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

usion and impatience-Winter letters-Maxims and reflections-Quarrels among friends-Haydon, Hunt and Shelley-A prolific February-Rants and sonnets-A haunting memory-Six weeks at Teignmouth-Soft weather

land wit

e as Richard III in particular; a second on a hash of the three parts of Shakespeare's Henry VI produced under the title Richard Duke of York, with Kean in the name-part and probably Kean also as compiler; a third on a tragedy of small account by one Dillon, called Retribution, or the Chieftain's Daughter, in which the young Macready played the part of the villain; and a fourth on a pantomime of Don Giovanni. No one, least of all one living in Keats's circle, could well attempt stage criticism at this ti

xpress (there is nothing more difficult) the specific quality and very thrill of the actor's voice and utterance. The whole passage is of special interest, both wh

f the instant. When he says in Othello, 'Put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,' we feel that his throat had commanded where swords were as thick as reeds. From eternal risk, he speaks as though his body were unassailable. Again, his exclamation of 'blood, blood, blood!' is direful and slaughterous to the deepest degree; the very words appear stained and gory. His nature hangs over them, making a prophetic repast. The voice is loosed on them, like the wild dog on the savage relics of an eastern conflict; and we can distinctly hear it 'gorging and growling o'er carcase and limb.' In Richard, 'Be stirring with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk!' comes from him as th

retir'd the S

rth Field, we can easily conceive him really expectant

was in the same weeks delivering in Fetter Lane Keats makes no mention, and it is clear that he made no effort to go and hear them, though the distance of the lecture-hall from his Hampstead lodging was so much less. The reader who would fain conjure up for himself the contrasted personalities and styles in public discourse of these two master critics, the shy and saturnine, yet vigorously straight-hittin

ing up a concerted racket, each in imitation of some musical instrument (Keats himself of the bassoon); but of this pastime he soon got tired and rather ashamed. His social relations began to extend themselves more than he much cared about, or thought consistent with proper industry. We find him dining with Shelley's friend, the genial and admirable stockbroker and man of letters Horace Smith, in company with some fashionable wits, concerning whom he reflects:-'They only served to convince me how superior

ound it hard to forgive.2 Near about the same time, hearing that the next Waverley novel was to be about Rob Roy, he took down his ballad so named, read it aloud, and said 'I do not know what more Mr Scott can have to say on the subject.'3 Keats promptly had full experience of Wordsworth's egotism, but also saw more genial aspects of his character. Quite coolly and briefly he mentions those circumstances of their first meeting which Haydon, in a famous passage of his autobiography, thrusts before us in the insistent colour and illumination of a magic-lantern picture. 'I think,' writes Keats, 'Ritchie is going to Fezan in Africa; thence to proceed i

sitely witty; and his fun in the midst of Wordsworth's solemn intonations of oratory was like the sarcasm and wit of the fool in the intervals of Lear's passion. He made a speech and voted me absent, and made them drink my health. 'Now,' said Lamb, 'you old

f a triangle. And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the poetry of the rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank 'Newton's

introduced him to all as 'a gentleman going to Africa.' Lamb seemed to take no notice; but all of a sudden he roar

usiasm for Wordsworth and begged I would procure him the happiness of an introduction. He told me he was a comptroller of stamps,

r, Milton was a great genius?' Keats looked at me, Wordsworth looked at the comptroller. Lamb who was dozing by the fire turned round and said, 'Pray, sir, did you say Milton was a great genius?' 'No, sir; I asked

books. Ritchie squeezed in a laugh. Wordsworth seemed asking himself, 'Who is this?' Lamb got up, and taking a candle, said, 'Sir, will you al

le dumpling

with his b

e honour of some correspondence with you, Mr Wordsworth.' 'With me, sir?' said Wordsworth, 'not that I remember.' 'Don't you, sir? I am a comptroller

ddle d

and th

rles!' said

e dumpling,

nd gave way to inextinguishable laughter. Monkhouse followed and tried to get Lamb away. We went back but the comptroller was irreconcilable. We soothed and smiled a

b struggling in the painting-room and calling at intervals,

eam of conversation, that in my life I never passed a more delightful time. All our fun was within bounds. Not a word passed that an apostle might not have listened to. It was a night

inwar

he bliss o

arry his Endymion to the great desert

isit to London in his forty-eighth year, let us turn for a moment to

might imagine Ezekiel or Isaiah to have had such eyes.... He had a dignified manner, with a deep roughish but not unpleasing voice, and an exalted mode of speaking. He had a habit of keeping his left hand i

a few years later, gives a

dication of sly humour.... He has a peculiar sweetness in his smile, and great depth and manliness and a rugged harmony in the tones of his voice. His manner of reading h

d Wordsworth's chilling comment when Keats was induced to read to him the hymn to Pan from Endymion. 'A very pretty piece of Paganism,' he remarked and that was all. Severn was present at the gathering in Haydon's studio where this reading took place. The evening's talk, he relates, ran much on the virtues of a vegetable diet, which was for the moment, through the vehement advocacy of Shelley, so much in vogue in Leigh Hunt's circle that even the ruddy and robust Haydon gave himself out for a proselyte like the rest, until friends one day caught him coming privily smacking his lips out of a chop-h

h.' A later allusion implies that he has seen him 'with his beautiful wife and his enchanting sister.' At one meeting Keats must have heard talk or reading that delighted him, for Severn tells how while he was toiling late one night over his miniature painting, Keats burst into his lodging fresh from Wordsworth's company and in a state of eager elation over his experience. It is hard to refrain from c

inent poets, according to his notions of the art. Thus he finds fault with Dryden's description

ith a pur

his hon

ollowed by troops of satyrs, of wild men and animals that he had tamed. You would think, in hearing him speak on this subjec

t met, we might have been inclined to attribute to Wordsworth's eloquence some part of Keats's inspiration. And even as it is such possibility remains open, for it must be remembered that Keats carefully re-copied

h in Keats that the young poet received at this time a friendl

t with the poets of his own time; particularly with Wordsworth, whom he had always devoutly reverenced from a distance, and with Hunt, next to Cowden Clarke his earliest encourager and sympathiser, whom to his disappointment he had lately found more ready to carp than praise when he read him the early books of Endymion. It seems Hunt would have liked the talk of Endymion and Peona to come nearer his own key of simpering triviality in Rimini. 'He says,' writes Keats 'the conversation is unnatural and too high-flown for Brother and Sister-says it should be simple, forgetting do ye mind th

We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hand into its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze it with itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, 'Admire me, I am a violet! Dote upon me, I am a primrose!' Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this: each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his pe

rases often come from him which prove, when you have lived with them, to be more sufficient as well as more suggestive than if they had been chiselled into precision by longer study and a more confident mind. For instance: 'the excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all dis

which Shakespeare possessed so enormously-I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught fro

thi

oms, and you will see how

t by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording o

of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should, like the sun, come natural to hi

looking into new countries with 'O for a muse of Fire to ascend!' If Endymion serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content-I have great reason to be content, for thank God I can read, and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his

oney borrowed by Mrs Hunt-by all accounts the most unabashed of petty spongers-and not repaid, grew into an active quarrel. Another still fiercer quarrel broke out between Haydon and Reynolds, who with all his fine qualities seems to have been quick and touchy, and whom we find later in open breach with his admirable brother-in-law Thomas Hood. Keats was not

in their frames, which creates the ferment of existence-by which a Man is propelled to act, and strive, and buffet with Circumstance. The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a Man's and then be passive-if after that he insensibly draws you towards him then you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Haydon, I was well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I have been ce

ce as the idea he had pre-conceived of it in the light of his friend's enthusiastic ambition and eloquence. Severn repeatedly insists on Keats's remarkably keen natural instinct for and understanding of the arts both of music and painting. Cowde

its thousand materials before it arrives at that trembling delicate and snail-horn perception of beauty. I know not your many havens of intenseness-nor ever can know them: but for this I hope nought you achieve is lost upon me: for when a Schoolboy the abstract idea I had of an heroic pai

p to time, but Hunt had to sit up half the night to finish his. It was worth the pains, and with it for once the small poet outdid the two great. 'I have been writing,' continues Keats, 'at intervals, many songs and sonnets, and I long to be at Teignmouth to read them over to you.' With the help of his manuscripts or of the transcripts made from them by his friends, it is possible to retrace the actual order of many of these fugitive pieces. On the 16th of January wa

organic

ar of the

pparently) his Spenser,5 in order to read again the more rousing and human-passionate pages of Lear. This is one of the last of his sonnets written in the Petrarchan form as followed by Milton and Wordsworth, and from henceforth he follows the Shakespearean form almost exclusively. On t

n the so

above o

ted do

its ai

a moth

young inf

n eagle

ot this

ss?-God

arest m

ghts I scar

e, let

hot lyre

id Phil

my lone

me see t

unala

ses in the favourite four-beat measure, heptasyllable varied with octosyllable, of the later Elizabethans and the youthful Milton, namely those to Robin Hood (suggested by a set of sonnets by Reynolds on Sherwood Forest) and those on the Mermaid Tavern. On th

ears that I m

has glean'd my

iled books, i

garners the ful

upon the night'

symbols of a

t I may never

with the magic

l, fair creatu

never look up

elish in the

ng love!-then

rld I stand al

Fame to nothin

been five years

to and fro let

angled in thy

the ungloving

ver look on

ine eyes' well

ok upon the

k my soul doth

k on any bud

ear, in fanc

for a love-so

e wrong sense:-T

t with sweet

my darling jo

t in the third quatrain should be recalled, in the same high strain of emotion, the vision of a beauty seen but not even accosted three-and-a-half years earlier (not really fiv

pairing hea

of the f

y reveling

wandering fan

by way of protest against one of Reynolds preferring black, at least in the colouring of feminine eyes. About the same time he agreed with Reynolds that they should each write some metrical tales from Boccaccio, and publish them in a joint volume; and began at once for his own part with the first few stanzas of Isabella or the Pot of Basil. A little later in this so prolific month of February we find him rejoicing in the song of the thrush a

ter knowledge

comes native w

ter knowledge

he evenin

d Tom's health having made a momentary rally, Keats was unwilling that he should leave Teignmouth, and determined to join him there. He started in the second week of March, and stayed almost two months. It was an unlucky season for weather,-the soft-buffeting sheets and misty drifts of Devonshire rain renewing themselves wave on wave, in the inexhaustible way all

ment never have thought it worth while to send a recruiting party among them. When I think of Wordsworth's Sonnet, 'Vanguard of Liberty! ye men of Kent!' the degenerated race about me are Pulvis ipecac. simplex-a strong dose. Were I a corsair, I'd make a descent on the south coast of Devon; if I did not run the chance of having Cowardice imputed to me. As for the men, they'd run away into the Methodist meeting-houses, and the women would be glad of it.... Such

vistock arise and check Keats's hand, and recite for his rebuke the burst in praise of Devon from Bri

ative soil: th

ll the world

an so many ch

hed vallies, or

pastures, quarri

hom the diamond

rth can shew

fail in her s

n produce men

enville, Davies

wkins or of

power made the

e proud

pondence with them a year later. One of the daughters married afterwards a Mr Prowse, and published two volumes of very tolerable sentimental verse: some of their contents, as interpreted (says Mr Buxton Forman) by Teignmouth tradition, would indicate that her heart had been

same time, no doubt with his great intended effort, Hyperion, in mind, he was studying and appreciating Milton as he had never done before. He had been steeped since boyhood in the charm of the minor poems, from the Vacation Exercise to Lycidas, and had read but not greatly cared for Paradise Lost, until first Severn, and then more energetically Bailey, had insisted that this was a reproach to him: and he now threw himself upon t

s to cut Sickness-a fellow to whom I have a complete aversion, and who strange to say is harboured and countenanced in several houses where I visit-he is sitting now quite impudent between me and Tom-he insults me at poor Jem

rub the bloom off things of beauty by over-commenting and over-interpreting them, a mood

ting themselves with the finest things, spoil them. Hunt has damned Hampstead and masks and sonnets and Italian tales. Wordsworth has damned the lakes. Milman has damned the old drama-West has damned wholesale. Peaco

ges that had crossed his brain, a kind of experience expressed by him elsewhere in various strains of verse, e.g. the finished poem Fancy and the careless lines beginning 'Welcome Joy, and wel

lours touch'd

goes on; the

un, the milk-wh

shrilly, the

ows above the g

oint, and throws

oin hymn with

victim ox by the horns; people with baskets and offerings coming up from behind the temple; and to the left tall trees with a priest leading in another victim by the horns, and a woman with a jar bringing in libation; a little back, two herdsmen with their goats; a river spanned by a bridge and winding towards a sea-bay partly encircled by mountains which close the view, and on the edge of the bay the tower and roofs of a little town indistinctly seen. Recollection of this Claude leads Keats on quickly to that of another, the famous 'Enchanted Castle,' which he partly mixes up with it, and partly transforms by fantasy into something quite different from w

.

FICE TO

BY VIVARES AND WOO

ns suddenly to reflections, which he would like to banish but cannot

o distinct i

al fierce d

happiness I

ck of it, and

ung spring-leave

le and wild

t most fierce

vage prey,-the

bin, like a P

rm,-Away, ye

of one

omise to finish it 'in good time.' The same letter contains the re-assertion of a purpose declared in a letter of a week before to Mr Taylor in the phrases, 'I find I can have no enjoyment in the world but the continual drinking of knowledge. I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing

ch weighed upon you in the most gloomy and true sentence in your letter. The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this: in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousan

e senses as opposed to those of the mind, but direct intuitions of the imagination as opposed to deliberate processes of

relative stages of history at which they lived, and on the further question whether Wordsworth was a greater or less poet than Milton by

ienced and we can judge no further but by larger experience-for axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.-I know this is not plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say that now I shall relish Hamlet more than I have ever don

.

CHANTE

BY VIVARES AND WOO

thways of the spirit parallel to those followed by Wordsworth in the Lines composed a few miles above T

hin us-we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight. However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man-of convincing one's nerves that the world is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness, and oppression-whereby this Cha

ommunion with nature, and through nature, with all life. But Keats, fully as he has pondered them, cannot be satisfied that they fit his own case until he has called up the history of his similar experiences in the form natural to him, the form, that is, of concrete similitudes or vi

es, and it was settled that they were to be married and sail early in the summer. Some of Keats's letters during the last weeks of his stay at Teignmouth are taken up with his plans for the time immediately following this change. He wavered for a while between two incompatible purposes. One was to go for a summer's walking tour through Scotland with Charles Brown. 'I have many reasons,' he writes to Reynolds, 'for going wonder-ways; to make my winter chair free from spleen; to enlarge my vision; to escape disquisitions on poetry, and Kingston-criticism; to promote digestion and economize shoe-leather.' (How 'economize,' one w

hat in writing Endymion he has rather been working off a youthful ferment of the mind than producing a sound or satisfying work of poetry. And when the time comes to write a preface to the poem, he in a first draft makes confession to the public of his 'non-opinion of himself' in terms both a little too intimate and too fidgeting and uneasy. Reynolds seeing the draft at once recognised that it would not do, and in criticizing it to Keats seems to have told him that it was too much in the manner of Leigh Hunt. In defe

account addressed the charming sonnet, 'Nymph of the downward smile and sidelong glance.' With no other woman or girl friend was he ever on such easy and cordial terms of intimacy. The wedding took place 'a week ago,' writes Keats on June 4, and about the same date, in order that he may not miss seeing as much of the young couple as possible before their departure,

kick to come up to the top-I know very well 'tis all nonsense. In a short time I hope I shall be in a temper to feel sensibly your mention of my book. In vain have I waited till Monday to have any Interest in that, or anything else. I feel no spur at my Br

ne of positive despondency, but it is the

njoyment-and now I am never alone without rejoicing that there is such a thing as death-without placing my ultimate in the glory of dying for a great human purpose. Perhaps if my affairs were in a different state, I should not have written the above-you shall judge: I have two brothers; one is driven, by The 'burden of Society,' to America; the other, with an exquisite love of life, is in a lingering state. My love for my Brothers, from the early loss of our paren

and two Necks in Lad Lane, and on the first day stopped for dinner at Redbourne near St Albans, where Keats's friend of medical student days, Mr Stephens, was in practice. He came to shake hands with the travelling party at the poet's request, and many years afterwards wrote an account of the interview, the chief point of which is a description of Mrs George Keats. 'Rathe

nte: Infern

on, as quoted by W. Knight, L

collections of Wr

it of the Age: Coll

ide is his own Endymion, meaning his task of seeing it

itions of Keats. They are not good, but interesting as containing in embryo ideas which afterwards

s date to Mr Wells of Redleaf, and was not exhibited until 1819, so tha