But the channels which had delighted his own, and that peculiarities that had taken the fancy of the one were easily pressed on the imagination of the other. Keats always defended himself energetically against the notion that he belonged to Leigh Hunt's or any other school. "I refused," he wrote, "to visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfettered scope," and he never ceased to desire to bear all the defects of his own originality. It is no contradiction to this to infer, that if the talents of Keats had been subjected to the discipline of a complete and regular classical education, and a selfdistrust inculcated by the continual presence of the highest original models of thought and form, he would have escaped very much of the mannerism which accompanied his early efforts; but it may be doubted whether the well-trained plant would have thrown out such luxurious shoots and expanded into such rare and delightful foliage. The most that can be said of the influence of Leigh Hunt and his friends on Keats was that he became obnoxious to those evils which inevitably beset every literary coterie, that he learned rather to encourage than to restrain individual peculiarities, and to demand a public and permanent attention for matters that could only justly claim a private and personal interest. But on the other hand it is impossible to deny that in this genial atmosphere the faculty of the young poet ripened with incredible facility, and advantages of literary culture were afforded which no just critic can disparage or conceal. Chatterton eating out his heart in his desolate lodging and ignoble service to low magazines, or Burns drinking down thought in country taverns and town society little more refined, afford mournful contrasts to the pleasant and elevating associations enjoyed by Keats during his residence in London, which he would have been the last to undervalue. Hazlitt, Haydon, Godwin, Basil Montague and his remarkable family, and many other persons of literary and artistic reputation received him with kindness: Mr. Reynolds, whose poems written under feigned names are full of merit, Mr. Dilke, whose intelligent criticism, large information, and manly sense, have had so beneficial an effect on the modern history of English letters, Archdeacon Bailey, and Severn, the poetical painter, became his devoted friends: while in Mr. Ollier, himself a poet, and afterwards in Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, he found considerate and liberal publishers. It soon became apparent that the profession for which young Keats was destined was too unsuitable to be maintained. There remain careful annotations on the lectures he attended, but when he had once entered on the practical part of his business, although successful in all his operations, he found his mind so oppressed with an overwrought apprehension of doing harm, that he determined on abandoning the course of life to which he had devoted a considerable portion of his small fortune. dexterity," he said, "used to seem to me a miracle, and I resolved never to take up a surgical instrument again.” The little volume of poems, the beloved first-born, "My MEMOIR OF JOHN KEATS. 25 scarcely touched the public attention: it was not even observed as a sign of the existence of a new cockney poet, whom the critic was bound to silence or to convert, or as the production of a new member of the revolutionary propaganda, to be hunted down with ridicule or obloquy. These honors were reserved for maturer labors. The characteristic lines, "Glory and loveliness have passed away," &c., were written in the midst of a merry circle of friends, who happened to be present when the printer sent to say that if there was to be a dedication he must send it directly; and he did so,-for the main thought, the regeneration of the images of Pagan beauty, was ever present with him. His health at this time was far from good, and in the spring of 1817, he returned to the quiet of the Isle of Wight to write "Endymion," a subject long germinating in his fancy, and thus shadowed out in the first poem of his early volume: "He was a poet, sure a lover too, Who stood on Latmus' top, what time there blew The solitude was not very propitious to his work, but he composed some other good verses, such as the sonnet "On the Sea," and others illustrative of his thoughts and feelings at the time. In a letter to Haydon he thus expressed himself with a noble humility: "I must think that difficulties nerve the spirit of a man; they make our prime objects a refuge as well as a passion; the trumpet of Fame is as a tower of strength, the ambitious bloweth it, and is safe." *** "There is no greater sin, after the seven deadly, than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great poet, or one of those beings who are privileged to wear out their lives in the pursuit of honor. How comfortable a thing it is to feel that such a crime must bring its heavy penalty, that if one be a self-deluder, accounts must be balanced." Again to Hunt: "I have asked myself so often why I should be a Poet more than other men, seeing how great a thing it is, how great things are to be gained by it, that at last the idea has grown so monstrously beyond my seeming power of attainment, that the other day I nearly consented with myself to drop into a Phaethon. Yet 'tis a disgrace to fail even in a huge attempt, and at this moment I drive the thought from me. I began my poem about a fortnight since, and have done some every day, except travelling ones." In September he visited his friend Bailey, at Oxford, and wrote thence as follows:-"Believe me, my dear it is a great happiness to me that you are, in this finest part of the year, winning a little enjoyment from the hard world. In truth, the great Elements we know of, are no mean comforters: the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown; the air is our robe of state; the earth is our throne; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it-able, like David's harp, to make such a one as you forget almost the tempest-cares of life. * * * * * I shall ever feel grateful to you for having made known to me so real a fellow as Bailey. He delights me in the selfish, and, please God, the disinterested part of my disposition. If the old Poets have any pleasure in looking down at the enjoyers of their works, their eyes must bend with double satisfaction. upon him. I sit as at a feast when he is over them, and pray that if, after my death, any of my labors should be worth saving, they may have as 'honest a chronicler' as Bailey. Out of this, his enthusiasm in his own pursuit and for all good things is of an exalted kind, worthy a more healthful frame and an untorn spirit. He must have happy years, to come; he shall not die-by God.'"* Some later extracts from letters to this excellent friend are interesting; they were part of the occupation of the winter of 1817-18, which Keats passed at Hampstead among his friends, perhaps the happiest period of In p. 62 of the "Life and Letters of Keats," the biographer spoke of the decease of Mr. Bailey: he had been erroneously informed as to that event, but he regrets to add that the newspapers, within the last few weeks, record the death of Archdeacon Bailey, lately returned from Ceylon, where he had long resided. |