English Literature
was modest enough in spirit, as was also his second volume, _Endymion_
(1818); but that did not prevent brutal attacks upon the author and his
work by the self-constituted critics of _Blackwood's Magazine_ and the
_Quarterly_. It is often alleged that the poet's spirit and ambition were
broken by these attacks;[229] but Keats was a man of strong character, and
instead of quarreling with his reviewers, or being crushed by their
criticism, he went quietly to work with the idea of producing poetry that
should live forever. As Matthew Arnold says, Keats "had flint and iron in
him"; and in his next volume he accomplished his own purpose and silenced
unfriendly criticism.
For the three years during which Keats wrote his poetry he lived chiefly in
London and in Hampstead, but wandered at times over England and Scotland,
living for brief spaces in the Isle of Wight, in Devonshire, and in the
Lake district, seeking to recover his own health, and especially to restore
that of his brother. His illness began with a severe cold, but soon
developed into consumption; and added to this sorrow was another,--his love
for Fannie Brawne, to whom he was engaged, but whom he could not marry on
account of his poverty and growing illness. When we remember all this
personal grief and the harsh criticism of literary men, the last small
volume, _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems_ (1820), is
most significant, as showing not only Keats's wonderful poetic gifts, but
also his beautiful and indomitable spirit. Shelley, struck by the beauty
and promise of "Hyperion," sent a generous invitation to the author to come
to Pisa and live with him; but Keats refused, having little sympathy with
Shelley's revolt against society. The invitation had this effect, however,
that it turned Keats's thoughts to Italy, whither he soon went in the
effort to save his life. He settled in Rome with his friend Severn, the
artist, but died soon after his arrival, in February, 1821. His grave, in
the Protestant cemetery at Rome, is still an object of pilgrimage to
thousands of tourists; for among all our poets there is hardly another
whose heroic life and tragic death have so appealed to the hearts of poets
and young enthusiasts.
THE WORK OF KEATS. "None but the master shall praise us; and none but the
master shall blame" might well be written on the fly leaf of every volume
of Keats's poetry; for never was there a poet more devoted to his ideal,
entirely independent of success or failure. In strong contrast with his
contemporary, Byron, who professed to despise the art that made him famous,
Keats lived for poetry alone, and, as Lowell pointed out, a virtue went out
of him into everything he wrote. In all his work we have the impression of
this intense loyalty to his art; we have the impression also of a profound
dissatisfaction that the deed falls so far short of the splendid dream.
Thus after reading Chapman's translation of Homer he writes:
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
In this striking sonnet we have a suggestion of Keats's high ideal, and of
his sadness because of his own ignorance, when he published his first
little volume of poems in 1817. He knew no Greek; yet Greek literature
absorbed and fascinated him, as he saw its broken and imperfect reflection
in an English translation. Like Shakespeare, who also was but poorly
educated in the schools, he had a marvelous faculty of discerning the real
spirit of the classics,--a faculty denied to many great scholars, and to
most of the "classic" writers of the preceding century,--and so he set
himself to the task of reflecting in modern English the spirit of the old
Greeks.
The imperfect results of this attempt are seen in his next volume,
_Endymion_, which is the story of a young shepherd beloved by a moon
goddess. The poem begins with the striking lines:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us; and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing,
which well illustrate the spirit of Keats's later work, with its perfect
finish and melody. It has many quotable lines and passages, and its "Hymn
to Pan" should be read in connection with Wordsworth's famous sonnet
beginning, "The world is too much with us." The poem gives splendid
promise, but as a whole it is rather chaotic, with too much ornament and
too little design, like a modern house. That Keats felt this defect
strongly is evident from his modest preface, wherein he speaks of
_Endymion_, not as a deed accomplished, but only as an unsuccessful attempt
to suggest the underlying beauty of Greek mythology.
Keats's third and last volume, _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and
Other Poems_ (1820), is the one with which the reader should begin his
acquaintance with this master of English verse. It has only two subjects,
Greek mythology and mediæval romance. "Hyperion" is a magnificent fragment,
suggesting the first arch of a cathedral that was never finished. Its theme
is the overthrow of the Titans by the young sun-god Apollo. Realizing his
own immaturity and lack of knowledge, Keats laid aside this work, and only
the pleadings of his publisher induced him to print the fragment with his
completed poems.
Throughout this last volume, and especially in "Hyperion," the influence of
Milton is apparent, while Spenser is more frequently suggested in reading
_Endymion_.
Of the longer poems in the volume, "Lamia" is the most suggestive. It is
the story of a beautiful enchantress, who turns from a serpent into a
glorious woman and fills every human sense with delight, until, as a result
of the foolish philosophy of old Apollonius, she vanishes forever from her
lover's sight. "The Eve of St. Agnes," the most perfect of Keats's mediæval
poems, is not a story after the manner of the metrical romances, but rather
a vivid painting of a romantic mood, such as comes to all men, at times, to
glorify a workaday world. Like all the work of Keats and Shelley, it has an
element of unreality; and when we read at the end,
And they are gone; aye, ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm,
it is as if we were waking from a dream,--which is the only possible ending
to all of Keats's Greek and mediæval fancies. We are to remember, however,
that no beautiful thing, though it be intangible as a dream, can enter a
man's life and leave him quite the same afterwards. Keats's own word is
here suggestive. "The imagination," he said, "may be likened to Adam's
dream; he awoke and found it true."
It is by his short poems that Keats is known to the majority of present-day
readers. Among these exquisite shorter poems we mention only the four odes,
"On a Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale," "To Autumn," and "To Psyche." These
are like an invitation to a feast; one who reads them will hardly be
satisfied until he knows more of such delightful poetry. Those who study
only the "Ode to a Nightingale" may find four things,--a love of sensuous
beauty, a touch of pessimism, a purely pagan conception of nature, and a
strong individualism,--which are characteristic of this last of the
romantic poets.
As Wordsworth's work is too often marred by the moralizer, and Byron's by
the demagogue, and Shelley's by the reformer, so Keats's work suffers by
the opposite extreme of aloofness from every human interest; so much so,
that he is often accused of being indifferent to humanity. His work is also
criticised as being too effeminate for ordinary readers. Three things
should be remembered in this connection. First, that Keats sought to
express beauty for its own sake; that beauty is as essential to normal
humanity as is government or law; and that the higher man climbs in
civilization the more imperative becomes his need of beauty as a reward for
his labors. Second, that Keats's letters are as much an indication of the
man as is his poetry; and in his letters, with their human sympathy, their
eager interest in social problems, their humor, and their keen insight into
life, there is no trace of effeminacy, but rather every indication of a
strong and noble manhood. The third thing to remember is that all Keats's
work was done in three or four years, with small preparation, and that,
dying at twenty-five, he left us a body of poetry which will always be one
of our most cherished possessions. He is often compared with "the marvelous
boy" Chatterton, whom he greatly admired, and to whose memory he dedicated
his _Endymion_; but though both died young, Chatterton was but a child,
while Keats was in all respects a man. It is idle to prophesy what he might
have done, had he been granted a Tennyson's long life and scholarly
training. At twenty five his work was as mature as was Tennyson's at fifty,
though the maturity suggests the too rapid growth of a tropical plant which
under the warm rains and the flood of sunlight leaps into life, grows,
blooms in a day, and dies.
As we have stated, Keats's work was bitterly and unjustly condemned by the
critics of his day. He belonged to what was derisively called the cockney
school of poetry, of which Leigh Hunt was chief, and Proctor and Beddoes
were fellow-workmen. Not even from Wordsworth and Byron, who were ready
enough to recommend far less gifted writers, did Keats receive the
slightest encouragement. Like young Lochinvar, "he rode all unarmed and he
rode all alone." Shelley, with his sincerity and generosity, was the first
to recognize the young genius, and in his noble _Adonais_--written, alas,
like most of our tributes, when the subject of our praise is dead--he spoke
the first true word of appreciation, and placed Keats, where he
unquestionably belongs, among our greatest poets. The fame denied him in
his sad life was granted freely after his death. Most fitly does he close
the list of poets of the romantic revival, because in many respects he was
the best workman of them all. He seems to have studied words more carefully
than did his contemporaries, and so his poetic expression, or the harmony
of word and thought, is generally more perfect than theirs. More than any
other he lived for poetry, as the noblest of the arts. More than any other
he emphasized beauty, because to him, as shown by his "Grecian Urn," beauty
and truth were one and inseparable. And he enriched the whole romantic
movement by adding to its interest in common life the spirit, rather than
the letter, of the classics and of Elizabethan poetry. For these reasons
Keats is, like Spenser, a poet's poet; his work profoundly influenced
Tennyson and, indeed, most of the poets of the present era.
II. PROSE WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD
Aside from the splendid work of the novel writers--Walter Scott, whom we
have considered, and Jane Austen, to whom we shall presently return--the
early nineteenth century is remarkable for the development of a new and
valuable type of critical prose writing. If we except the isolated work of
Dryden and of Addison, it is safe to say that literary criticism, in its
modern sense, was hardly known in England until about the year 1825. Such