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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 (“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.<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">“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 <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; “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.<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; “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.<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 “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<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.”<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.”</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.”</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, “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 <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.”<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.”</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.”</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.’”</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.”</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 +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, <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.”</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.”</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.”</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 +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<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 Germany”) was renewed whilst +the poet was composing “Endymion”; 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.”</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?”</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.”</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,”<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 ——”</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Hadst thou lived in days of old,”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and “Calidore, a Fragment,”</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“Young Calidore is paddling o’er the lake.”<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?”<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 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—</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.”<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?”<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,”<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 time”<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,”<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,”<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!”<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;”<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.”<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.”</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.”</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;”<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">Phœbus 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?”<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,”</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.”<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;”<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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”’<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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.’”</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.”</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 “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.</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.”<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.”</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 “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:<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!”</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 “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,<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.”</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.”<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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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 +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:</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.”</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.”</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>.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.’”</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!”</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.”</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!”</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.”</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.”</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.”<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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”<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.”</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.”<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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”<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.”</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>.”</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 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 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.”<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!’”<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:”<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>words which may perhaps be modelled upon the grave +and subdued conclusion of “Paradise Lost.”<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 +Phœbe, 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 Ariadne”), 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.”<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.”</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.”</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.”</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 “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.</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.”<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.”<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 +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,<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!”<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?”<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,”<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.”<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.”<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;”<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.”<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.”<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.”</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 Phœbe,<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 Phœbe). +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,”<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:”<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 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.</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 “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<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.”<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 (“Charmian”) 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 “Hyperion”), <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,”) <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.”</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.”</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.”</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.”</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’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.</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 “life”; 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.”</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.”</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.”</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>.”</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 silently”<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 +Cytherea”; but it appears on good evidence that what he really +wrote was “Visit thou my Cythera.” A false quantity in this same +canto, “Nèptŭnus,” 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!”<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 “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.</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 wight”); 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 dinner”<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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