Such, I think, is Keats’s historic place in English literature. What his place was in the hearts of those who best knew him, we have just learned from their own lips. The days of the years of his life were few and evil, but above his grave the double aureole of poetry and friendship shines immortally.
THE END.
APPENDIX.
[p. 2], note 1. As to the exact date of Keats’s birth the evidence is conflicting. He was christened at St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, Dec. 18, 1795, and on the margin of the entry in the baptismal register (which I am informed is in the handwriting of the rector, Dr Conybeare) is a note stating that he was born Oct. 31. The date is given accordingly without question by Mr Buxton Forman (Works, vol. I. p. xlviii). But it seems certain that Keats himself and his family believed his birthday to have been Oct. 29. Writing on that day in 1818, Keats says, “this is my birthday.” Brown (in Houghton MSS.) gives the same day, but only as on hearsay from a lady to whom Keats had mentioned it, and with a mistake as to the year. Lastly, in the proceedings in Rawlings v. Jennings, Oct. 29 is again given as his birthday, in the affidavit of one Anne Birch, who swears that she knew his father and mother intimately. The entry in the St Botolph’s register is probably the authority to be preferred.—Lower Moorfields was the space now occupied by Finsbury Circus and the London Institution, together with the east side of Finsbury Pavement.—The births of the younger brothers are in my text given rightly for the first time, from the parish registers of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch; where they were all three christened in a batch on Sept. 24, 1801. The family were at that date living in Craven Street.
[p. 2], note 2. Brown (Houghton MSS.) says simply that Thomas Keats was a ‘native of Devon.’ His daughter, Mrs Llanos, tells me she remembers hearing as a child that he came from the Land’s End. Persons of the name are still living in Plymouth.
[p. 5], note 2. The total amount of the funds paid into Court by the executors under Mr Jennings’s will (see Preface, [p. viii]) was £13160. 19s. 5d.
[p. 11], note 1, and [p. 70], note 1. Of the total last mentioned, there came to the widow first and last (partly by reversion from other legatees who predeceased her) sums amounting to £9343. 2s. In the Chancery proceedings the precise terms of the deed executed by Mrs Jennings for the benefit of her grandchildren are not quoted, but only its general purport; whence it appears that the sum she made over to Messrs Sandell and Abbey in trust for them amounted approximately to £8000, and included all the reversions fallen or still to fall in as above mentioned. The balance it is to be presumed she retained for her own support (she being then 74).
[p. 17], note 1. The following letter written by Mr Abbey to Mr Taylor the publisher, under April 18, 1821, soon after the news of Keats’s death reached England, speaks for itself. The letter is from Woodhouse MSS. B.