It is often said that poets have no biographies but their own works,
but that is only a half-truth. It is to me one of the most delightful
things in the world to follow the footsteps of a poet about, in scenes
perhaps familiar to myself; to see how the simple sights of earth and
sky struck fire from his mind, to realise what he thought about under
commonplace conditions. I have often stayed, for instance, at
Tan-yr-allt in North Wales, where Shelley spent some months, and where
the strange adventure of the night-attack by the assassin occurred--a
story never satisfactorily unravelled; it was a constant pleasure there
to feel that one was looking at the fine crags which Shelley loved, so
nobly weather-stained and ivy-hung, that one was threading the same
woodland paths, and rambling on the open moorland where he so often
paced. The interest, the inspiration of the process comes from the fact
that one sees how genius transmutes the dull elements of life, those
elements which are in reach of all of us, into thoughts rich and
strange. I often think of the plum-tree in the tiny garden of Wentworth
Place, where Keats, one languid spring day, sate to hear the
nightingale sing, and scribbled the _Ode_ on loose half-sheets of
paper, careless if they were preserved or no. It makes one discern the
quality of genius to realise how there is food for it everywhere, and
how little right one has to blame one's surroundings for not being more
suggestive. Indeed, I cannot help feeling that the very vulgarity of
Keats' circle, with its ill-flavoured jokes, its provincial taint, is
even more impressive than the romance in which Shelley lived, because
it marks his genius more impressively. Shelley was at least in contact
with interesting personalities, while Keats' circle was on the whole a
depressing one.
But the point which has been deeply borne in upon me, and which we are
apt, in reflecting on the posthumous glories of men of genius, to
forget, is the reflection how extraordinarily scanty was the
recognition which both Keats and Shelley met with in their lifetime.
Keats was nothing more than an obscure poetaster; he had a few friends
who believed in him, but which of them would have dared to predict the
volume and magnitude of his subsequent fame? Shelley was in even worse
case, for he was regarded by ordinary people as a monster of irreligion
and immorality, the custody of whose children had been denied him by
the most respectable of Lord Chancellors, on account of his detestable
opinions and the infamy of his mode of life. There are, I will venture
to say, a hundred living English writers who have more, far more, of
the comfortable sense of renown, and its tangible rewards, than either
of these great poets enjoyed in their lifetime. Byron himself, who by
the side of Shelley cuts so deplorable a figure, had at least the
consciousness of being an intensely romantic and mysterious figure,
quickening the emotional temperature of the world and making its pulse
beat faster. But Keats and Shelley worked on in discouragement and
obscurity. It is true that they judged their own work justly, and knew
within themselves that there was a fiery quality in what they wrote.
But how many poets have fed themselves in vain on the same hopes, have
thought themselves unduly contemned and slighted! There is hardly a
scribbler of verse who has not the same delusion, and who has not in
chilly and comfortless moments to face the fact that he does not
probably count for very much, after all, in the scheme of things. How
hard it is in the case of Keats and Shelley to feel that they had not
some inkling of all the desirous worship, the generous praise, that has
surrounded their memory after their death! How hard it is to enter into
the bitterness of spirit which fell upon Shelley, not once nor twice,
at the acrid contempt of reviewers! How hard it is to put oneself
inside the crushing sense of failure that haunted Keats' last days,
with death staring him in the face! Of course, one may say that a
writer ought not to depend upon any consciousness of fame; that he
ought to make his work as good as he can, and not care about the
verdict. That is a fine and dignified philosophy; but at the same time
half of the essence of the writer's work lies in its appeal. He may
feel the beauty of the world with a poignant emotion; but his work is
to make others feel it too, and it is impossible that he should not be
profoundly discouraged if there is no one who heeds his voice. It is
not that he craves for stupid and conventional praise from men who can
only applaud when they see others applauding. What he desires is to
express the kinship, the enthusiasm of generous hearts, to make an echo
in the souls of a few like-minded people. He may desire this--nay, he
must desire it, if he is to fulfil his own ideal at all. For in the
minds of poets there is the hope of achievement, of creation; he
dedicates time and thought and endeavour to his work, and the test of
its fineness and of its worth is that it should move others. If a man
cannot have some faint hope that he is doing this, then he had better
sink back into the crowd, live the life of the world, earn a wage, make
a place for himself. Indeed, he has no justification for refusing to
shoulder the accustomed burden, unless he is sure that the task to
which he devotes himself is better worth the doing; a poet must always
be haunted by the suspicion that he is but pleasing himself and playing
indolently at a pretty game, unless he can believe that he is adding
something to the sum of beauty and truth. These visions of the poet are
very faint and delicate things; there is little of robust confidence
about them, while there are plenty of loud and insistent voices on
every side of him to tell him that he is shirking the work of the
world, and that he is not lifting a finger in the cause of humanity and
progress. There are some self-conscious artists who would say that the
cause of humanity and progress is not the concern of the artist at all;
but, on the other hand, you will find but few of the great artists of
the ages who have not been thrilled and haunted with the deep desire to
help others, to increase their peace and joy, to interpret the riddle
of the world, to give a motive for living a fuller life than the life
of the drudge and the raker of stones and dirt.
But this very absence of recognition and fame was what made the lives
of these two great poets so intensely beautiful; there is hardly a
great poet who has achieved fame who has not been in a degree spoilt by
the consciousness of worth and influence. Tennyson, Pope, Byron,
Wordsworth--how their lives were injured by vanity and self-conceit!
Even Scott was touched by the grossness of prosperity, though he purged
his fault in despair and tears. But such poets as did not guess their
own greatness, and remained humble and peaceable, how much sweeter and
gentler is their example, walking humbly in the company of the mighty,
and hardly seeming to guess that they are of the happy number. And thus
we may rank it amongst the greatest gifts that were given to Keats and
Shelley, though they did not know their own felicity, that they were
never overshadowed by the approbation of the world, and had no touch of
the complacent sense of greatness that so disfigures the spirit of a
mortal.