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PREFACE

"I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death." These prophetic words were uttered by Keats not with presumption, but rather with the selfassurance of a man of genius. Humbly confided in a letter to his brother, in the gloom of approaching sorrow, in the face of unjust and bitter criticism, with the work to verify them yet undone, and the finger of death already upon their author, they claim our deep admiration. Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth early displayed a self-confidence in their literary powers, but faced no equal discouragement. That Keats spoke with true foresight, there is now no doubt. Matthew Arnold placed him with Shakespeare; Browning ranked him with Milton as one of a “superhuman poet-pair "; and Tennyson said: "He would have been among the very greatest of us if he had lived. There is something of the innermost soul of poetry in almost everything he ever wrote." These estimates may be too high; qualifications and explanations may be demanded; but they are far removed from the neglect and contempt accorded Keats in his own day. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, he has left the world unmistakable evidence of greatness: poetry that ranks with the best in our literature; in the words of Rossetti, many a thing of beauty,' which will remain a joy for ever.'" Since the appearance of the last volume of his poems in 1820, he has been Poets."

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among the English

Year by year the fame of Keats has become more secure, as the truth and beauty of his poetry, the significance of his message, and finally, the sterling qualities of his manhood, have become better understood. The faults in his work— his occasional lack of restraint, errors in diction, supersensuousness, weakness in narration—whatever they may be, have not been overlooked, nor can they be explained away; but they have rather been pardoned because of his inexperience and in the light of his subsequent achievements. The beauty and melody of his verse, the richness of his diction, the felicity of his phrase, the profusion and concentration of his imagery, his return to the Greek spirit in nature and myth, and finally, the perfection of art in his best work, will ever afford keen pleasure to the lovers of good literature.

Keats, it is true, can never be a popular poet. He did not seek public favor through any corruption or distortion of language, or by thrilling narrative, or by social, political, or religious controversy. He lived in the realm of art, learned its great language, reveled in its beauty, and strove to bring a message to the leaders of men. He was, as he said, "ambitious of doing the world some good," but that could not be until he had attained "as high a summit in poetry as his endowments would permit. "I have not," said he, "I have not," said he, "the least contempt for my species; and though it may sound paradoxical, my greatest elevations of soul leave me every time more humbled." The purport of his message and philosophy was to reveal

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to the world "the mighty abstract Idea of Beauty in all things "; to make clear by his poetry that truth and beauty are identical and accompanied by lasting joy. Such was his protest against the world that is too much with us, the unfeeling materialism and industrialism to which society was tending-his plea for sweetness and light. But since the general public, as a rule, is blind to the practical value of æsthetics, and since his message was one that "no gross ear can hear," Keats, like his great teachers, Milton and Spenser, must remain the poets' poet. We are slow to comprehend how men of genius without education, in the common acceptation of the word, can, at an early age, produce remarkable works of art-grasp, as it were, the eternal verities. The rise of Shakespeare, for instance, has proved a great mystery-a mystery which time has made more profound and difficult to explain. "Others abide our question. Thou art free." In the case of Keats the marvel, which has been admirably described by Mrs. Browning, is not less:

By Keats's soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years,
And died, not young (the life of a long life
Distilled to a mere drop, falling like a tear
Upon the world's cold cheek to make it burn
For ever), by that strong excepted soul
I count it strange and hard to understand

That nearly all young poets should write old.

Unlike Shakespeare, Keats abides our question. In the words of Lord Houghton, "Here is a surgeon's apprentice, with the ordinary culture of the middle classes, rivaling in æsthetic perceptions of antique life and thought the most careful scholars of his time and country, and reproducing these impressions in phraseology as complete and unconventional as if he had mastered the whole history and the frequent variations of the English tongue, and elaborated a mode of utterance commensurate with his vast ideas." Literary criticism can certainly have few more interesting and instructive tasks than an adequate explanation of Lord Houghton's statement. How did Keats, with no advantages of birth and education, in a few brief years make of himself a poet of enviable rank? To answer this question we must understand, in the first place, the nature and temperament of the man himself and the influences under which he came; and in the second place, the composition and character of his poetry. From his correspondence, his poetry, his portraits, and the word-pictures of his friends we know the man fairly well. The declaration of his brother that " John is the very soul of manliness and courage is now generally accepted as true. We know also that by nature he possessed a rare and delicate sensitiveness to impression. In the words of his friend, the artist Haydon, "He was in his glory in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature tremble; then his eyes flashed, his cheek glowed, his mouth quivered." All of this we may not understand, nor can we measure and explain all the powers and

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workings of genius; but a knowledge of the facts makes the poetry of Keats more comprehensible. To one whose senses brought him so much of the richness of life, the ardent desire to preserve this treasure by the magic of art, in order to share it with others, must of necessity come. Out of the abundance of the heart

the mouth speaketh.

Such delicate sensibilities and strong emotions require, for the purposes of art, powerful restraint and an adequate medium of expression. From his early friend and teacher, Charles Cowden Clarke, and through his friendship and intimacy with Leigh Hunt, Keats received much encouragement and inspiration at that impressionable age in the life of an artist when they are most needed. To Hunt this credit, at least, is due, although his influence on the early style of Keats may not always have been the best. In the society of these two friends and that of other men of culture and artistic temperament whom he soon met and made his lifelong friends, Keats began his travel in the realms of gold and his work of extending their boundaries. Fortunately the noblest and best held his attention. From Spenser, Shakespeare, Chapman, Milton, and Dryden he learned his profoundest lessons, and acquired a correct taste in poetry. Chaucer, Lyly, Drayton, Jonson, Marston, John Fletcher, Thomson, Chatterton, Burns; his famous contemporaries, Wordsworth and Shelley; the great Italians, Dante and Boccaccio; and many others influenced him more or less. He became an enthusiastic and critical reader of the English poets; he learned Italian that he might have access to the literature of Italy; and contemplated, if he did not actually begin, the study of Greek that he might come into direct contact with the culture and love of beauty which animated ancient Hellas, and with which he by nature had much in common.

From his cultured friends, therefore, and from his select reading and study Keats acquired by arduous and enthusiastic application the vocabulary of his art, but not without difficulties and failures. The influences under which he came varied in intensity, in degree of merit, and to some extent in the time at which they were operative, although the brevity of his career as a poet and the rapidity of his development make a strictly chronological arrangement of them impossible. With a mind plastic but retentive, undisciplined by a long and severe training in the classics of his own language or of any other, "with forced fingers rude," ere his Pegasus had "yet feathers enough to soar aloft into the fields of air," Keats in his early twenties eagerly set about the execution of a masterpiece, only to discover when the work was completed, if not before, that he had scattered his "leaves before the mellowing year "—an experience no doubt salutary for the growing powers of the poet. In this premature masterpiece, Endymion, he incorporated his gleanings in diction, both good and bad, from Hunt, Chatterton, Thomson, Collins, Chapman, William Browne, Shakespeare, and from the Elizabethan writers in general. Gradually, however, in his later poems the eccentricities and the extreme freedom or even license he had acquired from Hunt and William Browne, and especially from Chapman, gave way to the universality and judicious mastery he learned from Shakespeare. "As the great dramatist became daily a greater wonder to him, and he came to understand him to his very depths,

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