"After a thousand mazes overgone."
Keats was indebted for his introduction to Mr. Severn to his
school-fellow Edward Holmes, who also had been one of the child-scholars
at Enfield; for he came to us in the frock-dress. They were sworn
companions at school, and remained friends through life. Mr. Holmes
ought to have been an educated musician from his first childhood; for
the passion was in him. I used to amuse myself with the piano-forte
after supper, when all had gone to bed. Upon some sudden occasion,
leaving the parlor, I heard a scuffle on the stairs, and discovered that
my young gentleman had left his bed to hear the music. At other times,
during the day, and in the intervals of school-hours, he would stand
under the window, listening. He at length intrusted to me his heart's
secret, that he should like to learn music. So I taught him his notes;
and he soon knew and could do as much as his tutor. Upon leaving
Enfield, he was apprenticed to the elder Seeley, a bookseller in Fleet
Street; but, hating his occupation, left it, I believe, before he was of
age. He had not lost sight of me; and I introduced him to Mr. Vincent
Novello, who had made himself a friend to me, and who not merely, with
rare profusion of bounty, gave Holmes instruction, but received him into
his house, and made him one of his family. With them he resided some
years. I was also the fortunate means of recommending him to the chief
proprietor of the "Atlas" newspaper; and to that journal, during a long
period, he contributed a series of essays and critiques upon the science
and practice of music, which raised the journal into a reference and an
authority in the art. He wrote for the proprietors of the "Atlas"
that elegant little book of dilettante criticism, "A Ramble among the
Musicians in Germany." He latterly contributed to the "Musical Times" a
whole series of masterly essays and analyses upon the Masses of Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven. But the work upon which his reputation will rest
was a "Life of Mozart," which was purchased by Chapman and Hall.
I have said that Holmes used to listen on the stairs. In after-years,
when Keats was reading to me his "Eve of St. Agnes," (and what a happy
day was that! I had come up to see him from Ramsgate, where I then
lived,) at the passage where Porphyro in Madeleine's chamber is
fearfully listening to the hubbub of the icing and the music in the hall
below, and the verse says,--
"The boisterous midnight festive clarion,
The kettle-drum and far-heard clarionet,
Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:
_The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone_,"--
"That line," said he, "came into my head when I remembered how I used to
listen, in bed, to your music at school." Interesting would be a record
of the germs and first causes of all the greatest poets' conceptions!
The elder Brunei's first hint for his "shield," in constructing the
tunnel under the Thames, was taken from watching the labor of a
sea-insect, which, having a projecting hood, could bore into the ship's
timber, unmolested by the waves.
I fancy it was about this time that Keats gave that signal example of
his courage and stamina, in the recorded instance of his pugilistic
contest with a butcher-boy. He told me--and in his characteristic
manner--of their "passage of _arms_." The brute, he said, was tormenting
a kitten, and he interfered, when a threat offered was enough for his
mettle, and they set to. He thought he, should be beaten; for the fellow
was the taller and stronger; but, like an authentic pugilist, my young
poet found that he had planted a blow which "told" upon his antagonist.
In every succeeding round, therefore, (for they fought nearly an hour,)
he never failed of returning to the weak point; and the contest ended
in the hulk being led or carried home. In all my knowledge of my
fellow-beings, I never knew one who so thoroughly combined the sweetness
with the power of gentleness and the irresistible sway of anger as
Keats. His indignation would have made the boldest grave; and those who
have seen him under the influence of tyranny, injustice, and meanness of
soul will never forget the expression of his features,--"the form of his
visage was changed."
He had a strong sense of humor; yet, so to speak, he was not, in the
strict sense of the term, a humorist. His comic fancy lurked in the
outermost and most unlooked-for images of association,--which, indeed,
maybe said to be the components of humor; nevertheless, I think they
did not extend beyond the _quaint_, in fulfilment and success. But his
perception of humor, with the power of transmitting it by imitation, was
both vivid and irresistibly amusing. He once described to me his having
gone to see a bear-baiting,--the animal, the property of a Mr. Tom
Oliver. The performance not having began, Keats was near to and watched
a young aspirant, who had brought a younger under his wing to witness
the solemnity, and whom he oppressively patronized, instructing him in
the names and qualities of all the magnates present. Now and then, in
his zeal to manifest and impart his knowledge, he would forget himself,
and stray beyond the prescribed bounds, into the ring,--to the lashing
resentment of its comptroller, Mr. William Soames; who, after some hints
of a practical nature, to "keep back," began laying about him with
indiscriminate and unmitigable vivacity,--the Peripatetic signifying to
his pupil,--"My eyes! Bill Soames giv' me sich a licker!"--evidently
grateful, and considering himself complimented, upon being included in
the general dispensation. Keats's entertainment with this minor scene of
low life has often recurred to me. But his subsequent description of the
baiting, with his position, of his legs and arms bent and shortened,
till he looked like Bruin on his hind-legs, dabbing his fore-paws hither
and thither, as the dogs snapped at him, and now and then acting the
gasp of one that had been suddenly caught and hugged, his own capacious
mouth adding force to the personation, was a memorable display. I am
never reminded of this amusing relation, but it is associated with that
forcible picture in Shakspeare, (and what subject can we not associate
with him?) in the "Henry VI":--
"as a bear encompassed round with dogs,
Who having _pinched_ a few and _made them cry_,
The rest stand all aloof and bark at him."
Keats also attended a prize-fight between two of the most skilful and
enduring "light-weights,"--Randal and Turner. It was, I believe, at
that remarkable wager, when, the men being so equally matched and
accomplished, they had been sparring for three-quarters of an hour
before a blow had been struck. In describing the rapidity of Randal's
blows while the other was falling, Keats tapped his fingers on the
window-pane.
I make no apology for recording these events in his life; they are
characteristics of the natural man,--and prove, moreover, that the
indulgence in such exhibitions did not for one moment blunt the gentler
emotions of his heart, or vulgarize his inborn love of all that was
beautiful and true. His own line was the axiom of his moral existence,
his political creed:--"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"; and I can
fancy no coarser consociation able to win him from this faith. Had he
been born in squalor, he would have emerged a gentleman. Keats was not
an easily swayable man; in differing with those he loved, his firmness
kept equal pace with the sweetness of his persuasion; but with the rough
and the unlovable he kept no terms,--within the conventional precincts,
I mean, of social order.
From Well Walk he moved to another quarter of the Heath,--Wentworth
Place the name, if I recollect. Here he became a sharing inmate with Mr.
Charles Armitage Brown, a gentleman who had been a Russia merchant, and
had retired to a literary leisure upon an independence. I do not know
how they became acquainted; but Keats never had a more zealous, a
firmer, or more practical friend and adviser than Brown. His robust
eagerness and zeal, with a headstrong determination of will, led him
into an undue prejudice against the brother, George, respecting some
money-transactions with John, which, however, the former redeemed to the
perfect satisfaction of all the friends of the family. After the death
of Keats, Armitage Brown went to reside in Florence, where he remained
some few years; then he settled at Plymouth, and there brought out a
work entitled, "Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems. Being his Sonnets
clearly developed; with his Character, drawn chiefly from his Works."
It cannot be said that in this work the author has clearly educed his
theory; but, in the face of his failure upon that main point, the book
is interesting, for the heart-whole zeal and homage with which he has
gone into his subject. Brown was no half-measure man; "whatsoever his
hand found to do, he did it with his might." His last stage-scene in
life was passed in New Zealand, whither he emigrated with his son,
having purchased some land,--or, as his own letter stated, having been
thoroughly defrauded in the transaction. Brown accompanied Keats in his
tour in the Hebrides, a worthy event in the poet's career, seeing that
it led to the production of that magnificent sonnet to "Ailsa Rock." As
a passing observation, and to show how the minutest circumstance did not
escape him, he told me, that, when he first came upon the view of Loch
Lomond, the sun was setting; the lake was in shade, and of a deep blue;
and at the farther end was "_a slash across it_, of deep orange." The
description of the traceried window in the "Eve of St. Agnes" gives
proof of the intensity of his feeling for color.
It was during his abode in Wentworth Place that the savage and vulgar
attacks upon the "Endymion" appeared in the "Quarterly Review," and
in "Blackwood's Magazine." There was, indeed, ruffian, low-lived
work,--especially in the latter publication, which had reached a pitch
of blackguardism, (it used to be called "Blackguard's Magazine,") with
_personal abuse_,--ABUSE,--the only word,--that would damage the sale
of any review at this day. The very reverse of its present management.
There would not now be the _inclination_ for such rascal bush-fighting;
and even then, or indeed at any period of the Magazine's career, the
stalwart and noble mind of John Wilson would never have made itself
editorially responsible for such trash. As to him of the "Quarterly," a
thimble would have been "a mansion, a court," for his whole soul. The
style of the articles directed against the Radical writers, and those
especially whom the party had nicknamed the "Cockney school" of poetry,
may be conceived by its provoking the following observation from Hazlitt
to me:--"To pay those fellows, Sir, _in their own coin_, the way would
be, to begin with Walter Scott, and _have at his clump-foot_." "Verily,
the former times were not better than these."
To say that these disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the
consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the
sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice
of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one
night, when I slept in his brother's bed. They had injured him in the
most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment
supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he
had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article,"
indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense,
than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,--and I have
authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private
transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes's
life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship.
"Johnny Keats" had, indeed, "a little body with a mighty heart," and
he showed it in the best way: not by fighting the ruffians,--though
he could have done that,--but by the resolve that he would produce
brain-work which not one of their party could approach; and he did.
In the year 1820 appeared the "Lamia," "Isabella," "Eve of St. Agnes,"
and "Hyperion," etc. But, alas! the insidious disease which carried him
off had made its approach, and he was going to, or had already departed
for, Italy, attended by his constant and self-sacrificing friend,
Severn. Keats's mother died of consumption; and he nursed his younger
brother in the same disease, to the last,--and, by so doing, in all
probability, hastened his own summons. Upon the publication of the last
volume of poems, Charles Lamb wrote one of his own finely appreciative
and cordial critiques in the "Morning Chronicle." This was sent to me in
the country, where I had for some time resided. I had not heard of the
dangerous state of Keats's health,--only that he and Severn were going
to Italy; it was, therefore, an unprepared shock which brought me the
news that he had died in Rome.
Mr. Monckton Milnes has related the anecdote of Keats's introduction to
Wordsworth, with the latter's appreciation of the "Hymn to Pan," which
its author had been desired to repeat, and the Rydal Mount poet's
snow-capped comment upon it,--"Uhm! a pretty piece of Paganism!" Mr.
Milnes, with his genial and placable nature, has made an amiable defence
for the apparent coldness of Wordsworth's appreciation,--"That it was
probably intended for some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer,
whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas that to him appeared merely
sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek
mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith." Keats, like
Shakspeare, and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he
imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek,
"suckled in that creed outworn." The wonder is, that Mr. Wordsworth
forgot to quote himself. From Keats's description of his Mentor's
manner, as well as behavior, that evening, I cannot but believe it to
have been one of the usual ebullitions of the egoism, not to say of the
uneasiness, known to those who were accustomed to hear the great moral
philosopher discourse upon his own productions and descant upon those
of a contemporary. During this same visit, he was dilating upon some
question in poetry, when, upon Keats's insinuating a confirmatory
suggestion to his argument, Mrs. Wordsworth put her hand upon his arm,
saying,--"Mr. Wordsworth is never interrupted." Again, during the same
interview, some one had said that the next Waverley novel was to be "Rob
Roy"; when Mr. Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read
to the company "Rob Roy's Grave,"--then, returning it to the shelf,
observed, "I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the
subject." When Leigh Hunt had his first interview with Wordsworth, the
latter lectured to him--finely, indeed--upon his own writings; and
repeated the entire sonnet,
"Great men have been among us,"--
which Hunt said he did "in a grand and earnest tone." Some one in a
company quoting the passage from "Henry V.,"--
"So work the honey-bees,"
and each "picking out his pet plum" from that perfect piece of natural
history, Wordsworth objected to the line,
"The singing masons building roofs of gold,"
because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the "_ing_" in it!
Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more
than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of
Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a "_pro_" with
his "_con_," and, Atticus-like, would "just hint a fault and hesitate
dislike." Truly, indeed, we are all of "a mingled yarn, good and ill
together."
I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account
which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his "Diary,"
respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At
his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left
with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time
subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and
can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young
poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and
opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all
acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of
the sonnet to him, and those "On the Elgin Marbles." I say nothing of
the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing,
I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such
faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never
have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have
induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of
his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious
because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it
supplied his old critical antagonists (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 upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never
purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from
such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that
his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a
self-reproof.
When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told me that he had received
from him an invitation to become his guest,--and, in short, to make one
of his household. It was upon the purest principle that Keats declined
the noble proffer; for he entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's
genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty;
and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the
sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley's
never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit
in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his
sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with
him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,--even
within such a circle as Shelley's,--himself, nevertheless, the most
unrestricted of beings. Mr. Trelawney, a familiar of the family, has
confirmed the unwavering testimony to Shelley's bounty of nature, where
he says, "Shelley was a being absolutely without selfishness." The
poorest cottagers knew and benefited by the thoroughly _practical_ and
unselfish character of his Christianity, during his residence at Marlow,
when he would visit them, and, having gone through a course of study
in medicine, in order that he might assist them with his advice, would
commonly administer the tonic which such systems usually require,--a
good basin of broth, or pea-soup. And I believe I am infringing on no
private domestic delicacy, when I repeat, that he has been known, upon a
sudden and immediate emergency, to purloin ("_convey_ the wise it call")
a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley's wardrobe, to protect some
poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that
"_they all_ considered him a madman." I wish he had bitten the whole
squad.
"No settled senses of the world can match
The 'wisdom' of that madness."
Shelley's figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and of
delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or
waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded merely of
muscle and tendon, and that the power of walking was an achievement with
him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a
valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his
spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering
and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one
night,--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild
school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which
do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round,
flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair,
bright-brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely seen in
the human or any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent
expression, yet wonderfully alert and engrossing: nothing appeared to
escape his knowledge.
Whatever peculiarity there might have been in Shelley's religious faith,
I have the best authority for believing that it was confined to the
early period of his life. The _practical_ result of its course of
_action_, I am sure, had its source from the "Sermon on the Mount."
There is not one clause in that divine code which his conduct towards
his fellow-mortals did not confirm, and substantiate him to be a
follower of Christ. Yet, when the news arrived in London of the death of
Shelley and Captain Williams by drowning, the "Courier" newspaper--an
evening journal of that day--capped the intelligence with the following
remark:--"He will now know whether there is a hell or not!"--I believe
that there are still one or two public fanatics who would _think_ that
surmise, but not one would dare to utter it in his journal. So much for
the progress of liberality, and the power of opinion.
At page 100 of the "Life of Keats," Vol. I., Mr. Monckton Milnes has
quoted a literary portrait of him, which he received from a lady who
used to see him at Hazlitt's lectures at the Surrey Institution. The
building was on the south or right-hand side, and close to Blackfriars'
Bridge. I believe that the whole of Hazlitt's lectures, on the British
Poets, the Writers of the Time of Elizabeth, and the Comic Writers, were
delivered in that Institution, during the years 1817 and 1818; shortly
after which time the establishment appears to have been broken up. The
lady's remark upon the character and expression of Keats's features is
both happy and true. She says,--"His countenance lives in my mind as one
of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression _as if he had
been looking on some glorious sight_." That's excellent.--"His mouth was
full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But
when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and _blue_" and
that "his hair was _auburn_," I am naturally reminded of the fable of
the "Chameleon":--"They're _brown_, Ma'am,--_brown_, I assure you!" The
fact is, the lady was enchanted--and I cannot wonder at it--with the
whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the
favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation,
the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn."
Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator;
and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic
tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than
ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish
between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he
was exhibiting to us a landscape he had just completed, I hazarded
the critical question, why he painted his trees so _blue_? "Blue!" he
replied,--"what do you call green?"--Reader, alter in your copy of
Monckton Milnes's "Life of Keats," Vol. I., page 103, "eyes" _light
hazel_, "hair" _lightish-brown and wavy_.
The most perfect, and withal the favorite portrait of him, was the
one by Severn, published in Leigh Hunt's "Lord Byron and his
Contemporaries," and which I remember the artist's sketching in a few
minutes, one evening, when several of Keats's friends were at his
apartments in the Poultry. The portrait prefixed to the "Life," also
by Severn, is a most excellent one-look-and-expression likeness,--an
every-day, and of "the earth, earthy" one;--and the last, which the same
artist painted, and which is now in the possession of Mr. John Hunter,
of Craig Crook, Edinburgh, may be an equally felicitous rendering of one
look and manner; but I do not intimately recognize it. There is another,
and a _curiously unconscious_ likeness of him, in the charming Dulwich
Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt.
It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the
poet,--though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have
made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy
expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do not associate with him.
There is one of his attitudes, during familiar conversation, which, at
times, (with the whole earnest manner and sweet expression of the man)
presents itself to me, as though I had seen him only last week. The
attitude I speak of was that of cherishing one leg over the knee of the
other, smoothing the instep with the palm of his hand. In this action I
mostly associate him in an eager parley with Leigh Hunt, in his little
cottage in the "Vale of Health." This position, if I mistake not, is in
the last portrait of him at Craig Crook; if not, it is in a reminiscent
one, painted after his death.
His stature could have been very little more than five feet; but he was,
withal, compactly made and--well-proportioned; and before the hereditary
disorder which carried him off began to show itself, he was active,
athletic, and enduringly strong,--as the fight with the butcher gave
full attestation.
The critical world,--by which term I mean the censorious portion of
it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and
objection,--the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if
they will, the defective side of Keats's genius, and his friends, his
gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel
inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that
the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of
imagery,--that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest
promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and
teeming genius. But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the
amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to
the "Foliage," quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the "Life
of Keats"; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so
amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can
add no more than my assent.
Keats's whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one
routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others' feelings.
The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring
nurse--friend,--"Severn,--I,--lift me up,--I am dying:--_I shall die
easy; don't be frightened;_--be firm, and thank God it has come."
There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters
of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare. His own intensity of
thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol;
and he knew but little of him till he himself had become an author. A
marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the
complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his
matriculation;--and, through life, however long with any of us, we are
all in progress of matriculation, as we study the "myriad-minded's"
system of philosophy. The note that Keats made was this;--"The genius
of Shakspeare was an _innate universality;_ wherefore he laid the
achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and
kingly gaze: _he could do easily men's utmost;_ his plan of tasks to
come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would
not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his
conception of ultimates!"