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English Men of Letters
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY
KEATS
KEATS
BY SIDNEY COLVIN
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1909
_First Edition 1887._
_Reprinted 1889, 1898, 1899, 1902, 1909._
_Library Edition 1902._
_Reprinted 1906._
_Pocket Edition 1909._
PREFACE.
With the name of Keats that of his first biographer, the late Lord
Houghton, must always justly remain associated. But while the sympathetic
charm of Lord Houghton's work will keep it fresh, as a record of the
poet's life it can no longer be said to be sufficient. Since the revised
edition of the _Life and Letters_ appeared in 1867, other students and
lovers of Keats have been busy, and much new information concerning him
been brought to light, while of the old information some has been proved
mistaken. No connected account of Keats's life and work, in accordance
with the present state of knowledge, exists, and I have been asked to
contribute such an account to the present series. I regret that lack of
strength and leisure has so long delayed the execution of the task
entrusted to me. The chief authorities and printed texts which I have
consulted (besides the original editions of the Poems) are the
following:--
1. Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries. By Leigh Hunt. London, 1828.
2. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. By Thomas Medwin. London, 2 vols.,
1847.
3. Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard
Monckton Milnes. 2 vols., London, 1848.
4. Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon. Edited and compiled by Tom Taylor.
Second edition. 3 vols., London, 1853.
5. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, with Reminiscences of Friends and
Contemporaries. 3 vols., London, 1850.
6. The Poetical Works of John Keats. With a memoir by Richard Monckton
Milnes. London, 1854.
7. The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt. [Revised edition, edited by Thornton
Hunt.] London, 1860.
8. The Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame: an article by Joseph Severn in the
_Atlantic Monthly Magazine_ for 1863 (vol. xi. p. 401).
9. The Life and Letters of John Keats. By Lord Houghton. New edition,
London, 1867.
10. Recollections of John Keats: an article by Charles Cowden Clarke in
the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for 1874 (N. S. vol. xii. p. 177). Afterwards
reprinted with modifications in Recollections of Writers, by Charles and
Mary Cowden Clarke. London, 1878.
11. The Papers of a Critic. Selected from the writings of the late Charles
Wentworth Dilke. With a biographical notice by Sir Charles Wentworth
Dilke, Bart., M.P. 2 vols., London, 1875.
12. Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a memoir
by Frederic Wordsworth Haydon. 2 vols., London, 1876.
13. The Poetical Works of John Keats, chronologically arranged and edited,
with a memoir, by Lord Houghton [Aldine edition of the British Poets].
London, 1876.
14. Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne, with Introduction and Notes by
Harry Buxton Forman. London, 1878.
A biographer cannot ignore these letters now that they are published: but
their publication must be regretted by all who hold that human respect and
delicacy are due to the dead no less than to the living, and to genius no
less than to obscurity.
15. The Poetical Works and other Writings of John Keats. Edited with notes
and appendices by Harry Buxton Forman. 4 vols., London, 1883.
In this edition, besides the texts reprinted from the first editions, all
the genuine letters and additional poems published in 3, 6, 9, 13, and 14
of the above are brought together, as well as most of the biographical
notices contained in 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, and 12: also a series of
previously unpublished letters of Keats to his sister: with a great amount
of valuable illustrative and critical material besides. Except for a few
errors, which I shall have occasion to point out, Mr Forman's work might
for the purpose of the student be final, and I have necessarily been
indebted to it at every turn.
16. The Letters and Poems of John Keats. Edited by John Gilmer Speed. 3
vols., New York, 1883.
17. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by William T. Arnold. London,
1884.
The Introduction to this edition contains the only attempt with which I am
acquainted at an analysis of the formal elements of Keats's style.
18. An Æsculapian Poet--John Keats: an article by Dr B. W. Richardson in
the _Asclepiad_ for 1884 (vol. i. p. 134).
19. Notices and correspondence concerning Keats which have appeared at
intervals during a number of years in the _Athenæum_.
In addition to printed materials I have made use of the following
unprinted, viz.:--
I. HOUGHTON MSS. Under this title I refer to the contents of an album from
the library at Fryston Hall, in which the late Lord Houghton bound up a
quantity of the materials he had used in the preparation of the _Life and
Letters_, as well as of correspondence concerning Keats addressed to him
both before and after the publication of his book. The chief contents are
the manuscript memoir of Keats by Charles Brown, which was offered by the
writer in vain to _Galignani_, and I believe other publishers; transcripts
by the same hand of a few of Keats's poems; reminiscences or brief memoirs
of the poet by his friends Charles Cowden Clarke (the first draft of the
paper above cited as no. 10), Henry Stephens, George Felton Mathew, Joseph
Severn, and Benjamin Bailey; together with letters from all the above,
from John Hamilton Reynolds, and several others. For the use of this
collection, without which my work must have been attempted to little
purpose, I am indebted to the kindness of its owner, the present Lord
Houghton.
II. WOODHOUSE MSS. A. A common-place book in which Richard Woodhouse, the
friend of Keats and of his publishers Messrs Taylor and Hessey,
transcribed--as would appear from internal evidence, about midsummer
1819--the chief part of Keats's poems at that date unpublished. The
transcripts are in many cases made from early drafts of the poems: some
contain gaps which Woodhouse has filled up in pencil from later drafts: to
others are added corrections, or suggestions for corrections, some made in
the hand of Mr Taylor and some in that of Keats himself.
III. WOODHOUSE MSS. B. A note-book in which the same Woodhouse has
copied--evidently for Mr Taylor, at the time when that gentleman was
meditating a biography of the poet--a number of letters addressed by Keats
to Mr Taylor himself, to the transcriber, to Reynolds and his sisters, to
Rice, and Bailey. Three or four of these letters, as well as portions of a
few others, are unpublished.
Both the volumes last named were formerly the property of Mrs Taylor, a
niece by marriage of the publisher, and are now my own. A third note-book
by Woodhouse, containing personal notices and recollections of Keats, was
unluckily destroyed in the fire at Messrs Kegan Paul and Co's. premises in
1883. A copy of _Endymion_, annotated by the same hand, has been used by
Mr Forman in his edition (above, no. 15).
IV. SEVERN MSS. The papers and correspondence left by the late Joseph
Severn, containing materials for what should be a valuable biography, have
been put into the hands of Mr William Sharp, to be edited and published at
his discretion. In the meantime Mr Sharp has been so kind as to let me
have access to such parts of them as relate to Keats. The most important
single piece, an essay on 'The Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame,' has been
printed already in the _Atlantic Monthly_ (above, no. 8), but in the
remainder I have found many interesting details, particularly concerning
Keats's voyage to Italy and life at Rome.
V. _Rawlings v. Jennings._ When Keats's maternal grandfather, Mr John
Jennings, died in 1805, leaving property exceeding the amount of the
specific bequests under his will, it was thought necessary that his estate
should be administered by the Court of Chancery, and with that intent a
friendly suit was brought in the names of his daughter and her second
husband (Frances Jennings, _m._ 1st Thomas Keats, and 2nd William
Rawlings) against her mother and brother, who were the executors. The
proceedings in this suit are referred to under the above title. They are
complicated and voluminous, extending over a period of twenty years, and
my best thanks are due to Mr Ralph Thomas, of 27 Chancery Lane, for his
friendly pains in searching through and making abstracts of them.
For help and information, besides what has been above acknowledged, I am
indebted first and foremost to my friend and colleague, Mr Richard
Garnett; and next to the poet's surviving sister, Mrs Llanos; to Sir
Charles Dilke, who lent me the chief part of his valuable collection of
Keats's books and papers (already well turned to account by Mr Forman); to
Dr B. W. Richardson, and the Rev. R. H. Hadden. Other incidental
obligations will be found acknowledged in the footnotes.
Among essays on and reviews of Keats's work I need only refer in
particular to that by the late Mrs F. M. Owen (Keats: a Study, London,
1876). In its main outlines, though not in details, I accept and have
followed this lady's interpretation of _Endymion_. For the rest, every
critic of modern English poetry is of necessity a critic of Keats. The
earliest, Leigh Hunt, was one of the best; and to name only a few among
the living--where Mr Matthew Arnold, Mr Swinburne, Mr Lowell, Mr Palgrave,
Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr W. B. Scott, Mr Roden Noel, Mr Theodore Watts, have
gone before, for one who follows to be both original and just is not easy.
In the following pages I have not attempted to avoid saying over again
much that in substance has been said already, and doubtless better, by
others: by Mr Matthew Arnold and Mr Palgrave especially. I doubt not but
they will forgive me: and at the same time I hope to have contributed
something of my own towards a fuller understanding both of Keats's art and
life.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
Birth and Parentage--School Life at Enfield--Life as Surgeon's
Apprentice at Edmonton--Awakening to Poetry--Life as Hospital
Student in London. [1795-1817] 1
CHAPTER II.
Particulars of Early Life in London--Friendships and First
Poems--Henry Stephens--Felton Mathew--Cowden Clarke--Leigh
Hunt: his Literary and Personal Influence--John Hamilton
Reynolds--James Rice--Cornelius Webb--Shelley--Haydon--Joseph
Severn--Charles Wells--Personal Characteristics--
Determination to publish. [1814-April, 1817] 18
CHAPTER III.
The _Poems_ of 1817 50
CHAPTER IV.
Excursion to Isle of Wight, Margate, and Canterbury--Summer
at Hampstead--New Friends: Dilke: Brown: Bailey--With Bailey
at Oxford--Return: Old Friends at Odds--Burford Bridge--Winter
at Hampstead--Wordsworth: Lamb: Hazlitt--Poetical Activity--
Spring at Teignmouth--Studies and Anxieties--Marriage and
Emigration of George Keats. [April, 1817-May, 1818] 67
CHAPTER V.
_Endymion_ 93
CHAPTER VI.
Northern Tour--The _Blackwood_ and _Quarterly_ reviews--Death
of Tom Keats--Removal to Wentworth Place--Fanny Brawne--
Excursion to Chichester--Absorption in Love and Poetry--Haydon
and money difficulties--Family Correspondence--Darkening
Prospects--Summer at Shanklin and Winchester--Wise
Resolutions--Return from Winchester. [June, 1818-October,
1819] 111
CHAPTER VII.
_Isabella_--_Hyperion_--_The Eve of St Agnes_--_The Eve of St
Mark_--_La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--_Lamia_--The Odes--The
Plays 147
CHAPTER VIII.
Return to Wentworth Place--Autumn Occupations--The _Cap and
Bells_--Recast of _Hyperion_--Growing Despondency--Visit of
George Keats to England--Attack of Illness in February--Rally
in the Spring--Summer in Kentish Town--Publication of the
_Lamia_ Volume--Relapse--Ordered South--Voyage to Italy--
Naples--Rome--Last Days and Death. [October, 1819-Feb. 1821] 180
CHAPTER IX.
Character and Genius 209
APPENDIX 221
INDEX 234
KEATS.
CHAPTER I.
Birth and Parentage--School Life at Enfield--Life as Surgeon's
Apprentice at Edmonton--Awakening to Poetry--Life as Hospital Student
in London. [1795-1817.]
Science may one day ascertain the laws of distribution and descent which
govern the births of genius; but in the meantime a birth like that of
Keats presents to the ordinary mind a striking instance of nature's
inscrutability. If we consider the other chief poets of the time, we can
commonly recognize either some strain of power in their blood, or some
strong inspiring influence in the scenery and traditions of their home.
Thus we see Scott prepared alike by his origin, associations, and
circumstances to be the 'minstrel of his clan' and poet of the romance of
the border wilds; while the spirit of the Cumbrian hills, and the temper
of the generations bred among them, speak naturally through the lips of
Wordsworth. Byron seems inspired in literature by demons of the same
froward brood that had urged others of his lineage through lives of
adventure or of crime. But Keats, with instincts and faculties more purely
poetical than any of these, was paradoxically born in a dull and middling
walk of English city life; and 'if by traduction came his mind,'--to quote
Dryden with a difference,--it was through channels too obscure for us to
trace. His father, Thomas Keats, was a west-country lad who came young to
London, and while still under twenty held the place of head ostler in a
livery-stable kept by a Mr John Jennings in Finsbury. Presently he married
his employer's daughter, Frances Jennings; and Mr Jennings, who was a man
of substance, retiring about the same time to live in the country, at
Ponder's End, left the management of the business in the hands of his
son-in-law. The young couple lived at the stable, at the sign of the
Swan-and-Hoop, Finsbury Pavement, facing the then open space of Lower
Moorfields. Here their eldest child, the poet JOHN KEATS, was born
prematurely on either the 29th or 31st of October, 1795. A second son,
named George, followed on February 28, 1797; a third, Tom, on November 18,
1799; a fourth, Edward, who died in infancy, on April 28, 1801; and on the
3rd of June, 1803, a daughter, Frances Mary. In the meantime the family
had moved from the stable to a house in Craven Street, City Road, half a
mile farther north[1].
In the gifts and temperament of Keats we shall find much that seems
characteristic of the Celtic rather than the English nature. Whether he
really had any of that blood in his veins we cannot tell. His father was a
native either of Devon or of Cornwall[2]; and his mother's name, Jennings,
is common in but not peculiar to Wales. There our evidence ends, and all
that we know further of his parents is that they were certainly not quite
ordinary people. Thomas Keats was noticed in his life-time as a man of
intelligence and conduct--"of so remarkably fine a common sense and
native respectability," writes Cowden Clarke, in whose father's school
the poet and his brothers were brought up, "that I perfectly remember the
warm terms in which his demeanour used to be canvassed by my parents after
he had been to visit his boys." It is added that he resembled his
illustrious son in person and feature, being of small stature and lively
energetic countenance, with brown hair and hazel eyes. Of his wife, the
poet's mother, we learn more vaguely that she was "tall, of good figure,
with large oval face, and sensible deportment": and again that she was a
lively, clever, impulsive woman, passionately fond of amusement, and
supposed to have hastened the birth of her eldest child by some
imprudence. Her second son, George, wrote in after life of her and of her
family as follows:--"my grandfather [Mr Jennings] was very well off, as
his will shows, and but that he was extremely generous and gullible would
have been affluent. I have heard my grandmother speak with enthusiasm of
his excellencies, and Mr Abbey used to say that he never saw a woman of
the talents and sense of my grandmother, except my mother." And
elsewhere:--"my mother I distinctly remember, she resembled John very much
in the face, was extremely fond of him, and humoured him in every whim, of
which he had not a few, she was a most excellent and affectionate parent,
and as I thought a woman of uncommon talents."
The mother's passion for her firstborn son was devotedly returned by him.
Once as a young child, when she was ordered to be left quiet during an
illness, he is said to have insisted on keeping watch at her door with an
old sword, and allowing no one to go in. Haydon, an artist who loved to
lay his colours thick, gives this anecdote of the sword a different
turn:--"He was when an infant a most violent and ungovernable child. At
five years of age or thereabouts, he once got hold of a naked sword and
shutting the door swore nobody should go out. His mother wanted to do so,
but he threatened her so furiously she began to cry, and was obliged to
wait till somebody through the window saw her position and came to the
rescue." Another trait of the poet's childhood, mentioned also by Haydon,
on the authority of a gammer who had known him from his birth, is that
when he was first learning to speak, instead of answering sensibly, he had
a trick of making a rhyme to the last word people said and then laughing.
The parents were ambitious for their boys, and would have liked to send
them to Harrow, but thinking this beyond their means, chose the school
kept by the Rev. John Clarke at Enfield. The brothers of Mrs Keats had
been educated here, and the school was one of good repute, and of
exceptionally pleasant aspect and surroundings. Traces of its ancient
forest character lingered long, and indeed linger yet, about the
neighbourhood of the picturesque small suburban town of Enfield, and the
district was one especially affected by City men of fortune for their
homes. The school-house occupied by Mr Clarke had been originally built
for a rich West-India merchant, in the finest style of early Georgian
classic architecture, and stood in a pleasant and spacious garden at the
lower end of the town. When years afterwards the site was used for a
railway station, the old house was for some time allowed to stand: but
later it was taken down, and the façade, with its fine proportions and
rich ornaments in moulded brick, was transported to the South Kensington
Museum as a choice example of the style.
Not long after Keats had been put to school he lost his father, who was
killed by a fall from his horse as he rode home at night from Southgate.
This was on the 16th of April, 1804. Within twelve months his mother had
put off her weeds, and taken a second husband--one William Rawlings,
described as 'of Moorgate in the city of London, stable-keeper,'
presumably therefore the successor of her first husband in the management
of her father's business. This marriage turned out unhappily. It was soon
followed by a separation, and Mrs Rawlings went with her children to live
at Edmonton, in the house of her mother, Mrs Jennings, who was just about
this time left a widow[3]. In the correspondence of the Keats brothers
after they were grown up, no mention is ever made of their step-father, of
whom after the separation the family seem to have lost all knowledge. The
household in Church Street, Edmonton, was well enough provided for, Mr
Jennings having left a fortune of over £13,000, of which, in addition to
other legacies, he bequeathed a capital yielding £200 a year to his widow
absolutely; one yielding £50 a year to his daughter Frances Rawlings, with
reversion to her Keats children after her death; and £1000 to be
separately held in trust for the said children and divided among them on
their coming of age[4]. Between this home, then, and the neighbouring
Enfield school, where he was in due time joined by his younger brothers,
the next four or five years of Keats's boyhood (1806-1810) were passed in
sufficient comfort and pleasantness. He did not live to attain the years,
or the success, of men who write their reminiscences; and almost the only
recollections he has left of his own early days refer to holiday times in
his grandmother's house at Edmonton. They are conveyed in some rhymes
which he wrote years afterwards by way of foolishness to amuse his young
sister, and testify to a partiality, common also to little boys not of
genius, for dabbling by the brookside--
"In spite
Of the might
Of the Maid,
Nor afraid
Of his granny-good"--
and for keeping small fishes in tubs.
If we learn little of Keats's early days from his own lips, we have
sufficient testimony as to the impression which he made on his school
companions; which was that of a boy all spirit and generosity, vehement
both in tears and laughter, handsome, passionate, pugnacious, placable,
loveable, a natural leader and champion among his fellows. But beneath
this bright and mettlesome outside there lay deep in his nature, even from
the first, a strain of painful sensibility making him subject to moods of
unreasonable suspicion and self-tormenting melancholy. These he was
accustomed to conceal from all except his brothers, between whom and
himself there existed the very closest of fraternal ties. George, the
second brother, had all John's spirit of manliness and honour, with a less
impulsive disposition and a cooler blood: from a boy he was the bigger and
stronger of the two: and at school found himself continually involved in
fights for, and not unfrequently with, his small, indomitably fiery elder
brother. Tom, the youngest, was always delicate, and an object of
protecting care as well as the warmest affection to the other two. The
singularly strong family sentiment that united the three brothers extended
naturally also to their sister, then a child: and in a more remote and
ideal fashion to their uncle by the mother's side, Captain Midgley John
Jennings, a tall navy officer who had served with some distinction under
Duncan at Camperdown, and who impressed the imagination of the boys, in
those days of militant British valour by land and sea, as a model of manly
prowess[5]. It may be remembered that there was a much more distinguished
naval hero of the time who bore their own name--the gallant Admiral Sir
Richard Godwin Keats of the _Superb_, afterwards governor of Greenwich
Hospital: and he, like their father, came from the west country, being the
son of a Bideford clergyman. But it seems clear that the family of our
Keats claimed no connection with that of the Admiral.
Here are some of George Keats's recollections, written after the death of
his elder brother, and referring partly to their school-days and partly to
John's character after he was grown up:--
"I loved him from boyhood even when he wronged me, for the goodness of
his heart and the nobleness of his spirit, before we left school we
quarrelled often and fought fiercely, and I can safely say and my
schoolfellows will bear witness that John's temper was the cause of
all, still we were more attached than brothers ever are."
"From the time we were boys at school, where we loved, jangled, and
fought alternately, until we separated in 1818, I in a great measure
relieved him by continual sympathy, explanation, and inexhaustible
spirits and good humour, from many a bitter fit of hypochondriasm. He
avoided teazing any one with his miseries but Tom and myself, and
often asked our forgiveness; venting and discussing them gave him
relief."
Let us turn now from these honest and warm brotherly reminiscences to
their confirmation in the words of two of Keats's school-friends; and
first in those of his junior Edward Holmes, afterwards author of the _Life
of Mozart_:--
"Keats was in childhood not attached to books. His _penchant_ was for
fighting. He would fight any one--morning, noon, and night, his
brother among the rest. It was meat and drink to him.... His
favourites were few; after they were known to fight readily he seemed
to prefer them for a sort of grotesque and buffoon humour.... He was a
boy whom any one from his extraordinary vivacity and personal beauty
might easily fancy would become great--but rather in some military
capacity than in literature. You will remark that this taste came out
rather suddenly and unexpectedly.... In all active exercises he
excelled. The generosity and daring of his character with the extreme
beauty and animation of his face made I remember an impression on
me--and being some years his junior I was obliged to woo his
friendship--in which I succeeded, but not till I had fought several
battles. This violence and vehemence--this pugnacity and generosity of
disposition--in passions of tears or outrageous fits of
laughter--always in extremes--will help to paint Keats in his boyhood.
Associated as they were with an extraordinary beauty of person and
expression, these qualities captivated the boys, and no one was more
popular[6]."
Entirely to the same effect is the account of Keats given by a school
friend seven or eight years older than himself, to whose appreciation and
encouragement the world most likely owes it that he first ventured into
poetry. This was the son of the master, Charles Cowden Clarke, who towards
the close of a long life, during which he had deserved well of literature
in more ways than one, wrote retrospectively of Keats:--
"He was a favourite with all. Not the less beloved was he for having a
highly pugnacious spirit, which when roused was one of the most
picturesque exhibitions--off the stage--I ever saw.... Upon one
occasion, when an usher, on account of some impertinent behaviour, had
boxed his brother Tom's ears, John rushed up, put himself into the
received posture of offence, and, it was said, struck the usher--who
could, so to say, have put him in his pocket. His passion at times was
almost ungovernable; and his brother George, being considerably the
taller and stronger, used frequently to hold him down by main force,
laughing when John was "in one of his moods," and was endeavouring to
beat him. It was all, however, a wisp-of-straw conflagration; for he
had an intensely tender affection for his brothers, and proved it upon
the most trying occasions. He was not merely the favourite of all,
like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his
highmindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his
placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his
behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one,
superior or equal, who had known him."
The same excellent witness records in agreement with the last that in his
earlier school-days Keats showed no particular signs of an intellectual
bent, though always orderly and methodical in what he did. But during his
last few terms, that is in his fourteenth and fifteenth years, all the
energies of his nature turned to study. He became suddenly and completely
absorbed in reading, and would be continually at work before school-time
in the morning and during play-hours in the afternoon: could hardly be
induced to join the school games: and never willingly had a book out of
his hand. At this time he won easily all the literature prizes of the
school, and in addition to his proper work imposed on himself such
voluntary tasks as the translation of the whole Æneid in prose. He
devoured all the books of history, travel, and fiction in the school
library, and was for ever borrowing more from the friend who tells the
story. "In my mind's eye I now see him at supper sitting back on the form
from the table, holding the folio volume of Burnet's 'History of his Own
Time' between himself and the table, eating his meal from beyond it. This
work, and Leigh Hunt's 'Examiner'--which my father took in, and I used to
lend to Keats--no doubt laid the foundation of his love of civil and
religious liberty." But the books which Keats read with the greatest
eagerness of all were books of ancient mythology, and he seemed literally
to learn by heart the contents of Tooke's _Pantheon_, Lempriere's
_Dictionary_, and the school abridgment by Tindal of Spence's
_Polymetis_--the first the most foolish and dull, the last the most
scholarly and polite, of the various handbooks in which the ancient fables
were presented in those days to the apprehension of youth.
Trouble fell upon Keats in the midst of these ardent studies of his latter
school-days. His mother had been for some time in failing health. First
she was disabled by chronic rheumatism, and at last fell into a rapid
consumption, which carried her off in February 1810. We are told with what
devotion her eldest boy attended her sick bed,--"he sat up whole nights
with her in a great chair, would suffer nobody to give her medicine, or
even cook her food, but himself, and read novels to her in her intervals
of ease,"--and how bitterly he mourned for her when she was gone,--"he
gave way to such impassioned and prolonged grief (hiding himself in a nook
under the master's desk) as awakened the liveliest pity and sympathy in
all who saw him." In the July following, Mrs Jennings, being desirous to
make the best provision she could for her orphan grand-children, 'in
consideration of the natural love and affection which she had for them,'
executed a deed putting them under the care of two guardians, to whom she
made over, to be held in trust for their benefit from the date of the
instrument, the chief part of the property which she derived from her late
husband under his will[7]. The guardians were Mr Rowland Sandell,
merchant, and Mr Richard Abbey, a wholesale tea-dealer in Pancras Lane.
Mrs Jennings survived the execution of this deed more than four years[8],
but Mr Abbey, with the consent of his co-trustee, seems at once to have
taken up all the responsibilities of the trust. Under his authority John
Keats was withdrawn from school at the close of this same year 1810, when
he was just fifteen, and made to put on harness for the practical work of
life. With no opposition, so far as we learn, on his own part, he was
bound apprentice for a term of five years to a surgeon at Edmonton named
Hammond. The only picture we have of him in this capacity has been left by
R. H. Horne, the author of _Orion_, who came as a small boy to the Enfield
school just after Keats had left it. One day in winter Mr Hammond had
driven over to attend the school, and Keats with him. Keats was standing
with his head sunk in a brown study, holding the horse, when some of the
boys, who knew his school reputation for pugnacity, dared Horne to throw a
snowball at him; which Horne did, hitting Keats in the back, and then
taking headlong to his heels, to his surprise got off scot free[9]. Keats
during his apprenticeship used on his own account to be often to and fro
between the Edmonton surgery and the Enfield school. His newly awakened
passion for the pleasures of literature and the imagination was not to be
stifled, and whenever he could spare time from his work, he plunged back
into his school occupations of reading and translating. He finished at
this time his translation of the Æneid, and was in the habit of walking
over to Enfield once a week or oftener, to see his friend Cowden Clarke,
and to exchange books and 'travel in the realms of gold' with him. In
summer weather the two would sit in a shady arbour in the old school
garden, the elder reading poetry to the younger, and enjoying his looks
and exclamations of enthusiasm. On a momentous day for Keats, Cowden
Clarke introduced him for the first time to Spenser, reading him the
_Epithalamium_ in the afternoon, and lending him the _Faerie Queene_ to
take away the same evening. It has been said, and truly, that no one who
has not had the good fortune to be attracted to that poem in boyhood can
ever completely enjoy it. The maturer student, appreciate as he may its
inexhaustible beauties and noble temper, can hardly fail to be in some
degree put out by its arbitrary forms of rhyme and diction, and wearied by
its melodious redundance: he will perceive the perplexity and
discontinuousness of the allegory, and the absence of real and breathing
humanity, even the failure, at times, of clearness of vision and strength
of grasp, amidst all that luxuriance of decorative and symbolic invention,
and prodigality of romantic incident and detail. It is otherwise with the
uncritical faculties and greedy apprehension of boyhood. For them there is
no poetical revelation like the _Faerie Queene_, no pleasure equal to that
of floating for the first time along that ever-buoyant stream of verse, by
those shores and forests of enchantment, glades and wildernesses alive
with glancing figures of knight and lady, oppressor and champion, mage and
Saracen,--with masque and combat, pursuit and rescue, the chivalrous
shapes and hazards of the woodland, and beauty triumphant or in distress.
Through the new world thus opened to him Keats went ranging with delight:
'ramping' is Cowden Clarke's word: he shewed moreover his own instinct for
the poetical art by fastening with critical enthusiasm on epithets of
special felicity or power. For instance, says his friend, "he hoisted
himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said, 'What an image that
is--_sea-shouldering whales_!'" Spenser has been often proved not only a
great awakener of the love of poetry in youth, but a great fertilizer of
the germs of original poetical power where they exist; and Charles Brown,
the most intimate friend of Keats during two later years of his life,
states positively that it was to the inspiration of the _Faerie Queene_
that his first notion of attempting to write was due. "Though born to be a
poet, he was ignorant of his birthright until he had completed his
eighteenth year. It was the _Faerie Queene_ that awakened his genius. In
Spenser's fairy land he was enchanted, breathed in a new world, and became
another being; till, enamoured of the stanza, he attempted to imitate it,
and succeeded. This account of the sudden development of his poetic powers
I first received from his brothers, and afterwards from himself. This,
his earliest attempt, the 'Imitation of Spenser,' is in his first volume
of poems, and it is peculiarly interesting to those acquainted with his
history[10]." Cowden Clarke places the attempt two years earlier, but his
memory for dates was, as he owns, the vaguest, and we may fairly assume
him to have been mistaken.
After he had thus first become conscious within himself of the impulse of
poetical composition, Keats went on writing occasional sonnets and other
verses: secretly and shyly at first like all young poets: at least it was
not until two years later, in the spring of 1815, that he showed anything
he had written to his friend and confidant, Cowden Clarke. In the meantime
a change had taken place in his way of life. In the summer or autumn of
1814, more than a year before the expiration of his term of
apprenticeship, he had quarrelled with Mr Hammond and left him. The cause
of their quarrel is not known, and Keats's own single allusion to it is
when once afterwards, speaking of the periodical change and renewal of the
bodily tissues, he says "seven years ago it was not this hand which
clenched itself at Hammond." It seems unlikely that the cause was any
neglect of duty on the part of the poet-apprentice, who was not devoid of
thoroughness and resolution in the performance even of uncongenial tasks.
At all events Mr Hammond allowed the indentures to be cancelled, and
Keats, being now nearly nineteen years of age, went to live in London, and
continue the study of his profession as a student at the hospitals (then
for teaching purposes united) of St Thomas's and Guy's. For the first
winter and spring after leaving Edmonton he lodged alone at 8, Dean
Street, Borough, and then for about a year, in company with some
fellow-students, over a tallow-chandler's shop in St Thomas's Street.
Thence he went in the summer of 1816 to join his brothers in lodgings in
the Poultry, over a passage leading to the Queen's Head tavern. In the
spring of 1817 they all three moved for a short time to 76, Cheapside.
Between these several addresses in London Keats spent a period of about
two years and a half, from the date (which is not precisely fixed) of his
leaving Edmonton in 1814 until April, 1817.
It was in this interval, from his nineteenth to his twenty-second year,
that Keats gave way gradually to his growing passion for poetry. At first
he seems to have worked steadily enough along the lines which others had
marked out for him. His chief reputation, indeed, among his fellow
students was that of a 'cheerful, crotchety rhymester,' much given to
scribbling doggrel verses in his friends' note-books[11]. But I have
before me the MS. book in which he took down his own notes of a course, or
at least the beginning of a course, of lectures on anatomy; and they are
not those of a lax or inaccurate student. The only signs of a wandering
mind occur on the margins of one or two pages, in the shape of sketches
(rather prettily touched) of pansies and other flowers: but the notes
themselves are both full and close as far as they go. Poetry had indeed
already become Keats's chief interest, but it is clear at the same time
that he attended the hospitals and did his work regularly, acquiring a
fairly solid knowledge, both theoretical and practical, of the rudiments
of medical and surgical science, so that he was always afterwards able to
speak on such subjects with a certain mastery. On the 25th of July, 1816,
he passed with credit his examination as licentiate at Apothecaries' Hall.
He was appointed a dresser at Guy's under Mr Lucas on the 3rd of March,
1816, and the operations which he performed or assisted in are said to
have proved him no bungler. But his heart was not in the work. Its
scientific part he could not feel to be a satisfying occupation for his
thoughts: he knew nothing of that passion of philosophical curiosity in
the mechanism and mysteries of the human frame which by turns attracted
Coleridge and Shelley toward the study of medicine. The practical
responsibilities of the profession at the same time weighed upon him, and
he was conscious of a kind of absent uneasy wonder at his own skill.
Voices and visions that he could not resist were luring his spirit along
other paths, and once when Cowden Clarke asked him about his prospects and
feelings in regard to his profession, he frankly declared his own sense of
his unfitness for it; with reasons such as this, that "the other day,
during the lecture, there came a sunbeam into the room, and with it a
whole troop of creatures floating in the ray; and I was off with them to
Oberon and fairy-land." "My last operation," he once told Brown, "was the
opening of a man's temporal artery. I did it with the utmost nicety, but
reflecting on what passed through my mind at the time, my dexterity seemed
a miracle, and I never took up the lancet again."
Keats at the same time was forming intimacies with other young men of
literary tastes and occupations. His verses were beginning to be no longer
written with a boy's secrecy, but freely addressed to and passed round
among his friends; some of them attracted the notice and warm approval of
writers of acknowledged mark and standing; and with their encouragement he
had about the time of his coming of age (that is in the winter of 1816-17)
conceived the purpose of devoting himself to a literary life. We are not
told what measure of opposition he encountered on the point from Mr Abbey,
though there is evidence that he encountered some[12]. Probably that
gentleman regarded the poetical aspirations of his ward as mere symptoms
of a boyish fever which experience would quickly cure. There was always a
certain lack of cordiality in his relations with the three brothers as
they grew up. He gave places in his counting-house successively to George
and Tom as they left school, but they both quitted him after a while;
George, who had his full share of the family pride, on account of slights
experienced or imagined at the hands of a junior partner; Tom in
consequence of a settled infirmity of health which early disabled him for
the practical work of life. Mr Abbey continued to manage the money matters
of the Keats family,--unskilfully enough as will appear,--and to do his
duty by them as he understood it. Between him and John Keats there was
never any formal quarrel. But that young brilliant spirit could hardly
have expected a responsible tea-dealer's approval when he yielded himself
to the influences now to be described.