‘Scarce can I scribble on, for lovely airs
Are fluttering round the room, like doves in pairs.’
Grave Mary Shelley found the recurrence of the host’s fugues, and the masses, madrigals, and part-songs of his musical allies at times too much for her, and she wearied of them, but not of her delightful host.
Of all his friends, Shelley, Charles Lamb, and Keats appear to have kept him closest company. From the first he was soon parted; but genial, ‘gentle Elia,’ and the sensitive yet strong-souled Keats, were his sympathetic friends and frequent companions.
There is no doubt, with all his originality and independence of thought and character, Keats was greatly influenced by Leigh Hunt. Keats’ young enthusiasm and gratitude for Hunt’s encouragement and sympathy made him greatly overrate his mental powers. Both were saturated with the natural beauty of their surroundings—the woods, the fields, and what Bacon would call ‘the winsome air and amenities of the spot.’
Even Shelley owed some of his inspirations to the sweet influences of Hampstead; and we find him loitering in the fields, or leaning, notebook in hand, upon the old gray gate that admitted (notwithstanding the notice to trespassers) to the green glooms of Caen Wood, or one of those other gates, leading up to the charming walk to Highgate, with Caen Wood on one side, and the linked ponds on the other. I pleasure myself in thinking that it may have been in the blue, clear, ambient sky above the Heath that he heard the skylark singing:
‘Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden
Till the world is wrought