Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-Fame

testations-Hazlitt and Lamb-Friendship of Hunt and Shelley-Lamb and Hazlitt on Shelley-Haydon and Shelley: a battle royal-Keats and Shelley-A cool relation-John Hamilton Reynolds-His devotion to Keats

pr

years he had fought and laboured to win national recognition for the deserts of Lord Elgin in his great work of salvage-for such under the conditions of the time it was-in bringing away the remains of the Parthenon sculptures from Athens. By dint of sheer justice of conviction and power of fight, and then only when he had been reinforced in the campaign by foreigners of indisputable authority like the archaeologist Visconti and the sculptor Canova, he had succeeded in getting the pre-em

d been finished after his victory in the matter of the Elgin marbles. He was now busy on one larger and more ambitious than all, 'Christ's Entry into Jerusalem,' in which it was his purpose to include among the crowd of lookers-on portraits of many famous men both historical and contemporary. While as usual sunk deep in debt, he was perfectly confident of glory. Vain confidence-for he was in truth a man whom nature had endowed, as if maliciously, with one part of the gifts of genius and not the other. Its energy and voluntary power he possessed completely, and no man has ever lived at a more genuinely exalted pitch of feeling and aspiration. 'Never,' wrote he about this time, 'have I had such irresistible and perpetual urgings of future greatness. I have been like a man with air-balloons under his armpits, and ether in his soul. While I was painting, walking, or thinking, beaming flashes of energy followed

ment the pen. Readers of his journals and correspondence know how vividly and tellingly he can relate an experience or touch off a character. In this gift of striking out a human portrait in words he stood second in his age, if second, to Hazlitt alone, and in our later literature there has been no one to beat him except Carlyle. But passion and pugnacity, vanity and the spirit of self-exaltation, at the same time as they intensify vision, are bound to discolou

es of his day. Wordsworth and Wordsworth's firm ally, the painter-baronet Sir George Beaumont, Hazlitt, Horace Smith, Charles Lamb, Coleridge, Walter Scott, Mary Mitford, were among his friends. Some of them, like Wordsworth, held by him always, while his imperious and importunate egotism wore out others after a while. He was justly proud of his industry and strength of purpose: proud also of his religious faith and piety, and in the habit of thanking his maker effusively in set terms for special acts of favour and protec

.

N ROBER

VING BY THOMS

the Examiner the very able, cogent and pungent letter with which Haydon a few months before had clenched the Elgin marble controversy and practically brought it to an end.

rits chosen by

e of things t

g letter of Haydon to Wilkie, more just and temperate than usual, is good for filling in our picture both of Hunt

tober

rtainly one of the most delightful companions. Full of poetry and art, and amiable humour, we argue always with full hearts on everything but religion and Buonaparte, and we have resolved nev

you will, always pitches on two, and has a spike sticking for ever up and ever ready for you. He 'sets' at a subject with a scent like a pointer. He is a remarkable man, and created a sensation by his independence, his cou

se are trifles compared with the beauty of the poem, the intense painting of the scenery, and the deep burning in of the passion which trembles in every line. Thus far as a critic, an editor, and a poet. As a man, I know none with such an affectionate heart, if never opposed in his opinions. He has defects of course: one of his great defects i

place concealed by grass. The moment Hunt touched it, he shrank back, saying, 'It's muddy!' as if he meaned that it was full of adders.... He is a composition, as we all are, of defects and delightful

, the sublime egoist, could be rapturously sympathetic and genuinely kind to those who took him at his own valuation, and there was much to attract the spirits of eager youth about him as a leader. Keats and he were mutually delighted at first sight: each struck fire f

p, and I cannot forbear s

now on earth a

ud, the catar

llyn's summi

eshness from A

e, the violet

e, the chain fo

steadfastness

d than Raphae

its there are

ehead of the

ll give the wor

lses. Hear y

kings in some

, ye nations,

some years later by Wordsworth are well known. In his reply to Keats he proposed to hand on the above piece to Wordsworth-a proposal which 'puts me,' answers Keats, 'out of breath-you know with what reverence I would send my well-wishes to him.' Haydo

yed Shakespeare,' declares Haydon, 'with John Keats more than with any other human being.' Both he and Keats's other painter friend, Joseph Severn, have testified that Keats had a fine natural sense for the excellencies of painting and sculpture. Both loved to take him to the British Museum and expatiate to him on the glories of the antique; and it would seem that through Haydon he must have had access also to the collection of one at least of the great dilettanti noblemen o

is too wea

on me like un

gin'd pinnac

rdship, tells

Eagle lookin

gentle lu

ot the cloudy

opening of the

eived glories

e heart an und

wonders a mo

recian grandeu

d Time-with a

adow of a

for its immaturity and justly praising the part played by Hay

ive me that

on these mi

at I have not

nt I know not

t I would not

ut upfollow'

teep of Helic

e strength for

all those number

his who touch th

tar'd at what

idiotism-o'e

eheld the He

the East, and gon

etrays his unfortunate gift for fustian in the following

king at the sky, where he must have remembered his former towerings amid the blaze of dazzling sunbeams, in the pure expanse of glittering clouds; now and then passing

s me. We saw through each other, and I hope are friends for ever. I only know that, if I sell my picture, Keats shall never want till another is done, that he may have leisure for his effusions:

might be worthy to accompany these immortal beings in their immortal glories, and then I have seen each smile as it passes over me, and each shake his hand in awful encouragement. My dear Keats, the Friends who surrounded me were sensible to what talent I had,-but no one reflected my enthusiasm with that burning ripeness of soul, my heart yearned for sympathy,-bel

the characters of Shakespeare in 1817, reckoned his 'depth of taste' one of the things most to rejoice at in his age, and was a diligent attendant at his next course on the English poets. But he never frequented, presumably for lack of invitation, those Wednesday and Thursday evening parties at the Lambs of which Talfourd and B. W. Procter have left us such vivid pictures; and when he met some of the same company at the Novello's, the friends of his friend Cowden Clarke, he enjoyed it, as will appear later, less than one would have hoped. He has left no personal impression of Hazlitt, and of Lamb only the slightest and most casual. Fortunately we know them both so well from other sources that we can almost see and hear them: Hazlitt with his unkempt black hair and restless grey eyes, lean, slouching, sple

f money help; which for once, not being then in immediate need, Hunt had honourably declined. Since then they had held only slight communication; but when Hunt included Shelley on the strength of his poem Alastor, among the young poets praised in his Examiner essay (December 1, 1816), a glowing correspondence immediately followed, and a few d

rsuade his old intimates Hazlitt and Lamb to take kindly to his new friend Shelley either as man or poet. Lamb, who seems only to have seen him once, said after his death, 'his voice was the most obnoxious squeak I ever was tormented with'; of his poetry, that it was 'thin sown with profit or delight'; and of his 'theories and nostrums,' that 'they are oracular enough, but I either comprehend 'em not, or there is miching malice and mischief in 'em.' Hazlitt, opening the most studied of his several attacks on Shelley's poetry and doctrine, gives one of his vivid portraits, saying 'he has a fire in his eye, a fever in his blood, a maggot in his brain, a hectic flutter in his speech.... He is sanguine-complexioned, and shrill-voiced.... His bending, flexible form appears to take no strong hold of things, does not grapple with the world about him, but flows from it like a river.' Still less was a good understanding possible between Shelley and Haydon, who

y and a graceful, voluble enthusiasm for the 'luxuries' of poetry, art, and nature with slatternly housekeeping and a spirit of fervent or flippant anti-Christianity, became dista

rth a sort of natural enemy.' 'He was haughty, and had a fierce hatred of rank,' says Haydon in his unqualified way. Where his pride had not been aroused by anticipation, Keats, as we have seen, was eagerly open-hearted to new friendships, and it may well be that the reserve he maintained towards Shelley was assumed at first by way of defence against the possibility of social patronage on the other's part. But he must soon have perceived that from Shelley, a gentleman of gentlemen, such an attitude was the last thing to be apprehended, and the cause of his standing off was much more likely his knowledge that nearly all Shelle

natal sojourn among the radiances and serenities of the sunset clouds? Leigh Hunt's way of putting it is this:-'Keats, notwithstanding his unbounded sympathies with ordinary flesh and blood, and even the transcendental cosmopolitics of Hyperion, was so far inferior in universality to his great acquaintance, that he could not accompany him in his daedal rounds with nature, and his Archimedean endeavours to move the globe with his own hands.' Of the incidents and results of their intercourse at Hampstead we know little more than that Shelley, wisely enough in the light of his own headlong early experiments, tried to dissuade Keats from premature publication; and that Keats on his part declined, 'in order that he might have his own unfettered scope,' a cordial invitation from Shelley to come and stay with him at Great Marlow. Keats, though he must have known that he

s Hospital. The elder Reynolds and his wife were people of literary leanings and literary acquaintance, and seem to have been characters in their way: both Charles Lamb and Leigh Hunt were frequenters of their house in Little Britain, and Mrs Reynolds is reported as holding her own well among the talkers at Lamb's evenings. Their son John was educated at St Paul's school and showed talent and inclinations which drew him precociously into the literary movement of the time. At eighteen he wrote an Eastern tale in verse in the Byronic manner, Safie, of which Byron acknowledged the presentation copy in a kind

ew years later in collaboration with Thomas Hood holds its own well beside that of his associate. Partly owing to the persuasions of the lady to whom he was engaged, Reynolds early gave up the

me in

ling verse for

inty of being understood, and who once at least saved him from a serious mistake. A sonnet written by him within three months of their first meeting proves with what warmth of affection as well as with what generosity of admiration the one young aspirant from the first regarded the other. Keats one day, c

Keats, are like fre

pluck'd from so

art a-breathing

dows, mornings,

ted soul.-Thy

ll make the ag

coronal for t

ge hand of freshne

p thee to thin

t same key whi

anion of the

elds and older

muse be eve

riant spirit

intimacy and affection, seeing them often at the family home in Little Britain, exchanging lively letters with them in absence, and contributing to Jane's album sets of vers

t way one of the wittiest and wisest men I ever knew.' It was through Rice that there presently came to Reynolds that uncongenial business opening which in worldly wisdom he held himself bound to accept. Besides Reynolds, another and more insignificant young versifying member, or satellite, of Hunt's set when Keats first joined it was one Cornelius Webb, remembered now, if remembered at all, by the derisory quotation in Blackwood's Magazine of his rimes on Byron and Ke

-nosed, blue-eyed youth of irrepressible animal spirits. Now or somewhat later he formed an intimacy, never afterwards broken, with Hazlitt. Keats's own regard for Wells was short-lived, being changed a year or so later into fierce indignation when Wells played off a heartless practical joke upon the consumptive Tom in the shape of a batch of pretended love-letters fr

n the northern suburbs of London. The elder Severn seems to have been much of a domestic tyrant, and in all things headstrong and hot-headed, but blessed with an admirable wife whom he appreciated and who contrived to make the household run endurably if not comfortably. Joseph, the son, showing a precocious talent for drawing, was apprenticed to a stipple engraver, but the perpetual task of 'stabbing copper' irked him too sorely: his ambition was to be a painter, and against the angry opposition of his father he contrived to attend the Royal Academy schools, picking up meanwhile for himself what education in letters he could. He had a hereditary talent for music, an untrained love for books and poetry, and doubtless some touch already of that engaging social charm which Ruskin noted in him when they first met five and twenty years later in Rome. He was beginning to ge

tering gold-brown hair and carried with an eager upward and forward thrust from the shoulders; the features powerful, finished, and mobile, with an expression at once bold and sensitive; the forehead sloping and not high, but broad and strong: the brows well arched above hazel-brown, liquid flashing eyes, 'like the eyes of a wild gypsy maid in colour, set in the face of a young god,' Severn calls them. To the same effect Haydon,-'an eye that had an inward look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions': and again Leigh Hunt,-'the eyes mellow and glowing, large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a noble action or a beautiful thought, they would suffuse with

ouds: even the features and gestures of passing tramps, the colour of one woman's hair, the smile on one child's face, the furtive animalism below the deceptive humanity in many of the vagrants, even the hats, clothes, shoes, wherever these conveyed the remotest hint as to the real self of t

dlands. 'The tide! the tide!' he would cry delightedly, and spring on to some stile, or upon the low bough of a wayside tree, and watch the passage of the wind upon the meadow grasses or young corn, not stirring till the flow of air was all a

ymmetry of his frame, partly from his erect attitude and a characteristic backward poise (sometimes a toss) of the head, and

lking rapt in some deep reverie; when the chest fell in, the head bent forward as though

oved so well, particularly the violent passage of wind across a great field of barley. From fields of oats or barley it was almost impossible to allure him; he would stand, leaning forward, listening intently, watching

e and unaffected. His voice was rich and low, and when he joined in discussion, it was usually with an eager but gentle animation, while his occasional bursts of fierce indignation at wrong or meanness bore no undue air of assumption, and failed not to command respect. 'In my knowledge of my fellow beings,' says Cowden Clarke, 'I never kn

Though a quarrel in the streets,' he says, 'is a thing to be hated the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest man shows a grace in his quarrel.' His yearning love for the old polytheism and instinctive affinity with the Greek spirit did not at all blunt his relish of actualit

owledge, he would forget himself, and stray beyond the prescribed bounds into the ring, to the lashing resentment of its comptroller, Mr William Soames, who, after some hints of a practical nature to 'keep back' began laying about him with indiscriminate and unmitigable vivacity, the Peripatetic signifying to his pupil. 'My eyes! Bill Soames giv' me sich a licker!' evidently grateful, and considering himself complimented upon being included in the general dispensation. Keats's enterta

penses to live on for at least a year or two, soon found himself induced to try his luck and his powers with the rest. The backing of his friends was indeed only too ready and enthusiastic. His brothers, including the business member of the family, the sensible and practical George, were as eager that John should become a famous poet as he was himself. So encouraged, he made up his mind to give up the pursuit of surgery for that of literature, and declared his decision, being now of age, firmly to his guardian; who naturally but in vain opposed it to the best of his power. The consequence was a quarrel, which Mr Abbey afterwards related, in a livelier manner than we should have expected from him, in the same document, now unfortunately gone astray, to which I have already referred as containing his character of the

veliness hav

ander out i

incense do w

t to meet th

hs soft-voiced a

ets bringing

nks, and vio

f Flora in h

eft delights as

ever bless

e when under

ger sought, I

ry, seeing I

r offerings, a

and of gratitude for present friendship, the young poet's first venture was sent fort

in the Department of Prints and

lled and found him asleep as related in the text. Within a week was published the volume of Poems, with the principal piece, Sleep and Poetry, partly modelled on the Flour