To "Endymion" we now have to turn. The early verses of Keats (as well as
the later ones) contain numerous allusions to Grecian mythology--Muses,
Apollo, Pan, Narcissus, Endymion and Diana, &c. For the most part these
early allusions are nothing more than tawdry conventionalisms; so indeed
are some of the later ones, as for instance in the drama of "King
Stephen," written in 1819, the schoolboy classicism of "2nd Captain"--
"Royal Maud
From the thronged towers of Lincoln hath looked down,
Like Pallas from the walls of Ilion;"
and we cannot discover that any more credit is due to Keats for
dribbling out his tritenesses about Apollo and the Muses than to any
Akenside, Mason, or Hayley, of them all. At times, however, there is a
genuine tone of _enjoyment_ in these utterances sufficient to persuade
us that the subject had really taken possession of his mind, and that he
could feel Grecian mythology, not merely as a convenient vehicle for
rhetorical personifications, but as an ever-vital embodiment of ideas of
beauty in forms of beauty. In the early and partly boyish poem, "I
stood tip-toe upon a little hill," a good deal of space is devoted to
showing that classical myths are an outcome of eager sensitiveness to
the lovely things of Nature: the tales of Psyche, Pan and Sirynx,
Narcissus, are cited in confirmation--and finally Diana and Endymion, in
the following lines:--
"Where had he been from whose warm head outflew
That sweetest of all songs, that ever new,
That aye-refreshing pure deliciousness
Coming ever to bless
The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing
Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing
From out the middle air, from flowery nests,
And from the pillowy silkiness that rests
Full in the speculation of the stars.
Ah surely he had burst our mortal bars:
Into some wondrous region he had gone
To search for thee, divine Endymion.
He was a poet, sure a lover too,
Who stood on Latmus' top what time there blew
Soft breezes from the myrtle-vale below,
And brought--in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow--
A hymn from Dian's temple, while upswelling
The incense went to her own starry dwelling.
But, though her face was clear as infants' eyes,
Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice,
The poet wept at her so piteous fate--
Wept that such beauty should be desolate;
So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,
And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion.
Queen of the wide air, thou most lovely queen
Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen,
As thou exceedest all things in thy shine,
So every tale does this sweet tale of thine.
Oh for three words of honey that I might
Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night!
Where distant ships do seem to show their keels
Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels,
And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes
Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize.
* * * * *
Cynthia, I cannot tell the greater blisses
That followed thine and thy dear shepherd's kisses:
Was there a poet born?"
Readers often go at a skating-pace over passages of this kind, without
very clearly realizing to themselves the gist of the whole matter. I
will therefore put the thing into the most prosaic form, and say that
what Keats substantially intimates here is as follows:--The inventor of
the myth of Artemis and Endymion must have been a poet and lover, who,
standing on the hill of Latmos, and hearing thence a sweet hymn wafted
from the low-lying temple of Artemis, while the pure maiden-like moon
was shining resplendently, felt a pang of pity for this loveless moon or
Artemis, and invented for her a lover in the person of Endymion; and
ever since then the myth has lent additional beauty to the effects,
beautiful as in themselves they are, of moonlight. Without tying down
Keats too rigidly to this view of the genesis of the myth, I may
nevertheless point out that he wholly ignores as participants both the
spirit of religious devoutness, and the device of allegorizing natural
phaenomena: the inventor is simply a poet and lover, who thinks it a
world of pities that such a sweet maiden as Artemis should not have a
lover sooner or later. Invention prompted by warmth of feeling is thus
the sole motive-power recognized. The final phrase "Was there a poet
born?" may without violence be understood as implying, "Ought not the
loves of Artemis and Endymion to beget their poet, and why should not I
be that poet?" At all events, Keats determined that he _would_ be that
poet; and, contemplating the original invention of the myth from the
point of view which we have just analysed, he not unnaturally treated it
from a like point of view. The tale of Diana and Endymion was not to be
a monument of classic antiquity re-stated in the timid, formal spirit of
a school-exercise, but an invention of a poet and lover, who, acting
under the spell of natural beauty, re-informs his theme with poetic
fancy, amorous ardour, and Nature's profusion of object and of imagery.
And in this Keats thought--and surely he rightly thought--that he would
be getting closer to the spirit of a Grecian myth than by any
cut-and-dry process of tame repetition or pulseless decorum. He wanted
the dell of wild flowers, and not the _hortus siccus_.
"Endymion" was actually begun in the spring of 1817, much about the same
time when the volume "Poems" was published. The first draft was
completed (as we have said) on the 28th of November 1817, and by the end
of the winter which opened the year 1818 no more probably remained to be
done to it. The MS. was subjected to much revision and excision, so that
it cannot be alleged that Keats worked in a reckless temper, or without
such self-criticism as he could at that date bring to bear. It would
even appear, moreover, from the terms of a letter which he addressed to
Mr. Taylor, on April 27, 1818, that he allowed that gentleman to make
some volunteer corrections of his own. Haydon had spurred him on to the
ambitious attempt, which Hunt on the contrary deprecated. Shelley--so
the story goes--agreed with Keats that each of them should write an epic
within a space of six months. Shelley produced "The Revolt of Islam,"
Keats the "Endymion." Shelley proved to be the more rapid writer of the
two; for his poem of 4815 lines was finished by the early autumn of
1817, while Keats's, numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter
which opened 1818. A good deal of it had been done during Keats's
sojourn with Mr. Bailey, in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Afterwards, on 8th
October 1817, he wrote to Bailey--"I refused to visit Shelley, that I
might have my own unfettered scope;" an expression which one might be
inclined to understand as showing that Shelley, having now completed
"The Revolt of Islam," had invited Keats to visit him at Marlow, and
there to proceed with "Endymion,"--not without the advantage it may well
be supposed, of Shelley's sympathizing but none the less stringent
counsel. Bailey's account of the facts may be given here. "He wrote and
I read--sometimes at the same table, sometimes at separate desks--from
breakfast till two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task, which was
about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as
much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his
letters. Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, 'That,
if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a tree, it had better
not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not
often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself.
When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over
to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." The
first book of the poem was delivered into the hands of the publisher,
Mr. Taylor, in the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a
finished chalk-sketch of the author's head, to be prefixed to the
volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the volume, an octavo,
appeared in April without any portrait. We all know the now proverbial
first line in "Endymion,"
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."
This seems to have been an inspiration of long anterior date; for Mr.
Stephens, the surgical fellow-student and fellow-lodger of Keats, says
that in one twilight when they were together the youthful poet produced
the line--
"A thing of beauty is a constant joy;"
which, failing wholly to satisfy its author's ear, was immediately
afterwards improved into its present form. Even before handing over any
part of his MS. to the printer, Keats, at the "immortal dinner" which
came off in Haydon's painting-room, on the 28th of December 1817, and at
which Wordsworth, Lamb, and others, were present, had bespoken a strange
and heroic fate for one copy of his book; for he made Mr. Ritchie, who
was about to set forth on an African exploration, promise that he would
carry the volume "to the great desert of Sahara, and fling it in the
midst."
"Invention" was the quality which Keats most sought for in his
"Endymion," as shown in his letter to Mr. Bailey, already cited. He
said--"It ['Endymion'] will be a test of my powers of imagination, and
chiefly of my invention--which is a rare thing indeed--by which I must
make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry....
A long poem is a test of Invention, which I take to be the polar star of
poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder.... This same
Invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a
poetical excellence." The term "invention" might be used in various
senses. Keats seems to have meant the power of producing a great number
of minor incidents, illustrative images, and other particulars, all
tending to reinforce and fill out the main conception and
subject-matter.
Keats wrote a preface to "Endymion" on March 19, 1818, which was
objected to by Hamilton Reynolds, and by his friends generally. It was
certainly off-hand and unconciliating, and some readers would have
regarded it as defiant. Its general purport was that the poem was
faulty, but the author would not keep it back for revision, which would
make the performance a tedium to himself, "I have written to please
myself, and in hopes to please others, and for a love of fame." There
was a good deal more, jaunty and provocative enough. Keats was not well
inclined to suppress this preface. He replied on April 9th to Reynolds
in a letter from which some weighty words must be quoted:--
"I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards the public,
or to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the principle
of Beauty, and the memory of great men.... A preface is written
to the public--a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy,
and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.... I
would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing
me; but among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping--I
hate the idea of humility to them. I never wrote one single line
of poetry with the least shadow of public thought.... I hate a
mawkish popularity. I cannot be subdued before them. My glory
would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about
pictures and books."
Keats, however, yielded to his censors, and wrote a rather shorter
preface, by far a better one. It bears the date of April 10th, being the
very next day after he had written to Reynolds in so unsubmissive a
tone. This second preface says substantially much the same thing as the
first, but without any aggressive or "devil-may-care" addenda. It is too
important to be omitted here:--
"Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been
produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who
must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed
accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I
feel sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their
passing the press; nor should they, if I thought a year's
castigation would do them any good. It will not: the foundations
are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away--a
sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that, while it is
dwindling, I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit
to live.
"This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a
punishment. But no feeling man will be forward to inflict it; he
will leave me alone with the conviction that there is not a
fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. This is not
written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms of
course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are
competent to look, and who do look, with a zealous eye to the
honour of English literature.
"The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination
of a man is healthy. But there is a space of life between in
which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way
of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted. Thence proceeds
mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak
of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages.
"I hope I have not in too late a day touched the beautiful
mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness; for I wish to try
once more before I bid it farewell."
No one can deny that this is a modest preface; it is in fact too modest,
and concedes to the adversary the utmost which could possibly be at
issue, viz., whether the poem was worth publishing or not. The only
scintilla of self-assertion in it is the hope expressed-"_some_
hope"--that the writer might eventually produce "verses fit to live;"
and less than that no man who puts a poem before the public could be
expected to postulate. Keats must therefore be expressly acquitted of
having done anything to excite animosity or retaliation on the part of
his critics; the sole thing which could be attacked was the poem
itself--too frankly pronounced indefensible--or else something in the
author which did not appear within the covers of his volume. The preface
is indeed manly as well as modest; there is not a servile or obsequious
word in it; yet I cannot help thinking that Keats, when later on he
found "Endymion" denounced as drivel, must at times have wished that he
had been a little less deferential to Reynolds's objections, and had not
so explicitly admitted that not one of the four books of the poem was
qualified to "pass the press." An adverse reviewer was sure to take
advantage of that admission, and did so.
It would be interesting to compare with the preface which Keats printed
for "Endymion" the one which Shelley printed for "The Revolt of Islam."
Shelley, like Keats, was modest; he left his readers to settle any
question as to his poetic claims (although "Alastor," previously
published, might pretty well have vouched for these); but he resolutely
explained that reviewers would find in him no subject for bullying. I
can only make room for a few sentences:--
"The experience and the feelings to which I refer do not in
themselves constitute men poets, but only prepare them to be the
auditors of those who are. How far I shall be found to possess
that more essential attribute of poetry, the power of awakening
in others sensations like those which animate my own bosom, is
that which, to speak sincerely, I know not, and which, with an
acquiescent and contented spirit, I expect to be taught by the
effect which I shall produce upon those whom I now address.... It
is the misfortune of this age that its writers, too thoughtless
of immortality, are exquisitely sensible to temporary praise or
blame. They write with the fear of reviews before their eyes.
This system of criticism sprang up in that torpid interval when
poetry was not. Poetry, and the art which professes to regulate
and limit its powers, cannot subsist together.... I have sought,
therefore, to write (as I believe that Homer, Shakespeare, and
Milton wrote) in utter disregard of anonymous censure."
The publisher of "Endymion" (Mr. Taylor is probably meant) was nervous
as to the reception which potent critics would accord to the volume. He
went to William Gifford, the editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to
bespeak indulgence, but found a Cerberus who rejected every sop. In the
number of the _Quarterly_ for April 1818--not actually published, it
would seem, until September--appeared a critique branded into
ignominious permanence by the name and fame of Keats. Gifford himself is
regarded as its author. As an account of Keats's career would for
various reasons be incomplete in the absence of this critique, I
reproduce it here. It has the merit of brevity, and lends itself hardly
at all to curtailment, but I miss one or two details, relating chiefly
to Leigh Hunt.
"Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works
which they affected to criticize. On the present occasion we
shall anticipate the author's complaint, and honestly confess
that we have not read his work. Not that we have been wanting in
our duty; far from it; indeed, we have made efforts, almost as
superhuman as the story itself appears to be, to get through it:
but, with the fullest stretch of our perseverance, we are forced
to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond the
first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We
should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may
be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that
we are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through
which we have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the
three which we have not looked into.
"It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we
almost doubt that any man in his senses would put his real name
to such a rhapsody)--it is not, we say, that the author has not
powers of language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius. He has
all these; but he is unhappily a disciple of the new school of
what has been somewhere called 'Cockney Poetry,' which may be
defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in the most
uncouth language.
"Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former
number, aspires to be the hierophant.... This author is a copyist
of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged,
twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and absurd, than
his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat himself
in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats had
advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples. His
nonsense, therefore, is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its
own sake, and, being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism,
more than rivals the insanity of his poetry.
"Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under
peculiar circumstances. 'Knowing within myself,' he says, 'the
manner [&c., down to 'a deed accomplished']. We humbly beg his
pardon, but this does not appear to us to be 'quite so clear;' we
really do not know what he means. But the next passage is more
intelligible. 'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I
feel sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their
passing the press.' Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his
own judgment, unfit to appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems,
in the same condition; and, as two and two make four, and as that
is the whole number of books, we have a clear, and we believe a
very just, estimate of the entire work.
"Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and
feverish work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently
feverish; and we confess that we should have abstained from
inflicting upon him any of the tortures of the 'fierce hell' of
criticism[14] which terrify his imagination if he had not begged
to be spared in order that he might write more; if we had not
observed in him a certain degree of talent which deserves to be
put in the right way, or which at least ought to be warned of the
wrong; and if finally he had not told us that he is of an age and
temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
"Of the story we have been able to make out but little. It seems
to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana
and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has
altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of
certainty, and must therefore content ourselves with giving some
instances of its diction and versification. And here again we are
perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us that Mr. Keats
had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an
immeasurable game at _bouts rimes_; but, if we recollect rightly,
it is an indispensable condition at this play that the rhymes,
when filled up, shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have
already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at
random, and then he follows, not the thought excited by this
line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes.
There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in
the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the
association, not of ideas, but of sounds; and the work is
composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced
themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on
which they turn.
"We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that
least liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the
poem.
'Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils,
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead,' &c.
Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_,
produces the simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the
_dooms_ of the mighty dead' would never have intruded themselves
but for the 'fair musk-rose _blooms_.'
"Again--
'For 'twas the morn. Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds. Rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains: and the mass
Of Nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold
To feel this sunrise and its glories old.'
Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_--a silvery pyre--of
clouds, _wherein_ a spirit might _win_ oblivion, and melt his
essence _fine_; and scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the
_sun_, and cold springs had _run_ into the _grass_; and then the
pulse of the _mass_ pulsed _tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of
the new-born day, &c.
"One example more--
'Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings, such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven
That, spreading in this dull and clodded earth,
Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.'
_Lodge_, _dodge_--_heaven_, _leaven_--_earth_, _birth_--such, in
six words, is the sum and substance of six lines.
"We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot
indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a
line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial
notions of our English heroic metre:
'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite.
'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.
'Of some strange history, potent to send.
'Before the deep intoxication.
'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.
'The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared.
'Endymion, the cave is secreter
Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.'
"By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the
meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines. We now
present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation
of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language.
"We are told that turtles _passion_ their voices; that an arbour
was _nested_, and a lady's locks _gordianed_ up; and, to supply
the place of the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats, with great
fecundity, spawns new ones, such as men-slugs and human
_serpentry_, the _honey-feel_ of bliss, wives prepare
_needments_, and so forth.
"Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their
natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads.
Thus the wine out-sparkled, the multitude up-followed, and night
up-took; the wind up-blows, and the hours are down-sunken. But,
if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the
language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the
parent stock. Thus a lady whispers _pantingly_ and close, makes
_hushing_ signs, and steers her skiff into a _ripply_ cove, a
shower falls _refreshfully_, and a vulture has a _spreaded_ tail.
"But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If any one
should be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so
much more patient than ourselves as to get beyond the first book,
and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him
to make us acquainted with his success. We shall then return to
the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make
all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers."
Such is the too famous article in _The Quarterly Review_. If its
contents are to be assessed with perfect calmness, I should have to say
that it is not mistaken in alleging that the poem of "Endymion" is
rambling and indistinct; that Keats allowed himself to drift too readily
according to the bidding of his rhymes (Leigh Hunt has acknowledged as
much, in independent remarks of his own); that many words are coined,
and badly coined; and that the versification is not free from
blemishes--although several of the lines quoted by _The Quarterly_ as
unmetrical, are, when read with the right emphasis, blameless, or even
sonorous. But the article is none the less a despicable and odious
performance; partly as being a sneering depreciation of a work showing
rich poetic endowment, and partly as being, not a deliberate and candid
(however severe) estimate of Keats as a poet, but really an utterance of
malice prepense, and hardly disguised, against Hunt as a hostile
politician who wrote poetry, and against any one who consorted with him.
The inverting of the due balance between the merits and the defects of
"Endymion," would have been at best an act of stupidity; at second best,
after the author's preface had been laid to heart, an act of brutalism;
and at worst, when the venom of abuse was poured into the poetic cup of
Keats as an expedient for drugging the political cup of Hunt, an act of
partisan turpitude. No more words need be wasted upon a proceeding of
which the abiding and unevadeable literary record is graven in the brass
of Shelley's "Adonais."
The attack in _The Quarterly Review_ was accompanied by attacks in
_Blackwood's Magazine_. If _The Quarterly_ was carping and ill-natured,
_Blackwood_ was basely insulting. A series of articles "On the Cockney
School of Poetry" began in the Scotch magazine in October 1817, being
directed mainly, and with calumnious virulence, against Leigh Hunt. No.
4 of the series came out in August 1818, and formed a vituperation of
Keats. I will not draw upon its stores of underbred jocularity, so as to
show that the best raillery which _Blackwood_ could get up consisted of
terming him Johnny Keats, and referring to his having been assistant to
an "apothecary." The author of these papers signed himself Z, being no
doubt too noble and courageous to traduce people without muffling
himself in anonymity; nor did he consent to uncloak, though vigorously
pressed by Hunt to do so. It is affirmed that Z was Lockhart, the
son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards editor of _The Quarterly
Review_; and an unpleasant adjunct to this statement--we would gladly
disbelieve it--is that Scott himself lent active aid in concocting the
articles. A different account is that Z was at first John Wilson
(Christopher North), revised by William Blackwood, but that the article
on Keats was due to Lockhart.
Few literary questions of the last three-quarters of a century have been
regarded from more absolutely different points of view than the
problem--How did Keats receive the attacks made upon his poem and
himself? From an early date in the controversy three points seem to have
been very generally agreed upon: (1) That "Endymion" is (as Shelley
judiciously phrased it), "a poem considerably defective;" (2) that the
attacks upon it were, in essence, partly true, but so biassed--so keen
of scent after defects, and so dull of vision for beauties--as to be
practically unfair and perverse in a marked degree; and (3) that the
unfairness and perversity _quoad_ Keats were wilful devices of literary
and especially of political spite _quoad_ a knot of writers among whom
Leigh Hunt was the central figure. The question remains--In what spirit
did Keats meet his critics? Was he greatly distressed, or defiant and
retaliatory, or substantially indifferent?
Among the documents of Keats's life I find few records strictly
contemporary with the events themselves, serving to settle this point.
When the abuse of Z against Hunt began, Keats was indignant and
combative. He said in a letter which may belong to October 1817--
"There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the Edinburgh
magazine.... There has been but one number published--that on
Hunt, to which they have prefixed a motto by one Cornelius Webb,
'Poetaster,' who unfortunately was one of our party occasionally
at Hampstead, and took it into his head to write the following
(something about)--
'We'll talk on Wordsworth, Byron,
A theme we never tire on,'
and so forth till he came to Hunt and Keats. In the motto they
have put 'Hunt and Keats' in large letters. I have no doubt that
the second number was intended for me, but have hopes of its
non-appearance.... I don't mind the thing much; but, if he should
go to such lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must
infallibly call him to an account, if he be a human being, and
appears in squares and theatres where we might 'possibly meet.' I
don't relish his abuse."
It is worth observing also that, in a paper "On Kean as Richard Duke of
York" which Keats published on December 28, 1817, he wrote: "The English
people do not care one fig about Shakespeare, only as he flatters their
pride and their prejudices;... it is our firm opinion." If he thought
that English indifference to Shakespeare was of this degree of density,
he must surely have been prepared for a considerable amount of apathy in
relation to any poem by John Keats.
On October 9, 1818, just after the spiteful notices of himself in
_Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_ had appeared, and had been replied to in
_The Morning Chronicle_ by two correspondents signing J. S. and R. B.,
Keats wrote as follows to his publisher Mr. Hessey; and to treat the
affair in a more self-possessed, measured, and dignified spirit, would
not have been possible:--
"You are very good in sending me the letters from _The
Chronicle_, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a
kindness sooner; pray forgive me. It has so chanced that I have
had that paper every day. I have seen to-day's. I cannot but feel
indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the
rest, I begin to get a little 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 on
his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain
without comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or _The Quarterly_
could possibly 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."'[15] 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. But I am nigh getting into a
rant; so, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse, &c., I am
yours very sincerely,
"John Keats."
This letter, equally moderate and wide-reaching, proves conclusively
that Keats, at the time when he wrote it, treated depreciatory criticism
in exactly the right spirit; acknowledging that it was not without a
certain _raison d'etre_, but affirming that he could for himself see
much further and much deeper in the same direction, and in others as
well. On October 29, 1818, he wrote to his brother George:--
"Reynolds... persuades me to publish my 'Pot of Basil' as an
answer to the attack made on me in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and
_The Quarterly Review_.... I think I shall be among the English
poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest, the
attempt to crush me in _The Quarterly_ has only brought me more
into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, 'I
wonder _The Quarterly_ should cut its own throat.' It does me not
the least harm in society to make me appear little and
ridiculous. I know when a man is superior to me, and give him all
due respect; he will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the
rest, I feel that I make an impression upon them which ensures me
personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when
my back is turned.... The only thing that can ever affect me
personally for more than one short passing day is any doubt about
my powers for poetry. I seldom have any; and I look with hope to
the nighing time when I shall have none."
Towards December 1818 he wrote in a similarly contented strain to George
Keats and his wife: "You will be glad to hear that Gifford's attack upon
me has done me service; it has got my book among several _sets_." The
same letter mentions a sonnet, and a bank-note for L25 received from an
unknown admirer. However, the next letter to the same correspondents,
February 19, 1819, clearly attests some annoyance.
"My poem has not at all succeeded.... The reviewers have
enervated men's minds, and made them indolent; few think for
themselves. These reviews are getting more and more powerful,
especially _The Quarterly_. They are like a superstition which,
the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the
more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing
weakness. I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do
now) all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would
scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the
Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not care who
wins or who loses.... I have been at different times turning it
in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a
physician.... It is not worse than writing poems, and hanging
them up to be fly-blown in the Review shambles."
We find in Keats's letters nothing further about the criticisms; but,
when he replied in August 1820 to Shelley's first invitation to Italy,
he referred to "Endymion" itself: "I am glad you take any pleasure in my
poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if
possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation." We must
also take into account the publishers' advertisement (not Keats's own)
to the "Lamia" volume, saying of "Hyperion"--"The poem was intended to
have been of equal length with 'Endymion,' but the reception given to
that work discouraged the author from proceeding." It can scarcely be
supposed that the publishers printed this without Keats's express
sanction; yet he never assigned elsewhere any similar reason for
discontinuing "Hyperion," nor was "Hyperion" open to exception on any
such grounds as had been urged against "Endymion."
The earliest written reference which I can trace to any serious
despondency of Keats consequent upon the attacks of reviewers (if we
except a less strongly worded statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted
further on) is in a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually
send, to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_. It was written after
Shelley had seen the "Lamia" volume, and can hardly, I suppose, date
earlier than October 1820, two full years after the publication of the
_Quarterly_ (and also the _Blackwood_) tirades against "Endymion."
Shelley adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the _Quarterly_
critique, and then proceeds--
"Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this
review, which I am persuaded was not written with any intention
of producing the effect (to which it has at least greatly
contributed) of embittering his existence, and inducing a disease
from which there are now but faint hopes of his recovery. The
first effects are described to me to have resembled insanity, and
it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from
effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at
length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and
the usual process of consumption appears to have begun."
The informants of Shelley with regard to Keats's acute feelings and
distress were (it is stated) the Gisbornes, and possibly Leigh Hunt may
have confirmed them in some measure; but the Gisbornes knew nothing
directly of what had been taking place in England in or about the autumn
of 1818, and that which Hunt published regarding Keats is far from
corroborating so extreme a view of the facts. Later on Shelley received
from Mr. Gisborne a letter written by Colonel Finch, the date of which
would perhaps be in May 1821 (three months after the death of Keats).
This letter appears to have been one of his principal incentives for the
indignation expressed in the preface to "Adonais," but not in the poem
itself, which had been completed before Shelley saw the letter; and it
is remarkable that Colonel Finch's expressions, when one scrutinizes
them, do not really say anything about mental anguish caused to Keats by
any review, but only by ill-treatment of a different kind--seemingly
that of his brother George and others, as previously detailed. The
following is the only relevant passage: "He left his native shores by
sea in a merchant vessel for Naples, where he arrived, having received
no benefit during the passage, and brooding over the most melancholy and
mortifying reflections, and nursing a deeply-rooted disgust to life and
to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the very
persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe." Shelley
however put into print in the preface to "Adonais" the same view of the
blighting of Keats's life by the _Quarterly_ critique (he seems to have
known nothing of the _Blackwood_ scurrility), which had appeared in his
undespatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly_--
"The savage criticism on his 'Endymion' which appeared in _The
Quarterly Review_ produced the most violent effect on his
susceptible mind. The agitation thus originated ended in the
rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs. A rapid consumption
ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid
critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to
heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted.... Miserable man! you,
one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest
specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse
that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but used
none."
Thus far we have found no strong evidence (only assertions) that Keats
took greatly to heart the attacks upon him, whether in the _Quarterly_
or in _Blackwood_. Shelley seems to be the principal authority, and
Shelley, unless founding upon some adequate information, is next to no
authority at all. He had left England in March 1818, five months before
the earlier--printed in August--of these spiteful articles. Were there
nothing further, we should be more than well pleased to rally to the
opinion of Lord Houghton, who came to the conclusion that the idea of
Keats's extreme sensitiveness to criticism was a positive delusion--that
he paid little heed to it, and pursued his own course much as if no
reviewer had tried to be provoking. But there is, in fact, a direct
witness of high importance--Haydon. Haydon knew Keats very intimately,
and saw a great deal of him; he admired and loved him, and had a
vigorous, discerning insight into character and habit of mind, such as
makes his observations about all sorts of men substantial testimony and
first-rate reading. He took forcible views of many things, and sometimes
exaggerated views: but, when he attributed to Keats a particular mood of
feeling, I should find it very difficult to think that he was either
unfairly biassed or widely mistaken. In his reminiscences proper to the
year 1817-18 occurs the following passage:--
"The assaults on Hunt in _Blackwood_ at this time, under the
signature of Z, were incessant. Who Z was nobody knew, but I
myself strongly suspect him to have been Terry the actor. Leigh
Hunt had exasperated Terry by neglecting to notice his theatrical
efforts. Terry was a friend of Sir Walter's, shared keenly his
political hatreds, and was also most intimate with the Blackwood
party, which had begun a course of attacks on all who showed the
least liberalism of thinking, or who were praised by or known to
_The Examiner_. Hunt had addressed a sonnet to me. This was
enough: we were taken to be of the same clique of rebels,
rascals, and reformers, who were supposed to support that
production of so much power and talent. On Keats the effect was
melancholy. He became morbid and silent; would call and sit
whilst I was painting, for hours, without speaking a word."
This counts for something--not very much. But another passage forming an
entry in Haydon's diary, written on March 29, 1821, perhaps as soon as
he had heard of Keats's death, carries the matter much further--
"He began life full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, and ungovernable,
expecting the world to fall at once beneath his powers. Poor
fellow! his genius had no sooner begun to bud than hatred and
malice spat their poison on its leaves, and, sensitive and young,
it shrivelled beneath their effusions. Unable to bear the sneers
of ignorance or the attacks of envy, not having strength of mind
enough to buckle himself together like a porcupine and present
nothing but his prickles to his enemies, he began to despond, and
flew to dissipation as a relief, which, after a temporary
elevation of spirits, plunged him into deeper despondency than
ever. For six weeks he was scarcely sober, and (to show what a
man does to gratify his appetites when once they get the better
of him) once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could
reach with cayenne pepper in order to appreciate the 'delicious
coldness[16] of claret in all its glory'--his own expression."
Immediately afterwards, April 21, 1821, Haydon wrote a letter to Miss
Mitford, repeating, with some verbal variations, what is said above, and
adding several other particulars concerning Keats. The opening phrase
runs thus: "Keats was a victim to personal abuse, and want of nerve to
bear it. Ought he to have sunk in that way because a few quizzers told
him that he was an apothecary's apprentice?" And further on--"I
remonstrated on his absurd dissipation, but to no purpose." The reader
will observe that this dissipation, six weeks of insobriety, is alleged
to have occurred after Keats "began to despond." The precise time when
he began to despond is not defined, but we may suppose it to have been
in the late autumn of 1818. If so, it was much about the same period
when he first made Miss Brawne's acquaintance.
It is true that Mr. Cowden Clarke, when he published certain
"Recollections" in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ in 1874, strongly
contested these statements of Haydon's; he disbelieved the cayenne
pepper and the dissipation, and had "never perceived in Keats even a
tendency to imprudent indulgence." The "Recollections" were afterwards
reproduced as a volume, and in the volume the confutation of Haydon
disappeared; whether because Clarke had eventually changed his opinion,
or for what other reason, I am unable to say. Anyhow, Haydon's evidence
remains; it relates to a period of Keats's life when Haydon no doubt saw
him much oftener than Clarke did, and we must observe that he refers to
"Keats's own expression" as to the claret ensuing after the cayenne
pepper, and affirms that he himself remonstrated in vain against the
"dissipation," which means apparently excess in drinking alone.
To advert to what Lord Byron wrote about Keats as having been killed by
_The Quarterly Review_ is hardly worth while. His first reference to the
subject is in a letter to Mr. Murray (publisher of _The Quarterly_)
dated April 26, 1821. In this he expressly names Shelley as his
informant, and with Shelley as an authority for the allegation I have
already dealt.
There are two writings of Leigh Hunt in which the question of Keats and
his critics is touched upon. The first is the review, August 1820, of
the "Lamia" volume. In speaking of the "Ode to a Nightingale" he says--
"The poem will be the more striking to the reader when he
understands, what we take a friend's liberty in telling him, that
the author's powerful mind has for some time past been inhabiting
a sickened and shaken body; and that in the meanwhile it has had
to contend with feelings that make a fine nature ache for its
species, even when it would disdain to do so for itself--we mean
critical malignity, that unhappy envy which would wreak its own
tortures upon others, especially upon those that really feel for
it already."
Hunt's posthumous Memoir of Keats was first published in 1828. He refers
to the attack in _Blackwood_ upon himself and upon Keats, and says: "I
little suspected, as I did afterwards, that the hunters had struck him;
that a delicate organization, which already anticipated a premature
death, made him feel his ambition thwarted by these fellows; and that
the very impatience of being impatient was resented by him and preyed on
his mind." Hunt also says regarding Byron--"I told him he was mistaken
in attributing Keats's death to the critics, though they had perhaps
hastened and certainly embittered it."
Another item of evidence may be cited. It is from a letter written by
George Keats to Mr. Dilke in April 1824, and refers to the insolences of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. George, it will be remembered, was already out
of England before the articles appeared in _Blackwood_ and in _The
Quarterly_, and he only saw a little of John Keats at the close of the
ensuing year, 1819. "_Blackwood's Magazine_ has fallen into my hands. I
could have walked 100 miles to have dirked him _a l'Americaine_ for his
cruelly associating John in the Cockney School, and other
blackguardisms. Such paltry ridicule will have wounded deeper than the
severest criticisms, particularly as he regarded what is called the
cockneyism of the coterie with so much disgust. He either knew John
well, and touched him in the tenderest place purposely; or knew nothing
of him, and supposed he went all lengths with the set in their festering
opinions and cockney affectations." And from a later letter dated in
April 1825: "After all, _Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_, associated with
our family disease, consumption, were ministers of death sufficiently
venomous, cruel, and deadly, to have consigned one of less sensibility
to a premature grave.... John was the very soul of courage and
manliness, and as much like the Holy Ghost as 'Johnny Keats.'"
The evidence of latest date on this subject (there is none such in
Severn's correspondence[17]) is that of Cowden Clarke. In his
"Recollections," already mentioned, he refers to the attacks upon Keats,
having his eye, it would seem, rather upon those in _Blackwood_ than in
_The Quarterly_, and he remarks: "To say that these disgusting
misrepresentations did not affect the consciousness and self-respect of
Keats would be to under-rate the sensitiveness of his nature. He did
feel and resent the insult, but far more the _injustice_ of the
treatment he had received. They no doubt 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."
I have now given all the evidence at first or second hand which seems to
be producible on that much-vexed question--Was Keats (to adopt Byron's
phrase) "snuffed out by an article"? The upshot appears to me to be as
follows. In his inmost mind Keats was from first to last raised very far
above that level where the petty gales of review-criticism blow, puffing
out the canvas of feeble reputations, and fraying that of strong ones.
Nevertheless he was sensitive to derisive criticism, and more especially
to personal ridicule, and even (as Haydon records) gave way to his
feelings of irritation with reckless and culpable self-abandonment. This
passed off partially, and would have passed off entirely--it has left in
his letters no trace worth mentioning, and in his poetry no trace at
all, other than that of executive power braced up to do constantly
better and yet better; but then, about a year and a half after the
reviews, supervened his fatal illness (which cannot be reasonably
supposed to have had its root in any critiques), and all the heartache
of his unsatisfied love. This last formed the real agony of his waning
life: it must have been reinforced to some extent by resentment against
a mode of reviewing which would contribute to the thwarting of his
poetic ambition, and make him go down into the grave with a "name writ
in water;" but the reviews themselves counted for very little in the
last wrestlings of his spirit with death and nothingness. By general
constitution of mind few men were less adapted than Keats for being
"snuffed out by an article," or more certain to snuff one out and leave
all its ill-savour to its scribe.