CONTENTS.


PAGE

CHAPTER I.

Birth and Parentage--School Life at Enfield--Life as Surgeon's
Apprentice at Edmonton--Awakening to Poetry--Life as Hospital
Student in London. [1795-1817] 1

CHAPTER II.

Particulars of Early Life in London--Friendships and First
Poems--Henry Stephens--Felton Mathew--Cowden Clarke--Leigh
Hunt: his Literary and Personal Influence--John Hamilton
Reynolds--James Rice--Cornelius Webb--Shelley--Haydon--Joseph
Severn--Charles Wells--Personal Characteristics--
Determination to publish. [1814-April, 1817] 18

CHAPTER III.

The _Poems_ of 1817 50

CHAPTER IV.

Excursion to Isle of Wight, Margate, and Canterbury--Summer
at Hampstead--New Friends: Dilke: Brown: Bailey--With Bailey
at Oxford--Return: Old Friends at Odds--Burford Bridge--Winter
at Hampstead--Wordsworth: Lamb: Hazlitt--Poetical Activity--
Spring at Teignmouth--Studies and Anxieties--Marriage and
Emigration of George Keats. [April, 1817-May, 1818] 67

CHAPTER V.

_Endymion_ 93

CHAPTER VI.

Northern Tour--The _Blackwood_ and _Quarterly_ reviews--Death
of Tom Keats--Removal to Wentworth Place--Fanny Brawne--
Excursion to Chichester--Absorption in Love and Poetry--Haydon
and money difficulties--Family Correspondence--Darkening
Prospects--Summer at Shanklin and Winchester--Wise
Resolutions--Return from Winchester. [June, 1818-October,
1819] 111

CHAPTER VII.

_Isabella_--_Hyperion_--_The Eve of St Agnes_--_The Eve of St
Mark_--_La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--_Lamia_--The Odes--The
Plays 147

CHAPTER VIII.

Return to Wentworth Place--Autumn Occupations--The _Cap and
Bells_--Recast of _Hyperion_--Growing Despondency--Visit of
George Keats to England--Attack of Illness in February--Rally
in the Spring--Summer in Kentish Town--Publication of the
_Lamia_ Volume--Relapse--Ordered South--Voyage to Italy--
Naples--Rome--Last Days and Death. [October, 1819-Feb. 1821] 180

CHAPTER IX.

Character and Genius 209

APPENDIX 221

INDEX 234




KEATS.




CHAPTER I.

Birth and Parentage--School Life at Enfield--Life as Surgeon's
Apprentice at Edmonton--Awakening to Poetry--Life as Hospital Student
in London. [1795-1817.]


Science may one day ascertain the laws of distribution and descent which
govern the births of genius; but in the meantime a birth like that of
Keats presents to the ordinary mind a striking instance of nature's
inscrutability. If we consider the other chief poets of the time, we can
commonly recognize either some strain of power in their blood, or some
strong inspiring influence in the scenery and traditions of their home.
Thus we see Scott prepared alike by his origin, associations, and
circumstances to be the 'minstrel of his clan' and poet of the romance of
the border wilds; while the spirit of the Cumbrian hills, and the temper
of the generations bred among them, speak naturally through the lips of
Wordsworth. Byron seems inspired in literature by demons of the same
froward brood that had urged others of his lineage through lives of
adventure or of crime. But Keats, with instincts and faculties more purely
poetical than any of these, was paradoxically born in a dull and middling
walk of English city life; and 'if by traduction came his mind,'--to quote
Dryden with a difference,--it was through channels too obscure for us to
trace. His father, Thomas Keats, was a west-country lad who came young to
London, and while still under twenty held the place of head ostler in a
livery-stable kept by a Mr John Jennings in Finsbury. Presently he married
his employer's daughter, Frances Jennings; and Mr Jennings, who was a man
of substance, retiring about the same time to live in the country, at
Ponder's End, left the management of the business in the hands of his
son-in-law. The young couple lived at the stable, at the sign of the
Swan-and-Hoop, Finsbury Pavement, facing the then open space of Lower
Moorfields.

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