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

-History of the 'heroic' couplet-The closed and free systems-Marlowe-Drayton-William Browne-Chapman and Sandys-Decay of the free system-William Chamberlayne-Milton and Marvell-Waller-Katherine Philips

r-Battle-cry of the new poetry-Its strength and weakness-Challenge and congratulation-Encouragements acknowledged-Analysis of I stood tiptoe-Intended induction to Endymi

accurately struck in the motto fro

icity can fal

oy delight

ndred years been hampered. And the spirit which animates him is essentially the spirit of delight: delight in the beauty and activities of nature, in the vividness of sensation, in the ch

d ever since as the predominant English metre outside of lyric and drama. The only exceptions in the volume are the boyish stanzas in imitation of Spenser,-truly rather of Spenser's eighteenth century imitators; the Address to Hope of February 1815, quite in the conventional eighteenth century style and diction, though its form, the sextain stanza, is ancient; the two copies of verses To some Ladies and On receiving a curious Shell from some Ladies

in youth with

d rom

intance with Oberon and Titania not only through the Midsummer Night's Dream but through Wieland's Oberon, a romance poem which Sotheby's translation

thusiastic, manifest sincerity in all expressions of personal feeling, and contain here and there a passage of fine mature poetry. These, however, are seldom sustained for more than a single quatrain. The great exception of course is the sonnet, almost too well known to quote,-but I will quote it nevertheless,-on Chapman's Homer. That walk in the morning twilight from Clerkenwell to the Borough had enrich

avell'd in the

ly states and

estern islan

in fealty to

de expanse ha

'd Homer rul'd

er breathe it

apman speak out

ke some watche

lanet swims

Cortez when

the Pacific-a

h other with

on a peak

eats's range of reading in our older poetry, had been in a me

s gild the la

m have ever

ted fancy,-I

auties, earth

en I sit me d

hrongs before m

sion, no dis

ion; 'tis a p

r'd sounds tha

ds-the whisp'rin

ters-the great

und,-and thous

of recogniza

music, and n

etic reading in his mind and memory with the effect of the confused but harmonious sounds of evening on the ear,-a frank and illuminating comment by himself on those stray echoes and reminiscences of the older poets which we catch now and again throughout his work. Such echoes and reminiscences are

Nature that e

ghty

nd:-'One great poet is a masterpiece of nature whi

admirable opening, 'Nymph of the downward smile, etc.,' and its rather lame conclusion; to which, as more loosely connected with the group, and touched in some degree with Byronic suggestion, may be added 'Happy is England, sweet her artless daughters.' That excellent critic, the late F.T. Palgrave, had a singular admiration for the set of three which I have placed at the head of this group: to me its chi

on (February 5, 1815), and shown shyly as a first flight to Cowden Clarke immediately afterwards, and the dedicatory sonnet already quoted on the decay of the old pagan beauty, written almost exactly two years later. Intermediate in date between these two come two or three sonnets of May and June 1816 which, whether inspired directly or not by intercourse with Hunt, are certainly influenced by hi

thy vig

illion'd, where th

ld bee from the

London, and from walks between the Hampstead cottage and in their city lodgings:-'Give me a golden pen,' 'Small, busy flames play through the fresh-laid coals,' 'Keen,

its destined to give the world another heart and other pulses. A few of the sonnets stand singly apart from the rest by their subject or occasion. Such is the sonnet in honour o

its vastness,

ks, its caves, its

terious, whic

hat will be, an

a laurel crown from Leigh Hunt,4 seem not to have been written (as that on the Floure and the Lefe certainly was not) until the book was passing, or had passed, the press. The last-named pair he would probably have had the good sense to omit in any case, as he has the sonnet celebrating a like laureation at the hands of a young lady at an earlier date. But why leave out 'After dark vapours' and 'Who loves to peer,' and above all why the admirable sonnet on Leander? The date of this was March 16, 1816, the occasion the gift by a lady of one of James Tassie's coloured paste reproductions of an engraved gem of the subject. 'Tassie's gems' were at this time immensely popular among lovers of Grecia

all sweet ma

ye, and with a

inges of your

t your fair h

tle that ye

ictim of your

o his young sp

der'd 'mid th

ander toiling

he doth purse

k, and smiles a

am! see how

ms and shoulde

ubbles all his

of the verse in this case is modelled pretty closely on Browne's Britannia's Pastorals. Keats, as has been said, was already familiar with the work of this amiable Spenserian allegorist, so thin and tedious in the allegorical part of his work proper, in romantic invention so poorly inspired, so admir

a shepheard (

his pipe) wit

could, began to

pecial students is well known but to others only vaguely, the story of the chief phases which this most characteristic of English measures had gone through until the time when Keats tried to handle it in a spirit more or less revolutionary. Some of the examples I

desse of the

evene and erthe

egne of Pluto

dens, that myn

er, and woost

thy vengeance

on abought

ess?, wel w

een a mayde

l I be no l

oost, yet of

love huntin

alken in the

een a wyf, and

know? comp

lady, sith ye

orm?s that tho

that hath swi

e, that lovet

prey? thee wi

and pees bit

urne awey hi

hot? love, a

isy torment,

r turn?d in

thou wolt not

estinee be

ned?s have o

him that mos

ntence is allowed to run on with little break through several couplets divided from each other by no break of more than a comma. When a full stop comes and ends the sentence, it is hardly ever allowed to break a line by falling at any point except the end. On the other hand it is as often as not used to divide the couplet by falling at the end

cide, and within the limits of a couplet no full break of the sense is allowed. Rhetorical and epigrammatical point and vigour are the special virtues of this system: its weaknesses are monotony of beat and lack of freedom and variety in sentence structure. The other and opposite tendency is to suffer the sentence or period to develop itself freely, almost as in prose, running over as it will from one couplet into another, and coming to a full pause at any point in the line; and at the same time to let any syllable whatever, down to the lightest of prepositions or auxiliaries, serve at ne

o one another. Spenser in Mother Hubbard's Tale and Marlowe in Hero and Leander were among the earliest and best revivers of the measure, and both inclined to the closed coup

n our power t

us is over-r

ript, long ere

ne should lose

pecially d

ngots, like i

man knows; l

d is censured

iberate, the l

that loved not

ut unto her d

o herself thu

t he worships, I

those words, came

she blushed a

nder much mor

and; in touching

ounded, hardly

arlèd by the t

mute, and oft

gns their yielding

rks of living fi

p-drenched in

head, and half

forth (dark nigh

fter the second or third stress. When the narrative begins, the verse moves still mainly in detached couplets (partly because a line of moral reflection is now and again paired with a line of narrat

raction of the closed couplet; and indeed he will often run on through page on page of twinned verses, o

wilt, I wil

irm and swear

thy shame thou

ar sake, I my

s, amaz'd thou s

much appallè

tunes have in

this) to sigh

on, 'tis I, t

read, is but to

d, nor let my

n, is but t' of

nd, nor do th

dful spell, n

period and the loose over-run of couplet into couplet

Virtue might

orld, yet will

fair and love

riod of the

been forsaken

many sundry

aily, and

t her, as it w

ke her natur

tep for futur

ever been, f

st disgrace,

s chief C

we know to have stuck in his memory, and which illustrates the prevailing tendency of the metre in Browne's hands to run in a successio

ly maiden, pu

'ry neck, and

amber, when t

garments to e

e off her lil

or sorrow as s

rms graceth a

as it would

ir, ensnaring

s to wave about

cast it back, t

steal and hang

weetly angry,

anton locks in

th her joints) each

nchain'd but wi

ead a dressin

bare, her kirt

s off (which

ul-fair marks

which enviously

partake with

test rest, while

he down bed swe

, constantly breaking up single lines with a full stop in the middle and riming on syllables too light or too grammatically de

'd, the mules unc

fy river's sh

em. The maids fro

d steep'd them in

nto springs, an

eet; adventuri

soonest and mo

ghly cleans'd, th

e, all in order.

bles wash'd, and

elves, and all wi

te skins; refreshi

dinner, by the

when the sun their

me, having di

gins did at st

reaching head-t

ses of Ovid by the traveller and colonial administrator George Sandys. As a rule Sandys prefers the regul

elves, O Mort

fields smile wit

oughs; plump grapes

erbs, and savory

, milk, hon

thyme, thy pal

arth abounds w

uets without d

flesh their rave

ll; in pastur

erds. But those

cruelty, and

, Armenian tig

light. How h

leeding entrail

sh, by flesh sh

reature's deat

he same broken and jerking movement, are plentifully to be matched from the epistles of Ben Jonson. In later and weaker hands this method of letting the sentence march or jolt upon its way in almost complete independence of the rime developed into a fatal disease and decay of the metre, analogous to the disease which at the same time was overtaking and corrupting dramatic blank verse. A signal instance, to which we shall

ilent sorrow s

ronnida reco

each accent i

swer:-'Wilt, o

ove such inj

wn? When shall

le smile to

ne? They're but

ruitless wishe

ess expense of

ortune only

; but a grea

inst us-Dange

ead'st from hence

mirth, each of

fe? When Fame p

attles join, h

pulses beat,

adorns! Or

bling, when, lodg

posed to ever

valour, and

t lights on the

ear, to myria

beat, and to establish the rime-unit-that is the separate couplet-as the completely dominant element in the measure, the 'heroic' measure as it had come

guage now in

ich the Roman

the Muse con

t meet anothe

rtness hath p

ords fit for t

pression in th

nds of some de

r every reason interesting to read in connexion with the poems expressing Keats's early asp

anguage, that

rst endeavouring

··

ked thoughts t

ck to have the

f their plac

deck't them in

may without s

o this fair A

ther if I we

n some graver

e thee search t

loath my fanc

deep transporte

ing poles, and

see each bl

he thunderous t

what unshor

golden wires,

ctar to her

ough the Spheres

ions of wide a

ow and lofts of

th how green-ey'

iance musterin

ecret things t

Nature in he

ngs and Queens

wise Demodoc

gs at King Al

sses soul and

h his melodi

ains and swee

. The name especially associated in contemporary and subsequent criticism with the attainment of the admired quality of 'smoothness' (another name for clipped and even monotony of rime and rhythm) in this metre is Waller, the famous parliamentary and poetical turncoat who could adulate with equal unction first the Lord Protector and then the restored Charles. By this time, however, every rimer cou

most do with

he living an

merits Fame so

till, though dis

, two other Cr

and her own gr

splendid as t

rd which she do

irth Fortune as

her own fame

pacious theatre

ng World call'

of mighty sor

t this single

tratagems, and

ic soul the

their vain att

vered and sub

se, saw the need for a richer variation yet, and obtained it by the free use both of triple rimes and of Alexandrines: often getting fine effects of sweeping sonority, although by means which the reader cannot but

unter of the

v'n and Earth an

ther Skies, whe

escend, and light

s, and consciou

m the Vengeanc

's devoted

the Skies the feather

to live a

Name of Mothe

from my tend

thee, the Woods

know'st, I loath

Tyrant of our

vant, but a

s Duty on th

ual Gust, and sough

iple Shape, a

, Hell, and ev'r

irst Desire; le

xt the Rivals

ot Fire, or fa

turn it on so

ning Stars ha

be rejected,

d, within whose

mage, and who

entirely, reserving them for playful and colloquial u

tlemen, strange

st of poor d

e not frighted;

s, a little h

we Sprights have

the World, when

lace, to a pitch of polished and glittering elegance, of striking, instantaneous effect both upon ear and mind, which completely dazzled and subjugated not only his contemporaries but three full generations of rimers and readers after them. Everyone knows the tune; it is the same whether applied to purpo

ields of pure

whiten in the

ourse of wanderi

nets through th

'd, beneath the

s that shoot at

ists in gross

pinions in th

tempests on t

lebe distil t

th, o'er human

ays, and all thei

this to the familiarly known lines

ncy's maze he

truth, and mora

ame, but virtu

urious foe, th

ritic, half a

hit, or fear

loss of frien

roud, the wicke

eats of vengean

lt, the tear

ed, the lie so

ash, and dulne

to his castigation o

supperless

ds, the dice, and

pen, then dash'd

ught to thought,

sense, but found

flounder'd on

h embryo, muc

ode, and abd

ipitate, like

ugh cracks and zi

twenty-four, within two years of Pope's death, a formal protest against the reign of the polished and urbane moral essay in verse, and at all times stoutly maintained 'Invention and Imagination' to be the chief qualities of a poet; illustrating his views by what he called odes, to us sadly uninspired, of his own composition. His younger brother Thomas, with his passion for Gothic architecture, his masterly editing of Spenser, and his profound labours on the origin and history of our native English poetry, carried within him, for all his grotesque personality, many of the germs of the spirit that was to animate the coming age. As the century advanced, other signs and portents of what was to come were Chatterton's audaciously brilliant blunder of the Rowley forgeries, with the interest which it excited, the profound impression created by the pseudo-Ossian of Macpherson, and the enthusiastic reception of Percy's Reliques. But current critical taste did not recognize the me

Sun and Summ

thy wings bedr

s that o'er thy

lively blue,

arious blended

nbow's hues or

ing in easter

lur'd from far

'ring throne, lik

pletest minia

rose her balm

ies fill their

the laughing

a sheds her ch

couplet, and took refuge, like Thomson, in the Spenserian stanza or Miltonic blank verse, or confined themselves to lyric or elegiac work like Gray,-even they continued to be hampered by a strict conventional and artificial code of poetic style and diction. The first full and effective note of emancipation, of poetical revolution and expansion, in England was th

order lays. But the heroic couplet on the Queen Anne model still held the field as the reigning and official form of verse; and among the most admired poets of Keats's day, Rogers, Campbell, and Crabbe in the older generation, each in his own manner, still kept sounding the old instrument essentially to the old tune, with Byron in the younger following, in The Corsair and Lara, at a pace more rapid and helter-skelter but with a beat even more monotonous and

mself said on another occasion, something in common between them. At the same time it should be remembered that some of Keats's most Huntian-seeming rimes and phrases contain really an echo of the older masters.7 That William Browne was his earliest model in the handling of the

iend! fain wou

horizon of

echo back eac

an seas, clear

skimming gondo

un his farewell

ssible; far d

nly from soft

aculties so l

t in doubt w

see Phoebus

rora in the r

aiad in a ri

raph in a mo

ss what with t

ry feet swept

t of some qu

lf and fay ha

cessions took t

urved moon's

ow each passi

e, with me she

city, nor wou

ctions her de

fine-ey'd maid

t must be wh

ot, sequester'd

st have seen

erst the Druid

e glory of one

eav'd laburnum's

the stream their

'd the cassia

rooping buds,

ays of their first creation, of the charm and power of nature. The piece ends with a queer Ovidian fancy about his friend, to the effect that he, Mathew, had once been a 'flowret blooming wild' beside the springs o

iptions are quite cheap and external, the figures of knights and ladies quite conventional, the whole thing a matter of plumes and palfreys and lances, shallow graces of costume and sentiment, much more recalling Stothard's sugared illustrations to Spenser than the spirit of Spenser himself, whose patronage Keats timorously invokes. He at the same time entreats Hunt t

s along the

s and c

hose elements in Keats which were naturally akin to him,

y o'er the

their blo

d

om the high-roof'

el a shining qui

justly conscious of the working of the poetic impulse in him, but not less justly dissatisfied with the present fruits of such impulse, and wondering whether any worth gathering will ever come to ripeness. He tells us of hours when all in vain he gazes at the play of sheet lightning or pries among th

on an evenin

to the soothin

t see but the

onds trembling th

oon, when in

uds she does h

aces higher u

nun in holy

ore would start

s, and myste

ver see them,

eds must with am

er times by men and women of all sorts and conditions-warrior, statesman, and philosopher, village May-queen and nursing mother (the best and most of the verses are those which picture the May-queen taking his book from her bosom to read to a thrilled circle on the village green). He might be happier, he admits, could he

s of water which a swan vainly tries to collect in the hollows of his plumage. He would have written sooner, he tells his correspondent, but had

te, had ta'en s

elegantly cha

ertas,-who has

plets, and Ap

lrous prancing

dies made for

he would not show Clarke his verses but that he takes courage from their old friendship and from his sense of owing to it all he knows of poetry. Recurring to the pleasantness of his present surroundings, he says that they have inspired h

es out of ten with some kind of pause as well as emphasis on the rime-word. He deals freely in double endings, and occasionally, but not often (oftenest in the epistle to George) breaks the run of a line with a full

th himself on his own hopes and ambitions. Possessed by the thrilling sense that everything in earth and air is full, as it were, of poetry in solution, he has as yet no clearness as to the forms and modes in which these suspended elements will crystallize for him. In Sleep and Poetry he tries to get into shape his conceptions of the end and aim of poetical endeavour, conjures up the difficulties of his task, counts over the new achievement and growing promise of the time in which he lives, and gives thanks for the encouragement by which he has been personally sustained. In 'I stood tip-toe' he runs over the stock of

d until the end of December 1816. Sleep and Poetry cannot well have been written later, seeing that the book was published in the first days of the following March, and must therefore have gone to press early in the new year. What seems likeliest is that Sleep and Poetry was written without break during the first freshness

poem was the result of just such another night. An opening invocation sets the blessings of sleep above a number of other delightful things which it gives him joy to think of, and recounts the activities of Sleep personified,-'Silent entangler of a beauty's tresses,' etc.,-in lines charming and

d to what shal

and nought els

reof is awful,

all worldline

s like fearful

blings earth's

s like a gen

rets of some w

about us in

ok around wit

shapes of light

oatings from a fa

rel wreath, on

n our name when

gives a glory

rt up-springs, r

l reach the Fram

y in ardent

he overwhelming favour of her acceptance he will be admitted to 'the fair visions of all places' and will learn to reveal in verse the hidden beauty and meanings of thin

an answering inward voice of gay courage and hope replies. Keats could only think in images, and almost in

sider! life

w-drop on it

summit; a poor

hastens to the

nci. Why so

se's hope whil

of an ever-c

ifting of a m

bling in cle

ol-boy, without

pringy branc

nymphasque sorores-certainly with visions from Poussin's Bacchanals in his mind's eye): then, the ascent to loftier regions where the imagination has to grapple with the deeper mysteries of life and experiences of the soul. Here again he can only shadow forth his ideas by evoking shapes and actions of visible beings to stand for and represent them symbolically. He sees a charioteer guiding his horses among the clouds, looking out the while 'with glorious fear,' then swooping do

in a thousand

onw

as gone before, of the events and tragedies of the world, 'the a

wreath

sleek hair int

g themselves on the young aspirant's mind in spite of his r

soul into nothingness. But he clings to the memory of that chariot and its journey; and thereupon turns to consider the history of English poetry and the dearth of imagination from which it had suffered for so many years. Here comes the famous outbr

so smal

trength of manho

on cannot

t of old? prep

the light, and

s? Has she not

space of ethe

uds unfolding?

eye-brow, to the

ows? Here her

isle; and who

oir that lift

to where it

elf of convo

et, and like t

around a d

ays the Muses

; nor had a

ut and sooth t

be forgotten?

foppery an

llo blush for

t wise who coul

with a puling

about upon a

t Pegasus. Ah

eaven blew, th

waves-ye felt

ernal bosom,

hts collected

recious: beau

ot awake? But

new not of,-we

lined out with

e: so that ye t

oth, inlay, and

certain wands

tallied. Easy

ndicraftsmen

ll-fated, i

the bright Lyr

now it,-no, t

or, decrepid

st flimsy mott

of one

r faults. What is it, for instance, that imagination is asked to do? Fly, or drive? Is it she, or her steeds, that are to paw up against the light? And why paw? Deeds to be done upon clouds by pawing can hardly be other than strange. What sort of a verb is 'I green, thou greenest?' Why should the hair of the muses require 'soothing'?-if it were their tempers it would be more intelligible. And surely 'foppery' belongs to civilization and not to 'barbarism': and a standard-bearer may be decrepit but not a standard, and a standard flimsy but not a motto. And so on without end, if we choose to let the mind assume that attitude and to resent the contemptuous treatment of a very finished artist and craftsman by one as yet obviously raw and imperfec

ing the grand sea of song' (Keats is here remembering the huge club which Ulysses and his companions, in the Homeric story, find in the cave of Polyphemus, and confusing it with the rocks which the blinded giant later tears up and hurls after them into the sea).10 The obvious supposition is that Keats is here referring to Byron's Eastern tales, with their clamour and heat and violence of melodramatic action and passion. Leigh Hunt, indeed, who ought to have known, asserts in his review of the volume that they are aimed against 'the morbidity wh

will believe in and seek to enter upon the kingdom of poetry where

ll be accoun

the most heart

s of the task comes over him, and he falls back for support on thoughts of recent friendship and encouragement. A score of lines follow, recalling happy talks at Hunt's over books and prints: the memory of these calls up by association a string of the delights ('luxuries' as in Huntian phrase he calls them) of nature: t

e of where I

f: but more tha

hought to nouri

st; so that th

even from a s

refresh'd, and

to begin t

and howsoever

as a father

that in it Keats again follows the practice which he had attempted in Calidore and its Induction but gave up in Sleep and Poetry, namely that

our round of

ent ma

the right spring-board-from which to start on its flight through a whole succession of other and kindred images of natural beauty. Some of the series of evocations that follow are already almost in the happiest vein of Keats's lighter nature-poetry, especially the four lines about the sweet peas on tip-toe for a flight, and the long passage recalling his boyish delights by the Edmonton brookside and telling (in lines which Tennyson has remembered in his idyll of Enid) how the minnows would scatt

grandeur of

ving of the m

ale is beaut

afety of a ha

t inspired the poets of old with the fables of Cupid and Psyche and of Pan and Syrinx, of Narcissus and Echo, and most beautiful of all, that of Cynthia and Endymion,-a

oet, sure

tmus' top, what

from the myrt

aintness solemn,

an's temple; w

nt to her own

face was clear

od smiling o'e

t at her so

h beauty shou

th some golden

ek Cynthia

unts, in a strain of purely human tenderness which owes something to his hospital experience and which he w

were ether

gh half-closed

; it cool'd thei

m into slumbers

lear eyed, nor bu

gers, nor with t

p, they met the

iends, nigh fool

ms and breasts, a

lacid forehead

maidens at e

d back, and mo

ghtness in eac

uestion, 'Was there a poet born?' which he int

ith William Browne's 'roundly form' in his mind, Keats invents, infelicitously enough, an adjective 'boundly' for 'bounden.' In the matter of metre, he is now fairly well at home in the free Elizabethan use of the couplet, letting his periods develop themselves unhampered, suffering his full pauses to fall at any point in the line where the sense calls for them, the rime echo to come full and emphatic or faint and light as may be, and the pause following the rime-word to be shorter or longer or almost non-existent on occasion. If his ear was for the moment attuned to the harmonies of any special master among the Elizabethans, it was by th

Keats was by this time a diligent and critical admirer of Wordsworth we know: both of the earlier poems and of the Excursion, which had appeared when his passion for poetry was already at its height in the last yea

me, the lonely h

ss through half

ulled his in

fit of wear

eath was silent

n, far sweeter

ill could make, h

blazing char

th, who touched

llumined groves

unter, liftin

rescent moon, wi

lovely wandere

ht, to share hi

aming Goddess w

and through th

anied with t

iplied from

orm of chase; a

y along the c

are blowi

nt's word for the fact, seeing that he was constantly in Keats's company at the time. Other critics have gone farther and supposed it was from Wordsworth that Keats first learned truly to understand Greek mythology. I do not at all think so. He would never have pored so passionately over the stories in the classical dictionaries as a schoolboy, nor mused on them so intently in the field walks of his appr

ay by Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey, a poem which we know from other evidence to have been certainly much in Keats's mind a year and a half later. Wordsworth in Tintern Abbey defines three stages of hi

, a feeling

need of a

upplied, nor

ed from

zed passion doubly enriched by the ever-present haun

e su

far more deep

is the light

ocean and th

sky, and in t

d a spirit,

ngs, all objects

through

er the string of joyous images beginning, 'A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air', seems to me irrelevant, as being simply the answer of the poet's soul to certain melancholy promptings of its own. On the other hand th

r bid these j

ass them for

ession of symbolic and enigmatic forms and actions which Keats summons up before our mind's eye, so far from having any

than any other poet has attained; sometimes, alas! quite otherwise, when his passion has subsided, and he must needs to go back upon his experiences and droningly and flatly analyse and explain them. Keats, on the other hand, had a mind constitutionally unapt for abstract thinking. When he conceives or wishes to express general ideas, his only way of doing so is by calling up, from the multitudes of concrete images with which his memory and imagination are haunted, such as strike him as fitted by their colour and significance, their quality of association and suggestion, to stand for and symbolize the abstractions working in his mind; and in this concrete and figurative fashion he will be found, by those who take the pains to follow him, to

ines I

ark: 'tis the

shade did King

Titania was

ft him to sorr

ced blend of the marvellous and the voluptuous, the cynically gay and the heavily moral and pathetic, it had a considerable vogue in Sotheby's translation (published 1798) and played a part in the English romantic movement of the time. There are

chless language,

tongue, how vo

c. vi,

syllable, o

art her heart

f St Agne

according t

relude,

above,

larly Son

tate la sem

bassi most

Vita Nuova through Leigh Hunt: but they were not yet acquainted when he wr

ate. Which particular Leander gem of Tassie's Keats had before him it is impossible to tell. The general catalogue of Tassie's reproductions gives a list of over s

of Keats that have often been cha

in a chat t

fall among ou

en some rimes

e come, the ver

ton written in his Epi

vèd friend h

nings (meanin

chosen place

oderate meat, an

hour content

his and then di

erses 'twixt ou

es, which we by

n the Vacati

vely thoughts

ck to have the

amous volume of 1820 Keats prints firs

rth in his f

bares its boso

cluding, I am sorry to say, my own, this phrase has been c