We have seen what John Keats did in the shifting scene of the world, and
in the high arena of poesy; we have seen what were the qualities of
character and of mind which enabled him to bear his part in each. His
work as a poet is to us the thing of primary importance: and it remains
for us to consider what this poetic work amounts to in essence and in
detail. The critic who _is_ a critic--and not a _Quarterly_ or a
_Blackwood_ reviewer or lampooner--is well aware of the disproportion
between his power of estimation, and the demand which such a genius as
that of Keats, and such work as the maturest which he produced, make
upon the estimating faculty. But this consideration cannot be allowed to
operate beyond a certain point: the estimate has to be given--and given
candidly and distinctly, however imperfectly. I shall therefore proceed
to express my real opinion of Keats's poems, whether an admiring opinion
or otherwise; and shall write without reiterating--what I may
nevertheless feel--a sense of the presumption involved in such a
process. I shall in the main, as in previous chapters, follow the
chronological order of the poems.
As we have seen, Keats began versifying chiefly under a Spenserean
influence; and it has been suggested that this influence remained
puissant for harm as well as for good up to the close of his poetic
career. I do not see much force in the suggestion: unless in this
limited sense--that Spenser, like other Elizabethan and Jacobean poets
his successors, allowed himself very considerable latitude in saying
whatever came into his head, relevant or irrelevant, appropriate or
jarring, obvious or far-fetched, simple or grandiose, according to the
mood of the moment and the swing of composition, and thus the whole
strain presents an aspect more of rich and arbitrary picturesqueness
than of ordered suavity. And Keats no doubt often did the same: but not
in the choicest productions of his later time, nor perhaps so much under
incitement from Spenser as in pursuance of that revolt from a factitious
and constrained model of work in which Wordsworth in one direction,
Coleridge in another, and Leigh Hunt in a third, had already come
forward with practice and precept. Making allowance for a few early
attempts directly referable to Spenser, I find, even in Keats's first
volume, little in which that influence is paramount. He seems to have
written because his perceptions were quick, his sympathies vivid in
certain directions, and his energies wound up to poetic endeavour. The
mannerisms of thought, method, and diction, are much more those of Hunt
than of Spenser; and it is extremely probable that the soreness against
Hunt which Keats evidenced at a later period was due to his perceiving
that that kindly friend and genial literary ally had misled him into
some poetic trivialities and absurdities, not less than to anything in
himself which could be taken hold of for complaint.
Keats's first volume would present nothing worthy of permanent memory,
were it not for his after achievements, and for the single sonnet upon
Chapman's Homer. Several of the compositions are veritable rubbish:
probably Keats knew at the time that they were not good, and knew soon
afterwards that they were deplorably bad. Such are the address "To Some
Ladies" who had sent the author a shell; that "On Receiving a Curious
Shell and a Copy of Verses [Moore's "Golden Chain"] from the same
Ladies;" the "Ode to Apollo" (in which Homer, Virgil, Milton,
Shakespeare, Spenser, and Tasso, are commemorated); the "Hymn to
Apollo;" the lines "To Hope" (in which there is a patriotic aspiration,
mingled with scorn for the gauds of a Court). "Calidore" has a certain
boyish ardour, clearly indicated if not well expressed. The verses "I
stood tiptoe upon a little hill" are very far from good, and are stuffed
with affectations, but do nevertheless show a considerable spice of the
real Keats. Some lines have already been quoted from this effusion,
about "flowery nests," and "the pillowy silkiness that rests full in the
speculation of the stars." It is only by an effort that we can attach
any meaning to either of these childish Della-Cruscanisms: the "pillowy
silkiness" may perhaps be clouds intermingled with stars, and the
"flowery nests" may, by a great wrenching of English, be meant for
"flowery nooks"--nests or nooks of flowers. "Sleep and Poetry" contains
various fine lines, telling and suggestive images, and luscious
descriptive snatches, and is interesting as showing the bent of the
writer's mind, and a sense of his mission begun. Serious metrical flaws
are perceptible in it here and there, and throughout this first volume
of verse--and indeed in "Endymion" as well. One metrical weakness of
which he never got rid is the accenting of the preterite or participial
form "ed" (in such words as "resolved," &c.), where its sound ekes out
with feeble stress the prosody of a line. Two songs which have genuine
lyric grace--dated in 1817, but not included in the volume of
"Poems"--are those which begin "Think not of it, sweet one, so," and
"Unfelt, unheard, unseen." The volume contains sixteen sonnets, besides
the grand one on "Chapman's Homer." The best are those which begin "Keen
fitful gusts are whispering here and there," and "Happy is England," and
the "Grasshopper and Cricket," which was written in competition with
Hunt. It seems to me that Keats's production has more of poetry, Hunt's
of finish. The sonnet "On leaving some friends at an early hour" is
characteristic enough. This is as much detail as need be given here to
the "Poems" of 1817. The sonnet on Chapman's Homer revealed a hand which
might easily prove to be a master's. All else was prentice-work, with
some melody, some richness and freshness, some independence, much
enthusiasm; also many solecisms and perversities of diction, imagery,
and method: and not a few pieces were included which only self-conceit,
or torpor of the critical faculty, or the mis-persuasion of friends,
could have allowed to pass muster. But Keats chose to publish--to
exhibit his poetic identity at this stage and in this guise; and of
course we can see, in the light of his after-work, that the experiment
was rather a rash forestalling than a positive mistake.
There are a few other sonnets which Keats wrote in 1817, or, in general
terms, between the publishing dates of the "Poems" volume and of
"Endymion." Those "On a Picture of Leander," and "On the Sea," and the
one which begins "After dark vapours have oppressed our plains," rank
among the best of his juvenile productions. A general observation,
applicable to all the early work, whether printed at the time or
unprinted, is that the ideas are constantly _expressed_ in an imperfect
way. There are perceptions, thoughts, and emotions; but the vehicle of
words is, as a rule, huddled and approximate.
"Endymion" now claims our attention. I believe that no better criticism
of "Endymion" has ever been written than that which Shelley supplied in
a letter dated in September 1819. Certainly no criticism which is
equally short is also equally good. I therefore extract it here, and
shall have little to say about the poem which is not potentially
condensed into Shelley's brief utterance. "I have read Keats's poem," he
wrote: "much praise is due to me for having read it, the author's
intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end
of it. Yet it is full of some of the highest and the finest gleams of
poetry; indeed, everything seems to be viewed by the mind of a poet
which is described in it. I think if he had printed about fifty pages of
fragments from it I should have been led to admire Keats as a poet more
than I ought, of which there is now no danger." In July 1820 Shelley
wrote to Keats himself on the subject, furnishing almost the only
addendum which could have been needed to the preceding remarks: "I have
lately read your 'Endymion' again, and even with a new sense of the
treasures of poetry it contains, though treasures poured forth with
indistinct profusion." As Shelley shared with Gifford the conviction
that it is difficult to read "Endymion" from book 1, line 1, to book 4,
line 1003, and as human nature has not changed essentially since the
time of that pre-eminent poet and that rather less eminent critic, I
daresay that there are at this day several Keats-enthusiasts who know
_in foro conscientiae_, though they may not avow in public, that they
have left "Endymion" unread, or only partially read. Others have perused
it, but have found in it so much "indistinct profusion" that they also
remain after a while with rather a vague impression of the course of the
story; although they agree with Gifford, and even exceed him in the
assurance, that "it seems to be mythological, and probably relates to
the loves of Diana and Endymion." As the poem is an extremely important
one in relation to the life-work of Keats, I think it may not be out of
place if I here give a succinct account of what the narrative really
amounts to. This may be all the more desirable as Keats has not followed
the convenient if prosaic practice of several other epic poets by
prefixing to the several books of his long poem an "argument" of their
respective contents.
_Book 1._ On a lawn within a forest upon a slope of Mount Latmos was
held one morning a festival to Pan. The young huntsman-chieftain
Endymion attended, but his demeanour betrayed a secret preoccupation
and trouble. After the rites were over, his sister Peona addressed him,
and gradually won him to open his heart to her. He told her that at a
certain spot by the river, one of his favourite haunts, he had lately
seen a sudden efflorescence of dittany and poppies (the flowers sacred
to Diana). He fell asleep there, and had a dream or vision of entering
the gates of heaven, seeing the moon in transcendent splendour, and then
being accosted by a woman or goddess lovely beyond words, who pressed
his hand. He seemed to faint, and to be upborne into the upper regions
of the sky, where he gave the beauty a rapturous kiss, and then they
both paused upon a mountain-side. Next he dreamed that he fell asleep.
This was the prelude to his actual waking out of the vision. Ever since
he had retained a mysterious sense that the dream had not been all a
dream. This was confirmed by various incidents of obscure suggestion,
and especially by his hearing in a cavern the words (we have read them
already, beslavered by the "human serpentry" of criticism, but they
remain delicious words none the less)--
"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."
As nothing further, however, had happened, Endymion promised Peona that
he would henceforth cease to live a life of feverish expectation, and
would resume the calm tenor of his days.
_Book 2._--Endymion's promise had not been strictly fulfilled; he was
still restless and craving. One day he plucked a rosebud: it suddenly
blossomed, and a butterfly emerged from it, with strangely-charactered
wings. He pursued the butterfly, which led him to a fountain by a
cavern, and then disappeared. A naiad thereupon addressed him, saying
that he must wander far before he could be reunited to his mystic fair
one. He then appealed to the moon-goddess for some aid, was rapt into a
dizzy vision as if he were sailing through heaven in her car, and heard
a voice from the cavern bidding him descend into the entrails of the
earth. He eagerly obeyed, and passed through a region of twilight
dimness starred with gems, until he reached a natural temple enshrining
a statue of Diana. An awful sense of solitude weighed upon him, and he
implored the goddess to restore him to his earthly home. A profusion of
flowers budded forth before his feet, followed by music as he resumed
his journey. At last he came to a verdant space, peopled with slumbering
Cupids. Here in a beautiful chamber he found Adonis lying tranced on a
couch, attended by other Cupids.[18] One of them gave him wine and
fruit, and explained to him the winter-sleep and summer-life of Adonis;
and at this moment Adonis woke up from his trance, and Venus came to
solace him with love. Venus spoke soothingly also to Endymion, telling
him that she knew of his love for some one of the immortals, but who
this was she had failed to fathom. She promised that one day he should
be blessed, and with Adonis she then rose heavenward in her car. The
earth closed, and Endymion gladly pursued his way through caves, jewels,
and water-springs. Cybele passed on her lion-drawn chariot. The diamond
path ended in middle air; Endymion invoked Jupiter, an eagle swooped and
bore him down through darkness into a mossy jasmine-bower. With a sense
of ecstasy, chequered by an unsatisfied longing for his unknown love,
Endymion prepared himself to sleep:
"And, just into the air
Stretching his indolent arms, he took, O bliss!
A naked waist. 'Fair Cupid, whence is this?'
A well-known voice sighed, 'Sweetest, here am I!'"
The lovers indulged their passion in kisses and caresses; he urgent to
know who she might be, and she confessing herself a goddess hitherto
awful in loveless chastity, but not naming herself, though perhaps her
avowals were sufficiently indicative,[19] and she promised to exalt him
ere long to Olympus. The rapturous interview ended with the sleep of
Endymion, and awaking he found himself alone. He strayed out, and
reached an enormous grotto. Two springs of water gushed forth--the
springs of Arethusa and Alpheus, whose loves found voice in words.
Endymion, sending up a prayer for their union, stepped forward and found
himself beneath the sea.
_Book 3._ Soothed by a moonbeam which greeted him through the waters,
Endymion pursued his course. Upon a rock within the sea he encountered
an old, old man, with wand and book. The ancient man started up as from
a trance, declaring that he should now be young again and happy. This
was Glaucus, who imparted to Endymion the story of his ill-omened love
for Scylla (it is told at considerable length, but need not be detailed
here), the witchcraft of Circe which had doomed him to a ghastly marine
life of a thousand years, and how, after a shipwreck, he came into
possession of a book of magic, which revealed to him that at some
far-off day a youth should make his appearance and break the accursed
spell. In Endymion, Glaucus recognized the predicted youth. Glaucus then
led Endymion to an edifice in which he had preserved the corpse of
Scylla, and thousands of other corpses, being those of lovers who had
been shipwrecked during his many cycles of sea-dwelling doom. Glaucus
tore his scroll into fragments, bound his cloak round Endymion, and
waved his wand nine times. He then instructed Endymion to unwind a
tangled thread, read the markings on a shell, break the wand against a
lyre, and strew the fragments of the scroll upon Glaucus himself, and
upon the dead bodies. As the final act was performed, Glaucus resumed
his youth, and Scylla and the drowned lovers returned to life. The whole
joyous company then rushed off, and paid their devotions to Neptune in
his palace. Cupid and Venus were also present here; and the goddess of
love spoke words of comfort to Endymion, assuring him that his long
expectancy would soon find its full reward. She had by this time probed
the secret of Diana, but she refrained from naming that deity to
Endymion. She invited him and his bride to pass a portion of their
honeymoon in Cythera,[20] with Adonis and Cupid. A stupendous festival
in Neptune's palace succeeded. Endymion finally sank down in a trance;
Nereids conveyed him up to a forest by a lake; and as he floated
earthwards he heard in dream words promising that his goddess would soon
waft him up into heaven. He awoke in the sylvan scene.
_Book 4._ The first sound that Endymion heard was a female voice; the
wail of a damsel who had followed Bacchus from the banks of the Ganges,
and who longed to be at home again, if only to die there. Unseen
himself, he saw a beautiful girl, who lay bemoaning her loveless lot. He
at once felt that, if he adored his unknown goddess, he loved also his
Indian Bacchante. He sprang forward and declared his passion.[21] She,
after chaunting her long journeyings in the train of Bacchus, explained
that, being sick-hearted and weary, she had strayed away in the forest,
and was now but the votary of sorrow. Endymion continued to woo her with
sweet words and hot: he heard a dismal voice, "Woe to Endymion!" echoing
through the forest. Mercury descended and touched the ground with his
wand, and two winged horses sprang out of the earth. Endymion seated his
Bacchante upon one horse and mounted the other; they flew upward,
eagle-high. In the air they passed Sleep, who had heard a report that a
mortal was to wed a daughter of Jove, and who desired to hearken to the
marriage ditties before he returned to his cave. The influence of Sleep
made the winged horses drowse, and also Endymion and the Bacchante.
Endymion then dreamed of being in heaven, the mate of gods and
goddesses, Diana among them. In dream he sprang towards Diana, and so
awoke; but awake he still saw the same vision. Diana was there in
heaven; his Bacchante was beside him lying on the horse's pinions. He
kissed the Bacchante, and almost in the same breath protested to Diana
his unshaken constancy. The Bacchante then awoke. Endymion, dazed in
mind with his divided allegiance, urged her to be gone, and the winged
horses resumed their flight. They advanced towards the galaxy, the moon
peeped out of the sky, the Bacchante faded away in the moonbeams. Her
steed dropped down to the earth; while the one which bore Endymion
continued mounting upwards, and he again fell into a sort of trance. He
heard not the celestial messengers bespeaking guests to Diana's wedding.
The winged horse then carried Endymion down to a hill-top. Here once
more he found his beautiful Indian, and for her sake forswore all
praeterhuman passion. She, however, declared to him that a divine terror
forbade her to be his. His sister Peona now re-appeared. She rallied him
and the Bacchante on their love and melancholy, both equally obvious,
and bade him attend at night a festival to Diana, whom the soothsayers
had pronounced to be in a mood peculiarly propitious. Endymion announced
his resolution to abandon the world, and live an eremitic life: Peona
and the fair Indian should both be his sisters. The Indian vowed
lifelong chastity, devoted to Diana. Both the women then retired. The
day passed over Endymion motionless and mute. At eventide he walked
towards the temple: he heeded not the hymning to Diana. Peona,
companioned by the Indian damsel, accosted him. He replied, "Sister, I
would have command, if it were heaven's will, on our sad fate." The
Indian replied that this he should assuredly have; as she spoke she
changed semblance, and stood revealed as Diana herself. She laid upon
her own fears and upon fate the blame of past delays, and told Endymion
that it had also been fitting that he should be spiritualized out of
mortality by some unlooked-for change. As Endymion kneeled and kissed
her hands, they both vanished away. The last words of the poem are--
"Peona went
Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment:"
words which may perhaps be modelled upon the grave and subdued
conclusion of "Paradise Lost."
This is a bald outline of the thread of story which meanders through
that often-skimmed, seldom-read, not easily readable poem--in snatches
alluring, in entirety disheartening--the "Endymion" of Keats. It will be
perceived that the poet keeps throughout tolerably close to his main and
professed subject matter--the loves of Diana and Endymion, although the
episode of Glaucus, which is brought within the compass of the amorous
quest, is certainly a very long and extraneous one. As we have seen,
Keats, when well advanced with this poem, spoke of it as a test of his
inventive faculty: and truly it is such, but I am not sure that his
inventive faculty has come extremely well out of the ordeal. The best
part which invention could take in such an attempt would be a vigorous,
sane, and adequate conception of the imaginable relation between a
loving goddess and her human lover; her emotion towards him, and his
emotion towards her; and his ultimate semi-spiritualized and semi-human
mode of existence in the divine conclave; along with a chain of
incidents--partly of mythologic tradition, partly the poet's own--which
should illustrate these essential elements of the legend, and take
possession of the reader's mind, for their own sake at the moment, and
for the sake of the main conception as ultimate result. Of all this we
find little in Keats's poem. Diana figures as a very willing woman,
passing out of the stage of maidenly coyness. Endymion talks indeed at
times of the exaltation of a passion transcending the bounds of
mortality, but his conduct and demeanour go little beyond those of an
adventurous lover of the knight-errant sort who, having taken the first
leap in the dark, follows where Fortune leads him--and assuredly she
leads him a very curious dance, where one cannot make out how his human
organism, with respirative and digestive processes, continues to exist.
Moreover, the last book of the poem spoils all that has preceded, so far
as continuity of feeling is concerned; for here we learn that no sooner
does Endymion see a pretty Indian Bacchante than he falls madly in love
with her, and casts to the winds every shred and thought of Diana,
already his bride or quasi-bride; she goes out like a cloud-veiled
glimpse of moonlight. True, the Bacchante is in fact Diana herself; but
of this Endymion knows nothing at all, and he deliberately--or rather
with fatuous precipitancy--gives up the glorious goddess for the
sentimental and beguiling wine-bibber. Diana, when she re-assumes her
proper person, has not a word of reproach to level at him. This may
possibly be true to the nature of a goddess--it is certainly not so to
that of a woman; and it is the only crisis at which she shows herself
different from womanhood--shall we say superior to it?
In another and minor sense there is no lack of invention in this Poetic
Romance. So far as I know, there is nothing in Grecian mythology
furnishing a nucleus for the incidents of Endymion's descending into the
bowels of the earth, passing thence beneath the sea, meeting Glaucus,
and restoring to life the myriads of drowned lovers, encountering the
Indian Bacchante, and taking with her an aerial voyage upon winged
coursers. These incidents--except indeed that of the Bacchante--are
passing strange, and could not be worked out in a long narrative poem
without a lavish command of fanciful and surprising touches. The tale
of the aerial voyage seems abortive; its natural _raison d'etre_ and
needful sequel would appear to be that Diana, having thus launched
Endymion along with herself into the heavenly regions, should bear him
straight onward to the high court of the gods; but, instead of that, the
horses and their riders return to earth, the air has been traversed to
no purpose and with no ostensible result, and Endymion is allowed again
to forswear Diana for the Bacchante before the consummation is reached.
Presumably Morpheus (Sleep) is responsible for this mishap. His untoward
presence in the sky sent the Bacchante, as well as Endymion, to sleep
for awhile: when they awoke, Diana had to leave the form of the
Bacchante, and, in her character of Phoebe, regulate the nascent moon;
though a goddess, she could not be in two places at once, and so the
winged horses descended _re infecta_. This is an ingenious point of
incident enough; but it is just one of those points which indicate that
the poet's mind moved in a region of scintillating details rather than
of large and majestic contours.
Such is in fact the quality of "Endymion" throughout. Everything is done
for the sake of variegation and embroidery of the original fabric; or we
might compare it to a richly-shot silk which, at every rustling
movement, catches the eye with a change of colour. Constant as they are,
the changes soon become fatiguing, and in effect monotonous; one colour,
varied with its natural light and shade, would be more restful to the
sight, and would even, in the long run, leave a sense of greater,
because more congruous and harmonized, variety. Luscious and luxuriant
in intention--for I cannot suppose that Keats aimed at being exalted or
ideal--the poem becomes mawkish in result: he said so himself, and we
need not hesitate to repeat it. Affectations, conceits, and puerilities,
abound, both in thought and in diction: however willing to be pleased,
the reader is often disconcerted and provoked. The number of clever
things said cleverly, of rich things richly, and of fine things finely,
is however abundant and superabundant; and no one who peruses "Endymion"
with a true sense for poetic endowment and handling can fail to see that
it is peculiarly the work of a poet. The versification, though far from
faultless, is free, surging, and melodious--one of the devices which the
author most constantly employs with a view to avoiding jogtrot
uniformity being that of beginning a new sentence with the second line
of a couplet. On every page the poet has enjoyed himself, and on most of
them the reader can joy as well. The lyrical interludes, especially the
hymn to Pan, and the chaunt of the Bacchante (which comprises a sort of
verse-transcript of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne"), are singularly
wealthy in that fancy which hovers between description and emotion. The
hymn to Pan was pronounced by Wordsworth, _viva voce_, to be "a pretty
piece of paganism"--a comment which annoyed Keats not a little. Shelley
(in his undispatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_)
pointed out, as particularly worthy of attention, the passages--"And
then the forest told it in a dream" (book ii.); "The rosy veils mantling
the East" (book iii.); and "Upon a weeded rock this old man sat" (book
iii.) The last--relating to Glaucus and his pictured cloak--is
certainly remarkable; the other two, I should say, not more remarkable
than scores of others--as indeed Shelley himself implied.
To sum up, "Endymion" is an essentially poetical poem, which sins, and
greatly or even grossly does it sin, by youthful indiscipline and by
excess. To deny these blemishes would be childish--they are there, and
must be not only admitted, but resented. The faults, like the beauties,
of the poem, are positive--not negative or neutral. The work was in fact
(as Keats has already told us) a venture of an experimental kind. At the
age of twenty-one to twenty-two he had a mind full of poetic material;
he turned out his mind into this poetic romance, conscious that, if some
things came right, others would come wrong. We are the richer for his
rather overweening experiment; we are not to ignore its conditions, nor
its partial failure, but we have to thank him none the less. If "a thing
of beauty is a joy for ever," a thing of alloyed beauty is a joy in its
minor degree.
The next long poem of Keats--"Isabella, or the Pot of Basil"--is a vast
advance on "Endymion" in sureness of hand and moderation of work: it is
in all respects the better poem, and justifies what Keats said (in his
letter of October 9, 1818, quoted in our Chapter v.) of the experience
which he was sure to gain by the adventurous plunge he had made in
"Endymion." Of course it was a less arduous attempt; the subject being
one of directly human passion, the story ready-furnished to him by
Boccaccio, and the narrative much briefer. Except in altering the
locality from Messina to Florence (a change which seems objectless),
Keats has adhered faithfully enough to the sweet and sad story of
Boccaccio; he has however amplified it much in detail, for the Italian
tale is a short one. "Isabella" has always been a favourite with the
readers of Keats, and deservedly so; it is tender, touching, and
picturesque. Yet I should not place it in the very first rank of the
poet's works--the treatment seems to me at once more ambitious and less
masculine than is needed. The writer seems too conscious that he has set
himself to narrating something pathetic; he tells the story _ab extra_,
and enlarges on "the pity of it," instead of leaving the pity to speak
to the heart out of the very circumstances themselves. The brothers may
have been "ledger-men" and "money-bags" (Boccaccio does not insist upon
any such phase of character), and they certainly became criminals,
though the Italian author treats their murder of Lorenzo as if it were a
sufficiently obvious act in vindication of the family honour; but, when
Keats "again asks aloud" why these commercial brothers were proud, he
seems to intrude upon us overmuch the personality of the narrator of a
tragic story, and pounds away at his text like a pulpiteer. This is only
one instance of the flaw which runs through the poem--that it is all
told as with a direct appeal to the reader to be sympathetic--indignant
now, and now compassionate. Leigh Hunt has pointed out the absurdity of
putting into the mouth of one of the brother "money-bags," just as they
are about to execute their plot for murdering Lorenzo, the lines (though
he praises the pretty conceit in itself)--
"Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count
His dewy rosary on the eglantine."
The author's invocation to Melancholy, Music, Echo, Spirits in grief,
and Melpomene, to condole the approaching death of Isabella, seems to me
a _fadeur_ hardly more appropriate than the money-bag's epigram upon the
"dewy rosary." But the reader is probably tired of my qualifying clauses
for the admiration with which he regards "The Pot of Basil." He thinks
it both beautiful and pathetic--and so do I.
"Isabella" is written in the octave stanza; "The Eve of St. Agnes" in
the Spenserean. This difference of metre corresponds very closely to the
difference of character between the two poems. "Isabella" is a narrative
poem of event and passion, in which the incidents are presented so as
chiefly to subserve purposes of sentiment; "The Eve of St. Agnes,"
though it assumes a narrative form, is hardly a narrative, but rather a
monody of dreamy richness, a pictured and scenic presentment, which
sentiment again permeates and over-rules. I rate it far above
"Isabella"--and indeed above all those poems of Keats, not purely
lyrical, in which human or quasi-human agents bear their part, except
only the ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and the uncompleted "Eve of
St. Mark." "Hyperion" stands aloof in lonely majesty; but I think that,
in the long run, even "Hyperion" represents the genius of Keats less
adequately, and past question less characteristically, than "The Eve of
St. Agnes." The story of this fascinating poem is so meagre as to be
almost nugatory. There is nothing in it but this--that Keats took hold
of the superstition proper to St. Agnes' Eve, the power of a maiden to
see her absent lover under certain conditions, and added to it that a
lover, who was clandestinely present in this conjuncture of
circumstances, eloped with his mistress. This extreme tenuity of
constructive power in the poem, coupled with the rambling excursiveness
of "Endymion," and the futility of "The Cap and Bells," might be held to
indicate that Keats had very little head for framing a story--and indeed
I infer that, if he possessed any faculty in that direction, it remained
undeveloped up to the day of his death. One of the few subsidiary
incidents introduced into "The Eve of St. Agnes" is that the lover
Porphyro, on emerging from his hiding-place while his lady is asleep,
produces from a cupboard and marshals to sight a large assortment of
appetizing eatables. Why he did this no critic and no admirer has yet
been able to divine; and the incident is so trivial in itself, and is
made so much of for the purpose of verbal or metrical embellishment, as
to reinforce our persuasion that Keats's capacity for framing a story
out of successive details of a suggestive and self-consistent kind was
decidedly feeble. The power of "The Eve of St. Agnes" lies in a wholly
different direction. It lies in the delicate transfusion of sight and
emotion into sound; in making pictures out of words, or turning words
into pictures; of giving a visionary beauty to the closest items of
description; of holding all the materials of the poem in a long-drawn
suspense of music and reverie. "The Eve of St. Agnes" is _par
excellence_ the poem of "glamour." It means next to nothing; but means
that little so exquisitely, and in so rapt a mood of musing or of
trance, that it tells as an intellectual no less than a sensuous
restorative. Perhaps no reader has ever risen from "The Eve of St.
Agnes" dissatisfied. After a while he can question the grounds of his
satisfaction, and may possibly find them wanting; but he has only to
peruse the poem again, and the same spell is upon him.
"The Eve of St. Mark" was begun at much the same date as "The Eve of St.
Agnes," rather the earlier of the two. Its relation to other poems by
the author is singular. In "Endymion" he had been a prodigal of
treasures--some of them genuine, others spurious; in "The Eve of St.
Agnes" he was at least opulent, a magnate superior to sumptuary laws;
but in "The Eve of St. Mark" he subsides into a delightful simplicity--a
simplicity full, certainly, of "favour and prettiness," but chary of
ornament. It comes perfectly natural to him, and promises the most
charming results. The non-completion of "The Eve of St. Mark" is the
greatest grievance of which the admirers of Keats have to complain. I
should suppose that, in the first instance, he advisedly postponed the
eve of one saint, Mark, to the eve of the other, Agnes; and that he did
not afterwards find a convenient opportunity for resuming the
uncompleted poem. The superstition connected with St. Mark's vigil is
not wholly unlike that pertaining to St. Agnes's. In the former instance
(I quote from Dante Rossetti), "it is believed that, if a person placed
himself near the church porch when twilight was thickening, he would
behold the apparition of those persons in the parish who were to be
seized with any severe disease that year go into the church. If they
remained there, it signified their death; if they came out again, it
portended their recovery; and, the longer or shorter the time they
remained in the building, the severer or less dangerous their illness."
The same writer, forecasting the probable course of the story,[22]
surmised that "the heroine, remorseful after trifling with a sick and
now absent lover, might make her way to the minster porch to learn his
fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not return." If
this was really to have been the sequel, we can perceive that the
unassuming simplicity of the poem at its commencement would, ere its
close, have deepened into a different sort of simplicity--emotional, and
even tragic. As it stands, the simplicity of "The Eve of St. Mark" is
full-blooded as well as quaint--there is nothing starved or threadbare
about it. Diverse though it is from Coleridge's "Christabel," we seem to
feel in it something of the like possessing or haunting quality,
modified by Keats's own distinctive genius. In this respect, and in
perfectness of touch, we link it with "La Belle Dame sans Merci."
"Hyperion" has next to be considered. This was the only poem by Keats
which Shelley admired in an extreme degree. He wrote at different dates:
"The fragment called 'Hyperion' promises for him that he is destined to
become one of the first writers of the age.... It is certainly an
astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I
confess I had not before.... If the 'Hyperion' be not grand poetry, none
has been produced by our contemporaries.... The great proportion of this
piece is surely in the very highest style of poetry." Byron, who had
been particularly virulent against Keats during his lifetime, wrote
after his death a much more memorable phrase: "His fragment of
'Hyperion' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as
AEschylus." Mr. Swinburne has written of the poem more at length, and
with carefully weighed words:
"The triumph of 'Hyperion' is as nearly complete as the failure
of 'Endymion.' Yet Keats never gave such proof of a manly
devotion and rational sense of duty to his art as in his
resolution to leave this great poem unfinished; not (as we may
gather from his correspondence on the subject) for the pitiful
reason assigned by his publishers, that of discouragement at the
reception given to his former work, but on the solid and
reasonable ground that a Miltonic study had something in its very
scheme and nature too artificial, too studious of a foreign
influence, to be carried on and carried out at such length as was
implied by his original design. Fortified and purified as it had
been on a first revision, when much introductory allegory and
much tentative effusion of sonorous and superfluous verse had
been rigorously clipped down or pruned away, it could not long
have retained spirit enough to support or inform the shadowy body
of a subject so little charged with tangible significance."
Mr. Swinburne is a critic with whom one may well be content to go
astray, if astray it is. I will therefore say that I entirely agree with
him in this estimate of "Hyperion," and of the sound discretion which
Keats exercised in giving it up. To deal with the gods of Olympus is no
easy task--it had decidedly overtaxed Keats in "Endymion," though he
limited himself to the two goddesses Diana and Venus, and casually the
gods Neptune and Mercury; but to deal with the elder gods--Saturn, Ops,
Hyperion--and with the Titans, on the scale of a long epic narration, is
a task which may well be pronounced unachievable. The Olympian gods
would also have had to be introduced: Apollo already appears in the
poem, not too promisingly. The elder gods are necessarily mere
figure-heads of bulk, might, majesty, and antiquity; to get any
character out of them after these "property" attributes have been
exhausted to the mind's eye, to "set them going" in act, and doing
something apportionable into cantos, and readable by human energies, was
not a problem which could be solved by a poet of the nineteenth century.
Past question, Keats started grandly, and has left us a monument of
Cyclopean architecture in verse almost impeccable--a Stonehenge of
reverberance; he has made us feel that his elder gods were profoundly
primaeval, powers so august and abstract-natured as to have become
already obsolete in the days of Zeus and Hades: his Titans, too, were so
vast and muscular that no feat would have been difficult to them except
that of interesting us. This sufficed for the first book of the poem; in
the second book, the enterprise is already revealing itself as an
impossible one, for the council at which Oceanus and others speak is
reminiscent of the Pandaemonic council in Milton, and clearly very
inferior to that. It could not well help resembling the scene in
"Paradise Lost," nor yet help being inferior; besides, even were it
equal or preferable, Milton had done the thing first. The "large
utterance of the early gods," large though it be, tends to monotony. In
book iii., we go off to Mnemosyne and Apollo; but of this section little
remains, and we close the poem with a conviction that Keats, if he had
succeeded in writing "a _fragment_ as sublime as AEschylus," was both
prudent and fortunate in leaving it a fragment. To say that "Hyperion"
is after all a semi-artificial utterance of the grand would be harsh,
and ungrateful for so noble an effort of noble faculty; but to say that,
by being prolonged, its grandeur must infallibly have partaken more and
more of an artificial infusion, appears to me criticism entirely sound
and safe.
Mr. Woodhouse has informed us: "The poem, if completed, would have
treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by
Apollo; and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by
Jupiter, &c., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's
re-establishment; with other events of which we have but very dark hints
in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome. In fact, the incidents
would have been pure creations of the poet's brain." Here again Keats
would have been partly forestalled by Milton: the combat of the Giants
with the Olympian gods must have borne a very appreciable resemblance to
the combat of Satan and his legions with the hosts of heaven. How far
Keats's "invention" would have sufficed to filling in this vast canvas
may be questioned. The precedent of "Endymion," in which he had
attempted something of the same kind, was not wholly encouraging. The
method and tone would of course have been very different; in what
remains of "Hyperion," the general current of diction is as severe as in
"Endymion" it had been florid.
The other commencement of "Hyperion" (alluded to in my sixth chapter)
was a later version, done in November and December 1819; it presents a
great deal of poetic or scenic machinery in which the author's
personality was copiously introduced. This recast contains impressive
things; but the prominence given to the author as spectator or
participant of what he pictures forth was fulsome and fatal. Mr.
Swinburne is in error (along with most other writers) in supposing this
to be the earlier version of the two.
The tragedy of "Otho the Great," written on a peculiar system of
collaboration to which I have already referred, succeeded "Hyperion." It
is a tragedy on the Elizabethan model, and we find in scene i. a curious
instance of Elizabethan contempt of chronology--a reference to
"Hungarian petards." The main factors in the plot are a fierce and
fervent love-passion of the man, and an unscrupulous ambition of the
woman, reddened with crime. Webster may perhaps have been taken by Keats
as his chief prototype. To call "Otho the Great" an excellent drama
would not be possible; but it can be read without tedium, and contains
vigorous passages, and lines and images moulded with a fine poetic
ardour. The action would be sufficient for stage-representation at a
time when an audience come prepared to like a play if it is good in
verse and strong in romantic emotion; under such conditions, while it
could not be a great success, it need not nevertheless fall manifestly
flat. Under any other conditions, such as those which prevail nowadays,
this tragedy would necessarily run no chance at all. In a copy of Keats
which belonged to Dante Gabriel Rossetti I find the following note of
his, which may bear extracting: "This repulsive yet powerful play is of
course in draft only. It is much less to be supposed that it would have
been left so imperfect than to be surmised, from its imperfection, how
very gradual the maturing of Keats's best work probably may have been.
It gives after all, perhaps, the strongest proof of _robustness_ that
Keats has left; and as a tragedy is scarcely more deficient than
'Endymion' as a poem. Both, viewed as wholes, are quite below Keats's
three masterpieces;[23] yet 'Otho,' as well as 'Endymion,' gives proof
of his finest powers." Another note from the same hand remarks: "The
character and conduct of Albert [the lover of Auranthe murdered to clear
the way for her ambition] are the finest point in the play."
Of the later drama, "King Stephen," so little was written that I need
not dwell upon it here.
"Lamia" was begun about the same time as "Otho the Great," but finished
afterwards. The influence of Dryden, under which it was composed, has
told strongly upon its versification, as marked especially in the very
free use of alexandrines--generally the third line of a triplet,
sometimes even the second line of a couplet. You might search "Endymion"
in vain for alexandrines; and I will admit that their frequency appears
to me to give an artificial tone to "Lamia." The view which Keats has
elected to take of his subject is worth considering. The heroine is a
serpent-woman, or a double-natured being who can change from serpent
into woman and _vice versa_. In the female form she beguiles a young
student of philosophy, Lycius, lives with him in a splendid palace, and
finally celebrates their marriage-feast. The philosopher Apollonius
attends among the guests, perceives her to be "human serpentry," and,
gazing on her with ruthless fixity, he compels her and all her apparatus
of enchantment to vanish. This is the act for which (in lines partly
quoted in these pages) Keats arraigns philosophy, and its power of
stripping things bare of their illusions. No doubt a poet has a right to
treat a legend of this sort from such point of view as he likes; it is
for him, and not for his reader, to take the bull by the horns. But it
does look rather like taking the bull by the weaker horn to contend that
the philosopher who saves a youthful disciple from the wiles of a
serpent is condemnably prosaic--a grovelling spirit that denudes life of
its poetry. Conveniently for Keats's theory, Lycius is made to die
forthwith after the vanishing of his Lamia. If we invent a different
finale to the poem, and say that Lycius fell down on his knees, and
thanked Apollonius for saving him from such pestilent delusions and
perilous blandishments, and ever afterwards looked out for the cloven
tongue (if not the cloven hoof) when a pretty woman made advances to
him, we may perhaps come quite as near to a right construction of so
strange a series of events, and to the true moral of the story. But
Keats's championship was for the enjoying aspects of life; he may be
held to have exercised it here rather perversely. "Lamia" is one of his
completest and most finished pieces of writing--perhaps in this respect
superior to all his other long poems, if we except "Hyperion"; it closes
the roll of them with an affluence, even an excess, of sumptuous
adornment. "Lamia" leaves on the mental palate a rich flavour, if not an
absolutely healthy one.
Passing from the long compositions, we find the cream of Keats's poetry
in the ballad of "La Belle Dame sans Merci," and in the five odes--"To
Psyche," "To Autumn," "On Melancholy," "To a Nightingale," and "On a
Grecian Urn." "La Belle Dame sans Merci" may possibly have been written
later than any of the odes, but this point is uncertain. I give it here
as marking the highest point of romantic imagination to which Keats
attained in dealing with human or quasi-human personages, and also his
highest level of simplicity along with completeness of art.
"Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,[24]
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
"Ah what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done.
"I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew;
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too."
"I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
"I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone:
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
"I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean and sing
A faery's song.
"She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew;
And sure in language strange she said--
'I love thee true.'
"She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gazed and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kissed to sleep.
"And there we slumbered on the moss,
And there I dreamed--ah woe betide!--
The latest dream I ever dreamed
On the cold hill-side.
"I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors--death-pale were they all;
They cried--'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall.'
"I saw their starved lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide;
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill-side.
"And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering;
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing."
This is a poem of _impression_. The impression is immediate, final, and
permanent; and words would be more than wasted upon pointing out to the
reader that such and such are the details which have conduced to impress
him.
In the five odes there is naturally some diversity in the degrees of
excellence. I have given their titles above in the probable (not
certain) order of their composition. Considered intellectually, we might
form a kind of symphony out of them, and arrange it thus--1, "Grecian
Urn"; 2, "Psyche"; 3, "Autumn"; 4, "Melancholy"; 5, "Nightingale"; and,
if Keats had left us nothing else, we should have in this symphony an
almost complete picture of his poetic mind, only omitting, or
representing deficiently, that more instinctive sort of enjoyment which
partakes of gaiety. Viewing all these wondrous odes together, the
predominant quality which we trace in them is an extreme susceptibility
to delight, close-linked with afterthought--pleasure with pang--or that
poignant sense of ultimates, a sense delicious and harrowing, which
clasps the joy in sadness, and feasts upon the very sadness in joy. The
emotion throughout is the emotion of beauty: beauty intensely
perceived, intensely loved, questioned of its secret like the sphinx,
imperishable and eternal, yet haunted (as it were) by its own ghost, the
mortal throes of the human soul. As no poet had more capacity for
enjoyment than Keats, so none exceeded him in the luxury of sorrow. Few
also exceeded him in the sense of the one moment irretrievable; but this
conception in its fulness belongs to the region of morals yet more than
of sensation, and the spirit of Keats was almost an alien in the region
of morals. As he himself wrote (March 1818)--
"Oh never will the prize,
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award!"
I think it will be well to cull out of these five odes--taken in the
symphonic order above noted--the phrases which constitute the strongest
chords of emotion and of music.
(1) "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe, to the spirit, ditties of no tone.
"Human passion far above
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
(2) "Too late for antique vows,
Too too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire.
"Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts new-grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind.
(3) "Where are the songs of spring--ay, where are they?
Think not of them: thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.
(4) "But, when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud,
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave.
"She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine.
(5) "That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret,
Here where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs;
Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
"Darkling I listen: and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,--
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme
To take into the air my quiet breath.
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy.
"The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self.
"Was it a vision or a waking dream?
Fled is that music--do I wake or sleep?"
To one or two of these phrases a few words of comment may be given. That
axiom which concludes the "Ode on a Grecian Urn"--
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,"
is perhaps the most important contribution to thought which the poetry
of Keats contains: it pairs with and transcends
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."
I am not prepared to say whether Keats was the first writer to formulate
any axiom to this effect,--I should rather presume not; but at any rate
it comes with peculiar appropriateness in the writings of a poet who
might have varied the dictum of Iago, and said of himself
"For I am nothing if not beautiful."
In the Ode, the axiom is put forward as the message of the sculptured
Grecian Urn "to man," and is thus propounded as being of universal
application. It amounts to saying--"Any beauty which is not truthful (if
any such there be), and any truth which is not beautiful (if any such
there be), are of no practical importance to mankind in their mundane
condition: but in fact there are none such, for, to the human mind,
beauty and truth are one and the same thing." To debate this question on
abstract grounds is not in my province: all that I have to do is to
point out that Keats's perception and thought crystallized into this
axiom as the sum and substance of wisdom for man, and that he has
bequeathed it to us to ponder in itself, and to lay to heart as the
secret of his writings. Those other lines, from the "Ode on Melancholy,"
where he says of Melancholy--
"She dwells with Beauty--Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu"--
appear to me unsurpassable in the whole range of his poetry--as intense
in imagery as supreme in diction and in music. They pair with the other
celebrated verses from the "Ode to a Nightingale"--
"Now more then ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain;"
and--
"Charmed magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn."
The phrase "_rich_ to die" is of the very essence of Keats's emotion;
and the passage about "magic casements" shows a reach of expression
which might almost be called the Pillars of Hercules of human language.
Far greater things have been said by the greatest minds: but nothing
more perfect in form has been said--nothing wider in scale and closer in
utterance--by any mind of whatsoever pitch of greatness.
And here we come to one of the most intrinsic properties of Keats's
poetry. He is a master of _imagination in verbal form_: he gifts us with
things so finely and magically said as to convey an imaginative
impression. The imagination may sometimes be in the substance of the
thought, as well as in its wording--as it is in the passage just quoted:
sometimes it resides essentially in the wording, out of which thought
expands in the reader, who is made
"To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest."
From wealth of perception, at first confused or docked in the
expression, he rose into a height of verbal embodiment which has seldom
been equalled and seldomer exceeded. His conception of poetry as an
ideal, his sense of poetry as an art, spurred him on to artistic
achievement; and in the later stages of his work the character of the
Artist is that which marks him most strongly. As one of his own letters
says, he "looks upon fine phrases like a lover."
According to Mr. Swinburne, "the faultless force and profound subtlety
of this deep and cunning instinct for the absolute expression of
absolute natural beauty is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or
power which denotes him as a poet among all his equals." We may safely
accept this verdict of poet upon poet as a true one: yet I should be
inclined to demur to such strong adjectives as "faultless" and
"absolute." Beautiful as several of them are, I might hesitate to say
that even one poem by Keats exhibits this his special characteristic in
a faultless degree, or expresses absolutely throughout a natural beauty
of absolute quality. To the last, he appears to me to have been somewhat
wanting in those faculties of selection and of discipline which we sum
up, by a rough-and-ready process, in the word "taste." He had done a
great deal in this direction, and would probably, with a few years more
of life, have done all that was needed; but we have to take him as he
stands, with those few years denied. Unless perhaps in "La Belle Dame
sans Merci," Keats has not, I think, come nearer to perfection than in
the "Ode to a Nightingale." It is with some trepidation that I recur to
this Ode, for the invidious purpose of testing its claim to be adjudged
"faultless," for in so doing I shall certainly lose the sympathy of some
readers, and strain the patience of many. The question, however, seems
to be a very fair one to raise, and the specimen a strong one to try it
by, and so I persevere. The first point of weakness--excess which
becomes weak in result--is a surfeit of mythological allusions: Lethe,
Dryad (the nightingale is turned into a "light-winged Dryad of the
trees"--which is as much as to say, a light-winged _Oak_-nymph of the
_trees_), Flora, Hippocrene, Bacchus, the Queen-moon (the Queen-moon
appears at first sight to be the classical Phoebe, who is here
"clustered around by all her starry Fays," spirits proper to a Northern
mythology; but possibly Keats thought more of a Faery-queen than of
Phoebe). Then comes the passage (already cited in these pages) about
the poet's wish for a draught of wine, to help him towards spiritual
commune with the nightingale. Some exquisite phrases in this passage
have endeared it to all readers of Keats; yet I cannot but regard it as
very foreign to the main subject-matter. Surely nobody wants wine as a
preparation for enjoying a nightingale's music, whether in a literal or
in a fanciful relation. Taken in detail, to call wine "the true, the
blushful Hippocrene"--the veritable fount of poetic inspiration--seems
both stilted and repulsive, and the phrase "with beaded bubbles winking
at the brim" is (though picturesque) trivial, in the same way as much of
Keats's earlier work. Far worse is the succeeding image, "Not charioted
by Bacchus and his pards"--_i.e._, not under the inspiration of wine:
the poet will fly to the nightingale, but not in a leopard-drawn
chariot. Further on, as if we had not already had enough of wine and its
associations, the coming musk-rose is described as "full of dewy
wine"--an expression of very dubious appositeness: and the like may be
said of "become a sod," in the sense of "become a corpse--earth to
earth." The renowned address--
"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down,"
seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a palpable
fact that this address, according to its place in the context, is a
logical solecism. While "Youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies,"
while the poet would "become a sod" to the requiem sung by the
nightingale, the nightingale itself is pronounced immortal. But this
antithesis cannot stand the test of a moment's reflection. Man, as a
race, is as deathless, as superior to the tramp of hungry generations,
as is the nightingale as a race: while the nightingale as an individual
bird has a life not less fleeting, still more fleeting, than a man as an
individual. We have now arrived at the last stanza of the ode. Here the
term "deceiving elf," applied to "the fancy," sounds rather petty, and
in the nature of a make-rhyme: but this may possibly be a prejudice.
Having thus--in the interest of my reader as a critical appraiser of
poetry--burned my fingers a little at the clear and perennial flame of
the "Ode to a Nightingale," I shall quit that superb composition, and
the whole quintett of odes, and shall proceed to other phases of my
subject. The "Ode to Indolence," and the fragment of an "Ode to Maia,"
need not detain us; the former, however, is important as indicating a
mood of mind--too vaguely open to the influences of the moment for
either love, ambition, or poesy--to which we may well suppose that Keats
was sufficiently prone. The few poems which remain to be mentioned were
all printed posthumously.
There are four addresses to Fanny Brawne, dating perhaps from early till
late in 1819; two of them are irregular lyrics, and two sonnets. The
best of the four is the sonnet, "The day is gone, and all its sweets are
gone," which counts indeed among the better sonnets of Keats. Taken
collectively, all four supply valuable evidence as to the poet's love
affair, confirmatory of what appears in his letters; they exhibit him
quelled by the thought of his mistress and her charms, and jealous of
her mixing in or enjoying the company of others.
Keats wrote some half-hundred of sonnets altogether, some of them among
his very earliest and most trifling performances, others up to his
latest period, including the last of all his compositions.
Notwithstanding his marked growth in love of form, and his ultimate
surprising power of expression--both being qualities peculiarly germane
to this form of verse--his sonnets appear to me to be seldom masterly. A
certain freakishness of disposition, and liability to be led astray by
some point of detail into side-issues, mar the symmetry and
concentration of his work. Perhaps the sonnet on "Chapman's Homer,"
early though it was, remains the best which he produced; it is at any
rate pre-eminent in singleness of thought, illustrated by a definite and
grand image. It has a true opening and a true climax, and a clear link
of inventive association between the thing mentally signified in chief,
and the modes of its concrete presentment. In points of this kind Keats
is seldom equally happy in his other sonnets; sometimes not happy at
all, but distinctly at fault. There is a second Homeric sonnet,
"Standing aloof in giant ignorance" (1818), which contains one line
which has been very highly praised,
"There is a budding morrow in midnight:"
but, regarded as a whole, it is a weakling in comparison with the
Chapman sonnet. The sonnets, "To Sleep" ("O soft embalmer of the still
midnight"), "Why did I laugh to-night?" and "On a Dream" ("As Hermes
once took to his feathers light")--all of them dated in 1819--are
remarkable; the third would indeed almost be excellent were it not for
the inadmissible laxity of an alexandrine last line. This is the sonnet
of which we have already spoken, the dream of Paolo and Francesca. The
"Why did I laugh to-night?" is a strange personal utterance, in which
the poet (not yet attacked by his mortal illness) exalts death above
verse, fame, and beauty, in the same mood of mind as in the lovely
passage of the "Ode to a Nightingale"; but the sonnet, considered as an
example of its own form of art, is too exclamatory and uncombined.
There are several minor poems by Keats of which--though some of them are
extremely dear to his devotees--I have made no mention. Such are
"Teignmouth," "Where be you going, you Devon maid?" "Meg Merrilies,"
"Walking in Scotland," "Staffa," "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," "Robin
Hood," "To Fancy," "To the Poets," "In a drear-nighted December," "Hush,
hush, tread softly," four "Faery Songs." Most of these pieces seem to me
over-rated. As a rule they have lyrical impulse, along with the
brightness or the tenderness which the subject bespeaks; but they are
slight in significance and in structure, pleasurable but not memorable
work. One enjoys them once and again, and then their office is over;
they have not in them that stuff which can be laid to heart, nor that
spherical unity and replenishment which can make of a mere snatch of
verse an inscription for the adamantine portal of time.
The feeling with which Keats regarded women in real life has been
already spoken of. As to the tone of his poems respecting them we have
his own evidence. A letter of his to Armitage Brown, dated towards the
first days of September 1820, says, in reference to the "Lamia" volume:
"One of the causes, I understand from different quarters, of the
unpopularity of this new book, is the offence the ladies take at me. On
thinking that matter over, I am certain that I have said nothing in a
spirit to displease any woman I would care to please; but still there is
a tendency to class women in my books with roses and sweetmeats; they
never see themselves dominant." The long poems in the volume in question
were "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia." In
"Hyperion" women are of course not dominant; but, as regards the other
three poems, they are surely dominant enough in one sense. In "Isabella"
the heroine is the sole figure of prime importance--so also in "Lamia";
and in the "Eve of St. Agnes" she counts for much more than Porphyro,
though the number of stanzas about her may be fewer. Nevertheless it
might be that the women in the three poems, though "dominant," are
"classed with roses and sweetmeats." I do not see, however, that this
can fairly be said of Madeline in the "Eve of St. Agnes"; she is made a
very charming and loveable figure, although she does nothing very
particular except to undress without looking behind her, and to elope.
Again, Isabella, amenable as she may be to the censure of the severely
virtuous, plays a part which takes her very considerably out of affinity
to roses and sweetmeats. To Lamia the objection applies clearly enough;
but then she is not exactly a woman, and Keats resents so fiercely the
far from indefensible line of conduct which Apollonius adopts in
relation to her that it seems hard if the ladies owed the poet a grudge.
On the whole I incline to think that they must have been misreported;
but the statement in Keats's letter remains not the less significant as
a symptom of his real underlying feeling about women.
It has often been pointed out that Keats's lovers have a habit of
"swooning," and the fact has sometimes been remarked upon as evidencing
a certain want of virility in himself. I cannot affect to be, so far, of
a different opinion. The incident and the phrase do manifestly tend to
the namby-pamby. This may have been more a matter of affected or
self-willed diction on his part--and diction of that kind appears
constantly in his earlier poems, and not seldom in his later ones--than
of actual character chargeable against himself; yet I would not entirely
disregard it in the latter relation either. Keats was a very young man,
with a limited experience of life. He had to picture to himself how his
lovers would be likely to behave under given conditions; and, if he
thought they would be likely to swoon, the probability is that he also,
under parallel conditions, would have been likely to swoon--or at least
supposed he would be likely. Because he thrashed a butcher-boy, or was
indignant at backbiting and meanness, we are not to credit him with an
unmingled fund of that toughness which distinguishes the English middle
class. The English middle-class man is not habitually addicted to
writing an "Endymion," an "Eve of St. Agnes," or an "Ode on
Melancholy."
Sensuousness has been frequently defined as the paramount bias of
Keats's poetic genius. This is, in large measure, unassailably true. He
was a man of perception rather than of contemplation or speculation.
Perception has to do with perceptible things; perceptible things must be
objects of sense, and the mind which dwells on objects of sense must
_ipso facto_ be a mind of the sensuous order. But the mind which is
mainly sensuous by direct action may also work by reflex action, and
pass from sensuousness into sentiment. It cannot fairly be denied that
Keats's mind continually did this; it had direct action potently, and
reflex action amply. He saw so far and so keenly into the sensuous as to
be penetrated with the sentiment which, to a healthy and large nature,
is its inseparable outcome. We might say that, if the sensuous was his
atmosphere, the breathing apparatus with which he respired it was
sentiment. In his best work--for instance, in all the great odes--the
two things are so intimately combined that the reader can only savour
the sensuous nucleus through the sentiment, its medium or vehicle. One
of the most compendious and elegant phrases in which the genius of Keats
has been defined is that of Leigh Hunt: "He never beheld an oak tree
without seeing the Dryad." In immediate meaning Hunt glances here at the
mythical sympathy or personifying imagination of the poet; but, if we
accept the phrase as applying to the sensuous object-painting, along
with its ideal aroma or suggestion in his finest work, we shall still
find it full of right significance. We need not dwell upon other less
mature performances in which the two things are less closely interfused.
Certainly some of his work is merely, and some even crudely, sensuous:
but this is work in which the poet was trying his materials and his
powers, and rising towards mastery of his real faculty and ultimate
function.
While discriminating between what was excellent in Keats, and what was
not excellent, or was merely tentative in the direction of final
excellence, we must not confuse endowments, or the homage which is due
to endowments, of a radically different order. Many readers, and there
have been among them several men highly qualified to pronounce, have set
Keats beside his great contemporary Shelley, and indeed above him. I
cannot do this. To me it seems that the primary gift of Shelley, the
spirit in which he exercised it, the objects upon which he exercised it,
the detail and the sum of his achievement, the actual produce in
appraisable work done, the influence and energy of the work in the
future, were all superior to those of Keats, and even superior beyond
any reasonable terms of comparison. If Shelley's poems had
defects--which they indisputably had--Keats's poems also had defects.
After all that can be said in their praise--and this should be said in
the most generous or rather grateful and thankful spirit--it seems to me
true that not many of Keats's poems are highly admirable; that most of
them, amid all their beauty, have an adolescent and frequently a morbid
tone, marking want of manful thew and sinew and of mental balance; that
he is not seldom obscure, chiefly through indifference to the thought
itself and its necessary means of development; that he is emotional
without substance, and beautiful without control; and that personalism
of a wilful and fitful kind pervades the mass of his handiwork. We have
already seen, however, that there is a certain not inconsiderable
proportion of his poems to which these exceptions do not apply, or apply
only with greatly diminished force; and, as a last expression of our
large and abiding debt to him and to his well-loved memory, we recur to
his own words, and say that he has given us many a "thing of beauty,"
which will remain "a joy for ever." By his early death he was doomed to
be the poet of youthfulness; by being the poet of youthfulness he was
privileged to become and to remain enduringly the poet of rapt
expectation and passionate delight.
THE END.
INDEX.
A.
Abbey, Guardian of Keats, 17, 19, 20, 29, 37, 39
"Adonais," by Shelley, 39, 90, 98, 170
AEschylus, 186
"Agnes, The Eve of St.," 107, 138;
critical estimate of the poem, 182-184; 190, 206
"Alastor," by Shelley, 82
"Annals of the Fine Arts," 110
Ariosto, 113
_Asclepiad, The_, 24
_Athenaeum, The_, 23
"Autumn, Ode to," by Keats, 109, 192, 194
B.
Bailey, Archdeacon Benjamin, 23, 77, 78, 112, 123;
his description of Keats, 124; 130, 133, 141, 142, 145, 158, 159
"Belle Dame (La) sans Merci," by Keats, 112, 182, 185, 190;
quoted, 192, &c.; 200
Benjamin, Nathan, 157
Bion, Idyll on "Adonis," by, 170
Blackwood, William, 91
_Blackwood's Magazine_, 90;
articles in by Z, on The Cockney School of Poetry, 91; 92, 93, 95, 97,
98, 99, 100, 103, 104, 153
Boccaccio's "Decameron," 107, 180, 181
Boileau, 70
Bojardo's "Orlando Innamorato," 114
Brawne, Fanny, engaged to Keats, 30, 32;
Keats's description of her, 33; 34, 35, 36, 38, 40, 42, 44, 45;
Keats's love-letters to her, 45-46, &c.; 53, 57, 60, 62, 102;
her marriage to Mr. Lindon, 121; 130, 141, 143, 146, 147, 158, 160;
poems to, 202
Brawne, Mrs., 29, 34, 36, 60, 61, 143
Brown, Charles Armitage, friend of Keats, 25;
Keats's verses on, 26; 27, 28, 29, 33, 38, 39, 41,
42, 43, 46, 48, 53;
letter from Keats to, 55-56, 59, 108, 111, 112, 114, 116, 119;
his death, 120; 136, 156, 157, 160, 206
Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," 108
Byron, Lord, 32, 102, 103, 105, 125, 128, 185
Byron's "Don Juan," 58
C.
Caius Cestius, 118
"Calidore," by Keats, 65, 165
"Cap and Bells, The," by Keats, 113, 183
"Caviare" (pseudonym of Keats), 112
"Cenci, The," by Shelley, 123
_Champion, The_, 115
"Chapman's Homer," sonnet by Keats, 66, 69, 165, 166, 203
Chartier, Alain, 112
Chatterton, 67, 68
Chaucer, 112
Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, picture by Haydon, 21, 36, 43,
126, 158
"Christmas Eve," sonnet by Keats, quoted, 157
Clark, Mrs., 60
Clark, Sir James, 59, 60
Clarke, Charles Cowden, preceptor and friend of Keats, 14, 18, 19,
20, 25, 65, 66;
his "Recollections," 102; 104, 125, 126, 129, 140, 148
Clarke, Epistle to, by Keats, 67, 68
Clarke, Rev. John, Keats's schoolmaster, 14
Coleridge, 25, 151, 164
Coleridge's "Christabel," 185
Colman, 156
Colvin's, Mr., "Life of Keats," 9, 35, 42
"Comus," by Milton, 115
Cox, Miss Jane ["Charmian"], 30, 31, 32, 34, 143, 146
Cripps, 133
D.
Dante, 112, 113
Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 23, 27, 29, 34, 39, 51, 53, 58, 103,
115, 120, 131, 133, 142, 150, 156, 160
Dilke, Mrs., 28
"Dream, A," sonnet by Keats, 112, 204
Dryden, 70, 108, 190
Duncan, Admiral, 16
E.
_Edinburgh Review_, 109, 117
Edouart, 35
"Endymion," by Keats, 23, 24, 25, 54, 67, 72;
details as to the composition of, 76;
preface to, 79, 80;
criticism upon in _The Quarterly Review_, 83;
Keats's feeling as to this and other criticisms, 91-106; 107,
108, 109, 122, 130, 137, 139, 141, 149, 152, 166;
Shelley's opinion of, 167;
summary of the poem, 168-175;
critical estimate of it, 176-180; 182, 186, 188, 189, 190
_Examiner, The_, 21, 68, 100
Eyre, Sir Vincent, 119
F.
"Fancy, The," by Reynolds, 22
Finch, Colonel, 39, 98
"Florence, The Garden of," by Reynolds, 22, 107
Forman, Mr. H. Buxton, 18, 25, 33, 34, 35, 52, 123
G.
_Gentleman's Magazine, The_, 102
George IV., 21, 114
Gifford, William, 83, 95, 168
Girometti, 128
Gisborne, Mrs., 44, 98
Grafty, Mrs., 64
"Grasshopper and Cricket, The," sonnets by Keats and Hunt, 166
"Grecian Urn, Ode on a," by Keats, 109, 110, 192, 194-198
Guido, 155
H.
Hammond, Surgeon, 18, 19
Haslam, William, 54
Haydn, 148
Haydon, Benjamin Robert, the painter, friend of John Keats, 13, 16,
18, 21, 36, 37, 44;
his last interview with Keats, 54, 55, 64, 69, 76, 78, 99;
his view as to Keats's feeling regarding critical attacks, 100, &c.;
105, 110, 123, 126, 127, 128, 132, 133;
his view of Keats's character, 134-135, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141,
142, 150, 152, 153, 155, 158
Hazlitt, 116, 152
Hilton, 128
Holmes, Edward, 54
Homer, 165
Hood, Mrs. (Miss Reynolds), 23
Hood, Thomas, 23
Hooker, Bishop, 32
Houghton, Lord, 41, 42, 58, 99, 114, 119, 125, 132, 136, 139
Howard, John, 32
Hunt, John, 20
Hunt, Leigh, 20, 21, 25, 44, 59, 66-69, 77, 83, 84, 85, 89-92,
97, 98, 100;
his view as to Keats's sensitiveness to criticism, 102; 110,
112, 114, 121, 122, 123;
his description of Keats, 124; 125, 131, 134, 141, 142, 148,
150, 156, 158, 164, 166, 181, 207
Hunt, Leigh, dedicatory sonnet to, by Keats, 66
Hunt, Leigh, leaving prison, sonnet by Keats, 66
Hunt, Mrs., 44
Hunt, Thornton, 44
"Hyperion," by Keats, 96, 97, 107, 108, 113, 137, 182;
critical estimate of the poem, 185-189;
recast of, 189; 190, 192, 206
I.
"I stood tiptoe upon a little hill," poem by Keats, 67;
extract from, 74; 165
_Indicator, The_, 112, 114
"Indolence, Ode to," by Keats, 202
"Isabella, or the Pot of Basil," by Keats, 95, 107, 138;
critical estimate of the poem, 180-182; 206
"Islam, The Revolt of," by Shelley, 77, 82, 123
J.
J. S., 93, 94
Jeffrey, Lord, 109
Jeffrey, Mr., 120
Jennings, grandfather of Keats, 12, 37
Jennings, Captain, 16
Jennings, Mrs., 16
"Joseph and his Brethren," by Wells, 23
K.
Kean as Richard Duke of York,
critique by Keats, 93, 115
Kean, Edmund, 112
Keats, Fanny, sister of the poet, 13, 29, 38, 43, 45, 57, 62,
120, 121, 129, 148
Keats, Frances, mother of the poet, 12;
her death, 16; 25, 126
Keats, George, brother of the poet, 13, 15, 18, 19, 25, 27, 30,
32, 37, 38, 64, 71, 95, 98;
his view as to John Keats's sensitiveness to criticism, 103; 111,
119, 120, 126, 136, 141, 142, 145, 146, 147, 150, 151, 155, 159, 160
Keats, George, Epistle to, by John Keats, 67, 68
Keats, John, his parentage, 12;
his birth in London, October 31, 1795, 13;
anecdote of his childhood, 13;
goes to the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield, 14;
his studies, pugnacity, &c., 15;
death of his parents, 16;
apprenticed to a surgeon, Hammond, 18;
leaves Hammond, and walks the hospitals, 18, 19;
reads Spenser's "Faery Queen," and drops surgical study, 20;
makes acquaintance with Leigh Hunt, Haydon, and others, 20, 21, 22;
his first volume, Poems, 1817, 22;
writes "Endymion," 23;
his health suffers in Oxford, 24;
anecdotes (Coleridge, &c.), 25;
makes a pedestrian tour in Scotland &c. with
Charles Armitage Brown, 25-29;
takes leave of his brother George and his wife, 27;
his brother Tom dies, 29;
lodges with Brown at Hampstead, 29;
meets Miss Cox ("Charmian") and Miss Brawne, and falls in love
with the latter, 30-35;
their engagement, 36;
his friendship towards Haydon cools, 36, 37;
at Shanklin and Winchester, 37, 38;
sees his brother George again, and is left by him in pecuniary
straits, 38, 39;
the painful circumstances of his closing months, owing to illness,
his love affair, and the depreciation of his poems, 40, 41;
beginning of his consumptive illness, 41, 42;
removes to Kentish Town, 43, 44;
returns to Mrs. Brawne's house at Hampstead, 45;
his love-letters, 45-54;
travels to Italy with Joseph Severn, 54-59;
Severn's account of his last days in Rome, 60, 61;
his death there, February 23, 1821, 62, 63;
his early turn for mere rhyming, 64;
his early writings, and first volume, 65, 69;
diatribe against Boileau, and poets of that school, 70;
the publishers relinquish sale of the volume, 72;
"Endymion," and passage from an early poem forecasting
this attempt, 73-76;
details as to composition of "Endymion," 76-79;
prefaces to the poem, 79-83;
adverse critique in _The Quarterly Review_, 83-91;
question debated whether this and other attacks affected Keats
deeply, 91-97;
statements by Shelley, 97;
and by Haydon, 99;
other evidence, 102;
conclusion as to this point, 105;
Keats writes "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," and
"Hyperion," 107;
"Lamia," 108;
and publishes the volume containing these poems, 1820, 108;
other poems in the volume, 109;
posthumous poems of Keats, "The Eve of St. Mark," "Otho the Great,"
"The Cap and Bells," &c., 110-115;
his letters and other prose writings, 115-117;
Keats's burial-place, 118-119;
projects for writing his life, accomplished finally by
Lord Houghton, 119;
his relations with Hunt, Shelley, and others, 121-123;
Keats's small stature and personal appearance, 124-126;
the portraits of him, 126-129;
difficulty of clearly estimating his character, 129;
his poetic ambition and intensity of thought, 130, 131;
his moral tone, 132;
his character ("no decision" &c.,) estimated by Haydon, 133-139;
Lord Houghton's account of his manner in society, 139;
his suspiciousness, 141;
and dislike of mankind, 142;
his feeling towards women, 143-146;
and towards Miss Brawne, 147, 148;
his habits, opinions, likings, &c., 148-155;
humour and jocularity, 155-157;
negative turn in religious matters, 157-160;
wine and diet, 160, 161;
conclusion as to his character, 161, 162;
his early tone in poetry, 164;
critical estimate of his first volume, Poems, 1817, 165-166;
of "Endymion," 167, 168;
narrative of this poem, 168-175;
defects and beauties of "Endymion," 176-180;
critical estimate of "Isabella," 180;
"Eve of St. Agnes," 182;
"Eve of St. Mark," 184;
"Hyperion," 185;
"Otho the Great," 189;
"Lamia," 190;
"Belle Dame sans Merci" (quoted), 192;
the five chief Odes, 194;
analysis of the "Ode to a Nightingale," 200;
various posthumous lyrics, sonnets, &c., 202;
Keats's feeling towards women, as developed in his poems, 205;
"swooning," 206;
sensuousness and sentiment, 207;
comparison between Keats and Shelley, and final remarks, 208
Keats, Mrs. George, 27, 32, 95, 120
Keats, Thomas, father of the poet, 12;
his death, 16; 126
Keats, Thomas, brother of the poet, 13, 15, 19, 23, 24, 25, 28;
his death, 29; 37, 38, 39, 121, 135, 159, 160
"King Stephen," by Keats, 73, 112, 190
Kotzebue, 150
L.
Lamb, Charles, 78, 150
Lamb, Dr., 44
"Lamia," by Keats, 108, 138, 151, 160;
critical estimate of the poem, 190, &c.; 206
"Lamia, and other Poems," by Keats (1820), 44, 97, 103, 108,
109, 110, 206
Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 61
Lempriere's "Classical Dictionary," 15
Lindon, Mrs. (_see_ Brawne, Fanny)
Llanos, 121
Lockhart, 91
Lucas, 19
Lucy Vaughan Lloyd (pseudonym of Keats), 114
Lyrics (various) by Keats, 204
M.
Mackereth, George Wilson, 19
"Maia, Ode to," by Keats, 202
"Mark, Eve of St.," by Keats, 52, 110, 182;
critical estimate of the poem, 184-185; 190
Marmontel's "Incas of Peru," 15
Mathew, George Felton, Epistle to, by Keats, 67; 157
Medwin's "Life of Shelley," 34
"Melancholy, Ode on," by Keats, 109, 192, 194-199
Milton, 107, 135, 147, 159, 165, 186, 188
"Miserrimus," by Reynolds, 23
Mitford, Miss, 101, 135
Moore, Thomas, 165
_Morning Chronicle, The_, 93
Murray, John, 102
N.
Napoleon I., 32
"Narensky," opera by C. A. Brown, 27
Newton, Sir Isaac, 151
"Nightingale, Ode to a," by Keats, 103, 109, 160, 192, 194-202;
analysed, 200-202; 204
"Nile," Sonnets on the, by Keats, &c.; 110
O.
Ollier, Charles, 21, 71
"Otho the Great," by Keats, 38, 111, 112;
critical estimate of, 189
P.
"Paradise Lost," 108, 175, 187
"Paradise Lost," Notes on, by Keats, 115
Philostratus's "Life of Apollonius," 108
"Poems" (1817), by Keats, 23, 66;
letter regarding this volume, by the publishers, 72; 122, 164-167
Pope, 70
Procter, Mrs., 125, 126
Purcell, 148
"Psyche, Ode to," by Keats, 109, 192, 194-199
Q.
_Quarterly Review, The_, 83;
its critique of "Endymion" extracted, 83-91; 93, 95, 96, 97,
98, 99, 102, 104, 153, 179
"Quixote, Don," 120
R.
R. B., 93
Raphael, 155
Rawlings, William, 16
Reynolds, John Hamilton, 22, 79, 95, 107, 115, 128, 156
Reynolds, Misses, 30, 31, 142, 145, 148
Reynolds, Mrs., 31
Rice, James, 38, 41, 147
Richardson, Dr., 25
Ritchie, 78
Robinson Crusoe, 15
Robinson, H. Crabb, 104
Rossetti, Dante G., 52, 184, 185, 190
S.
Sandt, 150
Scott, Sir Walter, 91, 100
Severn, Joseph, 39;
leaves England with Keats for Italy, 54; 59;
his narrative of Keats's last days, 60, &c.; 104, 118, 119, 125;
his portraits of Keats, 127-129; 139, 143, 147, 148
Shakespeare (Macbeth), 15;
(Hamlet), 52; 93, 114, 135, 147;
(King Lear), 151; 155, 165
Shakespeare, Notes on, by Keats, 115
Shakespeare's sonnets, Book on, by C. A. Brown, 27
Sharpey, Dr., 30
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 39, 58, 59, 71, 77, 82, 91, 96;
his references to "Endymion," and _The Quarterly
Review_, 97-99; 102, 110, 119, 123, 125, 141, 147,
167, 179, 180, 185;
comparison between Shelley and Keats, 208
"Sleep and Poetry," by Keats, 67, 69;
extract from, 70; 165
Smith, Horace, 68
Snook, 56
Sonnet by Keats ("Bright Star," &c.), 114
Sonnets (various) by Keats, 164, 167, 203, &c.
Spence's "Polymetis," 15
Spenser, Edmund, 66, 164, 165
Spenser's Cave of Despair, picture by Severn, 55
Spenser's "Faery Queen," 20, 149
"Spenser, Imitation of," by Keats, 64
Stephens, Henry, 19, 78, 132, 147
"Stories after Nature," by Wells, 23
Swinburne, Mr. (on "Hyperion"), 186; 189, 199
T.
Tasso, 165
Taylor and Hessey, 23, 72, 76, 78, 83, 93, 96, 109, 120, 128,
140, 146, 149, 152
Terry, 100
Thomson, James, 70
Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne," 179
Tooke's "Pantheon," 15
Torlonia, 61
V.
Virgil, 165
Virgil's AEneid, 15, 20
Voltaire, 158
W.
Webb, Cornelius, 92
Webster, 189
Wells, Charles, 23
Wilson, John, 91
"Woman, when I behold thee" &c., poem by Keats, quoted, 143
Wood, Warrington, 119
Woodhouse, Richard, 94, 149, 153, 188
Wordsworth, 21, 78; ("The Excursion,") 152; 153, 156, 164, 179
Z.
Z (probably Lockhart), 91, 92, 100.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
BY
JOHN P. ANDERSON
(British Museum).
I. Works.
II. Poetical Works.
III. Single Works.
IV. Letters, etc.
V. Miscellaneous.
VI. Appendix--
Biography, Criticism, etc.
Magazine Articles.
VII. Chronological List of Works.
I. WORKS.
The Poetical Works and other Writings of John Keats, now first brought
together, including poems and numerous letters not before published.
Edited, with notes and appendices, by H. B. Forman. 4 vols. London,
1883, 8vo.
The Letters of John Keats. Edited by J. G. Speed. (The Poems of
J. Keats, with the annotations of Lord Houghton, and a memoir by
J. G. Speed.) 3 vols. New York, 1883, 8vo.
A number of letters now included in this work were first
published in the New York _World_ of June 25-6, 1877, and
afterwards reprinted in the _Academy_, vol. xii., 1877,
pp. 38-40, 65-67.
II. POETICAL WORKS.
The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. In one volume.
Paris, 1829, 8vo.
John Keats (including Memoir), i.-vii. and 1-75.
Standard Library. The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1840, 8vo.
The first _collected_ edition of Keats's Works.
The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1840, 8vo.
With an engraved frontispiece from the portrait in chalk
by Hilton. This book, although dated 1840, was not issued
until the following year. The frontispiece is dated
correctly.
The Poetical Works of J. K. London, 1841, 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. A new edition. London, 1851, 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. With Memoir by R. M. Milnes [Lord Houghton].
Illustrated by a portrait and 120 designs by George Scharf, Jun. London,
1854, 8vo.
A small number of copies were struck off upon large
paper.
The Poetical Works of J. K. With a life [signed J. R. L.--_i.e._, James
Russell Lowell]. Boston [U.S.], 1854, 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. With a Memoir by Richard Monckton Milnes
[Lord Houghton]. A new edition. London, 1861, 8vo.
Upon the reverse of the half-title to the "Memoir" is a
wood-cut profile of Keats.
The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W. M.
Rossetti. Illustrated by T. Seccombe. London [1872], 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with an introductory memoir and
illustrations, by William B. Scott. London [1873], 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. With a memoir by James Russell Lowell.
Portrait and 10 illustrations. New York, 1873, 8vo.
The Memoir was afterwards reprinted in "Among my Books,"
second series, 1876, pp. 303-327.
The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted from the early editions, with
memoir, explanatory notes, etc. (_Chandos Classics._) London [1874],
8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. Chronologically arranged and edited, with a
memoir, by Lord Houghton. (_Aldine Edition._) London, 1876, 8vo.
The Poetical Works of Coleridge and Keats, with a memoir of each.
(_Riverside Edition._) 4 vols. in 2. New York, 1878, 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. London [1878], 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with an introductory memoir, by
W. B. Scott. (_Excelsior Series._) London [1880], 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited, with a critical memoir, by W. M.
Rossetti. [Portrait, fac-simile, and six illustrations by Thomas
Seccombe.] (_Moxon's Popular Poets._) London [1880], 8vo.
The same as the edition of 1872. The Memoir was reprinted
in "Lives of Famous Poets."
The Poetical Works of J. K., reprinted from the original editions, with
notes, by F. T. Palgrave. (_Golden Treasury Series._) London, 1884, 8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. Edited by W. T. Arnold. London, 1884, 8vo.
There was a large paper edition, consisting of fifty
copies, numbered and signed.
The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by H. B. Forman. London, 1884,
8vo.
The Poetical Works of J. K. With an introductory sketch by John Hogben.
(_Canterbury Poets._) London, 1885, 8vo.
III. SINGLE WORKS.
Poems, by John Keats. London, 1817, 16mo.
The Museum copy contains a MS. note by F. Locker.
Endymion; a Poetic Romance. By J. K. London, 1818, 8vo.
Endymion. Illustrated by F. Joubert. From paintings by E. J. Poynter.
London, 1873, fol.
The Eve of St. Agnes. By J. K. With 20 illustrations by E. H. Wehnert.
London, 1856, 8vo.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated by E. H. Wehnert. London [1875], 8vo.
The Eve of St. Agnes. Illustrated by nineteen etchings by Charles O.
Murray. London, 1830, fol.
The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. Illustrated. Boston [U.S.], 1876,
24mo.
Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society. London, 1856-7, 8vo.
Vol. iii. contains "Another version of Keats's _Hyperion,
a Vision_," edited, with an introduction, by R. M. Milnes
(Lord Houghton).
Keatsii Hyperionis. Libri i-ii. Latine reddidit Carolus Merivale.
Cambridge, 1862, 8vo.
Keats's Hyperion. Book I. With notes [life and introduction]. London
[1877], 8vo.
Keats's Hyperion. Book I. With introduction, elucidatory notes, and an
appendix of exercises. London [1878], 8vo.
Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems. By J. K. London,
1820, 12mo.
Lamia. With illustrative designs by W. H. Low. Philadelphia, 1885, fol.
Ode to a Nightingale. By J. K. Edited, with an introduction, by Thomas
J. Wise. London, 1884, 8vo.
Printed for private distribution, and issued in parchment
wrappers. Four copies on vellum and twenty-five on paper
only printed.
IV. LETTERS, ETC.
Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of J. K. Edited by R. M. Milnes.
2 vols. London, 1848, 16mo.
Life and Letters of John Keats. A new and completely revised edition.
Edited by Lord Houghton. London, 1867, 8vo.
Letters of J. K. to Fanny Brawne, written in the years 1819 and 1820,
and now given from the original manuscripts, with introduction and
notes, by Harry Buxton Forman. London, 1878, 8vo.
In addition to the ordinary issue, the following special
copies were "printed for private distribution"--In 8vo on
Whatman's hand-made paper 60 copies, on vellum 2 copies;
in post 8vo there were 6 copies with title-page set up in
different style, and 2 copies of coloured bank-note
paper, one blue and the other yellow.
V. MISCELLANEOUS.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO MAGAZINES.
_Annals of the Fine Arts. A quarterly magazine, edited by James Elmes_--
"Ode to the Nightingale," vol. iv., 1820, pp. 354-356.
The first appearance of this poem, which was afterwards
included in the "Lamia" volume, 1820, pp. 107-112.
"Ode on a Grecian Urn." Appeared first in the "Annals of
the Fine Arts" vol. iv., 1820, pp. 638, 639, afterwards
included in the Lamia volume.
_The Athenaeum_--
First appearance of the Sonnet "On hearing the Bag-pipe
and seeing 'The Stranger' played at Inverary," June 7,
1873, p. 725.
_The Champion_--
"On Edmund Kean as a Shakesperian actor, and on Kean in
'Richard, Duke of York.'" Appeared on the 21st and 28th
Dec. 1817.
_The Dial_--
"Notes on Milton's Paradise Lost." In vol. iii., 1843,
pp, 500-504; reprinted by Lord Houghton.
_The Examiner_--
The "Sonnet to Solitude," Keats's first published poem,
according to Charles Cowden Clarke, appeared on the 5th
of May 1816, signed J. K., p. 282.
The first appearance of the sonnet "To Kosciusko," Feb.
16, 1817, p. 107.
The first appearance of the sonnet, "After dark vapors
have oppress'd our plains," etc., Feb. 23, 1817, p. 124.
Two sonnets "To Haydon, with a Sonnet written on seeing
the Elgin Marbles," and "On seeing the Elgin Marbles"
appear for the first time, March 9, 1817, p. 155. In 1818
they were reprinted in the _Annals of the Fine Arts_, No.
8.
The first appearance of the sonnet, "Written on a blank
space at the end of Chaucer's tale of 'The Floure and the
Lefe,'" March 16, 1817, p. 173.
Sonnet "On the Grasshopper and Cricket" appeared on the
21st Sept. 1817, p. 599.
_The Gem, a Literary Annual, Edited by Thomas Hood_--
The sonnet "On a picture of Leander" appeared for the
first time in 1829, p. 108.
_Hood's Comic Annual_--
"Sonnet to a Cat," 1830, p. 14.
_Hood's Magazine_--
In vol. ii., 1844, p. 240, the sonnet "Life's sea hath
been five times at its slow ebb" appears for the first
time; included by Lord Houghton in the Literary Remains.
In vol. ii., 1844, p. 562, the poem "Old Meg," written
during a tour in Scotland, appears for the first time.
_The Indicator. Edited by Leigh Hunt_--
In vol. i., 1820, p. 120. there are thirty-four lines,
headed _Vox et praeterea nihil_, supposed by Mr. Forman to
be a cancelled passage of Endymion, and reprinted by him
in his edition of Keats, 1883, vol. i, p. 221.
In vol. i. 1820, pp. 246-248, the poem "La Belle Dame Sans
Merci" first appeared, and signed "Caviare."
First appearance of the sonnet, "A Dream after reading
Dante's Episode of 'Paolo and Francesca,'" signed
"Caviare," vol. i. 1820, p. 304.
_Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket Book_--
First appearance of the sonnets, "To Ailsa Rock" and "The
Human Season" in 1819.
VI. APPENDIX.
BIOGRAPHY, CRITICISM, ETC.
Armstrong, Edmund J.--Essays and Sketches of Edmund J. Armstrong.
London, 1877, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 176-179.
Atlantic Monthly.--Boston, 1858, 8vo.
"The Poet Keats." Seven stanzas, vol. ii., pp. 531-532.
Belfast, Earl of.--Poets and Poetry of the xixth century. A course of
lectures. London, 1852, 8vo.
Moore, Keats, Scott, pp. 59-131.
Best Bits.--Best Bits. London, 1884, 8vo.
"The Last Moments of Keats," vol. ii., p. 119.
Biographical Magazine.--Lives of the Illustrious (The Biographical
Magazine). London, 1853, 8vo.
John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 260-271.
Caine, T. Hall. Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London,
1882, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 167-183.
Caine, T. Hall.--Cobwebs of Criticism, etc. London, 1883, 8vo. Keats,
pp. 158-190.
Carr, J. Comyns.--Essays on Art. London, 1879, 8vo.
The artistic spirit in Modern English Poetry, pp. 3-34.
Clarke, Charles Cowden.--The Riches of Chaucer, in which his impurities
have been expunged, etc. 2 vols. London, 1835, 12mo.
John Keats, vol. i., pp. 52, 53.
---- Recollections of Writers. London, 1878, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 120-157.
Colvin, Sidney.--Keats (_English Men of Letters_). London, 1887, 8vo.
Cotterill, H. B.--An Introduction to the Study of Poetry. London,
1882, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 242-268.
Courthope, William J.--The Liberal Movement in English Literature.
London, 1885, 8vo.
Poetry, Music, and Painting. Coleridge and Keats, pp.
159-194.
Cunningham, Allan.--Biographical and Critical History of the British
Literature of the last fifty years. [Reprinted from the "Athenaeum."]
Paris, 1834, 12mo.
Keats, pp. 102-104.
Dennis, John.--Heroes of Literature. English Poets. London, 1883, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 365-373.
De Quincey, Thomas.--Essays on the Poets, and other English Writers.
Boston, 1853, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 75-97.
---- De Quincey's Works. 16 vols. Edinburgh, 1862-71, 12mo.
John Keats, vol. v, pp. 269-288.
Devey, J.--A comparative estimate of Modern English Poetry. London,
1873, 8vo.
Alexandrine Poets. Keats, pp. 263-274.
Dilke, Charles Wentworth.--The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the
writings of the late Charles W. Dilke. 2 vols. London, 1875, 8vo.
John Keats, vol. i., pp. 2-14.
Encyclopaedia Britannica.--Encyclopaedia Britannica. Eighth edition.
Edinburgh, 1857, 4to.
John Keats, vol. xiii., pp. 55-57.
---- Ninth edition. Edinburgh, 1882, 4to.
John Keats, by Algernon C. Swinburne, vol. xiv.,
pp. 22-24.
English Writers.--Essays on English Writers. By the author of "The
Gentle Life." London, 1869, 8vo.
Shelley, Keats, etc., pp. 338-349.
Gilfillan, George.--A Gallery of Literary Portraits. Edinburgh,
1845, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 372-385.
Gossip.--The Gossip. London, 1821, 8vo.
Three Stanzas, signed G. V. D., May 19, 1821, p. 96, "On
Reading Lamia and other poems, by John Keats."
Griswold, Rufus W.--The Poets and Poetry of England in the Nineteenth
Century. New York, 1875, 8vo.
John Keats, with portrait, pp. 301-311.
Haydon, Benjamin Robert,--Life of B. R. Haydon. Edited and compiled by
Tom Taylor. 3 vols. London, 1853, 8vo.
Numerous references to Keats.
---- Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a memoir by his son, F. W.
Haydon. 2 vols. London, 1876, 8vo.
Contains ten letters and two extracts from letters to
Haydon, and ten letters from Haydon to Keats, vol. ii.,
pp. 1-17.
Hinde, F.--Essays and Poems. Liverpool, 1864, 8vo.
The life and works of the poet Keats: a paper read before
the Liverpool Philomathic Society, April 15, 1862,
pp. 57-95.
Hoffmann, Frederick A.--Poetry, its origin, nature, and history, etc.
London, 1884, 8vo.
Keats, vol. i., pp. 483-491.
Howitt, William.--Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British Poets.
Third edition. London, 1857, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 292-300.
---- The Northern Heights of London, etc. London, 1869, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 95-103.
Hunt, Leigh.--Imagination and Fancy; or, selections from the English
Poets. London, 1844, 12mo.
Keats, born 1796, died 1821, pp. 312-345.
---- Foliage, or Poems original and translated. London, 1818, 8vo.
Contains four sonnets; "To John Keats," "On receiving a
Crown of Ivy from the same," "On the same," "To the
Grasshopper and the Cricket."
---- Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries; with recollections of
the author's life, and of his visit to Italy. London, 1826, 4to.
John Keats, pp. 246-268.
---- The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt; with reminiscences of friends and
contemporaries. In three volumes. London, 1850, 8vo.
The references to John Keats, vol. ii., pp. 201-216, etc.
are substantially reproduced from the preceding work.
Hutton, Laurence.--Literary Landmarks of London. London, [1885], 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 177-182.
Jeffrey, Francis.--Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. London,
1853, 8vo.
John Keats. Review of Endymion and Lamia, pp. 526-534.
Lester, John W.--Criticisms. Third edition, London, 1853, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 343-349.
Lowell, James Russell.--Among my Books. Second series. London,
1876, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 303-327.
---- The Poetical Works of J. R. L. New revised edition. Boston [U.S.],
1882, 8vo.
Sonnet "To the Spirit of Keats," p. 20.
Maginn, William.--Miscellanies: prose and verse. Edited by R. W.
Montagu. 2 vols. London, 1885; 8vo.
Remarks on Shelley's Adonais, vol. ii., pp. 300-311.
Mario, Jessie White.--Sepoleri Inglesi in Roma. (Estratto dalla _Nuova
Antologia_, 15 Maggio, 1879.) Roma, 1879, 8vo.
On Keats and Shelley.
Mason, Edward T.--Personal Traits of British Authors. New York, 1885,
8vo.
John Keats, pp. 195-207.
Masson, David.--Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays. London,
1874, 8vo.
"The Life and Poetry of Keats," pp. 143-191.
Medwin, Thomas.--Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron: noted
during a residence with his Lordship at Pisa, in the years 1821 and
1822. By T. Medwin. London, 1824, 4to.
John Keats, pp. 143, 237-240, 255, etc.
Milnes, Richard Monckton, _Lord Houghton_.--Life, Letters, and Literary
Remains of John Keats. In two volumes. London, 1848, 8vo.
---- Life and Letters of John Keats. A new and completely revised
edition. Edited by Lord Houghton, London, 1867, 8vo.
Mitford, Mary Russell.--Recollections of a Literary Life, etc. 3 vols.
London, 1852, 8vo.
Shelley and Keats, vol. ii., pp. 183-192.
Moir, D. M.--Sketches of the poetical literature of the past
half-century. London, 1851, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 215-221.
Noel, Hon. Roden.--Essays on poetry and poets. London, 1886, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 150-171.
Notes and Queries.--General Index to Notes and Queries. 5 series.
London, 1856-80, 4to.
Numerous references to John Keats.
Olio.--The Olio. London [1828]. 8vo.
"Recollections of Books and their Authors," No. 6, "John
Keats, the Poet," vol. i., pp. 391-394.
Oliphant, Mrs.--The Literary History of England, etc. 3 vols. London,
1885, 8vo.
John Keats, vol. iii., pp. 133-155.
Owen, Frances Mary.--John Keats. A Study. London, 1880, 8vo.
Reviewed in the _Academy_, July 5 1884, p. 2.
Payn, James.--Stories from Boccaccio, and other Poems. London,
1852, 8vo.
Sonnet to John Keats, p. 97.
Phillips, Samuel.--Essays from "The Times." Being a selection from the
literary papers which have appeared in that journal. London, 1851, 8vo.
"The Life of John Keats," pp. 255-269. This article
originally appeared in "The Times" on Sept. 17, 1849.
---- New Edition. 2 vols. London, 1871, 8vo.
John Keats, vol. i., pp. 255-269.
Richardson, David Lester.--Literary Chit-Chat, etc. Calcutta, 1848, 8vo.
Shelley, Keats, and Coleridge, pp. 271-281.
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel.--Ballads and Sonnets. London, 1881, 8vo.
Sonnets "To Five English Poets." No. iv., John Keats,
p. 316.
Rossetti, William Michael.--Lives of Famous Poets. London [1885], 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 349-361.
Sarrazin, Gabriel.--Poetes Modernes de l'Angleterre. Paris, 1885, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 131-152.
Scott, William Bell.--Poems, Ballads, Studies from Nature, Sonnets, etc.
Illustrated by seventeen etchings by the author and L. Alma Tadema.
London, 1875, 8vo.
An etching by the author of Keats' Grave, p. 177; sonnet
"On the Inscription, Keats' Tombstone," p. 179. An Ode
"To the memory of John Keats," pp. 226-230.
Scribner's Monthly Magazine.--Scribner's Monthly Magazine. New York,
1880, 1887, 8vo.
The No. for June 1880 contains fourteen lines "To the
Immortal memory of Keats," and the May No. for 1887, p.
110, "Keats" (ten verses) by Robert Burns Wilson.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe.--Adonais. An elegy on the death of John Keats,
author of Endymion, Hyperion, etc. Pisa, 1821, 4to.
---- Adonais. An elegy on the death of John Keats, etc. Cambridge,
1829, 8vo.
---- Adonais. Edited, with notes, by H. Buxton Forman. London,
1880, 8vo.
Shelley, Lady.--Shelley Memorials; from authentic sources. Edited by
Lady Shelley. London, 1859, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 74, 150-152, 155, 156, 200, 203.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence.--Victorian Poets. London, 1876, 8vo.
John Keats, pp. 18, 104, 106, 155, 367, etc.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles.--Miscellanies. London, 1886, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 210-218. Originally appeared in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Tuckerman, Henry T.--Characteristics of Literature, illustrated by the
genius of distinguished men. Philadelphia, 1849, 8vo.
Final Memorials of Lamb and Keats, pp. 256-269.
---- Thoughts on the Poets. London [1852], 12mo.
Keats, pp. 212-226.
Verdicts.--Verdicts. [Verse.] London, 1852, 8vo.
John Keats, occupies 93 lines, pp. 28-32.
Ward, Thomas H.--The English Poets, etc. 4 vols. London, 1883, 8vo.
John Keats, by Matthew Arnold, vol. iv., pp. 427-464.
Willis, N. P.--Pencillings by the Way. A new edition. London, 1844, 8vo.
"Keats's Poems," pp. 84-88.
Wiseman, Cardinal.--On the Perception of Natural Beauty by the Ancients
and the Moderns, etc. London, 1856, 8vo.
Keats, pp. 13, 14; reviewed by Leigh Hunt in _Fraser's
Magazine_ for December, 1859.
MAGAZINE ARTICLES.
Keats, John
--Examiner, June 1, 1817, p. 345, July 6, 1817, pp. 428, 429,
July 13, 1817, pp. 443, 444.
--Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 3, 1818, pp. 519-524.
--Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 7, 1820, p. 665;
vol. 27, 1830, p. 633.
--Indicator, by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352.
--Quarterly Review, vol. 37, 1828, pp. 416-421.
--Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T. Tuckerman, vol. 8,
1842, pp. 37-41.
--Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, by T. De Quincey, vol. 13, N.S.,
1846, pp. 249-254; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 8,
pp. 202-209.
--Democratic Review, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429.
--United States Magazine, vol. 21, N.S., 1847, pp. 427-429;
vol. 26, N.S., 1850, pp. 415-421.
--Hogg's Weekly Instructor, with portrait, vol. 1, 1848,
pp. 145-148; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 14,
pp. 409-415.
--Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, vol. 10, N.S., 1848,
pp. 376-380.
--Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849, pp. 56-60.
--Knickerbocker, vol. 55, 1860, pp. 392-397.
--Temple Bar, vol. 38, 1873, pp. 501-512.
--Edinburgh Review, July 1876, pp. 38-42.
--Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 40. 1870, pp. 523-525
and vol. 55, 1877, by E. F. Madden, pp. 357-361,
illustrated.
--Scribner's Monthly, by R. H. Stoddard, vol. 15, 1877,
pp. 203-213.
--American Bibliopolist, vol. 7, p. 94, etc., and vol. 8,
p. 94, etc.
--_La Revue Politique et Litteraire_, by Leo Quesnel, 1877,
pp. 61-65.
--Argonaut, by Reginald W. Corlass, vol. 2, 1875, pp. 172-178.
--Canadian Monthly, by Edgar Fawcett, vol. 2, 1879,
pp. 449-454.
--_Century_, by Edmund C. Stedman, illustrated, vol. 27, 1884,
pp. 599-602.
---- _and his Critics._ Dial, vol. 1, 1881, pp. 265, 266.
---- _and Joseph Severn._ Dublin University Magazine, by
E. S. R., vol. 96, 1880, pp. 37-39.
---- _and Lamb._ Southern Literary Messenger, by H. T.
Tuckerman, vol. 14, 1848, pp. 711-715.
---- _and Shelley._ To-Day, June 1883, pp. 188-206, etc.
---- _and the Quarterly Review._ Morning Chronicle, Oct. 3 and
8, 1818 (two letters). Examiner, 11 Oct., 1818, pp. 648,
649.
---- _an Esculapian Poet._ Asclepiad, with portrait on steel,
vol. 1, 1884, pp. 138-155.
---- _Art of._ Our Corner, by J. Robertson, vol. 4, 1884,
pp. 40-45, 72-76.
---- _Cardinal Wiseman on._ Fraser's Magazine, by Leigh Hunt,
vol. 60, 1859, pp. 759, 760.
---- _daintiest of Poets._ Victoria Magazine, vol. 15, 1870,
pp. 55-67.
---- _Death of._ London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821, pp. 426,
427.
---- _Verses on death of._ London Magazine, vol. 3, 1821,
p. 526.
---- _Did he really care for music._ Manchester Quarterly, by
John Mortimer, vol 2, 1883, pp. 11-17.
---- _Endymion._ Quarterly Review, by Gifford, vol. 19, 1818,
pp. 204-208.--London Magazine, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 380-389.
---- _Forman's Edition of._ Macmillan's Magazine, vol. 49,
1884, pp. 330-341.--Times, Aug. 7, 1884.
---- _Fragment from._ Gentleman's Magazine, by Grant Allen,
vol. 244, 1879, pp. 676-686.
---- _Genius of._ Christian Remembrancer, vol. 6, N.S., 1843,
pp. 251-263.
---- _Holman Hunt's "Isabel."_ Fortnightly Review, by
B. Cracroft, vol. 3, 1868, pp. 648-657.
---- _Hyperion._ American Whig Review, vol. 14, 1851,
pp. 311-322.
---- _Hyperionis, Libri i-ii._ Saturday Review, April 26, 1862,
pp. 477, 478.
---- _in Cloudland._ A poem of thirty-one verses. St. James's
Magazine, by R. W. Buchanan, vol. 7, 1863, pp. 470-475.
---- _Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems._
London Magazine, vol. 2, 1820, pp. 315-321.--Indicator,
by Leigh Hunt, vol. 1, 1820, pp. 337-352.--Monthly
Review, vol. 92, N.S., 1820, pp. 305-310.--Eclectic
Review, vol. 14 N.S., 1820, 158-171.
---- _Leigh Hunt's Farewell Words to._ Indicator, September 20,
1820.
---- _Letters to Fanny Brawne._ Athenaeum, July 14, p. 50, July
21, pp. 80, 81, and July 28, 1877, pp. 114,
115.--Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 57, 1878,
p. 466.--Eclectic Magazine, vol. 27, N.S., 1878, pp. 495-498
(from the Academy).--Appleton's Journal, by R. H.
Stoddard, vol. 4, N.S., 1878, pp. 379-382.
---- _Life and Poems of._ Macmillan's Magazine, by D. Masson,
vol. 3, 1860, pp. 1-16.
---- _Marginalia made by Dante G. Rossetti in a copy of Keats'
Poems._ Manchester Quarterly, by George Milner, vol. 2,
1883, pp. 1-10.
---- _Milnes' Life of._ American Review, by C. A. Bristed, vol.
8, 1848, pp. 603-610.--Littell's Living Age, vol. 19,
1848, pp. 20-24.--United States Magazine, vol. 23, N.S.,
1848, pp. 375-377.--Athenaeum, Aug. 12, 1848, pp.
824-827.--Revue des Deux Mondes, by Philarete Chasles,
Tom. 24, Serie 5, 1848, pp. 584-607.--Eclectic Review,
vol. 24, N.S., 1848, pp. 533-552.--Dublin Review, vol.
25, 1848, pp. 164-179.--British Quarterly Review, vol. 8,
1848, pp. 328-343.--Prospective Review, vol. 4, 1848,
pp. 539-555.--Democratic Review, vol. 23, N.S., 1848,
pp. 375-377.--Westminster Review, vol. 50, 1849,
pp. 349-371.--Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 8, 1849,
pp. 56-60.--North British Review, vol. 10, 1848, pp. 69-96;
same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 16,
pp. 145-159.--New Monthly Magazine, vol. 84, 1848,
pp. 105-115; same article, Eclectic Magazine, vol. 15,
pp. 340-343.--Dublin University Magazine, vol. 33, 1849,
pp. 28-35.--Democratic Review, vol. 26, N.S., 1850,
pp. 415-421.
---- _My Copy of._ Tinsley's Magazine, by Richard Dowling,
vol. 25, 1879, pp. 427-436.
---- _New Editions of._ Dial, by W. M. Payne, vol. 4, 1884,
pp. 255, 256.
---- _Le Paganisme poetique en Angleterre._ Revue des Deux
Mondes, by Louis Etienne, Tom. 69, periode 2, pp.
291-317.--Eclectic Review, vol. 8, 1817, pp. 267-275.
---- _Poems of._ Examiner, by Leigh Hunt, June 1, July 6 and
13, 1817.--Edinburgh Review, by F. Jeffrey, vol. 34,
1820, pp. 203-213.--Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, vol. 8,
N.S., 1841, pp. 650, 651.--Dublin University Magazine,
vol. 21, 1843, pp. 690-703.--Edinburgh Review, vol. 90,
1849, pp. 424-430.--Massachusetts Quarterly Review, vol.
2, 1849, pp. 414-428.--Dublin University Magazine, vol.
83, 1874, pp. 699-706.--North American Review, vol. 124,
1877, pp. 500-501.
---- _Poetry, Music, and Painting: Coleridge and Keats._
National Review, by W. J. Courthope, vol. 5, 1885,
pp. 504-518.
---- _Recollections of._ Gentleman's Magazine, by Charles
Cowden Clarke, vol. 12, N.S., 1874, pp. 177-204; same
article, Littell's Living Age, vol. 121, pp. 174-188;
Every Saturday, vol. 16, p. 262, etc., 669,
etc.--Atlantic Monthly, by C. C. Clarke, vol. 7, 1861,
pp. 86-100.
---- _School House of, at Enfield._ St. James's Magazine
Holiday Annual, 1875, by Charles Cowden Clarke.
---- _Thoughts on._ New Dominion Monthly (portrait), by Robert
S. Weir, 1877, pp. 293-300.
---- _Unpublished Notes on Milton._ Athenaeum, Oct. 26, 1872,
pp. 529, 530.
---- _Unpublished Notes on Shakespeare._ Athenaeum, Nov. 16,
1872, p. 634.
---- _Vicissitudes of his fame._ Atlantic Monthly, by
J. Severn, vol. 11, 1863, pp. 401-407; same article,
Sharpe's London Magazine, vol. 34, N.S., 1869,
pp. 246-249.
VII.--CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF WORKS.
Poems 1817
Endymion 1818
Lamia, etc. 1820
Life, letters, and literary remains 1848
Letters to Fanny Brawne 1878
Letters 1883
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: A small point here may deserve a note. A letter from John
Keats to his brother George, under date of September 21st, 1819,
contains the following words: "Our bodies, every seven years, are
completely fresh-materialed: seven years ago it was not this hand that
clenched itself against Hammond." Another version of the same letter
(the true wording of which is matter of some dispute) substitutes: "Mine
is not the same hand I clenched at Hammond's." Mr. Buxton Forman, who
gives the former phrase as the genuine one, thinks that "this phrase
points to a serious rupture as the cause of his quitting his
apprenticeship to Hammond." My own inclination is to surmise that the
accurate reading may be--"It was not this hand that clenched itself
against Hammond's"; indicating, not any quarrel, but the friendly
habitual clasp of hand against hand. "Seven years ago" would reach back
to September 1812: whereas Keats did not part from Hammond until 1814.]
[Footnote 2: This is Hunt's own express statement. It has been disputed,
but I am not prepared to reject it.]
[Footnote 3: Biographers have been reticent on this subject. Keats's
statement however speaks for itself, and a high medical authority, Dr.
Richardson, writing in _The Asclepiad_ for April 1884, and reviewing the
whole subject of the poet's constitutional and other ailments, says that
Keats in Oxford "runs loose, and pays a forfeit for his indiscretion
which ever afterwards physically and morally embarrasses him." He
pronounces that Keats's early death was "expedited, perhaps excited, by
his own imprudence," but was substantially due to hereditary disease.
His mother, as we have already seen, had died of the malady which killed
the poet, consumption. It is not clear to me what Keats meant by saying
that "from his _employment_" his health would be insecure. One might
suppose that he was thinking of the long and haphazard working hours of
a young surgeon or medical man; in which case, this seems to be the
latest instance in which he spoke of himself as still belonging to that
profession.]
[Footnote 4: Hitherto printed "life"; it seems to me clear that "lips"
is the right word.]
[Footnote 5: In Medwin's "Life of Shelley," vol. ii. pp. 89 to 92, are
some interesting remarks upon Keats's character and demeanour, written
in a warm and sympathetic tone. Some of them were certainly penned by
Miss Brawne (Mrs. Lindon), and possibly all of them. Mr. Colvin (p. 233
of his book) has called special attention to these remarks: I forbear
from quoting them. A leading point is to vindicate Keats from the
imputation of "violence of temper."]
[Footnote 6: This passage is taken from Lord Houghton's "Life, &c., of
Keats," first published in 1848, and by "home" he certainly means
Wentworth Place, Hampstead. Yet in his Aldine Edition of Keats, his
lordship says that the poet "was at that time, very much against Mr.
Brown's desire and advice, living alone in London." This latter
statement may possibly be correct--I question it. The passage, as
written by Lord Houghton, is condensed from the narrative of Brown. The
latter is given verbatim in Mr. Colvin's "Keats," and is, of course, the
more important and interesting of the two. I abstain from quoting it,
solely out of regard to Mr. Colvin's rights of priority.]
[Footnote 7: Apparently Miss Brawne had remonstrated against the
imputation of "flirting with Brown," and much else to like effect in a
recent letter from Keats.]
[Footnote 8: I observe this name occurring once elsewhere in relation to
Keats, but am not clear whose house it represents.]
[Footnote 9: It has been suggested (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as
printed in Mr. Forman's edition of Keats) that the poem here referred to
is "The Eve of St. Mark." Keats had begun it fully a year and a half
before the date of this letter, but, not having continued it, he might
have spoken of "having it in his head."]
[Footnote 10: This may require a word of explanation. Keats, detained at
Portsmouth by stress of weather, had landed for a day, and seen his
friend Mr. Snook, at Bedhampton. Brown was then in Chichester, only ten
miles off, but of this Keats had not at the time been aware.]
[Footnote 11: The -- before "you" appears in the letter, as printed in
Mr. Forman's edition of Keats. It might seem that Keats hesitated a
moment whether to write "you" or "Miss Brawne."]
[Footnote 12: No such letter is known. It has been stated that Keats,
after leaving home, could never summon up resolution enough to write to
Miss Brawne: possibly this statement ought to be limited to the time
after he had reached Italy.]
[Footnote 13: Lord Houghton says that Keats in Naples "could not bear to
go to the opera, on account of the sentinels who stood constantly on the
stage:" he spoke of "the continual visible tyranny of this government,"
and said "I will not leave even my bones in the midst of this
despotism." Sentinels on the stage have, I believe, been common in
various parts of the continent, as a mere matter of government parade,
or of routine for preserving public order. The other points (for which
no authority is cited by Lord Houghton) must, I think, be over-stated.
In November 1820 the short-lived constitution of the kingdom of Naples
was in full operation, and neither tyranny nor despotism was in the
ascendant--rather a certain degree of popular license.]
[Footnote 14: The reader of Keats's preface will note that this is a
misrepresentation. Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism,
nor did he ask to remain uncriticized in order that he might write more.
What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of him for
hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be aware that
Keats's own sense of failure in "Endymion" was as fierce a hell as he
could be chastised by.]
[Footnote 15: This phrase stands printed with inverted commas, as a
quotation. It is not, however, a quotation from the letter of J. S.]
[Footnote 16: "Coolness" (which seems to be the right word) in the
letter to Miss Mitford.]
[Footnote 17: Severn's view of the matter some years afterwards has
however received record in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson. Under the
date May 6, 1837, we read--"He [Severn] denies that Keats's death was
hastened by the article in the _Quarterly_."]
[Footnote 18: The passage which begins--
"Hard by
Stood serene Cupids watching silently"
has some affinity with a passage in Shelley's "Adonais." The latter
passage is, however, more directly based upon one in the Idyll of Bion
on Adonis.]
[Footnote 19: I do not clearly understand from the poem whether Endymion
does or does not know, until the story nears its conclusion, that the
goddess who favours him is Diana. He appears at any rate to _guess_ as
much, either during this present interview or shortly afterwards.]
[Footnote 20: Keats has been laughed at for ignorance in printing "Visit
my Cytherea"; but it appears on good evidence that what he really wrote
was "Visit thou my Cythera." A false quantity in this same canto,
"Nept[)u]nus," cannot be explained away.]
[Footnote 21: Declared it in some very odd lines; for instance--
"Do gently murder half my soul, and I
Shall feel the other half so utterly!"]
[Footnote 22: See p. 52 as to Miss Brawne.]
[Footnote 23: I presume the "three masterpieces" are "The Eve of St.
Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia"; this leaves out of count the short
"Belle Dame sans Merci," and the unfinished "Eve of St. Mark," but
certainly not because Dante Rossetti rated those lower than the three
others.]
[Footnote 24: There are some various readings in this poem (as here,
"wretched wight"); I adopt the phrases which I prefer.]
* * * * *
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, and inconsistent
hyphenation. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation have been
fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:
page 110: typo fixed
In Feburary[February] 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley,
undertook to write a sonnet each upon the river Nile.
page 150: typo fixed
which could not be made applicable or subservient to the purposes
of poetry. Many will remember the ancedote[ancedote], proper to
Haydon's "immortal dinner"
page 201: typo fixed
seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a
palpaple[palpable] fact that this address, according to its place
in
In Footnote 20, [)u] indicates a u-breve.
End of Project Gutenberg's Life of John Keats, by William Michael Rossetti