Keats.
The case of Keats is curiously different. He too—as indeed practically everybody does—begins with imitation, but it is imitation of a different kind. Chapman, Spenser, the sonneteers, the Jacobean poets probably, Leigh Hunt certainly, supply him not merely with hints and "send-offs," but with carefully studied models. He hits, in consequence, first in his Juvenilia and then in Endymion, upon a very much enjambed form of decasyllabic couplet—a form opposed to all the traditions of Pope, and deemed horrible by the orthodox critics of the day. But he sees for himself the defect of this, and applies himself earnestly to the study of Dryden and Milton as tonics and astringents. The results are the fine, less fluent, still slightly overrun, but tripleted and Alexandrined heroics of Lamia, and the splendid blank verse of Hyperion. But he has not confined himself to these, or to their lessons; and he has never confined himself to the mere lessons of any poet or of any period. He produces in turn the touching octaves of Isabella; the magnificent Spenserians of The Eve of St. Agnes; the Sonnets, most of them among the finest examples of the form in English; the varied stanza-measures of the Odes; the unique ballad adaptation[107] of La Belle Dame sans Merci; and lastly, two forms of octosyllabic couplet—the mainly catalectic or seven-syllabled form of some earlier poems, and the complete one of The Eve of St. Mark, which overleaps all other examples back to Gower, picks out the finest qualities of Gower's own form, and rearranges them in an example unfinished in itself, but serving as a guide, in the production of a great body of finished and admirable work, to the late Mr. William Morris. In no poet is the lesson—which it was the business of this generation to exemplify, and should be of this chapter to expound—of ordered variety, in foot, in line, in stanza, more triumphantly shown.
FOOTNOTES:
[102] His greatest prosodic achievement is also his greatest achievement in poetry, the "Immortality" Ode. But, though he varies line-length admirably, the prevailing rhythm is merely iambic; and when, in stanza 4, he tries to vary it, the effect is very unfortunate.
[103] Scott was a debtor for something as well to "Monk" Lewis. See "List of Poets," [Book IV].
Ă̄nd wēpt | bĕhĭnd [thĕ] clōuds | ŏ'er thĕ māid|ĕn's shāme.
. . . . . . .
Thă̄t stāin | ŭpŏn [thĕ] snōw | ŏf făir Ēv|ĕlĕen's fame.
[105] Where three lines like the following occur:
Shōuld thŏ̄se | fōnd hŏ̄pes | ē'er fŏr|sāke thē̆e,
. . . . . . .
Whĭ̄ch nōw | sŏ̄ swēet|ly̆ thy̆ hēart | ĕmplōy,
. . . . . . .
Ŏn ŏur thrēsh|ŏld ă wēl|cŏme stĭll fōund.
and are quite irreconcilable.