Keats's meeting with Hunt--Growth of their friendship--Haydon's
intervention--Keats's residence with Hunt--His departure for Italy--Hunt's
Criticism of Keats's poetry--His influence on the _Poems of 1817_.
It was about the year 1815 that Keats showed to his former school friend,
Charles Cowden Clarke, the following sonnet, the first indication the
latter had that Keats had written poetry:
"What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state,
Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit been as free
As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.
Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling thou unturn'dst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
With daring Milton through the fields of air:
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"
This admiration, expressed before Keats had met Hunt, was due to the
influence of the Clarke family and to Keats's acquaintance with _The
Examiner_, which he saw regularly during his school days at Enfield and
which he continued to borrow from Clarke during his medical
apprenticeship. Clarke later showed to Leigh Hunt two or three of Keats's
poems. Of the reception of one of them (_How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of
Time_) Clarke said:
"I could not but anticipate that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and
indeed approvingly, of the compositions--written, too, by a youth
under age; but my partial spirit was not prepared for the
unhesitating and prompt admiration which broke forth before he had
read twenty lines of the first poem."[91]
Hunt invited Keats to visit him. Of this first meeting between the two
men, Clarke wrote:
"That was a red letter day in the young poet's life, and one which
will never fade with me while memory lasts. The character and
expression of Keats's features would arrest even the casual passenger
in the street; and now they were wrought to a tone of animation that
I could not but watch with interest, knowing what was in store for
him from the bland encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention,
with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to encounter
and receive.... The interview, which stretched into three 'morning
calls', was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about
Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a
familiar of the household, and was always welcomed."[92]
Hunt's account of the meeting is as follows:
"I shall never forget the impression made upon me by the exuberant
specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before me,
and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance
of the writer. We became intimate on the spot, and I found the young
poet's heart as warm as his imagination. We read and we walked
together, and used to write verse of an evening upon a given subject.
No imaginative pleasure was left untouched by us, or unenjoyed; from
the recollections of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of
a summer rain at our window, or the clicking of the coal in the
winter-time. Not long afterwards, having the pleasure of entertaining
at dinner Mr. Godwin, Mr. Hazlitt, and Mr. Basil Montagu, I showed
the verses of my young friend, and they were pronounced to be as
extraordinary as I thought them."[93]
Leigh Hunt discovered Keats, by no means a small thing, for as he himself
has said: "To admire and comment upon the genius that two or three hundred
years have applauded, and to discover what will partake of applause two or
three hundred years hence, are processes of a very different
description."[94] With the same power of prophetic discernment, writing in
1828, he realized to the full the greatness of Keats and predicted that
growth of his fame in the future which has since taken place.[95] Keats's
account of his reception is given in the sonnet _Keen fitful gusts are
whisp'ring here and there_:
"For I am brimfull of the friendliness
That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned."
The date of the introduction of Keats to Hunt has been placed variously
from November, 1815, to the end of the year 1816. He says:
"It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York
Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the
_Indicator_--and he resided with me while in Mortimer Terrace,
Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the
curious in such things, among whom I am one."[96]
If this statement were correct, it would make the meeting about two or
three years later than has generally been supposed, for Leigh Hunt did not
move to York Buildings until 1818, and he did not begin work on the
_Indicator_ until October, 1819. Clarke states positively that the meeting
took place at Hampstead. From this evidence Mr. Colvin has suggested the
early spring of 1816 as the most probable date.[97] What seems better
evidence than any that has yet been brought forward is a passage in _The
Examiner_ of June 1, 1817, in Hunt's review of Keats's _Poems_ of 1817,
where he says that the poet is a personal friend whom he announced to the
public a short time ago (this allusion can only be to an article in _The
Examiner_ of December 1, 1816) and that the friendship dates from "no
greater distance of time than the announcement above mentioned. We had
published one of his sonnets in our paper,[98] without knowing more of him
than of any other anonymous correspondent; but at the period in question a
friend brought us one morning some copies in verse, which he said were
from the pen of a youth.... We had not read more than a dozen lines when
we recognized a young poet indeed." This seems conclusive evidence that
the meeting did not take place until the winter of 1816, for Hunt's
testimony written in 1817, when the circumstance was fresh in his mind is
certainly more trustworthy than his impression of it at the time that he
revised his _Autobiography_ in 1859 at the age of seventy-five years.
The two men, before they came in contact, had much in common, and Hunt's
influence, while in some cases an inspiring force, more often fostered
instincts already existing in Keats. Both possessed by nature a deep love
of poetry, color and melody, and both "were given to 'luxuriating'
somewhat voluptuously over the 'deliciousness' of the beautiful in art,
books or nature."[99] At the very beginning of their acquaintance,
notwithstanding a disparity in age of eleven years, they were wonderfully
drawn to each other. Spenser was their favorite poet. Both had a great
love for Chaucer, for Oriental fable and for Chivalric romance, and an
unusual knowledge of Greek myth. But even at the height of their intimacy,
the friendship seems to have remained more intellectual than personal, a
fact due no doubt to Keats's reserve and Hunt's "incuriousness."[100]
Except for this drawback Hunt considered the friendship ideal. He says:
"Mr. Keats and I were old friends of the old stamp, between whom there was
no such thing as obligation, except the pleasure of it. He enjoyed the
privilege of greatness with all whom he knew, rendering it delightful to
be obliged by him, and an equal, but not a greater delight, to oblige. It
was a pleasure to his friends to have him in their houses, and he did not
grude it."[101]
Through Hunt, Keats was introduced to a circle of literary men whose
companionship was an important factor in his development, notably Haydon,
Godwin, Hazlitt, Shelley, Vincent Novello, Horace Smith, Cornelius Webbe,
Basil Montagu, the Olliers, Barry Cornwall, and later Wordsworth.
For about a year following the meeting of the two, Hunt undoubtedly
exerted the strongest influence of any living man over the young poet.
Severn said that Keats's introduction to Hunt wrought a great change in
him and "intoxicated him with an excess of enthusiasm which kept by him
four or five years."[102] Mr. Forman says that "Charles Cowden Clarke, as
his early mentor, Leigh Hunt and Haydon as his most powerful encouragers
at the important epoch of adolescence, must be credited with much of the
active influence that took Keats out of the path to a medical
practitioner's life, and set his feet in the devious paths of
literature."[103] Keats's interest in his profession had decreased as his
knowledge and love of poetry grew. With the publication of his _Poems_ in
1817, and his retirement in April of that year from London to the Isle of
Wight "to be alone and improve" himself and to continue _Endymion_, his
decision was finally made in favor of a literary life. Hunt's aid at this
time took the practical form of publishing Keats's poems in _The Examiner_
and of drawing the attention of the public to them by comments and
reviews. Whether he ever paid Keats for any of his contributions to his
periodicals is not known.[104] Through the influence of Hunt the Ollier
brothers were induced to undertake the publication of Keats's first volume
of poems. It is dedicated to Leigh Hunt in the sonnet _Glory and
loveliness have passed away_. The sestet refers directly to him:
"But there are left delights as high as these,
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time, when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free
A leafy luxury, seeing I could please
With these poor offerings, a man like thee."[105]
Hunt replied in the sonnet _To John Keats_, quoted here in full because of
its inacessibility:
"'Tis well you think me truly one of those,
Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things;
For surely as I feel the bird that sings
Behind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows,
Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes,
Or the glad issue of emerging springs,
Or overhead the glide of a dove's wings,
Or turf, or trees, or midst of all, repose.
And surely as I feel things lovelier still,
The human look, and the harmonious form
Containing woman, and the smile in ill,
And such a heart as Charles's wise and warm,--
As surely as all this, I see ev'n now,
Young Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow."[106]
In 1820, Hunt dedicated his translation of Tasso's _Aminta_ to Keats.
In spite of a eulogistic article by Hunt running in _The Examiners_ of
June 1, July 6 and 13, 1817, and other notices in some of the provincial
papers, the _Poems_ sold not very well at first, and later, not at
all.[107] Praise from the editor of _The Examiner_, although offered with
the kindest intentions in the world, was about the worst thing that could
possibly have happened to Keats, for, politically and poetically, Leigh
Hunt was most unpopular at this time;[108] and it was noised abroad that
Keats too was a radical in politics and in religion, a disciple of the
apostate in his attack on the established and accepted creed of poetry. As
a matter of fact, Keats's interest in politics decreased as his knowledge
of poetry increased, although, "as a party-badge and sign of
ultra-liberalism," he, like Hunt, Byron and Shelley continued to wear the
soft turn-down collars in contrast to the stiff collars and enormous
cravats of the time.[109] In religion Keats vented his dislike of sect and
creed on the Kirk of Scotland, as Hunt had on the Methodists. His
"simply-sensuous Beauty-worship" Palgrave attributes to the "moral laxity"
of Hunt.[110] Unless Palgrave, like Haydon, refers to Hunt's unorthodoxy
in matters of church and state, it is difficult to understand on what
evidence he bases this statement; in the first place, a charge of moral
laxity is not borne out by the recorded facts of Hunt's life, but only by
such untrustworthy tradition as still lingers in the public mind from the
Cockney School articles of _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_. Carlyle said
that he was of "most exemplary private deportment."[111] Byron, Shelley
and Lamb testified to his virtuous life. In the second place, a close
comparison of the works of the two now leads one to conclude that
"simply-sensuous Beauty-worship" existed to a much higher degree in Keats
than in Hunt, and that so strong an innate tendency would have developed
without outward stimulus from any one. While both men sought the good and
worshipped the beautiful, Keats, unlike Hunt, recognized somewhat "the
burthen and the mystery" of human life.
Keats, during his stay in the Isle of Wight and a visit to Oxford with
Bailey in the spring and summer of 1817, worked on _Endymion_, finishing
it in the fall. The letters exchanged between him and Hunt during his
absence were friendly, but a feeling of coolness began before his return.
In a letter from Margate May 10, 1817, there is a curiously obscure
reference to the _Nymphs_:
"How have you got on among them? How are the _Nymphs_? I suppose they
have led you a fine dance. Where are you now?--in Judea, Cappadocia,
or the parts of Lybia about Cyrene? Stranger from 'Heaven, Hues, and
Prototypes' I wager you have given several new turns to the old
saying, 'Now the maid was fair and pleasant to look on,' as well as
made a little variation in 'Once upon a time.' Perhaps, too, you have
rather varied, 'Here endeth the first lesson.' Thus I hope you have
made a horseshoe business of 'unsuperfluous life,' 'faint bowers' and
fibrous roots."[112]
A letter written by Haydon to Keats, dated May 11, 1817, warned Keats
against Hunt, and, with others of its kind, was possibly the insidious
beginning of the coolness which followed: "Beware, for God's sake of the
delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality
of our friend! He will go out of the world the victim of his own weakness
and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the contempt of his enemies
and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he undertook to support
injured by his own neglect of character."[113] A letter in reply from
Keats, written the day after he wrote the passage about the _Nymphs_,
accounts for its dissembling tone:
"I wrote to Hunt yesterday--scarcely know what I said in it. I could
not talk about Poetry in the way I should have liked for I was not in
humour with either his or mine. His self delusions are very
lamentable--they have inticed him into a Situation which I should be
less eager after than that of a galley Slave,--what you observe
thereon is very true must be in time [sic].
Perhaps it is a self delusion to say so--but I think I could not be
deceived in the manner that Hunt is--may I die to-morrow if I am to
be. There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter
oneself into the idea of being a great Poet...."[114]
To judge from the testimony of his brother George it is not surprising
that Keats succumbed to Haydon's influence against Hunt: "his nervous,
morbid temperament led him to misconstrue the motives of his best
friends."[115] In the last days of his life, his suspicion and bitterness
were general. In a letter to Bailey, June, 1818, Keats says: "I have
suspected everybody."[116] January, 1820, he wrote Georgiana Keats, "Upon
the whole I dislike mankind."[117] Haydon may have sincerely believed
Hunt's influence to be injurious because of the latter's unorthodoxy in
matters of religion. He wrote that Keats "could not bring his mind to bear
on one object, and was at the mercy of every petty theory that Leigh
Hunt's ingenuity would suggest.... He had a tendency to religion when I
first knew him, but Leigh Hunt soon forced it from his mind.... Leigh Hunt
was the unhinger of his best dispositions. Latterly, Keats saw Leigh
Hunt's weaknesses. I distrusted his leader, but Keats would not cease to
visit him, because he thought Hunt ill-used. This shows Keats's goodness
of heart."[118] It is not to be regretted that Haydon lessened Keats's
estimate of Hunt's literary infallibility, for his influence was most
injurious in that direction; but it is to be regretted that he impugned a
friendship in which Hunt was certainly sincere and by which Keats had
benefited.
In September, just before Keats's return, he seems somewhat mollified and
writes to John Hamilton Reynolds of Leigh Hunt's pleasant companionship;
he has failings, "but then his make-ups are very good."[119]
On his return to Hampstead in October, 1817, Keats found affairs among the
circle in a very bad way.[120]
Everybody "seems at Loggerheads--There's Hunt infatuated--there's
Haydon's picture in statu quo--There's Hunt walks up and down his
painting room--criticising every head most unmercifully. There's
Horace Smith tired of Hunt. 'The web of our life is of mingled
yarn.'... I am quite disgusted with literary men and will never know
another except Wordsworth--no not even Byron. Here is an instance of
the friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many
years.... Haydon says to me, Keats, don't show your lines to Hunt on
any Account or he will have done half for you--so it appears Hunt
wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds in the Theatre, John
told him that I was getting on to the completion of 4,000 lines--Ah!
says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been 7,000! If he
will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people? Haydon
received a Letter a little while back on this subject from some
Lady--which contains a caution to me, thro' him, on the subject--now
is not all this a most paultry (sic) thing to think about?"[121]
Hunt had tried to persuade Keats not to write a long poem. Keats wrote of
this: "Hunt's dissuasion was of no avail[122]--I refused to visit Shelley
that I might have my own unfettered scope; and after all, I shall have the
reputation of Hunt's eleve. His corrections and amputations will by the
knowing ones be traced in the poem."[123]
During 1818, Leigh Hunt in his critical work remained silent concerning
Keats, probably because of his sincere disapproval of _Endymion_ and
secondly, because he realized that his praise would be injurious. The
attacks on Hunt in _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_ had foreshadowed an
attack of the same virulent kind on Keats. The realization came with the
publication of _Endymion_. The article on "Johnny Keats," fourth of the
series on the Cockney School in _Blackwood's Magazine_, appeared almost
simultaneously with his return from Scotland, and the one in the
_Quarterly_ in September of the same year. These will be discussed in a
later chapter. Suspicions of neglect on the part of Hunt murmured in
Keats's mind like a discordant undertone, although the friendship
continued as warm as ever on Hunt's part. Keats was passive, without,
however, the old sense of dependence and trust. December 28, 1817, he
writes to his brothers of the "drivelling egotism" of _The Examiner_
article on the obsoletion of Christmas gambols and pastimes.[124] In a
journal letter written to George Keats and his wife in Louisville during
December and January, 1819, the old liking has become almost repugnance:
"Hunt keeps on in his old way--I am completely tired of it all. He has
lately published a Pocket Book called the literary Pocket-Book--full of
the most sickening stuff you can imagine";[125] yet Keats suffered himself
to become a contributor to this same book with two sonnets, _The Human
Seasons_ and _To Ailsa Rock_. Again in the same letter:
"The night we went to Novello's there was a complete set-to of Mozart
and punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow
my own inclinations I should never meet any of that set again, not
even Hunt who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are
with him, but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in
matters of taste and morals. He understands many a beautiful thing;
but then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same degree of
perception as he himself possesses,--he begins an explanation in such
a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended
continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and
beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I
care not for white Busts--and many a glorious thing when associated
with him becomes a nothing."[126]
Continuing in the same strain:
"I will have no more Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we
be of the tribe of Manasseh when we can wander with Esau? Why should
we kick against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses?... I don't
mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to
say that we need not to be teazed with grandeur and merit, when we
can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old
Poets and Robin Hood."[127]
And again:
"Hunt has damned Hampstead and masks and sonnets and Italian tales.
Wordsworth has damned the lakes--Milman has damned the old
drama--West has damned wholesale. Peacock has damned satire--Ollier
has damned Music--Hazlitt has damned the bigoted and the
blue-stockinged; how durst the Man?!"[128]
A parody on the conversation of Hunt's set, in which he is the principal
actor, carries with it a ridicule that is unkinder than the bitterness of
dislike, and difficult to reconcile with the fact that Keats at the same
time preserved the semblance of friendship.[129]
"Scene, a little Parlour--Enter Hunt--Gattie--Hazlitt--Mrs.
Novello--Ollier. _Gattie_:--Ha! Hunt got into your new house? Ha!
Mrs. Novello: seen Altam and his wife? _Mrs. N._: Yes (with a grin)
it's Mr. Hunt's isn't it? _Gattie_: Hunt's? no, ha! Mr. Ollier, I
congratulate you upon the highest compliment I ever heard paid to the
Book. Mr. Hazlitt, I hope you are well. _Hazlitt_:--Yes Sir, no
Sir--_Mr. Hunt_ (at the Music) 'La Biondina' etc. Hazlitt, did you
ever hear this?--"La Biondina" &c. _Hazlitt_: O no Sir--I
never--_Ollier_:--Do Hunt give it us over
again--divine--_Gattie_:--divino--Hunt when does your Pocket-Book
come out--_Hunt_:--'What is this absorbs me quite?' O we are spinning
on a little, we shall floridize soon I hope. Such a thing was very
much wanting--people think of nothing but money getting--now for me I
am rather inclined to the liberal side of things. I am reckoned lax
in my Christian principles, etc., etc., etc., etc."[130]
Such a dual attitude in Keats can be explained only by a dual feeling in
his mind, for it is impossible to believe him capable of deliberate
deceit. He may have realized Hunt's affectation and superficiality and
"disgusting taste"; he was probably swayed by Haydon to distrust Hunt's
morals; the suspicions planted by Haydon concerning _Endymion_ rankled;
but at the same time Hunt's charm of personality, and the assistance and
encouragement given in the first days of their friendship, formed a bond
difficult to break. Of Leigh Hunt's attitude there can be no doubt, for
through his long life of more than threescore years and ten, filled with
many friendships of many kinds, he can in no instance be charged with
insincerity. There is no conclusive proof on record to show him deserving
of the insinuations which Keats believed in respect to _Endymion_, for
Haydon is not trustworthy, and the opinion of a lady given through Haydon
may be dismissed on the same grounds.[131] Reynolds' testimony is not
damaging in itself, and in the absence of facts to the contrary may have
been wrongly construed by Keats. To the charges against himself, Leigh
Hunt has replied in the following passage, "affecting and persuasive in
its unrestrained pathos of remonstrance":[132]
"an irritable morbidity appears even to have driven his suspicions to
excess; and this not only with regard to the acquaintance whom he
might reasonably suppose to have had some advantages over him, but to
myself, who had none; for I learned the other day, with extreme pain,
such as I am sure so kind and reflecting a man as Mr. Monckton Milnes
would not have inflicted on me could he have foreseen it, that Keats
at one period of his intercourse suspected Shelley and myself of a
wish to see him undervalued! Such are the tricks which constant
infelicity can play with the most noble natures. For Shelley, let
_Adonais_ answer. For myself, let every word answer which I uttered
about him, living and dead, and such as I now proceed to repeat. I
might as well have been told that I wished to see the flowers or the
stars undervalued, or my own heart that loved him."[133]
Hunt's feeling towards Keats is nowhere better expressed than in his
_Autobiography_: "I could not love him as deeply as I did Shelley. That
was impossible. But my affection was only second to the one which I
entertained for that heart of hearts."[134]
Keats's atonement is contained in the last letter that he ever wrote: "If
I recover, I will do all in my power to correct the mistakes made during
sickness, and if I should not, all my faults will be forgiven."[135]
Haydon's influence over Keats was at its height in 1817 and 1818.[136] His
gifts and his enthusiasm, his "fresh magnificence"[137] carried Keats by
storm. It was not until about July 1818 that a reaction against Haydon in
favor of Hunt set in, brought about by money transactions between Keats
and Haydon, and the indifference of the latter in repaying a debt when he
knew Keats's necessity.[138] Keats probably never ceased to feel that
Hunt's influence as a poet had been injurious, as indeed it was, but the
relative stability of his two friends adjusted itself after this
experience with Haydon. Affairs seem to have been smoothed over with Hunt,
and were not disturbed again until a short time before Keats's departure
for Italy, when his morbid suspicions, which even led him to accuse his
friend Brown of flirting with Fanny Brawne,[139] seem to have been
renewed.
In 1820, Brown, with whom Keats had been living since his brother Tom's
death, went on a second tour to Scotland. Keats, unable to accompany him,
took a lodging in Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town, to be near Hunt, who was
living in Mortimer Street. Brown says: "It was his choice, during my
absence to lodge at Kentish Town, that he might be near his friend, Leigh
Hunt, in whose companionship he was ever happy."[140] In a letter to Fanny
Brawne, Keats said Hunt "amuses me very kindly."[141] It is not likely,
judging from this overture, that there had ever been an actual cessation
of intercourse, notwithstanding what Keats wrote in his letters; and the
act points to a revival of the old feeling on his part. About the
twenty-second or twenty-third of June, 1820, Keats left his rooms and
moved to Leigh Hunt's home to be nursed.[142] He remained about seven
weeks with the family, when there occurred an unfortunate incident which
resulted in his abrupt departure August 12, 1820. A letter of Fanny
Brawne's was delivered to him two days late with the seal broken. The
contretemps was due to the misconduct of a servant, but it was interpreted
by Keats as treachery on the part of the family. At the moment he would
accept no explanations or apologies. He writes of this incident to Fanny
Brawne:
"My friends have behaved well to me in every instance but one, and
there they have become tattlers, and inquisitors into my conduct:
spying upon a secret I would rather die than share it with anybody's
confidence. For this I cannot wish them well, I care not to see any
of them again. If I am the Theme, I will not be the Friend of idle
Gossips. Good gods what a shame it is our Loves should be put into
the microscope of a Coterie. Their laughs should not affect you (I
may perhaps give you reasons some day for these laughs, for I suspect
a few people to hate me well enough, _for reasons I know of_, who
have pretended a great friendship for me) when in competition with
one, who if he should never see you again would make you the Saint of
his memory. These Laughers, who do not like you, who envy you for
your Beauty, who would have God-bless'd me from you for ever: who
were plying me with disencouragements with respect to you eternally.
People are revengeful--do not mind them--do nothing but love
me."[143]
In his next letter to her he says:
"I shall never be able to endure any more the society of any of those
who used to meet at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two
years taste like brass upon my Palate."[144]
The lack of self-control and the distrust seen in these extracts show that
Keats was laboring under hallucinations produced by an ill mind and body;
the letters from which they have been taken are unnatural, almost
terrible, in their passion and rebellion against fate.
Keats moved to the residence of the Brawnes. While he was here the trouble
seems to have been smoothed over, for in a letter to Hunt he says: "You
will be glad to hear I am going to delay a little at Mrs. Brawne's. I hope
to see you whenever you get time, for I feel really attached to you for
your many sympathies with me, and patience at all my _lunes_.... Your
affectionate friend, John Keats."[145] To Brown he says: "Hunt has behaved
very kindly to me"; and again: "The seal-breaking business is over-blown.
I think no more of it."[146] Hunt's reply is couched in most affectionate
terms:
"Giovani [sic] Mio,
"I shall see you this afternoon, and most probably every day. You
judge rightly when you think I shall be glad at your putting up
awhile where you are, instead of that solitary place. There are
humanities in the house; and if wisdom loves to live with children
round her knees (the tax-gatherer apart), sick wisdom, I think,
should love to live with arms about it's waist. I need not say how
you gratify me by the impulse that led you to write a particular
sentence in your letter, for you must have seen by this time how much
I am attached to yourself.
"I am indicating at as dull a rate as a battered finger-post in wet
weather. Not that I am ill: for I am very well altogether. Your
affectionate Friend, Leigh Hunt."[147]
This was probably the last letter written by him to Keats. In September
Keats went to Rome with Severn to escape the hardships of the winter
climate, after having declined an invitation from Shelley to visit him at
Pisa. In the same month, Hunt published an affectionate farewell to him in
_The Indicator_. An announcement of his death appeared in _The Examiner_
of March 25, 1821. The story of the personal relations of the two men
could not be better closed than with the words of Hunt written March 8,
1821, to Severn in Rome when he believed Keats still alive:
"If he can bear to hear of us, pray tell him; but he knows it
already, and can put it into better language than any man. I hear
that he does not like to be told that he may get better; nor is it to
be wondered at, considering his firm persuasion that he shall not
survive. He can only regard it as a puerile thing, and an insinuation
that he shall die. But if his persuasion should happen to be no
longer so strong, or if he can now put up with attempts to console
him, tell him of what I have said a thousand times, and what I still
(upon my honour) think always, that I have seen too many instances of
recovery from apparently desperate cases of consumption not to be in
hope to the very last. If he still cannot bear to hear this, tell
him--tell that great poet and noblehearted man--that we shall all
bear his memory in the most precious part of our hearts, and that the
world shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do. Or if this,
again, will trouble his spirit, tell him that we shall never cease to
remember and love him; and that, Christian or infidel, the most
sceptical of us has faith enough in the high things that nature puts
into our heads, to think all who are of one accord in mind and heart
are journeying to one and the same place, and shall unite somewhere
or other again, face to face, mutually conscious, mutually
delighted."[148]
The literary relations of Keats and Hunt will be considered under two
heads; first, the criticism of Keats's writings by Hunt; and second, his
direct influence upon them.
_On first looking into Chapman's Homer_ in _The Examiner_ of December 1st,
1816, was embodied in an article entitled "Young Poets." It was the first
notice of Keats to appear in print and is in part as follows:
"The last of these young aspirants whom we have met with, and who
promise to help the new school to revive Nature and
'To put a spirit of youth in everything,'--
is we believe, the youngest of them all, and just of age. His name is
John Keats. He has not yet published anything except in a newspaper,
but a set of his manuscripts was handed us the other day, and fairly
surprised us with the truth of their ambition, and ardent grappling
with Nature."
In _Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries_, the last line of the same
sonnet--
"Silent upon a peak in Darien"--
is called "a basis of gigantic tranquillity."[149]
Leigh Hunt's review of the _Poems_ of 1817[150] was kind and
discriminating. He writes characteristically of the first poem, _I stood
tiptoe_, that it "consists of a piece of luxury in a rural spot"; of the
epistles and sonnets, that they "contain strong evidences of warm and
social feelings." This comment is quite characteristic of Hunt. He was as
fond of finding "warm and social feelings" in the poetry of others as of
putting them into his own. In his anxiety he sometimes found them when
they did not exist. He continues: "The best poem is certainly the last and
the longest, entitled _Sleep and Poetry_. It originated in sleeping in a
room adorned with busts and pictures [Hunt's library], and is a striking
specimen of the restlessness of the young poetical appetite, obtaining its
food by the very desire of it, and glancing for fit subjects of creation
'from earth to heaven.' Nor do we like it the less for an impatient, and
as it may be thought by some irreverend [sic] assault upon the late French
school of criticism[151] and monotony." But Hunt did not allow his
affection for Keats or his approval of Keats's poetical doctrine to blunt
his critical acumen. In summarizing he says: "The very faults of Mr. Keats
arise from a passion for beauties, and a young impatience to vindicate
them; and as we have mentioned these, we shall refer to them at once. They
may be comprised in two;--first, a tendency to notice everything too
indiscriminately, and without an eye to natural proportion and effect; and
second, a sense of the proper variety of versification without a due
consideration of its principles." In conclusion, the beauties "outnumber
the faults a hundred fold" and "they are of a nature decidedly opposed to
what is false and inharmonious. Their characteristics indeed are a fine
ear, a fancy and imagination at will, and an intense feeling of external
beauty in its most natural and least inexpressible simplicity."
Hunt was disappointed with _Endymion_ and did not hesitate to say so.
Keats writes to his brothers:
"Leigh Hunt I showed my 1st book to--he allows it not much merit as a
whole; says it is unnatural and made ten objections to it in the mere
skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural and too
high-flown for Brother and Sister--says it should be simple,
forgetting do ye mind that they are both overshadowed by a
supernatural Power, and of force could not speak like Francesca in
the _Rimini_. He must first prove that Caliban's poetry is unnatural.
This with me completely overturns his objections. The fact is he and
Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at my not having showed them
the affair officiously (sic); and from several hints I have had they
appear much disposed to dissect and anatomize any trip or slip I may
have made.--But who's afraid? Aye! Tom! Demme if I am."[152]
Leigh Hunt expressed himself thus in 1828: "_Endymion_, it must be allowed
was not a little calculated to perplex the critics. It was a wilderness of
sweets, but it was truly a wilderness; a domain of young, luxuriant,
uncompromising poetry."[153]
_La Belle Dame sans Merci_, which appeared first in _The Indicator_,[154]
was accompanied with an introduction by Hunt, who says that it was
suggested by Alain Chartier's poem of the same title and "that the union
of the imagination and the real is very striking throughout, particularly
in the dream. The wild gentleness of the rest of the thoughts and of the
music are alike old, and they are alike young." _The Indicator_ of August
2 and 9, 1820, contained a review of the volume of 1820. The part dealing
with philosophy in poetry is of more than passing interest:
"We wish that for the purpose of his story he had not appeared to
give in to the commonplace of supposing that Apollonius's sophistry
must always prevail, and that modern experiment has done a deadly
thing to poetry by discovering the nature of the rainbow, the air,
etc.; that is to say, that the knowledge of natural science and
physics, by showing us the nature of things, does away the
imaginations that once adorned them. This is a condescension to a
learned vulgarism, which so excellent a poet as Mr. Keats ought not
to have made. The world will always have fine poetry, so long as it
has events, passions, affections, and a philosophy that sees deeper
than this philosophy. There will be a poetry of the heart, as long as
there are tears and smiles: there will be a poetry of the
imagination, as long as the first causes of things remain a mystery.
A man who is no poet, may think he is none, as soon as he finds out
the first causes of the rainbow; but he need not alarm himself:--he
was none before."[155]
Much the same line of discussion is reported of the conversation at
Haydon's "immortal dinner," December 28, 1817, when Keats and Lamb
denounced Sir Isaac Newton and his demolition of the things of the
imagination, Keats saying he "destroyed the poetry of the rainbow by
reducing it to a prism."[156] The pictorial features of the _Eve of St.
Agnes_ were particularly admired by Hunt, as one might be led to expect
from the decorative detail of his own narrative poetry. The portrait of
"Agnes" (_sic_ for Madeline) is said to be "remarkable for its union of
extreme richness and good taste" and "affords a striking specimen of the
sudden and strong maturity of the author's genius. When he wrote
_Endymion_ he could not have resisted doing too much. To the description
before me, it would be a great injury either to add or to diminish. It
falls at once gorgeously and delicately upon us, like the colours of the
painted glass." Of the description of the casement window, Hunt asks
"Could all the pomp and graces of aristocracy with Titian's and Raphael's
aid to boot, go beyond the rich religion of this picture, with its
'twilight saints' and its 'scutcheons blushing with the blood of queens'?"
Elsewhere he says that "Persian Kings would have filled a poet's mouth
with gold" for such poetry. Hunt calls _Hyperion_[157] "a fragment, a
gigantic one, like a ruin in the desert, or the bones of the mastodon. It
is truly of a piece with its subject, which is the downfall of the elder
gods." Later, in _Imagination and Fancy_, Hunt declared that Keats's
greatest poetry is to be found in _Hyperion_. His opinion of the whole is
thus summed up:
"Mr. Keats's versification sometimes reminds us of Milton in his
blank verse, and sometimes of Chapman both in his blank verse and in
his rhyme; but his faculties, essentially speaking, though partaking
of the unearthly aspirations and abstract yearnings of both these
poets, are altogether his own. They are ambitious, but less directly
so. They are more _social_, and in the finer sense of the word,
sensual, than either. They are more coloured by the modern philosophy
of sympathy and natural justice. _Endymion_, with all its
extraordinary powers, partook of the faults of youth, though the best
ones; but the reader of _Hyperion_ and these other stories would
never guess that they were written at twenty.[158] The author's
versification is now perfected, the exuberances of his imagination
restrained, and a calm power, the surest and loftiest of all power,
takes place of the impatient workings of the younger god within him.
The character of his genius is that of energy and voluptuousness,
each able at will to take leave of the other, and possessing in their
union, a high feeling of humanity not common to the best authors who
can combine them. Mr. Keats undoubtedly takes his seat with the
oldest and best of our living poets."[159]
The more important division of the literary relations of the two men is
the direct influence of Hunt's work upon that of Keats.
On Keats's prose style Hunt's influence was very slight and can be quickly
dismissed. At one time Keats, affected perhaps by Hunt's example, thought
of becoming a theatrical critic. He did actually contribute four articles
to _The Champion_. Keats's favorite of Hunt's essays, _A Now_, contains
several passages composed by Keats. Mr. Forman considers that "the greater
part of the paper is so much in the taste and humor of Keats" that he is
justified in including it in his edition of Keats. He has also called
attention to a passage in Keats's letter to Haydon of April 10, 1818,
which bears a striking likeness to Hunt's occasional essay style: "The
Hedges by this time are beginning to leaf--Cats are becoming more
vociferous--Young Ladies who wear Watches are always looking at them.
Women about forty-five think the Season very backward."
The _Poems_ of 1817 show Hunt's influences in spirit, diction and
versification. There are epistles and sonnets in the manner of Hunt. _I
stood tiptoe upon a little hill_ opens the volume with a motto from the
_Story of Rimini_. The _Specimen of an Induction_ and _Calidore_ so nearly
approach Hunt's work in manner, that they might easily be mistaken for it.
_Sleep and Poetry_ attacks French models as Hunt had previously done. The
colloquial style of certain passages is significant of Hunt's influence
upon the poems. A few examples are:
"To peer about upon variety."[160]
"Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves
Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves."[161]
"The ripples seem right glad to reach those cresses."[162]
"... you just now are stooping
To pick up the keepsake intended for me."[163]
"Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers."[164]
"The evening weather was so bright, and clear,
That men of health were of unusual cheer."[165]
"Linger awhile upon some bending planks
That lean against a streamlet's rushy banks,
And watch intently Nature's gentle doings:
They will be found softer than the ring-dove's cooings."[166]
"The lamps that from the high roof'd wall were pendant
And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent."[167]
"Or on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely."[168]
The following are infelicitous passages reflecting Leigh Hunt's bad taste,
especially in the description of physical appearance, or of situations
involving emotion:
"... what amorous and fondling nips
They gave each other's cheeks."[169]
"... some lady sweet
Who cannot feel for cold her tender feet."[170]
"Rein in the swelling of his ample might."[171]
"Nor will a bee buzz round two swelling peaches."[172]
"... What a kiss,
What gentle squeeze he gave each lady's hand!
How tremblingly their delicate ankles spann'd!
Into how sweet a trance his soul was gone,
While whisperings of affection
Made him delay to let their tender feet
Come to the earth; with an incline so sweet
From their low palfreys o'er his neck they bent:
And whether there were tears of languishment,
Or that the evening dew had pearl'd their tresses,
He felt a moisture on his cheek and blesses
With lips that tremble, and with glistening eye,
All the soft luxury
That nestled in his arms."[173]
"... Add too, the sweetness
Of thy honey'd voice; the neatness
Of thine ankle, lightly turned:
With those beauties, scarce discern'd
Kept with such sweet privacy,
That they seldom meet the eye
Of the little loves that fly
Round about with eager pry."[174]
Descriptive passages in the Huntian style are not infrequent: the opening
lines from the _Imitation of Spenser_[175] are much nearer to Hunt than to
Spenser.
"Now morning from her orient chamber came,
And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,
Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame,
Silv'ring the untainted gushes of its rill;
Which, pure from mossy beds, did down distil
And after parting beds of simple flowers,
By many streams a little lake did fill,
Which round its marge reflected woven bowers,
And in its middle space, a sky that never lowers."[176]
These lines of _Calidore_ show a like resemblance:
"He bares his forehead to the cool blue sky,
And smiles at the far clearness all around,
Until his heart is well nigh over wound,
And turns for calmness to the pleasant green
Of easy slopes, and shadowy trees that lean
So elegantly o'er the waters' brim
And show their blossoms trim."[177]
A third is:
"Across the lawny fields, and pebbly water."
Single phrases showing the influence of Hunt[178] are: "airy feel,"
"patting the flowing hair," "A Man of elegance," "sweet-lipped ladies,"
"grateful the incense," "modest pride," "a sun-beamy tale of a wreath,"
"soft humanity," "leafy luxury," "pillowy silkiness," "swelling apples,"
"the very pleasant rout," "forms of elegance."
The following passages apparently bear as close a resemblance to each
other as it is possible to find by the comparison of individual passages
from the works of the two men:
"The sidelong view of swelling leafiness
Which the glad setting sun in gold doth dress"[179]
compare with:
"And every hill, in passing one by one
Gleamed out with twinkles of the golden sun:
For leafy was the road, with tall array."[180]
The _Epistles_ are strikingly like Hunt's epistles in spirit, diction and
metre. Mr. Colvin has pointed out that the one addressed _To George Felton
Mathew_ was written in November, 1815, before Keats had met Hunt and
before the publication of the latter's epistles;[181] but Keats may have
known them at the time in manuscript through Clarke. The resemblances may
also have been due, in part, as in other points of comparison, to an
innate similarity of thought and feeling.
That Hunt's habit of sonneteering and his preference for the Petrarcan
form influenced Keats, is attested by the similarity of the latter's
sonnets to Hunt's in form, subjects, and allusions, and by the direct
references[182] to Hunt. _On the Grasshopper and the Cricket_[183] and
_To the Nile_[184] were written in contest with Hunt. _To Spenser_ is a
refusal to comply with Hunt's request that he should write a sonnet on
Spenser.[185] The title of _On Leigh Hunt's Poem, The Story of
Rimini_[186] speaks for itself.[187]
To put it briefly, the _Poems_ of 1817 show Hunt's influence in more ways
than any equal number of the young poet's later verses. It is seen in
Keats's subject matter[188] and allusions; in his adoption of a colloquial
style and diction; in his absorption of Hunt's spirit in the treatment of
nature and in his attitude toward women; and in his imitation and
exaggerated use of the free heroic couplet in _Sleep and Poetry_, _I
stood tiptoe_, _Specimen of an Induction_ and other poems.
Of the poem _Lines on seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair_, written in January,
1818, Keats wrote in a letter to Bailey: "I was at Hunt's the other day,
and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of _Milton's hair_. I
know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is--as they say of a
Sheep in a Nursery Book.... This I did at Hunt's, at his request--perhaps
I should have done something better alone and at home."[189] Leigh Hunt's
three sonnets on the same subject, published in _Foliage_, have been
already spoken of in the preceding chapter.
_Endymion_ shows a decided decrease in the ascendancy of Hunt's mind over
Keats, for the sway of his intellectual supremacy had been shaken before
suspicions arose in Keats's mind as to the disinterestedness of his
motives. What influence lingers is seen in the general theory of
versification and in the diction, with some trace in matters of taste. A
marvellous luxury of imagery, glimpses into the heights and depths of
nature, an absorbing love of Greek fable, a deeper infusion of the ideal
have superseded what Mr. Colvin has called the "sentimental chirp" of
Hunt.[190] Specific passages in _Endymion_ reminiscent of Hunt are rare,
but Book III, ll. 23-30 recalls the general descriptive style in the
_Descent of Liberty_ and summarizes in a few lines pages of Hunt's
diffuse, spectacular imagery. Once or twice Keats seems to have fallen
into the colloquial manner in dialogue:
"But a poor Naiad, I guess not. Farewell!
I have a ditty for my hollow cell."[191]
Again:
"I own
This may sound strangely: but when, dearest girl,
Thou seest it for my happiness, no pearl
Will trespass down those cheeks. Companion fair!
Wilt be content to dwell with her, to share
This sister's love with me? Like one resign'd
And bent by circumstance, and thereby blind
In self-commitment, thus that meek unknown:
'Aye, but a buzzing by my ears has flown,
Of jubilee to Dian:--truth I heard?
Well then, I see there is no little bird.'"[192]
Occasionally there are passages in the bad taste of Hunt, as this example:
"Enchantress! tell me by this soft embrace,
By the most soft completion of thy face,
Those lips, O slippery blisses, twinkling eyes,
And by these tenderest, milky sovereignties--
These tenderest, and by the nectar wine,
The passion--"[193]
Likewise:
"O that I
Were rippling round her dainty fairness now,
Circling about her waist, and striving how
To entice her to a dive! then stealing in
Between her luscious lips and eyelids thin."[194]
In July, 1820, appeared the volume _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes
and other Poems_. The lingering influence of Hunt is seen in a fondness
for the short poetic tale, in the direct and simple narrative style, and
in the return in _Lamia_ to the use of the heroic couplet; but that, along
with the other poems of the volume, is free from the Huntian
eccentricities of manner and diction found in Keats's earlier works. He
had come into his own. In treatment, _Lamia_ is almost faultless in
technique and in matters of taste; although Mr. Colvin has pointed out as
an exception the first fifteen lines of the second book, which he says
have Leigh Hunt's "affected ease and fireside triviality."[195] One of the
few occurrences of Hunt's manner is seen in the _Eve of St. Agnes_.
"Paining with eloquence her balmy side."[196]
The famous passage in the _Eve of St. Agnes_ describing all manner of
luscious edibles is very suggestive of one in Hunt's _Bacchus and Ariadne_
which enumerates articles of the same kind.[197] It is in this latter
poem and in the _Story of Rimini_ that Hunt's power of description most
nearly approximates to that of Keats. In 1831, in the _Gentle Armour_,
Hunt is the imitator of Keats, as Mr. Colvin has already pointed out.[198]
The peculiarities of Keats's diction are, in the main, two-fold, and may
each be traced to a direct influence: first, archaisms in the manner of
Spenser[199] and Chatterton; second, colloquialisms and deliberate
departures from established usage in the employment and formation of
words, in imitation of Leigh Hunt. Keats's theory so far as he had one, is
set forth in a passage in one of his letters: "I shall never become
attached to a foreign idiom, so as to put it into my writings. The
Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language.
It should be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand
curosity, the most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect
accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The
purest English, I think--or what ought to be the purest--is
Chatterton's."[200]
Keats's _Poems_ of 1817 show Hunt's influence in diction more strongly
than any of his later works. In the majority of instances, this influence
is reflected in the principles of usage rather than in the actual usages,
although words and phrases used by Hunt are occasionally found in the
writings of Keats. The tendency to a colloquial vocabulary is seen in such
words and combinations as jaunty, right glad, balmy pain, leafy
luxury,[201] delicious,[202] tasteful, gentle doings, gentle livers, soft
floatings, frisky leaps, lawny mantle, patting, busy spirits. Among these
words, leafy, balmy, lawny, patting, nest, tiptoe, and variations of
"taste" were special favorites with Hunt. A few expressions only of this
kind, as "nest," "honey feel," "infant's gums," are found in _Endymion_,
and almost none at all in the later poems.
Keats used peculiar words with so much greater felicity and in so much
greater profusion than Hunt, exceeding in richness and individuality of
vocabulary most of the poets of his own time, that one is forced to
believe that Spenser's influence rather than Hunt's was dominant here.
Breaches of taste are confined almost entirely to the _Poems_ of 1817.
Ordinary words used peculiarly include "nips" (they gave each other's
cheeks), "core" (for heart) and "luxury"[203] (with a wrong connotation),
nouns and adjectives employed as verbs, and verbs as nouns and adjectives.
These devices likewise cannot be credited to Hunt without reservation,
since both Spenser and Milton used them; but there is little doubt that in
this instance Hunt was an inciting and sustaining influence. Keats
resorted to such artifices frequently and continued to do so to the end.
Instances of nouns and adjectives employed as verbs are: pennanc'd,
luting, passion'd, neighbour'd, syllabling, companion'd, labrynth,
anguish'd, poesied, vineyard'd, woof'd, loaned, medicin'd, zon'd, mesh,
pleasure, legion'd, companion, green'd, gordian'd, character'd, finn'd,
forest'd, tusk'd, monitor. Verbs employed as nouns and adjectives are:
shine, which occurs five times, feel, seeing, hush, pry and amaze.
More examples of coined compounds, nouns and adjectives, are to be found
in Keats than in Hunt; in his better work as well as in his early
productions. A few are: cirque-couchant, milder-mooned, tress-lifting,
flitter-winged, silk-pillowed, death-neighing, break-covert,
palsy-twitching, high-sorrowful, sea-foamy, amber-fretted, sweet-lipped,
lush-leaved.
The last principle is the coining, or choice of, adjectives in _y_ and
_ing_; of adverbs in _ly_, when, in many instances, adjectives and adverbs
already existed formed on the same stem. The frequent use of words with
these weak endings gives a very diffuse effect at times in Keats's early
poems. The following are examples: fenny, fledgy, rushy, lawny, liny,
nervy, pipy, paly, palmy, towery, sluicy, surgy, scummy, mealy, sparry,
heathy, rooty, slumbery, bowery, bloomy, boundly, palmy, surgy, spermy,
ripply, spangly, spherey, orby, oozy, skeyey, clayey, and plashy.[204]
Adjectives in _ing_ are: cheering, hushing, breeding, combing, dumpling,
sphering, tenting, toying, baaing, far-spooming, peering (hand), searing
(hand), shelving, serpenting. Adverbs are: scantly, elegantly,
refreshingly, freshening (lave), hoveringly, greyly, cooingly, silverly,
refreshfully, whitely, drowningly, wingedly, sighingly, windingly,
bearingly.
These statements are not very conclusive proof of the frequent occurrences
of the same words in the poems of the two men. They are questionable even
in regard to the principles of usage themselves, since poets of the same
period or young poets may possess the same tendencies. Yet in the light of
their relations already discussed the similarity of a number of principles
seems convincing proof that Hunt influenced Keats considerably in the
_principles_ of diction in his first volume and occasionally in the
selection of individual words; and that Keats never entirely freed himself
from some of Hunt's peculiarities. Shelley, in writing of _Hyperion_ to
Mrs. Hunt, spoke of the "bad sort of style which is becoming fashionable
among those who fancy that they are imitating Hunt and Wordsworth."[205]
Medwin reported Shelley as saying "We are certainly indebted to the
Lakists for a more simple and natural phraseology; but the school that has
sprung out of it, have spawned a set of words neither Chaucerian nor
Spencerian (_sic_), words such as 'gib,' and 'flush,' 'whiffling,'
'perking up,' 'swirling,' 'lightsome and brightsome' and hundreds of
others."[206]
Keats, following the lead of Hunt, used the free heroic couplet in several
of the 1817 poems with a license even greater than Hunt's. In _Endymion_
he indulged in further vagaries of rhythm and metre that Hunt never
dreamed of and in fact greatly disapproved of. Hunt said that "_Endymion_
had no versification."[207] In its want of couplet and line units, this is
not very far from the truth. Writing of it again in 1828, he says: "The
great fault of _Endymion_ next to its unpruned luxuriance, (or before it,
rather, for it was not a fault on the right side,) was the wilfulness of
its rhymes. The author had a just contempt for the monotonous termination
of everyday couplets; he broke up his lines in order to distribute the
rhyme properly; but going only upon the ground of his contempt, and not
having settled with himself any principles of versification, the very
exuberance of his ideas led him to make use of the first rhymes that
offered; so that, by a new meeting of effects, the extreme was artificial,
and much more obtrusive than the one under the old system. Dryden modestly
thought, that a rhyme had often helped him to a thought. Mr. Keats in the
tyranny of his wealth, forced his rhymes to help him, whether they would
or not; and they obeyed him, in the most singular manner, with equal
promptitude and ungainliness."[208] _Endymion_ has been thought by some
critics, to have been written under the metrical influence of
Chamberlayne's _Pharronida_. In the number of run-on lines and couplets--a
scheme nearer blank verse than the couplet--there is certainly a striking
correspondence. Mr. Forman thinks that Keats knew the poem. Mr. Colvin
and Mr. De Selincourt can see no real likeness. There is no proof as yet
discovered that Keats ever heard of it.
In _Lamia_, after the extreme reaction in _Endymion_, Keats approached
nearer to the classic form of the couplet used by Dryden, but still with
greater freedom in structure than appears in either Dryden or Hunt. From
the evidence of Brown it is probable that Keats imitated Dryden directly
and not through the medium of Hunt's work, but it is very likely that Hunt
directed him there in the first instance for a model. Mr. Palgrave says of
the metre of _Lamia_ that Keats "admirably found and sustained the balance
between a blank verse treatment of the 'Heroic' and the epigrammatic form
carried to such perfection by Pope."[209] Leigh Hunt said that "the lines
seem to take pleasure in the progress of their own beauty like sea nymphs
luxuriating through the water."[210]
In conclusion, Keats's early and late employment of the couplet was marked
always by greater freedom in the use of run-on couplets and lines, and in
the handling of the caesura than Dryden's or Hunt's; he was at first slower
than Hunt to employ the triplet and the Alexandrine, but he later adopted
them in a larger measure; and he introduced the run-on paragraph and the
hemistich independently of Hunt.