Keats

er and

, in the expression of that sympathy was Shelley. He had been misinformed as to the degree in which the critics had contributed to Keats's sufferings, and believing that they had k

f music came sweet

eature, while the general impression it conveys of his character and fate is erroneous. A similar false impression was at the same time conveyed, to a circle of readers incommensurably wider than that reached by Shelley, in the well-known stanza of Don Juan. In regard to Keats Byron tried both to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare. When the Edinburgh praised him, he was furious, and on receipt of the Lamia volume wrote with vulgar savagery to M

m, since he had failed to send help to his poet-brother in the hour of need, (having been in truth simply unable to do so,) Brown had unluckily conceived so harsh a prejudice that friendly communication between them became impossible. Neither was Dilke, who alone among Keats's friends in England took George's part, disposed under the circumstances to help Brown in his task. For a long time George himself hoped to superintend and supply materials for a life of his brother, but partly his want of literary experience, and partly the difficulty of leaving his occupations in the West, prevented him. Mr Taylor, the publisher, also at one time wished to be Keats's biographer, and with the help of Woodhouse collected mate

the bridle thus put on himself he alludes in his unaffected way when he speaks of the 'violence of his temperament, continually smothered up.' Left fatherless at eight, motherless at fifteen, and subject, during the forming years of his life which followed, to no other discipline but that of apprenticeship in a suburban surgery, he showed in his life such generosity, modesty, humour, and self-knowledge, such a spirit of conduct and degree of self-control, as would have done honour to one infinitely better trained and less hardly tried. His hold over himself gave way, indeed, under the stress of passion, and as a lover he betrays all the weak pla

his silent acknowledgment. Something like this, Severn his last nurse, observed to me[76]:" and we know in fact how the whole life of Severn, prolonged nearly sixty years after his friend's death, was coloured by the light reflected from his memory. When Lord Houghton's book came out in 1848, Archdeacon Bailey wrote from Ceylon to thank the writer for doing merited honour to one "whose genius I did not, and do not, more fully admire than I entirely loved the Man[77]." The points on which all who knew him especially dwell are two. First his high good sense and spirit of honour; as to which let one witness stand for many. "He had a soul of noble integrity," says Bailey: "and his common sense was a conspicuous part of his character. Indeed his character was, in the best sense, manly." Next, his beautiful unselfishness and warmth of sympathy. This is the rarest quality of genius, which from the very intensity of its own life and occupations is apt to b

n his letters he talks of suspecting everybody. It appeared not in his conversation. On the contrary he was uniformly the apologist for poor frail human nature, and allowed for people's faults more

f others, he would at all hazards, and without calculating his powers to defend, or his rewar

e than himself. He acknowledges his own "unsteady and vagarish disposition." What he means is no weakness of instinct or principle affecting the springs of conduct in regard to others, but a liability to veerings of opinion and purpose in regard to himself. "The Celtic instability," a reader may perhaps surmise who adopts that hypothesis as to the poet's descent. Whether the quality was one of race or not, it was probably inseparable from the peculiar complexion of Keats's genius. Or rather it was an expression in character of that whic

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. 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.... If then, he has no self, and if I

ays, "men of power": and it is the men of power, the men of trenchant individuality and settled aims, that in the sphere of practical life he most admires. But in the sphere of thought and imagination his preference is dictated by the instinctive bent of his own geniu

man does not brood and peacock over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing....

med indeed invariably, but of beauty wherever its elements existed:-"I have loved," as he says, "the principle of beauty in all things." His conception of the kingdom of poetry was Shaksperean, including the whole range of life and imagination, every affection of the soul and every speculation of the mind. Of that kingdom he lived long enough to enter on and possess certain provinces only, those that by their manifest and prevailing charm first and most n

and aim, he was the most Shaksperean spirit that has lived since Shakspere; the true Marcellus, as his first biographer has called him, of the realm of English song; and that in his premature death our literature has sustained its greatest loss. Something like this, it would seem, is also the opinion of his foremost now living successors, as Lord Tennyson, Mr Browning, Mr Matthew Arnold. Others have formed a different judgment: but among those unfortunate guests at the banquet of life, the poets called away before their time, who can really adjudge the honours that would have been due had they remained? In a final estimate of any writer's work, we must take into account not w

sake, and also, in equal degrees, the love both of classic fable and of romance. And secondly on its form, in setting before poets a certain standard of execution-a standard not of technical correctness, for which Keats never cared sufficiently, but of that quality to which he himse

eart her hear

eloquence her

s really to write like this, his influence has been wholly to their advantage,-but not so when for this quality they give us only its simulacrum, in the shape of brilliancies merely verbal and a glitter not of gold. The first considerable writer among Keats's successors on whom his example took effect was Hood, in the fairy and romance poems of his earlier time. The dominant poet of the Victorian age, Tennyson, has been profoundly influenced by it both in the form and the

those who best knew him, we have just learned from their own lips. The days of the years of his life

E

END

ily believed his birthday to have been Oct. 29. Writing on that day in 1818, Keats says, "this is my birthday." Brown (in Houghton MSS.) gives the same day, but only as on hearsay from a lady to whom Keats had mentioned it, and with a mistake as to the year. Lastly, in the proceedings in Rawlings v. Jennings, Oct. 29 is again given as his birthday, in the affidavit of one Anne Birch, who swears that she knew his father and mother intimately. The entry in the

of Devon.' His daughter, Mrs Llanos, tells me she remembers hearing as a child t

into Court by the executors under Mr Jennings's

ings the precise terms of the deed executed by Mrs Jennings for the benefit of her grandchildren are not quoted, but only its general purport; whence it appears that the sum she made over to Messrs Sandell and Abbey

e publisher, under April 18, 1821, soon after the news of Keats's death

S

o your favor of the 30th ult. r

wn himself from my controul, and acted contrary

m,

o. Hb

d. A

athew, dated November 1815, which would seem to indicate an earlier acquaintance (see p. 31). Unluckily Leigh Hunt himself has darkened counsel on the point by a paragraph inserted in the last edition of his Autobiography, as follows:-(Pref. no. 7, p. 257) "It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was at York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the Indicator, and he resided with me while in Mortimer Street, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I

of the Floure and the Leafe the sonnet beginning 'This pleasant tale is like a little copse.' Reynolds on reading it addressed to Keats

Keats, are like fr

pluck'd from so

art a-breathing

dows, mornings,

ted soul.-Thy

ll make the ag

coronal for t

qy. strong?] hand of f

p thee to thin

t same key whi

anion of the

elds and older

muse be eve

riant spirit

text of the first draft in question, with so

ritten by K. at the request of his brother George, and by the latter sent as a v

lived in

onders ha

vely dimp

otsteps fu

's luxuriou

s' expressiv

ce's swelli

rts a read

u hadst br

made the

u wish for l

sister o

for ever,

ll the Gr

the poem as afterwards pu

hither sh

metamorp

t me sigh

be my va

by. 1

ir auburn: Mrs Speed had heard from her father and mother that it was 'golden red,' which may mean nearly the same thing: I have seen a lock in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke, and should rather call it a warm brown, likely to have looked gold in the lights. Bailey in Houghton MSS. speaks of it as extraordinarily thick and curly, and says that to lay your hand on his head was like laying it 'on the rich pluma

ance and morbid suspicion. Fairness seems to require that the whole passage in which he deals with it should be given. The passage occurs in a letter to Bailey writt

disgusted with literary men, and will never know another except Wordsworth-no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years-now they live, pour ainsi dire, jealous neighbours. Haydon says to me, Keats, don't show your lines to Hunt on any account, or he will have done half for you-so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Re

ings lived the family of Charles Wells.) In Houghton MSS. I find a transcript of the same letter in the hand of Mr Coventry Patmore, with a note in Lord Houghton's hand: "These letters I did not print. R. M. M." In the transcript is added in a parenthesis after the weekday t

er as transcribed in Woodhouse MSS. B., proving that an error was early made either in docketing or copying it. The contents of the letter leave no doubt as to its real date. The sentences quoted prove it to have been written not in autumn but in spring. It contains Keats's reasons both for going down to join his brother Tom at Teignmouth, and for failing to vi

Taylor (from Woodhouse MSS. B.) has a certain interest, both i

ay ev

ear T

shall write, do send him some you think will be most amusing-he will be careful in returning them. Let him have one of my books bound. I am ashamed to catalogue these messages. There is but one more, which ought to go for nothing as there is a lady concerned. I promised Mrs Reynolds one of my books bound. As I cannot write in it let the opposite" [a leaf with the name and 'from the author,' notes

incere

o'G

nd place are added by Woodhouse in re

c of the place' and the next line, 'So saying, with a spirit's glance,' and has proposed, by way of improvement, to read 'with a s

free to st

and to fas

and to pe

sea shall

me shall n

thing Quadr

with a spi

div

be), and suppressed them in copying the piece both for his correspondents and for t

diately joined him at Teignmouth." It is certain that no such second visit to Teignmouth was made by either brot

50 a year, in reversion after their mother's death (see p. 5). The former sum was invested by order of the Court in Consols, and brought ￡1550. 7s. 10d. worth of that security at the price at which it then stood. ￡1666. 13s. 4d. worth of the same stock was farther purchased from the funds of the estate in order to yield the income of ￡50 a year. The interest on both these investments was duly paid to Frances Rawlings during her life: but after her death in 1810 both investments lay untouched and accumulating interest until 1823; when George Keats, to whose knowledge their exis

receipt of a presentation copy of the Life and Let

, Aug

Mil

, excepting Shakspeare and Milton, and perhaps Chaucer, he has most of the poetical character-fire, fancy, and diversity. He has not indeed overcome so great a difficulty as Shelley in his Cenci,

; but these words rather favour than exclude the supposition that it had been already begun. In his December-January letter to America Keats himself alludes to the poem by name, and says he has been 'going on a little' with it: and on the 14th of February, 1819, says 'I have not gone on with Hyperion.' During the next three months he was chiefly occupied on the Odes, and whether he at the same time wrote any more of Hyperion we cannot tell. It was certainly finished, all but the revision, by some time in April, as in that month Woodhouse had the MS. to read, and notes (see Buxton Forman, Works, vol. II. p. 143) that "it cont

l probability that actually written by Keats at Chichester (see p. 133). The readings of the MS. in question are given with great care by Mr Buxton Forman (Works, vol. II. p. 71 foll.), but the first seven stanza

e 9 (and Stanza II., line 1), for "prayer" stood "prayers". Stanza III.: line 7, for "went" stood "turn'd": lin

ears may hear

eyes to brig

feet for nimbl

that for the

ollow to the i

uth-and leav

ar-then troph

illiant tasse

rched ways this hi

"revelry" stood "reve

shadows hau

uff'd in youth w

e. These let

he foll

ey? the idle pu

d never make t

ulness, laughi

in-Winchester expedition in that year, is I think certain both from the readings of the transcripts themselves, and from the absence among them of Lamia and the Ode to Autumn. Hence it is to the first half of 1819 that La Belle Dame Sans Merci must belong, like so much of the poet's best w

which the earlier part of the poem was composed, or is it the commencement of a reconstruction of the whole? I have no external evidence to decide this question:" and further,-"the problem of the priority of the two poems-both fragments, and both so beautiful-may afford a wide field for ingenious and critical conjecture." Ten years later again, when he brought out the second edition of the Life and Letters, Lord Houghton had drifted definitely into a wrong conclusion on the point, and printing the piece in his Appendix as 'Another Version,' says in his text (p. 206) "on reconsideration, I have no doubt that it was the first draft." Accordingly it is given as 'an earlier version' in Mr W. M. Rossetti's edition of 1872, as 'the first version' in Lord Houghton's own edition of 1876; and so on, positively but quite wrongly, in the several editions by Messrs Buxton Forman, Speed, and W. T. Arnold. The obvious superiority of Hype

ne 21 stood the

agle, drowsy wi

his weak plum

d or soar aga

ee sons upon

line 48, for "tone" stood "tune". In line 76, for "gradual" stood "sud

dost

t same?

ne 200 for "When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers" stood "When an earthquake hath shook their city towers." After line 205 stood the cancelled

ine 134 for "starry Uranus" stood "starr'd Uranus" (some fri

ine 125 stood the

ore roseate t

sh'd nymph, whe

with no sob; o

r "most like" s

f the poem preserved by Woodhouse. This of itself would make it certain that the Vision was not a first version of Hyperion, but a recast of the poem as revised (in all probability at Winchester) after its first composition. Taken together with the statement of Brown, which i

ter its appearance, by Cowden Clarke (see Preface, no. 10), not, indeed, from personal

tagonists (if any remained) with an authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put cayenne pepper on his tongue when taking his claret. In the first place, if the stupid trick were ever played, I have

o runs the text, "was most acute, is true, and his passions were very strong, but not violent; if by that term, violence of temper is implied. His was no doubt susceptible, but his anger seemed rather to turn on himself than others, and in moments of greatest irritation, it was only by a sort of savage despondency that he sometimes grieved and wounded his friends. Violence such as the letter" [of Mr Finch] "describes, was quite foreign to his nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting England, I saw him every day", [this would be true of Fanny Brawne from Oct. 1819

DE

d, 11, 17, 70, 7

helley's),

younger Son (T

eri,

d, Th

elancholy (B

y (Scott

Ode to

, Ode

in, 75, 76, 77

tie,

teraria (Cole

ccio,

line, Princess

ny, 131 seq., 18

Pastorals (B

3, 111 seq., 128, 143

wne

g, Robe

net

1, 19,

et t

rbury

Bells,

ereag

on, Th

ton, 15

et t

cer,

ester

n, 3, 8, 12,

Rev. J

ne, King

(Articles in Blackwood'

16, 25, 2

, Astl

l, Miss,

s Charlo

(Cary'

Stanzas

ntemplati

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incey

shire

y (Lempri

, 73,

s Wentworth,

yron's), 18

, 29,

5, 6, 11

on,

Lieuten

on, Litera

68, 71, 76,

opinion of

and defects

's previous treatment

ical manner of

re circums

of the p

f nature-inte

e passa

ion with a similar one

rics,

yrics a test of true

hm and m

the best criticis

ld, 4

the conjoined pleasures of l

ical slip

tic specime

ium (Spen

es, its simpl

rectness of con

que cha

Keats' impressions of t

ctures

egend

ial brilli

on later Engli

he (Leigh H

e (Spenser's

pherdess (Fl

Lines t

Poets (Leig

cher

Leigh Hun

births

er to Maria (S

he,

er and Cr

y,

s' love of,

ring (Sco

d, Mr,

ead, 7

lliam, 45,

65, 68, 78, 137

William

s own Time (B

, Edwa

Dying (Jeremy

oking into Chapman

d,

ddress

, R.

Lord, 75

John

25, 32, 35, 39, 49,

, 129, 1

urpos

dest poems of o

of Paradise L

e compared wit

ntal gran

ng of it,

of the chang

erest of th

nser (Keats' fir

, Ode on,

r the Pot o

its inspir

lemishe

lian me

ous power an

of its bea

f Wigh

s, Mrs,

, Capt.

is Brethren

n,

escriptions of, 7, 8,

th,

n at Enf

f his f

l-lif

us inclina

his mot

at the age o

iced to a

ool-translation

pithalamium and F

tempts at co

and walks the

passion fo

sser at Guy's

t opera

life in

y poems,

ction to Le

influence ove

tance with

r friend

haracteris

h his brothers i

his first volum

the Isle of

Carisbr

to Mar

troubl

time at Ca

yment in advance

two brothers at

ily at Endy

ore fri

of Endymion

r his siste

Burford B

'immortal

s Devons

our in Scotland wit

ver to Ir

nd and visits Bur

e seeds of co

to Lon

od's Magazine and the

onduct towar

young broth

with Charle

n love,

nds in Chic

ith his t

ce with his brot

Shankl

th Brown in wri

Winchest

gain to L

ey troub

ake a living by

y himse

to Mr Br

opened after having

prevents his

ing illness

rovement in h

ther volume o

eigh Hunt's

ce in the Edinb

family of Mis

to spend the wint

improves his

s last li

a time at

to Rome,

vement in his

d last re

ursed by his fri

already living a 'p

rse and

utes to his

ened by the Fae

other poets

language, 21,

the 'Heroic' c

pirit of his

nts in m

al effect of

pirit, 58, 77

s and principle

pendence on

the mystery

, 72

in idea, Engli

pontaneous expressi

vivifyi

license

n subsequen

of phra

charact

perament,

nature, 6,

perament,

sition, 6, 8,

, 7, 9

al bea

or fightin

nature,

, 39, 89

d tendernes

iption of,

ature, 47

ce,

ame, 60, 12

physical and spiritual

edness,

130-134, 180-181,

sensitiv

hness, 2

bilit

ns of, 7, 8, 9, 46

miral Sir

ny (Mrs Ll

(Keats' mot

e, 90, 113,

s (Keats' fa

Tom,

tephen

men,'

sans Merci,

f the ti

wasting power

of its bea

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ia,

ource

icatio

of the serpe

nion of th

dor

nd Cyt

, 85, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 114, 116-117, 118, 126, 127, 129, 130, 134

e Keat

t, 33,

Magaz

, George

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Thought,

Town (We

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George F

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51, 52

n, Miln

re,

hronicle,

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Greek, 10,

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Review,

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etti

Reynold

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38, 56, 85, 110

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Horace,

23, 43, 48,

n Induction t

20, 21, 31,

s, Henr

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mouth

yson

son,

a Grecian, 1

187, 193 (s

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Charl

son

ster,

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JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT

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by JOHN

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Appendix

Ib

nings died M

gs. See below, p. 138,

nnings died Oc

ought

Jennings. See

's, Coleman Street, December 19, 1814, aged 78.

e to Mr Gosse, who had

oughto

glish of Rowley, and in prose, not verse, will be found in The Philosophy of Mystery, by W. C. Dendy (London,

ee App

Memorials of J. F. Sout

Dr B. W. Richardson in the

oughto

be less Spenserian and at the

fair a place

ver charm'd r

Appendi

Appendi

o Sleep in the little volume of Webb's

Appendi

eterita, vol

Appendi

e Chapman,

-hair'd god

n and loveless

iest mountains c

ills, and cli

opses, and t

eaches here and

, by allureme

he wat'ry s

pare Wor

at soar

ghest peak of

the hour in f

ats an echo or me

Armour as an example of the degree to which Keats was at this time indebted to Hunt: forgetting that th

Appendi

aland, to Mr Leslie Stephen, from whom I have them. The point about the Adventures of a Younger Son is confirmed by

oughto

Appendi

Appendi

Appendi

spelling and endeavoured to mend his punctuation

t in her main conception of an allegoric p

of the myth): and in Spenser's Faerie Queene there is a P?ana-the daughter of the giant Corflambo in the

point about Browne has be

r and characteristic enough

ne, in such a

dored favori

f a monarch

ture's robes, wh

edemption; h

pigmy age,

oportions of t

ones, grown mod

carefully pre

much these t

's youthful

Appendi

oughto

Appendi

rn in Hou

oughto

tes positively that Lockhart afterwards owned as much; and there are tricks of style, e.

lf was the writer, and Haydon to the last fancied

Atlantic Monthly,

Preface

Appendi

oughto

, with certain alterations and additions which in the summer of 1885 were pointed ou

Appendi

Appendi

ith that of Keats, by Barry Cornwall in his Sicilian Story (1820). Of the metrical tales from Boccaccio which Reynolds had agreed to write concur

p. 228: and as to the error by which Keats's later recast o

nly on a cameo scale-in the best idyls of Chénier in France, as L'Aveugle or Le Jeune Malade, or of Landor in England, as the H

he most liked in Chatterton's work was the minstrel's song in ?lla, that fantasia, so

man and Angela in the concluding stanza are due to the exigencies of rhyme. On t

dy had his de

his life were

la where she

alsy-stricken, c

ell may ere the

Appendi

duction in narrative and the rest in dialogue, setting forth the obduracy shown by a lady to her wooer,

S. Murray: see Forman, Works, vol. iii. p. 115, note;

oughto

mething in their favour, and this always so agreeably and cleverly, imitating the

Appendi

in 1819, and passed after his death into the hands first of Brown, and afterwards of Archdeacon Bailey (Hough

ion to this passage, without, however, understanding the spec

oughto

elow, p. 1

arly in Houghton MSS., "by a circumst

the closest daily companionship, by itself sufficiently ref

the same time dedicated to Keats his translation of Tasso's Amyntas, speaking of the original as "an early wo

inson. Diaries, Vo

Appendi

the Correspondence the passage is amplified wit

the voyage and the time following it, I have drawn in almost equal degrees from the materials published by Lord Houghto

ains were in 1882 removed from their original burying-place to a grave beside

am, in Se

Sever

oughto

] I

oughto

] I