FOOTNOTES:
[1] A small point here may deserve a note. A letter from John Keats to his brother George, under date of September 21st, 1819, contains the following words: “Our bodies, every seven years, are completely fresh-materialed: seven years ago it was not this hand that clenched itself against Hammond.” Another version of the same letter (the true wording of which is matter of some dispute) substitutes: “Mine is not the same hand I clenched at Hammond’s.” Mr. Buxton Forman, who gives the former phrase as the genuine one, thinks that “this phrase points to a serious rupture as the cause of his quitting his apprenticeship to Hammond.” My own inclination is to surmise that the accurate reading may be—“It was not this hand that clenched itself against Hammond’s”; indicating, not any quarrel, but the friendly habitual clasp of hand against hand. “Seven years ago” would reach back to September 1812: whereas Keats did not part from Hammond until 1814.
[2] This is Hunt’s own express statement. It has been disputed, but I am not prepared to reject it.
[3] Biographers have been reticent on this subject. Keats’s statement however speaks for itself, and a high medical authority, Dr. Richardson, writing in The Asclepiad for April 1884, and reviewing the whole subject of the poet’s constitutional and other ailments, says that Keats in Oxford “runs loose, and pays a forfeit for his indiscretion which ever afterwards physically and morally embarrasses him.” He pronounces that Keats’s early death was “expedited, perhaps excited, by his own imprudence,” but was substantially due to hereditary disease. His mother, as we have already seen, had died of the malady which killed the poet, consumption. It is not clear to me what Keats meant by saying that “from his employment” his health would be insecure. One might suppose that he was thinking of the long and haphazard working hours of a young surgeon or medical man; in which case, this seems to be the latest instance in which he spoke of himself as still belonging to that profession.
[4] Hitherto printed “life”; it seems to me clear that “lips” is the right word.
[5] In Medwin’s “Life of Shelley,” vol. ii. pp. 89 to 92, are some interesting remarks upon Keats’s character and demeanour, written in a warm and sympathetic tone. Some of them were certainly penned by Miss Brawne (Mrs. Lindon), and possibly all of them. Mr. Colvin (p. 233 of his book) has called special attention to these remarks: I forbear from quoting them. A leading point is to vindicate Keats from the imputation of “violence of temper.”
[6] This passage is taken from Lord Houghton’s “Life, &c., of Keats,” first published in 1848, and by “home” he certainly means Wentworth Place, Hampstead. Yet in his Aldine Edition of Keats, his lordship says that the poet “was at that time, very much against Mr. Brown’s desire and advice, living alone in London.” This latter statement may possibly be correct—I question it. The passage, as written by Lord Houghton, is condensed from the narrative of Brown. The latter is given verbatim in Mr. Colvin’s “Keats,” and is, of course, the more important and interesting of the two. I abstain from quoting it, solely out of regard to Mr. Colvin’s rights of priority.
[7] Apparently Miss Brawne had remonstrated against the imputation of “flirting with Brown,” and much else to like effect in a recent letter from Keats.
[8] I observe this name occurring once elsewhere in relation to Keats, but am not clear whose house it represents.
[9] It has been suggested (by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as printed in Mr. Forman’s edition of Keats) that the poem here referred to is “The Eve of St. Mark.” Keats had begun it fully a year and a half before the date of this letter, but, not having continued it, he might have spoken of “having it in his head.”
[10] This may require a word of explanation. Keats, detained at Portsmouth by stress of weather, had landed for a day, and seen his friend Mr. Snook, at Bedhampton. Brown was then in Chichester, only ten miles off, but of this Keats had not at the time been aware.
[11] The — before “you” appears in the letter, as printed in Mr. Forman’s edition of Keats. It might seem that Keats hesitated a moment whether to write “you” or “Miss Brawne.”
[12] No such letter is known. It has been stated that Keats, after leaving home, could never summon up resolution enough to write to Miss Brawne: possibly this statement ought to be limited to the time after he had reached Italy.
[13] Lord Houghton says that Keats in Naples “could not bear to go to the opera, on account of the sentinels who stood constantly on the stage:” he spoke of “the continual visible tyranny of this government,” and said “I will not leave even my bones in the midst of this despotism.” Sentinels on the stage have, I believe, been common in various parts of the continent, as a mere matter of government parade, or of routine for preserving public order. The other points (for which no authority is cited by Lord Houghton) must, I think, be over-stated. In November 1820 the short-lived constitution of the kingdom of Naples was in full operation, and neither tyranny nor despotism was in the ascendant—rather a certain degree of popular license.
[14] The reader of Keats’s preface will note that this is a misrepresentation. Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism, nor did he ask to remain uncriticized in order that he might write more. What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of him for hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be aware that Keats’s own sense of failure in “Endymion” was as fierce a hell as he could be chastised by.
[15] This phrase stands printed with inverted commas, as a quotation. It is not, however, a quotation from the letter of J. S.
[16] “Coolness” (which seems to be the right word) in the letter to Miss Mitford.
[17] Severn’s view of the matter some years afterwards has however received record in the diary of Henry Crabb Robinson. Under the date May 6, 1837, we read—“He [Severn] denies that Keats’s death was hastened by the article in the Quarterly.”
[18] The passage which begins—
“Hard by
Stood serene Cupids watching silently”
has some affinity with a passage in Shelley’s “Adonais.” The latter passage is, however, more directly based upon one in the Idyll of Bion on Adonis.
[19] I do not clearly understand from the poem whether Endymion does or does not know, until the story nears its conclusion, that the goddess who favours him is Diana. He appears at any rate to guess as much, either during this present interview or shortly afterwards.
[20] Keats has been laughed at for ignorance in printing “Visit my Cytherea”; but it appears on good evidence that what he really wrote was “Visit thou my Cythera.” A false quantity in this same canto, “Nèptŭnus,” cannot be explained away.
[21] Declared it in some very odd lines; for instance—
“Do gently murder half my soul, and I
Shall feel the other half so utterly!”
[22] See [p. 52] as to Miss Brawne.
[23] I presume the “three masterpieces” are “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Hyperion,” and “Lamia”; this leaves out of count the short “Belle Dame sans Merci,” and the unfinished “Eve of St. Mark,” but certainly not because Dante Rossetti rated those lower than the three others.
[24] There are some various readings in this poem (as here, “wretched wight”); I adopt the phrases which I prefer.
Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including obsolete and variant spellings, and inconsistent hyphenation. Obvious typographical errors in punctuation have been fixed. Corrections [in brackets] in the text are noted below:
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In [Feburary[February] 1818 Keats, Leigh Hunt, and Shelley, undertook to write a sonnet each upon the river Nile.
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which could not be made applicable or subservient to the purposes of poetry. Many will remember the [ancedote[ancedote], proper to Haydon’s “immortal dinner”
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seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a [palpaple[palpable] fact that this address, according to its place in