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Lyrical Ballads (search for this): chapter 5
elves incapable of the one and not of the other? Probably a certain amount of honest loyalty to old idols in danger of dethronement is to be taken into account, and quite as much of the cruelty of criticism is due to want of thought as to deliberate injustice. However it be, the best poetry has been the most savagely attacked, and men who scrupulously practised the Ten Commandments as if there were never a not in any of them, felt every sentiment of their better nature outraged by the Lyrical Ballads. It is idle to attempt to show that Keats did not suffer keenly from the vulgarities of Blackwood and the Quarterly. He suffered in proportion as his ideal was high, and he was conscious of falling below it. In England, especially, it is not pleasant to be ridiculous, even if you are a lord; but to be ridiculous and an apothecary at the same time is almost as bad as it was formerly to be excommunicated. A priori, there was something absurd in poetry written by the son of an assistan
Charles Cowden Clarke (search for this): chapter 5
for her children, and there was some talk of sending John to Harrow. Fortunately this plan was thought too expensive, and he was sent instead to the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield with his brothers. A maternal uncle, who had distinguished himself by his courage under Duncan at Camperdown, was the hero of his nephews, and they us. The place was of more importance than the master, for its neighborhood to Enfield enabled him to keep up his intimacy with the family of his former teacher, Mr. Clarke, and to borrow books of them. In 1812, when he was in his seventeenth year, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke lent him the Faerie Queene. Nothing that is told of OrphMr. Charles Cowden Clarke lent him the Faerie Queene. Nothing that is told of Orpheus or Amphion is more wonderful than this miracle of Spenser's, transforming a surgeon's apprentice into a great poet. Keats learned at once the secret of his birth, and henceforward his indentures ran to Apollo instead of Mr. Hammond. Thus could the Muse defend her son. It is the old story, —the lost heir discovered by his apt
Grafty (search for this): chapter 5
d company perhaps for him as aorists and aspirates. It is pleasant to fancy the horror of those respectable writers if their pages could suddenly have become alive under their pens with all that the young poet saw in them. There is always some one willing to make himself a sort of accessary after the fact in any success; always an old woman or two, ready to remember omens of all quantities and qualities in the childhood of persons who have become distinguished. Accordingly, a certain Mrs. Grafty, of Craven Street, Finsbury, assures Mr. George Keats, when he tells her that John is determined to be a poet, that this was very odd, because when he could just speak, instead of answering questions put to him, he would always make a rhyme to the last word people said, and then laugh. The early histories of heroes, like those of nations, are always more or less mythical, and I give the story for what it is worth. Doubtless there is a gleam of intelligence in it, for the old lady pronou
Amphion (search for this): chapter 5
pprenticed for five years to a surgeon at Edmonton. His master was a Mr. Hammond, of some eminence in his profession, as Lord Houghton takes care to assure us. The place was of more importance than the master, for its neighborhood to Enfield enabled him to keep up his intimacy with the family of his former teacher, Mr. Clarke, and to borrow books of them. In 1812, when he was in his seventeenth year, Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke lent him the Faerie Queene. Nothing that is told of Orpheus or Amphion is more wonderful than this miracle of Spenser's, transforming a surgeon's apprentice into a great poet. Keats learned at once the secret of his birth, and henceforward his indentures ran to Apollo instead of Mr. Hammond. Thus could the Muse defend her son. It is the old story, —the lost heir discovered by his aptitude for what is gentle and knightly. Haydon tells us that he used sometimes to say to his brother he feared he should never be a poet, and if he was not he would destroy hims
Brocken (search for this): chapter 5
erament. On the whole, perhaps, we need not respect Keats the less for having been gifted with sensibility, and may even say what we believe to be true, that his health was injured by the failure of his book. A man cannot have a sensuous nature and be pachydermatous at the same time, and if he be imaginative as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount of his imagination. It is perfectly true that what we call the world, in these affairs, is nothing more than a mere Brocken spectre, the projected shadow of ourselves; but as long as we do not know it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its occupant. But poets are not built on this plan, and especially poets like Keats, in whom the moral seems to have so perfectly interfused the physical man, that you might almost say he could fee
Boulstred (search for this): chapter 5
it, it is a very passable giant. We are not without experience of natures so purely intellectual that their bodies had no more concern in their mental doings and sufferings than a house has with the good or ill fortune of its occupant. But poets are not built on this plan, and especially poets like Keats, in whom the moral seems to have so perfectly interfused the physical man, that you might almost say he could feel sorrow with his hands, so truly did his body, like that of Donne's Mistress Boulstred, think and remember and forebode. The healthiest poet of whom our civilization has been capable says that when he beholds desert a beggar born, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, alluding, plainly enough, to the Giffords of his day, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, as it was long afterward in Wordsworth's case, And captive Good attending Captain Ill, that then even he, the poet to whom, of all others, life seems to have bee
Hessey (search for this): chapter 5
of all these, had nothing for it but to cry for restful Death. Keats, to all appearance, accepted his ill fortune courageously. He certainly did not overestimate Endymion, and perhaps a sense of humor which was not wanting in him may have served as a buffer against the too importunate shock of disappointment. He made Ritchie promise, says Haydon, he would carry his Endymion to the great desert of Sahara and fling it in the midst. On the 9th October, 1818, he writes to his publisher, Mr. Hessey, I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary affection the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own sol
Dilke (search for this): chapter 5
s all we have. She seems to have been still living in 1848, and as Lord Houghton tells us, kept the memory of the poet sacred. She is an East-Indian, Keats says, and ought to be her grandfather's heir. Her name we do not know. It appears from Dilke's Papers of a Critic that they were betrothed: It is quite a settled thing between John Keats and Miss—. God help them. It is a bad thing for them. The mother says she cannot prevent it, and that her only hope is that it will go off. He don't lir buried lover, crowd his small mound with a galaxy of their innocent stars, more prosperous than those under which he lived. Written in 1856. O irony of Time! Ten years after the poet's death the woman he had so loved wrote to his friend Mr. Dilke, that the kindest act would be to let him rest forever in the obscurity to which circumstances had condemned him! (Papers of a Critic, I. 11.) O Time the atoner! In 1874 I found the grave planted with shrubs and flowers, the pious homage of t
Hyperion (search for this): chapter 5
the most interesting aspects of Keats is that in him we have an example of the renaissance going on almost under our own eyes, and that the intellectual ferment was in him kindled by a purely English leaven. He had properly no scholarship, any more than Shakespeare had, but like him he assimilated at a touch whatever could serve his purpose. His delicate senses absorbed culture at every pore. Of the self-denial to which he trained himself (unexampled in one so young) the second draft of Hyperion as compared with the first is a conclusive proof. And far indeed is his Lamia from the lavish indiscrimination of Endymion. In his Odes he showed a sense of form and proportion which we seek vainly in almost any other English poet, and some of his sonnets (taking all qualities into consideration) are the most perfect in our language. No doubt there is something tropical and of strange overgrowth in his sudden maturity, but it was maturity nevertheless. Happy the young poet who has the s
October 9th, 1818 AD (search for this): chapter 5
it was also the fullest of enjoyment, tired of all these, had nothing for it but to cry for restful Death. Keats, to all appearance, accepted his ill fortune courageously. He certainly did not overestimate Endymion, and perhaps a sense of humor which was not wanting in him may have served as a buffer against the too importunate shock of disappointment. He made Ritchie promise, says Haydon, he would carry his Endymion to the great desert of Sahara and fling it in the midst. On the 9th October, 1818, he writes to his publisher, Mr. Hessey, I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary affection the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no external p
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