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

errilies-Flying visit to Belfast-Contrasts and reflections-The Duchess of Dunghill-The Ayrshire coast-In Burns's cottage-Lines on his pilgrimage-Through

still dripping mist; breakfasted at Bolton-le-Sands; stopped to dine at the village of Burton-in-Kendal, and found the inns crowded, to their hosts' distraction, with soldiers summoned by the Lowther interest to keep order at the election. This was the famous contest where Brougham had the effrontery, as his opponents considered it, to go down and challenge for the first time the power of that great family in their own country. The same state of things prevailed farther down the road. Hearing that they could not hope to find a bed at Kendal, they slept in a mean roadsid

is, he was now tempted to speak of it with indifference. At the first turn from the road, before descending to the hamlet of Bowness, we both simultaneously came to a full stop. The lake lay before us. His bright eyes darted on a mountain-peak, beneath which was gently floating on a silver cloud; thence to a very small island, adorned with the foliage of trees, that lay beneath us, and surrounded by water of ? glorious hue, when he exclaimed-'How can I believe in that a-surely it cannot be!' He warmly ass

Keats might call and pay his respects to Wordsworth. But the poet was away at Lowther Castle electioneering (he had been exerting himself vigorously in the Tory and Lowther interest since the spring in prospect of this contest). Complete want of sympathy with the cause of his absence made Keats's disappointment the keener; and finding none of the family at home he could do no more than leave a note of regret. The same afternoon the travellers reached the hamlet of Wythburn and slept there as well as fleas would allow, inten

lently in his being until at the right moment, if the right moment comes, their essence and vital power shall distil themselves for him into a phrase of poetry. Partly, also, the truth is that an intensely active, intuitive genius for nature like his hardly needs the stimulus of nature's beauties for long or at their highest power, but on a minimum of experience can summon up and multiply for itself spirit sunsets, and glories of dream lake and mountain, richer and more varied than the mere receptive lover of scenery can witness and register in memory during a lifetime of travel and pursuit. In this respect Keats's letters written on his northern tour seem m

fag up hill, rather too near dinner-time, which was rendered void by the gratification of seeing those aged stones on a gentle rise in the midst of the Mountains, which at that time darkened all around, except at the fresh opening of the Vale of St. John. We went to bed rather fatigued, but not so much so as to hinder us getting up this morning to mount Skiddaw. It promised all along to be fair, and we had fagged and tugged nearly to the top, when, at half-past six, there came a Mist upon us, and shut out the view. We did not, however, lose anything by it: we were high enough without mist to see the coast of Scotland-the Irish Sea-the hil

, illustrating what I have said about his instinct for distillation rather than description, wi

-ridged mountai

e, and the lines in

al c

nes, upon a

rain begins a

er, and their

lf, is blinded

elighted knowledge of her ways and doings for his faculties to work on through a lifetime of poetry; and now, in his second chamber of Maiden-thought, the appeal of nature, even at its most thrilling, yields in his mind to that of humanity. 'Scenery is fine,' he had already written from Devonshire in the spring, 'but human nature is finer.' So far as concerns shrewd and interest

and every little farmer sent his young ones to take lessons. We went upstairs to witness the skill of these rustic boys and girls-fine, healthy, clean-dressed, and withal perfectly orderly, as well as serious in their endeavours. We noticed some among them quite handsome, but the attention of none was drawn aside to notice us. The ins

same scene as to

r like mad.2 The difference between our country dances and these Scottish figures is about the same as leisurely stirring a cup o' Tea and beating up a batter-pudding. I was extremely gratified to think that, if I had pleasures they knew nothing of, they had also some into which I could not possibly enter.

familiar beauties of the home counties of England, two ideals of landscape had haunted and allured his imagination almost equally, that of the classic south, harmonious and sunned and gay, and that of the shadowed, romantic and adventurous north; and the Scottish b

as he believed, by descent, but by habit and education purely English, felt himself at first an alien in the Scottish Lowlands. On this stage of the walk they were both unpleasurably struck by the laughterless gravity and cold greetings of the people, ('more serious and solidly inanimated than necessary' B

ear Auchencairn. Approaching the Kirkcudbrightshire coast, with its scenery at once wild and soft, its embosomed inlets and rocky tufted headlands, its high craggy moors towering inland, and its backward views over the glimmering Solway to the Cumberland fells or the hazier hills of Man, they began to enjoy themselves to the full. Brown bethought him that this was Guy Man

nd most tastefully ornamented with a profusion of honeysuckle, wild roses, and fox-glove, all in the very blush and fullness of blossom. While finishing breakfast, and both employed in writing, I could not avoid noticing that Keats's letter was not running in regular prose. He told me he was writing to his littl

she was

d upon t

was the bro

use was ou

were swart

nts pods

dew of the wi

a churchy

s were the

ers larc

h her gre

as she d

t had she m

er many

f supper she

against

morn of wo

her gar

ight the da

and she

r fingers o

ed Mats o

hem to the

among th

brave as M

ll as

blanket clo

hat had

r aged bone

full lo

cribbled the Meg Merrilies song we have walked through a beautiful country to Kirkcudbright-at which place I will write you a song about myself.' Then follows the set of gay doggrel stanzas telling of various escapades of himself as a child and since,-'There was a naughty boy;' and then the excuse for them,-'My dear Fanny, I am ashamed of writing you such stuff, nor would I if it were not for being tired after my day's walking, and ready to tumble into bed so fatigued that when I am in bed you might sew my nose to my great toe and trundle me round the town, like a Hoop, wit

with a walk to Belfast, and crossed back again to Portpatrick on the third day. In a letter to his brother Tom written during and immediately after this excursion, Keats has some striking passages of human observation and reflection. The change of spirit between one generation and another is forcibly brought home to us when we think of Johnson, setting forth on his Scottish tour forty-five years earlier with the study of men, manners and social conditions in his mind as the one aim worthy of a serious traveller, (he had spoken scoffing

hall make a full stop at kissing, ... and go on to remind you of the fate of Burns poor, unfortunate fellow! his disposition was Southern! How sad it is when a luxurious imagination is obliged, in self-defence, to deaden its delicacy in vulgarity and in things attainable, that it may not have leisure to go mad after things that are not!... I have not sufficient reasoning faculty to settle the doctrine of thrift, as it is consistent with the dignity of human Society-with the happiness of Cottagers. All I can do is by plump contrasts; were the fingers made

ulfilled a few days later with remarkable shrewdness and insight, of further

pe half-starved from a scarcity of biscuit in its passage from Madagascar to the Cape, with a pipe in her mouth and looking out with a round-eyed, skinny-lidded inanity, with a sort of horizontal idiotic movement of her head: squat and lean she sat, and

t Stevenson took the reverse way in the winter of 1876) to Ayr. Brown grows especially lyrical, and Keats more enthusiastic than usual, over the beaut

magnificent glen finely wooded in Parts-seven Miles long-with a Mountain stream winding down the Midst-full of cottages in the most happy situations-the sides of the Hills covered with sheep-the effect of cattle lowing I never had so finely. At the end we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the Mountains whence in a little

g self is approaching such a shrine as the cottage of Burns-we need not think of his misery-that is all gone-bad luck to it-I shall look upon it all with unmixed pleasure, as I do upon my Stratford-on-Avon day with Bailey.' On the walk from Maybole to Ayr Keats has almost the only phrase which escapes him during the whole tour to indicate a sense of special inspiring power in mountain scenery for a poet:-'The approach to it [Ayr] is extremely fine-quite outwent my expectations-richly meadowed, wooded, heathed, and rivuleted-with a Grand Sea view terminated by the black mountains of the Is

spirit the guts-ache. Many a true word, they say, is spoken in jest-this may be because his gab hindered my sublimity: the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My dear Reynolds-I cannot write about scenery and visitings-Fancy is indeed less than a present palpable reality, but it is greater than remembrance-you would lift your eyes from Homer only to see close before you the real Isle of Tenedos-you would rather read Homer afterwards than remember yourself. One song of

ains (as Brown particularly mentions) the lines beginning 'There is a charm in footing slow across a silent plain,' intended to express the temper in which his pilgrimage through and beyond the Burns country had been made. They are written in the long iambic fourteeners of Chapman's Iliad, a metre not touched by Keats elsewhere, and perhaps chosen to convey a sense of the sustained continuous trudge of his wayfaring. They are very interesting as an attempt to capture and fix in words certain singular, fluctuating intensities of the poet's mood-the pressure of a great and tragic memory absorbing his whole consciousness and deadening all sense of

may tremble then b

rom sandy fern,-the

e grass on shelves

are not heard, though

may set behind bla

nd drench their time in

to sleep wing-wi

onvuls'd across to s

ye is still fast li

h weariness, mid-dese

oul's a child, in ch

rldly heart-alone,

ghland plaid thrown over my shoulders.' From Glasgow they walked by Dumbarton through the Loch Lomond country, round the head of Loch Fyne to Inverary, thence down the side and round the south-west end of Loch Awe and so past the head of Loch Craignish to the coast. At his approach to the lower end of Loch Lomond Keats had thought the scene 'precious good;' but his sense of romance was disturbed by finding it so frequented. 'Steamboats on Loch Lomond and Barouches on its sides take a little from the pleasure of such romantic chaps as Brown and I.' If the scene were to be peopled he would prefer that it were by another kind of denizen. 'The Evening was beautiful nothing could surpass our fortune in the weather-yet was I worldly enough to wish for a fleet of chivalry Barges with Trumpets and Banners just to die away before me into that blue place among the mountains'-and here follows a little sketch of the narrow upper end of the lake from near Tarbet, just to show where the blue place was. At Inverary Keats has a word about the woods which reminds one of Coleridge's Kubla Khan-'t

than their reality-I thought them ethereal above men-I find them perhaps equal-great by comparison is very small. Insult may be inflicted in more ways than by word or action. One who is tender of being insulted does not like to think an insult against another. I do not like to think insults in a lady's company-I commit a crime with her which absence w

is present doings

, and strengthen more my reach in Poetry, than would stopping at home among books, even though I should reach Homer. By this time I am comparatively a Mountaineer. I have been among wilds and mountains too much to break out much about thei

ds' sheep and dogs in the misty heights close above them, but could see none of them for some time, till two came in sight 'creeping among the crags like Emmets,' yet their voices plainly audible: how solemn was the first sight of Loch Awe as they approached it 'along a complete mountain road' (that is by way of Glen Aray) 'where if one listened the

er Lakes coming up between Crags and Islands full tide and scarcely ruffled-sometimes appearing as one large Lake sometimes as three distinct ones in different directions.

ham goes but a very little way and fowls are like larks to me.... I can eat a bull's head as easily as I used to do bull's eyes.' Some days later he writes that he is getting used to it, and doing his twenty mil

Cake-we have lost the sight of white bread entirely-Now we had eaten nothing but eggs all day-about 10 a piece and they had become sickening-To-day we have

eir expedition, only three years before, to the loneliest wilds of Lochaber. But then the Wordsworth party only walked when they wished, and drove much of the way in their ramshackle jaunting-car; and the Lockh

ightful in the warmheartedness of the Highland people. Bating the article of inquisitiveness, they are as polite as courtiers. The moment we entered a cottage the wife began to bake her

such threw herself headlong from the window into the waves? and was this scene with its story in his mind when he wrote of forlorn fairy lands where castle casements open on the foam of perilous seas?7 From the landing place in Mull they had to take a guide and traverse on foot the whole width of the island to the extreme point of the Ross of Mull opposite Iona: a wretched walk, as Keats calls it, of some thirty-seven miles, over difficult ground and in the very roughest weather, broken by one night's rest in a shepherd's hut at a spot he calls Dun an Cullen,-perhaps for Derrynacullen. Having crossed the narrow channel to Iona and admired the antiquities of that illustrious island

these Columns-of course the roof and floor must be composed of the broken ends of the Columns-such is Fingal's cave except that the Sea has done the work of excavations and is continually dashing there-so that we walk along the sides of the cave on the pillars which are left as

ddin Magian,' written in the seven-syllable metre which he handled almost as well as his sixteenth and seventeenth century masters, from Fletcher and Ben Jonson to the youthful Milton. Avoiding wor

hy bones a

ond the sto

priestly character Lycidas tells his latter-day visitant of the religion of the place, complains of the violation of its solitude, and th

ver will

int and s

agic of t

ree to st

and to Fa

and to Pe

sea shall

me shall n

thing Quadr

with a Spi

div

ropped out or inserted only in pencil: but he apparently did not see his way to mend them, and Brown tells us he could never persuade

wn calls it a violent cold,-which compelled him to rest for a day or two at Oban. Thence they pushed on in broken weather by Ballachulish and the shore of Loch Linnhe to Fort William, and from thence groped and struggled up Ben Nevis, a toilsome climb at best, in a dissolving mist. Once again Keats makes an exceptional endeavour to realise the scene in words for his brother's benefit, telling of the continual shifting and opening and closing and re-opening of the cloud vei

son, Muse, an

of Nevis, b

the chasms,

hide them,-jus

ow of hell; I

sullen mist

ll of heaven;

rth, beneath

is man's sig

raggy stones b

ow that, a poo

m,-that all my

ag, not only o

d of thought an

amusement a comic dialogue in verse between the mountain and the lady, much more in Brown's vein than in his own. By the 6th of Augus

d to write and recall him on account of a sudden change for the worse in the condition of the invalid Tom, so that his tour with Brown would have been cut short in any case. On their way round the head of Beauly Firth to Cromarty the friends did not miss the opportunity of visiting the ruins of Beauly Abbey. The interior was then and for long afterwards used as a burial place and receptacle for miscellaneous rubbish. Their attention being drawn to a heap of skulls which they took, probably on the information of some local guide, for skulls of ancient monks of the Abbey, they jointly composed upon them a set

ed pleasantly in a letter to his brother George. But his throat trouble, the premonitory sign of worse, never really or for any length of time left him afterwards. On the 18th of August he arrived at Hampstead, and made his appearance among his friends the next day, 'as brown and as shabby as you can imagine,' writes Mrs Dilke, 'scarcely any shoes left, his jacket all torn

1840, but was unluckily stopped after the fourth number and carries us no farther than to Ball

ott's Redgauntlet, Dame Martin, leading the dance, 'frisked like a kid, snapped her finger

te has found something in this piece entitling it to a p

King Lear's (a

y slight-pause. At the point quoted Keats varies it, whether carelessly or on purpose, and the first lines of three successive couplets, beginning from 'Runnels,' etc

ions: but the MS. is quite clear, and even we

W. P. Ker. Personally I have always associated the magic casements with the Enchanted Castle of Claude's picture representing a very different sce