +<br /> +Napoleon I., <a href="#Page_32">32</a><br /> +<br /> +“Narensky,†opera by C. A. Brown, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br /> +<br /> +Newton, Sir Isaac, <a href="#Page_151">151</a><br /> +<br /> +“Nightingale, Ode to a,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_160">160</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194-202</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">analysed, <a href="#Page_200">200-202</a>; <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Nile,†Sonnets on the, by Keats, &c.; <a href="#Page_110">110</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +O.<br /> +<br /> +Ollier, Charles, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a><br /> +<br /> +“Otho the Great,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">critical estimate of, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +P.<br /> +<br /> +“Paradise Lost,†<a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_175">175</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a><br /> +<br /> +“Paradise Lost,†Notes on, by Keats, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> +<br /> +Philostratus’s “Life of Apollonius,†<a href="#Page_108">108</a><br /> +<br /> +“Poems†(1817), by Keats, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">letter regarding this volume, by the publishers, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>; <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164-167</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Pope, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +<br /> +Procter, Mrs., <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a><br /> +<br /> +Purcell, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> +<br /> +“Psyche, Ode to,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194-199</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Q.<br /> +<br /> +<i>Quarterly Review, The</i>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">its critique of “Endymion†extracted, <a href="#Page_83">83-91</a>; <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Quixote, Don,†<a href="#Page_120">120</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +R.<br /> +<br /> +R. B., <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br /> +<br /> +Raphael, <a href="#Page_155">155</a><br /> +<br /> +Rawlings, William, <a href="#Page_16">16</a><br /> +<br /> +Reynolds, John Hamilton, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a><br /> +<br /> +Reynolds, Misses, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a><br /> +<br /> +Reynolds, Mrs., <a href="#Page_31">31</a><br /> +<br /> +Rice, James, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>Richardson, Dr., <a href="#Page_25">25</a><br /> +<br /> +Ritchie, <a href="#Page_78">78</a><br /> +<br /> +Robinson Crusoe, <a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /> +<br /> +Robinson, H. Crabb, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br /> +<br /> +Rossetti, Dante G., <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +S.<br /> +<br /> +Sandt, <a href="#Page_150">150</a><br /> +<br /> +Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +<br /> +Severn, Joseph, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">leaves England with Keats for Italy, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>; <a href="#Page_59">59</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his narrative of Keats’s last days, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, &c.; <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his portraits of Keats, <a href="#Page_127">127-129</a>; <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Shakespeare (Macbeth), <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Hamlet), <a href="#Page_52">52</a>; <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(King Lear), <a href="#Page_151">151</a>; <a href="#Page_155">155</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Shakespeare, Notes on, by Keats, <a href="#Page_115">115</a><br /> +<br /> +Shakespeare’s sonnets, Book on, by C. A. Brown, <a href="#Page_27">27</a><br /> +<br /> +Sharpey, Dr., <a href="#Page_30">30</a><br /> +<br /> +Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">his references to “Endymion,†and <i>The Quarterly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_97">97-99</a>; <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_185">185</a>;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">comparison between Shelley and Keats, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span><br /> +<br /> +“Sleep and Poetry,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">extract from, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>; <a href="#Page_165">165</a></span><br /> +<br /> +Smith, Horace, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br /> +<br /> +Snook, <a href="#Page_56">56</a><br /> +<br /> +Sonnet by Keats (“Bright Star,†&c.), <a href="#Page_114">114</a><br /> +<br /> +Sonnets (various) by Keats, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, &c.<br /> +<br /> +Spence’s “Polymetis,†<a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /> +<br /> +Spenser, Edmund, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br /> +<br /> +Spenser’s Cave of Despair, picture by Severn, <a href="#Page_55">55</a><br /> +<br /> +Spenser’s “Faery Queen,†<a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a><br /> +<br /> +“Spenser, Imitation of,†by Keats, <a href="#Page_64">64</a><br /> +<br /> +Stephens, Henry, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a><br /> +<br /> +“Stories after Nature,†by Wells, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Swinburne, Mr. (on “Hyperionâ€), <a href="#Page_186">186</a>; <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +T.<br /> +<br /> +Tasso, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br /> +<br /> +Taylor and Hessey, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_120">120</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a><br /> +<br /> +Terry, <a href="#Page_100">100</a><br /> +<br /> +Thomson, James, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br /> +<br /> +Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne,†<a href="#Page_179">179</a><br /> +<br /> +Tooke’s “Pantheon,†<a href="#Page_15">15</a><br /> +<br /> +Torlonia, <a href="#Page_61">61</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +V.<br /> +<br /> +Virgil, <a href="#Page_165">165</a><br /> +<br /> +Virgil’s Æneid, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a><br /> +<br /> +Voltaire, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +W.<br /> +<br /> +Webb, Cornelius, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br /> +<br /> +Webster, <a href="#Page_189">189</a><br /> +<br /> +Wells, Charles, <a href="#Page_23">23</a><br /> +<br /> +Wilson, John, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br /> +<br /> +“Woman, when I behold thee†&c., poem by Keats, quoted, <a href="#Page_143">143</a><br /> +<br /> +Wood, Warrington, <a href="#Page_119">119</a><br /> +<br /> +Woodhouse, Richard, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a><br /> +<br /> +Wordsworth, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_78">78</a>; (“The Excursion,â€) <a href="#Page_152">152</a>; <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_156">156</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +Z.<br /> +<br /> +Z (probably Lockhart), <a href="#Page_91">91</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>.<br /></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> + +<h2><a name="BIBLIOGRAPHY" id="BIBLIOGRAPHY"></a>BIBLIOGRAPHY.</h2> + +<h4>BY</h4> + +<h3>JOHN P. ANDERSON</h3> + +<p class="center">(<i>British Museum</i>).</p> + + +<table summary="Contents of Bibliography"> +<tr> +<td class="tda">I.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Works.</span></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda">II.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Poetical Works.</span></td></tr><tr> +<td class="tda">III.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Single Works.</span></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda">IV.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Letters, etc.</span></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda">V.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Miscellaneous.</span></td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda">VI.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span>—</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda"> </td> +<td class="tdbb">Biography, Criticism, etc.</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda"> </td> +<td class="tdbb">Magazine Articles.</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tda">VII.</td> +<td class="tdb"><span class="smcap">Chronological List of Works.</span></td></tr> +</table> + + + +<h3>I. WORKS.</h3> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works and other +Writings of John Keats, now +first brought together, including +poems and numerous letters +not before published. Edited, +with notes and appendices, by +H. B. Forman. 4 vols. London, +1883, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Letters of John Keats. Edited +by J. G. Speed. (The Poems of +J. Keats, with the annotations +of Lord Houghton, and a memoir +by J. G. Speed.) 3 vols. New +York, 1883, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">A number of letters now included +in this work were first published in +the New York <i>World</i> of June 25-6, +1877, and afterwards reprinted in +the <i>Academy</i>, vol. xii., 1877, pp. +38-40, 65-67.</p> + + +<h3>II. POETICAL WORKS.</h3> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of Coleridge, +Shelley, and Keats. In one +volume. Paris, 1829, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats (including Memoir), +i.-vii. and 1-75.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Standard Library. The Poetical +Works of J. K. London, 1840, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The first <i>collected</i> edition of Keats’s +Works.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. London, +1840, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">With an engraved frontispiece +from the portrait in chalk by Hilton. +This book, although dated +1840, was not issued until the following +year. The frontispiece is dated +correctly.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. London, +1841, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. A +new edition. London, 1851, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. With +Memoir by R. M. Milnes [Lord +Houghton]. Illustrated by a +portrait and 120 designs by +George Scharf, Jun. London, +1854, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">A small number of copies were +struck off upon large paper.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. With +a life [signed J. R. L.—<i>i.e.</i>, +James Russell Lowell]. Boston +[U.S.], 1854, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. With +a Memoir by Richard Monckton +Milnes [Lord Houghton]. A +new edition. London, 1861, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Upon the reverse of the half-title +to the “Memoir†is a wood-cut +profile of Keats.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. +Edited, with a critical memoir, +by W. M. Rossetti. Illustrated +by T. Seccombe. London +[1872], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. +Edited, with an introductory +memoir and illustrations, by +William B. Scott. London +[1873], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. With +a memoir by James Russell +Lowell. Portrait and 10 illustrations. +New York, 1873, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The Memoir was afterwards reprinted +in “Among my Books,†+second series, 1876, pp. 303-327.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted +from the early editions, +with memoir, explanatory notes, +etc. (<i>Chandos Classics.</i>) London +[1874], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. +Chronologically arranged and +edited, with a memoir, by Lord +Houghton. (<i>Aldine Edition.</i>) +London, 1876, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of Coleridge +and Keats, with a memoir of +each. (<i>Riverside Edition.</i>) +4 vols. in 2. New York, 1878, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. London +[1878], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. +Edited, with an introductory +memoir, by W. B. Scott. (<i>Excelsior +Series.</i>) London [1880], +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. +Edited, with a critical memoir, +by W. M. Rossetti. [Portrait, +fac-simile, and six illustrations +by Thomas Seccombe.] (<i>Moxon’s +Popular Poets.</i>) London [1880], +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The same as the edition of 1872. +The Memoir was reprinted in +“Lives of Famous Poets.â€</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted +from the original editions, +with notes, by F. T. +Palgrave. (<i>Golden Treasury +Series.</i>) London, 1884, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. +Edited by W. T. Arnold. London, +1884, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">There was a large paper edition, +consisting of fifty copies, numbered +and signed.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of John Keats. +Edited by H. B. Forman. London, +1884, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Poetical Works of J. K. With +an introductory sketch by John +Hogben. (<i>Canterbury Poets.</i>) +London, 1885, 8vo.</p> + + +<h3>III. SINGLE WORKS.</h3> + +<p class="biblio">Poems, by John Keats. London, +1817, 16mo.</p> +<p class="biblio1">The Museum copy contains a MS. +note by F. Locker.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p> + +<p class="biblio">Endymion; a Poetic Romance. +By J. K. London, 1818, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Endymion. Illustrated by F. +Joubert. From paintings by +E. J. Poynter. London, 1873, +fol.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Eve of St. Agnes. By J. K. +With 20 illustrations by E. H. +Wehnert. London, 1856, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated +by E. H. Wehnert. London +[1875], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated +by nineteen etchings by +Charles O. Murray. London, +1830, fol.</p> + +<p class="biblio">The Eve of St. Agnes, and other +Poems. Illustrated. Boston +[U.S.], 1876, 24mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society. +London, 1856-7, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Vol. iii. contains “Another version +of Keats’s <i>Hyperion, a Vision</i>,†+edited, with an introduction, by R. +M. Milnes (Lord Houghton).</p> + +<p class="biblio">Keatsii Hyperionis. Libri i-ii. +Latine reddidit Carolus Merivale. +Cambridge, 1862, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Keats’s Hyperion. Book I. With +notes [life and introduction]. +London [1877], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Keats’s Hyperion. Book I. With +introduction, elucidatory notes, +and an appendix of exercises. +London [1878], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. +Agnes, and other Poems. By +J. K. London, 1820, 12mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Lamia. With illustrative designs +by W. H. Low. Philadelphia, +1885, fol.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ode to a Nightingale. By J. K. +Edited, with an introduction, +by Thomas J. Wise. London, +1884, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Printed for private distribution, +and issued in parchment wrappers. +Four copies on vellum and twenty-five +on paper only printed.</p> + + +<h3>IV. LETTERS, ETC.</h3> + +<p class="biblio">Life, Letters, and Literary Remains +of J. K. Edited by R. +M. Milnes. 2 vols. London, +1848, 16mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Life and Letters of John Keats. +A new and completely revised +edition. Edited by Lord +Houghton. London, 1867, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Letters of J. K. to Fanny Brawne, +written in the years 1819 and +1820, and now given from the +original manuscripts, with introduction +and notes, by Harry +Buxton Forman. London, 1878, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">In addition to the ordinary issue, +the following special copies were +“printed for private distribution‗In +8vo on Whatman’s hand-made +paper 60 copies, on vellum 2 copies; +in post 8vo there were 6 copies with +title-page set up in different style, +and 2 copies of coloured bank-note +paper, one blue and the other +yellow.</p> + + +<h3>V. MISCELLANEOUS.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Contributions to Magazines.</span></h4> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Annals of the Fine Arts. A +quarterly magazine, edited by +James Elmes</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“Ode to the Nightingale,†vol. iv., +1820, pp. 354-356. The first appearance +of this poem, which was afterwards +included in the “Lamia†+volume, 1820, pp. 107-112.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“Ode on a Grecian Urn.†Appeared +first in the “Annals of the +Fine Arts†vol. iv., 1820, pp. 638, 639, +afterwards included in the Lamia +volume.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>The Athenæum</i>—</p> +<p class="biblio1">First appearance of the Sonnet +“On hearing the Bag-pipe and +seeing ‘The Stranger’ played at +Inverary,†June 7, 1873, p. 725.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> +<p class="biblio"><i>The Champion</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“On Edmund Kean as a Shakesperian +actor, and on Kean in +‘Richard, Duke of York.’†Appeared +on the 21st and 28th Dec. 1817.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>The Dial</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“Notes on Milton’s Paradise +Lost.†In vol. iii., 1843, pp, 500-504; +reprinted by Lord Houghton.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>The Examiner</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The “Sonnet to Solitude,†Keats’s +first published poem, according to +Charles Cowden Clarke, appeared +on the 5th of May 1816, signed +J. K., p. 282.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The first appearance of the +sonnet “To Kosciusko,†Feb. 16, +1817, p. 107.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The first appearance of the +sonnet, “After dark vapors have +oppress’d our plains,†etc., Feb. 23, +1817, p. 124.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Two sonnets “To Haydon, with +a Sonnet written on seeing the +Elgin Marbles,†and “On seeing the +Elgin Marbles†appear for the first +time, March 9, 1817, p. 155. In 1818 +they were reprinted in the <i>Annals +of the Fine Arts</i>, No. 8.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The first appearance of the +sonnet, “Written on a blank space +at the end of Chaucer’s tale of ‘The +Floure and the Lefe,’†March 16, +1817, p. 173.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Sonnet “On the Grasshopper and +Cricket†appeared on the 21st Sept. +1817, p. 599.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>The Gem, a Literary Annual, +Edited by Thomas Hood</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The sonnet “On a picture of +Leander†appeared for the first +time in 1829, p. 108.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Hood’s Comic Annual</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“Sonnet to a Cat,†1830, p. 14.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Hood’s Magazine</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">In vol. ii., 1844, p. 240, the sonnet +“Life’s sea hath been five times at +its slow ebb†appears for the first +time; included by Lord Houghton +in the Literary Remains.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">In vol. ii., 1844, p. 562, the poem +“Old Meg,†written during a tour +in Scotland, appears for the first +time.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>The Indicator. Edited by Leigh +Hunt</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">In vol. i., 1820, p. 120. there are +thirty-four lines, headed <i>Vox et præterea +nihil</i>, supposed by Mr. Forman +to be a cancelled passage of Endymion, +and reprinted by him in his +edition of Keats, 1883, vol. i, p. 221.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">In vol. i. 1820, pp. 246-248, the +poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci†+first appeared, and signed “Caviare.â€</p> + +<p class="biblio1">First appearance of the sonnet, +“A Dream after reading Dante’s +Episode of ‘Paolo and Francesca,’†+signed “Caviare,†vol. i. 1820, p. +304.</p> + +<p class="biblio"><i>Leigh Hunt’s Literary Pocket +Book</i>—</p> + +<p class="biblio1">First appearance of the sonnets, +“To Ailsa Rock†and “The Human +Season†in 1819.</p> + + +<h3>VI. APPENDIX.</h3> + +<h4><span class="smcap">Biography, Criticism, etc.</span></h4> + +<p class="biblio">Armstrong, Edmund J.—Essays +and Sketches of Edmund J. +Armstrong. London, 1877, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 176-179.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Atlantic Monthly.—Boston, 1858, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“The Poet Keats.†Seven +stanzas, vol. ii., pp. 531-532.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Belfast, Earl of.—Poets and +Poetry of the xixth century. A +course of lectures. London, +1852, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Moore, Keats, Scott, pp. 59-131.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Best Bits.—Best Bits. London, +1884, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“The Last Moments of Keats,†+vol. ii., p. 119.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Biographical Magazine.—Lives of +the Illustrious (The Biographical +Magazine). London, 1853, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 260-271.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Caine, T. Hall. Recollections of +Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London, +1882, 8vo.</p> +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 167-183.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> +<p class="biblio">Caine, T. Hall.—Cobwebs of Criticism, +etc. London, 1883, 8vo. +Keats, pp. 158-190.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Carr, J. Comyns.—Essays on Art. +London, 1879, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The artistic spirit in Modern English +Poetry, pp. 3-34.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Clarke, Charles Cowden.—The +Riches of Chaucer, in which his +impurities have been expunged, +etc. 2 vols. London, 1835, +12mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. i., pp. 52, 53.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Recollections of Writers. London, +1878, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 120-157.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Colvin, Sidney.—Keats (<i>English +Men of Letters</i>). London, 1887, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Cotterill, H. B.—An Introduction +to the Study of Poetry. London, +1882, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 242-268.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Courthope, William J.—The +Liberal Movement in English +Literature. London, 1885, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Poetry, Music, and Painting. +Coleridge and Keats, pp. 159-194.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Cunningham, Allan.—Biographical +and Critical History of the +British Literature of the last +fifty years. [Reprinted from the +“Athenæum."] Paris, 1834, +12mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 102-104.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Dennis, John.—Heroes of Literature. +English Poets. London, +1883, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 365-373.</p> + +<p class="biblio">De Quincey, Thomas.—Essays +on the Poets, and other English +Writers. Boston, 1853, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 75-97.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— De Quincey’s Works. 16 vols. +Edinburgh, 1862-71, 12mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. v, pp. 269-288.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Devey, J.—A comparative estimate +of Modern English Poetry. +London, 1873, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Alexandrine Poets. Keats, pp. +263-274.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Dilke, Charles Wentworth.—The +Papers of a Critic. Selected +from the writings of the late +Charles W. Dilke. 2 vols. London, +1875, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. i., pp. 2-14.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Encyclopædia Britannica.—Encyclopædia +Britannica. Eighth +edition. Edinburgh, 1857, 4to.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. xiii., pp. 55-57.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Ninth edition. Edinburgh, +1882, 4to.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, by Algernon C. +Swinburne, vol. xiv., pp. 22-24.</p> + +<p class="biblio">English Writers.—Essays on English +Writers. By the author of +“The Gentle Life.†London, +1869, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Shelley, Keats, etc., pp. 338-349.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Gilfillan, George.—A Gallery of +Literary Portraits. Edinburgh, +1845, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 372-385.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Gossip.—The Gossip. London, +1821, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Three Stanzas, signed G. V. D., +May 19, 1821, p. 96, “On Reading +Lamia and other poems, by John +Keats.â€</p> + +<p class="biblio">Griswold, Rufus W.—The Poets +and Poetry of England in the +Nineteenth Century. New +York, 1875, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, with portrait, pp. +301-311.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Haydon, Benjamin Robert,—Life +of B. R. Haydon. Edited and +compiled by Tom Taylor. 3 vols. +London, 1853, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Numerous references to Keats.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Correspondence and Table-Talk. +With a memoir by his +son, F. W. Haydon. 2 vols. +London, 1876, 8vo.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> +<p class="biblio1">Contains ten letters and two extracts +from letters to Haydon, and +ten letters from Haydon to Keats, +vol. ii., pp. 1-17.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hinde, F.—Essays and Poems. +Liverpool, 1864, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The life and works of the poet +Keats: a paper read before the +Liverpool Philomathic Society, +April 15, 1862, pp. 57-95.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hoffmann, Frederick A.—Poetry, +its origin, nature, and history, +etc. London, 1884, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, vol. i., pp. 483-491.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Howitt, William.—Homes and +Haunts of the most eminent +British Poets. Third edition. +London, 1857, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 292-300.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— The Northern Heights of +London, etc. London, 1869, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 95-103.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hunt, Leigh.—Imagination and +Fancy; or, selections from the +English Poets. London, 1844, +12mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, born 1796, died 1821, pp. +312-345.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Foliage, or Poems original +and translated. London, 1818, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Contains four sonnets; “To John +Keats,†“On receiving a Crown of +Ivy from the same,†“On the +same,†“To the Grasshopper and +the Cricket.â€</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Lord Byron and some of his +Contemporaries; with recollections +of the author’s life, and of +his visit to Italy. London, +1826, 4to.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 246-268.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— The Autobiography of Leigh +Hunt; with reminiscences of +friends and contemporaries. +In three volumes. London, +1850, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The references to John Keats, vol. +ii., pp. 201-216, etc. are substantially +reproduced from the preceding +work.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Hutton, Laurence.—Literary +Landmarks of London. London, +[1885], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 177-182.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Jeffrey, Francis.—Contributions +to the Edinburgh Review. +London, 1853, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats. Review of Endymion +and Lamia, pp. 526-534.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Lester, John W.—Criticisms. +Third edition, London, 1853, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 343-349.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Lowell, James Russell.—Among +my Books. Second series. +London, 1876, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 303-327.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— The Poetical Works of J. R. L. +New revised edition. Boston +[U.S.], 1882, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Sonnet “To the Spirit of Keats,†+p. 20.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Maginn, William.—Miscellanies: +prose and verse. Edited by +R. W. Montagu. 2 vols. London, +1885; 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Remarks on Shelley’s Adonais, +vol. ii., pp. 300-311.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Mario, Jessie White.—Sepoleri +Inglesi in Roma. (Estratto +dalla <i>Nuova Antologia</i>, 15 +Maggio, 1879.) Roma, 1879, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">On Keats and Shelley.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Mason, Edward T.—Personal +Traits of British Authors. New +York, 1885, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 195-207.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Masson, David.—Wordsworth, +Shelley, Keats, and other +Essays. London, 1874, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“The Life and Poetry of Keats,†+pp. 143-191.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> + +<p class="biblio">Medwin, Thomas.—Journal of the +Conversations of Lord Byron: +noted during a residence with +his Lordship at Pisa, in the +years 1821 and 1822. By T. +Medwin. London, 1824, 4to.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 143, 237-240, 255, +etc.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Milnes, Richard Monckton, <i>Lord +Houghton</i>.—Life, Letters, and +Literary Remains of John Keats. +In two volumes. London, 1848, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Life and Letters of John +Keats. A new and completely +revised edition. Edited by +Lord Houghton, London, 1867, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Mitford, Mary Russell.—Recollections +of a Literary Life, etc. +3 vols. London, 1852, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Shelley and Keats, vol. ii., pp. +183-192.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Moir, D. M.—Sketches of the +poetical literature of the past +half-century. London, 1851, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 215-221.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Noel, Hon. Roden.—Essays on +poetry and poets. London, +1886, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 150-171.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Notes and Queries.—General +Index to Notes and Queries. +5 series. London, 1856-80, 4to.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Numerous references to John +Keats.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Olio.—The Olio. London [1828]. +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“Recollections of Books and their +Authors,†No. 6, “John Keats, the +Poet,†vol. i., pp. 391-394.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Oliphant, Mrs.—The Literary +History of England, etc. +3 vols. London, 1885, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 133-155.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Owen, Frances Mary.—John Keats. +A Study. London, 1880, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Reviewed in the <i>Academy</i>, July 5 +1884, p. 2.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Payn, James.—Stories from +Boccaccio, and other Poems. +London, 1852, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Sonnet to John Keats, p. 97.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Phillips, Samuel.—Essays from +“The Times.†Being a selection +from the literary papers +which have appeared in that +journal. London, 1851, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“The Life of John Keats,†pp. +255-269. This article originally +appeared in “The Times†on Sept. +17, 1849.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— New Edition. 2 vols. London, +1871, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, vol. i., pp. 255-269.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Richardson, David Lester.—Literary +Chit-Chat, etc. Calcutta, +1848, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, pp. +271-281.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.—Ballads +and Sonnets. London, 1881, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Sonnets “To Five English Poets.†+No. iv., John Keats, p. 316.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Rossetti, William Michael.—Lives +of Famous Poets. London +[1885], 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 349-361.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Sarrazin, Gabriel.—Poètes Modernes +de l’Angleterre. Paris, +1885, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 131-152.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Scott, William Bell.—Poems, +Ballads, Studies from Nature, +Sonnets, etc. Illustrated by +seventeen etchings by the author +and L. Alma Tadema. London, +1875, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">An etching by the author of +Keats’ Grave, p. 177; sonnet “On +the Inscription, Keats’ Tombstone,†+p. 179. An Ode “To the memory of +John Keats,†pp. 226-230.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Scribner’s Monthly Magazine.—Scribner’s +Monthly Magazine. +New York, 1880, 1887, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">The No. for June 1880 contains +fourteen lines “To the Immortal +memory of Keats,†and the May +No. for 1887, p. 110, “Keats†(ten +verses) by Robert Burns Wilson.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></p> +<p class="biblio">Shelley, Percy Bysshe.—Adonais. +An elegy on the death of John +Keats, author of Endymion, +Hyperion, etc. Pisa, 1821, +4to.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Adonais. An elegy on the +death of John Keats, etc. +Cambridge, 1829, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Adonais. Edited, with notes, +by H. Buxton Forman. London, +1880, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Shelley, Lady.—Shelley Memorials; +from authentic +sources. Edited by Lady +Shelley. London, 1859, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 74, 150-152, 155, +156, 200, 203.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Stedman, Edmund Clarence.—Victorian +Poets. London, 1876, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, pp. 18, 104, 106, 155, +367, etc.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Swinburne, Algernon Charles.—Miscellanies. +London, 1886, +8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 210-218. Originally +appeared in the Encyclopædia +Britannica.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Tuckerman, Henry T.—Characteristics +of Literature, illustrated +by the genius of distinguished +men. Philadelphia, 1849, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Final Memorials of Lamb and +Keats, pp. 256-269.</p> + +<p class="biblio">—— Thoughts on the Poets. +London [1852], 12mo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 212-226.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Verdicts.—Verdicts. [Verse.] +London, 1852, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, occupies 93 lines, pp. +28-32.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Ward, Thomas H.—The English +Poets, etc. 4 vols. London, +1883, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">John Keats, by Matthew Arnold, +vol. iv., pp. 427-464.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Willis, N. P.—Pencillings by the +Way. A new edition. London, +1844, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">“Keats’s Poems,†pp. 84-88.</p> + +<p class="biblio">Wiseman, Cardinal.—On the Perception +of Natural Beauty by +the Ancients and the Moderns, +etc. London, 1856, 8vo.</p> + +<p class="biblio1">Keats, pp. 13, 14; reviewed by +Leigh Hunt in <i>Fraser’s Magazine</i> for +December, 1859.</p> + + +<h4><span class="smcap">Magazine Articles.</span></h4> + +<div class="biblio"> +<p>Keats, John</p> + +<p>—Examiner, June 1, 1817, p. 345, July 6, 1817, pp. 428, 429, +July 13, 1817, pp. 443, 444.</p> + +<p>—Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 3, 1818, pp. 519-524.</p> + +<p>—Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 7, 1820, p. 665; vol. +27, 1830, p. 633.</p> + +<p>—Indicator, by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352.</p> + +<p>—Quarterly Review, vol. 37, 1828, pp. 416-421.</p> + +<p>—Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T. Tuckerman, vol. 8, +1842, pp. 37-41.</p> + +<p>—Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, by T. De Quincey, vol. 13, N.S., +1846, pp. 249-254; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 8, +pp. 202-209.</p> + +<p>—Democratic Review, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429.</p> + +<p>—United States Magazine, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429; +vol. 26, N.S., 1850, pp. 415-421.</p> + +<p>—Hogg’s Weekly Instructor, with portrait, vol. 1, 1848, pp. +145-148; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 14, pp. +409-415.</p> + +<p>—Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, vol. 10, N.S., 1848, pp. +376-380.</p> + +<p>—Sharpe’s London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 56-60.</p> + +<p>—Knickerbocker, vol. 55, 1860, pp. 392-397.</p> + +<p>—Temple Bar, vol. 38, 1873, pp. 501-512.</p> + +<p>—Edinburgh Review, July 1876, pp. 38-42.</p> + +<p>—Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span>1870, pp. 523-525 +and vol. 55, 1877, by E. F. Madden, pp. 357-361, +illustrated.</p> + +<p>—Scribner’s Monthly, by R. H. Stoddard, vol. 15, 1877, pp. +203-213.</p> + +<p>—American Bibliopolist, vol. 7, p. 94, etc., and vol. 8, p. +94, etc.</p> + +<p>—<i>La Revue Politique et Littéraire</i>, by Léo Quesnel, 1877, pp. +61-65.</p> + +<p>—Argonaut, by Reginald W. Corlass, vol. 2, 1875, pp. 172-178.</p> + +<p>—Canadian Monthly, by Edgar Fawcett, vol. 2, 1879, pp. +449-454.</p> + +<p>—<i>Century</i>, by Edmund C. Stedman, illustrated, vol. 27, 1884, +pp. 599-602.</p></div> + +<div class="biblio"><p>—— <i>and his Critics.</i> Dial, vol. 1, +1881, pp. 265, 266.</p> + +<p>—— <i>and Joseph Severn.</i> Dublin +University Magazine, by E. S. +R., vol. 96, 1880, pp. 37-39.</p> + +<p>—— <i>and Lamb.</i> Southern Literary +Messenger, by H. T. Tuckerman, +vol. 14, 1848, pp. 711-715.</p> + +<p>—— <i>and Shelley.</i> To-Day, June +1883, pp. 188-206, etc.</p> + +<p>—— <i>and the Quarterly Review.</i> +Morning Chronicle, Oct. 3 and +8, 1818 (two letters). Examiner, +11 Oct., 1818, pp. 648, 649.</p> + +<p>—— <i>an Esculapian Poet.</i> Asclepiad, +with portrait on steel, +vol. 1, 1884, pp. 138-155.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Art of.</i> Our Corner, by J. +Robertson, vol. 4, 1884, pp. 40-45, +72-76.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Cardinal Wiseman on.</i> Fraser’s +Magazine, by Leigh Hunt, +vol. 60, 1859, pp. 759, 760.</p> + +<p>—— <i>daintiest of Poets.</i> Victoria +Magazine, vol. 15, 1870, pp. 55-67.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Death of.</i> London Magazine, +vol. 3, 1821, pp. 426, 427.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Verses on death of.</i> +London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821, +p. 526.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Did he really care for music.</i> +Manchester Quarterly, by John +Mortimer, vol 2, 1883, pp. 11-17.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Endymion.</i> Quarterly Review, +by Gifford, vol. 19, 1818, pp. +204-208.—London Magazine, +vol. 1, 1820, pp. 380-389.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Forman’s Edition of.</i> Macmillan’s +Magazine, vol. 49, +1884, pp. 330-341.—Times, +Aug. 7, 1884.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Fragment from.</i> Gentleman’s +Magazine, by Grant Allen, vol. +244, 1879, pp. 676-686.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Genius of.</i> Christian Remembrancer, +vol. 6, N.S., 1843, pp. +251-263.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Holman Hunt’s “Isabel."</i> +Fortnightly Review, by B. Cracroft, +vol. 3, 1868, pp. 648-657.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Hyperion.</i> American Whig +Review, vol. 14, 1851, pp. 311-322.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Hyperionis, Libri i-ii.</i> Saturday +Review, April 26, 1862, pp. +477, 478.</p> + +<p>—— <i>in Cloudland.</i> A poem of +thirty-one verses. St. James’s +Magazine, by R. W. Buchanan, +vol. 7, 1863, pp. 470-475.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of +St. Agnes, and other poems.</i> +London Magazine, vol. 2, 1820, +pp. 315-321.—Indicator, by +Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. +337-352.—Monthly Review, vol. +92, N.S., 1820, pp. 305-310.—Eclectic +Review, vol. 14 N.S., +1820, 158-171.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span></p> + +<p>—— <i>Leigh Hunt’s Farewell Words +to.</i> Indicator, September 20, +1820.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Letters to Fanny Brawne.</i> +Athenæum, July 14, p. 50, July +21, pp. 80, 81, and July 28, +1877, pp. 114, 115.—Harper’s +New Monthly Magazine, vol. +57, 1878, p. 466.—Eclectic +Magazine, vol. 27, N.S., 1878, +pp. 495-498 (from the Academy).—Appleton’s +Journal, by R. H. +Stoddard, vol. 4, N.S., 1878, +pp. 379-382.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Life and Poems of.</i> Macmillan’s +Magazine, by D. Masson, +vol. 3, 1860, pp. 1-16.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Marginalia made by Dante +G. Rossetti in a copy of Keats’ +Poems.</i> Manchester Quarterly, +by George Milner, vol. 2, 1883, +pp. 1-10.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Milnes’ Life of.</i> American +Review, by C. A. Bristed, +vol. 8, 1848, pp. 603-610.—Littell’s +Living Age, vol. +19, 1848, pp. 20-24.—United +States Magazine, vol. +23, N.S., 1848, pp. 375-377.—Athenæum, +Aug. 12, 1848, pp. +824-827.—Revue des Deux +Mondes, by Philarète Chasles, +Tom. 24, Série 5, 1848, pp. 584-607.—Eclectic +Review, vol. 24, +N.S., 1848, pp. 533-552.—Dublin +Review, vol. 25, 1848, pp. +164-179.—British Quarterly +Review, vol. 8, 1848, pp. 328-343.—Prospective +Review, vol. +4, 1848, pp. 539-555.—Democratic +Review, vol. 23, N.S., +1848, pp. 375-377.—Westminster +Review, vol. 50, 1849, +pp. 349-371.—Sharpe’s London +Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 56-60.—North +British Review, vol. +10, 1848, pp. 69-96; same +article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. +16, pp. 145-159.—New Monthly +Magazine, vol. 84, 1848, pp. +105-115; same article, Eclectic +Magazine, vol. 15, pp. 340-343.—Dublin +University Magazine, +vol. 33, 1849, pp. 28-35.—Democratic +Review, vol. 26, +N.S., 1850, pp. 415-421.</p> + +<p>—— <i>My Copy of.</i> Tinsley’s Magazine, +by Richard Dowling, vol. +25, 1879, pp. 427-436.</p> + +<p>—— <i>New Editions of.</i> Dial, by +W. M. Payne, vol. 4, 1884, pp. +255, 256.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Le Paganisme poétique en +Angleterre.</i> Revue des Deux +Mondes, by Louis Étienne, Tom. +69, période 2, pp. 291-317.—Eclectic +Review, vol. 8, 1817, +pp. 267-275.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Poems of.</i> Examiner, by Leigh +Hunt, June 1, July 6 and +13, 1817.—Edinburgh Review, +by F. Jeffrey, vol. 34, 1820, +pp. 203-213.—Tait’s Edinburgh +Magazine, vol. 8, N.S., 1841, +pp. 650, 651.—Dublin University +Magazine, vol. 21, 1843, +pp. 690-703.—Edinburgh Review, +vol. 90, 1849, pp. 424-430.—Massachusetts +Quarterly +Review, vol. 2, 1849, pp. 414-428.—Dublin +University Magazine, +vol. 83, 1874, pp. 699-706.—North +American Review, +vol. 124, 1877, pp. 500-501.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Poetry, Music, and Painting: +Coleridge and Keats.</i> National +Review, by W. J. Courthope, +vol. 5, 1885, pp. 504-518.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p> + +<p>—— <i>Recollections of.</i> Gentleman’s +Magazine, by Charles Cowden +Clarke, vol. 12, N.S., 1874, pp. +177-204; same article, Littell’s +Living Age, vol. 121, pp. 174-188; +Every Saturday, vol. 16, +p. 262, etc., 669, etc.—Atlantic +Monthly, by C. C. +Clarke, vol. 7, 1861, pp. 86-100.</p> + +<p>—— <i>School House of, at Enfield.</i> +St. James’s Magazine Holiday +Annual, 1875, by Charles +Cowden Clarke.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Thoughts on.</i> New Dominion +Monthly (portrait), by Robert +S. Weir, 1877, pp. 293-300.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Unpublished Notes on Milton.</i> +Athenæum, Oct. 26, 1872, pp. +529, 530.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Unpublished Notes on Shakespeare.</i> +Athenæum, Nov. 16, +1872, p. 634.</p> + +<p>—— <i>Vicissitudes of his fame.</i> +Atlantic Monthly, by J. Severn, +vol. 11, 1863, pp. 401-407; +same article, Sharpe’s London +Magazine, vol. 34, N.S., 1869, +pp. 246-249.</p></div> + + +<h3>VII.—CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.</h3> + +<table summary="Chronological List of Works"> +<tr> +<td class="tdb">Poems</td> +<td class="tdb">1817</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdb">Endymion</td> +<td class="tdb">1818</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdb">Lamia, etc.</td> +<td class="tdb">1820</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdb">Life, letters, and literary remains</td> +<td class="tdb">1848</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdb">Letters to Fanny Brawne</td> +<td class="tdb">1878</td></tr> +<tr> +<td class="tdb">Letters</td> +<td class="tdb">1883</td></tr> +</table> + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> A small point here may deserve a note. A letter from John +Keats to his brother George, under date of September 21st, 1819, +contains the following words: “Our bodies, every seven years, are +completely fresh-materialed: seven years ago it was not this hand +that clenched itself against Hammond.†Another version of the +same letter (the true wording of which is matter of some dispute) +substitutes: “Mine is not the same hand I clenched at Hammond’s.†+Mr. Buxton Forman, who gives the former phrase as the genuine +one, thinks that “this phrase points to a serious rupture as the cause +of his quitting his apprenticeship to Hammond.†My own inclination +is to surmise that the accurate reading may be—“It was not +this hand that clenched itself against Hammond’sâ€; indicating, not +any quarrel, but the friendly habitual clasp of hand against hand. +“Seven years ago†would reach back to September 1812: whereas +Keats did not part from Hammond until 1814.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> This is Hunt’s own express statement. It has been disputed, +but I am not prepared to reject it.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Biographers have been reticent on this subject. Keats’s statement +however speaks for itself, and a high medical authority, Dr. +Richardson, writing in <i>The Asclepiad</i> for April 1884, and reviewing +the whole subject of the poet’s constitutional and other ailments, +says that Keats in Oxford “runs loose, and pays a forfeit for his +indiscretion which ever afterwards physically and morally embarrasses +him.†He pronounces that Keats’s early death was “expedited, +perhaps excited, by his own imprudence,†but was substantially due +to hereditary disease. His mother, as we have already seen, had +died of the malady which killed the poet, consumption. It is not +clear to me what Keats meant by saying that “from his <i>employment</i>†+his health would be insecure. One might suppose that he was +thinking of the long and haphazard working hours of a young +surgeon or medical man; in which case, this seems to be the latest +instance in which he spoke of himself as still belonging to that +profession.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Hitherto printed “lifeâ€; it seems to me clear that “lips†is the +right word.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> In Medwin’s “Life of Shelley,†vol. ii. pp. 89 to 92, are some +interesting remarks upon Keats’s character and demeanour, written +in a warm and sympathetic tone. Some of them were certainly +penned by Miss Brawne (Mrs. Lindon), and possibly all of them. +Mr. Colvin (p. 233 of his book) has called special attention to these +remarks: I forbear from quoting them. A leading point is to +vindicate Keats from the imputation of “violence of temper.â€</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> This passage is taken from Lord Houghton’s “Life, &c., of +Keats,†first published in 1848, and by “home†he certainly means +Wentworth Place, Hampstead. Yet in his Aldine Edition of +Keats, his lordship says that the poet “was at that time, very much +against Mr. Brown’s desire and advice, living alone in London.†+This latter statement may possibly be correct—I question it. The +passage, as written by Lord Houghton, is condensed from the +narrative of Brown. The latter is given verbatim in Mr. Colvin’s +“Keats,†and is, of course, the more important and interesting +of the two. I abstain from quoting it, solely out of regard to +Mr. Colvin’s rights of priority.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> Apparently Miss Brawne had remonstrated against the imputation +of “flirting with Brown,†and much else to like effect in a +recent letter from Keats.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> I observe this name occurring once elsewhere in relation to +Keats, but am not clear whose house it represents.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> It has been suggested (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as printed in +Mr. Forman’s edition of Keats) that the poem here referred to is +“The Eve of St. Mark.†Keats had begun it fully a year and a +half before the date of this letter, but, not having continued it, he +might have spoken of “having it in his head.â€</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> This may require a word of explanation. Keats, detained at +Portsmouth by stress of weather, had landed for a day, and seen his +friend Mr. Snook, at Bedhampton. Brown was then in Chichester, +only ten miles off, but of this Keats had not at the time been aware.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> The — before “you†appears in the letter, as printed in Mr. +Forman’s edition of Keats. It might seem that Keats hesitated a +moment whether to write “you†or “Miss Brawne.â€</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> No such letter is known. It has been stated that Keats, after +leaving home, could never summon up resolution enough to write to +Miss Brawne: possibly this statement ought to be limited to the +time after he had reached Italy.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Lord Houghton says that Keats in Naples “could not bear to +go to the opera, on account of the sentinels who stood constantly +on the stage:†he spoke of “the continual visible tyranny of this +government,†and said “I will not leave even my bones in the +midst of this despotism.†Sentinels on the stage have, I believe, +been common in various parts of the continent, as a mere matter of +government parade, or of routine for preserving public order. The +other points (for which no authority is cited by Lord Houghton) +must, I think, be over-stated. In November 1820 the short-lived +constitution of the kingdom of Naples was in full operation, and +neither tyranny nor despotism was in the ascendant—rather a certain +degree of popular license.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> The reader of Keats’s preface will note that this is a misrepresentation. +Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism, nor +did he ask to remain uncriticized in order that he might write +more. What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of +him for hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be +aware that Keats’s own sense of failure in “Endymion†was as +fierce a hell as he could be chastised by.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> This phrase stands printed with inverted commas, as a quotation. +It is not, however, a quotation from the letter of J. S.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> “Coolness†(which seems to be the right word) in the letter to +Miss Mitford.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> Severn’s view of the matter some years afterwards has however +received record in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson. Under the +date May 6, 1837, we read—“He [Severn] denies that Keats’s +death was hastened by the article in the <i>Quarterly</i>.â€</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> The passage which begins— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10">“Hard by<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stood serene Cupids watching silentlyâ€<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p> +has some affinity with a passage in Shelley’s “Adonais.†The +latter passage is, however, more directly based upon one in the +Idyll of Bion on Adonis.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> I do not clearly understand from the poem whether Endymion +does or does not know, until the story nears its conclusion, that the +goddess who favours him is Diana. He appears at any rate to +<i>guess</i> as much, either during this present interview or shortly afterwards.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> Keats has been laughed at for ignorance in printing “Visit my +Cythereaâ€; but it appears on good evidence that what he really +wrote was “Visit thou my Cythera.†A false quantity in this same +canto, “NèptÅnus,†cannot be explained away.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> Declared it in some very odd lines; for instance— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Do gently murder half my soul, and I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall feel the other half so utterly!â€<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> See <a href="#Page_52">p. 52</a> as to Miss Brawne.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> I presume the “three masterpieces†are “The Eve of St. +Agnes,†“Hyperion,†and “Lamiaâ€; this leaves out of count the +short “Belle Dame sans Merci,†and the unfinished “Eve of St. +Mark,†but certainly not because Dante Rossetti rated those lower +than the three others.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> There are some various readings in this poem (as here, +“wretched wightâ€); I adopt the phrases which I prefer.</p></div> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 95%;" /> + +<div class="trans_note"> +<p class="center"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a><big>TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:</big></p> + +<p>Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, and inconsistent +hyphenation. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation have been +fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:</p> + +<p><a name="Page_110tn" id="Page_110tn"></a>page 110: typo fixed<br /> + +In <a href="#Page_110t">Feburary[February]</a> 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, +undertook to write a sonnet each upon the river Nile.<br /><br /> + +<a name="Page_150tn" id="Page_150tn"></a>page 150: typo fixed<br /> + +which could not be made applicable or subservient to the +purposes of poetry. Many will remember the <a href="#Page_150t">ancedote[ancedote]</a>, +proper to Haydon’s “immortal dinnerâ€<br /><br /> + +<a name="Page_201tn" id="Page_201tn"></a>page 201: typo fixed<br /> + +seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is +a <a href="#Page_201t">palpaple[palpable]</a> fact that this address, according to its place in</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of John Keats, by William Michael Rossetti + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN KEATS *** + +***** This file should be named 31682-h.htm or 31682-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31682/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Life of John Keats + +Author: William Michael Rossetti + +Release Date: March 18, 2010 [EBook #31682] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN KEATS *** + + + + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + LIFE OF JOHN KEATS. + + BY + + WILLIAM MICHAEL ROSSETTI. + + + LONDON + WALTER SCOTT + 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW + + 1887 + + (_All rights reserved._) + + + * * * * * + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. PAGE + + Keats's grandfather Jennings; his father and mother; Keats + born in London, October 31, 1795; his brothers and sister; + goes to the school of John Clarke at Enfield, and is tutored + by Charles Cowden Clarke; death of his parents; is + apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond; leaves Hammond, + and studies surgery; reads Spenser, and takes to poetry; + his literary acquaintances--Leigh Hunt, Haydon, J. + Hamilton Reynolds, Dilke, &c.; Keats's first volume, + "Poems," 1817 11 + + +CHAPTER II. + + Keats begins "Endymion," May 1817; his health suffers in + Oxford; finishes "Endymion" in November; his friend, + Charles Armitage Brown; his brother George marries + and emigrates to America; Keats and Brown make a + walking tour in Scotland and Ireland; returns to Hampstead, + owing to a sore throat; death of his brother Tom; + his description of Miss Cox ("Charmian"), and of Miss + Brawne, with whom he falls in love; a difference with + Haydon; visits Winchester; George Keats returns for + a short while from America, but goes away again without + doing anything to relieve John Keats from straits in + money matters. 23 + + +CHAPTER III. + + Keats's consumptive illness begins, February 1820; he rallies, + but has a relapse in June; he stays with Leigh Hunt, and + leaves him suddenly; publication of his last volume, + "Lamia" &c.; returns to Hampstead before starting + for Italy; his love-letters to Miss Brawne--extracts; + Haydon's last sight of him; he sails for Italy with Joseph + Severn; letter to Brown; Naples and Rome; extracts from + Severn's letters; Keats dies in Rome, February 23, 1821. 40 + + +CHAPTER IV. + + Keats rhymes in infancy; his first writings, the "Imitation + of Spenser," and some sonnets; not precocious as a poet; + his sonnet on Chapman's Homer; contents of his first + volume, "Poems," 1817; Hunt's first sight of his poems + in MS.; "Sleep and Poetry," extract regarding poetry + of the Pope school, &c.; the publishers, Messrs. Ollier, + give up the volume as a failure. 64 + + +CHAPTER V. + + "Endymion"; Keats's classical predilections; extract (from + "I stood tiptoe" &c.) about Diana and Endymion; details + as to the composition of "Endymion," 1817; preface to + the poem; the critique in _The Quarterly Review_; attack + in _Blackwood's Magazine_; question whether Keats broke + down under hostile criticism; evidence on this subject in + his own letters, and by Shelley, Lord Houghton, Haydon, + Byron, Hunt, George Keats, Cowden Clarke, Severn; + conclusion. 73 + + +CHAPTER VI. + + Poems included in the "Lamia" volume, 1820; "Isabella"; + "The Eve of St. Agnes"; "Hyperion"; "Lamia"; + five odes; other poems--sonnet on "The Nile"; "The + Eve of St. Mark," "Otho the Great," "La Belle Dame + sans Merci," "The Cap and Bells," final sonnet, &c.; + prose writings. 107 + + +CHAPTER VII. + + Keats's grave in Rome; projects of Brown and others for + writing his Life; his brother George, and his sister, Mrs. + Llanos; Miss Brawne; discussion as to Hunt's friendship + to Keats; other friends--Bailey, Haydon, Shelley. 118 + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + Keats's appearance; portraits; difficulties in estimating his + character; his poetic ambition, and feeling on subjects of + historical or public interest; his intensity of thought; + moral tone; question as to his strength of character--Haydon's + opinion; demeanour among friends; studious + resolves; suspicious tendency; his feeling toward women--poem + quoted; love of flowers and music; politics; + irritation against Leigh Hunt; his letters; antagonism + to science; remarks on contemporary writers; axioms on + poetry; self-analysis as to his perceptions as a poet; feelings + as to painting; sense of humour, punning, &c.; indifference + in religious matters; his sentiments as to the + immortality of the soul; fondness for wine and game; + summary. 124 + + +CHAPTER IX. + + Influence of Spenser discussed; flimsiness of Keats's first + volume; early sonnets; "Endymion"; Shelley's criticisms + of this poem; detailed argument of the poem; estimate + of "Endymion" as to invention and execution; + estimate of "Isabella"; of "The Eve of St. Agnes"; of + "The Eve of St. Mark"; of "Hyperion"; of "Otho the + Great"; of "Lamia"; "La Belle Dame sans Merci" + quoted and estimated; Keats's five great odes--extracts; + "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"; imagination in verbal + form distinctive of Keats; discussion of the term "faultless" + applied to Keats; details of execution in the "Ode + to a Nightingale"; other odes, sonnets, and lyrics; treatment + of women in Keats's last volume; his references to + "swooning"; his sensuousness and its correlative sentiment; + superiority of Shelley to Keats; final remarks as to + the quality of Keats's poetry. 163 + + +INDEX 211 + + + + +NOTE. + + +In all important respects I leave this brief "Life of Keats" to speak +for itself. There is only one point which I feel it needful to dwell +upon. In the summer of 1886 I was invited to undertake a life of Keats +for the present series, and I assented. Some while afterwards it was +publicly announced that a life of Keats, which had been begun by Mr. +Sidney Colvin long before for a different series, would be published at +an early date. I read up my materials, began in March 1887 the writing +of my book, finished it on June 3rd, and handed it over to the editor. +On June 10th Mr. Colvin's volume was published. I at once read it, and +formed a high opinion of its merits, and I found in it some new details +which could not properly be ignored by any succeeding biographer of the +poet. I therefore got my MS. back, and inserted here and there such +items of fresh information as were really needful for the true +presentment of my subject-matter. In justice both to Mr. Colvin and to +myself I drew upon his pages for only a minimum, not a maximum, of the +facts which they embody; and in all matters of opinion and criticism I +left my MS. exactly as it stood. The reader will thus understand that +the present "Life of Keats" is, in planning, structure, execution, and +estimate, entirely independent of Mr. Colvin's; but that I have +ultimately had the advantage of consulting Mr. Colvin's book as one of +my various sources of information--the latest and within its own lines +the completest of all. + + + + +LIFE OF KEATS. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + +A truism must do duty as my first sentence. There are long lives, and +there are eventful lives: there are also short lives, and uneventful +ones. Keats's life was both short and uneventful. To the differing +classes of lives different modes of treatment may properly be applied by +the biographer. In the case of a writer whose life was both long and +eventful, I might feel disposed to carry the whole narrative forward +_pari passu_, and to exhibit in one panorama the outward and the inward +career, the incidents and the product, the doings and environment, and +the writings, acting and re-acting upon one another. In the instance of +Keats this does not appear to me to be the most fitting method. It may +be more appropriate to apportion his Life into two sections: and to +treat firstly of his general course from the cradle to the grave, and +secondly of his performances in literature. The two things will +necessarily overlap to some extent, but I shall keep them apart so far +as may be convenient. When we have seen what he did and what he wrote, +we shall be prepared to enter upon some analysis of his character and +personality. This will form my third section; and in a fourth I shall +endeavour to estimate the quality and value of his writings, in +particular and in general. Thus I address myself in the first instance +to a narrative of the outer facts of his life. + + * * * * * + +John Keats came of undistinguished parentage. No biographer carries his +pedigree further than his maternal grandfather, or alleges that there +was any trace, however faint or remote, of ancestral eminence. The +maternal grandfather was a Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable, +called the Swan and Hoop, in the Pavement, Moorfields, London, opposite +the entrance to Finsbury Circus. The principal stableman or assistant in +the business was named Thomas Keats, of Devonshire or Cornish parentage. +He was a well-conducted, sensible, good-looking little man, and won the +favour of Jennings's daughter, named Frances or Fanny: they married, and +this rather considerable rise in his fortunes left Keats unassuming and +manly as before. He appears to have been a natural gentleman. Jennings +was a prosperous tradesman, and might have died rich (his death took +place in 1805) but for easy-going good-nature tending to the gullible. +Mrs. Keats seems to have been in character less uniform and +single-minded than her husband. She is described as passionately fond of +amusement, prodigal, dotingly attached to her children, more especially +John, much beloved by them in return, sensible, and at the same time +saturnine in demeanour: a personable tall woman with a large oval face. +Her pleasure-seeking tendency probably led her into some imprudences, +for her first baby, John, was a seven months' child. + +John Keats was born at the Moorfields place of business on the 31st of +October 1795. This date of birth is established by the register of +baptisms at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate: the date usually assigned, the +29th of October, appears to be inaccurate, though Keats himself, and +others of the family, believed in it. There were three other children of +the marriage--or four if we reckon a a son who died in infancy: George, +Thomas, and lastly Fanny, born in March 1803. An anecdote is told of +John when in the fifth year of his age, purporting to show forth the +depth of his childish affection for his mother. It is said that she then +lay seriously ill; and John stood sentinel at her chamber-door, holding +an old sword which he had picked up about the premises, and he remained +there for hours to prevent her being disturbed. One may fear, however, +that this anecdote has taken an ideal colouring through the lens of a +partial biographer. The painter Benjamin Robert Haydon--who, as we shall +see in the sequel, was extremely well acquainted with John Keats, and +who heard the story from his brother Thomas--records it thus: "He was, +when an infant, a most violent and ungovernable child. At five years of +age or thereabouts he once got hold of a naked sword, and, shutting the +door, swore nobody should go out. His mother wanted to do so; but he +threatened her so furiously she began to cry, and was obliged to wait +till somebody, through the window, saw her position, and came to her +rescue." It can scarcely be supposed that there were two different +occasions when the quinquennial John Keats superintended his mother and +her belongings with a naked sword--once in ardent and self-oblivious +affection, and once in petulant and froward excitement. + +The parents would have liked to send John to Harrow school: but, this +being finally deemed too expensive, he was placed in the Rev. John +Clarke's school at Enfield, then in high repute, and his brothers +followed him thither. The Enfield schoolhouse was a fine red-brick +building of the early eighteenth century, said to have been erected by a +retired West India merchant; the materials "moulded into designs +decorating the front with garlands of flowers and pomegranates, together +with heads of cherubim over two niches in the centre of the building." +This central part of the facade was eventually purchased for the South +Kensington Museum, and figures there as a screen in the structural +division. The schoolroom was forty feet long; the playground was a +spacious courtyard between the schoolroom and the house itself; a +garden, a hundred yards in length, stretched beyond the playground, +succeeded by a sweep of greensward, with a "lake" or well-sized pond: +there was also a two-acre field with a couple of cows. In this +commodious seat of sound learning, well cared for and well instructed so +far as his school course extended, John Keats remained for some years. +He came under the particular observation of the headmaster's son, Mr. +Charles Cowden Clarke, not very many years his senior. He was born in +1787, fostered Keats's interest in literature, became himself an +industrious writer of some standing, and died in 1877. Keats at school +did not show any exceptional talent, but he was, according to Mr. Cowden +Clarke's phrase, "a very orderly scholar," and got easily through his +tasks. In the last eighteen months of his schooling he took a new lease +of assiduity: he read a vast deal, and would keep to his book even +during meals. For two or three successive half-years he obtained the +first prize for voluntary work; and was to be found early and late +attending to some translation from the Latin or the French, to which he +would, when allowed his own way, sacrifice his recreation-time. He was +particularly fond of Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," Tooke's +"Pantheon," and Spence's "Polymetis": a line of reading presageful of +his own afterwork in the region of Greek mythology. Of the Grecian +language, however, he learned nothing: in Latin he proceeded as far as +the AEneid, and of his own accord translated much of that epic in +writing. Two of his favourite books were "Robinson Crusoe" and +Marmontel's "Incas of Peru." He must also have made some acquaintance +with Shakespeare, as he told a younger schoolfellow that he thought no +one durst read "Macbeth" alone in the house at two in the morning. Not +indeed that these bookish leanings formed the whole of his personality +as a schoolboy. He was noticeable for beauty of face and expression, +active and energetic, intensely pugnacious, and even quarrelsome. He was +very apt to get into a fight with boys much bigger than himself. Nor was +his younger brother George exempted: John would fight fiercely with +George, and this (if we may trust George's testimony) was always owing +to John's own unmanageable temper. The two brothers were none the less +greatly attached, both at school and afterwards. The youngest brother, +Thomas (always called Tom in family records), is reported to have been +as pugilistic as John; whereas George, when allowed his own way, was +pacific, albeit resolute. The ideal of all the three boys was a maternal +uncle, a naval officer of very stalwart presence, who had been in +Admiral Duncan's ship in the famous action off Camperdown; where he had +distinguished himself not only by signal gallantry, but by not getting +shot, though his tall form was a continual mark for hostile guns. + +While still a schoolboy at Enfield, John Keats lost both his parents. +The father died on the 16th of April 1804, in returning from a visit to +the school: a detail which serves to show us (for I do not find it +otherwise affirmed) that John could at the utmost have been only in the +ninth year of his age, possibly even younger, when his schooling began. +On leaving Enfield, the father dined at Southgate, and, going late +homewards, his horse fell in the City Road, and the rider's skull was +fractured. He was found about one o'clock in the morning speechless, and +expired towards eight, aged thirty-six. The mother suffered from +rheumatism, and later on from consumption; of which she died in February +1810. "John," so writes Haydon, "sat up whole nights with her in a great +chair, would suffer nobody to give her medicine or even cook her food +but himself, and read novels to her in her intervals of ease." She had +been an easily consoled widow, for, within a year from the decease of +her first husband, she married another, William Rawlings, who had +probably succeeded to the management of the business. She soon, however, +separated from Rawlings, and lived with her mother at Edmonton. After +her death Keats hid himself for some days in a nook under his master's +desk, passionately inconsolable. The four children, who inherited from +their grandparents (chiefly from their grandmother) a moderate fortune +of nearly L8,000 altogether, in which the daughter had the largest +share, were then left under the guardianship of Mr. Abbey, a city +merchant residing at Walthamstow. At the age of fifteen, or at some date +before the close of 1810, John quitted his school. + +A little stave of doggrel which Keats wrote to his sister, probably in +July 1818, gives a glimpse of what he was like at the time when he and +his brothers were living with their grandmother. + + "There was a naughty boy, + And a naughty boy was he: + He kept little fishes + In washing-tubs three, + In spite + Of the might + Of the maid, + Nor afraid + Of his granny good. + He often would + Hurly-burly + Get up early + And go + By hook or crook + To the brook, + And bring home + Miller's-thumb, + Tittlebat, + Not over fat, + Minnows small + As the stall + Of a glove, + Not above + The size + Of a nice + Little baby's + Little fingers." + +He was fond of "goldfinches, tomtits, minnows, mice, +ticklebacks, dace, cock-salmons, and all the whole tribe of the bushes +and the brooks." + +A career in life was promptly marked out for the youth. While still aged +fifteen, he was apprenticed, with a premium of L210, to Mr. Hammond, a +surgeon of some repute at Edmonton. Mr. Cowden Clarke says that this +arrangement evidently gave Keats satisfaction: apparently he refers +rather to the convenient vicinity of Edmonton to Enfield than to the +surgical profession itself. The indenture was to have lasted five years; +but, for some reason which is not wholly apparent, Keats left Hammond +before the close of his apprenticeship.[1] If Haydon was rightly +informed (presumably by Keats himself), the reason was that the youth +resented surgery as the antagonist of a possible poetic vocation, and +"at last his master, weary of his disgust, gave him up his time." He +then took to walking St. Thomas's Hospital; and, after a short stay at +No. 8 Dean Street, Borough, and next in St. Thomas's Street, he resided +along with his two brothers--who were at the time clerks in Mr. Abbey's +office--in the Poultry, Cheapside, over the passage which led to the +Queen's Arms Tavern. Two of his surgical companions were Mr. Henry +Stephens, who afterwards introduced creosote into medical practice, and +Mr. George Wilson Mackereth. Keats attended the usual lectures, and made +careful annotations in a book still preserved. Mr. Stephens relates that +Keats was fond of scribbling rhyme of a sort among professional notes, +especially those of a fellow-student, and he sometimes showed graver +verses to his associates. Finally, in July 1815, he passed the +examination at Apothecaries' Hall with considerable credit--more than +his familiars had counted upon; and in March 1816 he was appointed a +dresser at Guy's under Mr. Lucas. Cowden Clarke once inquired how far +Keats liked his studies at the hospital. The youth replied that he did +not relish anatomy: "The other day, for instance, during the lecture, +there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a whole troop of +creatures floating in the ray, and I was off with them to Oberon and +fairyland." + +Readers of Keats's poetry will have no difficulty in believing that, +ever since his first introduction into a professional life, surgery and +literature had claimed a divided allegiance from him. When at Edmonton +with Mr. Hammond, he kept up his connection with the Clarke family, +especially with Charles Cowden Clarke. He was perpetually borrowing +books; and at last, about the beginning of 1812 he asked for Spenser's +"Faery Queen," rather to the surprise of the family, who had no idea +that that particular book could be at all in his line. The effect, +however, was very noticeable. Keats walked to Enfield at least once a +week, for the purpose of talking over Spenser with Cowden Clarke. "He +ramped through the scenes of the romance," said Clarke, "like a young +horse turned into a spring meadow." A fine touch of description or of +imagery, or energetic epithets such as "the sea-shouldering whale," +would light up his face with ecstasy. His leisure had already been given +to reading and translation, including the completion of his rendering of +the AEneid. A literary craving was now at fever-heat, and he took to +writing verses as well as reading them. Soon surgery and letters were to +conflict no longer--the latter obtaining, contrary to the liking of Mr. +Abbey, the absolute and permanent mastery. Keats indeed always denied +that he abandoned surgery for the express purpose of taking to poetry: +he alleged that his motive had been the dread of doing some mischief in +his surgical operations. His last operation consisted in opening a +temporal artery; he was entirely successful in it, but the success +appeared to himself like a miracle, the recurrence of which was not to +be reckoned on. + +While surgery was waning with Keats, and finally dying out--an upshot +for which the exact date is not assigned, nor perhaps assignable--he was +making, at first through his intimacy with Cowden Clarke, some good +literary acquaintances. The brothers John and Leigh Hunt were the centre +of the circle to which Keats was thus admitted. John was the publisher, +and Leigh the editor, of _The Examiner_. They had both been lately +fined, and imprisoned for two years, for a libel on the Prince Regent, +George IV.; it was perhaps legally a libel, and was certainly a +castigation laid on with no indulgent hand. Leigh Hunt (born in 1784, +and therefore Keats's senior by some eleven years) is known to us all as +a fresh and airy essayist, a fresh and airy poet, a liberal thinker in +the morals both of society and of politics (hardly a politician in the +stricter sense of the term), a charming companion, a too-constant +cracker of genial jocosities and of puns. He understood good literature +both instinctively and critically; but was too full of tricksy +mannerisms, and of petted byways in thought and style, to be an +altogether safe associate for a youthful literary aspirant, whether as +model or as Mentor. Leigh Hunt first saw Keats in the spring of 1816, +not at his residence in Hampstead as has generally been supposed, but at +No. 8 York Buildings, New Road.[2] The earliest meeting of Keats with +Haydon was in November 1816, at Hunt's house; Haydon born in 1786, the +zealous and impatient champion of high art, wide-minded and combative, +too much absorbed in his love for art to be without a considerable +measure of self-seeking for art's apostle, himself. He painted into his +large picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem the head of Keats, along +with those of Wordsworth and others. Another acquaintance was Mr. +Charles Ollier, the publisher, who wrote verse and prose of his own. The +Ollier firm in the early spring of 1817 became the publishers of Keats's +first volume of poems, of which more anon. Still earlier than the +Hunts, Haydon, and Ollier, Keats had known John Hamilton Reynolds, his +junior by a year, a poetical writer of some mark, now too nearly +forgotten, author of "The Garden of Florence," "The Fancy," and the +prose tale, "Miserrimus"; he was the son of the writing-master at Christ +Hospital, and Keats became intimate with the whole family, though not +invariably well pleased with them all. One of the sisters married Thomas +Hood. Through Reynolds Keats made acquaintance with Mr. Benjamin Bailey, +born towards 1794, then a student at Oxford reading for the Church, +afterwards Archdeacon of Colombo in Ceylon. Charles Wentworth Dilke, +born in 1789, the critic, and eventually editor of _The Athenaeum_, was +another intimate; and in course of time Keats knew Charles Wells, seven +years younger than himself, the author of the dramatic poem "Joseph and +his Brethren," and of the prose "Stories after Nature." Other friends +will receive mention as we progress. I have for the present said enough +to indicate what was the particular niche in the mansion of English +literary life in which Keats found himself housed at the opening of his +career. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + +We have now reached the year 1817 and the month of May, when Keats was +in the twenty-second year of his age. He then wrote that he had +"forgotten all surgery," and was beginning at Margate his romantic epic +of "Endymion," reading and writing about eight hours a day. Keats had +previously been at Carisbrooke in the Isle of Wight, but had run away +from there, finding that the locality, while it charmed, also depressed +him. He had left London for the island, apparently with the view of +having greater leisure for study and composition. His brother Tom was +with him at Carisbrooke and at Margate. He was already provided with a +firm of publishers, Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, willing to undertake the +risk of "Endymion," and they advanced him a sum sufficient for +continuing at work on it with comfort. In September he went with Mr. +Benjamin Bailey to Oxford: they made an excursion to Stratford-on-Avon, +and Keats was back at Hampstead by the end of the month. It would appear +that in Oxford Keats, in the heat of youthful blood, committed an +indiscretion of which we do not know the details, nor need we give them +if we knew them; for on the 8th of October he wrote to Bailey in these +terms: "The little mercury I have taken has corrected the poison and +improved my health,[3] though I feel, from my employment, that I shall +never again be secure in robustness." The residence of Keats and his +brother Tom in Hampstead, a first-floor lodging, was in Well Walk, No. +1, next to the Wells Tavern, which was then called the Green Man. The +reader who has a head for localities should bear this point well in +mind, should carefully discriminate the house in Well Walk from another +house, Wentworth Place, afterwards tenanted by Keats and others at +Hampstead, and, every time that the question occurs to his thought, +should pass a mental vote of thanks to Mr. Buxton Forman for the great +pains which he took to settle the point, and the lucid and pleasant +account which he has given of it. Keats was at Leatherhead in November; +finished the first draft of "Endymion" at Burford Bridge, near Dorking, +on the 28th of that month, and returned to Hampstead for the winter. +Two anecdotes which have often been repeated belong apparently to about +this date. One of them purports that Keats gave a sound drubbing in +Hampstead to a butcher, or a butcher's boy, who was ill-treating a small +boy, or else a cat. Hunt simply says that the butcher "had been +insolent,"--by implication, to Keats himself. The "butcher's boy" has +obtained traditional currency; but, according to George Keats, the +offender was "a scoundrel in livery," the locality "a blind alley at +Hampstead." Clarke says that the stand-up fight lasted nearly an hour. +Keats was an undersized man, in fact he was not far removed from the +dwarfish, being barely more than five feet high, and this small feat of +stubborn gallantry deserves to be appraised and praised accordingly. The +other anecdote is that Coleridge met Keats along with Leigh Hunt in a +lane near Highgate, "a loose, slack, not well-dressed youth," and after +shaking hands with Keats, he said aside to Hunt, "There is death in that +hand." Nothing is extant to show that at so early a date as this, or +even for some considerable while after, any of Keats's immediate friends +shared the ominous prevision of Coleridge. + +In March 1818 Keats joined his brothers at Teignmouth in Devonshire, and +in April "Endymion" was published. In June he set off on a pedestrian +tour of some extent with a friend whose name will frequently recur from +this point forwards, Charles Armitage Brown. One is generally inclined +to get some idea of what a man was like; if one knows what he was +_un_like much the same purpose is served. In April 1819 Keats wrote +some bantering verses about Brown, which are understood to go mainly by +contraries we therefore infer Brown to have presented a physical and +moral aspect the reverse of the following-- + + "He is to meet a melancholy carle, + Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair, + As hath the seeded thistle when a parle + It holds with Zephyr ere it sendeth fair + Its light balloons into the summer air. + Thereto his beard had not begun to bloom; + No brush had touched his chin, or razor sheer; + No care had touched his cheek with mortal doom, + But new he was and bright as scarf from Persian loom. + + "Ne cared he for wine or half-and-half, + Ne cared he for fish or flesh or fowl, + And sauces held he worthless as the chaff; + He 'sdained the swine-head at the wassail bowl. + Ne with lewd ribalds sat he cheek by jowl, + Ne with sly lemans in the scorner's chair; + But after water-brooks this pilgrim's soul + Panted, and all his food was woodland air, + Though he would oft-times feast on gillyflowers rare. + + "The slang of cities in no wise he knew; + 'Tipping the wink' to him was heathen Greek. + He sipped no olden Tom or ruin blue, + Or Nantz or cherry-brandy, drank full meek + By many a damsel brave and rouge of cheek. + Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat; + Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek + For curled Jewesses with ankles neat, + Who, as they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet." + +Mr. Brown, son of a London stockbroker from Scotland, was a man several +years older than Keats, born in 1786. He was a Russia merchant retired +from business, of much culture and instinctive sympathy with genius, and +he enjoyed assisting the efforts of young men of promise. He had +produced the libretto of an opera, "Narensky," and he eventually +published a book on the Sonnets of Shakespeare. From the date we have +now reached, the summer of 1818, which was more than a year following +their first introduction, Brown may be regarded as the most intimate of +all Keats's friends, Dilke coming next to him. + +The pedestrian tour with Brown was the sequel of a family leave-taking +at Liverpool. George Keats, finding in himself no vocation for trade, +with its smug compliances and sleek assiduities (and John agreed with +him in these views), had determined to emigrate to America, and rough it +in a new settlement for a living, perhaps for fortune; and, as a +preliminary step, he had married Miss Georgiana Augusta Wylie, a girl of +sixteen, daughter of a deceased naval officer. The sonnet "Nymph of the +downward smile" &c. was addressed to her. John Keats and Brown, +therefore, accompanied George and his bride to Liverpool, and saw them +off. They then started as pedestrians into the Lake country, the land of +Burns, Belfast, and the Western Highlands. Before starting on the trip +Keats had often been in such a state of health as to make it prudent +that he should not hazard exposure to night air; but in his excursion he +seems to have acted like a man of sound and rather hardy physique, +walking from day to day about twenty miles, and sometimes more, and his +various records of the trip have nothing of a morbid or invaliding tone. +This was not, however, to last long; the Isle of Mull proved too much +for him. On the 23rd of July, writing to his brother Tom, he describes +the expedition thus: "The road through the island, or rather track, is +the most dreary you can think of; between dreary mountains, over bog and +rock and river, with our breeches tucked up and our stockings in +hand.... We had a most wretched walk of thirty-seven miles across the +island of Mull, and then we crossed to Iona." In another letter he says: +"Walked up to my knees in bog; got a sore throat; gone to see Icolmkill +and Staffa." From this time forward the mention of the sore throat +occurs again and again; sometimes it is subsiding, or as good as gone; +at other times it has returned, and causes more or less inconvenience. +Brown wrote of it as "a violent cold and ulcerated throat." The latest +reference to it comes in December 1819, only two months preceding the +final and alarming break-down in the young poet's health. In Scotland, +at any rate, amid the exposure and exertion of the walking tour, the +sore throat was not to be staved off; so, having got as far as +Inverness, Keats, under medical advice, reluctantly cut his journey +short, parted from Brown, and went on board the smack from Cromarty. A +nine days' passage brought him to London Bridge, and on the 18th of +August he presented himself to the rather dismayed eyes of Mrs. Dilke. +"John Keats," she wrote, "arrived here last night, as brown and as +shabby as you can imagine: scarcely any shoes left, his jacket all torn +at the back, a fur cap, a great plaid, and his knapsack. I cannot tell +what he looked like." More ought to be said here of the details of +Keats's Scottish and Irish trip; but such details, not being of +essential importance as incidents in his life, could only be given +satisfactorily in the form of copious extracts from his letters, and for +these--readable and picturesque as they are--I have not adequate space. +He preferred, on the whole, the Scotch people to the little which he saw +of the Irish. Just as Keats was leaving Scotland, because of his own +ailments, he had been summoned away thence on account of the more +visibly grave malady of his brother Tom, who was in an advanced stage of +consumption; but it appears that the letter did not reach his hands at +the time. + +The next three months were passed by Keats along with Tom at their +Hampstead lodgings. Anxiety and affection--warm affection, deep +anxiety--were of no avail. Tom died at the beginning of December, aged +just twenty, and was buried on the 7th of that month. The words in "King +Lear," "Poor Tom," remain underlined by the surviving brother. + +John Keats was now solitary in the world. Tom was dead, George and his +bride in America, Fanny, his girlish sister, a permanent inmate of the +household of Mr. and Mrs. Abbey at Walthamstow. In December he quitted +his lodgings at Hampstead, and set up house along with Mr. Brown in what +was then called Wentworth Place, Hampstead, now Lawn Bank; Brown being +rightly the tenant, and Keats a paying resident with Brown. Wentworth +Place consisted of only two houses. One of them was thus inhabited by +Brown and Keats, the other by the Dilkes. In the first of these houses, +when Brown and Keats were away, and afterwards in the second, there was +also a well-to-do family of the name of Brawne,--a mother, with a son +and two daughters. Lawn Bank is the penultimate house on the right of +John Street, next to Wentworth House: Dr. Sharpey passed some of his +later years in it. This is, beyond all others, the dwelling which +remains permanently linked with the memory of Keats. + +While Tom was still lingering out the days of his brief life, Keats made +the acquaintance of two young ladies. He has left us a description of +both of them. His portraiture of the first, Miss Jane Cox, is written in +a tone which might seem the preliminary to a _grande passion_; but this +did not prove so; she rapidly passed out of his existence and out of his +memory. His portraiture of the second, Miss Fanny Brawne, does not +suggest anything beyond a tepid liking which might perhaps merge into a +definite antipathy; this also was delusive, for he was from the first +smitten with Miss Brawne, and soon profoundly in love with her--I might +say desperately in love, for indeed desperation, which became despair, +was the main ingredient in his passion, in all but its earliest stages. +I shall here extract these two passages, for both of them are of +exceptional importance for our biography--one as acquainting us with +Keats's general range of feeling in relation to women, and the other as +introducing the most serious and absorbing sentiment of the last two +years of his life. On October 29, 1818, he wrote as follows to his +brother George and his wife in America:-- + + "The Misses Reynolds are very kind to me.... On my return, the + first day I called [this was probably towards the 20th of + September], they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a + cousin of theirs, Miss Cox, who, having fallen out with her + grandpapa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs. Reynolds to + take asylum in her house. She is an East Indian, and ought to be + her grandfather's heir.... From what I hear she is not without + faults of a real kind; but she has others which are more apt to + make women of inferior claims hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, + but is at least a Charmian; she has a rich Eastern look; she has + fine eyes and fine manners. When she comes into the room she + makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is + too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may + address her; from habit she thinks that nothing particular. I + always find myself more at ease with such a woman; the picture + before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot + possibly feel with anything inferior. I am at such times too much + occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble; I forget + myself entirely, because I live in her. You will by this time + think I am in love with her; so, before I go any further, I will + tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of + Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an + amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation + with an imperial woman, the very yes and no of whose lips[4] is + to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon home with me in my + pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her, and her + like, because one has no _sensations_; what we both are is taken + for granted. You will suppose I have by this time had much talk + with her. No such thing; there are the Misses Reynolds on the + look out. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at + her; they call her a flirt to me--what a want of knowledge! She + walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn to her + with a magnetic power; this they call flirting! They do not know + things; they do not know what a woman is. I believe, though, she + has faults, the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had. + Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are + two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things:--the + worldly, theatrical, and pantomimical; and the unearthly, + spiritual, and ethereal. In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, + and this Charmian, hold the first place in our mind; in the + latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, + and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of + the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal + being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, + and I should like you to save me." + +So much for Miss Cox, the Charmian whom Keats was not in love with. This +is not absolutely the sole mention of her in his letters, but it is the +only one of importance. We now turn to Miss Brawne, the young lady with +whom he had fallen very much in love at a date even preceding that to +which the present description must belong. The description comes from a +letter to George and Georgiana Keats, written probably towards the +middle of December 1818. It is true that the name Brawne does not appear +in the printed version of the letter, but the "very positive +conviction" expressed by Mr. Forman that that name really does stand in +the MS., a conviction "shared by members of her family," may safely be +adopted by all my readers. I therefore insert the name where a blank had +heretofore appeared in print. + + "Perhaps, as you are fond of giving me sketches of characters, + you may like a little picnic of scandal, even across the + Atlantic. Shall I give you Miss Brawne? She is about my height, + with a fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort. She + wants sentiment in every feature. She manages to make her hair + look well; her nostrils are very fine, though a little painful; + her mouth is bad, and good; her profile is better than her full + face, which indeed is not 'full,' but pale and thin, without + showing any bone; her shape is very graceful, and so are her + movements; her arms are good, her hands bad-ish, her feet + tolerable. She is not seventeen [Keats, if he really wrote 'not + seventeen,' was wrong here; 'not nineteen' would have been + correct, as she was born on August 9, 1800.] But she is ignorant, + monstrous in her behaviour, flying out in all directions; calling + people such names that I was forced lately to make use of the + term 'minx.' This is, I think, from no innate vice, but from a + penchant she has for acting stylishly. I am, however, tired of + such style, and shall decline any more of it. She had a friend to + visit her lately. You have known plenty such. She plays the + music, but without one sensation but the feel of the ivory at her + fingers. She is a downright Miss, without one set-off. We hated + her ["We" would apparently be Keats, Brown, and the Dilkes], and + smoked her, and baited her, and I think drove her away. Miss + Brawne thinks her a paragon of fashion, and says she is the only + woman in the world she would change persons with. What a stupe! + She is as superior as a rose to a dandelion." + +At the time when Keats wrote these words he had known Miss Brawne for a +couple of months, more or less, having first seen her in October or +November at the house of the Dilkes. It might seem that he was about +this time in a state of feeling propense to love. _Some_ woman was +required to fill the void in his heart. The woman might have been Miss +Cox, whom he met in September. As the event turned out, it was not she, +but it _was_ Miss Brawne, whom he met in October or November. Fanny +Brawne was the elder daughter of a gentleman of independent means, who +died while she was still a child; he left another daughter and a son +with their mother; and the whole family, as already mentioned, lived at +times in the same house which the Dilkes occupied in Wentworth-place, +Hampstead, and at other times in the adjoining house, while not tenanted +by Brown and Keats. Miss Brawne (I quote here from Mr. Forman) "had much +natural pride and buoyancy, and was quite capable of affecting higher +spirits and less concern than she really felt. But, as to the +genuineness of her attachment to Keats, some of those who knew her +personally have no doubt whatever."[5] If so--or indeed whether so or +not--it is a pity that she was wont, after Keats's death, to speak of +him (as has been averred) as "that foolish young poet who was in love +with me." That Keats was a poet and a young poet is abundantly true; but +that he was a foolish one had even before his death, and especially very +soon after it, been found out to be a gross delusion by a large number +of people, and might just as well have been found out by his betrothed +bride in addition. I know of only one portrait of Miss Brawne; it is a +silhouette by Edouart, engraved in two of Mr. Forman's publications. A +silhouette is one of the least indicative forms of portraiture for +enabling one to judge whether the sitter was handsome or not. This +likeness shows a very profuse mass of hair, a tall, rather sloping, +forehead, a long and prominent aquiline nose, a mouth and chin of the +_petite_ kind, a very well-developed throat, and a figure somewhat small +in proportion to the head. The face is not of the sort which I should +suppose to have ever been beautiful in an artist's eyes, or in a poet's +either; and indeed Keats's description of Miss Brawne, which I have just +cited, is qualified, chilly, and critical, with regard to beauty. +Nevertheless, his love-letters to Miss Brawne, most of which have been +preserved and published, speak of her beauty very emphatically. "The +very first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal;" "I cannot +conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you, but beauty;" "all +I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your beauty." It seems +probable that Keats was the declared lover of Miss Brawne in April 1819 +at the latest--more probably in February; and when his first published +letter to her was written, July 1819, he and she must certainly have +been already engaged, or all but engaged, to marry. This was contrary to +Mrs. Brawne's liking. They appear to have contemplated--anything but +willingly on the poet's part--a tolerably long engagement; for he was a +young man of twenty-three, with stinted means, no regular profession, +and no occupation save that of producing verse derided in the high +places of criticism. He spoke indeed of re-studying in Edinburgh for the +medical profession: this was a vague notion, with which no practical +beginning was made. An early marriage, followed by a year or so of +pleasuring and of intellectual advancement in some such place as Rome or +Zurich, was what Keats really longed for. + +We must now go back a little--to December 1818. Haydon was then still +engaged upon his picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and found his +progress impeded by want of funds, and by a bad attack, from which he +frequently suffered, of weakness of eyesight. On the 22nd of the month, +Keats, with conspicuous generosity--and although he had already lent +nearly L200 to various friends--tendered him any money-aid which might +be in his power; asking merely that his friend would claim the +fulfilment of his promise only in the last resort. On January 7, 1819, +Haydon definitely accepted his offer; and Keats wrote back, hoping to +comply, and refusing to take any interest. His own money affairs were, +however, at this time almost at a deadlock, controlled by lawyers and by +his ex-guardian Mr. Abbey; and the amount which he had expected to +command as coming to him after his brother Tom's death was not +available. He had to explain as much in April 1819 to Haydon, who wrote +with some urgency. Eventually he did make a small loan to the +painter--L30; but very shortly afterwards (June 17th) was compelled to +ask for a reimbursement--"do borrow or beg somehow what you can for me." +There was a chancery-suit of old standing, begun soon after the death of +Mr. Jennings in 1805, and it continued to obstruct Keats in his money +affairs. The precise facts of these were also but ill-known to the poet, +who had potentially at his disposal certain funds which remained _perdu_ +and unused until two years after his death. On September 20, 1819, he +wrote to his brother George in America that Haydon had been unable to +make the repayment; and he added, "He did not seem to care much about +it, and let me go without my money with almost nonchalance, when he +ought to have sold his drawings to supply me. I shall perhaps still be +acquainted with him, but, for friendship, that is at an end." And in +fact the hitherto very ardent cordiality between the poet and the +painter does seem to have been materially damped after this date; Keats +being somewhat reserved towards Haydon, and Haydon finding more to +censure than to extol in the conduct of Keats. We can feel with both of +them; and, while we pronounce Keats blameless and even praiseworthy +throughout, may infer Haydon to have been not greatly blameable. + +Towards the end of June 1819 Keats went to Shanklin; his first +companion there being an invalid but witty and cheerful friend, James +Rice, a solicitor, and his second, Brown, who co-operated at this time +with the poet in producing the drama "Otho the Great." Next, the two +friends went to Winchester, "chiefly," wrote Keats to his sister Fanny, +"for the purpose of being near a tolerable library, which after all is +not to be found in this place. However, we like it very much; it is the +pleasantest town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations of +any." One of his letters from here (September 21) speaks of his being +now almost as well acquainted with Italian as with French, and he adds, +"I shall set myself to get complete in Latin, and there my learning must +stop. I do not think of venturing upon Greek." It is stated that he +learned Italian with uncommon quickness. + +Early in the winter which closed 1819 George Keats came over for a short +while from America, his main object being to receive his share of the +money accruing from the decease of his brother Tom, to the cost of whose +illness he had largely contributed. He had been in Cincinnati, and had +engaged in business, but as yet without any success. In some lines which +John Keats addressed to Miss Brawne in October there is an energetic and +no doubt consciously overloaded denunciation of "that most hateful land, +dungeoner of my friends, that monstrous region," &c., &c. John, it +appears, concealed from George, during his English visit, the fact that +he himself was then much embarrassed in money-matters, and almost wholly +dependent upon his friends for a subsistence meanwhile; and George left +England again without doing anything for his brother's relief or +convenience. He took with him L700, some substantial part of which +appears to have been the property of John, absolutely or contingently; +and he undertook to remit shortly to his brother L200, to be raised by +the sale of a boat which he owned in America; but months passed, and the +L200 never came, no purchaser for the boat being procurable. Out of the +L1,100 which Tom Keats had left, George received L440, John hardly more +than L200, George thus repaying himself some money which had been +previously advanced for John's professional education. For all this he +has been very severely censured, Mr. Brown being among his sternest and +most persistent assailants. It must seemingly have been to George Keats, +and yet not to him exclusively, that Colonel Finch referred in the +letter which reached Shelley's eyes, saying that John had been +"infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued +from want and woe;" and Shelley re-enforced this accusation in his +preface to "Adonais"--"hooted from the stage of life, no less by those +on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he +had lavished his fortune and his care." From these painful charges +George Keats eventually vindicated himself with warmth of feeling, and +with so much solidity of demonstration as availed to convince Mr. Dilke, +and also Mr. Abbey. Who were the other offenders glanced at by Colonel +Finch, as also in one of Severn's letters, I have no distinct idea. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + +From this point forwards nothing but misery remains to be recorded of +John Keats. The narrative becomes depressing to write and depressing to +read. The sensation is like that of being confined in a dark vault at +noonday. One knows, indeed, that the sun of the poet's genius is blazing +outside, and that, on emerging from the vault, we shall be restored to +light and warmth; but the atmosphere within is not the less dark and +laden, nor the shades the less murky. In tedious wretchedness, racked +and dogged with the pang of body and soul, exasperated and protesting, +raging now, and now ground down into patience and acceptance, Keats +gropes through the valley of the shadow of death. + +Before detailing the facts, we must glance for a minute at the position. +Keats had a passionate ambition and a passionate love--the ambition to +be a poet, the love of Fanny Brawne. At the beginning of 1820, he was +conscious of his authentic vocation as a poet, and conscious also that +this vocation, though recognized in a small and to some extent an +influential circle, was publicly denied and ridiculed; his portion was +the hiss of the viper and the gander, the hooting of the impostor and +the owl. His forthcoming volume was certain to share the same fate; he +knew its claims would be perversely resisted and cruelly repudiated. If +he could make no serious impression as a poet, not only was his leading +ambition thwarted, but he would also be impeded in getting any other and +more paying literary work to do--regular profession or employment he had +none. He was at best a poor man, and, for the while, almost bereft of +any command of funds. So long as this state of things, or anything like +it, continued, he would be unable to marry the woman of his heart. While +sickness kept him a prisoner, he was torn by ideas of her volatility and +fickleness. Disease was sapping his vitals, pain wrung him, Death +beckoned him with finger more and more imperative. Poetic fame became +the vision of Tantalus, and love the clasp of Ixion. + +Such was the life, or such the incipient death, of Keats, in the last +twelvemonth of his brief existence. + +For half a year prior to February 1820 he had been unrestful and +cheerless. "Either that gloom overspread me," so he wrote to James Rice, +"or I was suffering under some passionate feeling, or, if I turned to +versify, that exacerbated the poison of either sensation." He began +taking laudanum at times, but was induced by Brown, towards the end of +1819, to promise to give up this insidious practice. Then came the +crash: it was at Hampstead, on the night of the 3rd of February. + + "One night, about eleven o'clock," I quote the words of Lord + Houghton, which have become classical, "Keats returned home[6] + in a state of strange physical excitement; it might have + appeared, to those who did not know him, one of fierce + intoxication. He told his friend [Brown] he had been outside the + stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered; + but added: 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go + to bed; and, as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head + was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and said: 'That is blood + from my mouth. Bring me the candle: let me see this blood.' He + gazed steadfastly some moments at the ruddy stain, and then, + looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden + calmness never to be forgotten, said: 'I know the colour of that + blood--it is arterial blood. I cannot be deceived in that colour. + That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.'" + +A surgeon arrived shortly, bled Keats, and pronounced the rupture to be +unimportant, but the patient was not satisfied. He wrote to Miss Brawne +some few days afterwards, "So violent a rush of blood came to my lungs +that I felt nearly suffocated." By the 6th of the month, however, he was +already better, and he then said in a letter to his sister: "From +imprudently leaving off my great-coat in the thaw, I caught cold, which +flew to my lungs." Later on he suffered from palpitation of the heart; +but was so far recovered by the 25th of March as to be able to go to +town to the exhibition of Haydon's picture, Christ's Entry into +Jerusalem, and early in April he could take a walk of five miles. In +March he had written that he was then picking up flesh, and, if he could +avoid inflammation for six weeks, might yet do well; in April his doctor +assured him that his only malady was nervous irritability and general +weakness, caused by anxiety and by the excitement of poetry. At an +untoward time for his health, about the first week in May, Keats was +obliged to quit his residence in Hampstead; as Brown was then leaving +for Scotland, and, according to his wont, let the house. Keats +accordingly went to live in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town. A letter which +he wrote just before his departure speaks of his uncertain outlook; he +might be off to South America, or, more likely, embarking as surgeon on +a vessel trading to the East Indies. This latter idea had been in his +mind for about a year past, off and on. What he could have contemplated +doing in South America is by no means apparent. On the 7th of May Keats +parted at Gravesend from Brown, and they never met again. The hand with +which he grasped Brown's, and which he had of old "clenched against +Hammond's," was now, according to his own words, "that of a man of +fifty." + +Things had thus gone on pretty well with Keats's health, since he first +began to rally from the blood-spitting attack of the 3rd of February; +but this was not to continue. On the 22nd of June he again broke a +blood-vessel, and vomited blood morning and evening. Leigh Hunt thought +it high time to intervene, and removed the patient to his house, No. 13 +Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town. By the 7th of July--just about the time +when Keats's last volume was published, the one containing "Lamia," +"Hyperion," and all his best works--the physician had told him that he +must not remain in England, but go to Italy. On the 12th, Mrs. Gisborne, +the friend of Godwin and of Shelley, saw him at Hunt's house, looking +emaciated, and "under sentence of death from Dr. Lamb." Three days +afterwards he wrote to Haydon "I am afraid I shall pop off just when my +mind is able to run alone." The stay at Leigh Hunt's house came to an +end in a way which speaks volumes for the shattered nerves, and +consequent morbid susceptibility, of Keats. On the 10th of August a note +for him written by Miss Brawne, which "contained not a word of the least +consequence," arrived at the house. Keats was then resting in his own +room, and Mrs. Hunt, who was occupied, desired a female servant to give +it to him. The servant quitted the household on the following day; and, +in leaving, she handed the letter to Thornton Hunt, then a mere child, +asking him to reconsign it to his mother. When Thornton did this on the +12th, the letter was open; opened (one assumes) either by the servant +through idle curiosity, or by Thornton through simple childishness. +"Poor Keats was affected by this inconceivable circumstance beyond what +can be imagined. He wept for several hours, and resolved, +notwithstanding Hunt's entreaties, to leave the house. He went to +Hampstead that same evening." In Hampstead he had at least the solace of +being received into the dwelling occupied by the Brawne family, being +the same dwelling (next door to that of Brown and Keats) which had been +recently tenanted by the Dilkes; yet the excitement of feeling, +consequent on the continual presence of Miss Brawne, was perhaps harmful +to him. Here he remained until the time for journeying to Italy arrived. +He was still, it seems, left in some uncertainty as to the precise +nature and gravity of his disease, for on the 14th of August he wrote to +his sister: "'Tis not yet consumption, I believe; but it would be, were +I to remain in this climate all the winter." Anyhow, his expectations of +recovery, or of marked benefit from the Italian sojourn, were but faint. + +Something may here be said of the love-letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne. +They begin (as already stated) on the 1st of July 1819, and end at some +date between his leaving Hampstead, early in May 1820, and quitting +Hunt's house in August. We may assume the 10th July 1820, or +thereabouts, as the date of the last letter. I cannot say that the +character of Keats gains to my eyes from the perusal of this +correspondence. Love-letters are not expected to be models of +self-regulation and "the philosophic mind"; they would be bad +love-letters, or letters of a bad specimen of a lover, if they were so. +Still, one wants a man to show himself, _qua_ lover, at his highest in +letters of this stamp; one wants to find in them his noblest self, his +steadiest as his most ardent aspirations, in one direction. Keats seems +to me, throughout his love-letters, unbalanced, wayward, and profuse; he +exhibits great fervour of temperament, and abundant caressingness, +without the inner depth of tenderness and regard. He lives in his +mistress, for himself. As the letters pass further and further into the +harsh black shadows of disease, he abandons all self-restraint, and +lashes out right and left; he wills that his friends should have been +disloyal to him, as the motive for his being disloyal to them. To make +allowance for all this is possible, and even necessary; but to treat it +as not needing that any allowance should be made would seem to me +futile. In the earlier letters of the series we have to note a few +points of biographic interest. He says that he believes Miss Brawne +liked him for himself, not for his writings, and he loves her the more +for it; that, on first falling in love with her, he had written to +declare himself, but he burned the letter, fancying that she had shown +some dislike to him; that he had all his life been indifferent to money +matters, but must be chary of the resources of his friends; that he was +afraid of her "being a little inclined to the Cressid"--one of the +various passages which show that he chafed at her girlish liking for +general society and diversions. On the 10th of October 1819 he had had +"a thousand kisses" from her, and was resolved not to dispense with the +thousand and first. Early in June 1820 he speaks of her having "been in +the habit of flirting with Brown," who "did not know he was doing me to +death by inches."--It may be well to give three of the letters as +specimens:-- + +(I.) + + "25 College Street. + + "[Postmark] _13 October 1819._ + + "My dearest Girl,--This moment I have set myself to copy some + verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I + must write you a line or two, and see if that will assist in + dismissing you from my mind for ever so short a time. Upon my + soul I can think of nothing else. The time is past when I had + power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of + my life. My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you; + I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again; my life seems + to stop there--I see no further. You have absorbed me; I have a + sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving. I + should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing + you; I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet + Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no + limit now to my love. + + "Your note came in just here. I cannot be 'happier' away from + you; 'tis richer than an argosy of pearls. Do not threat me, even + in jest. I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for + religion--I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more; I could be + martyred for _my_ religion. Love is my religion--I could die for + that; I could die for you. My creed is love, and you are its only + tenet. You have ravished me away by a power I cannot resist; and + yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you + I have endeavoured often 'to reason against the reasons of my + love.' I can do that no more, the pain would be too great. My + love is selfish; I cannot breathe without you." + + +(II.) + + [Date uncertain--say towards June 15, 1820.] + + "My dearest Fanny,--My head is puzzled this morning, and I scarce + know what I shall say, though I am full of a hundred things. 'Tis + certain I would rather be writing to you this morning, + notwithstanding the alloy of grief in such an occupation, than + enjoy any other pleasure, with health to boot, unconnected with + you. Upon my soul I have loved you to the extreme. I wish you + could know the tenderness with which I continually brood over + your different aspects of countenance, action, and dress. I see + you come down in the morning; I see you meet me at the window; I + see everything over again eternally that I ever have seen. If I + get on the pleasant clue, I live in a sort of happy misery; if on + the unpleasant, 'tis miserable misery. + + "You complain of my ill-treating you in word, thought, and + deed.[7] I am sorry--at times I feel bitterly sorry that I ever + made you unhappy. My excuse is that those words have been wrung + from me by the sharpness of my feelings. At all events, and in + any case, I have been wrong: could I believe that I did it + without any cause, I should be the most sincere of penitents. I + could give way to my repentant feelings now, I could recant all + my suspicions, I could mingle with you heart and soul, though + absent, were it not for some parts of your letters. Do you + suppose it possible I could ever leave you? You know what I think + of myself, and what of you: you know that I should feel how much + it was my loss, and how little yours. + + "'My friends laugh at you.' I know some of them: when I know them + all, I shall never think of them again as friends, or even + acquaintance. My friends have behaved well to me in every + instance but one; and there they have become tattlers, and + inquisitors into my conduct--spying upon a secret I would rather + die than share it with anybody's confidence. For this I cannot + wish them well; I care not to see any of them again. If I am the + theme, I will not be the friend of idle gossips. Good gods, what + a shame it is our loves should be so put into the microscope of a + coterie! Their laughs should not affect you--(I may perhaps give + you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect a few people + to hate me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who have + pretended a great friendship for me)--when in competition with + one who, if he never should see you again, would make you the + saint of his memory. These laughers, who do not like you, who + envy you for your beauty, who would have God-blessed me from you + for ever, who were plying me with discouragements with respect to + you eternally! People are revengeful: do not mind them. Do + nothing but love me: if I knew that for certain, life and health + will in such event be a heaven, and death itself will be less + painful. I long to believe in immortality: I shall never be able + to bid you an entire farewell. If I am destined to be happy with + you here, how short is the longest life! I wish to believe in + immortality--I wish to live with you for ever. Do not let my name + ever pass between you and those laughers: if I have no other + merit than the great love for you, that were sufficient to keep + me sacred and unmentioned in such society. If I have been cruel + and unjust, I swear my love has ever been greater than my + cruelty--which lasts but a minute, whereas my love, come what + will, shall last for ever. If concession to me has hurt your + pride, God knows I have had little pride in my heart when + thinking of you. Your name never passes my lips--do not let mine + pass yours. Those people do not like me. + + "After reading my letter, you even then wish to see me. I am + strong enough to walk over: but I dare not--I shall feel so much + pain in parting with you again. My dearest love, I am afraid to + see you: I am strong, but not strong enough to see you. Will my + arm be ever round you again, and, if so, shall I be obliged to + leave you again? + + "My sweet love, I am happy whilst I believe your first letter. + Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul, and I + could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If you think + me cruel, if you think I have slighted you, do muse it over + again, and see into my heart. My love to you is 'true as truth's + simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth'--as I think I + once said before. How could I slight you? how threaten to leave + you? Not in the spirit of a threat to you--no, but in the spirit + of wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious, my angel + Fanny, do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will be as + patient in illness and as believing in love as I am able." + + +(III.) + + +(This is the last letter of the series. Its date is uncertain; but may, +as already intimated, be towards July 10, 1820. It follows next after +our No. 2.) + + "My dearest Girl,--I wish you could invent some means to make me + at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more + concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my + mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy. The fact is, I + cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute's content + until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I + will not go on at this rate. A person in health, as you are, can + have no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like + mine go through. + + "What island do your friends propose retiring to? I should be + happy to go with you there alone, but in company I should object + to it: the backbitings and jealousies of new colonists, who have + nothing else to amuse themselves, is unbearable. Mr. Dilke came + to see me yesterday, and gave me a very great deal more pain than + pleasure. I shall never be able any more to endure the society of + any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage[8] and Wentworth + Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my palate. If I + cannot live with you, I will live alone. + + "I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated + from you. For all this, I am averse to seeing you: I cannot bear + flashes of light, and return into my glooms again. I am not so + unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you yesterday. To be + happy with you seems such an impossibility: it requires a luckier + star than mine--it will never be. + + "I enclose a passage from one of your letters which I want you to + alter a little: I want (if you will have it so) the matter + expressed less coldly to me. + + "If my health would bear it, I could write a poem which I have in + my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a + situation as mine. I would show some one in love, as I am, with a + person living in such liberty as you do.[9] Shakespeare always + sums up matters in the most sovereign manner. Hamlet's heart was + full of such misery as mine is, when he said to Ophelia, 'Go to a + nunnery, go, go!' Indeed, I should like to give up the matter at + once--I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world you + are smiling with. I hate men, and women more. I see nothing but + thorns for the future: wherever I may be next winter, in Italy + or nowhere, Brown will be living near you, with his indecencies. + I see no prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome. Well, I should + there see you, as in a magic glass, going to and from town at all + hours--I wish I could infuse a little confidence of human nature + into my heart: I cannot muster any. The world is too brutal for + me. I am glad there is such a thing as the grave--I am sure I + shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate, I will + indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any of + their friends. I wish I was either in your arms full of faith, or + that a thunderbolt would strike me.--God bless you. + + "J. K." + +It is seldom one reads a letter (not to speak of a love-letter) more +steeped than this in wretchedness and acrimony; wretchedness for which +the cause was but too real and manifest; acrimony for which no ground +has been shown or is to be surmised. What Mr. Dilke had done, or could +be supposed to have done, to merit the invalid's ire, is unapparent. Mr. +Brown may be inferred, from the verses of Keats already quoted, to have +had the general character and bearing of a _bon vivant_ or "jolly dog"; +sufficiently versed in the good things of this world, whether fish, +flesh, or womankind; jocose, or on occasion slangy. But Keats himself, +in the nearly contemporary letter in which he arraigned Miss Brawne for +"flirting with Brown," had said: "I know his love and friendship for +me--at this moment I should be without pence were it not for his +assistance;" and we refuse to think that any contingency could be likely +to arise in which his "indecencies" would put Miss Brawne to the blush. +Be it enough for us to know that Keats, in the drear prospect of +expatriation and death, wrote in this strain, and to wish it were +otherwise. + +The time had now arrived when Keats was to go to Italy. It was on the +18th of September 1820 that he embarked on the _Maria Crowther_ from +London. Haydon gives us a painful glimpse of the poet shortly before his +departure: "The last time I saw him was at Hampstead, lying on his back +in a white bed, helpless, irritable, and hectic. He had a book, and, +enraged at his own feebleness, seemed as if he were going out of the +world, with a contempt of this, and no hopes of a better. He muttered as +I stood by him that, if he did not recover, he would 'cut his throat.' I +tried to calm him, but to no purpose. I left him, in great depression of +spirit to see him in such a state." Another attached friend, of whom I +have not yet made mention, accompanied him; and in the annals of +watchful and self-oblivious friendship there are few records more +touching than the one which links with the name of John Keats that of +Joseph Severn. Severn, two years older than Keats, had known him as far +back as 1813, being introduced by Mr. William Haslam. Keats was then +studying at Guy's Hospital, but none the less gave Severn "the complete +idea of a poet." The acquaintance does not seem to have proceeded far at +that date; but, through the intervention of Mr. Edward Holmes (author of +a "Life of Mozart," and "A Ramble among the Musicians of Germany") was +renewed whilst the poet was composing "Endymion"; and Severn may +probably have co-operated in some minor degree with Haydon in training +Keats to a perception of the great things in plastic art. In 1820 +Severn, a student-painter at the Royal Academy, had won the gold medal +by his picture of The Cave of Despair, from Spenser, entitling him to +the expenses of a three years' stay in Italy, for advancement in his +art. He had an elegant gift in music, as well as in painting; and it is +a satisfaction to learn that at this period he had "great animal +spirits," for without these what he went through during the ensuing five +months would have been but too likely to break him down. I must make +room here for another letter from Keats, one addressed to his good +friend Brown, deeply pathetic, and serving to assuage whatever may have +been like "brass upon our palate" in the last-quoted letter to Fanny +Brawne. + + "_Saturday, September 28._ + + "_Maria Crowther_, off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight. + + "My dear Brown,--The time has not yet come for a _pleasant_ + letter from me. I have delayed writing to you from time to time, + because I felt how impossible it was to enliven you with one + heartening hope of my recovery. This morning in bed the matter + struck me in a different manner. I thought I would write 'while I + was in some liking,' or I might become too ill to write at all, + and then, if the desire to have written should become strong, it + would be a great affliction to me. I have many more letters to + write, and I bless my stars that I have begun, for time seems to + press--this may be my best opportunity. + + "We are in a calm, and I am easy enough this morning. If my + spirits seem too low you may in some degree impute it to our + having been at sea a fortnight without making any way. I was very + disappointed at not meeting you at Bedhampton, and am very + provoked at the thought of you being at Chichester to-day.[10] I + should have delighted in setting off for London for the sensation + merely--for what should I do there? I could not leave my lungs or + stomach or other worse things behind me. + + "I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much. There + is one I must mention, and have done with it. Even if my body + would recover of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing + which I want to live most for will be a great occasion of my + death. I cannot help it--who can help it? Were I in health, it + would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my state? I daresay + you will be able to guess on what subject I am harping: you know + what was my greatest pain during the first part of my illness at + your house. I wish for death every day and night to deliver me + from these pains; and then I wish death away, for death would + destroy even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and + sea, weakness and decline, are great separators; but death is the + great divorcer for ever. When the pang of this thought has passed + through my mind, I may say the bitterness of death is past. I + often wish for you, that you might flatter me with the best. + + "I think, without my mentioning it, for my sake you would be a + friend to Miss Brawne when I am dead. You think she has many + faults: but for my sake think she has not one. If there is + anything you can do for her by word or deed, I know you will do + it. I am in a state at present in which woman, merely as woman, + can have no more power over me than stocks and stones; and yet + the difference of my sensations with respect to Miss Brawne and + my sister is amazing. The one seems to absorb the other to a + degree incredible. I seldom think of my brother and sister in + America. The thought of leaving Miss Brawne is beyond everything + horrible--the sense of darkness coming over me--I eternally see + her figure eternally vanishing. Some of the phrases she was in + the habit of using during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring + in my ears. Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all + this a dream? There must be--we cannot be created for this sort + of suffering. The receiving this letter is to be one of yours. + + "I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather yours to me, + more than that, as you deserve to escape, you will never be so + unhappy as I am. I should think of--you[11] in my last moments. I + shall endeavour to write to Miss Brawne if possible to-day.[12] A + sudden stop to my life in the middle of one of these letters + would be no bad thing, for it keeps one in a sort of fever + awhile. + + "Though fatigued with a letter longer than any I have written for + a long while, it would be better to go on for ever than awake to + a sense of contrary winds. We expect to put into Portland Roads + to-night. The captain, the crew, and the passengers are all + ill-tempered and weary. I shall write to Dilke. I feel as if I + was closing my last letter to you." + +The ship at last proceeded on her voyage, and in the Bay of Biscay +encountered a severe squall. Keats soon afterwards read the storm-scene +in Byron's "Don Juan": he threw the book away in indignation, denouncing +the author's perversity of mind which could "make solemn things gay, and +gay things solemn." Late in October he reached the harbour of Naples, +and had to perform a tedious quarantine of ten days. After landing on +the 31st,[13] he received a second letter from Shelley, then at Pisa, +urging him to come to that city. The first letter on this subject, +dated in July, had invited Keats to the hospitality of Shelley's own +house; but in November this project had been given up, as "we are not +rich enough for that sort of thing"--although Shelley still intended (so +he wrote to Leigh Hunt) "to be the physician both of his body and his +soul,--to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish." +Keats, however, had brought with him a letter of introduction to Dr. +(afterwards Sir James) Clark, in Rome,--or indeed he may have met him +before leaving England--and he decided to proceed to Rome rather than +Pisa. Dr. Clark engaged for him a lodging opposite his own: it was in +the first house on the right as you ascend the steps of the Trinita del +Monte. The precise date when Keats reached Rome, his last place of +torture and of rest, does not appear to be recorded: it was towards the +middle of November. He was at first able to walk out a little, and +occasionally to ride. Dr. Clark attended his sick bed with the most +exemplary assiduity and kindness. He pronounced (so Keats wrote to Brown +in a letter of November 30th, which is perhaps the last he ever penned) +that the lungs were not much amiss, but the stomach in a very bad +condition: perhaps this was a kindly equivocation, for by this time--as +was ascertained after his death--Keats can have had scarcely any lungs +at all. The patient was under no illusion as to his prospects, and he +more than once asked the physician "When will this posthumous life of +mine come to an end?" + +The only words in which the last days of Keats can be adequately +recorded are those of Severn: our best choice would be between extract +and silence. There were oscillations from time to time, from bad to less +bad, but generally the tendency of the disease was steadily downwards. +The poet's feelings regarding Fanny Brawne were so acute and harrowing +that he never mentioned her to his friend. I give a few particulars from +Severn's contemporary letters--the person addressed being not always +known. + + "_December 14._ His suffering is so great, so continued, and his + fortitude so completely gone, that any further change must make + him delirious. + + "_December 17._ Not a moment can I be from him. I sit by his bed + and read all day, and at night I humour him in all his + wanderings.... He rushed out of bed and said 'This day shall be + my last,' and but for me most certainly it would. The blood broke + forth in similar quantity the next morning, and he was bled + again. I was afterwards so fortunate as to talk him into a little + calmness, and he soon became quite patient. Now the blood has + come up in coughing five times. Not a single thing will he + digest, yet he keeps on craving for food. Every day he raves he + will die from hunger, and I've been obliged to give him more than + was allowed.... Dr. Clark will not say much.... All that can be + done he does most kindly; while his lady, like himself in refined + feeling, prepares all that poor Keats takes, for--in this + wilderness of a place for an invalid--there was no alternative. + + [To Mrs. Brawne.] "_January 11._ He has now given up all + thoughts, hopes, or even wish, for recovery. His mind is in a + state of peace, from the final leave he has taken of this world, + and all its future hopes.... I light the fire, make his + breakfast, and sometimes am obliged to cook; make his bed, and + even sweep the room.... Oh I would my unfortunate friend had + never left your Wentworth Place for the hopeless advantages of + this comfortless Italy! He has many many times talked over 'the + few happy days at your house, the only time when his mind was at + ease'.... Poor Keats cannot see any letters--at least he will + not; they affect him so much, and increase his danger. The two + last I repented giving: he made me put them into his box, unread. + + "_January 15._ Torlonia the banker has refused us any more money. + The bill is returned unaccepted, and to-morrow I must pay my last + crown for this cursed lodging-place: and what is more, if he + dies, all the beds and furniture will be burnt, and the walls + scraped, and they will come on me for a hundred pounds or + more.... You see my hopes of being kept by the Royal Academy will + be cut off unless I send a picture in the spring. I have written + to Sir T. Lawrence. + + "_February 12._ At times I have hoped he would recover; but the + doctor shook his head, and Keats would not hear that he was + better; the thought of recovery is beyond everything dreadful to + him. + + [To Mrs. Brawne.] "_February 14._ His mind is growing to great + quietness and peace. I find this change has its rise from the + increasing weakness of his body; but it seems like a delightful + sleep to me, I have been beating about in the tempest of his mind + so long. To-night he has talked very much to me, but so easily + that he at last fell into a pleasant sleep. He seems to have + comfortable dreams without nightmare. This will bring on some + change: it cannot be worse--it may be better. Among the many + things he has requested of me to-night, this is the + principal--that on his grave shall be this, 'Here lies one whose + name was writ in water.'... Such a letter has come! I gave it to + Keats, supposing it to be one of yours; but it proved sadly + otherwise. The glance of that letter tore him to pieces. The + effects were on him for many days. He did not read it--he could + not; but requested me to place it in his coffin, together with a + purse and letter (unopened) of his sister's: since which time he + has requested me not to place _that_ letter in his coffin, but + only his sister's purse and letter, with some hair. Then he found + many causes of his illness in the exciting and thwarting of his + passions; but I persuaded him to feel otherwise on this delicate + point.... I have got an English nurse to come two hours every + other day.... He has taken half a pint of fresh milk: the milk + here is beautiful to all the senses--it is delicious. For three + weeks he has lived on it, sometimes taking a pint and a half in a + day. + + "_February 22._ This morning, by the pale daylight, the change in + him frightened me: he has sunk in the last three days to a most + ghastly look.... He opens his eyes in great doubt and horror; + but, when they fall upon me, they close gently, open quietly, and + close again, till he sinks to sleep. + + "_February 27._ He is gone. He died with the most perfect + ease--he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23rd, about four, the + approaches of death came on. 'Severn--I--lift me up. I am + dying--I shall die easy. Don't be frightened: be firm, and thank + God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed + boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he + gradually sank into death, so quiet that I still thought he + slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down by four nights' + watching, no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days + since the body was opened: the lungs were completely gone. The + doctors could not imagine how he had lived these two months. I + followed his dear body to the grave on Monday [February 26th], + with many English.... The letters I placed in the coffin with my + own hand." + +No words of mine shall be added here to tarnish upon the mirror of +memory this image of a sacred death and a sacred friendship. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + +We have now reached the close of a melancholy history--that of the +extinction, in a space of less than twenty-six years, of a bright life +foredoomed by inherited disease. We turn to another subject--the +intellectual development and the writings of Keats, what they were, and +how they were treated. Here again there are some sombre tints. + +A minute anecdote, apparently quite authentic, shows that a certain +propensity to the jingle of rhyme was innate in Keats: Haydon is our +informant. "An old lady (Mrs. Grafty, of Craven Street, Finsbury) told +his brother George--when, in reply to her question what John was doing, +he told her he had determined to become a poet--that this was very odd; +because when he could just speak, instead of answering questions put to +him, he would always make a rhyme to the last word people said, and then +laugh." This, however, is the only rhyming-anecdote that we hear of +Keats's childhood or mere boyhood: there is nothing to show that at +school he made the faintest attempt at verse-spinning. The earliest +known experiment of his is the "Imitation of Spenser"--four Spenserian +stanzas, beginning-- + + "Now Morning from her orient chamber came," + +and very poor stanzas they are. This Imitation was written while he was +living at Edmonton, in his nineteenth year, and thus there was nothing +singularly precocious in Keats, either in the age at which he began +versifying, or in the skill with which he first addressed himself to the +task. I might say more of other verses, juvenile in the amplest sense of +the term, but such remarks would belong more properly to a later section +of this volume. I will therefore only observe here that the earliest +poems of his in which I can discern anything even distantly approaching +to poetic merit or to his own characteristic style (and these distantly +indeed) are the lines "To ----" + + "Hadst thou lived in days of old," + +and "Calidore, a Fragment," + + "Young Calidore is paddling o'er the lake." + +The dates of these two compositions are not stated, but they were +probably later than the opening of 1815, and if so Keats would have been +nearly or quite twenty when he wrote them--and this is far remote from +precocity. Let us say then, once for all, that, whatever may be the +praise and homage due to Keats for ranking as one of the immortals when +he died aged twenty-five, no sort of encomium can be awarded to him on +the ground that, when he first began, he began early and well. All his +rawest attempts, be it added to his credit, appear to have been kept to +himself; for Cowden Clarke, who was certainly his chief literary +confidant in those tentative days, says that until Keats produced to him +his sonnet "written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left prison" the +youth's attempts at verse-writing were to him unknown. The 3rd of +February 1815 was the day of Hunt's liberation, so that the endeavour +had by this time been going on in silence for something like a year or +more. + +It was not till 1816--or let us say when he was just of age--that Keats +produced a truly excellent thing. This is the sonnet "On first looking +into Chapman's Homer." A copy of Chapman's translation had been lent to +Cowden Clarke; he and Keats sat up till daylight reading it, the young +poet shouting with delight, and by ten o'clock on the following morning +Keats sent the sonnet to Clarke. It was therefore a sudden immediate +inspiration, a little rill of lava flowing out of a poetic volcano, +solidified at once. This is not only the first excellent thing written +by Keats--it is the _only_ excellent thing contained in his first volume +of verse. + +This volume came out (as already mentioned) in the early spring of 1817. +The sonnet dedicating the book to Leigh Hunt, written off at a moment's +notice "when the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer," was +evidently composed in winter-time. The title of the volume is "Poems by +John Keats." The motto on its title-page is from Spenser-- + + "What more felicity can fall to creature + Than to enjoy delight with liberty?" + +--a motto embodying with considerable completeness the feeling which is +predominant in the volume, and generally in Keats's poetic works. We +always feel "delight" to be his true element, whatever may be the +undertone of pathos opposed to it by poetic development and treatment, +and by adverse fate. "Liberty" also--a free flight of the faculties, a +rejection of conventional trammels, whether in life or in verse--was +highly characteristic of him; and perhaps the youthful friend of Hunt +intended the word "liberty" to be understood by his readers as having a +certain political flavour as well. In addition to some writings just +specified, the volume contained "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill"; the +three epistles "To George Felton Mathew" (who was a gentleman of +literary habits, afterwards employed in administering the Poor Law), "To +my brother George," and "To Charles Cowden Clarke"; sixteen sonnets; and +"Sleep and Poetry." The question of the poetic deservings of these +compositions belongs more properly to our final chapter. I shall here +give only a few details bearing upon the circumstances of their +production. The poem "I stood tiptoe" &c. was written beside a gate near +Caen Wood, Highgate. It must have been begun in a summer, no doubt that +of 1816, and was still uncompleted in the middle of December of that +year. "The Epistle to Mathew," dated November 1815, testifies to the +early admiration of Keats for Thomas Chatterton; though the dedication +of "Endymion," "Inscribed to the memory of Thomas Chatterton," was but +poorly forestalled by such lines as the following-- + + "Where we may soft humanity put on, + And sit and rhyme, and think on Chatterton, + And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him + Four laurelled spirits heavenward to entreat him." + +Moreover, the first of his youthful sonnets is addressed to +Chatterton. The "Epistle to George," August 1816, opens with a reference +to "many a dreary hour" which John Keats has passed, fearing he would +never be able to write good poetry, however much he might gaze on sky, +honey-bees, and the beauty of woman. The "Epistle to Clarke," September +1816, pays ample tribute to the guidance which he had afforded to Keats +into the realms of poetry, and contains a couplet which has of late been +very often quoted-- + + "Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly + Up to its climax, and then dying proudly?" + +The sonnet-- + + "O Solitude, if I must with thee dwell," + +is the first thing that Keats ever published. It had previously appeared +in _The Examiner_ for May 5, 1816, and is clearly one of the best of +these early sonnets. The sonnet which begins with the unmetrical line-- + + "How many bards gild the lapses of time" + +was included in the very first batch of verses by Keats which Cowden +Clarke showed to Leigh Hunt. Hunt expressed "unhesitating and prompt +admiration" of some other one among the compositions; and Horace Smith, +who was present, reading out the sonnet now before us, praised as "a +well-condensed expression" the contorted and inefficient line-- + + "That distance of recognizance bereaves," + +_i.e._ [sounds] which distance bereaves of recognizance, or, in plain +English, which are too distant to be recognized. Two other sonnets are +addressed to Haydon in a tone of glowing laudation. + +"Sleep and Poetry" is (if we except the sonnet upon Chapman's Homer) by +far the most important poem in the volume. It was written partly in +Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hampstead, in the library-room, where a sofa-bed +had on one occasion been made up for Keats's convenience, and the latter +lines in the poem refer to objects of art which were kept in the room. +Apart from the impressive line which all readers remember, saying of +poetry-- + + "'Tis might half-slumbering on its own right arm," + +there are several passages interesting as showing Keats's enthusiasm for +the art in which he was now a beginner, soon to be an adept-- + + "Oh for ten years that I may overwhelm + Myself in poesy!" + +also + + "The great end + Of poesy, that it should be a friend + To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man;" + +and again + + "They shall be accounted poet-kings + Who simply tell the most heart-easing things"-- + +both of these being definitions in which we might imagine Leigh Hunt to +have borne his part, or at least notified his concurrence. The +following well-known diatribe is also important, and should be kept in +mind when we come to speak of the reception accorded to Keats by +established critics, more or less of the old school. He has been +dilating on the splendours of British poetry of the great era, say +Spenser to Milton, and then proceeds-- + + "Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism + Nurtured by foppery and barbarism + Made great Apollo blush for this his land. + Men were thought wise who could not understand + His glories: with a puling infant's force + They swayed about upon a rocking-horse, + And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal-souled! + The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled + Its gathering waves--ye felt it not; the blue + Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew + Of summer-night collected still to make + The morning precious. Beauty was awake-- + Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead + To things ye knew not of--were closely wed + To musty laws lined out with wretched rule + And compass vile; so that ye taught a school + Of dolts to smoothe, inlay, and chip, and fit, + Till--like the certain wands of Jacob's wit-- + Their verses tallied. Easy was the task; + A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask + Of Poesy. Ill-fated impious race, + That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face, + And did not know it! No, they went about + Holding a poor decrepit standard out + Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large + The name of one Boileau." + +Zeal is generally pardonable. Keats's was manifestly honest zeal, and +flaming forth in the right direction. Yet it would have been well for +him to remember and indicate that amid his "school of dolts," bearing +the flag of Boileau, there had been some very strong and capable men, +notably Dryden and Pope, who could do several things besides inlaying +and clipping; nor could it be said that the beauty of the world had been +wholly blinked by so pre-eminently descriptive a poet as Thomson; and, +if we were to read Boileau--which few of us do now-a-days, and I daresay +Keats was not one of the few--we should probably find that his "mottoes" +were much less concerned with inlaying and clipping than with solid +meaning and studious congruity--qualities not totally contemptible, but +(be it acknowledged) very largely contemned by Keats in that first +slender performance of his adolescence named "Poems, 1817." + +It has been said that this volume hardly went beyond the circle of +Keats's personal friends; nor do I think this statement can be far +wrong, although one inquirer avers that the book was "constantly alluded +to in the prominent periodicals." The dictum of Keats himself stands +thus: "It was read by some dozen of my friends, who liked it; and some +dozen whom I was unacquainted with, who did not." Shelley cannot have +been among the friends who liked the volume, for he had recommended +Keats not to give it to the press. At any rate the publishers, Messrs. +Ollier, would after a very short while sell it no more. Their letter to +George Keats--who seems to have been acting for John during the absence +of the latter in the Isle of Wight or at Margate--is too amusing to be +omitted:-- + + "We regret that your brother ever requested us to publish his + book, or that our opinion of its talent should have led us to + acquiesce in undertaking it. We are, however, much obliged to you + for relieving us from the unpleasant necessity of declining any + further connexion with it, which we must have done, as we think + the curiosity is satisfied and the sale has dropped. By far the + greater number of persons who have purchased it from us have + found fault with it in such plain terms that we have in many + cases offered to take the book back rather than be annoyed with + the ridicule which has time after time been showered upon it. In + fact, it was only on Sunday last that we were under the + mortification of having our own opinion of its merits flatly + contradicted by a gentleman who told us he considered it 'no + better than a take-in.' These are unpleasant imputations for any + one in business to labour under; but we should have borne them + and concealed their existence from you had not the style of your + note shown us that such delicacy would be quite thrown away. We + shall take means without delay for ascertaining the number of + copies on hand, and you shall be informed accordingly. + + "3 Welbeck Street, 29th April 1817." + +I do not find that the after-fate of the "Poems" is recorded: probably +they were handed over to Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, who undertook the +publication of "Endymion." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + +To "Endymion" we now have to turn. The early verses of Keats (as well as +the later ones) contain numerous allusions to Grecian mythology--Muses, +Apollo, Pan, Narcissus, Endymion and Diana, &c. For the most part these +early allusions are nothing more than tawdry conventionalisms; so indeed +are some of the later ones, as for instance in the drama of "King +Stephen," written in 1819, the schoolboy classicism of "2nd Captain"-- + + "Royal Maud + From the thronged towers of Lincoln hath looked down, + Like Pallas from the walls of Ilion;" + +and we cannot discover that any more credit is due to Keats for +dribbling out his tritenesses about Apollo and the Muses than to any +Akenside, Mason, or Hayley, of them all. At times, however, there is a +genuine tone of _enjoyment_ in these utterances sufficient to persuade +us that the subject had really taken possession of his mind, and that he +could feel Grecian mythology, not merely as a convenient vehicle for +rhetorical personifications, but as an ever-vital embodiment of ideas of +beauty in forms of beauty. In the early and partly boyish poem, "I +stood tip-toe upon a little hill," a good deal of space is devoted to +showing that classical myths are an outcome of eager sensitiveness to +the lovely things of Nature: the tales of Psyche, Pan and Sirynx, +Narcissus, are cited in confirmation--and finally Diana and Endymion, in +the following lines:-- + + "Where had he been from whose warm head outflew + That sweetest of all songs, that ever new, + That aye-refreshing pure deliciousness + Coming ever to bless + The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing + Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing + From out the middle air, from flowery nests, + And from the pillowy silkiness that rests + Full in the speculation of the stars. + Ah surely he had burst our mortal bars: + Into some wondrous region he had gone + To search for thee, divine Endymion. + He was a poet, sure a lover too, + Who stood on Latmus' top what time there blew + Soft breezes from the myrtle-vale below, + And brought--in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow-- + A hymn from Dian's temple, while upswelling + The incense went to her own starry dwelling. + But, though her face was clear as infants' eyes, + Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice, + The poet wept at her so piteous fate-- + Wept that such beauty should be desolate; + So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won, + And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion. + Queen of the wide air, thou most lovely queen + Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen, + As thou exceedest all things in thy shine, + So every tale does this sweet tale of thine. + Oh for three words of honey that I might + Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night! + Where distant ships do seem to show their keels + Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels, + And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes + Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize. + * * * * * + Cynthia, I cannot tell the greater blisses + That followed thine and thy dear shepherd's kisses: + Was there a poet born?" + +Readers often go at a skating-pace over passages of this kind, without +very clearly realizing to themselves the gist of the whole matter. I +will therefore put the thing into the most prosaic form, and say that +what Keats substantially intimates here is as follows:--The inventor of +the myth of Artemis and Endymion must have been a poet and lover, who, +standing on the hill of Latmos, and hearing thence a sweet hymn wafted +from the low-lying temple of Artemis, while the pure maiden-like moon +was shining resplendently, felt a pang of pity for this loveless moon or +Artemis, and invented for her a lover in the person of Endymion; and +ever since then the myth has lent additional beauty to the effects, +beautiful as in themselves they are, of moonlight. Without tying down +Keats too rigidly to this view of the genesis of the myth, I may +nevertheless point out that he wholly ignores as participants both the +spirit of religious devoutness, and the device of allegorizing natural +phaenomena: the inventor is simply a poet and lover, who thinks it a +world of pities that such a sweet maiden as Artemis should not have a +lover sooner or later. Invention prompted by warmth of feeling is thus +the sole motive-power recognized. The final phrase "Was there a poet +born?" may without violence be understood as implying, "Ought not the +loves of Artemis and Endymion to beget their poet, and why should not I +be that poet?" At all events, Keats determined that he _would_ be that +poet; and, contemplating the original invention of the myth from the +point of view which we have just analysed, he not unnaturally treated it +from a like point of view. The tale of Diana and Endymion was not to be +a monument of classic antiquity re-stated in the timid, formal spirit of +a school-exercise, but an invention of a poet and lover, who, acting +under the spell of natural beauty, re-informs his theme with poetic +fancy, amorous ardour, and Nature's profusion of object and of imagery. +And in this Keats thought--and surely he rightly thought--that he would +be getting closer to the spirit of a Grecian myth than by any +cut-and-dry process of tame repetition or pulseless decorum. He wanted +the dell of wild flowers, and not the _hortus siccus_. + +"Endymion" was actually begun in the spring of 1817, much about the same +time when the volume "Poems" was published. The first draft was +completed (as we have said) on the 28th of November 1817, and by the end +of the winter which opened the year 1818 no more probably remained to be +done to it. The MS. was subjected to much revision and excision, so that +it cannot be alleged that Keats worked in a reckless temper, or without +such self-criticism as he could at that date bring to bear. It would +even appear, moreover, from the terms of a letter which he addressed to +Mr. Taylor, on April 27, 1818, that he allowed that gentleman to make +some volunteer corrections of his own. Haydon had spurred him on to the +ambitious attempt, which Hunt on the contrary deprecated. Shelley--so +the story goes--agreed with Keats that each of them should write an epic +within a space of six months. Shelley produced "The Revolt of Islam," +Keats the "Endymion." Shelley proved to be the more rapid writer of the +two; for his poem of 4815 lines was finished by the early autumn of +1817, while Keats's, numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter +which opened 1818. A good deal of it had been done during Keats's +sojourn with Mr. Bailey, in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Afterwards, on 8th +October 1817, he wrote to Bailey--"I refused to visit Shelley, that I +might have my own unfettered scope;" an expression which one might be +inclined to understand as showing that Shelley, having now completed +"The Revolt of Islam," had invited Keats to visit him at Marlow, and +there to proceed with "Endymion,"--not without the advantage it may well +be supposed, of Shelley's sympathizing but none the less stringent +counsel. Bailey's account of the facts may be given here. "He wrote and +I read--sometimes at the same table, sometimes at separate desks--from +breakfast till two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task, which was +about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as +much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his +letters. Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, 'That, +if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a tree, it had better +not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not +often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself. +When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over +to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." The +first book of the poem was delivered into the hands of the publisher, +Mr. Taylor, in the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a +finished chalk-sketch of the author's head, to be prefixed to the +volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the volume, an octavo, +appeared in April without any portrait. We all know the now proverbial +first line in "Endymion," + + "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." + +This seems to have been an inspiration of long anterior date; for Mr. +Stephens, the surgical fellow-student and fellow-lodger of Keats, says +that in one twilight when they were together the youthful poet produced +the line-- + + "A thing of beauty is a constant joy;" + +which, failing wholly to satisfy its author's ear, was immediately +afterwards improved into its present form. Even before handing over any +part of his MS. to the printer, Keats, at the "immortal dinner" which +came off in Haydon's painting-room, on the 28th of December 1817, and at +which Wordsworth, Lamb, and others, were present, had bespoken a strange +and heroic fate for one copy of his book; for he made Mr. Ritchie, who +was about to set forth on an African exploration, promise that he would +carry the volume "to the great desert of Sahara, and fling it in the +midst." + +"Invention" was the quality which Keats most sought for in his +"Endymion," as shown in his letter to Mr. Bailey, already cited. He +said--"It ['Endymion'] will be a test of my powers of imagination, and +chiefly of my invention--which is a rare thing indeed--by which I must +make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry.... +A long poem is a test of Invention, which I take to be the polar star of +poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder.... This same +Invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a +poetical excellence." The term "invention" might be used in various +senses. Keats seems to have meant the power of producing a great number +of minor incidents, illustrative images, and other particulars, all +tending to reinforce and fill out the main conception and +subject-matter. + +Keats wrote a preface to "Endymion" on March 19, 1818, which was +objected to by Hamilton Reynolds, and by his friends generally. It was +certainly off-hand and unconciliating, and some readers would have +regarded it as defiant. Its general purport was that the poem was +faulty, but the author would not keep it back for revision, which would +make the performance a tedium to himself, "I have written to please +myself, and in hopes to please others, and for a love of fame." There +was a good deal more, jaunty and provocative enough. Keats was not well +inclined to suppress this preface. He replied on April 9th to Reynolds +in a letter from which some weighty words must be quoted:-- + + "I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards the public, + or to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the principle + of Beauty, and the memory of great men.... A preface is written + to the public--a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, + and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.... I + would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing + me; but among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping--I + hate the idea of humility to them. I never wrote one single line + of poetry with the least shadow of public thought.... I hate a + mawkish popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory + would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about + pictures and books." + +Keats, however, yielded to his censors, and wrote a rather shorter +preface, by far a better one. It bears the date of April 10th, being the +very next day after he had written to Reynolds in so unsubmissive a +tone. This second preface says substantially much the same thing as the +first, but without any aggressive or "devil-may-care" addenda. It is too +important to be omitted here:-- + + "Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been + produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it + public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who + must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every + error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed + accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I + feel sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their + passing the press; nor should they, if I thought a year's + castigation would do them any good. It will not: the foundations + are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away--a + sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that, while it is + dwindling, I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit + to live. + + "This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a + punishment. But no feeling man will be forward to inflict it; he + will leave me alone with the conviction that there is not a + fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not + written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of + course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are + competent to look, and who do look, with a zealous eye to the + honour of English literature. + + "The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination + of a man is healthy. But there is a space of life between in + which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way + of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted. Thence proceeds + mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak + of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. + + "I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful + mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness; for I wish to try + once more before I bid it farewell." + +No one can deny that this is a modest preface; it is in fact too modest, +and concedes to the adversary the utmost which could possibly be at +issue, viz., whether the poem was worth publishing or not. The only +scintilla of self-assertion in it is the hope expressed-"_some_ +hope"--that the writer might eventually produce "verses fit to live;" +and less than that no man who puts a poem before the public could be +expected to postulate. Keats must therefore be expressly acquitted of +having done anything to excite animosity or retaliation on the part of +his critics; the sole thing which could be attacked was the poem +itself--too frankly pronounced indefensible--or else something in the +author which did not appear within the covers of his volume. The preface +is indeed manly as well as modest; there is not a servile or obsequious +word in it; yet I cannot help thinking that Keats, when later on he +found "Endymion" denounced as drivel, must at times have wished that he +had been a little less deferential to Reynolds's objections, and had not +so explicitly admitted that not one of the four books of the poem was +qualified to "pass the press." An adverse reviewer was sure to take +advantage of that admission, and did so. + +It would be interesting to compare with the preface which Keats printed +for "Endymion" the one which Shelley printed for "The Revolt of Islam." +Shelley, like Keats, was modest; he left his readers to settle any +question as to his poetic claims (although "Alastor," previously +published, might pretty well have vouched for these); but he resolutely +explained that reviewers would find in him no subject for bullying. I +can only make room for a few sentences:-- + + "The experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in + themselves constitute men poets, but only prepare them to be the + auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess + that more essential attribute of poetry, the power of awakening + in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is + that which, to speak sincerely, I know not, and which, with an + acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the + effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.... It + is the misfortune of this age that its writers, too thoughtless + of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or + blame. They write with the fear of reviews before their eyes. + This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when + poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate + and limit its powers, cannot subsist together.... I have sought, + therefore, to write (as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and + Milton wrote) in utter disregard of anonymous censure." + +The publisher of "Endymion" (Mr. Taylor is probably meant) was nervous +as to the reception which potent critics would accord to the volume. He +went to William Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to +bespeak indulgence, but found a Cerberus who rejected every sop. In the +number of the _Quarterly_ for April 1818--not actually published, it +would seem, until September--appeared a critique branded into +ignominious permanence by the name and fame of Keats. Gifford himself is +regarded as its author. As an account of Keats's career would for +various reasons be incomplete in the absence of this critique, I +reproduce it here. It has the merit of brevity, and lends itself hardly +at all to curtailment, but I miss one or two details, relating chiefly +to Leigh Hunt. + + "Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works + which they affected to criticize. On the present occasion we + shall anticipate the author's complaint, and honestly confess + that we have not read his work. Not that we have been wanting in + our duty; far from it; indeed, we have made efforts, almost as + superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it: + but, with the fullest stretch of our perseverance, we are forced + to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the + first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We + should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may + be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that + we are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through + which we have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the + three which we have not looked into. + + "It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we + almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name + to such a rhapsody)--it is not, we say, that the author has not + powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius. He has + all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of + what has been somewhere called 'Cockney Poetry,' which may be + defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most + uncouth language. + + "Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former + number, aspires to be the hierophant.... This author is a copyist + of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, + twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd, than + his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself + in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his + own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had + advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples. His + nonsense, therefore, is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its + own sake, and, being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, + more than rivals the insanity of his poetry. + + "Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under + peculiar circumstances. 'Knowing within myself,' he says, 'the + manner [&c., down to 'a deed accomplished']. We humbly beg his + pardon, but this does not appear to us to be 'quite so clear;' we + really do not know what he means. But the next passage is more + intelligible. 'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I + feel sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their + passing the press.' Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his + own judgment, unfit to appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, + in the same condition; and, as two and two make four, and as that + is the whole number of books, we have a clear, and we believe a + very just, estimate of the entire work. + + "Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and + feverish work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently + feverish; and we confess that we should have abstained from + inflicting upon him any of the tortures of the 'fierce hell' of + criticism[14] which terrify his imagination if he had not begged + to be spared in order that he might write more; if we had not + observed in him a certain degree of talent which deserves to be + put in the right way, or which at least ought to be warned of the + wrong; and if finally he had not told us that he is of an age and + temper which imperiously require mental discipline. + + "Of the story we have been able to make out but little. It seems + to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana + and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has + altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of + certainty, and must therefore content ourselves with giving some + instances of its diction and versification. And here again we are + perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats + had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an + immeasurable game at _bouts rimes_; but, if we recollect rightly, + it is an indispensable condition at this play that the rhymes, + when filled up, shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have + already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at + random, and then he follows, not the thought excited by this + line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. + There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in + the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the + association, not of ideas, but of sounds; and the work is + composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced + themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on + which they turn. + + "We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that + least liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the + poem. + + 'Such the sun, the moon, + Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon + For simple sheep; and such are daffodils, + With the green world they live in; and clear rills + That for themselves a cooling covert make + 'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake + Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms; + And such too is the grandeur of the dooms + We have imagined for the mighty dead,' &c. + + Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_, + produces the simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the + _dooms_ of the mighty dead' would never have intruded themselves + but for the 'fair musk-rose _blooms_.' + + "Again-- + + 'For 'twas the morn. Apollo's upward fire + Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre + Of brightness so unsullied that therein + A melancholy spirit well might win + Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine + Into the winds. Rain-scented eglantine + Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun; + The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run + To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass; + Man's voice was on the mountains: and the mass + Of Nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold + To feel this sunrise and its glories old.' + + Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_--a silvery pyre--of + clouds, _wherein_ a spirit might _win_ oblivion, and melt his + essence _fine_; and scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the + _sun_, and cold springs had _run_ into the _grass_; and then the + pulse of the _mass_ pulsed _tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of + the new-born day, &c. + + "One example more-- + + 'Be still the unimaginable lodge + For solitary thinkings, such as dodge + Conception to the very bourne of heaven, + Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven + That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth, + Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.' + + _Lodge_, _dodge_--_heaven_, _leaven_--_earth_, _birth_--such, in + six words, is the sum and substance of six lines. + + "We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot + indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a + line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial + notions of our English heroic metre: + + 'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, + The passion poesy, glories infinite. + + 'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots. + + 'Of some strange history, potent to send. + + 'Before the deep intoxication. + + 'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion. + + 'The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared. + + 'Endymion, the cave is secreter + Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir + No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise + Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys + And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.' + + "By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the + meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines. We now + present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation + of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language. + + "We are told that turtles _passion_ their voices; that an arbour + was _nested_, and a lady's locks _gordianed_ up; and, to supply + the place of the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats, with great + fecundity, spawns new ones, such as men-slugs and human + _serpentry_, the _honey-feel_ of bliss, wives prepare + _needments_, and so forth. + + "Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their + natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads. + Thus the wine out-sparkled, the multitude up-followed, and night + up-took; the wind up-blows, and the hours are down-sunken. But, + if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the + language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the + parent stock. Thus a lady whispers _pantingly_ and close, makes + _hushing_ signs, and steers her skiff into a _ripply_ cove, a + shower falls _refreshfully_, and a vulture has a _spreaded_ tail. + + "But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If any one + should be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so + much more patient than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, + and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him + to make us acquainted with his success. We shall then return to + the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make + all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers." + +Such is the too famous article in _The Quarterly Review_. If its +contents are to be assessed with perfect calmness, I should have to say +that it is not mistaken in alleging that the poem of "Endymion" is +rambling and indistinct; that Keats allowed himself to drift too readily +according to the bidding of his rhymes (Leigh Hunt has acknowledged as +much, in independent remarks of his own); that many words are coined, +and badly coined; and that the versification is not free from +blemishes--although several of the lines quoted by _The Quarterly_ as +unmetrical, are, when read with the right emphasis, blameless, or even +sonorous. But the article is none the less a despicable and odious +performance; partly as being a sneering depreciation of a work showing +rich poetic endowment, and partly as being, not a deliberate and candid +(however severe) estimate of Keats as a poet, but really an utterance of +malice prepense, and hardly disguised, against Hunt as a hostile +politician who wrote poetry, and against any one who consorted with him. +The inverting of the due balance between the merits and the defects of +"Endymion," would have been at best an act of stupidity; at second best, +after the author's preface had been laid to heart, an act of brutalism; +and at worst, when the venom of abuse was poured into the poetic cup of +Keats as an expedient for drugging the political cup of Hunt, an act of +partisan turpitude. No more words need be wasted upon a proceeding of +which the abiding and unevadeable literary record is graven in the brass +of Shelley's "Adonais." + +The attack in _The Quarterly Review_ was accompanied by attacks in +_Blackwood's Magazine_. If _The Quarterly_ was carping and ill-natured, +_Blackwood_ was basely insulting. A series of articles "On the Cockney +School of Poetry" began in the Scotch magazine in October 1817, being +directed mainly, and with calumnious virulence, against Leigh Hunt. No. +4 of the series came out in August 1818, and formed a vituperation of +Keats. I will not draw upon its stores of underbred jocularity, so as to +show that the best raillery which _Blackwood_ could get up consisted of +terming him Johnny Keats, and referring to his having been assistant to +an "apothecary." The author of these papers signed himself Z, being no +doubt too noble and courageous to traduce people without muffling +himself in anonymity; nor did he consent to uncloak, though vigorously +pressed by Hunt to do so. It is affirmed that Z was Lockhart, the +son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards editor of _The Quarterly +Review_; and an unpleasant adjunct to this statement--we would gladly +disbelieve it--is that Scott himself lent active aid in concocting the +articles. A different account is that Z was at first John Wilson +(Christopher North), revised by William Blackwood, but that the article +on Keats was due to Lockhart. + +Few literary questions of the last three-quarters of a century have been +regarded from more absolutely different points of view than the +problem--How did Keats receive the attacks made upon his poem and +himself? From an early date in the controversy three points seem to have +been very generally agreed upon: (1) That "Endymion" is (as Shelley +judiciously phrased it), "a poem considerably defective;" (2) that the +attacks upon it were, in essence, partly true, but so biassed--so keen +of scent after defects, and so dull of vision for beauties--as to be +practically unfair and perverse in a marked degree; and (3) that the +unfairness and perversity _quoad_ Keats were wilful devices of literary +and especially of political spite _quoad_ a knot of writers among whom +Leigh Hunt was the central figure. The question remains--In what spirit +did Keats meet his critics? Was he greatly distressed, or defiant and +retaliatory, or substantially indifferent? + +Among the documents of Keats's life I find few records strictly +contemporary with the events themselves, serving to settle this point. +When the abuse of Z against Hunt began, Keats was indignant and +combative. He said in a letter which may belong to October 1817-- + + "There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the Edinburgh + magazine.... There has been but one number published--that on + Hunt, to which they have prefixed a motto by one Cornelius Webb, + 'Poetaster,' who unfortunately was one of our party occasionally + at Hampstead, and took it into his head to write the following + (something about)-- + + 'We'll talk on Wordsworth, Byron, + A theme we never tire on,' + + and so forth till he came to Hunt and Keats. In the motto they + have put 'Hunt and Keats' in large letters. I have no doubt that + the second number was intended for me, but have hopes of its + non-appearance.... I don't mind the thing much; but, if he should + go to such lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must + infallibly call him to an account, if he be a human being, and + appears in squares and theatres where we might 'possibly meet.' I + don't relish his abuse." + +It is worth observing also that, in a paper "On Kean as Richard Duke of +York" which Keats published on December 28, 1817, he wrote: "The English +people do not care one fig about Shakespeare, only as he flatters their +pride and their prejudices;... it is our firm opinion." If he thought +that English indifference to Shakespeare was of this degree of density, +he must surely have been prepared for a considerable amount of apathy in +relation to any poem by John Keats. + +On October 9, 1818, just after the spiteful notices of himself in +_Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_ had appeared, and had been replied to in +_The Morning Chronicle_ by two correspondents signing J. S. and R. B., +Keats wrote as follows to his publisher Mr. Hessey; and to treat the +affair in a more self-possessed, measured, and dignified spirit, would +not have been possible:-- + + "You are very good in sending me the letters from _The + Chronicle_, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a + kindness sooner; pray forgive me. It has so chanced that I have + had that paper every day. I have seen to-day's. I cannot but feel + indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the + rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and + weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man + whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on + his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain + without comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or _The Quarterly_ + could possibly inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no + external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary + reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly + right in regard to the 'slipshod "Endymion."'[15] That it is so + is no fault of mine. No; though it may sound a little + paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. + Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that + view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not + have been written, for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will + write independently. I have written independently, _without + judgment_: I may write independently, and _with judgment_, + hereafter. The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation + in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by + sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must + create itself. In 'Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea, and + thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the + quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green + shore and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable + advice. I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail + than not be among the greatest. But I am nigh getting into a + rant; so, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse, &c., I am + yours very sincerely, + + "John Keats." + + + +This letter, equally moderate and wide-reaching, proves conclusively +that Keats, at the time when he wrote it, treated depreciatory criticism +in exactly the right spirit; acknowledging that it was not without a +certain _raison d'etre_, but affirming that he could for himself see +much further and much deeper in the same direction, and in others as +well. On October 29, 1818, he wrote to his brother George:-- + + "Reynolds... persuades me to publish my 'Pot of Basil' as an + answer to the attack made on me in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and + _The Quarterly Review_.... I think I shall be among the English + poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest, the + attempt to crush me in _The Quarterly_ has only brought me more + into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, 'I + wonder _The Quarterly_ should cut its own throat.' It does me not + the least harm in society to make me appear little and + ridiculous. I know when a man is superior to me, and give him all + due respect; he will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the + rest, I feel that I make an impression upon them which ensures me + personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when + my back is turned.... The only thing that can ever affect me + personally for more than one short passing day is any doubt about + my powers for poetry. I seldom have any; and I look with hope to + the nighing time when I shall have none." + +Towards December 1818 he wrote in a similarly contented strain to George +Keats and his wife: "You will be glad to hear that Gifford's attack upon +me has done me service; it has got my book among several _sets_." The +same letter mentions a sonnet, and a bank-note for L25 received from an +unknown admirer. However, the next letter to the same correspondents, +February 19, 1819, clearly attests some annoyance. + + "My poem has not at all succeeded.... The reviewers have + enervated men's minds, and made them indolent; few think for + themselves. These reviews are getting more and more powerful, + especially _The Quarterly_. They are like a superstition which, + the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the + more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing + weakness. I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do + now) all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would + scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the + Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not care who + wins or who loses.... I have been at different times turning it + in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a + physician.... It is not worse than writing poems, and hanging + them up to be fly-blown in the Review shambles." + +We find in Keats's letters nothing further about the criticisms; but, +when he replied in August 1820 to Shelley's first invitation to Italy, +he referred to "Endymion" itself: "I am glad you take any pleasure in my +poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if +possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation." We must +also take into account the publishers' advertisement (not Keats's own) +to the "Lamia" volume, saying of "Hyperion"--"The poem was intended to +have been of equal length with 'Endymion,' but the reception given to +that work discouraged the author from proceeding." It can scarcely be +supposed that the publishers printed this without Keats's express +sanction; yet he never assigned elsewhere any similar reason for +discontinuing "Hyperion," nor was "Hyperion" open to exception on any +such grounds as had been urged against "Endymion." + +The earliest written reference which I can trace to any serious +despondency of Keats consequent upon the attacks of reviewers (if we +except a less strongly worded statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted +further on) is in a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually +send, to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_. It was written after +Shelley had seen the "Lamia" volume, and can hardly, I suppose, date +earlier than October 1820, two full years after the publication of the +_Quarterly_ (and also the _Blackwood_) tirades against "Endymion." +Shelley adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the _Quarterly_ +critique, and then proceeds-- + + "Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this + review, which I am persuaded was not written with any intention + of producing the effect (to which it has at least greatly + contributed) of embittering his existence, and inducing a disease + from which there are now but faint hopes of his recovery. The + first effects are described to me to have resembled insanity, and + it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from + effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at + length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and + the usual process of consumption appears to have begun." + +The informants of Shelley with regard to Keats's acute feelings and +distress were (it is stated) the Gisbornes, and possibly Leigh Hunt may +have confirmed them in some measure; but the Gisbornes knew nothing +directly of what had been taking place in England in or about the autumn +of 1818, and that which Hunt published regarding Keats is far from +corroborating so extreme a view of the facts. Later on Shelley received +from Mr. Gisborne a letter written by Colonel Finch, the date of which +would perhaps be in May 1821 (three months after the death of Keats). +This letter appears to have been one of his principal incentives for the +indignation expressed in the preface to "Adonais," but not in the poem +itself, which had been completed before Shelley saw the letter; and it +is remarkable that Colonel Finch's expressions, when one scrutinizes +them, do not really say anything about mental anguish caused to Keats by +any review, but only by ill-treatment of a different kind--seemingly +that of his brother George and others, as previously detailed. The +following is the only relevant passage: "He left his native shores by +sea in a merchant vessel for Naples, where he arrived, having received +no benefit during the passage, and brooding over the most melancholy and +mortifying reflections, and nursing a deeply-rooted disgust to life and +to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the very +persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe." Shelley +however put into print in the preface to "Adonais" the same view of the +blighting of Keats's life by the _Quarterly_ critique (he seems to have +known nothing of the _Blackwood_ scurrility), which had appeared in his +undespatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly_-- + + "The savage criticism on his 'Endymion' which appeared in _The + Quarterly Review_ produced the most violent effect on his + susceptible mind. The agitation thus originated ended in the + rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs. A rapid consumption + ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid + critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to + heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.... Miserable man! you, + one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest + specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse + that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but used + none." + +Thus far we have found no strong evidence (only assertions) that Keats +took greatly to heart the attacks upon him, whether in the _Quarterly_ +or in _Blackwood_. Shelley seems to be the principal authority, and +Shelley, unless founding upon some adequate information, is next to no +authority at all. He had left England in March 1818, five months before +the earlier--printed in August--of these spiteful articles. Were there +nothing further, we should be more than well pleased to rally to the +opinion of Lord Houghton, who came to the conclusion that the idea of +Keats's extreme sensitiveness to criticism was a positive delusion--that +he paid little heed to it, and pursued his own course much as if no +reviewer had tried to be provoking. But there is, in fact, a direct +witness of high importance--Haydon. Haydon knew Keats very intimately, +and saw a great deal of him; he admired and loved him, and had a +vigorous, discerning insight into character and habit of mind, such as +makes his observations about all sorts of men substantial testimony and +first-rate reading. He took forcible views of many things, and sometimes +exaggerated views: but, when he attributed to Keats a particular mood of +feeling, I should find it very difficult to think that he was either +unfairly biassed or widely mistaken. In his reminiscences proper to the +year 1817-18 occurs the following passage:-- + + "The assaults on Hunt in _Blackwood_ at this time, under the + signature of Z, were incessant. Who Z was nobody knew, but I + myself strongly suspect him to have been Terry the actor. Leigh + Hunt had exasperated Terry by neglecting to notice his theatrical + efforts. Terry was a friend of Sir Walter's, shared keenly his + political hatreds, and was also most intimate with the Blackwood + party, which had begun a course of attacks on all who showed the + least liberalism of thinking, or who were praised by or known to + _The Examiner_. Hunt had addressed a sonnet to me. This was + enough: we were taken to be of the same clique of rebels, + rascals, and reformers, who were supposed to support that + production of so much power and talent. On Keats the effect was + melancholy. He became morbid and silent; would call and sit + whilst I was painting, for hours, without speaking a word." + +This counts for something--not very much. But another passage forming an +entry in Haydon's diary, written on March 29, 1821, perhaps as soon as +he had heard of Keats's death, carries the matter much further-- + + "He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, and ungovernable, + expecting the world to fall at once beneath his powers. Poor + fellow! his genius had no sooner begun to bud than hatred and + malice spat their poison on its leaves, and, sensitive and young, + it shrivelled beneath their effusions. Unable to bear the sneers + of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind + enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine and present + nothing but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, and + flew to dissipation as a relief, which, after a temporary + elevation of spirits, plunged him into deeper despondency than + ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober, and (to show what a + man does to gratify his appetites when once they get the better + of him) once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could + reach with cayenne pepper in order to appreciate the 'delicious + coldness[16] of claret in all its glory'--his own expression." + +Immediately afterwards, April 21, 1821, Haydon wrote a letter to Miss +Mitford, repeating, with some verbal variations, what is said above, and +adding several other particulars concerning Keats. The opening phrase +runs thus: "Keats was a victim to personal abuse, and want of nerve to +bear it. Ought he to have sunk in that way because a few quizzers told +him that he was an apothecary's apprentice?" And further on--"I +remonstrated on his absurd dissipation, but to no purpose." The reader +will observe that this dissipation, six weeks of insobriety, is alleged +to have occurred after Keats "began to despond." The precise time when +he began to despond is not defined, but we may suppose it to have been +in the late autumn of 1818. If so, it was much about the same period +when he first made Miss Brawne's acquaintance. + +It is true that Mr. Cowden Clarke, when he published certain +"Recollections" in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1874, strongly +contested these statements of Haydon's; he disbelieved the cayenne +pepper and the dissipation, and had "never perceived in Keats even a +tendency to imprudent indulgence." The "Recollections" were afterwards +reproduced as a volume, and in the volume the confutation of Haydon +disappeared; whether because Clarke had eventually changed his opinion, +or for what other reason, I am unable to say. Anyhow, Haydon's evidence +remains; it relates to a period of Keats's life when Haydon no doubt saw +him much oftener than Clarke did, and we must observe that he refers to +"Keats's own expression" as to the claret ensuing after the cayenne +pepper, and affirms that he himself remonstrated in vain against the +"dissipation," which means apparently excess in drinking alone. + +To advert to what Lord Byron wrote about Keats as having been killed by +_The Quarterly Review_ is hardly worth while. His first reference to the +subject is in a letter to Mr. Murray (publisher of _The Quarterly_) +dated April 26, 1821. In this he expressly names Shelley as his +informant, and with Shelley as an authority for the allegation I have +already dealt. + +There are two writings of Leigh Hunt in which the question of Keats and +his critics is touched upon. The first is the review, August 1820, of +the "Lamia" volume. In speaking of the "Ode to a Nightingale" he says-- + + "The poem will be the more striking to the reader when he + understands, what we take a friend's liberty in telling him, that + the author's powerful mind has for some time past been inhabiting + a sickened and shaken body; and that in the meanwhile it has had + to contend with feelings that make a fine nature ache for its + species, even when it would disdain to do so for itself--we mean + critical malignity, that unhappy envy which would wreak its own + tortures upon others, especially upon those that really feel for + it already." + +Hunt's posthumous Memoir of Keats was first published in 1828. He refers +to the attack in _Blackwood_ upon himself and upon Keats, and says: "I +little suspected, as I did afterwards, that the hunters had struck him; +that a delicate organization, which already anticipated a premature +death, made him feel his ambition thwarted by these fellows; and that +the very impatience of being impatient was resented by him and preyed on +his mind." Hunt also says regarding Byron--"I told him he was mistaken +in attributing Keats's death to the critics, though they had perhaps +hastened and certainly embittered it." + +Another item of evidence may be cited. It is from a letter written by +George Keats to Mr. Dilke in April 1824, and refers to the insolences of +_Blackwood's Magazine_. George, it will be remembered, was already out +of England before the articles appeared in _Blackwood_ and in _The +Quarterly_, and he only saw a little of John Keats at the close of the +ensuing year, 1819. "_Blackwood's Magazine_ has fallen into my hands. I +could have walked 100 miles to have dirked him _a l'Americaine_ for his +cruelly associating John in the Cockney School, and other +blackguardisms. Such paltry ridicule will have wounded deeper than the +severest criticisms, particularly as he regarded what is called the +cockneyism of the coterie with so much disgust. He either knew John +well, and touched him in the tenderest place purposely; or knew nothing +of him, and supposed he went all lengths with the set in their festering +opinions and cockney affectations." And from a later letter dated in +April 1825: "After all, _Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_, associated with +our family disease, consumption, were ministers of death sufficiently +venomous, cruel, and deadly, to have consigned one of less sensibility +to a premature grave.... John was the very soul of courage and +manliness, and as much like the Holy Ghost as 'Johnny Keats.'" + +The evidence of latest date on this subject (there is none such in +Severn's correspondence[17]) is that of Cowden Clarke. In his +"Recollections," already mentioned, he refers to the attacks upon Keats, +having his eye, it would seem, rather upon those in _Blackwood_ than in +_The Quarterly_, and he remarks: "To say that these disgusting +misrepresentations did not affect the consciousness and self-respect of +Keats would be to under-rate the sensitiveness of his nature. He did +feel and resent the insult, but far more the _injustice_ of the +treatment he had received. They no doubt had injured him in the most +wanton manner; but, if they or my Lord Byron ever for one moment +supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he +had received, never were they more deluded." + +I have now given all the evidence at first or second hand which seems to +be producible on that much-vexed question--Was Keats (to adopt Byron's +phrase) "snuffed out by an article"? The upshot appears to me to be as +follows. In his inmost mind Keats was from first to last raised very far +above that level where the petty gales of review-criticism blow, puffing +out the canvas of feeble reputations, and fraying that of strong ones. +Nevertheless he was sensitive to derisive criticism, and more especially +to personal ridicule, and even (as Haydon records) gave way to his +feelings of irritation with reckless and culpable self-abandonment. This +passed off partially, and would have passed off entirely--it has left in +his letters no trace worth mentioning, and in his poetry no trace at +all, other than that of executive power braced up to do constantly +better and yet better; but then, about a year and a half after the +reviews, supervened his fatal illness (which cannot be reasonably +supposed to have had its root in any critiques), and all the heartache +of his unsatisfied love. This last formed the real agony of his waning +life: it must have been reinforced to some extent by resentment against +a mode of reviewing which would contribute to the thwarting of his +poetic ambition, and make him go down into the grave with a "name writ +in water;" but the reviews themselves counted for very little in the +last wrestlings of his spirit with death and nothingness. By general +constitution of mind few men were less adapted than Keats for being +"snuffed out by an article," or more certain to snuff one out and leave +all its ill-savour to its scribe. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + +The first important poem to which Keats sets his hand after finishing +"Endymion" was "Isabella, or The Pot of Basil." This was completed by +April 27, 1818, the same month in which "Endymion" was published. +Hamilton Reynolds had suggested the project of producing a volume of +tales in verse, founded upon stories in Boccaccio's "Decameron"; some of +the tales would have been executed by Reynolds himself, who did in fact +produce on this plan the two poems named collectively "The Garden of +Florence." As it turned out, however, Keats's tale appeared in a volume +of his own, 1820, and Reynolds's two came out independently in the +succeeding year. + +"The Eve of St. Agnes" was written in the winter beginning the year +1819. Then came "Hyperion," of which two versions remain, both +fragmentary. The first version (begun perhaps as early as October or +September 1818), the only one which Keats himself published, is in all +respects by far the better. He was much under the spell of Milton while +he wrote it; and finally he gave it up in September 1819, declaring that +"there were too many Miltonic inversions in it." He went so far as to +say in a letter written in the same month that "the 'Paradise Lost,' +though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language--a northern +dialect accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and +intonations." "Hyperion" was included in Keats's third volume at the +request of the publishers, contrary to the author's own preference. One +may readily infer that it was to "Hyperion" that he referred when, in +the preface to "Endymion," he spoke of returning to Grecian mythology +for another subject: the full length of the poem was to have been ten +books. + +"Lamia" was the last poem of considerable length which Keats brought to +completion and published. It seems to have been begun towards the summer +of 1819, and was written with great care, after a heedful study of +Dryden's methods of composition. On September 18, 1819, Keats wrote: "I +am certain there is that sort of fire in it which must take hold of +people in some way, give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensations." +The subject was taken from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," in which +there is a reference to the "Life of Apollonius" by Philostratus as the +original source of the legend. + +The volume--entitled "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other +Poems"--came out towards the beginning of July 1820, when the malady of +Keats had reached an advanced and alarming stage. At the beginning of +September Keats wrote to Brown--"The sale of my book is very slow, +though it has been very highly rated." I am not aware that there is any +other record to show how far the publication may ultimately have +approached towards becoming a commercial success; nor indeed would it be +altogether easy to define the date at which Keats became a recognized +and uncontested poet of high rank, and his works a solid property. His +early death, at the beginning of 1821, must have formed a +turning-point--not to speak of the favourable notice of "Endymion," and +subordinately of the "Lamia" volume, which appeared in _The Edinburgh +Review_, Jeffrey being the critic, in August 1820. Perhaps Jeffrey's +praise may have facilitated an arrangement which Keats made in September +1820--the sale of the copyright of "Endymion" to Messrs. Taylor and +Hessey for L100; no second edition of the poem appeared, however, while +he was alive. I should presume that, within five or six years after +Keats's decease, ridicule and rancour were already much in the minority; +and that, by some such date as 1835 to 1840, they had finally "hidden +their diminished heads," living only, with too persistent a life, in the +retributive memory of men. + +Some of the shorter poems in the "Lamia" volume must receive brief +mention here. The "Ode to Psyche" was written in February 1819, and was +termed by Keats the first poem with which he had taken pains--"I have +for the most part dashed off my lines in a hurry." "To Autumn," the "Ode +on Melancholy," and the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," succeeded. The "Ode to a +Nightingale" was composed at Hampstead in the spring of 1819 _after +breakfast_, forming two or three hours' work: thus we see that the +nocturnal imagery of the ode was a general or a particular reminiscence, +not actual to the very moment of composition. This poem and the "Ode on +a Grecian Urn" were recited by Keats to Haydon in a chaunting tone in +Kilburn meadows, and were published in the serial entitled "Annals of +the Fine Arts." The urn thus immortalized may probably be one preserved +in the garden of Holland House. + +With the "Lamia" volume we have come to the close of what Keats +published during his lifetime. Something remains to be said of other +writings of his--almost all of them earlier in date than the publication +of that volume--which remained imprinted or uncollected at the time of +his death. + +In February 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, undertook to write a +sonnet each upon the river Nile. In order of merit, the three sonnets +are the reverse of what one might have been willing to forecast. I at +least am clearly of opinion that Hunt's sonnet is the best (though with +a weak ending), Keats's the second, and Shelley's a decidedly bad third. +The leading thought in each sonnet is characteristic of its author. +Keats adheres to the simple natural facts of the case, while Hunt and +Shelley turn the Nile into a moral or intellectual symbol. Keats says +essentially that to associate the Nile with ideas of antique desolation +is but a delusion of ignorance, for this river is really rich and fresh +like others. Hunt makes the Egyptian stream an emblem of history tending +towards the progress of the individual and the race; while Shelley reads +into the Nile a lesson of the good and the evil inhering in knowledge. + +"The Eve of St. Mark"--a fragment which very few of Keats's completed +poems can rival in point of artist-like feeling and writing--belongs to +the years 1818-9. I find nothing in print to account for his leaving it +unfinished. + +In May 1819 Keats had an idea of inventing a new structure of +sonnet-rhyme; and he sent to his brother and sister-in-law a sonnet +composed accordingly, beginning-- + + "If by dull rhymes our English must be chained." + +He wrote: "I have been endeavouring to discover a better sonnet-stanza +than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language well, from the +pouncing rhymes. The other appears too elegiac, and the couplet at the +end of it has seldom a pleasing effect. I do not pretend to have +succeeded." Keats's experiment reads agreeably. It comprises five rhymes +altogether; the first rhyme being repeated thrice at arbitrary +intervals; and the last rhyme twice in lines twelve and fourteen. + +The tragedy of "Otho the Great" was written by Keats (as already +referred to) in July and August 1819, in co-operation with Armitage +Brown. The diction of the play is, it would appear, Keats's entirely; +whereas the invention and development of plot in the first four acts is +wholly due to Brown. The two friends sat together; Brown described each +successive scene, and Keats turned it into verse, without troubling his +head as to the subject-matter for the scene next ensuing. When it came +to the fifth act, however, Keats inquired what would be the conclusion +of the play; and, not being satisfied with Brown's project which he +deemed too humorous and too melodramatic, he both invented and wrote a +fifth act for himself. He felt sure that "Otho the Great" was "a +tolerable tragedy," and set his heart upon getting it acted--Kean was +well inclined to take the principal character, Prince Ludolph; and it +became his greatest ambition to write fine plays. "Otho" was in fact +accepted for Drury Lane Theatre, on the offer of Brown, who left Keats's +authorship in the background; but, as both the writers were impatient of +delay, Brown, in February 1820, took away the MS., and Covent Garden +Theatre was thought of instead--without any practical result. As soon as +"Otho" was finished, Brown suggested King Stephen as the subject of +another drama; and Keats, without any further collaboration from his +friend, composed the few scenes of it which remain. "One of my +ambitions" (writes Keats to Bailey in August 1819), "is to make as great +a revolution in modern dramatic writing as Kean has done in acting." + +The ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci," than which Keats did nothing more +thrilling or more perfect, may perhaps have been written in the earlier +half of 1819; it was published in 1820, in Hunt's _Indicator_ for May +10th, under the signature "Caviare"; the same signature which was +adopted for the sonnet, "A dream, after reading Dante's episode of Paolo +and Francesca." Keats may probably have meant to imply, in some +bitterness of spirit, that his poems were "caviare to the general." The +title of this ballad was suggested to Keats by seeing it at the head of +a translation from Alain Chartier in a copy of Chaucer. As to the +"Dream" sonnet he wrote in April 1819:-- + + "The 5th canto of Dante pleases me more, and more; it is that one + in which he meets with Paulo and Francesca. I had passed many + days in rather a low state of mind, and in the midst of them I + dreamt of being in that region of Hell. The dream was one of the + most delightful enjoyments I ever had in my life. I floated about + the wheeling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful + figure, to whose lips mine were joined, it seemed for an age; and + in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm. + Ever-flowery tree-tops sprang up, and we rested on them, + sometimes with the lightness of a cloud, till the wind blew us + away again. I tried a sonnet on it; there are fourteen lines in + it, but nothing of what I felt. Oh that I could dream it every + night!" + +The last long work which Keats undertook, and he wrote it with extreme +facility, was "The Cap and Bells; or The Jealousies, a Fairy Tale," in +the Spenserian stanza. What remains is probably far less than Keats +intended the tale to amount to, but it is enough to enable us to +pronounce upon its merits. The poem was begun soon after Keats's first +attack of blood-spitting in February 1820. It seems singular that under +such depressing conditions he should have written in so frivolous and +jaunty a spirit, and provoking that his last long work (the last, that +is, if we except the recast of "Hyperion") should be about the most +valueless which he produced, at any date after commencing upon +"Endymion." This poem has been said to be written in the spirit of +Ariosto; a statement which, in justice to the brilliant Italian, cannot +be admitted. It may well be, however, as Lord Houghton suggests, that +the general notion was suggested by Brown, who had translated the first +five cantos (not indeed of Ariosto, but) of the "Orlando Innamorato" of +Bojardo. "The Cap and Bells" appears to be destitute of distinct plan, +though some sort of satirical allusion to the marital and extra-marital +exploits of George IV. is traceable in it; meagre and purposeless in +invention; a poor farrago of pumped-up and straggling jocosity. Perhaps +a hearty laugh has never been got out of it; although there are points +here and there at which a faint snigger may be permissible, and the +concluding portion improves somewhat. Keats seems to have intended to +publish it under a pseudonym, Lucy Vaughan Lloyd; and Hunt gave, in _The +Indicator_ of August 23, 1820, some taste of its quality, possibly +meaning to print more of it anon. + +The last verses which Keats ever wrote formed the sonnet here ensuing. +He composed this late in September 1820, after landing on the +Dorsetshire coast, probably near Lulworth, and returning to the ship +which bore him to his doom in Italy; and he wrote it down on a blank +page in Shakespeare's Poems, facing "A Lover's Complaint." + + "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art; + Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, + And watching with eternal lids apart, + Like Nature's patient sleepless eremite, + The moving waters at their priestlike task + Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, + Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask + Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:-- + No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, + Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, + To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, + Awake for ever in a sweet unrest; + Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, + And so live ever--or else swoon to death." + +Of poetic projects which remained unfulfilled when Keats died we +hear--leaving out of count the works which he had begun and left +uncompleted--of only one. During his voyage to Naples he often spoke of +wishing to write the story of Sabrina, as indicated in Milton's "Comus," +connecting it with some points in English history and character. + +In prose--apart from his letters, which are noticeably various in mood, +matter, and manner, and contain many admirable things--Keats wrote +extremely little. In a weekly paper with which Reynolds was connected, +_The Champion_, December 1817, he published two articles on "Kean as a +Shakespearean Actor:" they are not remarkable. With the above-named +articles are now associated some "Notes on Shakespeare," not written +with a view to publication; these appear to me somewhat strained and +bloated. There are also some "Notes on Milton's 'Paradise Lost.'" On +September 22, 1819, Keats addressed to Mr. Dilke a letter, which however +does not appear to have been actually sent off. As it shows a definite +intention of writing in prose for regular publication and for an income, +a few sentences are worth quoting. + + "It concerns a resolution I have taken to endeavour to acquire + something by temporary writing in periodical works. You must + agree with me how unwise it is to keep feeding upon hopes which, + depending so much on the state of temper and imagination, appear + gloomy or bright, near or afar off, just as it happens.... You + may say I want tact; that is easily acquired.... I should, a year + or two ago, have spoken my mind on every subject with the utmost + simplicity. I hope I have learned a little better, and am + confident I shall be able to cheat as well as any literary Jew of + the market, and shine up an article on anything without much + knowledge of the subject--aye, like an orange. I would willingly + have recourse to other means. I cannot; I am fit for nothing but + literature.... Notwithstanding my 'aristocratic' temper, I cannot + help being very much pleased with the present public proceedings. + I hope sincerely I shall be able to put a mite of help to the + liberal side of the question before I die." + +On the following day Keats wrote to Brown on the same subject-- + + "I will write on the liberal side of the question for whoever + will pay me. I have not known yet what it is to be diligent. I + purpose living in town in a cheap lodging, and endeavouring, for + a beginning, to get the theatricals of some paper.... I shall + apply to Hazlitt, who knows the market as well as any one, for + something to bring me in a few pounds as soon as possible. I + shall not suffer my pride to hinder me. The whisper may go + round--I shall not hear it. If I can get an article in _The + Edinburgh_, I will. One must not be delicate." + +In pursuance of this plan, Keats did, for a few days in October, take a +lodging in Westminster. He then reverted to Hampstead, and finally the +scheme came to nothing, principally perhaps because his fatal illness +began, and everything had to be given up which was not directly +controlled by considerations of health. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + +Having now gone through the narrative of Keats's life and death, and +also the narrative of his literary work, we have before us the more +delicate and exacting task of forming some judgment of both,--to +estimate his character, and appraise his writings. But first I pause a +brief while for the purpose of relating a little that took place after +his decease, and mentioning a few particulars regarding his surviving +relatives and friends. + +Keats was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome amid the overgrown +ruins of the Honorian walls, surmounted by the pyramid-tomb of Caius +Cestius, a Tribune of the People whose monument has long survived his +fame: this used to be traditionally called the Tomb of Remus. There were +but few graves on the spot when Keats was laid there. In recent years +the portion of the cemetery where he reposes has been cut off by a +fortification. A little altar-tomb was set up for him, sculptured with a +Greek lyre, and inscribed with his name and his own epitaph, "Here lies +one whose name was writ in water." Severn attended affectionately to all +this, and the whole was completed about two years after the poet's +death. In 1875 General Sir Vincent Eyre and some other Englishmen and +Americans repaired the stone, and placed on an adjacent wall a medallion +portrait of Keats, presented by its sculptor, Mr. Warrington Wood. +Severn, who died in August 1879, having been British Consul in Rome for +many years, now lies in close proximity to his friend. Shelley's remains +are interred hard by, but in the new cemetery,--not the old one, which +received the bones of Keats. As early as 1836 Severn was able to attest +that his connection with the poet had been of benefit to his own +professional career. The friend and death-bed companion of Keats had by +that time become a personage, apart from the merit, be it greater or +less, of his performances as a painter. + +Severn's letters addressed to Armitage Brown show that it was expected +that Brown should write a Life of Keats. The non-appearance of any such +work was made a matter of remonstrance in 1834; and at one time George +Keats, though conscious of not being quite the right man for the +purpose, thought of supplying the deficiency. Severn also had had a +similar idea. Brown was in Italy in 1832, and there he met Mr. Richard +Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton. He returned to England some +three years later, and was about to produce the desired Life when a new +project entered his mind, and he emigrated to New Zealand. He then +handed over to Mr. Milnes all his collections of Keats's writings, and +the biographical notices which he had compiled, and these furnished a +substantive basis for Mr. Milnes's work published in 1848--a work +written with abundant sympathy, invaluable at its own date and ever +since to all lovers of the poet's writings. Brown died towards 1842. + +George Keats voluntarily paid all the debts left by his brother. These +have not been precisely detailed: but it appears that Messrs. Taylor and +Hessey had made an advance of L150, and there must have been something +not inconsiderable due to Brown, and probably also to Dilke, who assured +George that John Keats had known nothing of direct want of either money +or friends. George, who has been described as "the most manly and +self-possessed of men," settled at Louisville, Kentucky, where he became +a prominent citizen, and left a family creditably established. He died +in 1841, and his widow remarried with a Mr. Jeffrey. In one of his +letters addressed to his sister, April 1824, there is a pleasant little +critique of "Don Quixote." It gives one so prepossessing an idea of its +writer that I am tempted to extract it:-- + + "Your face is decidedly not Spanish, but English all over. If I + fancied you to resemble Don Quixote, I should fancy a handsome, + intelligent, melancholy countenance, with something wild but + benevolent about the eyes, a lofty forehead but not very broad, + with finely-arched eyebrows, denoting candour and generosity. He + is an immense favourite of mine; and I cannot help feeling angry + with the great Cervantes for bringing him into situations where + he is the laughing-stock of minds so inferior to his own. It is + evident he was a great favourite of the author, and it is evident + _he_ was united with the chivalric spirits he so wittily + ridicules. He is made to speak as much sound sense, elevated + morality, and true piety, as any divine who ever wrote. If I were + to meet such a man, I should almost hate myself for laughing at + his eccentricities." + +The opening reference here to a Spanish face must relate to the fact +that Miss Fanny Keats, who in girlhood had been the recipient of many +affectionate and attentive letters from her brother John, was engaged +to, and eventually married, a Spanish gentleman, Senhor Llanos, author +of "Don Esteban," "Sandoval the Freemason," and other books illustrating +the modern history of his country. He was a Liberal, and in the time of +the Spanish Republic represented his Government at the Court of Rome. +Mrs. Llanos is still living at a very advanced age. A few years ago a +pension on the Civil List was conferred upon her, in national +recognition of what is due to the sister of John Keats. There is a +pathetic reference to her appearance at the close of the very last +letter which he wrote: "My sister, who walks about my imagination like a +ghost, she is so like Tom." + +Miss Brawne married a Mr. Lindon some years after the death of Keats. I +do not know how many years, but it must have been later than June 1825. +She died in 1865. + +The sincerity or otherwise of Leigh Hunt as a personal, and more +especially a literary, friend of Keats, has been a good deal canvassed +of late. It has been said that he showed little staunchness in +championing the cause of Keats at the time--towards the close of +1818--when detraction was most rampant, and when support from a man +occupying the position of editor of _The Examiner_ would have been most +serviceable. But one must not hurry to assume that Hunt was seriously in +the wrong, whether we regard the question as one of individual +friendship or of literary policy. The attacks upon Keats were in great +measure flank-attacks upon Hunt himself. Keats was abused on the ground +that he wrote bad poetry through imitating Hunt's bad poetry--that he +out-Heroded Herod, or out-Hunted Hunt. Obviously it was a delicate task +which would have lain before the elder poet: for any direct defence of +Keats must have been conducted on the thesis either that the faults were +not there (when indeed they _were_ there to a large extent); or else +that the faults were in fact beauties, an allegation which would only +have riveted the charge that they were Leigh-Huntish mannerisms; or +finally that they were not due to Hunt's influence or example, but were +proper to Keats in person, and this would have been more in the nature +of censure than of vindication. A defence on general grounds, upholding +the poems without any discussion of the particular faults alleged, would +also, as coming from Hunt, have been a difficult thing to manage: it +would rather have inflamed than abated the rancour of the enemy. +Besides, we must remember that Keats's first volume, though very warmly +accepted and praised by Hunt, was really but beginner's work, imperfect +in the last degree; while the second volume, "Endymion," was viewed by +Hunt as a hazardous and immature attempt notwithstanding its many +beauties, and incapable of being upheld beyond a certain limit. There +was not at that date any third volume to be put forward in proof of +faculty, or in arrest of judgment. Mr. Forman, than whom no man looks +with more patience into the evidence on a question such as this of +Hunt's friendship, or is more likely to pronounce a sound judgment upon +it, wholly scouts the accusation; and I am quite content to range myself +on the same side as Mr. Forman. + +Of Keats's friends in general it may be said that the one whom he +respected very highly in point of character was Bailey: the one who had +a degree of genius fully worthy, whatever its limitations and defects, +of communing with his own, was Haydon. Shelley can hardly be reckoned +among his friends, though very willing and even earnest to be such, both +in life and after death. Keats held visibly aloof from Shelley, more +perhaps on the ground of his being a man of some family and position +than from any other motive. Shortly after the publication of "The Revolt +of Islam," Keats's rather naive expression was, "Poor Shelley, I think +he has his quota of good qualities." Neither did he show any warm or +frank admiration of Shelley's poetry. On receiving a copy of "The +Cenci," he urged its author to "curb his magnanimity, and be more of an +artist, and load every rift of his subject with ore." We should not +ascribe this to any mean-spirited jealousy, but to that sense, which +grew to a great degree of intensity in Keats, that the art of +composition and execution is of paramount importance in poetry, and must +supersede all considerations of abstract or proselytizing intention. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + +I must next proceed to offer some account of Keats's person, character, +and turn of mind. + +As I have already said, Keats was a very small man, barely more than +five feet in height. He was called "Little Keats" by his surgical +fellow-students. Archdeacon Bailey has left a good description of him in +brief:-- + + "There was in the character of his countenance the femineity + which Coleridge thought to be the mental constitution of true + genius. His hair was beautiful, and, if you placed your hand upon + his head, the curls fell round it like a rich plumage. I do not + particularly remember the thickness of the upper lip so generally + described; but the mouth was too wide, and out of harmony with + the rest of his face, which had a peculiar sweetness of + expression, with a character of mature thought, and an almost + painful sense of suffering." + +Leigh Hunt should also be heard:-- + + "His lower limbs were small in comparison with the upper, but + neat and well-turned. His shoulders were very broad for his + size. He had a face in which energy and sensibility were + remarkably mixed up--an eager power checked and made impatient by + ill-health. Every feature was at once strongly cut and delicately + alive. If there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, + which was not without something of a character of pugnacity. His + face was rather long than otherwise. The upper lip projected a + little over the under; the chin was bold, the cheeks sunken; the + eyes mellow and glowing--large, dark, and sensitive. At the + recital of a noble action or a beautiful thought, they would + suffuse with tears, and his mouth trembled. In this there was + ill-health as well as imagination, for he did not like these + betrayals of emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral + courage. His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and hung in + natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for the phrenologists, + being remarkably small in the skull; a singularity which he had + in common with Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on. + Keats was sensible of the disproportion above noticed between his + upper and lower extremities; and he would look at his hand, which + was faded, and swollen in the veins, and say it was the hand of a + man of fifty." + +Cowden Clarke confirms Hunt in stating that Keats's hair was brown, and +he assigns the same colour, or dark hazel, to his eyes: confuting the +"auburn" and "blue" of which Mrs. Procter had spoken. It is rather +remarkable that, while Hunt speaks of the projection of the _upper_ +lip--a detail which is fully verified in a charcoal drawing by +Severn--Lord Houghton observes upon "the undue prominence of the +_lower_ lip," which point I cannot trace clearly in any one of the +portraits. Keats himself, in one of his love-letters (August 1819), +says, "I do not think myself a fright." According to Clarke, John Keats +was the only one of the family who resembled the father in person and +feature, while the other three resembled the mother. George Keats does +not wholly coincide in this, for he says, "My mother resembled John very +much in the face;" at the same time he would not have been qualified to +deny a likeness to the father, of whom he remembered nothing except that +he had dark hair. The lady who saw Keats's hair and eyes of the wrong +colour saw at any rate his face to some effect, having left it recorded +thus: "His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and +brightness; it had an expression as if he had been looking on some +glorious sight." In a like spirit, Haydon speaks of Keats as having "an +eye that had an inward look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess +who saw visions." His voice was deep and grave. + +Let us now turn to the portraits, which are as numerous and as good as +could fairly be expected under the circumstances. + +The earliest in date, and certainly one of the best from an art point of +view, is a sketch in profile done by Haydon preparatory to introducing +Keats's head into the picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. The +sketch dates in November 1816, just after Keats had come of age. The +picture is in Philadelphia, and I cannot speak of the head as it appears +there. In the sketch we see abundant wavy hair; a forehead and nose +sloping forward to the nasal tip in a nearly uniform curve; a dark, +set, speaking eye; a mouth tolerably well moulded, the upper lip being +fully long enough, and noticeably overhanging the lower lip, upon which +the chin--large, full, and rounded--closely impinges. The whole face +partakes of the Raphaelesque cast of physiognomy. At some time, which +may have been the autumn of 1817, some one, most probably Haydon, took a +mask of the face of Keats. In respect of actual form, this is +necessarily the final test of what the poet was like--but masks are +often only partially true to the _impression_ of a face. This mask +confirms Haydon's sketch markedly; allowing only for the points that +Haydon has rather emphasized the length of the nose, and attenuated (so +far as one can judge from a profile) its thickness, and has given very +much more of the overhanging of the upper lip--but this last would, by +the very conditions of mask-taking, be there reduced to a minimum. On +the whole we may say that, after considering reciprocally Haydon's +sketch and the mask, we know very adequately what Keats's face was--he +had ample reason for acquitting himself of being "a fright." We come +still closer to a firm conclusion upon taking into account, along with +these two records, two of the portraits left to us by Severn. One is a +miniature, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, and which +we may surmise to have been painted in that year, or late in 1818: the +well-known likeness which represents Keats in three-quarters face, +looking earnestly forwards, and resting his chin upon his left hand. +Here the eyes are larger than in Haydon's sketch, and the upper lip +shorter, while the forehead seems straighter; but, as to those matters +of lip and forehead, a profile tells the plainer tale. The whole aspect +of the face is not greatly unlike Byron's. There is also the earlier +charcoal drawing by Severn, the best of all for enabling us to judge of +the beautiful rippling long hair; it is a profile, and extremely like +Haydon's profile, except for the greater straightness of the forehead, +and the decided smallness of the chin, points on which the mask shows +conclusively that Haydon was in the right. Most touching of all as a +reminiscence is the Indian-ink drawing which Severn made of his dying +friend on "28 Jan^y. 1821, 3 o'clock morn^g.," as he lay asleep, with +the death-damp on his dark hair. It exhibits the attenuation of disease, +but without absolute painfulness, and produces, fully as much as any of +the other portraits, the impression of a fine and distinguished mould of +face. Severn left yet other likenesses of Keats--posthumous, and of +inferior interest. There is moreover a chalk drawing by the painter +Hilton, who used to meet Keats at the house of the publisher Mr. Taylor. +It has an artificial air, and conveys a notion of the general character +of the face different from the other records, but may assist us towards +estimating what Keats was like about, or very soon before, the +commencement of his fatal illness. Lastly, though the list of extant +portraits is not even thus exhausted, I mention the medallion by +Girometti, which is to all appearance a posthumous performance. Its +lines correspond pretty well with the profile sketch by Haydon, while in +character it assimilates more to Hilton's drawing. To me it seems of +very little importance as a document, but Hamilton Reynolds thought it +the best likeness of all. Mrs. Llanos was in favour of the mask; Mr. +Cowden Clarke, of the crayon drawing by Severn--which, indeed, conveys a +bright impression of eager, youthful impulsiveness. + +The character of Keats appears to me not a very easy one to expound. To +begin with, it stands to reason that a man who died at the age of +twenty-five can only have half evolved and evinced himself; there must +have been a great deal which time and trial, had these been granted, +would have developed, but which untimely fate left to conjecture. We are +thus compelled to judge of an apprentice in the severe school of life as +if he had gone through its full course; many things about him may, in +their real nature, have been fleeting and tentative, which to us pass +for final and established. This difficulty has to be allowed for, but +cannot be got over; the only Keats with whom we have to deal is the +Keats who had not completed his twenty-sixth year. For him, as for other +youths, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had budded apace; the +fruit remained for ever unmatured. Another gravely deflecting force in +our estimation of the character of Keats consists in the fact that what +we really care for in him is his poetry. We admire his poetry, and +condole his inequitable treatment, and his hard and premature fate, and +are disposed to see his life in the light of his verse and his +sufferings. Hence arises a facile and perhaps vapid enthusiasm, with an +inclination to praise through thick and thin, or to ignore such points +as may not be susceptible of praise. The sympathetic biographer is a +very pleasant fellow; but the truthful biographer also has something to +say for himself in the long run. I aspire to the part of the truthful +biographer, duly sympathetic. + +We have already seen that Keats in early childhood was vehement and +ungovernable. His sensibility displayed itself in the strongest +contrasts, and he would be convulsed with laughter or with tears, +rapidly interchanged. At school his skill in bodily exercises, and his +marked generosity of spirit, made him very popular--his comrades +surmising that he would turn out superior in some active career, such as +soldiering. To be rated as a good boy was not his ambition; but, as +previously stated, he settled down into a very attentive scholar. Later +on, his friend Bailey liked "the simplicity of his character," and his +winning affectionate manner. "Simplicity" means, I suppose, frankness or +straightforwardness; for I cannot see that Keats's character was at any +time particularly simple--I should rather say that it was complex and +many-sided. + +The one great craving of Keats, before the love for Miss Brawne +engrossed him, was the desire to become an excellent poet; to do great +things in poesy, and leave a name among the immortals. At times he was +conscious of some presumption in this craving; but mostly it seems to +have held such plenary possession of him that the question of +presumption or otherwise hardly arose. Whether he felt very strongly +upon any matters of intellectual or general concern other than poetic +ones may admit of some doubt. In Book II. of "Endymion" he openly +proclaims that poetic love-making is the one thing needful to the +susceptible mind; the Athenian admiral and his auspicious owl, the +Indian expeditions of Alexander, Ulysses and the Cyclops, the death-day +of empires, are as nothing to Juliet's passion, Hero's tears, Imogen's +swoon, and Pastorella in the bandits' den. He does indeed, in one of his +letters (April 1818), aver "I would jump down AEtna for any great public +good"; but it may perhaps be permissible to think that he would at all +events have postponed the Empedoclean feat until he had written and +ensured the publishing of some poem upon which he could be content to +stake his claim to permanent poetic renown. His tension of thought was +great. In a letter which he addressed in May 1817 to Leigh Hunt there is +a little passage which may be worth quoting here, along with Mr. Dilke's +comment upon it: + + "I went to the Isle of Wight. Thought so much about poetry so + long together that I could not get to sleep at night; and + moreover, I know not how it was, I could not get wholesome food. + By this means, in a week or so, I became not over-capable in my + upper stories, and set off pell-mell for Margate, at least a + hundred and fifty miles, because forsooth I fancied that I should + like my old lodging here, and could continue to do without trees. + Another thing, I was too much in solitude, and consequently was + obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only + resource." + +This passage Mr. Dilke considered "an exact picture of the man's mind +and character," adding: "He could at any time have 'thought himself +out,' mind and body. Thought was intense with him, and seemed at times +to assume a reality that influenced his conduct, and, I have no doubt, +helped to wear him out." + +Whether Keats should be regarded as a young man tolerably regular in his +mode of life, or manifestly tending to the irregular, is a question not +entirely clear. We have seen something of a sexual misadventure in +Oxford, and of six weeks of hard drinking, attested by Haydon; and it +should be added that two or three of Keats's minor poems have a certain +unmistakable twang of erotic laxity. Lord Houghton thought that in the +winter of 1817-18 the poet had indulged somewhat "in that dissipation +which is the natural outlet for the young energies of ardent +temperaments;" but he held that it all amounted to no more than "a +little too much rollicking" (Keats's own phrase), and he would not allow +that either drinking or gaming had proceeded to any serious extent, +"for, in his letters to his brothers, he speaks of having drunk too much +as a rare piece of joviality, and of having won L10 at cards as a great +hit." Medical students, it may be added, are not, as a rule, conspicuous +for mortifying the flesh; Keats, however, according to Mr. Stephens, did +not indulge in any vice during his term of studentship. He was eminently +open, as his writings evidence, to impressions of enjoyment; and one may +not unnaturally suppose that the joys of sense numbered him, no less +than the average of young men, among their votaries--not indeed among +their slaves. He had not, I think, any taste for those "manly +recreations" which consist chiefly in making the lower animals +uncomfortable, or in putting a quietus to their comforts and discomforts +along with their lives. I only observe one occasion on which he went +out with a gun. He then (towards the close of 1818) accompanied Mr. +Dilke in shooting on Hampstead Heath, and his trophy was a solitary +tomtit. + +As to strength or stability of character, it is rather amusing to find +Keats picking a hole in Haydon, while Haydon could probe a joint in the +armour of Keats. In November 1817 Haydon had been playing rather fast +and loose (so at least it seemed to Keats and to his friend Bailey) with +a pictorial aspirant named Cripps, and Keats wrote to Bailey in the +following terms: + + "To a man of your nature such a letter as Haydon's must have been + extremely cutting.... As soon as I had known Haydon three days, I + had got enough of his character not to have been surprised at + such a letter as he has hurt you with. Nor, when I knew it, was + it a principle with me to drop his acquaintance, although with + you it would have been an imperious feeling.... I must say one + thing that has pressed upon me lately, and increased my humility + and capability of submission, and that is this truth: _Men of + genius_ are great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on a + mass of neutral intellect; but they _have not any individuality, + any determined character_." + +The following also, from a letter of January 1818 to the same +correspondent, relates partly to Haydon: + + "The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man's faults, and then + be passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him, + then you have no power to break the link." + +Haydon's verdict upon Keats is no doubt extremely important. I give here +the whole entry in his diary, 29th of March 1821, omitting only two +passages which have been already extracted in their more essential +context:-- + + "Keats, too, is gone! He died at Rome, the 23rd February, aged + twenty-five. A genius more purely poetical never existed. In + fireside conversation he was weak and inconsistent, but he was in + his glory in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a + flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature + tremble; then his eyes flashed, his cheeks glowed, his mouth + quivered. He was the most unselfish of human creatures; unadapted + to this world, he cared not for himself, and put himself to any + inconvenience for the sake of his friends. He was haughty, and + had a fierce hatred of rank [this corresponds with Hunt's remark, + that Keats looked upon a man of birth as his natural enemy], but + he had a kind, gentle heart, and would have shared his fortune + with any man who wanted it. His classical knowledge was + inconsiderable, but he could feel the beauties of the classical + writers. He had an exquisite sense of humour, and too refined a + notion of female purity to bear the little sweet arts of love + with patience. _He had no decision of character_, and, having no + object upon which to direct his great powers, was at the mercy of + every pretty theory Hunt's ingenuity might start. One day he was + full of an epic poem; the next day epic poems were splendid + impositions on the world. Never for two days did he know his own + intentions.... The death of his brother wounded him deeply, and + it appeared to me that he began to droop from that hour. I was + much attracted to Keats, and he had a fellow-feeling for me. I + was angry because he would not bend his great powers to some + definite object, and always told him so. Latterly he grew + irritated because I would shake my head at his irregularities, + and tell him that he would destroy himself.... Poor dear Keats! + had nature given you firmness as well as fineness of nerve, you + would have been glorious in your maturity as great in your + promise. May your kind and gentle spirit be now mingling with + those of Shakespeare and Milton, before whose minds you have so + often bowed! May you be considered worthy of admission to share + their musings in heaven, as you were fit to comprehend their + imaginations on earth! Dear Keats, hail and adieu for some six or + seven years, and I shall meet you. I have enjoyed Shakespeare + more with Keats than with any other human creature." + +In writing to Miss Mitford, Haydon added: + + "His ruin was owing to _his want of decision of character, and + power of will_, without which genius is a curse." + +It will be seen that Haydon's character of Keats is in some respects +very highly laudatory: he speaks of the poet's unselfishness and +generosity in terms which may possibly run into excess, but cannot +assuredly have fallen short. What he remarks as to "irregularities" +seems to show that these had (at least in Haydon's opinion) taken +somewhat firm root with Keats, and had not merely come and gone with a +spurt, as a relief from feelings of depression or mortification; nor can +we altogether forget the statement that, on the night of February 3, +1820, which closed with the first attack of blood-spitting, Keats +"returned home in a state of strange physical excitement--it might have +appeared to those who did not know him one of fierce intoxication." +Physical excitement which looks like fierce intoxication, without being +really anything of the sort, can be but a comparatively rare phaenomenon; +nor do I suppose that an impending attack of blood-spitting would +account for such an appearance. Brown, however, was still more positive +than Lord Houghton in excluding the idea of intoxication on that +occasion; he even says, "Such a state in him, I knew, was +impossible"--an assertion which we have to balance against the general +averments of Haydon. Keats's irritation at the remonstrances which +Haydon addressed to him upon irregularities, real or assumed, is +mentioned by the painter without any seeming knowledge of the fact that +Keats had (as shown by his letter of September 20, 1819, already cited, +to his brother George) cooled down very greatly in his cordiality to his +monitor; and he may perhaps have received the remonstrances in a spirit +of stubbornness, or of apparent irritation, more because he was out of +humour with Haydon than because he could not confute the allegations, +had he been so minded. As to the charge of want of decision of +character, want of power of will, we must try to understand what is the +exact sense in which Haydon applies these terms. He appears from the +context to refer more to indefiniteness of literary aim, combined with +sensitiveness to critical detraction and ridicule, than to anything +really affecting the basis of a man's character in his general walk of +life and commerce with the world. A few words on both these aspects of +the question will not be wasted. We need not, however, recur to the +allegation of over-sensitiveness to criticism, or of being "snuffed out +by an article," which has already been sufficiently debated. + +Indefiniteness of literary aim must be assessed in relation to a man's +faculties, and in especial to his age and experience. A beginner is +naturally indefinite in aim, in the sense that he tries his hand at +various things, and only after making several experiments does he learn +which things he can manage well, and which less than well. Keats, in his +first two volumes, was but a beginner, and a youthful beginner. If they +show indefiniteness of aim--though indeed they hardly _do_ show that in +any marked degree--one cannot regard the fact as derogatory to the +author. With his third volume, he was getting some assurance of the +direction in which his power lay. It is certainly true that, after +producing one epic (if such it can be called), "Endymion," and after +commencing another, "Hyperion," he laid the second aside, for whatever +reason; partly, it would seem, because the harsh reception of "Endymion" +discouraged him, and partly because he considered the turn of diction +too obviously Miltonic; and no doubt, as his mood varied, he must have +expressed to Haydon very divergent opinions as to the expediency of +writing epics. But, apart from this special matter, the third volume +shows no uncertainty or infirmity of purpose. It contains three +narrative poems--"Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and "Lamia"--some +odes, and a few minor lyrics. The very fact that he continued writing +poetry so persistently, maugre _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The Quarterly +Review_, speaks to some decision of character and power of will in +literary matters; and the immense advance in executive force tells the +same tale aboundingly. Therefore, while laying great stress upon +Haydon's view so far as it concerns certain shifting currents of thought +and of talk, I cannot find that Keats is fairly open to the charge of +want of decision or of will in the literary relation. Then as to the +larger question of his character generally, Keats appears to me to have +been eminently wilful, and somewhat wayward to boot. He had the +temperament of a man of genius, liable to sudden and sharp impressions, +and apt to go considerable lengths at the beck of an impulse, or even of +a caprice. Wilfulness along with waywardness is certainly not quite the +same thing as "power of will," but it testifies to a will which can +exert itself steadily if it likes. The very short duration of Keats's +life, and the painful conjuncture of circumstances which made his last +year a despairing struggle between a passionate love and an inexorable +disease, preclude our forming a very distinct opinion of what his power +of will might naturally have become. If I may venture a surmise, I would +say that he had within him the stuff of ample determination and +high-heartedness in any matters upon which he was in earnest, mingled +however with deficient self-control, and with a perilous facility for +seeing the seamy side of life. + +Lord Houghton gives an attractive picture of Keats at what was probably +his happiest time, the winter of 1817-18, when "Endymion" was preparing +for the press. I cannot condense it to any purpose, and certainly cannot +improve it, so I reproduce the passage as it stands: + + "Keats passed the winter of 1817-18 at Hampstead, gaily enough + among his friends. His society was much sought after, from the + delightful combination of earnestness and pleasantry which + distinguished his intercourse with all men. There was no effort + about him to say fine things, but he _did_ say them most + effectively, and they gained considerably by his happy transition + of manner. He joked well or ill as it happened, and with a laugh + which still echoes sweetly in many ears; but at the mention of + oppression or wrong, or at any calumny against those he loved, he + rose into grave manliness at once, and seemed like a tall man. + His habitual gentleness made his occasional looks of indignation + almost terrible. On one occasion, when a gross falsehood + respecting the young artist, Severn, was repeated and dwelt upon, + he left the room, declaring 'he should be ashamed to sit with men + who could utter and believe such things.'" + +Severn himself avers that Keats never spoke of any one unless by way of +saying something in his favour. + +Cowden Clarke's anecdote tells in the same direction, that once, when +some local tyranny was being discussed, Keats amused the party by +shouting: "Why is there not a human dust-hole into which to tumble such +fellows?" His own Carlylean phrase seems to have tickled Keats as well +as others, for he repeated it in a field walk with Haydon: "Haydon, what +a pity it is there is not a human dust-hole!" + +To this may be added a few words from a letter addressed from Teignmouth +by Keats to Mr. Taylor in April 1818:-- + + "I know nothing, I have read nothing: and I mean to follow + Solomon's directions, 'Get learning, get understanding.' I find + earlier days are gone by; I find that I can have no enjoyment in + the world but continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no + worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good to the world. Some + do it with their society, some with their wit, some with their + benevolence, some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and + good humour on all they meet--and in a thousand ways, all dutiful + to the command of great Nature. There is but one way for me: the + road lies through application, study, and thought. I will pursue + it; and for that end purpose retiring for some years. I have been + hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the + luxurious and a love for philosophy. Were I calculated for the + former, I should be glad; but, as I am not, I shall turn all my + soul to the latter." + +This "exquisite sense of the luxurious" must have prompted an +interjection of Keats in a rather earlier letter to Bailey (November +1817): "Oh for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!" + +One does not usually associate the suspicious character with the +unselfish and generous character. Even apart from Haydon's, there is +ample evidence to show that Keats was generous, and, in a sense, +unselfish; although a man of creative or productive genius, intent upon +his own work, and subordinating everything else to it, is seldom +unselfish in the fullest ordinary sense of the term. But he was +certainly suspicious. Of this temper we have already seen some painful +ebullitions in his letters to Fanny Brawne. These might be ascribed +mainly to the acute feelings of a lover, the morbid impressions of an +invalid. But, in truth, Keats always was and had been suspicious. In a +letter to his brothers, dated in January 1818, he refers, in a tone of +some soreness, to objections which Hunt had raised against points of +treatment in the first Book of "Endymion," adding: "The fact is, he and +Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed them the +affair officiously; and, from several hints I have had, they appear much +disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made." +Still earlier, writing to Haydon, he had confessed to "a horrid +morbidity of temperament." In a letter of June 1818 to Bailey he says: +"You have all your life (I think so) believed everybody: I have +suspected everybody." By January 1820 he has got into a condition of +decided _ennui_, not far removed from misanthropy, and the company of +acquaintances, and even of friends, is a tedium to him. This was a month +before the beginning of his fatal illness. It is true, he was then in +love. He writes to Mrs. George Keats:-- + + "I dislike mankind in general.... The worst of men are those + whose self-interests are their passions; the next, those whose + passions are their self-interest. Upon the whole, I dislike + mankind. Whatever people on the other side of the question may + advance, they cannot deny that we are always surprised at hearing + of a good action, and never of a bad one.... If you were in + England, I dare say you would be able to pick out more amusement + from society than I am able to do. To me it is as dull as + Louisville is to you. [Then follow several remarks on Hunt, + Haydon, the Misses Reynolds, and Dilke.] 'Tis best to remain + aloof from people, and like their good parts, without being + eternally troubled with the dull processes of their everyday + lives. When once a person has smoked the vapidness of the routine + of society, he must have either some self-interest or the love of + some sort of distinction to keep him in good humour with it. All + I can say is that, standing at Charing Cross, and looking east, + west, north, and south, I see nothing but dulness." + +"I carry all things to an extreme," he had written to Bailey in July +1818, "so that when I have any little vexation it grows in five minutes +into a theme fit for Sophocles. Then and in that temper if I write to +any friend, I have so little self-possession that I give him matter for +grieving, at the very time perhaps when I am laughing at a pun." A +phrase which Keats used in a letter of the 24th of October 1820, +addressed to Mrs. Brawne, may also be, in the main, a true item of +self-portraiture: "If ever there was a person born without the faculty +of hoping, I am he." Too much weight, however, should not be given to +this, as the poet's disease had then brought him far onward towards his +grave. Severn does not seem to have regarded such a tendency as innate +in Keats, for he wrote, at a far later date, "No mind was ever more +exultant in youthful feeling." + +Keats's sentiment towards women appears to have been that of a shy youth +who was at the same time a critical man. Miss Brawne enslaved him, but +did not inspire him with that tender and boundless confidence which the +accepted and engaged lover of a virtuous girl naturally feels. With one +woman, Miss Cox, he seems to have been thoroughly at his ease; and one +can gather from his expressions that this unusual result depended upon a +fair counterbalance of claims. While she was self-centred in her beauty +and attractiveness, he was self-centred in his intellect and +aspirations. There is an early poem of his--the reverse of a good +one--which seems worth quoting here. I presume he may have been in his +twenty-first year or so when he wrote it:-- + + "Woman, when I behold thee flippant, vain, + Inconstant, childish, proud, and full of fancies; + Without that modest softening that enhances + The downcast eye, repentant of the pain + That its mild light creates to heal again; + E'en then elate my spirit leaps and prances, + E'en then my soul with exultation dances, + For that to love so long I've dormant lain. + But, when I see thee meek and kind and tender, + Heavens! how desperately do I adore + Thy winning graces! To be thy defender + I hotly burn--to be a Calidore, + A very Red-cross Knight, a stout Leander-- + Might I be loved by thee like these of yore. + + Light feet, dark violet eyes, and parted hair, + Soft dimpled hands, white neck, and creamy breast, + Are things on which the dazzled senses rest + Till the fond fixed eyes forget they stare. + From such fine pictures, Heavens! I cannot dare + To turn my admiration, though unpossessed + They be of what is worthy--though not dressed + In lovely modesty and virtues rare. + Yet these I leave as thoughtless as a lark; + These lures I straight forget--e'en ere I dine + Or thrice my palate moisten. But, when I mark + Such charms with mild intelligences shine, + My ear is open like a greedy shark + To catch the tunings of a voice divine. + + Ah who can e'er forget so fair a being? + Who can forget her half-retiring sweets? + God! she is like a milk-white lamb that bleats + For man's protection. Surely the All-seeing, + Who joys to see us with His gifts agreeing, + Will never give him pinions who entreats + Such innocence to ruin--who vilely cheats + A dove-like bosom. In truth there is no freeing + One's thoughts from such a beauty. When I hear + A lay that once I saw her hand awake, + Her form seems floating palpable and near. + Had I e'er seen her from an arbour take + A dewy flower, oft would that hand appear, + And o'er my eyes the trembling moisture shake." + +From the opening lines of this poem I gather that Keats, when he wrote +it, had never been in love; but that he had a feeling towards pure, +sweet-minded, lovely women, which made him, in idea, their champion and +votary. Later on, in June 1818, he wrote to Bailey that his love for his +brothers had "always stifled the impression that any woman might +otherwise have made upon him." And in July of the same year, also to +Bailey:-- + + "I am certain that our fair friends [_i.e._ the Misses Reynolds] + are glad I should come for the mere sake of my coming; but I am + certain I bring with me a vexation they are better without.... I + am certain I have not a right feeling towards women: at this + moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it + because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I + was a schoolboy I thought a fair woman a pure goddess; my mind + was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew + it not. I have no right to expect more than their reality. I + thought them ethereal--above men; I find them perhaps + equal--great by comparison is very small. Insult may be inflicted + in more ways than by word or action. One who is tender of being + insulted does not like to _think_ an insult against another. I do + not like to think insults in a lady's company; I commit a crime + with her which absence would not have known.... When I am among + women I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be + silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; + I am in a hurry to be gone. You must be charitable, and put all + this perversity to my being disappointed since my boyhood.... + After all, I do think better of womankind than to suppose they + care whether Mister John Keats, five feet high, likes them or + not." + +In his letter about Miss Cox as "Charmian," written perhaps just before +he knew Miss Brawne, Keats said: "I hope I shall never marry.... The +mighty abstract idea of Beauty in all things I have stifles the more +divided and minute domestic happiness. An amiable wife and sweet +children I contemplate as part of that Beauty, but I must have a +thousand of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart.... These +things, combined with the opinion I have formed of the generality of +women, who appear to me as children to whom I would rather give a +sugar-plum than my time, form a barrier against matrimony which I +rejoice in." + +We have seen, in one of Keats's letters to Miss Brawne, that he shrank +from the thought of having their mutual love made known to any of their +friends. But he went further than this. As well after as before he had +fallen in love with Miss Brawne, and had become engaged to her, he could +express a contrary state of feeling. Thus, in addressing Mr. Taylor, on +August 23, 1819, he says: "I equally dislike the favour of the public +with the love of a woman; they are both a cloying treacle to the wings +of independence." And to his brother George, September 17, 1819: +"Nothing strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love. +A man in love, I do think, cuts the sorriest figure in the world. Even +when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it, I could burst out +laughing in his face; his pathetic visage becomes irresistible." The +letters to George, in fact, give no hint of any love for Miss Brawne, +still less of an engagement. + +From all these details it would appear that Keats was by no means an +ardent devotee of the feminine type of character. He thought there was +but little congruity between the Ideal and the Real of womanhood. He +parted company, in this regard, with Shakespeare and Shelley, and +adhered rather to Milton. So it was before he was in love; and to be in +love was not the occasion of any essential alteration of view. He +ascribed to Fanny Brawne the same volatile appetite for amusement, the +same propensity for flirtation, the same comparative shallowness of +heart-affection, which he imputed to her sex in general. He loved her +passionately: he believed in her not passionately, nor even intensely. +That he was hard hit by the blind and winged archer was a patent fact; +but he still knew the archer to be blind. + +In a room, says Keats's surgical fellow-student, Mr. Stephens, he was +always at the window peering out into space, and it was customary to +call the window-seat "Keats's place." In his last illness he told Severn +that the intensest of his pleasures had been to watch the growth of +flowers; and, after lying quiet one day, he whispered, "I feel the +daisies [or "the flowers"] growing over me." In an early stage of his +fatal illness, February 16, 1820, he had written pathetically to James +Rice: "How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a +sense of its natural beauties upon us! Like poor Falstaff, though I do +not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest +affection on every flower I have known from my infancy--their shapes +and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a +superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the most +thoughtless and the happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign +flowers in hot-houses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a +straw for them. The simple flowers of our spring are what I want to see +again." Music was another of his great enjoyments. He would sit for +hours while Miss Charlotte Reynolds played to him on the pianoforte; and +a wrong note in an orchestra has been known to rouse his pugnacity, and +make him wish to "go down and smash all the fiddles." Haydn's symphonies +were among his prime favourites, and Purcell's songs from Shakespeare. +"Give me," he wrote from Winchester to his sister, in August 1819, +"books, fruit, French wine, and fine weather, and a little music out of +doors, played by somebody I do not know, and I can pass a summer very +quietly." He would also listen long to Severn's playing, following the +air with a low kind of recitative; and could himself "produce a pleasing +musical effect, though possessing hardly any voice." + +Closely though he was mixed up with Leigh Hunt and his circle, Keats +had, in fact, not much sympathy with their ideas on literary topics, nor +with Hunt's own poetry, still less with their views on political matters +of the time, in which he took but very faint interest. Cowden Clarke +thought that the poet's "whole civil creed was comprised in the +master-principle of universal liberty, viz., equal and stern justice to +all, from the duke to the dustman." He was, however, a liberal by +temperament, and, I suppose, by conviction as well. One of the really +puerile and nonsensical passages in "Endymion" is that which opens book +iii. He told his friend Richard Woodhouse (a barrister, connected with +the firm of Taylor and Hessey) that it expressed his opinion of the Tory +Ministry then in office:-- + + "There are who lord it o'er their fellow-men + With most prevailing tinsel; who unpen + Their baaing vanities to browse away + The comfortable green and juicy hay + From human pastures; or, oh torturing fact! + Who through an idiot blink will see unpacked + Fire-branded foxes to scar up and singe + Our gold and ripe-eared hopes. With not one tinge + Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight + Able to face an owl's, they still are dight + By the blear-eyed nations in empurpled vests, + And crowns and turbans. With unladen breasts, + Save of blown self-applause, they proudly mount + To their spirit's perch, their being's high account, + Their tiptop nothings, their dull skies, their thrones, + Amid the fierce intoxicating tones + Of trumpets, shoutings, and belaboured drums, + And sudden cannon." + +A rather more sensible embodiment of his political feelings is a stanza +which he wrote, perhaps in 1818, at the close of canto 5, book ii. of +"The Faery Queen." In this stanza the revolutionary Giant, who had been +suppressed by Artegall and Talus, is represented as being pieced +together again by Typographus, the Printing-press, and so trained up as +to become more than a match for his former victors. There is also, in a +letter to George Keats dated in September 1819, a rather long and +detailed passage on politics covering a wide period in English and +European history, on the oscillations of governmental and popular power +&c., and on the writer's sympathy with the enlightenment and progress of +the people. It closes with an admiring description of Sandt, the +assassin of Kotzebue, as pourtrayed in a profile likeness. As to Hunt, +some expressions in a letter from George Keats to Dilke are decidedly +strong:--"I should be extremely sorry that poor John's name should go +down to posterity associated with the littlenesses of Leigh Hunt--an +association of which he was so impatient in his lifetime. He speaks of +him patronizingly; that he would have defended him against the reviewers +if he had known his nervous irritation at their abuse of him, and says +that on that point only he was reserved to him. The fact was, he more +dreaded Hunt's defence than their abuse. You know all this as well as I +do." + +Apart from his own special capability for poetry, Keats had a mind both +active and capacious. The depth, pregnancy, and incisiveness, of many of +the remarks in his letters, glancing along a considerable range of +subject-matter, are highly noticeable. If some one were to take the +pains of extracting and classifying them, he would do a good service to +readers. It does not appear, however, that Keats took much interest in +any kind of knowledge which could not be made applicable or subservient +to the purposes of poetry. Many will remember the anecdote, proper to +Haydon's "immortal dinner" (December 1817), of Keats's joining with +Charles Lamb in denouncing Sir Isaac Newton for having destroyed all +the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours; the +whole company had to drink "Newton's health, and confusion to +mathematics." This was a freak, yet not so mere a freak but that the +poet--in one of his most elaborated and heedful compositions, +"Lamia"--could revert to the same idea-- + + "Do not all charms fly + At the mere touch of cold philosophy? + There was an awful rainbow once in heaven: + We know her woof, her texture--she is given + In the dull catalogue of common things. + Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, + Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, + Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine, + Unweave a rainbow." + +In a letter to his brother, December 1817, Keats observes:-- + + "The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making + all disagreeables evaporate from their being in close + relationship with beauty and truth. Examine 'King Lear,' and you + will find this exemplified throughout.... It struck me what + quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in + literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously. I mean + _negative capability_; that is, when a man is capable of being in + uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching + after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a + fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the penetralium of + mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with + half-knowledge. This, pursued through volumes, would perhaps take + us no further than this: that with a great poet the sense of + beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates + all consideration." + +Keats did not very often in his letters remark upon the work of his +poetic contemporaries. We have just read a reference to Coleridge. In +another letter addressed to Haydon, January 1818, he shows that his +admiration of Wordsworth's "Excursion" was great, coupling that poem +with Haydon's pictures, and with "Hazlitt's depth of taste," as "three +things to rejoice at in this age." + +Soon afterwards, February 1818, while "Endymion" was passing through the +press, he wrote to Mr. Taylor:-- + + "In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am + from their centre. 1st, I think poetry should surprise by a fine + excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a + wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a + remembrance. 2nd, Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, + thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The + rise, the progress, the setting, of imagery, should, like the + sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly + although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. + But it is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it. + And this leads me to another axiom--That, if poetry comes not as + naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at + all." + +Keats held that the melody of verse is founded on the adroit management +of open and close vowels. He thought that vowels can be as skilfully +combined and interchanged as differing notes of music, and that monotony +should only be allowed when it subserves some special purpose. + +The following, from a letter to Mr. Woodhouse, October 1818 (soon after +the abusive reviews had appeared in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The +Quarterly_), is a remarkable piece of self-analysis. As we read it, we +should bear in mind what Haydon said of Keats's want of decision of +character. I am not indeed clear that Keats has here pourtrayed himself +with marked accuracy. It may appear that he ascribes to himself too much +of absorption into the object or the personage which he contemplates; +whereas it might, with fully as much truth, be advanced that he was wont +to assimilate the personage or the object to himself. I greatly doubt +whether in Keats's poems we see the object or the personage the clearer +because his faculty transpires through them: rather, we see the object +or the personage through the haze of Keats. His range was not extremely +extensive (whatever it might possibly have become, with a longer lease +of life), nor was his personality by any means occulted. But in any +event his statement here is of great importance as showing what he +thought of the poetic phase of mind and working. + + "As to the poetical character itself (I mean that sort of which, + if I am anything, I am a member--that sort distinguished from the + Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime, which is a thing _per se_, + and stands alone), it is not itself--it has no self. It is + everything, and nothing--it has no character. It enjoys light, + and shade. It lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, + rich or poor, mean or elevated--it has as much delight in + conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous + philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its + relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste + for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet + is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has + no identity: he is continually in for, and filling, some other + body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men and women who are + creatures of impulse, are poetical, and have about them an + unchangeable attribute: the poet has none, no identity. He is + certainly the most unpoetical of all God's creatures. If then he + has no self, and if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I + should say I would write no more? Might I not at that very + instant have been cogitating on the characters of Saturn and Ops? + It is a wretched thing to confess, but it is a very fact, that + not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion + growing out of my identical nature. How can it when I have _no_ + nature? When I am in a room with people, if I ever am free from + speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes + home to myself, but the identity of every one in the room begins + to press upon me [so] that I am in a very little time + annihilated. Not only among men; it would be the same in a + nursery of children." + +Elsewhere Keats says, November 1817: "Nothing startles me beyond the +moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights; or if a sparrow +come before my window, I take part in its existence, and pick about the +gravel." + +For painting Keats had a good deal of taste, largely fostered, no doubt, +by his intimacy with Haydon. This came to him gradually. Towards the +beginning of 1818 he was, according to his own account, quite unable to +appreciate Raphael's Cartoons, but afterwards gained an insight into +them through contrasting them with some maudlin saints by Guido. It is +interesting to find him entering warmly into the beauties of the earlier +Italian art, as indicated in a book of prints from some church in Milan +(so he says, but perhaps it should rather be Pisa or Florence). "I do +not think I ever had a greater treat out of Shakespeare; full of romance +and the most tender feeling; magnificence of drapery beyond everything I +ever saw, not excepting Raphael's, but grotesque to a curious pitch--yet +still making up a fine whole, even finer to me than more accomplished +works, as there was left so much room for imagination." + +Here is a small trait of character, recorded by Keats in a letter to +George, from Winchester, September 1819. "I feel I can bear real ills +better than imaginary ones. Whenever I find myself growing vapourish, I +rouse myself, wash, and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, +tie my shoe-strings neatly, and in fact adonize as if I were going out; +then, all clean and comfortable, I sit down to write. This I find the +greatest relief." + +Haydon, as we have seen, said that Keats had an exquisite sense of +humour. There are few things more difficult to analyse than the sense +of humour; few points as to which different people will vary more in +opinion than the possession, by any particular man, of a sense of +humour, or the account, good or bad, to which he turned this sense. +Certainly there is a large amount of jocularity in the familiar writings +of Keats--often a quick perception of the ridiculous or the risible, +sometimes a telling jest or _jeu d'esprit_. I confess, however, that to +myself most of Keats's fun appears forced or inept, wanting in fineness +of taste and manner, and tending towards the vulgar; a jangling jingle +of word and notion. Punning plays a large part in it, as it did in Leigh +Hunt's familiar converse. Some specimens of Keats's funning or punning +seem to me a humiliating exhibition, as, for instance, a letter, January +1819, which Armitage Brown addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Dilke, with +interpolations by Keats. No doubt both the friends were resolutely bent +upon being silly on that occasion; but to be silly is not fully +tantamount to being "a fellow of infinite jest," or having an exquisite +sense of humour. There is some very exasperating writing also in a +letter to Reynolds (May 1818), about "making Wordsworth and Colman play +at leap-frog, or keeping one of them down a whole half-holiday at +fly-the-garter," &c., &c. A feeling for the inappropriate is perhaps one +element of jocoseness; if so, Keats may have been genuinely jocose when +(as he wrote in his very last letter to Brown) he "at his worst, even in +quarantine [in Naples Harbour], summoned up more puns, in a sort of +desperation, in one week than in any year of his life." He had a good +power of mimicry, as well as of dramatic recital. He did indisputably, +towards September 1819, play off one practical joke--Brown was the +victim--with eminent success; pretending that a certain Mr. Nathan +Benjamin, who was then renting Brown's house at Hampstead, had written a +letter complaining of illness--gravel, caused by some lime-tainted water +on the premises. But the success depended upon a very singular +coincidence, viz., that by mere chance Keats had happened to give the +tenant's name correctly. The angry reply of Brown to the angry +supposititious letter of Benjamin, and the astonishment of Benjamin upon +receiving Brown's retort, are fertile of laughter. + +Keats does not appear to have ever made any pretence to defined +religious belief of any sort, nor seriously to have debated the subject, +or troubled his mind about it one way or the other. He was certainly not +a Christian. His early friend, Mr. Felton Mathew, speaks of him as "of +the sceptical and republican school." On Christmas Eve, 1816, soon after +he had come of age, he wrote the following sonnet-- + + "The church-bells toll a melancholy round, + Calling the people to some other prayers, + Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, + More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound. + Surely the mind of man is closely bound + In some black spell: seeing that each one tears + Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs, + And converse high of those with glory crowned. + + Still, still they toll: and I should feel a damp, + A chill as from a tomb, did I not know + That they are dying like an outburnt lamp,-- + That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go + Into oblivion,--that fresh flowers will grow, + And many glories of immortal stamp." + +His sonnet on Ben Nevis, 1818, is also an utterance of +scepticism--speaking of heaven and hell as misty surmises, and of "the +world of thought and mental might" as a realm of nebulosity. A letter to +Leigh Hunt, May 1817, contains a phrase arraigning the God of +Christians. To the clerical student Bailey, September 1818, he spoke +out: "You know my ideas about religion. I do not think myself more in +the right than other people, that nothing in this world is proveable." +The latter clause appears to be carelessly elliptical in expression, the +real meaning being "I think [not "I do _not_ think"] that nothing in +this world is proveable." To Fanny Brawne, towards May 1820, he appealed +"by the blood of that Christ you believe in." Haydon tells a noticeable +anecdote--the only one, I think, which exhibits Keats as an admirer of +that anti-imaginative order of intellect of which Voltaire was a +prototype-- + + "He had a tending to religion when first I knew him [autumn of + 1816], but Leigh Hunt soon forced it from his mind. Never shall I + forget Keats once rising from his chair, and approaching my last + picture, Entry into Jerusalem. He went before the portrait of + Voltaire, placed his hand on his heart, and, bowing low, + + 'In reverence done, as to the power + That dwelt within, whose presence had infused + Into the plant sciential sap derived + From nectar, drink of gods,' + + + (as Milton says of Eve after she had eaten the apple), 'That's + the being to whom _I_ bend,' said he; alluding to the bending of + the other figures in the picture, and contrasting Voltaire with + our Saviour, and his own adoration with that of the crowd." + +Notwithstanding the general vagueness or indifference of his mind in +religious matters, Keats seems to have been at most times a believer in +the immortality of the soul. Following that phrase of his already quoted +(from a letter to Bailey, November 1817) "Oh for a life of sensations +rather than of thoughts!" he proceeds: "It is 'a vision in the form of +youth,' a shadow of reality to come. And this consideration has further +convinced me--for it has come as auxiliary to another favourite +speculation of mine--that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having +what we call happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone. And yet such a +fate can only befall those who delight in sensation, rather than hunger, +as you do, after truth. Adam's dream will do here: and seems to be a +conviction that imagination, and its empyreal reflexion, is the same as +human life, and its spiritual repetition." This allusion to "Adam's +dream" refers back to a fine phrase which had occurred shortly before in +the same letter--"Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream; he awoke, +and found it truth." In a letter written to George Keats and his wife, +shortly after the death of Tom, comes a very positive assertion--"I have +a firm belief in immortality, and so had Tom." This firm belief, +however, must certainly have faltered later on; for, as we have already +seen, one of Keats's letters to Miss Brawne, written in 1820, contains +the phrase "I long to believe in immortality." The reader may also refer +to the letter to Armitage Brown, September 1820, extracted in a previous +page. Of superstitious feeling I observe only one instance in Keats. +After Tom's death, a white rabbit appeared in the garden of Mr. Dilke, +and was shot by him: Keats would have it that this rabbit was the spirit +of Tom, and he persisted in the fancy with not a little earnestness. + +Of Keats's fondness for wine--his appreciation of it as a flavour +grateful to the palate, and to the abstract sense of enjoyment--there +are numerous traces throughout his writings. We all remember the famous +lines in his "Ode to a Nightingale"-- + + "Oh for a draught of vintage that hath been + Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,... + Oh for a beaker full of the warm South!" &c.-- + +lines which seem a little forced into their context, and of which the +only tangible meaning there is that the luxury and dreamy inspiration of +wine-drinking would relieve the poet's mind from the dull and painful +realities of life, and assist his imagination into the dim vocal haunts +of the nightingale. There is also in "Lamia" a conspicuous passage +celebrating "The happy vintage--merry wine, sweet wine." On claret--as +to which we have heard the evidence of Haydon--there is a long tirade in +a letter addressed to George Keats and his wife in February 1819. I give +it in a condensed form:-- + + "I never drink above three glasses of wine, and never any + spirits and water.... How I like claret! When I can get claret, I + must drink it. 'Tis the only palate affair that I am at all + sensual in.... It fills one's mouth with a gushing + freshness--then goes down cool and feverless: then you do not + feel it quarrelling with one's liver.... Other wines of a heavy + and spirituous nature transform a man into a Silenus: this makes + him a Hermes, and gives a woman the soul and immortality of an + Ariadne.... I said this same claret is the only palate-passion I + have: I forgot game. I must plead guilty to the breast of a + partridge, the back of a hare, the backbone of a grouse, the wing + and side of a pheasant, and a woodcock _passim_." + +At a rather later date, October 1819, Keats had "left off animal food, +that my brains may never henceforth be in a greater mist than is theirs +by nature." But I presume this form of abstinence did not last long. + +I have now gone through the principal points which appear to me to +identify Keats as a man, and to throw light upon his character and +habits. He entered on life high-spirited, ardent, impulsive, vehement; +with plenty of self-confidence, ballasted with a large capacity (though +he did not always exercise it to a practical result) for self-criticism; +longing to be a poet, and firmly believing that he could and would be +one; resolute to be a man--unselfish, kindly, and generous. But, though +kindly, he was irritable; though unselfish and generous, wilful and +suspicious. An affront was what he would not bear; and, when he found +himself affronted in a form--that of press ridicule and +detraction--which could not be resented in person, nor readily +retaliated in any way, it is abundantly probable that the indignity +preyed upon his mind and spirits, and contributed to embitter the days +cut short by disease, the messenger of despair to that passionate love +which had become the single intense interest of his life. The single +intense interest, along with poetry--both of them hurrying without +fruition to the grave. Keats seems to me to have been naturally a man of +complex character, many-mooded, with a tendency to perverse +self-conflict. The circumstances of his brief career--his poetic +ambition, his want of any definite employment, his association with men +of literary occupation or taste whom he only half approved, the critical +venom poured forth against him, his love thwarted by a mortal +malady--all these things tended to bring out the unruly or morbid, and +to deplete the many fine and solid, elements in his nature. With the +personal character of Keats, as with his writings, we may perhaps deal +most fairly by saying that his outburst and his reserve of faculty were +such that, in the narrow space allotted to him, youth had not advanced +far enough to disentangle the rich and various material. But his latest +years, which enabled his poetry to find full and deathless voice, were +so loaded with suffering and perturbation as to leave the character less +lucidly and harmoniously developed than even in the days of adolescence. +From "Endymion" to "Lamia" and the "Eve of St. Mark," we have, in +poetry, advanced greatly towards the radiant meridian: in life, from +1818 to 1821, we have receded to a baffling dusk. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + +We have seen what John Keats did in the shifting scene of the world, and +in the high arena of poesy; we have seen what were the qualities of +character and of mind which enabled him to bear his part in each. His +work as a poet is to us the thing of primary importance: and it remains +for us to consider what this poetic work amounts to in essence and in +detail. The critic who _is_ a critic--and not a _Quarterly_ or a +_Blackwood_ reviewer or lampooner--is well aware of the disproportion +between his power of estimation, and the demand which such a genius as +that of Keats, and such work as the maturest which he produced, make +upon the estimating faculty. But this consideration cannot be allowed to +operate beyond a certain point: the estimate has to be given--and given +candidly and distinctly, however imperfectly. I shall therefore proceed +to express my real opinion of Keats's poems, whether an admiring opinion +or otherwise; and shall write without reiterating--what I may +nevertheless feel--a sense of the presumption involved in such a +process. I shall in the main, as in previous chapters, follow the +chronological order of the poems. + +As we have seen, Keats began versifying chiefly under a Spenserean +influence; and it has been suggested that this influence remained +puissant for harm as well as for good up to the close of his poetic +career. I do not see much force in the suggestion: unless in this +limited sense--that Spenser, like other Elizabethan and Jacobean poets +his successors, allowed himself very considerable latitude in saying +whatever came into his head, relevant or irrelevant, appropriate or +jarring, obvious or far-fetched, simple or grandiose, according to the +mood of the moment and the swing of composition, and thus the whole +strain presents an aspect more of rich and arbitrary picturesqueness +than of ordered suavity. And Keats no doubt often did the same: but not +in the choicest productions of his later time, nor perhaps so much under +incitement from Spenser as in pursuance of that revolt from a factitious +and constrained model of work in which Wordsworth in one direction, +Coleridge in another, and Leigh Hunt in a third, had already come +forward with practice and precept. Making allowance for a few early +attempts directly referable to Spenser, I find, even in Keats's first +volume, little in which that influence is paramount. He seems to have +written because his perceptions were quick, his sympathies vivid in +certain directions, and his energies wound up to poetic endeavour. The +mannerisms of thought, method, and diction, are much more those of Hunt +than of Spenser; and it is extremely probable that the soreness against +Hunt which Keats evidenced at a later period was due to his perceiving +that that kindly friend and genial literary ally had misled him into +some poetic trivialities and absurdities, not less than to anything in +himself which could be taken hold of for complaint. + +Keats's first volume would present nothing worthy of permanent memory, +were it not for his after achievements, and for the single sonnet upon +Chapman's Homer. Several of the compositions are veritable rubbish: +probably Keats knew at the time that they were not good, and knew soon +afterwards that they were deplorably bad. Such are the address "To Some +Ladies" who had sent the author a shell; that "On Receiving a Curious +Shell and a Copy of Verses [Moore's "Golden Chain"] from the same +Ladies;" the "Ode to Apollo" (in which Homer, Virgil, Milton, +Shakespeare, Spenser, and Tasso, are commemorated); the "Hymn to +Apollo;" the lines "To Hope" (in which there is a patriotic aspiration, +mingled with scorn for the gauds of a Court). "Calidore" has a certain +boyish ardour, clearly indicated if not well expressed. The verses "I +stood tiptoe upon a little hill" are very far from good, and are stuffed +with affectations, but do nevertheless show a considerable spice of the +real Keats. Some lines have already been quoted from this effusion, +about "flowery nests," and "the pillowy silkiness that rests full in the +speculation of the stars." It is only by an effort that we can attach +any meaning to either of these childish Della-Cruscanisms: the "pillowy +silkiness" may perhaps be clouds intermingled with stars, and the +"flowery nests" may, by a great wrenching of English, be meant for +"flowery nooks"--nests or nooks of flowers. "Sleep and Poetry" contains +various fine lines, telling and suggestive images, and luscious +descriptive snatches, and is interesting as showing the bent of the +writer's mind, and a sense of his mission begun. Serious metrical flaws +are perceptible in it here and there, and throughout this first volume +of verse--and indeed in "Endymion" as well. One metrical weakness of +which he never got rid is the accenting of the preterite or participial +form "ed" (in such words as "resolved," &c.), where its sound ekes out +with feeble stress the prosody of a line. Two songs which have genuine +lyric grace--dated in 1817, but not included in the volume of +"Poems"--are those which begin "Think not of it, sweet one, so," and +"Unfelt, unheard, unseen." The volume contains sixteen sonnets, besides +the grand one on "Chapman's Homer." The best are those which begin "Keen +fitful gusts are whispering here and there," and "Happy is England," and +the "Grasshopper and Cricket," which was written in competition with +Hunt. It seems to me that Keats's production has more of poetry, Hunt's +of finish. The sonnet "On leaving some friends at an early hour" is +characteristic enough. This is as much detail as need be given here to +the "Poems" of 1817. The sonnet on Chapman's Homer revealed a hand which +might easily prove to be a master's. All else was prentice-work, with +some melody, some richness and freshness, some independence, much +enthusiasm; also many solecisms and perversities of diction, imagery, +and method: and not a few pieces were included which only self-conceit, +or torpor of the critical faculty, or the mis-persuasion of friends, +could have allowed to pass muster. But Keats chose to publish--to +exhibit his poetic identity at this stage and in this guise; and of +course we can see, in the light of his after-work, that the experiment +was rather a rash forestalling than a positive mistake. + +There are a few other sonnets which Keats wrote in 1817, or, in general +terms, between the publishing dates of the "Poems" volume and of +"Endymion." Those "On a Picture of Leander," and "On the Sea," and the +one which begins "After dark vapours have oppressed our plains," rank +among the best of his juvenile productions. A general observation, +applicable to all the early work, whether printed at the time or +unprinted, is that the ideas are constantly _expressed_ in an imperfect +way. There are perceptions, thoughts, and emotions; but the vehicle of +words is, as a rule, huddled and approximate. + +"Endymion" now claims our attention. I believe that no better criticism +of "Endymion" has ever been written than that which Shelley supplied in +a letter dated in September 1819. Certainly no criticism which is +equally short is also equally good. I therefore extract it here, and +shall have little to say about the poem which is not potentially +condensed into Shelley's brief utterance. "I have read Keats's poem," he +wrote: "much praise is due to me for having read it, the author's +intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end +of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of +poetry; indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet +which is described in it. I think if he had printed about fifty pages of +fragments from it I should have been led to admire Keats as a poet more +than I ought, of which there is now no danger." In July 1820 Shelley +wrote to Keats himself on the subject, furnishing almost the only +addendum which could have been needed to the preceding remarks: "I have +lately read your 'Endymion' again, and even with a new sense of the +treasures of poetry it contains, though treasures poured forth with +indistinct profusion." As Shelley shared with Gifford the conviction +that it is difficult to read "Endymion" from book 1, line 1, to book 4, +line 1003, and as human nature has not changed essentially since the +time of that pre-eminent poet and that rather less eminent critic, I +daresay that there are at this day several Keats-enthusiasts who know +_in foro conscientiae_, though they may not avow in public, that they +have left "Endymion" unread, or only partially read. Others have perused +it, but have found in it so much "indistinct profusion" that they also +remain after a while with rather a vague impression of the course of the +story; although they agree with Gifford, and even exceed him in the +assurance, that "it seems to be mythological, and probably relates to +the loves of Diana and Endymion." As the poem is an extremely important +one in relation to the life-work of Keats, I think it may not be out of +place if I here give a succinct account of what the narrative really +amounts to. This may be all the more desirable as Keats has not followed +the convenient if prosaic practice of several other epic poets by +prefixing to the several books of his long poem an "argument" of their +respective contents. + +_Book 1._ On a lawn within a forest upon a slope of Mount Latmos was +held one morning a festival to Pan. The young huntsman-chieftain +Endymion attended, but his demeanour betrayed a secret preoccupation +and trouble. After the rites were over, his sister Peona addressed him, +and gradually won him to open his heart to her. He told her that at a +certain spot by the river, one of his favourite haunts, he had lately +seen a sudden efflorescence of dittany and poppies (the flowers sacred +to Diana). He fell asleep there, and had a dream or vision of entering +the gates of heaven, seeing the moon in transcendent splendour, and then +being accosted by a woman or goddess lovely beyond words, who pressed +his hand. He seemed to faint, and to be upborne into the upper regions +of the sky, where he gave the beauty a rapturous kiss, and then they +both paused upon a mountain-side. Next he dreamed that he fell asleep. +This was the prelude to his actual waking out of the vision. Ever since +he had retained a mysterious sense that the dream had not been all a +dream. This was confirmed by various incidents of obscure suggestion, +and especially by his hearing in a cavern the words (we have read them +already, beslavered by the "human serpentry" of criticism, but they +remain delicious words none the less)-- + + "Endymion, the cave is secreter + Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir + No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise + Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys + And trembles through my labyrinthine hair." + +As nothing further, however, had happened, Endymion promised Peona that +he would henceforth cease to live a life of feverish expectation, and +would resume the calm tenor of his days. + +_Book 2._--Endymion's promise had not been strictly fulfilled; he was +still restless and craving. One day he plucked a rosebud: it suddenly +blossomed, and a butterfly emerged from it, with strangely-charactered +wings. He pursued the butterfly, which led him to a fountain by a +cavern, and then disappeared. A naiad thereupon addressed him, saying +that he must wander far before he could be reunited to his mystic fair +one. He then appealed to the moon-goddess for some aid, was rapt into a +dizzy vision as if he were sailing through heaven in her car, and heard +a voice from the cavern bidding him descend into the entrails of the +earth. He eagerly obeyed, and passed through a region of twilight +dimness starred with gems, until he reached a natural temple enshrining +a statue of Diana. An awful sense of solitude weighed upon him, and he +implored the goddess to restore him to his earthly home. A profusion of +flowers budded forth before his feet, followed by music as he resumed +his journey. At last he came to a verdant space, peopled with slumbering +Cupids. Here in a beautiful chamber he found Adonis lying tranced on a +couch, attended by other Cupids.[18] One of them gave him wine and +fruit, and explained to him the winter-sleep and summer-life of Adonis; +and at this moment Adonis woke up from his trance, and Venus came to +solace him with love. Venus spoke soothingly also to Endymion, telling +him that she knew of his love for some one of the immortals, but who +this was she had failed to fathom. She promised that one day he should +be blessed, and with Adonis she then rose heavenward in her car. The +earth closed, and Endymion gladly pursued his way through caves, jewels, +and water-springs. Cybele passed on her lion-drawn chariot. The diamond +path ended in middle air; Endymion invoked Jupiter, an eagle swooped and +bore him down through darkness into a mossy jasmine-bower. With a sense +of ecstasy, chequered by an unsatisfied longing for his unknown love, +Endymion prepared himself to sleep: + + "And, just into the air + Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss! + A naked waist. 'Fair Cupid, whence is this?' + A well-known voice sighed, 'Sweetest, here am I!'" + +The lovers indulged their passion in kisses and caresses; he urgent to +know who she might be, and she confessing herself a goddess hitherto +awful in loveless chastity, but not naming herself, though perhaps her +avowals were sufficiently indicative,[19] and she promised to exalt him +ere long to Olympus. The rapturous interview ended with the sleep of +Endymion, and awaking he found himself alone. He strayed out, and +reached an enormous grotto. Two springs of water gushed forth--the +springs of Arethusa and Alpheus, whose loves found voice in words. +Endymion, sending up a prayer for their union, stepped forward and found +himself beneath the sea. + +_Book 3._ Soothed by a moonbeam which greeted him through the waters, +Endymion pursued his course. Upon a rock within the sea he encountered +an old, old man, with wand and book. The ancient man started up as from +a trance, declaring that he should now be young again and happy. This +was Glaucus, who imparted to Endymion the story of his ill-omened love +for Scylla (it is told at considerable length, but need not be detailed +here), the witchcraft of Circe which had doomed him to a ghastly marine +life of a thousand years, and how, after a shipwreck, he came into +possession of a book of magic, which revealed to him that at some +far-off day a youth should make his appearance and break the accursed +spell. In Endymion, Glaucus recognized the predicted youth. Glaucus then +led Endymion to an edifice in which he had preserved the corpse of +Scylla, and thousands of other corpses, being those of lovers who had +been shipwrecked during his many cycles of sea-dwelling doom. Glaucus +tore his scroll into fragments, bound his cloak round Endymion, and +waved his wand nine times. He then instructed Endymion to unwind a +tangled thread, read the markings on a shell, break the wand against a +lyre, and strew the fragments of the scroll upon Glaucus himself, and +upon the dead bodies. As the final act was performed, Glaucus resumed +his youth, and Scylla and the drowned lovers returned to life. The whole +joyous company then rushed off, and paid their devotions to Neptune in +his palace. Cupid and Venus were also present here; and the goddess of +love spoke words of comfort to Endymion, assuring him that his long +expectancy would soon find its full reward. She had by this time probed +the secret of Diana, but she refrained from naming that deity to +Endymion. She invited him and his bride to pass a portion of their +honeymoon in Cythera,[20] with Adonis and Cupid. A stupendous festival +in Neptune's palace succeeded. Endymion finally sank down in a trance; +Nereids conveyed him up to a forest by a lake; and as he floated +earthwards he heard in dream words promising that his goddess would soon +waft him up into heaven. He awoke in the sylvan scene. + +_Book 4._ The first sound that Endymion heard was a female voice; the +wail of a damsel who had followed Bacchus from the banks of the Ganges, +and who longed to be at home again, if only to die there. Unseen +himself, he saw a beautiful girl, who lay bemoaning her loveless lot. He +at once felt that, if he adored his unknown goddess, he loved also his +Indian Bacchante. He sprang forward and declared his passion.[21] She, +after chaunting her long journeyings in the train of Bacchus, explained +that, being sick-hearted and weary, she had strayed away in the forest, +and was now but the votary of sorrow. Endymion continued to woo her with +sweet words and hot: he heard a dismal voice, "Woe to Endymion!" echoing +through the forest. Mercury descended and touched the ground with his +wand, and two winged horses sprang out of the earth. Endymion seated his +Bacchante upon one horse and mounted the other; they flew upward, +eagle-high. In the air they passed Sleep, who had heard a report that a +mortal was to wed a daughter of Jove, and who desired to hearken to the +marriage ditties before he returned to his cave. The influence of Sleep +made the winged horses drowse, and also Endymion and the Bacchante. +Endymion then dreamed of being in heaven, the mate of gods and +goddesses, Diana among them. In dream he sprang towards Diana, and so +awoke; but awake he still saw the same vision. Diana was there in +heaven; his Bacchante was beside him lying on the horse's pinions. He +kissed the Bacchante, and almost in the same breath protested to Diana +his unshaken constancy. The Bacchante then awoke. Endymion, dazed in +mind with his divided allegiance, urged her to be gone, and the winged +horses resumed their flight. They advanced towards the galaxy, the moon +peeped out of the sky, the Bacchante faded away in the moonbeams. Her +steed dropped down to the earth; while the one which bore Endymion +continued mounting upwards, and he again fell into a sort of trance. He +heard not the celestial messengers bespeaking guests to Diana's wedding. +The winged horse then carried Endymion down to a hill-top. Here once +more he found his beautiful Indian, and for her sake forswore all +praeterhuman passion. She, however, declared to him that a divine terror +forbade her to be his. His sister Peona now re-appeared. She rallied him +and the Bacchante on their love and melancholy, both equally obvious, +and bade him attend at night a festival to Diana, whom the soothsayers +had pronounced to be in a mood peculiarly propitious. Endymion announced +his resolution to abandon the world, and live an eremitic life: Peona +and the fair Indian should both be his sisters. The Indian vowed +lifelong chastity, devoted to Diana. Both the women then retired. The +day passed over Endymion motionless and mute. At eventide he walked +towards the temple: he heeded not the hymning to Diana. Peona, +companioned by the Indian damsel, accosted him. He replied, "Sister, I +would have command, if it were heaven's will, on our sad fate." The +Indian replied that this he should assuredly have; as she spoke she +changed semblance, and stood revealed as Diana herself. She laid upon +her own fears and upon fate the blame of past delays, and told Endymion +that it had also been fitting that he should be spiritualized out of +mortality by some unlooked-for change. As Endymion kneeled and kissed +her hands, they both vanished away. The last words of the poem are-- + + "Peona went + Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment:" + +words which may perhaps be modelled upon the grave and subdued +conclusion of "Paradise Lost." + +This is a bald outline of the thread of story which meanders through +that often-skimmed, seldom-read, not easily readable poem--in snatches +alluring, in entirety disheartening--the "Endymion" of Keats. It will be +perceived that the poet keeps throughout tolerably close to his main and +professed subject matter--the loves of Diana and Endymion, although the +episode of Glaucus, which is brought within the compass of the amorous +quest, is certainly a very long and extraneous one. As we have seen, +Keats, when well advanced with this poem, spoke of it as a test of his +inventive faculty: and truly it is such, but I am not sure that his +inventive faculty has come extremely well out of the ordeal. The best +part which invention could take in such an attempt would be a vigorous, +sane, and adequate conception of the imaginable relation between a +loving goddess and her human lover; her emotion towards him, and his +emotion towards her; and his ultimate semi-spiritualized and semi-human +mode of existence in the divine conclave; along with a chain of +incidents--partly of mythologic tradition, partly the poet's own--which +should illustrate these essential elements of the legend, and take +possession of the reader's mind, for their own sake at the moment, and +for the sake of the main conception as ultimate result. Of all this we +find little in Keats's poem. Diana figures as a very willing woman, +passing out of the stage of maidenly coyness. Endymion talks indeed at +times of the exaltation of a passion transcending the bounds of +mortality, but his conduct and demeanour go little beyond those of an +adventurous lover of the knight-errant sort who, having taken the first +leap in the dark, follows where Fortune leads him--and assuredly she +leads him a very curious dance, where one cannot make out how his human +organism, with respirative and digestive processes, continues to exist. +Moreover, the last book of the poem spoils all that has preceded, so far +as continuity of feeling is concerned; for here we learn that no sooner +does Endymion see a pretty Indian Bacchante than he falls madly in love +with her, and casts to the winds every shred and thought of Diana, +already his bride or quasi-bride; she goes out like a cloud-veiled +glimpse of moonlight. True, the Bacchante is in fact Diana herself; but +of this Endymion knows nothing at all, and he deliberately--or rather +with fatuous precipitancy--gives up the glorious goddess for the +sentimental and beguiling wine-bibber. Diana, when she re-assumes her +proper person, has not a word of reproach to level at him. This may +possibly be true to the nature of a goddess--it is certainly not so to +that of a woman; and it is the only crisis at which she shows herself +different from womanhood--shall we say superior to it? + +In another and minor sense there is no lack of invention in this Poetic +Romance. So far as I know, there is nothing in Grecian mythology +furnishing a nucleus for the incidents of Endymion's descending into the +bowels of the earth, passing thence beneath the sea, meeting Glaucus, +and restoring to life the myriads of drowned lovers, encountering the +Indian Bacchante, and taking with her an aerial voyage upon winged +coursers. These incidents--except indeed that of the Bacchante--are +passing strange, and could not be worked out in a long narrative poem +without a lavish command of fanciful and surprising touches. The tale +of the aerial voyage seems abortive; its natural _raison d'etre_ and +needful sequel would appear to be that Diana, having thus launched +Endymion along with herself into the heavenly regions, should bear him +straight onward to the high court of the gods; but, instead of that, the +horses and their riders return to earth, the air has been traversed to +no purpose and with no ostensible result, and Endymion is allowed again +to forswear Diana for the Bacchante before the consummation is reached. +Presumably Morpheus (Sleep) is responsible for this mishap. His untoward +presence in the sky sent the Bacchante, as well as Endymion, to sleep +for awhile: when they awoke, Diana had to leave the form of the +Bacchante, and, in her character of Phoebe, regulate the nascent moon; +though a goddess, she could not be in two places at once, and so the +winged horses descended _re infecta_. This is an ingenious point of +incident enough; but it is just one of those points which indicate that +the poet's mind moved in a region of scintillating details rather than +of large and majestic contours. + +Such is in fact the quality of "Endymion" throughout. Everything is done +for the sake of variegation and embroidery of the original fabric; or we +might compare it to a richly-shot silk which, at every rustling +movement, catches the eye with a change of colour. Constant as they are, +the changes soon become fatiguing, and in effect monotonous; one colour, +varied with its natural light and shade, would be more restful to the +sight, and would even, in the long run, leave a sense of greater, +because more congruous and harmonized, variety. Luscious and luxuriant +in intention--for I cannot suppose that Keats aimed at being exalted or +ideal--the poem becomes mawkish in result: he said so himself, and we +need not hesitate to repeat it. Affectations, conceits, and puerilities, +abound, both in thought and in diction: however willing to be pleased, +the reader is often disconcerted and provoked. The number of clever +things said cleverly, of rich things richly, and of fine things finely, +is however abundant and superabundant; and no one who peruses "Endymion" +with a true sense for poetic endowment and handling can fail to see that +it is peculiarly the work of a poet. The versification, though far from +faultless, is free, surging, and melodious--one of the devices which the +author most constantly employs with a view to avoiding jogtrot +uniformity being that of beginning a new sentence with the second line +of a couplet. On every page the poet has enjoyed himself, and on most of +them the reader can joy as well. The lyrical interludes, especially the +hymn to Pan, and the chaunt of the Bacchante (which comprises a sort of +verse-transcript of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne"), are singularly +wealthy in that fancy which hovers between description and emotion. The +hymn to Pan was pronounced by Wordsworth, _viva voce_, to be "a pretty +piece of paganism"--a comment which annoyed Keats not a little. Shelley +(in his undispatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_) +pointed out, as particularly worthy of attention, the passages--"And +then the forest told it in a dream" (book ii.); "The rosy veils mantling +the East" (book iii.); and "Upon a weeded rock this old man sat" (book +iii.) The last--relating to Glaucus and his pictured cloak--is +certainly remarkable; the other two, I should say, not more remarkable +than scores of others--as indeed Shelley himself implied. + +To sum up, "Endymion" is an essentially poetical poem, which sins, and +greatly or even grossly does it sin, by youthful indiscipline and by +excess. To deny these blemishes would be childish--they are there, and +must be not only admitted, but resented. The faults, like the beauties, +of the poem, are positive--not negative or neutral. The work was in fact +(as Keats has already told us) a venture of an experimental kind. At the +age of twenty-one to twenty-two he had a mind full of poetic material; +he turned out his mind into this poetic romance, conscious that, if some +things came right, others would come wrong. We are the richer for his +rather overweening experiment; we are not to ignore its conditions, nor +its partial failure, but we have to thank him none the less. If "a thing +of beauty is a joy for ever," a thing of alloyed beauty is a joy in its +minor degree. + +The next long poem of Keats--"Isabella, or the Pot of Basil"--is a vast +advance on "Endymion" in sureness of hand and moderation of work: it is +in all respects the better poem, and justifies what Keats said (in his +letter of October 9, 1818, quoted in our Chapter v.) of the experience +which he was sure to gain by the adventurous plunge he had made in +"Endymion." Of course it was a less arduous attempt; the subject being +one of directly human passion, the story ready-furnished to him by +Boccaccio, and the narrative much briefer. Except in altering the +locality from Messina to Florence (a change which seems objectless), +Keats has adhered faithfully enough to the sweet and sad story of +Boccaccio; he has however amplified it much in detail, for the Italian +tale is a short one. "Isabella" has always been a favourite with the +readers of Keats, and deservedly so; it is tender, touching, and +picturesque. Yet I should not place it in the very first rank of the +poet's works--the treatment seems to me at once more ambitious and less +masculine than is needed. The writer seems too conscious that he has set +himself to narrating something pathetic; he tells the story _ab extra_, +and enlarges on "the pity of it," instead of leaving the pity to speak +to the heart out of the very circumstances themselves. The brothers may +have been "ledger-men" and "money-bags" (Boccaccio does not insist upon +any such phase of character), and they certainly became criminals, +though the Italian author treats their murder of Lorenzo as if it were a +sufficiently obvious act in vindication of the family honour; but, when +Keats "again asks aloud" why these commercial brothers were proud, he +seems to intrude upon us overmuch the personality of the narrator of a +tragic story, and pounds away at his text like a pulpiteer. This is only +one instance of the flaw which runs through the poem--that it is all +told as with a direct appeal to the reader to be sympathetic--indignant +now, and now compassionate. Leigh Hunt has pointed out the absurdity of +putting into the mouth of one of the brother "money-bags," just as they +are about to execute their plot for murdering Lorenzo, the lines (though +he praises the pretty conceit in itself)-- + + "Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count + His dewy rosary on the eglantine." + +The author's invocation to Melancholy, Music, Echo, Spirits in grief, +and Melpomene, to condole the approaching death of Isabella, seems to me +a _fadeur_ hardly more appropriate than the money-bag's epigram upon the +"dewy rosary." But the reader is probably tired of my qualifying clauses +for the admiration with which he regards "The Pot of Basil." He thinks +it both beautiful and pathetic--and so do I. + +"Isabella" is written in the octave stanza; "The Eve of St. Agnes" in +the Spenserean. This difference of metre corresponds very closely to the +difference of character between the two poems. "Isabella" is a narrative +poem of event and passion, in which the incidents are presented so as +chiefly to subserve purposes of sentiment; "The Eve of St. Agnes," +though it assumes a narrative form, is hardly a narrative, but rather a +monody of dreamy richness, a pictured and scenic presentment, which +sentiment again permeates and over-rules. I rate it far above +"Isabella"--and indeed above all those poems of Keats, not purely +lyrical, in which human or quasi-human agents bear their part, except +only the ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and the uncompleted "Eve of +St. Mark." "Hyperion" stands aloof in lonely majesty; but I think that, +in the long run, even "Hyperion" represents the genius of Keats less +adequately, and past question less characteristically, than "The Eve of +St. Agnes." The story of this fascinating poem is so meagre as to be +almost nugatory. There is nothing in it but this--that Keats took hold +of the superstition proper to St. Agnes' Eve, the power of a maiden to +see her absent lover under certain conditions, and added to it that a +lover, who was clandestinely present in this conjuncture of +circumstances, eloped with his mistress. This extreme tenuity of +constructive power in the poem, coupled with the rambling excursiveness +of "Endymion," and the futility of "The Cap and Bells," might be held to +indicate that Keats had very little head for framing a story--and indeed +I infer that, if he possessed any faculty in that direction, it remained +undeveloped up to the day of his death. One of the few subsidiary +incidents introduced into "The Eve of St. Agnes" is that the lover +Porphyro, on emerging from his hiding-place while his lady is asleep, +produces from a cupboard and marshals to sight a large assortment of +appetizing eatables. Why he did this no critic and no admirer has yet +been able to divine; and the incident is so trivial in itself, and is +made so much of for the purpose of verbal or metrical embellishment, as +to reinforce our persuasion that Keats's capacity for framing a story +out of successive details of a suggestive and self-consistent kind was +decidedly feeble. The power of "The Eve of St. Agnes" lies in a wholly +different direction. It lies in the delicate transfusion of sight and +emotion into sound; in making pictures out of words, or turning words +into pictures; of giving a visionary beauty to the closest items of +description; of holding all the materials of the poem in a long-drawn +suspense of music and reverie. "The Eve of St. Agnes" is _par +excellence_ the poem of "glamour." It means next to nothing; but means +that little so exquisitely, and in so rapt a mood of musing or of +trance, that it tells as an intellectual no less than a sensuous +restorative. Perhaps no reader has ever risen from "The Eve of St. +Agnes" dissatisfied. After a while he can question the grounds of his +satisfaction, and may possibly find them wanting; but he has only to +peruse the poem again, and the same spell is upon him. + +"The Eve of St. Mark" was begun at much the same date as "The Eve of St. +Agnes," rather the earlier of the two. Its relation to other poems by +the author is singular. In "Endymion" he had been a prodigal of +treasures--some of them genuine, others spurious; in "The Eve of St. +Agnes" he was at least opulent, a magnate superior to sumptuary laws; +but in "The Eve of St. Mark" he subsides into a delightful simplicity--a +simplicity full, certainly, of "favour and prettiness," but chary of +ornament. It comes perfectly natural to him, and promises the most +charming results. The non-completion of "The Eve of St. Mark" is the +greatest grievance of which the admirers of Keats have to complain. I +should suppose that, in the first instance, he advisedly postponed the +eve of one saint, Mark, to the eve of the other, Agnes; and that he did +not afterwards find a convenient opportunity for resuming the +uncompleted poem. The superstition connected with St. Mark's vigil is +not wholly unlike that pertaining to St. Agnes's. In the former instance +(I quote from Dante Rossetti), "it is believed that, if a person placed +himself near the church porch when twilight was thickening, he would +behold the apparition of those persons in the parish who were to be +seized with any severe disease that year go into the church. If they +remained there, it signified their death; if they came out again, it +portended their recovery; and, the longer or shorter the time they +remained in the building, the severer or less dangerous their illness." +The same writer, forecasting the probable course of the story,[22] +surmised that "the heroine, remorseful after trifling with a sick and +now absent lover, might make her way to the minster porch to learn his +fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not return." If +this was really to have been the sequel, we can perceive that the +unassuming simplicity of the poem at its commencement would, ere its +close, have deepened into a different sort of simplicity--emotional, and +even tragic. As it stands, the simplicity of "The Eve of St. Mark" is +full-blooded as well as quaint--there is nothing starved or threadbare +about it. Diverse though it is from Coleridge's "Christabel," we seem to +feel in it something of the like possessing or haunting quality, +modified by Keats's own distinctive genius. In this respect, and in +perfectness of touch, we link it with "La Belle Dame sans Merci." + +"Hyperion" has next to be considered. This was the only poem by Keats +which Shelley admired in an extreme degree. He wrote at different dates: +"The fragment called 'Hyperion' promises for him that he is destined to +become one of the first writers of the age.... It is certainly an +astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I +confess I had not before.... If the 'Hyperion' be not grand poetry, none +has been produced by our contemporaries.... The great proportion of this +piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry." Byron, who had +been particularly virulent against Keats during his lifetime, wrote +after his death a much more memorable phrase: "His fragment of +'Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as +AEschylus." Mr. Swinburne has written of the poem more at length, and +with carefully weighed words: + + "The triumph of 'Hyperion' is as nearly complete as the failure + of 'Endymion.' Yet Keats never gave such proof of a manly + devotion and rational sense of duty to his art as in his + resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; not (as we may + gather from his correspondence on the subject) for the pitiful + reason assigned by his publishers, that of discouragement at the + reception given to his former work, but on the solid and + reasonable ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very + scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign + influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length as was + implied by his original design. Fortified and purified as it had + been on a first revision, when much introductory allegory and + much tentative effusion of sonorous and superfluous verse had + been rigorously clipped down or pruned away, it could not long + have retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy body + of a subject so little charged with tangible significance." + +Mr. Swinburne is a critic with whom one may well be content to go +astray, if astray it is. I will therefore say that I entirely agree with +him in this estimate of "Hyperion," and of the sound discretion which +Keats exercised in giving it up. To deal with the gods of Olympus is no +easy task--it had decidedly overtaxed Keats in "Endymion," though he +limited himself to the two goddesses Diana and Venus, and casually the +gods Neptune and Mercury; but to deal with the elder gods--Saturn, Ops, +Hyperion--and with the Titans, on the scale of a long epic narration, is +a task which may well be pronounced unachievable. The Olympian gods +would also have had to be introduced: Apollo already appears in the +poem, not too promisingly. The elder gods are necessarily mere +figure-heads of bulk, might, majesty, and antiquity; to get any +character out of them after these "property" attributes have been +exhausted to the mind's eye, to "set them going" in act, and doing +something apportionable into cantos, and readable by human energies, was +not a problem which could be solved by a poet of the nineteenth century. +Past question, Keats started grandly, and has left us a monument of +Cyclopean architecture in verse almost impeccable--a Stonehenge of +reverberance; he has made us feel that his elder gods were profoundly +primaeval, powers so august and abstract-natured as to have become +already obsolete in the days of Zeus and Hades: his Titans, too, were so +vast and muscular that no feat would have been difficult to them except +that of interesting us. This sufficed for the first book of the poem; in +the second book, the enterprise is already revealing itself as an +impossible one, for the council at which Oceanus and others speak is +reminiscent of the Pandaemonic council in Milton, and clearly very +inferior to that. It could not well help resembling the scene in +"Paradise Lost," nor yet help being inferior; besides, even were it +equal or preferable, Milton had done the thing first. The "large +utterance of the early gods," large though it be, tends to monotony. In +book iii., we go off to Mnemosyne and Apollo; but of this section little +remains, and we close the poem with a conviction that Keats, if he had +succeeded in writing "a _fragment_ as sublime as AEschylus," was both +prudent and fortunate in leaving it a fragment. To say that "Hyperion" +is after all a semi-artificial utterance of the grand would be harsh, +and ungrateful for so noble an effort of noble faculty; but to say that, +by being prolonged, its grandeur must infallibly have partaken more and +more of an artificial infusion, appears to me criticism entirely sound +and safe. + +Mr. Woodhouse has informed us: "The poem, if completed, would have +treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by +Apollo; and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by +Jupiter, &c., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's +re-establishment; with other events of which we have but very dark hints +in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome. In fact, the incidents +would have been pure creations of the poet's brain." Here again Keats +would have been partly forestalled by Milton: the combat of the Giants +with the Olympian gods must have borne a very appreciable resemblance to +the combat of Satan and his legions with the hosts of heaven. How far +Keats's "invention" would have sufficed to filling in this vast canvas +may be questioned. The precedent of "Endymion," in which he had +attempted something of the same kind, was not wholly encouraging. The +method and tone would of course have been very different; in what +remains of "Hyperion," the general current of diction is as severe as in +"Endymion" it had been florid. + +The other commencement of "Hyperion" (alluded to in my sixth chapter) +was a later version, done in November and December 1819; it presents a +great deal of poetic or scenic machinery in which the author's +personality was copiously introduced. This recast contains impressive +things; but the prominence given to the author as spectator or +participant of what he pictures forth was fulsome and fatal. Mr. +Swinburne is in error (along with most other writers) in supposing this +to be the earlier version of the two. + +The tragedy of "Otho the Great," written on a peculiar system of +collaboration to which I have already referred, succeeded "Hyperion." It +is a tragedy on the Elizabethan model, and we find in scene i. a curious +instance of Elizabethan contempt of chronology--a reference to +"Hungarian petards." The main factors in the plot are a fierce and +fervent love-passion of the man, and an unscrupulous ambition of the +woman, reddened with crime. Webster may perhaps have been taken by Keats +as his chief prototype. To call "Otho the Great" an excellent drama +would not be possible; but it can be read without tedium, and contains +vigorous passages, and lines and images moulded with a fine poetic +ardour. The action would be sufficient for stage-representation at a +time when an audience come prepared to like a play if it is good in +verse and strong in romantic emotion; under such conditions, while it +could not be a great success, it need not nevertheless fall manifestly +flat. Under any other conditions, such as those which prevail nowadays, +this tragedy would necessarily run no chance at all. In a copy of Keats +which belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti I find the following note of +his, which may bear extracting: "This repulsive yet powerful play is of +course in draft only. It is much less to be supposed that it would have +been left so imperfect than to be surmised, from its imperfection, how +very gradual the maturing of Keats's best work probably may have been. +It gives after all, perhaps, the strongest proof of _robustness_ that +Keats has left; and as a tragedy is scarcely more deficient than +'Endymion' as a poem. Both, viewed as wholes, are quite below Keats's +three masterpieces;[23] yet 'Otho,' as well as 'Endymion,' gives proof +of his finest powers." Another note from the same hand remarks: "The +character and conduct of Albert [the lover of Auranthe murdered to clear +the way for her ambition] are the finest point in the play." + +Of the later drama, "King Stephen," so little was written that I need +not dwell upon it here. + +"Lamia" was begun about the same time as "Otho the Great," but finished +afterwards. The influence of Dryden, under which it was composed, has +told strongly upon its versification, as marked especially in the very +free use of alexandrines--generally the third line of a triplet, +sometimes even the second line of a couplet. You might search "Endymion" +in vain for alexandrines; and I will admit that their frequency appears +to me to give an artificial tone to "Lamia." The view which Keats has +elected to take of his subject is worth considering. The heroine is a +serpent-woman, or a double-natured being who can change from serpent +into woman and _vice versa_. In the female form she beguiles a young +student of philosophy, Lycius, lives with him in a splendid palace, and +finally celebrates their marriage-feast. The philosopher Apollonius +attends among the guests, perceives her to be "human serpentry," and, +gazing on her with ruthless fixity, he compels her and all her apparatus +of enchantment to vanish. This is the act for which (in lines partly +quoted in these pages) Keats arraigns philosophy, and its power of +stripping things bare of their illusions. No doubt a poet has a right to +treat a legend of this sort from such point of view as he likes; it is +for him, and not for his reader, to take the bull by the horns. But it +does look rather like taking the bull by the weaker horn to contend that +the philosopher who saves a youthful disciple from the wiles of a +serpent is condemnably prosaic--a grovelling spirit that denudes life of +its poetry. Conveniently for Keats's theory, Lycius is made to die +forthwith after the vanishing of his Lamia. If we invent a different +finale to the poem, and say that Lycius fell down on his knees, and +thanked Apollonius for saving him from such pestilent delusions and +perilous blandishments, and ever afterwards looked out for the cloven +tongue (if not the cloven hoof) when a pretty woman made advances to +him, we may perhaps come quite as near to a right construction of so +strange a series of events, and to the true moral of the story. But +Keats's championship was for the enjoying aspects of life; he may be +held to have exercised it here rather perversely. "Lamia" is one of his +completest and most finished pieces of writing--perhaps in this respect +superior to all his other long poems, if we except "Hyperion"; it closes +the roll of them with an affluence, even an excess, of sumptuous +adornment. "Lamia" leaves on the mental palate a rich flavour, if not an +absolutely healthy one. + +Passing from the long compositions, we find the cream of Keats's poetry +in the ballad of "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and in the five odes--"To +Psyche," "To Autumn," "On Melancholy," "To a Nightingale," and "On a +Grecian Urn." "La Belle Dame sans Merci" may possibly have been written +later than any of the odes, but this point is uncertain. I give it here +as marking the highest point of romantic imagination to which Keats +attained in dealing with human or quasi-human personages, and also his +highest level of simplicity along with completeness of art. + + "Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,[24] + Alone and palely loitering? + The sedge is withered from the lake, + And no birds sing. + + "Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, + So haggard and so woe-begone? + The squirrel's granary is full, + And the harvest's done. + + "I see a lily on thy brow, + With anguish moist and fever-dew; + And on thy cheeks a fading rose + Fast withereth too." + + "I met a lady in the meads, + Full beautiful, a faery's child; + Her hair was long, her foot was light, + And her eyes were wild. + + "I made a garland for her head, + And bracelets too, and fragrant zone: + She looked at me as she did love, + And made sweet moan. + + "I set her on my pacing steed, + And nothing else saw all day long; + For sideways would she lean and sing + A faery's song. + + "She found me roots of relish sweet, + And honey wild, and manna-dew; + And sure in language strange she said-- + 'I love thee true.' + + "She took me to her elfin grot, + And there she gazed and sighed deep, + And there I shut her wild sad eyes-- + So kissed to sleep. + + "And there we slumbered on the moss, + And there I dreamed--ah woe betide!-- + The latest dream I ever dreamed + On the cold hill-side. + + "I saw pale kings and princes too, + Pale warriors--death-pale were they all; + They cried--'La Belle Dame sans Merci + Hath thee in thrall.' + + "I saw their starved lips in the gloam + With horrid warning gaped wide; + And I awoke, and found me here + On the cold hill-side. + + "And this is why I sojourn here, + Alone and palely loitering; + Though the sedge is withered from the lake, + And no birds sing." + +This is a poem of _impression_. The impression is immediate, final, and +permanent; and words would be more than wasted upon pointing out to the +reader that such and such are the details which have conduced to impress +him. + +In the five odes there is naturally some diversity in the degrees of +excellence. I have given their titles above in the probable (not +certain) order of their composition. Considered intellectually, we might +form a kind of symphony out of them, and arrange it thus--1, "Grecian +Urn"; 2, "Psyche"; 3, "Autumn"; 4, "Melancholy"; 5, "Nightingale"; and, +if Keats had left us nothing else, we should have in this symphony an +almost complete picture of his poetic mind, only omitting, or +representing deficiently, that more instinctive sort of enjoyment which +partakes of gaiety. Viewing all these wondrous odes together, the +predominant quality which we trace in them is an extreme susceptibility +to delight, close-linked with afterthought--pleasure with pang--or that +poignant sense of ultimates, a sense delicious and harrowing, which +clasps the joy in sadness, and feasts upon the very sadness in joy. The +emotion throughout is the emotion of beauty: beauty intensely +perceived, intensely loved, questioned of its secret like the sphinx, +imperishable and eternal, yet haunted (as it were) by its own ghost, the +mortal throes of the human soul. As no poet had more capacity for +enjoyment than Keats, so none exceeded him in the luxury of sorrow. Few +also exceeded him in the sense of the one moment irretrievable; but this +conception in its fulness belongs to the region of morals yet more than +of sensation, and the spirit of Keats was almost an alien in the region +of morals. As he himself wrote (March 1818)-- + + "Oh never will the prize, + High reason, and the love of good and ill, + Be my award!" + +I think it will be well to cull out of these five odes--taken in the +symphonic order above noted--the phrases which constitute the strongest +chords of emotion and of music. + + (1) "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard + Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; + Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, + Pipe, to the spirit, ditties of no tone. + + "Human passion far above + That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed, + A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. + + "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all + Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. + + (2) "Too late for antique vows, + Too too late for the fond believing lyre, + When holy were the haunted forest boughs, + Holy the air, the water, and the fire. + + "Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane + In some untrodden region of my mind, + Where branched thoughts new-grown with pleasant pain, + Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind. + + (3) "Where are the songs of spring--ay, where are they? + Think not of them: thou hast thy music too, + While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, + And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue. + + (4) "But, when the melancholy fit shall fall + Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, + That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, + And hides the green hill in an April shroud, + Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, + Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave. + + "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; + And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips + Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, + Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips + Ay, in the very temple of Delight + Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine. + + (5) "That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, + And with thee fade away into the forest dim: + Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget + What thou among the leaves hast never known, + The weariness, the fever, and the fret, + Here where men sit and hear each other groan; + Where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs; + Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies; + Where but to think is to be full of sorrow + And leaden-eyed despairs; + Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, + Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. + + "Darkling I listen: and for many a time + I have been half in love with easeful Death,-- + Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme + To take into the air my quiet breath. + Now more than ever seems it rich to die, + To cease upon the midnight with no pain, + While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad + In such an ecstasy. + + "The same that oft-times hath + Charmed magic casements opening on the foam + Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. + Forlorn! the very word is like a bell + To toll me back from thee to my sole self. + + "Was it a vision or a waking dream? + Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?" + +To one or two of these phrases a few words of comment may be given. That +axiom which concludes the "Ode on a Grecian Urn"-- + + "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all + Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," + +is perhaps the most important contribution to thought which the poetry +of Keats contains: it pairs with and transcends + + "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." + +I am not prepared to say whether Keats was the first writer to formulate +any axiom to this effect,--I should rather presume not; but at any rate +it comes with peculiar appropriateness in the writings of a poet who +might have varied the dictum of Iago, and said of himself + + "For I am nothing if not beautiful." + +In the Ode, the axiom is put forward as the message of the sculptured +Grecian Urn "to man," and is thus propounded as being of universal +application. It amounts to saying--"Any beauty which is not truthful (if +any such there be), and any truth which is not beautiful (if any such +there be), are of no practical importance to mankind in their mundane +condition: but in fact there are none such, for, to the human mind, +beauty and truth are one and the same thing." To debate this question on +abstract grounds is not in my province: all that I have to do is to +point out that Keats's perception and thought crystallized into this +axiom as the sum and substance of wisdom for man, and that he has +bequeathed it to us to ponder in itself, and to lay to heart as the +secret of his writings. Those other lines, from the "Ode on Melancholy," +where he says of Melancholy-- + + "She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die; + And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips + Bidding adieu"-- + +appear to me unsurpassable in the whole range of his poetry--as intense +in imagery as supreme in diction and in music. They pair with the other +celebrated verses from the "Ode to a Nightingale"-- + + "Now more then ever seems it rich to die, + To cease upon the midnight with no pain;" + +and-- + + "Charmed magic casements opening on the foam + Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn." + +The phrase "_rich_ to die" is of the very essence of Keats's emotion; +and the passage about "magic casements" shows a reach of expression +which might almost be called the Pillars of Hercules of human language. +Far greater things have been said by the greatest minds: but nothing +more perfect in form has been said--nothing wider in scale and closer in +utterance--by any mind of whatsoever pitch of greatness. + +And here we come to one of the most intrinsic properties of Keats's +poetry. He is a master of _imagination in verbal form_: he gifts us with +things so finely and magically said as to convey an imaginative +impression. The imagination may sometimes be in the substance of the +thought, as well as in its wording--as it is in the passage just quoted: +sometimes it resides essentially in the wording, out of which thought +expands in the reader, who is made + + "To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, + Awake for ever in a sweet unrest." + +From wealth of perception, at first confused or docked in the +expression, he rose into a height of verbal embodiment which has seldom +been equalled and seldomer exceeded. His conception of poetry as an +ideal, his sense of poetry as an art, spurred him on to artistic +achievement; and in the later stages of his work the character of the +Artist is that which marks him most strongly. As one of his own letters +says, he "looks upon fine phrases like a lover." + +According to Mr. Swinburne, "the faultless force and profound subtlety +of this deep and cunning instinct for the absolute expression of +absolute natural beauty is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or +power which denotes him as a poet among all his equals." We may safely +accept this verdict of poet upon poet as a true one: yet I should be +inclined to demur to such strong adjectives as "faultless" and +"absolute." Beautiful as several of them are, I might hesitate to say +that even one poem by Keats exhibits this his special characteristic in +a faultless degree, or expresses absolutely throughout a natural beauty +of absolute quality. To the last, he appears to me to have been somewhat +wanting in those faculties of selection and of discipline which we sum +up, by a rough-and-ready process, in the word "taste." He had done a +great deal in this direction, and would probably, with a few years more +of life, have done all that was needed; but we have to take him as he +stands, with those few years denied. Unless perhaps in "La Belle Dame +sans Merci," Keats has not, I think, come nearer to perfection than in +the "Ode to a Nightingale." It is with some trepidation that I recur to +this Ode, for the invidious purpose of testing its claim to be adjudged +"faultless," for in so doing I shall certainly lose the sympathy of some +readers, and strain the patience of many. The question, however, seems +to be a very fair one to raise, and the specimen a strong one to try it +by, and so I persevere. The first point of weakness--excess which +becomes weak in result--is a surfeit of mythological allusions: Lethe, +Dryad (the nightingale is turned into a "light-winged Dryad of the +trees"--which is as much as to say, a light-winged _Oak_-nymph of the +_trees_), Flora, Hippocrene, Bacchus, the Queen-moon (the Queen-moon +appears at first sight to be the classical Phoebe, who is here +"clustered around by all her starry Fays," spirits proper to a Northern +mythology; but possibly Keats thought more of a Faery-queen than of +Phoebe). Then comes the passage (already cited in these pages) about +the poet's wish for a draught of wine, to help him towards spiritual +commune with the nightingale. Some exquisite phrases in this passage +have endeared it to all readers of Keats; yet I cannot but regard it as +very foreign to the main subject-matter. Surely nobody wants wine as a +preparation for enjoying a nightingale's music, whether in a literal or +in a fanciful relation. Taken in detail, to call wine "the true, the +blushful Hippocrene"--the veritable fount of poetic inspiration--seems +both stilted and repulsive, and the phrase "with beaded bubbles winking +at the brim" is (though picturesque) trivial, in the same way as much of +Keats's earlier work. Far worse is the succeeding image, "Not charioted +by Bacchus and his pards"--_i.e._, not under the inspiration of wine: +the poet will fly to the nightingale, but not in a leopard-drawn +chariot. Further on, as if we had not already had enough of wine and its +associations, the coming musk-rose is described as "full of dewy +wine"--an expression of very dubious appositeness: and the like may be +said of "become a sod," in the sense of "become a corpse--earth to +earth." The renowned address-- + + "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! + No hungry generations tread thee down," + +seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a palpable +fact that this address, according to its place in the context, is a +logical solecism. While "Youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies," +while the poet would "become a sod" to the requiem sung by the +nightingale, the nightingale itself is pronounced immortal. But this +antithesis cannot stand the test of a moment's reflection. Man, as a +race, is as deathless, as superior to the tramp of hungry generations, +as is the nightingale as a race: while the nightingale as an individual +bird has a life not less fleeting, still more fleeting, than a man as an +individual. We have now arrived at the last stanza of the ode. Here the +term "deceiving elf," applied to "the fancy," sounds rather petty, and +in the nature of a make-rhyme: but this may possibly be a prejudice. + +Having thus--in the interest of my reader as a critical appraiser of +poetry--burned my fingers a little at the clear and perennial flame of +the "Ode to a Nightingale," I shall quit that superb composition, and +the whole quintett of odes, and shall proceed to other phases of my +subject. The "Ode to Indolence," and the fragment of an "Ode to Maia," +need not detain us; the former, however, is important as indicating a +mood of mind--too vaguely open to the influences of the moment for +either love, ambition, or poesy--to which we may well suppose that Keats +was sufficiently prone. The few poems which remain to be mentioned were +all printed posthumously. + +There are four addresses to Fanny Brawne, dating perhaps from early till +late in 1819; two of them are irregular lyrics, and two sonnets. The +best of the four is the sonnet, "The day is gone, and all its sweets are +gone," which counts indeed among the better sonnets of Keats. Taken +collectively, all four supply valuable evidence as to the poet's love +affair, confirmatory of what appears in his letters; they exhibit him +quelled by the thought of his mistress and her charms, and jealous of +her mixing in or enjoying the company of others. + +Keats wrote some half-hundred of sonnets altogether, some of them among +his very earliest and most trifling performances, others up to his +latest period, including the last of all his compositions. +Notwithstanding his marked growth in love of form, and his ultimate +surprising power of expression--both being qualities peculiarly germane +to this form of verse--his sonnets appear to me to be seldom masterly. A +certain freakishness of disposition, and liability to be led astray by +some point of detail into side-issues, mar the symmetry and +concentration of his work. Perhaps the sonnet on "Chapman's Homer," +early though it was, remains the best which he produced; it is at any +rate pre-eminent in singleness of thought, illustrated by a definite and +grand image. It has a true opening and a true climax, and a clear link +of inventive association between the thing mentally signified in chief, +and the modes of its concrete presentment. In points of this kind Keats +is seldom equally happy in his other sonnets; sometimes not happy at +all, but distinctly at fault. There is a second Homeric sonnet, +"Standing aloof in giant ignorance" (1818), which contains one line +which has been very highly praised, + + "There is a budding morrow in midnight:" + +but, regarded as a whole, it is a weakling in comparison with the +Chapman sonnet. The sonnets, "To Sleep" ("O soft embalmer of the still +midnight"), "Why did I laugh to-night?" and "On a Dream" ("As Hermes +once took to his feathers light")--all of them dated in 1819--are +remarkable; the third would indeed almost be excellent were it not for +the inadmissible laxity of an alexandrine last line. This is the sonnet +of which we have already spoken, the dream of Paolo and Francesca. The +"Why did I laugh to-night?" is a strange personal utterance, in which +the poet (not yet attacked by his mortal illness) exalts death above +verse, fame, and beauty, in the same mood of mind as in the lovely +passage of the "Ode to a Nightingale"; but the sonnet, considered as an +example of its own form of art, is too exclamatory and uncombined. + +There are several minor poems by Keats of which--though some of them are +extremely dear to his devotees--I have made no mention. Such are +"Teignmouth," "Where be you going, you Devon maid?" "Meg Merrilies," +"Walking in Scotland," "Staffa," "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," "Robin +Hood," "To Fancy," "To the Poets," "In a drear-nighted December," "Hush, +hush, tread softly," four "Faery Songs." Most of these pieces seem to me +over-rated. As a rule they have lyrical impulse, along with the +brightness or the tenderness which the subject bespeaks; but they are +slight in significance and in structure, pleasurable but not memorable +work. One enjoys them once and again, and then their office is over; +they have not in them that stuff which can be laid to heart, nor that +spherical unity and replenishment which can make of a mere snatch of +verse an inscription for the adamantine portal of time. + +The feeling with which Keats regarded women in real life has been +already spoken of. As to the tone of his poems respecting them we have +his own evidence. A letter of his to Armitage Brown, dated towards the +first days of September 1820, says, in reference to the "Lamia" volume: +"One of the causes, I understand from different quarters, of the +unpopularity of this new book, is the offence the ladies take at me. On +thinking that matter over, I am certain that I have said nothing in a +spirit to displease any woman I would care to please; but still there is +a tendency to class women in my books with roses and sweetmeats; they +never see themselves dominant." The long poems in the volume in question +were "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia." In +"Hyperion" women are of course not dominant; but, as regards the other +three poems, they are surely dominant enough in one sense. In "Isabella" +the heroine is the sole figure of prime importance--so also in "Lamia"; +and in the "Eve of St. Agnes" she counts for much more than Porphyro, +though the number of stanzas about her may be fewer. Nevertheless it +might be that the women in the three poems, though "dominant," are +"classed with roses and sweetmeats." I do not see, however, that this +can fairly be said of Madeline in the "Eve of St. Agnes"; she is made a +very charming and loveable figure, although she does nothing very +particular except to undress without looking behind her, and to elope. +Again, Isabella, amenable as she may be to the censure of the severely +virtuous, plays a part which takes her very considerably out of affinity +to roses and sweetmeats. To Lamia the objection applies clearly enough; +but then she is not exactly a woman, and Keats resents so fiercely the +far from indefensible line of conduct which Apollonius adopts in +relation to her that it seems hard if the ladies owed the poet a grudge. +On the whole I incline to think that they must have been misreported; +but the statement in Keats's letter remains not the less significant as +a symptom of his real underlying feeling about women. + +It has often been pointed out that Keats's lovers have a habit of +"swooning," and the fact has sometimes been remarked upon as evidencing +a certain want of virility in himself. I cannot affect to be, so far, of +a different opinion. The incident and the phrase do manifestly tend to +the namby-pamby. This may have been more a matter of affected or +self-willed diction on his part--and diction of that kind appears +constantly in his earlier poems, and not seldom in his later ones--than +of actual character chargeable against himself; yet I would not entirely +disregard it in the latter relation either. Keats was a very young man, +with a limited experience of life. He had to picture to himself how his +lovers would be likely to behave under given conditions; and, if he +thought they would be likely to swoon, the probability is that he also, +under parallel conditions, would have been likely to swoon--or at least +supposed he would be likely. Because he thrashed a butcher-boy, or was +indignant at backbiting and meanness, we are not to credit him with an +unmingled fund of that toughness which distinguishes the English middle +class. The English middle-class man is not habitually addicted to +writing an "Endymion," an "Eve of St. Agnes," or an "Ode on +Melancholy." + +Sensuousness has been frequently defined as the paramount bias of +Keats's poetic genius. This is, in large measure, unassailably true. He +was a man of perception rather than of contemplation or speculation. +Perception has to do with perceptible things; perceptible things must be +objects of sense, and the mind which dwells on objects of sense must +_ipso facto_ be a mind of the sensuous order. But the mind which is +mainly sensuous by direct action may also work by reflex action, and +pass from sensuousness into sentiment. It cannot fairly be denied that +Keats's mind continually did this; it had direct action potently, and +reflex action amply. He saw so far and so keenly into the sensuous as to +be penetrated with the sentiment which, to a healthy and large nature, +is its inseparable outcome. We might say that, if the sensuous was his +atmosphere, the breathing apparatus with which he respired it was +sentiment. In his best work--for instance, in all the great odes--the +two things are so intimately combined that the reader can only savour +the sensuous nucleus through the sentiment, its medium or vehicle. One +of the most compendious and elegant phrases in which the genius of Keats +has been defined is that of Leigh Hunt: "He never beheld an oak tree +without seeing the Dryad." In immediate meaning Hunt glances here at the +mythical sympathy or personifying imagination of the poet; but, if we +accept the phrase as applying to the sensuous object-painting, along +with its ideal aroma or suggestion in his finest work, we shall still +find it full of right significance. We need not dwell upon other less +mature performances in which the two things are less closely interfused. +Certainly some of his work is merely, and some even crudely, sensuous: +but this is work in which the poet was trying his materials and his +powers, and rising towards mastery of his real faculty and ultimate +function. + +While discriminating between what was excellent in Keats, and what was +not excellent, or was merely tentative in the direction of final +excellence, we must not confuse endowments, or the homage which is due +to endowments, of a radically different order. Many readers, and there +have been among them several men highly qualified to pronounce, have set +Keats beside his great contemporary Shelley, and indeed above him. I +cannot do this. To me it seems that the primary gift of Shelley, the +spirit in which he exercised it, the objects upon which he exercised it, +the detail and the sum of his achievement, the actual produce in +appraisable work done, the influence and energy of the work in the +future, were all superior to those of Keats, and even superior beyond +any reasonable terms of comparison. If Shelley's poems had +defects--which they indisputably had--Keats's poems also had defects. +After all that can be said in their praise--and this should be said in +the most generous or rather grateful and thankful spirit--it seems to me +true that not many of Keats's poems are highly admirable; that most of +them, amid all their beauty, have an adolescent and frequently a morbid +tone, marking want of manful thew and sinew and of mental balance; that +he is not seldom obscure, chiefly through indifference to the thought +itself and its necessary means of development; that he is emotional +without substance, and beautiful without control; and that personalism +of a wilful and fitful kind pervades the mass of his handiwork. We have +already seen, however, that there is a certain not inconsiderable +proportion of his poems to which these exceptions do not apply, or apply +only with greatly diminished force; and, as a last expression of our +large and abiding debt to him and to his well-loved memory, we recur to +his own words, and say that he has given us many a "thing of beauty," +which will remain "a joy for ever." By his early death he was doomed to +be the poet of youthfulness; by being the poet of youthfulness he was +privileged to become and to remain enduringly the poet of rapt +expectation and passionate delight. + + +THE END. + + + + +INDEX. + + +A. + + Abbey, Guardian of Keats, 17, 19, 20, 29, 37, 39 + + "Adonais," by Shelley, 39, 90, 98, 170 + + AEschylus, 186 + + "Agnes, The Eve of St.," 107, 138; + critical estimate of the poem, 182-184; 190, 206 + + "Alastor," by Shelley, 82 + + "Annals of the Fine Arts," 110 + + Ariosto, 113 + + _Asclepiad, The_, 24 + + _Athenaeum, The_, 23 + + "Autumn, Ode to," by Keats, 109, 192, 194 + + +B. + + Bailey, Archdeacon Benjamin, 23, 77, 78, 112, 123; + his description of Keats, 124; 130, 133, 141, 142, 145, 158, 159 + + "Belle Dame (La) sans Merci," by Keats, 112, 182, 185, 190; + quoted, 192, &c.; 200 + + Benjamin, Nathan, 157 + + Bion, Idyll on "Adonis," by, 170 + + Blackwood, William, 91 + + _Blackwood's Magazine_, 90; + articles in by Z, on The Cockney School of Poetry, 91; 92, 93, 95, 97, + 98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 153 + + Boccaccio's "Decameron," 107, 180, 181 + + Boileau, 70 + + Bojardo's "Orlando Innamorato," 114 + + Brawne, Fanny, engaged to Keats, 30, 32; + Keats's description of her, 33; 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 45; + Keats's love-letters to her, 45-46, &c.; 53, 57, 60, 62, 102; + her marriage to Mr. Lindon, 121; 130, 141, 143, 146, 147, 158, 160; + poems to, 202 + + Brawne, Mrs., 29, 34, 36, 60, 61, 143 + + Brown, Charles Armitage, friend of Keats, 25; + Keats's verses on, 26; 27, 28, 29, 33, 38, 39, 41, + 42, 43, 46, 48, 53; + letter from Keats to, 55-56, 59, 108, 111, 112, 114, 116, 119; + his death, 120; 136, 156, 157, 160, 206 + + Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," 108 + + Byron, Lord, 32, 102, 103, 105, 125, 128, 185 + + Byron's "Don Juan," 58 + + +C. + + Caius Cestius, 118 + + "Calidore," by Keats, 65, 165 + + "Cap and Bells, The," by Keats, 113, 183 + + "Caviare" (pseudonym of Keats), 112 + + "Cenci, The," by Shelley, 123 + + _Champion, The_, 115 + + "Chapman's Homer," sonnet by Keats, 66, 69, 165, 166, 203 + + Chartier, Alain, 112 + + Chatterton, 67, 68 + + Chaucer, 112 + + Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, picture by Haydon, 21, 36, 43, + 126, 158 + + "Christmas Eve," sonnet by Keats, quoted, 157 + + Clark, Mrs., 60 + + Clark, Sir James, 59, 60 + + Clarke, Charles Cowden, preceptor and friend of Keats, 14, 18, 19, + 20, 25, 65, 66; + his "Recollections," 102; 104, 125, 126, 129, 140, 148 + + Clarke, Epistle to, by Keats, 67, 68 + + Clarke, Rev. John, Keats's schoolmaster, 14 + + Coleridge, 25, 151, 164 + + Coleridge's "Christabel," 185 + + Colman, 156 + + Colvin's, Mr., "Life of Keats," 9, 35, 42 + + "Comus," by Milton, 115 + + Cox, Miss Jane ["Charmian"], 30, 31, 32, 34, 143, 146 + + Cripps, 133 + + +D. + + Dante, 112, 113 + + Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 23, 27, 29, 34, 39, 51, 53, 58, 103, + 115, 120, 131, 133, 142, 150, 156, 160 + + Dilke, Mrs., 28 + + "Dream, A," sonnet by Keats, 112, 204 + + Dryden, 70, 108, 190 + + Duncan, Admiral, 16 + + +E. + + _Edinburgh Review_, 109, 117 + + Edouart, 35 + + "Endymion," by Keats, 23, 24, 25, 54, 67, 72; + details as to the composition of, 76; + preface to, 79, 80; + criticism upon in _The Quarterly Review_, 83; + Keats's feeling as to this and other criticisms, 91-106; 107, + 108, 109, 122, 130, 137, 139, 141, 149, 152, 166; + Shelley's opinion of, 167; + summary of the poem, 168-175; + critical estimate of it, 176-180; 182, 186, 188, 189, 190 + + _Examiner, The_, 21, 68, 100 + + Eyre, Sir Vincent, 119 + + +F. + + "Fancy, The," by Reynolds, 22 + + Finch, Colonel, 39, 98 + + "Florence, The Garden of," by Reynolds, 22, 107 + + Forman, Mr. H. Buxton, 18, 25, 33, 34, 35, 52, 123 + + +G. + + _Gentleman's Magazine, The_, 102 + + George IV., 21, 114 + + Gifford, William, 83, 95, 168 + + Girometti, 128 + + Gisborne, Mrs., 44, 98 + + Grafty, Mrs., 64 + + "Grasshopper and Cricket, The," sonnets by Keats and Hunt, 166 + + "Grecian Urn, Ode on a," by Keats, 109, 110, 192, 194-198 + + Guido, 155 + + +H. + + Hammond, Surgeon, 18, 19 + + Haslam, William, 54 + + Haydn, 148 + + Haydon, Benjamin Robert, the painter, friend of John Keats, 13, 16, + 18, 21, 36, 37, 44; + his last interview with Keats, 54, 55, 64, 69, 76, 78, 99; + his view as to Keats's feeling regarding critical attacks, 100, &c.; + 105, 110, 123, 126, 127, 128, 132, 133; + his view of Keats's character, 134-135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, + 142, 150, 152, 153, 155, 158 + + Hazlitt, 116, 152 + + Hilton, 128 + + Holmes, Edward, 54 + + Homer, 165 + + Hood, Mrs. (Miss Reynolds), 23 + + Hood, Thomas, 23 + + Hooker, Bishop, 32 + + Houghton, Lord, 41, 42, 58, 99, 114, 119, 125, 132, 136, 139 + + Howard, John, 32 + + Hunt, John, 20 + + Hunt, Leigh, 20, 21, 25, 44, 59, 66-69, 77, 83, 84, 85, 89-92, + 97, 98, 100; + his view as to Keats's sensitiveness to criticism, 102; 110, + 112, 114, 121, 122, 123; + his description of Keats, 124; 125, 131, 134, 141, 142, 148, + 150, 156, 158, 164, 166, 181, 207 + + Hunt, Leigh, dedicatory sonnet to, by Keats, 66 + + Hunt, Leigh, leaving prison, sonnet by Keats, 66 + + Hunt, Mrs., 44 + + Hunt, Thornton, 44 + + "Hyperion," by Keats, 96, 97, 107, 108, 113, 137, 182; + critical estimate of the poem, 185-189; + recast of, 189; 190, 192, 206 + + +I. + + "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill," poem by Keats, 67; + extract from, 74; 165 + + _Indicator, The_, 112, 114 + + "Indolence, Ode to," by Keats, 202 + + "Isabella, or the Pot of Basil," by Keats, 95, 107, 138; + critical estimate of the poem, 180-182; 206 + + "Islam, The Revolt of," by Shelley, 77, 82, 123 + + +J. + + J. S., 93, 94 + + Jeffrey, Lord, 109 + + Jeffrey, Mr., 120 + + Jennings, grandfather of Keats, 12, 37 + + Jennings, Captain, 16 + + Jennings, Mrs., 16 + + "Joseph and his Brethren," by Wells, 23 + + +K. + + Kean as Richard Duke of York, + critique by Keats, 93, 115 + + Kean, Edmund, 112 + + Keats, Fanny, sister of the poet, 13, 29, 38, 43, 45, 57, 62, + 120, 121, 129, 148 + + Keats, Frances, mother of the poet, 12; + her death, 16; 25, 126 + + Keats, George, brother of the poet, 13, 15, 18, 19, 25, 27, 30, + 32, 37, 38, 64, 71, 95, 98; + his view as to John Keats's sensitiveness to criticism, 103; 111, + 119, 120, 126, 136, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 155, 159, 160 + + Keats, George, Epistle to, by John Keats, 67, 68 + + Keats, John, his parentage, 12; + his birth in London, October 31, 1795, 13; + anecdote of his childhood, 13; + goes to the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield, 14; + his studies, pugnacity, &c., 15; + death of his parents, 16; + apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond, 18; + leaves Hammond, and walks the hospitals, 18, 19; + reads Spenser's "Faery Queen," and drops surgical study, 20; + makes acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, Haydon, and others, 20, 21, 22; + his first volume, Poems, 1817, 22; + writes "Endymion," 23; + his health suffers in Oxford, 24; + anecdotes (Coleridge, &c.), 25; + makes a pedestrian tour in Scotland &c. with + Charles Armitage Brown, 25-29; + takes leave of his brother George and his wife, 27; + his brother Tom dies, 29; + lodges with Brown at Hampstead, 29; + meets Miss Cox ("Charmian") and Miss Brawne, and falls in love + with the latter, 30-35; + their engagement, 36; + his friendship towards Haydon cools, 36, 37; + at Shanklin and Winchester, 37, 38; + sees his brother George again, and is left by him in pecuniary + straits, 38, 39; + the painful circumstances of his closing months, owing to illness, + his love affair, and the depreciation of his poems, 40, 41; + beginning of his consumptive illness, 41, 42; + removes to Kentish Town, 43, 44; + returns to Mrs. Brawne's house at Hampstead, 45; + his love-letters, 45-54; + travels to Italy with Joseph Severn, 54-59; + Severn's account of his last days in Rome, 60, 61; + his death there, February 23, 1821, 62, 63; + his early turn for mere rhyming, 64; + his early writings, and first volume, 65, 69; + diatribe against Boileau, and poets of that school, 70; + the publishers relinquish sale of the volume, 72; + "Endymion," and passage from an early poem forecasting + this attempt, 73-76; + details as to composition of "Endymion," 76-79; + prefaces to the poem, 79-83; + adverse critique in _The Quarterly Review_, 83-91; + question debated whether this and other attacks affected Keats + deeply, 91-97; + statements by Shelley, 97; + and by Haydon, 99; + other evidence, 102; + conclusion as to this point, 105; + Keats writes "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and + "Hyperion," 107; + "Lamia," 108; + and publishes the volume containing these poems, 1820, 108; + other poems in the volume, 109; + posthumous poems of Keats, "The Eve of St. Mark," "Otho the Great," + "The Cap and Bells," &c., 110-115; + his letters and other prose writings, 115-117; + Keats's burial-place, 118-119; + projects for writing his life, accomplished finally by + Lord Houghton, 119; + his relations with Hunt, Shelley, and others, 121-123; + Keats's small stature and personal appearance, 124-126; + the portraits of him, 126-129; + difficulty of clearly estimating his character, 129; + his poetic ambition and intensity of thought, 130, 131; + his moral tone, 132; + his character ("no decision" &c.,) estimated by Haydon, 133-139; + Lord Houghton's account of his manner in society, 139; + his suspiciousness, 141; + and dislike of mankind, 142; + his feeling towards women, 143-146; + and towards Miss Brawne, 147, 148; + his habits, opinions, likings, &c., 148-155; + humour and jocularity, 155-157; + negative turn in religious matters, 157-160; + wine and diet, 160, 161; + conclusion as to his character, 161, 162; + his early tone in poetry, 164; + critical estimate of his first volume, Poems, 1817, 165-166; + of "Endymion," 167, 168; + narrative of this poem, 168-175; + defects and beauties of "Endymion," 176-180; + critical estimate of "Isabella," 180; + "Eve of St. Agnes," 182; + "Eve of St. Mark," 184; + "Hyperion," 185; + "Otho the Great," 189; + "Lamia," 190; + "Belle Dame sans Merci" (quoted), 192; + the five chief Odes, 194; + analysis of the "Ode to a Nightingale," 200; + various posthumous lyrics, sonnets, &c., 202; + Keats's feeling towards women, as developed in his poems, 205; + "swooning," 206; + sensuousness and sentiment, 207; + comparison between Keats and Shelley, and final remarks, 208 + + Keats, Mrs. George, 27, 32, 95, 120 + + Keats, Thomas, father of the poet, 12; + his death, 16; 126 + + Keats, Thomas, brother of the poet, 13, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25, 28; + his death, 29; 37, 38, 39, 121, 135, 159, 160 + + "King Stephen," by Keats, 73, 112, 190 + + Kotzebue, 150 + + +L. + + Lamb, Charles, 78, 150 + + Lamb, Dr., 44 + + "Lamia," by Keats, 108, 138, 151, 160; + critical estimate of the poem, 190, &c.; 206 + + "Lamia, and other Poems," by Keats (1820), 44, 97, 103, 108, + 109, 110, 206 + + Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 61 + + Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," 15 + + Lindon, Mrs. (_see_ Brawne, Fanny) + + Llanos, 121 + + Lockhart, 91 + + Lucas, 19 + + Lucy Vaughan Lloyd (pseudonym of Keats), 114 + + Lyrics (various) by Keats, 204 + + +M. + + Mackereth, George Wilson, 19 + + "Maia, Ode to," by Keats, 202 + + "Mark, Eve of St.," by Keats, 52, 110, 182; + critical estimate of the poem, 184-185; 190 + + Marmontel's "Incas of Peru," 15 + + Mathew, George Felton, Epistle to, by Keats, 67; 157 + + Medwin's "Life of Shelley," 34 + + "Melancholy, Ode on," by Keats, 109, 192, 194-199 + + Milton, 107, 135, 147, 159, 165, 186, 188 + + "Miserrimus," by Reynolds, 23 + + Mitford, Miss, 101, 135 + + Moore, Thomas, 165 + + _Morning Chronicle, The_, 93 + + Murray, John, 102 + + +N. + + Napoleon I., 32 + + "Narensky," opera by C. A. Brown, 27 + + Newton, Sir Isaac, 151 + + "Nightingale, Ode to a," by Keats, 103, 109, 160, 192, 194-202; + analysed, 200-202; 204 + + "Nile," Sonnets on the, by Keats, &c.; 110 + + +O. + + Ollier, Charles, 21, 71 + + "Otho the Great," by Keats, 38, 111, 112; + critical estimate of, 189 + + +P. + + "Paradise Lost," 108, 175, 187 + + "Paradise Lost," Notes on, by Keats, 115 + + Philostratus's "Life of Apollonius," 108 + + "Poems" (1817), by Keats, 23, 66; + letter regarding this volume, by the publishers, 72; 122, 164-167 + + Pope, 70 + + Procter, Mrs., 125, 126 + + Purcell, 148 + + "Psyche, Ode to," by Keats, 109, 192, 194-199 + + +Q. + + _Quarterly Review, The_, 83; + its critique of "Endymion" extracted, 83-91; 93, 95, 96, 97, + 98, 99, 102, 104, 153, 179 + + "Quixote, Don," 120 + + +R. + + R. B., 93 + + Raphael, 155 + + Rawlings, William, 16 + + Reynolds, John Hamilton, 22, 79, 95, 107, 115, 128, 156 + + Reynolds, Misses, 30, 31, 142, 145, 148 + + Reynolds, Mrs., 31 + + Rice, James, 38, 41, 147 + + Richardson, Dr., 25 + + Ritchie, 78 + + Robinson Crusoe, 15 + + Robinson, H. Crabb, 104 + + Rossetti, Dante G., 52, 184, 185, 190 + + +S. + + Sandt, 150 + + Scott, Sir Walter, 91, 100 + + Severn, Joseph, 39; + leaves England with Keats for Italy, 54; 59; + his narrative of Keats's last days, 60, &c.; 104, 118, 119, 125; + his portraits of Keats, 127-129; 139, 143, 147, 148 + + Shakespeare (Macbeth), 15; + (Hamlet), 52; 93, 114, 135, 147; + (King Lear), 151; 155, 165 + + Shakespeare, Notes on, by Keats, 115 + + Shakespeare's sonnets, Book on, by C. A. Brown, 27 + + Sharpey, Dr., 30 + + Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 39, 58, 59, 71, 77, 82, 91, 96; + his references to "Endymion," and _The Quarterly + Review_, 97-99; 102, 110, 119, 123, 125, 141, 147, + 167, 179, 180, 185; + comparison between Shelley and Keats, 208 + + "Sleep and Poetry," by Keats, 67, 69; + extract from, 70; 165 + + Smith, Horace, 68 + + Snook, 56 + + Sonnet by Keats ("Bright Star," &c.), 114 + + Sonnets (various) by Keats, 164, 167, 203, &c. + + Spence's "Polymetis," 15 + + Spenser, Edmund, 66, 164, 165 + + Spenser's Cave of Despair, picture by Severn, 55 + + Spenser's "Faery Queen," 20, 149 + + "Spenser, Imitation of," by Keats, 64 + + Stephens, Henry, 19, 78, 132, 147 + + "Stories after Nature," by Wells, 23 + + Swinburne, Mr. (on "Hyperion"), 186; 189, 199 + + +T. + + Tasso, 165 + + Taylor and Hessey, 23, 72, 76, 78, 83, 93, 96, 109, 120, 128, + 140, 146, 149, 152 + + Terry, 100 + + Thomson, James, 70 + + Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," 179 + + Tooke's "Pantheon," 15 + + Torlonia, 61 + + +V. + + Virgil, 165 + + Virgil's AEneid, 15, 20 + + Voltaire, 158 + + +W. + + Webb, Cornelius, 92 + + Webster, 189 + + Wells, Charles, 23 + + Wilson, John, 91 + + "Woman, when I behold thee" &c., poem by Keats, quoted, 143 + + Wood, Warrington, 119 + + Woodhouse, Richard, 94, 149, 153, 188 + + Wordsworth, 21, 78; ("The Excursion,") 152; 153, 156, 164, 179 + + +Z. + + Z (probably Lockhart), 91, 92, 100. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY. + +BY + +JOHN P. ANDERSON + +(British Museum). + + + I. Works. + II. Poetical Works. + III. Single Works. + IV. Letters, etc. + V. Miscellaneous. + VI. Appendix-- + Biography, Criticism, etc. + Magazine Articles. + VII. Chronological List of Works. + + + +I. WORKS. + +The Poetical Works and other Writings of John Keats, now first brought +together, including poems and numerous letters not before published. +Edited, with notes and appendices, by H. B. Forman. 4 vols. London, +1883, 8vo. + +The Letters of John Keats. Edited by J. G. Speed. (The Poems of +J. Keats, with the annotations of Lord Houghton, and a memoir by +J. G. Speed.) 3 vols. New York, 1883, 8vo. + + A number of letters now included in this work were first + published in the New York _World_ of June 25-6, 1877, and + afterwards reprinted in the _Academy_, vol. xii., 1877, + pp. 38-40, 65-67. + + +II. POETICAL WORKS. + +The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. In one volume. +Paris, 1829, 8vo. + + John Keats (including Memoir), i.-vii. and 1-75. + +Standard Library. The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1840, 8vo. + + The first _collected_ edition of Keats's Works. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1840, 8vo. + + With an engraved frontispiece from the portrait in chalk + by Hilton. This book, although dated 1840, was not issued + until the following year. The frontispiece is dated + correctly. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1841, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. A new edition. London, 1851, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With Memoir by R. M. Milnes [Lord Houghton]. +Illustrated by a portrait and 120 designs by George Scharf, Jun. London, +1854, 8vo. + + A small number of copies were struck off upon large + paper. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With a life [signed J. R. L.--_i.e._, James +Russell Lowell]. Boston [U.S.], 1854, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With a Memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes +[Lord Houghton]. A new edition. London, 1861, 8vo. + + Upon the reverse of the half-title to the "Memoir" is a + wood-cut profile of Keats. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W. M. +Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1872], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with an introductory memoir and +illustrations, by William B. Scott. London [1873], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With a memoir by James Russell Lowell. +Portrait and 10 illustrations. New York, 1873, 8vo. + + The Memoir was afterwards reprinted in "Among my Books," + second series, 1876, pp. 303-327. + +The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted from the early editions, with +memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (_Chandos Classics._) London [1874], +8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Chronologically arranged and edited, with a +memoir, by Lord Houghton. (_Aldine Edition._) London, 1876, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of Coleridge and Keats, with a memoir of each. +(_Riverside Edition._) 4 vols. in 2. New York, 1878, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. London [1878], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with an introductory memoir, by +W. B. Scott. (_Excelsior Series._) London [1880], 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W. M. +Rossetti. [Portrait, fac-simile, and six illustrations by Thomas +Seccombe.] (_Moxon's Popular Poets._) London [1880], 8vo. + + The same as the edition of 1872. The Memoir was reprinted + in "Lives of Famous Poets." + +The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted from the original editions, with +notes, by F. T. Palgrave. (_Golden Treasury Series._) London, 1884, 8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited by W. T. Arnold. London, 1884, 8vo. + + There was a large paper edition, consisting of fifty + copies, numbered and signed. + +The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by H. B. Forman. London, 1884, +8vo. + +The Poetical Works of J. K. With an introductory sketch by John Hogben. +(_Canterbury Poets._) London, 1885, 8vo. + + +III. SINGLE WORKS. + +Poems, by John Keats. London, 1817, 16mo. + + The Museum copy contains a MS. note by F. Locker. + +Endymion; a Poetic Romance. By J. K. London, 1818, 8vo. + +Endymion. Illustrated by F. Joubert. From paintings by E. J. Poynter. +London, 1873, fol. + +The Eve of St. Agnes. By J. K. With 20 illustrations by E. H. Wehnert. +London, 1856, 8vo. + +The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated by E. H. Wehnert. London [1875], 8vo. + +The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated by nineteen etchings by Charles O. +Murray. London, 1830, fol. + +The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. Illustrated. Boston [U.S.], 1876, +24mo. + +Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society. London, 1856-7, 8vo. + + Vol. iii. contains "Another version of Keats's _Hyperion, + a Vision_," edited, with an introduction, by R. M. Milnes + (Lord Houghton). + +Keatsii Hyperionis. Libri i-ii. Latine reddidit Carolus Merivale. +Cambridge, 1862, 8vo. + +Keats's Hyperion. Book I. With notes [life and introduction]. London +[1877], 8vo. + +Keats's Hyperion. Book I. With introduction, elucidatory notes, and an +appendix of exercises. London [1878], 8vo. + +Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. By J. K. London, +1820, 12mo. + +Lamia. With illustrative designs by W. H. Low. Philadelphia, 1885, fol. + +Ode to a Nightingale. By J. K. Edited, with an introduction, by Thomas +J. Wise. London, 1884, 8vo. + + Printed for private distribution, and issued in parchment + wrappers. Four copies on vellum and twenty-five on paper + only printed. + + +IV. LETTERS, ETC. + +Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of J. K. Edited by R. M. Milnes. +2 vols. London, 1848, 16mo. + +Life and Letters of John Keats. A new and completely revised edition. +Edited by Lord Houghton. London, 1867, 8vo. + +Letters of J. K. to Fanny Brawne, written in the years 1819 and 1820, +and now given from the original manuscripts, with introduction and +notes, by Harry Buxton Forman. London, 1878, 8vo. + + In addition to the ordinary issue, the following special + copies were "printed for private distribution"--In 8vo on + Whatman's hand-made paper 60 copies, on vellum 2 copies; + in post 8vo there were 6 copies with title-page set up in + different style, and 2 copies of coloured bank-note + paper, one blue and the other yellow. + + +V. MISCELLANEOUS. + +CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAGAZINES. + +_Annals of the Fine Arts. A quarterly magazine, edited by James Elmes_-- + + "Ode to the Nightingale," vol. iv., 1820, pp. 354-356. + The first appearance of this poem, which was afterwards + included in the "Lamia" volume, 1820, pp. 107-112. + + "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Appeared first in the "Annals of + the Fine Arts" vol. iv., 1820, pp. 638, 639, afterwards + included in the Lamia volume. + +_The Athenaeum_-- + + First appearance of the Sonnet "On hearing the Bag-pipe + and seeing 'The Stranger' played at Inverary," June 7, + 1873, p. 725. + +_The Champion_-- + + "On Edmund Kean as a Shakesperian actor, and on Kean in + 'Richard, Duke of York.'" Appeared on the 21st and 28th + Dec. 1817. + +_The Dial_-- + + "Notes on Milton's Paradise Lost." In vol. iii., 1843, + pp, 500-504; reprinted by Lord Houghton. + +_The Examiner_-- + + The "Sonnet to Solitude," Keats's first published poem, + according to Charles Cowden Clarke, appeared on the 5th + of May 1816, signed J. K., p. 282. + + The first appearance of the sonnet "To Kosciusko," Feb. + 16, 1817, p. 107. + + The first appearance of the sonnet, "After dark vapors + have oppress'd our plains," etc., Feb. 23, 1817, p. 124. + + Two sonnets "To Haydon, with a Sonnet written on seeing + the Elgin Marbles," and "On seeing the Elgin Marbles" + appear for the first time, March 9, 1817, p. 155. In 1818 + they were reprinted in the _Annals of the Fine Arts_, No. + 8. + + The first appearance of the sonnet, "Written on a blank + space at the end of Chaucer's tale of 'The Floure and the + Lefe,'" March 16, 1817, p. 173. + + Sonnet "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" appeared on the + 21st Sept. 1817, p. 599. + +_The Gem, a Literary Annual, Edited by Thomas Hood_-- + + The sonnet "On a picture of Leander" appeared for the + first time in 1829, p. 108. + +_Hood's Comic Annual_-- + + "Sonnet to a Cat," 1830, p. 14. + +_Hood's Magazine_-- + + In vol. ii., 1844, p. 240, the sonnet "Life's sea hath + been five times at its slow ebb" appears for the first + time; included by Lord Houghton in the Literary Remains. + + In vol. ii., 1844, p. 562, the poem "Old Meg," written + during a tour in Scotland, appears for the first time. + +_The Indicator. Edited by Leigh Hunt_-- + + In vol. i., 1820, p. 120. there are thirty-four lines, + headed _Vox et praeterea nihil_, supposed by Mr. Forman to + be a cancelled passage of Endymion, and reprinted by him + in his edition of Keats, 1883, vol. i, p. 221. + + In vol. i. 1820, pp. 246-248, the poem "La Belle Dame Sans + Merci" first appeared, and signed "Caviare." + + First appearance of the sonnet, "A Dream after reading + Dante's Episode of 'Paolo and Francesca,'" signed + "Caviare," vol. i. 1820, p. 304. + +_Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket Book_-- + + First appearance of the sonnets, "To Ailsa Rock" and "The + Human Season" in 1819. + + +VI. APPENDIX. + +BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC. + +Armstrong, Edmund J.--Essays and Sketches of Edmund J. Armstrong. +London, 1877, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 176-179. + +Atlantic Monthly.--Boston, 1858, 8vo. + + "The Poet Keats." Seven stanzas, vol. ii., pp. 531-532. + +Belfast, Earl of.--Poets and Poetry of the xixth century. A course of +lectures. London, 1852, 8vo. + + Moore, Keats, Scott, pp. 59-131. + +Best Bits.--Best Bits. London, 1884, 8vo. + + "The Last Moments of Keats," vol. ii., p. 119. + +Biographical Magazine.--Lives of the Illustrious (The Biographical +Magazine). London, 1853, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 260-271. + +Caine, T. Hall. Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London, +1882, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 167-183. + +Caine, T. Hall.--Cobwebs of Criticism, etc. London, 1883, 8vo. Keats, +pp. 158-190. + +Carr, J. Comyns.--Essays on Art. London, 1879, 8vo. + + The artistic spirit in Modern English Poetry, pp. 3-34. + +Clarke, Charles Cowden.--The Riches of Chaucer, in which his impurities +have been expunged, etc. 2 vols. London, 1835, 12mo. + + John Keats, vol. i., pp. 52, 53. + +---- Recollections of Writers. London, 1878, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 120-157. + +Colvin, Sidney.--Keats (_English Men of Letters_). London, 1887, 8vo. + +Cotterill, H. B.--An Introduction to the Study of Poetry. London, +1882, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 242-268. + +Courthope, William J.--The Liberal Movement in English Literature. +London, 1885, 8vo. + + Poetry, Music, and Painting. Coleridge and Keats, pp. + 159-194. + +Cunningham, Allan.--Biographical and Critical History of the British +Literature of the last fifty years. [Reprinted from the "Athenaeum."] +Paris, 1834, 12mo. + + Keats, pp. 102-104. + +Dennis, John.--Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 365-373. + +De Quincey, Thomas.--Essays on the Poets, and other English Writers. +Boston, 1853, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 75-97. + +---- De Quincey's Works. 16 vols. Edinburgh, 1862-71, 12mo. + + John Keats, vol. v, pp. 269-288. + +Devey, J.--A comparative estimate of Modern English Poetry. London, +1873, 8vo. + + Alexandrine Poets. Keats, pp. 263-274. + +Dilke, Charles Wentworth.--The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the +writings of the late Charles W. Dilke. 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. i., pp. 2-14. + +Encyclopaedia Britannica.--Encyclopaedia Britannica. Eighth edition. +Edinburgh, 1857, 4to. + + John Keats, vol. xiii., pp. 55-57. + +---- Ninth edition. Edinburgh, 1882, 4to. + + John Keats, by Algernon C. Swinburne, vol. xiv., + pp. 22-24. + +English Writers.--Essays on English Writers. By the author of "The +Gentle Life." London, 1869, 8vo. + + Shelley, Keats, etc., pp. 338-349. + +Gilfillan, George.--A Gallery of Literary Portraits. Edinburgh, +1845, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 372-385. + +Gossip.--The Gossip. London, 1821, 8vo. + + Three Stanzas, signed G. V. D., May 19, 1821, p. 96, "On + Reading Lamia and other poems, by John Keats." + +Griswold, Rufus W.--The Poets and Poetry of England in the Nineteenth +Century. New York, 1875, 8vo. + + John Keats, with portrait, pp. 301-311. + +Haydon, Benjamin Robert,--Life of B. R. Haydon. Edited and compiled by +Tom Taylor. 3 vols. London, 1853, 8vo. + + Numerous references to Keats. + +---- Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a memoir by his son, F. W. +Haydon. 2 vols. London, 1876, 8vo. + + Contains ten letters and two extracts from letters to + Haydon, and ten letters from Haydon to Keats, vol. ii., + pp. 1-17. + +Hinde, F.--Essays and Poems. Liverpool, 1864, 8vo. + + The life and works of the poet Keats: a paper read before + the Liverpool Philomathic Society, April 15, 1862, + pp. 57-95. + +Hoffmann, Frederick A.--Poetry, its origin, nature, and history, etc. +London, 1884, 8vo. + + Keats, vol. i., pp. 483-491. + +Howitt, William.--Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets. +Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 292-300. + +---- The Northern Heights of London, etc. London, 1869, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 95-103. + +Hunt, Leigh.--Imagination and Fancy; or, selections from the English +Poets. London, 1844, 12mo. + + Keats, born 1796, died 1821, pp. 312-345. + +---- Foliage, or Poems original and translated. London, 1818, 8vo. + + Contains four sonnets; "To John Keats," "On receiving a + Crown of Ivy from the same," "On the same," "To the + Grasshopper and the Cricket." + +---- Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries; with recollections of +the author's life, and of his visit to Italy. London, 1826, 4to. + + John Keats, pp. 246-268. + +---- The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt; with reminiscences of friends and +contemporaries. In three volumes. London, 1850, 8vo. + + The references to John Keats, vol. ii., pp. 201-216, etc. + are substantially reproduced from the preceding work. + +Hutton, Laurence.--Literary Landmarks of London. London, [1885], 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 177-182. + +Jeffrey, Francis.--Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. London, +1853, 8vo. + + John Keats. Review of Endymion and Lamia, pp. 526-534. + +Lester, John W.--Criticisms. Third edition, London, 1853, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 343-349. + +Lowell, James Russell.--Among my Books. Second series. London, +1876, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 303-327. + +---- The Poetical Works of J. R. L. New revised edition. Boston [U.S.], +1882, 8vo. + + Sonnet "To the Spirit of Keats," p. 20. + +Maginn, William.--Miscellanies: prose and verse. Edited by R. W. +Montagu. 2 vols. London, 1885; 8vo. + + Remarks on Shelley's Adonais, vol. ii., pp. 300-311. + +Mario, Jessie White.--Sepoleri Inglesi in Roma. (Estratto dalla _Nuova +Antologia_, 15 Maggio, 1879.) Roma, 1879, 8vo. + + On Keats and Shelley. + +Mason, Edward T.--Personal Traits of British Authors. New York, 1885, +8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 195-207. + +Masson, David.--Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays. London, +1874, 8vo. + + "The Life and Poetry of Keats," pp. 143-191. + +Medwin, Thomas.--Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: noted +during a residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the years 1821 and +1822. By T. Medwin. London, 1824, 4to. + + John Keats, pp. 143, 237-240, 255, etc. + +Milnes, Richard Monckton, _Lord Houghton_.--Life, Letters, and Literary +Remains of John Keats. In two volumes. London, 1848, 8vo. + +---- Life and Letters of John Keats. A new and completely revised +edition. Edited by Lord Houghton, London, 1867, 8vo. + +Mitford, Mary Russell.--Recollections of a Literary Life, etc. 3 vols. +London, 1852, 8vo. + + Shelley and Keats, vol. ii., pp. 183-192. + +Moir, D. M.--Sketches of the poetical literature of the past +half-century. London, 1851, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 215-221. + +Noel, Hon. Roden.--Essays on poetry and poets. London, 1886, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 150-171. + +Notes and Queries.--General Index to Notes and Queries. 5 series. +London, 1856-80, 4to. + + Numerous references to John Keats. + +Olio.--The Olio. London [1828]. 8vo. + + "Recollections of Books and their Authors," No. 6, "John + Keats, the Poet," vol. i., pp. 391-394. + +Oliphant, Mrs.--The Literary History of England, etc. 3 vols. London, +1885, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 133-155. + +Owen, Frances Mary.--John Keats. A Study. London, 1880, 8vo. + + Reviewed in the _Academy_, July 5 1884, p. 2. + +Payn, James.--Stories from Boccaccio, and other Poems. London, +1852, 8vo. + + Sonnet to John Keats, p. 97. + +Phillips, Samuel.--Essays from "The Times." Being a selection from the +literary papers which have appeared in that journal. London, 1851, 8vo. + + "The Life of John Keats," pp. 255-269. This article + originally appeared in "The Times" on Sept. 17, 1849. + +---- New Edition. 2 vols. London, 1871, 8vo. + + John Keats, vol. i., pp. 255-269. + +Richardson, David Lester.--Literary Chit-Chat, etc. Calcutta, 1848, 8vo. + + Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, pp. 271-281. + +Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.--Ballads and Sonnets. London, 1881, 8vo. + + Sonnets "To Five English Poets." No. iv., John Keats, + p. 316. + +Rossetti, William Michael.--Lives of Famous Poets. London [1885], 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 349-361. + +Sarrazin, Gabriel.--Poetes Modernes de l'Angleterre. Paris, 1885, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 131-152. + +Scott, William Bell.--Poems, Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc. +Illustrated by seventeen etchings by the author and L. Alma Tadema. +London, 1875, 8vo. + + An etching by the author of Keats' Grave, p. 177; sonnet + "On the Inscription, Keats' Tombstone," p. 179. An Ode + "To the memory of John Keats," pp. 226-230. + +Scribner's Monthly Magazine.--Scribner's Monthly Magazine. New York, +1880, 1887, 8vo. + + The No. for June 1880 contains fourteen lines "To the + Immortal memory of Keats," and the May No. for 1887, p. + 110, "Keats" (ten verses) by Robert Burns Wilson. + +Shelley, Percy Bysshe.--Adonais. An elegy on the death of John Keats, +author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. Pisa, 1821, 4to. + +---- Adonais. An elegy on the death of John Keats, etc. Cambridge, +1829, 8vo. + +---- Adonais. Edited, with notes, by H. Buxton Forman. London, +1880, 8vo. + +Shelley, Lady.--Shelley Memorials; from authentic sources. Edited by +Lady Shelley. London, 1859, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 74, 150-152, 155, 156, 200, 203. + +Stedman, Edmund Clarence.--Victorian Poets. London, 1876, 8vo. + + John Keats, pp. 18, 104, 106, 155, 367, etc. + +Swinburne, Algernon Charles.--Miscellanies. London, 1886, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 210-218. Originally appeared in the + Encyclopaedia Britannica. + +Tuckerman, Henry T.--Characteristics of Literature, illustrated by the +genius of distinguished men. Philadelphia, 1849, 8vo. + + Final Memorials of Lamb and Keats, pp. 256-269. + +---- Thoughts on the Poets. London [1852], 12mo. + + Keats, pp. 212-226. + +Verdicts.--Verdicts. [Verse.] London, 1852, 8vo. + + John Keats, occupies 93 lines, pp. 28-32. + +Ward, Thomas H.--The English Poets, etc. 4 vols. London, 1883, 8vo. + + John Keats, by Matthew Arnold, vol. iv., pp. 427-464. + +Willis, N. P.--Pencillings by the Way. A new edition. London, 1844, 8vo. + + "Keats's Poems," pp. 84-88. + +Wiseman, Cardinal.--On the Perception of Natural Beauty by the Ancients +and the Moderns, etc. London, 1856, 8vo. + + Keats, pp. 13, 14; reviewed by Leigh Hunt in _Fraser's + Magazine_ for December, 1859. + + +MAGAZINE ARTICLES. + +Keats, John + + --Examiner, June 1, 1817, p. 345, July 6, 1817, pp. 428, 429, + July 13, 1817, pp. 443, 444. + + --Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 3, 1818, pp. 519-524. + + --Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 7, 1820, p. 665; + vol. 27, 1830, p. 633. + + --Indicator, by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352. + + --Quarterly Review, vol. 37, 1828, pp. 416-421. + + --Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T. Tuckerman, vol. 8, + 1842, pp. 37-41. + + --Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by T. De Quincey, vol. 13, N.S., + 1846, pp. 249-254; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 8, + pp. 202-209. + + --Democratic Review, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429. + + --United States Magazine, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429; + vol. 26, N.S., 1850, pp. 415-421. + + --Hogg's Weekly Instructor, with portrait, vol. 1, 1848, + pp. 145-148; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 14, + pp. 409-415. + + --Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, vol. 10, N.S., 1848, + pp. 376-380. + + --Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 56-60. + + --Knickerbocker, vol. 55, 1860, pp. 392-397. + + --Temple Bar, vol. 38, 1873, pp. 501-512. + + --Edinburgh Review, July 1876, pp. 38-42. + + --Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40. 1870, pp. 523-525 + and vol. 55, 1877, by E. F. Madden, pp. 357-361, + illustrated. + + --Scribner's Monthly, by R. H. Stoddard, vol. 15, 1877, + pp. 203-213. + + --American Bibliopolist, vol. 7, p. 94, etc., and vol. 8, + p. 94, etc. + + --_La Revue Politique et Litteraire_, by Leo Quesnel, 1877, + pp. 61-65. + + --Argonaut, by Reginald W. Corlass, vol. 2, 1875, pp. 172-178. + + --Canadian Monthly, by Edgar Fawcett, vol. 2, 1879, + pp. 449-454. + + --_Century_, by Edmund C. Stedman, illustrated, vol. 27, 1884, + pp. 599-602. + + ---- _and his Critics._ Dial, vol. 1, 1881, pp. 265, 266. + + ---- _and Joseph Severn._ Dublin University Magazine, by + E. S. R., vol. 96, 1880, pp. 37-39. + + ---- _and Lamb._ Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T. + Tuckerman, vol. 14, 1848, pp. 711-715. + + ---- _and Shelley._ To-Day, June 1883, pp. 188-206, etc. + + ---- _and the Quarterly Review._ Morning Chronicle, Oct. 3 and + 8, 1818 (two letters). Examiner, 11 Oct., 1818, pp. 648, + 649. + + ---- _an Esculapian Poet._ Asclepiad, with portrait on steel, + vol. 1, 1884, pp. 138-155. + + ---- _Art of._ Our Corner, by J. Robertson, vol. 4, 1884, + pp. 40-45, 72-76. + + ---- _Cardinal Wiseman on._ Fraser's Magazine, by Leigh Hunt, + vol. 60, 1859, pp. 759, 760. + + ---- _daintiest of Poets._ Victoria Magazine, vol. 15, 1870, + pp. 55-67. + + ---- _Death of._ London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821, pp. 426, + 427. + + ---- _Verses on death of._ London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821, + p. 526. + + ---- _Did he really care for music._ Manchester Quarterly, by + John Mortimer, vol 2, 1883, pp. 11-17. + + ---- _Endymion._ Quarterly Review, by Gifford, vol. 19, 1818, + pp. 204-208.--London Magazine, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 380-389. + + ---- _Forman's Edition of._ Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 49, + 1884, pp. 330-341.--Times, Aug. 7, 1884. + + ---- _Fragment from._ Gentleman's Magazine, by Grant Allen, + vol. 244, 1879, pp. 676-686. + + ---- _Genius of._ Christian Remembrancer, vol. 6, N.S., 1843, + pp. 251-263. + + ---- _Holman Hunt's "Isabel."_ Fortnightly Review, by + B. Cracroft, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 648-657. + + ---- _Hyperion._ American Whig Review, vol. 14, 1851, + pp. 311-322. + + ---- _Hyperionis, Libri i-ii._ Saturday Review, April 26, 1862, + pp. 477, 478. + + ---- _in Cloudland._ A poem of thirty-one verses. St. James's + Magazine, by R. W. Buchanan, vol. 7, 1863, pp. 470-475. + + ---- _Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems._ + London Magazine, vol. 2, 1820, pp. 315-321.--Indicator, + by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352.--Monthly + Review, vol. 92, N.S., 1820, pp. 305-310.--Eclectic + Review, vol. 14 N.S., 1820, 158-171. + + ---- _Leigh Hunt's Farewell Words to._ Indicator, September 20, + 1820. + + ---- _Letters to Fanny Brawne._ Athenaeum, July 14, p. 50, July + 21, pp. 80, 81, and July 28, 1877, pp. 114, + 115.--Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 57, 1878, + p. 466.--Eclectic Magazine, vol. 27, N.S., 1878, pp. 495-498 + (from the Academy).--Appleton's Journal, by R. H. + Stoddard, vol. 4, N.S., 1878, pp. 379-382. + + ---- _Life and Poems of._ Macmillan's Magazine, by D. Masson, + vol. 3, 1860, pp. 1-16. + + ---- _Marginalia made by Dante G. Rossetti in a copy of Keats' + Poems._ Manchester Quarterly, by George Milner, vol. 2, + 1883, pp. 1-10. + + ---- _Milnes' Life of._ American Review, by C. A. Bristed, vol. + 8, 1848, pp. 603-610.--Littell's Living Age, vol. 19, + 1848, pp. 20-24.--United States Magazine, vol. 23, N.S., + 1848, pp. 375-377.--Athenaeum, Aug. 12, 1848, pp. + 824-827.--Revue des Deux Mondes, by Philarete Chasles, + Tom. 24, Serie 5, 1848, pp. 584-607.--Eclectic Review, + vol. 24, N.S., 1848, pp. 533-552.--Dublin Review, vol. + 25, 1848, pp. 164-179.--British Quarterly Review, vol. 8, + 1848, pp. 328-343.--Prospective Review, vol. 4, 1848, + pp. 539-555.--Democratic Review, vol. 23, N.S., 1848, + pp. 375-377.--Westminster Review, vol. 50, 1849, + pp. 349-371.--Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, + pp. 56-60.--North British Review, vol. 10, 1848, pp. 69-96; + same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 16, + pp. 145-159.--New Monthly Magazine, vol. 84, 1848, + pp. 105-115; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15, + pp. 340-343.--Dublin University Magazine, vol. 33, 1849, + pp. 28-35.--Democratic Review, vol. 26, N.S., 1850, + pp. 415-421. + + ---- _My Copy of._ Tinsley's Magazine, by Richard Dowling, + vol. 25, 1879, pp. 427-436. + + ---- _New Editions of._ Dial, by W. M. Payne, vol. 4, 1884, + pp. 255, 256. + + ---- _Le Paganisme poetique en Angleterre._ Revue des Deux + Mondes, by Louis Etienne, Tom. 69, periode 2, pp. + 291-317.--Eclectic Review, vol. 8, 1817, pp. 267-275. + + ---- _Poems of._ Examiner, by Leigh Hunt, June 1, July 6 and + 13, 1817.--Edinburgh Review, by F. Jeffrey, vol. 34, + 1820, pp. 203-213.--Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 8, + N.S., 1841, pp. 650, 651.--Dublin University Magazine, + vol. 21, 1843, pp. 690-703.--Edinburgh Review, vol. 90, + 1849, pp. 424-430.--Massachusetts Quarterly Review, vol. + 2, 1849, pp. 414-428.--Dublin University Magazine, vol. + 83, 1874, pp. 699-706.--North American Review, vol. 124, + 1877, pp. 500-501. + + ---- _Poetry, Music, and Painting: Coleridge and Keats._ + National Review, by W. J. Courthope, vol. 5, 1885, + pp. 504-518. + + ---- _Recollections of._ Gentleman's Magazine, by Charles + Cowden Clarke, vol. 12, N.S., 1874, pp. 177-204; same + article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 121, pp. 174-188; + Every Saturday, vol. 16, p. 262, etc., 669, + etc.--Atlantic Monthly, by C. C. Clarke, vol. 7, 1861, + pp. 86-100. + + ---- _School House of, at Enfield._ St. James's Magazine + Holiday Annual, 1875, by Charles Cowden Clarke. + + ---- _Thoughts on._ New Dominion Monthly (portrait), by Robert + S. Weir, 1877, pp. 293-300. + + ---- _Unpublished Notes on Milton._ Athenaeum, Oct. 26, 1872, + pp. 529, 530. + + ---- _Unpublished Notes on Shakespeare._ Athenaeum, Nov. 16, + 1872, p. 634. + + ---- _Vicissitudes of his fame._ Atlantic Monthly, by + J. Severn, vol. 11, 1863, pp. 401-407; same article, + Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 34, N.S., 1869, + pp. 246-249. + + +VII.--CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS. + + Poems 1817 + + Endymion 1818 + + Lamia, etc. 1820 + + Life, letters, and literary remains 1848 + + Letters to Fanny Brawne 1878 + + Letters 1883 + + + * * * * * + +FOOTNOTES: + +[Footnote 1: A small point here may deserve a note. A letter from John +Keats to his brother George, under date of September 21st, 1819, +contains the following words: "Our bodies, every seven years, are +completely fresh-materialed: seven years ago it was not this hand that +clenched itself against Hammond." Another version of the same letter +(the true wording of which is matter of some dispute) substitutes: "Mine +is not the same hand I clenched at Hammond's." Mr. Buxton Forman, who +gives the former phrase as the genuine one, thinks that "this phrase +points to a serious rupture as the cause of his quitting his +apprenticeship to Hammond." My own inclination is to surmise that the +accurate reading may be--"It was not this hand that clenched itself +against Hammond's"; indicating, not any quarrel, but the friendly +habitual clasp of hand against hand. "Seven years ago" would reach back +to September 1812: whereas Keats did not part from Hammond until 1814.] + +[Footnote 2: This is Hunt's own express statement. It has been disputed, +but I am not prepared to reject it.] + +[Footnote 3: Biographers have been reticent on this subject. Keats's +statement however speaks for itself, and a high medical authority, Dr. +Richardson, writing in _The Asclepiad_ for April 1884, and reviewing the +whole subject of the poet's constitutional and other ailments, says that +Keats in Oxford "runs loose, and pays a forfeit for his indiscretion +which ever afterwards physically and morally embarrasses him." He +pronounces that Keats's early death was "expedited, perhaps excited, by +his own imprudence," but was substantially due to hereditary disease. +His mother, as we have already seen, had died of the malady which killed +the poet, consumption. It is not clear to me what Keats meant by saying +that "from his _employment_" his health would be insecure. One might +suppose that he was thinking of the long and haphazard working hours of +a young surgeon or medical man; in which case, this seems to be the +latest instance in which he spoke of himself as still belonging to that +profession.] + +[Footnote 4: Hitherto printed "life"; it seems to me clear that "lips" +is the right word.] + +[Footnote 5: In Medwin's "Life of Shelley," vol. ii. pp. 89 to 92, are +some interesting remarks upon Keats's character and demeanour, written +in a warm and sympathetic tone. Some of them were certainly penned by +Miss Brawne (Mrs. Lindon), and possibly all of them. Mr. Colvin (p. 233 +of his book) has called special attention to these remarks: I forbear +from quoting them. A leading point is to vindicate Keats from the +imputation of "violence of temper."] + +[Footnote 6: This passage is taken from Lord Houghton's "Life, &c., of +Keats," first published in 1848, and by "home" he certainly means +Wentworth Place, Hampstead. Yet in his Aldine Edition of Keats, his +lordship says that the poet "was at that time, very much against Mr. +Brown's desire and advice, living alone in London." This latter +statement may possibly be correct--I question it. The passage, as +written by Lord Houghton, is condensed from the narrative of Brown. The +latter is given verbatim in Mr. Colvin's "Keats," and is, of course, the +more important and interesting of the two. I abstain from quoting it, +solely out of regard to Mr. Colvin's rights of priority.] + +[Footnote 7: Apparently Miss Brawne had remonstrated against the +imputation of "flirting with Brown," and much else to like effect in a +recent letter from Keats.] + +[Footnote 8: I observe this name occurring once elsewhere in relation to +Keats, but am not clear whose house it represents.] + +[Footnote 9: It has been suggested (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as +printed in Mr. Forman's edition of Keats) that the poem here referred to +is "The Eve of St. Mark." Keats had begun it fully a year and a half +before the date of this letter, but, not having continued it, he might +have spoken of "having it in his head."] + +[Footnote 10: This may require a word of explanation. Keats, detained at +Portsmouth by stress of weather, had landed for a day, and seen his +friend Mr. Snook, at Bedhampton. Brown was then in Chichester, only ten +miles off, but of this Keats had not at the time been aware.] + +[Footnote 11: The -- before "you" appears in the letter, as printed in +Mr. Forman's edition of Keats. It might seem that Keats hesitated a +moment whether to write "you" or "Miss Brawne."] + +[Footnote 12: No such letter is known. It has been stated that Keats, +after leaving home, could never summon up resolution enough to write to +Miss Brawne: possibly this statement ought to be limited to the time +after he had reached Italy.] + +[Footnote 13: Lord Houghton says that Keats in Naples "could not bear to +go to the opera, on account of the sentinels who stood constantly on the +stage:" he spoke of "the continual visible tyranny of this government," +and said "I will not leave even my bones in the midst of this +despotism." Sentinels on the stage have, I believe, been common in +various parts of the continent, as a mere matter of government parade, +or of routine for preserving public order. The other points (for which +no authority is cited by Lord Houghton) must, I think, be over-stated. +In November 1820 the short-lived constitution of the kingdom of Naples +was in full operation, and neither tyranny nor despotism was in the +ascendant--rather a certain degree of popular license.] + +[Footnote 14: The reader of Keats's preface will note that this is a +misrepresentation. Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism, +nor did he ask to remain uncriticized in order that he might write more. +What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of him for +hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be aware that +Keats's own sense of failure in "Endymion" was as fierce a hell as he +could be chastised by.] + +[Footnote 15: This phrase stands printed with inverted commas, as a +quotation. It is not, however, a quotation from the letter of J. S.] + +[Footnote 16: "Coolness" (which seems to be the right word) in the +letter to Miss Mitford.] + +[Footnote 17: Severn's view of the matter some years afterwards has +however received record in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson. Under the +date May 6, 1837, we read--"He [Severn] denies that Keats's death was +hastened by the article in the _Quarterly_."] + +[Footnote 18: The passage which begins-- + + "Hard by + Stood serene Cupids watching silently" + +has some affinity with a passage in Shelley's "Adonais." The latter +passage is, however, more directly based upon one in the Idyll of Bion +on Adonis.] + +[Footnote 19: I do not clearly understand from the poem whether Endymion +does or does not know, until the story nears its conclusion, that the +goddess who favours him is Diana. He appears at any rate to _guess_ as +much, either during this present interview or shortly afterwards.] + +[Footnote 20: Keats has been laughed at for ignorance in printing "Visit +my Cytherea"; but it appears on good evidence that what he really wrote +was "Visit thou my Cythera." A false quantity in this same canto, +"Nept[)u]nus," cannot be explained away.] + +[Footnote 21: Declared it in some very odd lines; for instance-- + + "Do gently murder half my soul, and I + Shall feel the other half so utterly!"] + +[Footnote 22: See p. 52 as to Miss Brawne.] + +[Footnote 23: I presume the "three masterpieces" are "The Eve of St. +Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia"; this leaves out of count the short +"Belle Dame sans Merci," and the unfinished "Eve of St. Mark," but +certainly not because Dante Rossetti rated those lower than the three +others.] + +[Footnote 24: There are some various readings in this poem (as here, +"wretched wight"); I adopt the phrases which I prefer.] + + + * * * * * + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: + +Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as +possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, and inconsistent +hyphenation. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation have been +fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below: + +page 110: typo fixed + + In Feburary[February] 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, + undertook to write a sonnet each upon the river Nile. + +page 150: typo fixed + + which could not be made applicable or subservient to the purposes + of poetry. Many will remember the ancedote[ancedote], proper to + Haydon's "immortal dinner" + +page 201: typo fixed + + seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a + palpaple[palpable] fact that this address, according to its place + in + +In Footnote 20, [)u] indicates a u-breve. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Life of John Keats, by William Michael Rossetti + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF JOHN KEATS *** + +***** This file should be named 31682.txt or 31682.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/6/8/31682/ + +Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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