ENDY MION. A Poetic Romance. BY JOHN KEATS. THE STRETCHEL METRE OF AN ANTIQUE SONO John Keats (1795-1821) was born on the 31st (or perhaps on the 29th) of October 1795, in the stable of the Swan and Hoop Inn, Finsbury Pavement. His father, Thomas Keats, was the ostler of this livery-stable, and had married Frances Jennings, his master's daughter, whom her son described as "a woman of uncommon talents." Keats's parents were fairly well to do, and he was sent to a good school in Enfield. In 1804 his father died of a fall from his horse, and in 1805 the widow married a stable-keeper named William Rawlings, from whom she was presently separated. She withdrew with her children to Edmonton, and John continued at school at Enfield until 1810; he showed no intellectual tastes, but he was "the favourite of all, like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage." Towards the close of his school years his thoughts suddenly turned to study, and he read as violently as he had previously played. Mrs. Rawlings died in February 1810, and Keats "gave way to impassioned and prolonged grief." The children were now placed in the care of guardians, who took John away from school, and bound him apprentice for five years to a surgeon in Edmonton. Keats now formed the valuable friendship of Charles Cowden Clarke, and was introduced to the poetry of Virgil and Spenser. The Faerie Queene awakened his genius, and at the age of seventeen he rather suddenly began to write. He had a difference of opinion with Mr. Hammond, the surgeon, and left him in 1814 to study at St. Thomas' and Guy's Hospitals. He was in London until April 1817. This was the period, of Cockney life, when Keats became an accomplished poet. His profession, however, was not neglected, and in 1816 he was appointed a dresser at Guy's. But although he was skilful he did not love the work; and after 1817 he never took up the lancet again. In the spring of 1816 Keats formed the friendship of Leigh Hunt, who exercised a strong influence in the emancipation of his temperament; through Hunt he knew J. H. Reynolds, Charles Wells, Haydon, Wordsworth, and Shelley. Keats had now determined to adopt the literary life. In this year he wrote many of his finest early sonnets, and several of his epistles. These and other verses were collected in the Poems of March 1817. From this volume the friends expected much, but it was a failure, and Keats withdrew to the Isle of Wight in April, and to Margate in May; he was in dejection from several sources, and not least from news that he had nearly exhausted his little fortune. At Margate, however, Keats seriously set about the composition of his Endymion, and in the summer he and his brothers removed to Hampstead. In the autumn of this year Blackwood's Magazine began its cowardly and illiterate attacks on the new school of poetry. Meanwhile Keats went steadily on with Endymion, which appeared in the early summer of 1818. He had already begun to write Isabella, or The Pot of Basil, and he had now reached the precocious maturity LONDON. PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSE 93, FLEET STREET. 1818. Title-page of the First Edition of of his talent. He spent much of this year in Devonshire with his younger brother House in which Keats lived in Hampstead Tom, whose health gave him much alarm. In the summer of 1818 Keats went for a tour in the Lakes and Scotland; the weather was bad and he fatigued himself; he became so ill in ascending Ben Nevis that a doctor at Inverness forbade him to travel any more, and sent him back from Cromarty to London by sea. After this he was never quite well again. The publication of Endymion had by this time roused the critics; the poem was harshly treated in the Quarterly Review, and in Blackwood's with characteristic brutal ity, the poet being told to go back to the apothecary's shop, and "stick to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes." It is to be feared that the stain of this disgraceful article must rest on the brows of Lockhart. It was at one time believed that these attacks killed Keats; when the courage with which he received them became known, it became the fashion to deny that they had any influence on him at all. But his health was now declining rapidly, and he had many sources of depression. He was anxious for the life of his brother Tom; he was newly in love with a certain Fanny Brawne, and he was in a state of general feverishness in which. such blows as those struck in the dark by Lockhart and Gifford produced a deep effect upon his physical health. But Keats was, thinking most of other things: "there is an awful warmth about my heart," he said, "like a load of immortality." He was now writing with eager magnificence; to the winter of 1818 belong The Eve of St. Agnes and Hyperion. In February 1819 his engagement to Fanny Brawne was acknowledged to an inner circle of intimates, and at first it greatly stimulated his powers of composition. To the spring of that year belong most of his noblest odes, and in particular those to the "Nightingale," to "Psyche," and "On a Grecian Urn." Poverty was my formait mmy Bare thom Jaws I do not sur Joseph Severn, with Inscription by himself beginning to press upon the poet in 1819, but he spent the summer and autumn with enjoyment at Winchester, and was steadily at work on Lamia and Otho; these, as Mr. Colvin says, "were the last good days of his life." In October Keats came up to lodgings in London, hoping to find employment. In a very few days he moved to Wentworth Place, Hampstead, in order to be near Fanny Brawne. He now set about remodel.ing Hyperion, but towards the end of January 1820, after being chilled on the top of a coach, the fatal malady revealed itself. After this his energy greatly declined, and he wrote little. In July the famous volume containing Lamia and the rest of his later poems was published, and won some moderate praise for him for the first time. His condition now gave his friends the deepest alarm, and just as they were wondering how to avoid for Keats a winter in England, an invitation came from the Shelleys begging him to come and live with them at Pisa. With Shelley and his poetry Keats had little sympathy, and he could not bring himself to accept, or even very graciously to respond to, Shelley's hospitable kindness. But the invitation deepened in his mind the attraction of Italy, and in September he started, with the painter Joseph Severn, for Naples. The weather was rough in the Channel, and Keats came ashore; on the 1st of October 1820, being near Lulworth, he wrote the sonnet, " Bright Star," his last verses. On the arrival of the friends, Shelley again warmly pressed Keats to come to Pisa, but he preferred Rome, and he settled with Severn in lodgings in the Piazza di Spagna. Through November Keats was much better, but December brought a relapse; he was distressed no less in mind than body, although admirably nursed all the while by the devoted Severn; but on the 23rd of February 1821, he was released at last from his sufferings. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery, near the pyramid of Caius Cestius. Of Keats in his mature youth we have many and most attractive descriptions. He was short and thick-set, with a powerful frame; his head was clustered round with thick waves of golden brown or auburn hair. His eyes impressed every one with their marvellous beauty; they "seemed to have looked upon some glorious vision," Mrs. Procter said. Leigh Hunt describes them, more precisely, as "mellow and glowing, large, dark and sensitive." Until the disease undermined it, he had unusual physical strength, and in early years much pugnacity in the display of it, although he was excessively amenable to tenderness and friendship. He had "a nature all tingling with pride and sensitiveness," and an "exquisite sense of the luxurious"; and he speaks of the violence of his temperament, continually smothered His ardour, his misfortunes, and his genius, have made him a figure incomparably attractive to all young enthusiasts since his day, and no figure in English literature is more romantically beloved. Mask of Keats Taken from the life by Haydon B Bright as thou art Star, would I were stedfast Not in love splendor hung aloft the night. alcking, with demnal lid afront Like natures patient sleepless Exemete, waters at their questlike lask And w The mor inng Of pure ablution wound earther human gazing ou от очно shores," the new soft fallen margine upon the mountains and the moors. no- net still stedfast, still unchangeable Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast ever its soft smell and fall, To feel for awake for wver in a sweet unest, Still, stile to hear her bender taken breath, or the smoon to death. Facsimile MS. of Keats's last Sonnet |
