KEATS.

There are few poets whose works contain slighter hints of their personal

history than those of Keats; yet there are, perhaps, even fewer whose

real lives, or rather the conditions upon which they lived, are more

clearly traceable in what they have written. To write the life of a man

was formerly understood to mean the cataloguing and placing of

circumstances, of those things which stood about the life and were more

or less related to it, but were not the life itself. But Biography from

day to day holds dates cheaper and facts dearer. A man's life, so far as

its outward events are concerned, may be made for him, as his clothes are

by the tailor, of this cut or that, of finer or coarser material; but the

gait and gesture show through, and give to trappings, in themselves

characterless, an individuality that belongs to the man himself. It is

those essential facts which underlie the life and make the individual man

that are of importance, and it is the cropping out of these upon the

surface that gives us indications by which to judge of the true nature

hidden below. Every man has his block given him, and the figure he cuts

will depend very much upon the shape of that,--upon the knots and twists

which existed in it from the beginning. We were designed in the cradle,

perhaps earlier, and it is in finding out this design, and shaping

ourselves to it, that our years are spent wisely. It is the vain endeavor

to make ourselves what we are not that has strewn history with so many

broken purposes and lives left in the rough.

Keats hardly lived long enough to develop a well-outlined character, for

that results commonly from the resistance made by temperament to the many

influences by which the world, as it may happen then to be, endeavors to

mould every one in its own image. What his temperament was we can see

clearly, and also that it subordinated itself more and more to the

discipline of art.

* * * * *

John Keats, the second of four children, like Chaucer and Spenser, was a

Londoner, but, unlike them, he was certainly not of gentle blood. Lord

Houghton, who seems to have had a kindly wish to create him gentleman by

brevet, says that he was "born in the upper ranks of the middle class."

This shows a commendable tenderness for the nerves of English society,

and reminds one of Northcote's story of the violin-player who, wishing to

compliment his pupil, George III., divided all fiddlers into three

classes,--those who could not play at all, those who played very badly,

and those who played very well,--assuring his Majesty that he had made

such commendable progress as to have already reached the second rank. We

shall not be too greatly shocked by knowing that the father of Keats (as

Lord Houghton had told us in an earlier biography) "was employed in the

establishment of Mr. Jennings, the proprietor of large livery-stables on

the Pavement in Moorfields, nearly opposite the entrance into Finsbury

Circus." So that, after all, it was not so bad; for, first, Mr. Jennings

was a _proprietor_; second, he was the proprietor of an _establishment_;

third, he was the proprietor of a _large_ establishment; and fourth, this

large establishment was _nearly_ opposite Finsbury Circus,--a name which

vaguely dilates the imagination with all sorts of potential grandeurs. It

is true Leigh Hunt asserts that Keats "was a little too sensitive on the

score of his origin,"[384] but we can find no trace of such a feeling

either in his poetry or in such of his letters as have been printed. We

suspect the fact to have been that he resented with becoming pride the

vulgar Blackwood and Quarterly standard, which measured genius by

genealogies. It is enough that his poetical pedigree is of the best,

tracing through Spenser to Chaucer, and that Pegasus does not stand at

livery even in the largest establishments in Moorfields.

As well as we can make out, then, the father of Keats was a groom in the

service of Mr. Jennings, and married the daughter of his master. Thus, on

the mother's side, at least, we find a grandfather, on the father's there

is no hint of such an ancestor, and we must charitably take him for

granted. It is of more importance that the elder Keats was a man of sense

and energy, and that his wife was a "lively and intelligent woman, who

hastened the birth of the poet by her passionate love of amusement,"

bringing him into the world, a seven-months' child, on the 29th October,

1795, instead of the 29th of December, as would have been conventionally

proper. Lord Houghton describes her as "tall, with a large oval face, and

a somewhat saturnine demeanour." This last circumstance does not agree

very well with what he had just before told us of her liveliness, but he

consoles us by adding that "she succeeded, _however_, in inspiring her

children with the profoundest affection." This was particularly true of

John, who once, when between four and five years old, mounted guard at

her chamber door with an old sword, when she was ill and the doctor had

ordered her not to be disturbed.[385]

In 1804, Keats being in his ninth year, his father was killed by a fall

from his horse. His mother seems to have been ambitious for her children,

and there was some talk of sending John to Harrow. Fortunately this plan

was thought too expensive, and he was sent instead to the school of Mr.

Clarke at Enfield with his brothers. A maternal uncle, who had

distinguished himself by his courage under Duncan at Camperdown, was the

hero of his nephews, and they went to school resolved to maintain the

family reputation for courage. John was always fighting, and was chiefly

noted among his school-fellows as a strange compound of pluck and

sensibility. He attacked an usher who had boxed his brother's ears; and

when his mother died, in 1810, was moodily inconsolable, hiding himself

for several days in a nook under the master's desk, and refusing all

comfort from teacher or friend.

He was popular at school, as boys of spirit always are, and impressed his

companions with a sense of his power. They thought he would one day be a

famous soldier. This may have been owing to the stories he told them of

the heroic uncle, whose deeds, we may be sure, were properly famoused by

the boy Homer, and whom they probably took for an admiral at the least,

as it would have been well for Keats's literary prosperity if he had

been. At any rate, they thought John would be a great man, which is the

main thing, for the public opinion of the playground is truer and more

discerning than that of the world, and if you tell us what the boy was,

we will tell you what the man longs to be, however he may be repressed by

necessity or fear of the police reports.

Lord Houghton has failed to discover anything else especially worthy of

record in the school-life of Keats. He translated the twelve books of the

Aeneid, read Robinson Crusoe and the Incas of Peru, and looked into

Shakespeare. He left school in 1810, with little Latin and no Greek, but

he had studied Spence's Polymetis, Tooke's Pantheon, and Lempriere's

Dictionary, and knew gods, nymphs, and heroes, which were quite as good

company perhaps for him as artists and aspirates. It is pleasant to fancy

the horror of those respectable writers if their pages could suddenly

have become alive tinder their pens with all that the young poet saw in

them.[386]

On leaving school he was apprenticed for five years to a surgeon at

Edmonton. His master was a Mr. Hammond, "of some eminence" in his

profession, as Lord Houghton takes care to assure us. The place was of

more importance than the master, for its neighborhood to Enfield enabled

him to keep up his intimacy with the family of his former teacher, Mr.

Clarke, and to borrow books of them. In 1812, when he was in his

seventeenth year, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke lent him the "Faerie Queene."

Nothing that is told of Orpheus or Amphion is more wonderful than this

miracle of Spenser's, transforming a surgeon's apprentice into a great

poet. Keats learned at once the secret of his birth, and henceforward his

indentures ran to Apollo instead of Mr. Hammond. Thus could the Muse

defend her son. It is the old story,--the lost heir discovered by his

aptitude for what is gentle and knightly. Haydon tells us "that he used

sometimes to say to his brother he feared he should never be a poet, and

if he was not he would destroy himself." This was perhaps a

half-conscious reminiscence of Chatterton, with whose genius and fate he

had an intense sympathy, it may be from an inward foreboding of the

shortness of his own career.[387]

Before long we find him studying Chaucer, then Shakespeare, and afterward

Milton. But Chapman's translations had a more abiding influence on his

style both for good and evil. That he read wisely, his comments on the

"Paradise Lost" are enough to prove. He now also commenced poet himself,

but does not appear to have neglected the study of his profession. He was

a youth of energy and purpose, and though he no doubt penned many a

stanza when he should have been anatomizing, and walked the hospitals

accompanied by the early gods, nevertheless passed a very creditable

examination in 1817. In the spring of this year, also, he prepared to

take his first degree as poet, and accordingly published a small volume

containing a selection of his earlier essays in verse. It attracted

little attention, and the rest of this year seems to have been occupied

with a journey on foot in Scotland, and the composition of "Endymion,"

which was published in 1818. Milton's "Tetrachordon" was not better

abused; but Milton's assailants were unorganized, and were obliged each

to print and pay for his own dingy little quarto, trusting to the natural

laws of demand and supply to furnish him with readers. Keats was

arraigned by the constituted authorities of literary justice. They might

be, nay, they were Jeffrieses and Scroggses, but the sentence was

published, and the penalty inflicted before all England. The difference

between his fortune and Milton's was that between being pelted by a mob

of personal enemies and being set in the pillory. In the first case, the

annoyance brushes off mostly with the mud; in the last, there is no

solace but the consciousness of suffering in a great cause. This solace,

to a certain extent, Keats had; for his ambition was noble, and he hoped

not to make a great reputation, but to be a great poet. Haydon says that

Wordsworth and Keats were the only men he had ever seen who looked

conscious of a lofty purpose.

It is curious that men should resent more fiercely what they suspect to

be good verses, than what they know to be bad morals. Is it because they

feel themselves incapable of the one and not of the other? Probably a

certain amount of honest loyalty to old idols in danger of dethronement

is to be taken into account, and quite as much of the cruelty of

criticism is due to want of thought as to deliberate injustice. However

it be, the best poetry has been the most savagely attacked, and men who

scrupulously practised the Ten Commandments as if there were never a

_not_ in any of them, felt every sentiment of their better nature

outraged by the "Lyrical Ballads." It is idle to attempt to show that

Keats did not suffer keenly from the vulgarities of Blackwood and the

Quarterly. He suffered in proportion as his ideal was high, and he was

conscious of falling below it. In England, especially, it is not pleasant

to be ridiculous, even if you are a lord; but to be ridiculous and an

apothecary at the same time is almost as bad as it was formerly to be

excommunicated. _A priori_, there was something absurd in poetry written

by the son of an assistant in the livery-stables of Mr. Jennings, even

though they were an establishment, and a large establishment, and nearly

opposite Finsbury Circus. Mr. Gifford, the ex-cobbler, thought so in the

Quarterly, and Mr. Terry, the actor,[388] thought so even more distinctly

in Blackwood, bidding the young apothecary "back to his gallipots!" It is

not pleasant to be talked down upon by your inferiors who happen to have

the advantage of position, nor to be drenched with ditchwater, though you

know it to be thrown by a scullion in a garret.

Keats, as his was a temperament in which sensibility was excessive, could

not but be galled by this treatment. He was galled the more that he was

also a man of strong sense, and capable of understanding clearly how hard

it is to make men acknowledge solid value in a person whom they have once

heartily laughed at. Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of

wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light

by which the world looks for and finds merit. Keats longed for fame, but

longed above all to deserve it. To his friend Taylor he writes, "There is

but one way for me. The road lies through study, application, and

thought." Thrilling with the electric touch of sacred leaves, he saw in

vision, like Dante, that small procession of the elder poets to which

only elect centuries can add another laurelled head. Might he, too,

deserve from posterity the love and reverence which he paid to those

antique glories? It was no unworthy ambition, but everything was against

him,--birth, health, even friends, since it was partly on their account

that he was sneered at. His very name stood in his way, for Fame loves

best such, syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue, like

Spenserian, Shakespearian. In spite of Juliet, there is a great deal in

names, and when the fairies come with their gifts to the cradle of the

selected child, let one, wiser than the rest, choose a name for him from

which well-sounding derivatives can be made, and, best of all, with a

termination in _on_. Men judge the current coin of opinion by the ring,

and are readier to take without question whatever is Platonic, Baconian,

Newtonian, Johnsonian, Washingtonian, Jeffersonian, Napoleonic, and all

the rest. You cannot make a good adjective out of Keats,--the more

pity,--and to say a thing is _Keatsy_ is to contemn it. Fortune likes

fine names.

Haydon tells us that Keats was very much depressed by the fortunes of his

book. This was natural enough, but he took it all in a manly way, and

determined to revenge himself by writing better poetry. He knew that

activity, and not despondency, is the true counterpoise to misfortune.

Haydon is sure of the change in his spirits, because he would come to the

painting-room and sit silent for hours. But we rather think that the

conversation, where Mr. Haydon was, resembled that in a young author's

first play, where the other interlocutors are only brought in as

convenient points for the hero to hitch the interminable web of his

monologue upon. Besides, Keats had been continuing his education this

year, by a course of Elgin marbles and pictures by the great Italians,

and might very naturally have found little to say about Mr. Haydon's

extensive works, that he would have cared to hear. Lord Houghton, on the

other hand, in his eagerness to prove that Keats was not killed by the

article in the Quarterly, is carried too far toward the opposite extreme,

and more than hints that he was not even hurt by it. This would have been

true of Wordsworth, who, by a constant companionship with mountains, had

acquired something of their manners, but was simply impossible to a man

of Keats's temperament.

On the whole, perhaps, we need not respect Keats the less for having been

gifted with sensibility, and may even say what we believe to be true,

that his health was injured by the failure of his book. A man cannot have

a sensuous nature and be pachydermatous at the same time, and if he be

imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the

amount of his imagination. It is perfectly true that what we call the

world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spectre, the

projected shadow of ourselves; but as long as we do not know it, it is a

very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely

intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings

and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its

occupant. But poets are not built on this plan, and especially poets like

Keats, in whom the moral seems to have so perfectly interfused the

physical man, that you might almost say he could feel sorrow with his

hands, so truly did his body, like that of Donne's Mistress Boulstred,

think and remember and forebode. The healthiest poet of whom our

civilization has been capable says that when he beholds

"desert a beggar born,

And strength by limping sway disabled,

And art made tongue-tied by authority,"

alluding, plainly enough, to the Giffords of his day,

"And simple truth miscalled simplicity,"

as it was long afterward in Wordsworth's case,

"And captive Good attending Captain Ill,"

that then even he, the poet to whom, of all others, life seems to have

been dearest, as it was also the fullest of enjoyment, "tired of all

these," had nothing for it but to cry for "restful Death."

Keats, to all appearance, accepted his ill fortune courageously. He

certainly did not overestimate "Endymion," and perhaps a sense of humor

which was not wanting in him may have served as a buffer against the too

importunate shock of disappointment. "He made Ritchie promise," says

Haydon, "he would carry his 'Endymion' to the great desert of Sahara and

fling it in the midst." On the 9th October, 1818, he writes to his

publisher, Mr. Hessey, "I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who

have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get acquainted with my

own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on

the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of

his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without

comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could inflict; and

also, when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow

as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J.S. is

perfectly right in regard to 'the slipshod Endymion.' That it is so is no

fault of mine. No! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as

good as I had power to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about its

being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice and trembled over

every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to

fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently _without

judgment_. I may write independently and _with judgment_, hereafter. The

Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be

matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself.

That which is creative must create itself. In 'Endymion' I leaped

headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the

soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the

green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.

I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among

the greatest."

This was undoubtedly true, and it was naturally the side which a

large-minded person would display to a friend. This is what he thought,

but whether it was what he _felt_, I think doubtful. I look upon it

rather as one of the phenomena of that multanimous nature of the poet,

which makes him for the moment that of which he has an intellectual

perception. Elsewhere he says something which seems to hint at the true

state of the case. "I must think that difficulties nerve the spirit of a

man: _they make our prime objects a refuge as well as a passion_." One

cannot help contrasting Keats with Wordsworth,--the one altogether poet;

the other essentially a Wordsworth, with the poetic faculty added,--the

one shifting from form to form, and from style to style, and pouring his

hot throbbing life into every mould; the other remaining always the

individual, producing works, and not so much living in his poems as

memorially recording his life in them. When Wordsworth alludes to the

foolish criticisms on his writings, he speaks serenely and generously of

Wordsworth the poet, as if he were an unbiassed third person, who takes

up the argument merely in the interest of literature. He towers into a

bald egotism which is quite above and beyond selfishness. Poesy was his

employment; it was Keats's very existence, and he felt the rough

treatment of his verses as if it had been the wounding of a limb. To

Wordsworth, composing was a healthy exercise, his slow pulse and

imperturbable self trust gave him assurance of a life so long that he

could wait, and when we read his poems we should never suspect the

existence in him of any sense but that of observation, as if Wordsworth

the poet were a half-mad land-surveyor, accompanied by Mr. Wordsworth the

distributor of stamps, as a kind of keeper. But every one of Keats's

poems was a sacrifice of vitality, a virtue went away from him into every

one of them; even yet, as we turn the leaves, they seem to warm and

thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses, and the flutter of

his electrical nerves, and we do not wonder he felt that what he did was

to be done swiftly.

In the mean time his younger brother languished and died, his elder seems

to have been in some way unfortunate and had gone to America, and Keats

himself showed symptoms of the hereditary disease which caused his death

at last. It is in October, 1818, that we find the first allusion to a

passion which was, erelong, to consume him It is plain enough beforehand,

that those were not moral or mental graces that should attract a man like

Keats. His intellect was satisfied and absorbed by his art, his books,

and his friends He could have companionship and appreciation from men;

what he craved of woman was only repose. That luxurious nature, which

would have tossed uneasily on a crumpled rose leaf, must have something

softer to rest upon than intellect, something less ethereal than culture.

It was his body that needed to have its equilibrium restored, the waste

of his nervous energy that must be repaired by deep draughts of the

overflowing life and drowsy tropical force of an abundant and healthily

poised womanhood. Writing to his sister-in-law, he says of this nameless

person: "She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian; she has a

rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine manners. When she comes

into a room she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess.

She is too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may

address her. From habit, she thinks that _nothing particular_. I always

find myself at ease with such a woman; the picture before me always gives

me a life and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything

inferior. I am at such times too much occupied in admiring to be awkward

or in a tremble. I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You

will by this time think I am in love with her, so, before I go any

farther, I will tell you that I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a

tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an

amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an

imperial woman, the very _yes_ and _no_ of whose life is to me a

banquet.... I like her and her like, because one has no _sensation_; what

we both are is taken for granted.... She walks across a room in such a

manner that a man is drawn toward her with magnetic power.... I believe,

though, she has faults, the same as a Cleopatra or a Charmian might have

had. Yet she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are

two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things,--the worldly,

theatrical, and pantomimical; and the unearthly, spiritual, and ethereal.

In the former, Bonaparte, Lord Byron, and this Charmian hold the first

place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his

child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As

a man of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal

being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I

should like you to save me."

It is pleasant always to see Love hiding his head with such pains, while

his whole body is so clearly visible, as in this extract. This lady, it

seems, is not a Cleopatra, only a Charmian; but presently we find that

she is imperial. He does not love her, but he would just like to be

ruined by her, nothing more. This glimpse of her, with her leopardess

beauty, crossing the room and drawing men after her magnetically, is all

we have. She seems to have been still living in 1848, and as Lord

Houghton tells us, kept the memory of the poet sacred. "She is an

East-Indian," Keats says, "and ought to be her grandfather's heir." Her

name we do not know. It appears from Dilke's "Papers of a Critic" that

they were betrothed: "It is quite a settled thing between John Keats and

Miss ----. God help them. It is a bad thing for them. The mother says she

cannot prevent it, and that her only hope is that it will go off. He

don't like any one to look at her or to speak to her." Alas, the tropical

warmth became a consuming fire!

"His passion cruel grown took on a hue

Fierce and sanguineous."

Between this time and the spring of 1820 he seems to have worked

assiduously. Of course, worldly success was of more importance than ever.

He began "Hyperion," but had given it up in September, 1819, because, as

he said, "there were too many Miltonic inversions in it." He wrote

"Lamia" after an attentive study of Dryden's versification. This period

also produced the "Eve of St. Agnes," "Isabella," and the odes to the

"Nightingale" and to the "Grecian Urn." He studied Italian, read Ariosto,

and wrote part of a humorous poem, "The Cap and Bells." He tried his hand

at tragedy, and Lord Houghton has published among his "Remains," "Otho

the Great," and all that was ever written of "King Stephen." We think he

did unwisely, for a biographer is hardly called upon to show how ill his

_biographee_ could do anything.

In the winter of 1820 he was chilled in riding on the top of a

stage-coach, and came home in a state of feverish excitement. He was

persuaded to go to bed, and in getting between the cold sheets, coughed

slightly. "That is blood in my mouth," he said; "bring me the candle; let

me see this blood." It was of a brilliant red, and his medical knowledge

enabled him to interpret the augury. Those narcotic odors that seem to

breathe seaward, and steep in repose the senses of the voyager who is

drifting toward the shore of the mysterious Other World, appeared to

envelop him, and, looking up with sudden calmness, he said, "I know the

color of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived in that

color. That drop is my death-warrant; I must die."

There was a slight rally during the summer of that year, but toward

autumn he grew worse again, and it was decided that he should go to

Italy. He was accompanied thither by his friend, Mr. Severn, an artist.

After embarking, he wrote to his friend, Mr. Brown. We give a part of

this letter, which is so deeply tragic that the sentences we take almost

seem to break away from the rest with a cry of anguish, like the branches

of Dante's lamentable wood.

"I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate me much. There is one

I must mention and have done with it. Even if my body would recover of

itself, this would prevent it. The very thing which I want to live most

for will be a great occasion of my death. I cannot help it. Who can help

it? Were I in health it would make me ill, and how can I bear it in my

state? I dare say you will be able to guess on what subject I am

harping,--you know what was my greatest pain during the first part of my

illness at your house I wish for death every day and night to deliver me

from these pains, and then I wish death away, for death would destroy

even those pains, which are better than nothing. Land and sea, weakness

and decline, are great separators, but Death is the great divorcer

forever. When the pang of this thought has passed through my mind, I may

say the bitterness of death is passed. I often wish for you, that you

might flatter me with the best. I think, without my mentioning it, for my

sake, you would be a, friend to Miss ---- when I am dead. You think she

has many faults, but for my sake think she has not one. If there is

anything you can do for her by word or deed I know you will do it. I am

in a state at present in which woman, merely as woman, can have no more

power over me than stocks and stones, and yet the difference of my

sensations with respect to Miss ---- and my sister is amazing,--the one

seems to absorb the other to a degree incredible. I seldom think of my

brother and sister in America; the thought of leaving Miss ---- is beyond

everything horrible,--the sense of darkness coming over me,--I eternally

see her figure eternally vanishing, some of the phrases she was in the

habit of using during my last nursing at Wentworth Place ring in my ears.

Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There

must be; we cannot be created for this sort of suffering."