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NOVEMBER, 1860.

THE LIFE AND POETRY OF KEATS.

BY THE EDITOR.

KEATS was born in Moorfields, London, in October, 1795, the son of a liverystable keeper of some wealth, who had attained that position by marrying his master's daughter and so succeeding him in the business. There were five children, four sons and a daughter, of whom John was the third. The father, who is described as an active, energetic little man of much natural talent, was killed by a fall from a horse at the age of thirty-six, when Keats was in his ninth year; and the care of the children devolved upon the mother, a tall, largefeatured woman, of considerable force of character. There was also a maternal uncle, a very tall, strong, and courageous man, who had been in the navy, had served under Duncan at Camperdown, and had done extraordinary feats in the way of fighting. Partly in emulation of this uncle, partly from constitutional inclination, the boys were always fighting too-in the house, about the stables, or out in the adjacent streets, with each other, or with anybody else. John, though the shortest for his years, and the most like his father, was the most pugnacious of the lot; but with his pugnacity he combined, it is said, a remarkable sensibility, and a great love of fun. This character he took with him to a boarding-school at Enfield, near London, kept by the father of Mr. Charles Cowden Clarke, then also a boy, not much older than Keats, receiving his education under his father's roof.

At school, Keats, according to the recollections of Mr. Clarke and others of his schoolfellows, was at first a perfect little terrier for resoluteness and pugnacity, but very placable and frolicsome, very much liked, and, though not particularly studious, very quick at learning. There would seem to have been more of pleasant sociability between the family of the master and the scholars in the school at Enfield, and more of literary talk at bye-hours, than was then common at private English schools. At all events, when, by the death of his mother, of lingering consumption, in 1810, the guardianship of Keats, his two surviving brothers, and his only sister, devolved on a Mr. Abbey, a London merchant who had known the family, and when Mr. Abbey thought it best to take two of the boys from school and apprentice them to professions, it was felt by Keats to be a very happy arrangement that he was apprenticed to a surgeon-apothecary at Edmonton, so near to Enfield, that he could still go over when he liked to see the Clarkes. He was then fifteen years of age. The share of the family property held for him by his guardian till he came of age, was about 2,000l.; and his apprenticeship was to last five

years.

From Edmonton, Keats was continually walking over to Enfield to see his young friend, Cowden Clarke, and to borrow books. It was some time in 1812 that he borrowed Spenser's "Faery

Queene." The effect was immediate and extraordinary. "He ramped" says Mr. Clarke, "through the scenes of the romance;" he would talk of nothing but Spenser; he had whole passages by heart, which he would repeat; and he would dwell with an ecstacy of delight on fine particular phrases, such as that of the "sea-shouldering whale." His first known poetical composition (he was then seventeen), was a piece expressly entitled "In Imitation of Spenser."

"Now Morning from her orient chamber came, And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill, Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill; Which, pure from mossy beds," &c.

From that moment it seemed as if Keats lived only to read poetry and to write it. From Spenser he went to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Milton, and so on and on, with ever-widening range, through all our sweeter and greater poets. He luxuriated in them by himself; he talked about them, and read parts of them aloud to his friends; he became a critic of their thoughts, their words, their rhymes, their cadences. His chief partner in these tastes was Mr. Cowden Clarke, with whom he would take walks, or sit up whole evenings, discoursing of poets and poetry; and he acknowledges, in one of his metrical epistles, the influence which Mr. Clarke had in forming his literary likings. Above all, it was Mr. Clarke that first introduced him to any knowledge of ancient Greek poetry. This was effected by lending him Chapman's Homer, his first acquaintance with which, and its effects on him, are celebrated in one of the finest and bestknown of his sonnets. Thenceforward Greek poetry, so far as it was accessible to him in translation, had peculiar fascinations for him. By similar means he became fondly familiar with some of the softer Italian poets, and with the stories of Boccaccio. It was noted by one of his friends that his preferences at this time, whether in English or in other poetry, were still for passages of sweet, sensuous description, or of sensuous

in the minor poems of Milton, Shakespeare and Chaucer, and in Spenser throughout, and that he rarely seemed to dwell with the same enthusiasm on passages of fervid feeling, of severe reference to life, or of powerful human interest. At this time, in fact, his feeling for poetry was very much that of an artist in language, observing effects which particularly delighted him, and studying them with a professional admiration of the exquisite. He brooded over fine phrases like a lover; and often, when he met a quaint or delicious word in the course of his reading, he would take pains to make it his own by using it, as speedily as possible, in some poem he was writing. Ah! those days of genial, enjoying youth, when, over the fire, with a book in one's hand, one gets fine passages by heart, and, in walks with one or two choice companions, there is an opening of the common stock, and hours and miles are whiled away with tit-bits of recent reading from a round of favourite poets! These are the days when books are books; and it is a fact to be remembered, as regards literature, that one half of the human race is always under the age of twenty

one.

Before Keats's apprenticeship was over, it was pretty clear to himself and his friends that he would not persevere in becoming a surgeon. In the year 1816,

when he came from Edmonton to London, at the age of twenty, he did indeed enter himself as a student at the hospitals; but he very soon gave up attending them, and found more agreeable employment in the society of Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Godwin, Dilke, Ollier, the painter Haydon, Hazlitt, Charles Armitage Brown, and others whose names are less remembered. In this society of artists and men of lettersforming, so far as the literary ingredient was concerned, the so-called "Cockney School," as distinct from the "Lakists" of the North of England, and from the Edinburgh men who gave both of them their names-Keats at once took a prominent place, less on account of what

mise 'of what he was to be. On first settling in London, he had taken lodgings in the Poultry, in the heart of the city; but, as soon as he had abandoned the idea of following the medical profession, he removed to Hampsteadwhich, as the provincial reader ought to know, is a suburb of London, as you approach it from the north.

London, with all the evils resulting from its vastness, has suburbs as rich and beautiful, after the English style of scenery, as any in the world; and even now, despite the encroachments of the ever-encroaching brick and mortar on the surrounding country, the neighbourhood of Hampstead and Highgate, near London, is one in which the lover of natural beauty and the solitary might well delight. The ground is much the highest round London; there are real heights and hollows, so that the omnibuses coming from town have to put on additional horses; you ascend steep roads, lying in part through villages of quaint shops, and old, high-gabled brick houses, still distinct from the great city, though about to be devoured by it, in part through straggling lines of villas, with gardens and grassy parks round them, and here and there an old inn; and, from the highest eminences, when the view is clear, you can see London left behind, a mass of purplish mist, with domes and steeples visible through it. Where the villages end, you are really in the country. There is the Heath, on the Hampstead side-an extensive tract of knolls and little glens, covered here and there with furze, all abloom with yellow in the summer, when the larks may be heard singing over it; threaded here and there by paths with seats in them, or broken by clumps of trees, and blue rusty-nailed palings, which enclose oldfashioned family-houses and shrubberies, where the coachman in livery may be seen talking lazily to the gardener; but containing also sequestered spots where one might wander alone for hours, or lie concealed amid the sheltering furze. At night, Hampstead Heath would be as ghastly a place to wander in as uneasy spirit could desire.

an

In every

hollow, seen in the starlight, one could fancy that there had been a murder; nay, tradition points to spots where foul crimes have been committed, or where, in the dead of night, forgers, who had walked, with discovery on their track, along dark intervening roads, from the hell of lamp-lit London, had lain down and poisoned themselves. In the day, however, and especially on a bright, summer day, the scene is open, healthy, and cheerful. On the one side, is a view across a green valley, called "The Vale of Health," to the opposite heights of Highgate; on the other, the eye traverses a flat expanse of fields and meadows, stretching for many miles northward, and looking, in its rich level variety, like a miniature representation of all England. And then the lanes all about and around, leading away from the Heath, deep and steep, between high banks and along the old church and churchyard, and past little ponds and gardens, and often ending in footpaths through fields where one has to get over stiles !

All this of Hampstead and its vicinity even now; but, forty years ago, it was still better. Why, at that time, London itself was a different city. There was less smoke; there were no steamers on the river; and, from the overspanning bridges, the water could be seen running clear beneath, with the consciousness of fish in it. Then, too, the conveyance between London and such suburbs as Hampstead and Highgate was not by omnibuses passing every five minutes, but by the old stage-coaches, with their guards and horns, coming and going leisurely twice or thrice a day. In those days, therefore, Hampstead and Highgate were still capable of having an individuality of their own, and of having associations fixed upon them by the occupations of their residents, even though these were in London daily, and were, by their general designation, properly enough Londoners. Part of their celebrity now, indeed, arises from associations thus formed. Old Leigh Hunt, visiting these scenes not long before his death, would point out the exact wooden seat on the Heath where he and Keats,

Queene." The effect was immediate and extraordinary. "He ramped" says Mr. Clarke, "through the scenes of the romance;" he would talk of nothing but Spenser; he had whole passages by heart, which he would repeat ; and he would dwell with an ecstacy of delight on fine particular phrases, such as that of the "sea-shouldering whale." His first known poetical composition (he was then seventeen), was a piece expressly entitled "In Imitation of Spenser."

"Now Morning from her orient chamber came, And her first footsteps touch'd a verdant hill, Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill; Which, pure from mossy beds," &c.

From that moment it seemed as if Keats lived only to read poetry and to write it. From Spenser he went to Chaucer, from Chaucer to Milton, and so on and on, with ever-widening range, through all our sweeter and greater poets. He luxuriated in them by himself; he talked about them, and read parts of them aloud to his friends; he became a critic of their thoughts, their words, their rhymes, their cadences. His chief partner in these tastes was Mr. Cowden Clarke, with whom he would take walks, or sit up whole evenings, discoursing of poets and poetry; and he acknowledges, in one of his metrical epistles, the influence which Mr. Clarke had in forming his literary likings. Above all, it was Mr. Clarke that first introduced him to any knowledge of ancient Greek poetry. This was effected by lending him Chapman's Homer, his first acquaintance with which, and its effects on him, are celebrated in one of the finest and bestknown of his sonnets. Thenceforward Greek poetry, so far as it was accessible to him in translation, had peculiar fascinations for him. By similar means he became fondly familiar with some of the softer Italian poets, and with the stories of Boccaccio. It was noted by one of his friends that his preferences at this time, whether in English or in other poetry, were still for passages of sweet, sensuous description, or of sensuous

in the minor poems of Milton, Shakespeare and Chaucer, and in Spenser throughout, and that he rarely seemed to dwell with the same enthusiasm on passages of fervid feeling, of severe reference to life, or of powerful human interest. At this time, in fact, his feeling for poetry was very much that of an artist in language, observing effects which particularly delighted him, and studying them with a professional admiration of the exquisite. He brooded over fine phrases like a lover; and often, when he met a quaint or delicious word in the course of his reading, he would take pains to make it his own by using it, as speedily as possible, in some poem he was writing. Ah! those days of genial, enjoying youth, when, over the fire, with a book in one's hand, one gets fine passages by heart, and, in walks with one or two choice companions, there is an opening of the common stock, and hours and miles are whiled away with tit-bits of recent reading from a round of favourite poets! These are the days when books are books; and it is a fact to be remembered, as regards literature, that one half of the human race is always under the age of twenty

one.

Before Keats's apprenticeship was over, it was pretty clear to himself and his friends that he would not persevere in becoming a surgeon. In the year 1816, when he came from Edmonton to London, at the age of twenty, he did indeed enter himself as a student at the hospitals; but he very soon gave up attending them, and found more agreeable employment in the society of Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Godwin, Dilke, Ollier, the painter Haydon, Hazlitt, Charles Armitage Brown, and others whose names are less remembered. In this society of artists and men of lettersforming, so far as the literary ingredient was concerned, the so-called “ Cockney School," as distinct from the "Lakists" of the North of England, and from the Edinburgh men who gave both of them their names-Keats at once took a prominent place, less on account of what

mise 'of what he was to be. On first settling in London, he had taken lodgings in the Poultry, in the heart of the city; but, as soon as he had abandoned the idea of following the medical profession, he removed to Hampstead— which, as the provincial reader ought to know, is a suburb of London, as you approach it from the north.

London, with all the evils resulting from its vastness, has suburbs as rich and beautiful, after the English style of scenery, as any 'in the world; and even now, despite the encroachments of the ever-encroaching brick and mortar on the surrounding country, the neighbourhood of Hampstead and Highgate, near London, is one in which the lover of natural beauty and the solitary might well delight. The ground is much the highest round London; there are real heights and hollows, so that the omnibuses coming from town have to put on additional horses; you ascend steep roads, lying in part through villages of quaint shops, and old, high-gabled brick houses, still distinct from the great city, though about to be devoured by it, in part through straggling lines of villas, with gardens and grassy parks round them, and here and there an old inn; and, from the highest eminences, when the view is clear, you can see London left behind, a mass of purplish mist, with domes and steeples visible through it. Where the villages end, you are really in the country. There is the Heath, on the Hampstead side-an extensive tract of knolls and little glens, covered here and there with furze, all abloom with yellow in the summer, when the larks may be heard singing over it; threaded here and there by paths with seats in them, or broken by clumps of trees, and blue rusty-nailed palings, which enclose oldfashioned family-houses and shrubberies, where the coachman in livery may be seen talking lazily to the gardener; but containing also sequestered spots where one might wander alone for hours, or lie concealed amid the sheltering furze. At night, Hampstead Heath would be as ghastly a place to wander in as an uneasy spirit could desire.

In every

hollow, seen in the starlight, one could fancy that there had been a murder; nay, tradition points to spots where foul crimes have been committed, or where, in the dead of night, forgers, who had walked, with discovery on their track, along dark intervening roads, from the hell of lamp-lit London, had lain down and poisoned themselves. In the day, however, and especially on a bright, summer day, the scene is open, healthy, and cheerful. On the one side, is a view across a green valley, called "The Vale of Health," to the opposite heights of Highgate; on the other, the eye traverses a flat expanse of fields and meadows, stretching for many miles northward, and looking, in its rich level variety, like a miniature representation of all England. And then the lanes all about and around, leading away from the Heath, deep and steep, between high banks and along the old church and churchyard, and past little ponds and gardens, and often ending in footpaths through fields where one has to get over stiles !

All this of Hampstead and its vicinity even now; but, forty years ago, it was still better. Why, at that time, London itself was a different city. There was less smoke; there were no steamers on the river; and, from the overspanning bridges, the water could be seen running clear beneath, with the consciousness of fish in it. Then, too, the conveyance between London and such suburbs as Hampstead and Highgate was not by omnibuses passing every five minutes, but by the old stage-coaches, with their guards and horns, coming and going leisurely twice or thrice a day. In those days, therefore, Hampstead and Highgate were still capable of having an individuality of their own, and of having associations fixed upon them by the occupations of their residents, even though these were in London daily, and were, by their general designation, properly enough Londoners. Part of their celebrity now, indeed, arises from associations thus formed. Old Leigh Hunt, visiting these scenes not long before his death, would point out the exact wooden seat on the Heath where he and Keats,

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