KAYE, SIR JOHN WILLIAM (1814-1876). —Historian and biographer, s. of a London solicitor, was ed. at Eton and Addiscombe. After serving for some time in the Bengal Artillery, he succeeded J.S. Mill as sec. to the political and secret department in the East India Office. His first literary work was a novel pub. in 1845, and he then began his valuable series of histories and biographies illustrative of the British occupation of India, including The War in Afghanistan (1851), and The Sepoy War in India, which he did not live to finish, and which was completed by G.B. Malleson as The History of the Indian Mutiny (6 vols., 1890); also histories of the East India Company and of Christianity in India, and Lives of Sir John Malcolm and other Indian soldiers and statesmen. All his writings are characterised by painstaking research, love of truth, and a style suited to the importance of his subjects. He was made K.C.S.I. in 1871.
KEARY, ANNIE (1825-1879). —Novelist, wrote some good novels, including Castle Daly, A Doubting Heart, and Oldbury, also books for children and educational works.
KEATS, JOHN (1795-1821). —Poet, s. of the chief servant at an inn in London, who m. his master's dau., and d. a man of some substance. He was sent to a school at Enfield, and having meanwhile become an orphan, was in 1810 apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton. In 1815 he went to London to walk the hospitals. He was not, however, at all enthusiastic in his profession, and having become acquainted with Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Shelley, and others, he gave himself more and more to literature. His first work—some sonnets—appeared in Hunt's Examiner, and his first book, Poems, came out in 1817. This book, while containing much that gave little promise of what was to come, was not without touches of beauty and music, but it fell quite flat, finding few readers beyond his immediate circle. Endymion, begun during a visit to the Isle of Wight, appeared in 1818, and was savagely attacked in Blackwood and the Quarterly Review. These attacks, though naturally giving pain to the poet, were not, as was alleged at the time, the cause of his health breaking down, as he was possessed of considerable confidence in his own powers, and his claim to immortality as a poet. Symptoms of hereditary consumption, however, began to show themselves and, in the hope of restored health, he made a tour in the Lakes and Scotland, from which he returned to London none the better. The death soon after of his brother Thomas, whom he had helped to nurse, told upon his spirits, as did also his unrequited passion for Miss Fanny Brawne. In 1820 he pub. Lamia and Other Poems, containing Isabella, Eve of St. Agnes, Hyperion, and the odes to the Nightingale and The Grecian Urn, all of which had been produced within a period of about 18 months. This book was warmly praised in the Edinburgh Review. His health had by this time completely given way, and he was likewise harassed by narrow means and hopeless love. He had, however, the consolation of possessing many warm friends, by some of whom, the Hunts and the Brawnes, he was tenderly nursed. At last in 1821 he set out, accompanied by his friend Severn, on that journey to Italy from which he never returned. After much suffering he d. at Rome, and was buried in the Protestant cemetery there. The character of K. was much misunderstood until the publication by R.M. Milnes, afterwards [Lord Houghton] (q.v.), of his Life and Letters, which gives an attractive picture of him. This, together with the accounts of other friends, represent him as "eager, enthusiastic, and sensitive, but humorous, reasonable, and free from vanity, affectionate, a good brother and friend, sweet-tempered, and helpful." In his political views he was liberal, in his religious, indefinite. Though in his life-time subjected to much harsh and unappreciative criticism, his place among English poets is now assured. His chief characteristics are intense, sensuous imagination, and love of beauty, rich and picturesque descriptive power, and exquisitely melodious versification.
Life, Letters, etc., by R.M. Milnes (1848), Poems and Letters (Forman, 5 vols., 1900). Keats (Men of Letters Series, Colvin, 1887), etc. Poems (1817), Endymion (1818), Lamia and Other Poems (1820).
KEBLE, JOHN (1792-1866). —Poet and divine, s. of the Rev. John K., Vicar of Coln St. Aldwyn's, Gloucestershire, b. at Fairford in the same county, ed. by his f. and at Oxf., where he was elected a Fellow of Oriel Coll., and was for some years tutor and examiner in the Univ. His ideal life, however, was that of a country clergyman, and having taken orders in 1815, he became curate to his f. Meantime he had been writing The Christian Year, which appeared in 1827, and met with an almost unparalleled acceptance. Though at first anonymous, its authorship soon became known, with the result that K. was in 1831 appointed to the Chair of Poetry at Oxf., which he held until 1841. In 1833 his famous sermon on "national apostasy" gave the first impulse to the Oxf. movement, of which, after the secession of Newman to the Church of Rome, he, along with Pusey, was regarded as the leader, and in connection with which he contributed several of the more important "tracts" in which were enforced "deep submission to authority, implicit reverence for Catholic tradition, firm belief in the divine prerogatives of the priesthood, the real nature of the sacraments, and the danger of independent speculation." His f. having d., K. became in 1836 Vicar of Hursley, near Winchester, where he remained until his death. In 1846 he pub. another book of poems, Lyra Innocentium. Other works were a Life of Wilson, Bishop of Sodor and Man, and an ed. of the Works of Hooker. After his death appeared Letters of Spiritual Counsel, and 12 vols. of Parish Sermons. The literary position of K. must mainly rest upon The Christian Year, Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays, and Holidays throughout the Year, the object of which was, as described by the author, to bring the thoughts and feelings of the reader into unison with those exemplified in the Prayer Book. The poems, while by no means of equal literary merit, are generally characterised by delicate and true poetic feeling, and refined and often extremely felicitous language; and it is a proof of the fidelity to nature with which its themes are treated that the book has become a religious classic with readers far removed from the author's ecclesiastical standpoint and general school of thought. K. was one of the most saintly and unselfish men who ever adorned the Church of England, and, though personally shy and retiring, exercised a vast spiritual influence upon his generation.
Life by J.D. Coleridge (1869), another by Rev. W. Lock (1895).