INTRODUCTION. I GENIUS and death have conferred upon John Keats a double immortality. Forever he remains young, as forever his song is full of melody. The rich sweetness of his verse touches the more surely because behind it lies the pathos of that early grave; and among all the writers of the century there is probably none who has excited deeper feelings of admiration and sympathy. He is, too, one of the most difficult of poets to discuss. The overflowing beauty of the work he did inevitably provokes the question: What might he have done? Every critic must have felt how hard it is to judge the poetry of Keats without reference to what might have followed it had he lived. It is obvious, however, that it is idle to speculate upon what might have been; and that what was written must be regarded not as part of a life-work uncompleted, but as a whole in and of itself. Taken as it is and for what it is, it is abundantly able to stand alone; it is sufficiently beautiful and sufficiently important to hold readers by its charm as long as English poetry endures, and to secure for the poet an unchallenged place among the immortals, even were all pathos and personal feeling entirely faded and forgotten. II The parents of Keats were not such as would have seemed likely to be the ancestors of a genius. The father was an assistant in a livery-stable, and had married the daughter of his employer. He seems to have been a respectable, sensible man, of instincts more refined than are usually found in his station. The mother's character has not been very clearly set forth. She is said to have been of disposition somewhat saturnine, and fond of amusements. The latter trait is of immediate interest from the fact that it is supposed to have led to some imprudence which resulted in the premature entrance into the world of her eldest son. The child was born at Moorfields, London, on October 29 or 31, 1795, and was christened John. Three other children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Keats, two boys, George and Thomas, and a daughter, Fanny. The father was killed by a fall from his horse in 1804, and the mother died of consumption in 1810. John was strongly attached to his mother, and felt her death keenly. His nature, too, was not one to be lightly consoled, although he was outwardly of a disposition rather joyous than melancholy. The boy had been early put to school at Enfield, under a Mr. Clarke, who is best remembered as the schoolmaster of Keats and the father of Charles Cowden Clarke, the Shakespearean scholar. Here he received a fair rudimentary education, including some knowledge of Latin. Greek he never knew. He seems to have been well liked by his fellows, and between him and the son of the master sprang up a friendship which lasted through the short life of the poet. Keats as a schoolboy was a manly, passionate, pugnacious lad, of quick and lively temperament, and though of rather small stature, of much personal beauty of face and figure. The maternal grandfather had left a moderate fortune to the Keats children, which was not too well managed by the trustees. A considerable portion of John's share was expended upon his education. He was taken from school at fifteen, and apprenticed for five years to a surgeon, although for some reason not clear he did not complete this term. He then went into the London hospitals, and reached the point of being able to operate successfully. While his education had been progressing, however, the poetic strain had shown itself in the young man. He was not precociously literary. The reading of Spenser when he was sixteen or seventeen seems to have awakened in him the passion till then latent, and for the rest of his life poetry was to him a prime necessity of existence. It was not until a couple of years later1 that he ventured to show to Clarke his own attempts at rhyming; but he composed more and more, and mɔre and more the love of poetic composition grew upon him. "The other day, during the lecture,” he once said to Clarke, "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 fairyland." The combined result of his inclination toward literature and of the sensitiveness which made surgery intolerable to him was that in the winter of 1816-17 Keats formed definitely the determination to devote his life to poetry. Keats had in the meantime through Clarke made that acquaintance with Leigh Hunt and his coterie which was to influence so strongly his work and his fate. Leigh Hunt was an amiable, attractive, superficially accomplished creature; an engaging dilettante in politics, in literature and in life. He was staunch in his friendships and appreciative of the work of others in an entirely unenvious fashion. He edited with his brother a paper called the Examiner, in which political matters were discussed with more emotion than profundity, but which had at least the merit of fearless frankness. An attack upon the Prince Regent, which was 1 There is more or less confusion of the authorities in regard to these dates, but the matter is not of importance which warrants going into it minutely. |