V. Rawlings v. Jennings. When Keats’s maternal grandfather, Mr John Jennings, died in 1805, leaving property exceeding the amount of the specific bequests under his will, it was thought necessary that his estate should be administered by the Court of Chancery, and with that intent a friendly suit was brought in the names of his daughter and her second husband (Frances Jennings, m. 1st Thomas Keats, and 2nd William Rawlings) against her mother and brother, who were the executors. The proceedings in this suit are referred to under the above title. They are complicated and voluminous, extending over a period of twenty years, and my best thanks are due to Mr Ralph Thomas, of 27 Chancery Lane, for his friendly pains in searching through and making abstracts of them.
For help and information, besides what has been above acknowledged, I am indebted first and foremost to my friend and colleague, Mr Richard Garnett; and next to the poet’s surviving sister, Mrs Llanos; to Sir Charles Dilke, who lent me the chief part of his valuable collection of Keats’s books and papers (already well turned to account by Mr Forman); to Dr B. W. Richardson, and the Rev. R. H. Hadden. Other incidental obligations will be found acknowledged in the footnotes.
Among essays on and reviews of Keats’s work I need only refer in particular to that by the late Mrs F. M. Owen (Keats: a Study, London, 1876). In its main outlines, though not in details, I accept and have followed this lady’s interpretation of Endymion. For the rest, every critic of modern English poetry is of necessity a critic of Keats. The earliest, Leigh Hunt, was one of the best; and to name only a few among the living—where Mr Matthew Arnold, Mr Swinburne, Mr Lowell, Mr Palgrave, Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr W. B. Scott, Mr Roden Noel, Mr Theodore Watts, have gone before, for one who follows to be both original and just is not easy. In the following pages I have not attempted to avoid saying over again much that in substance has been said already, and doubtless better, by others: by Mr Matthew Arnold and Mr Palgrave especially. I doubt not but they will forgive me: and at the same time I hope to have contributed something of my own towards a fuller understanding both of Keats’s art and life.
CONTENTS.
| PAGE | |
| [CHAPTER I.] | |
| Birth and Parentage—School Life at Enfield—Life as Surgeon’s Apprentice at Edmonton—Awakening to Poetry—Lifeas Hospital Student in London. [1795-1817] | [1] |
| [CHAPTER II.] | |
| Particulars of Early Life in London—Friendships and First Poems—Henry Stephens—Felton Mathew—CowdenClarke—Leigh Hunt: his Literary and Personal Influence—John Hamilton Reynolds—James Rice—CorneliusWebb—Shelley—Haydon—Joseph Severn—Charles Wells—Personal Characteristics—Determination to publish. [1814-April, 1817] | [18] |
| [CHAPTER III.] | |
| The Poems of 1817 | [50] |
| [CHAPTER IV.] | |
| Excursion to Isle of Wight, Margate, and Canterbury—Summer at Hampstead—New Friends: Dilke: Brown: Bailey—With Baileyat Oxford—Return: Old Friends at Odds—Burford Bridge—Winter at Hampstead—Wordsworth: Lamb: Hazlitt—PoeticalActivity—Spring at Teignmouth—Studies and Anxieties—Marriage and Emigration of George Keats. [April, 1817-May, 1818] | [67] |
| [CHAPTER V.] | |
| Endymion | [93] |
| [CHAPTER VI.] | |
| Northern Tour—The Blackwood and Quarterly reviews—Death of Tom Keats—Removal to Wentworth Place—FannyBrawne—Excursion to Chichester—Absorption in Love and Poetry—Haydon and money difficulties—FamilyCorrespondence—Darkening Prospects—Summer at Shanklin and Winchester—Wise Resolutions—Return from Winchester. [June, 1818-October, 1819] | [111] |
| [CHAPTER VII.] | |
| Isabella—Hyperion—The Eve of St Agnes—The Eve of StMark—La Belle Dame Sans Merci—Lamia—The Odes—The Plays | [147] |
| [CHAPTER VIII.] | |
| Return to Wentworth Place—Autumn Occupations—The Cap and Bells—Recast of Hyperion—Growing Despondency—Visitof George Keats to England—Attack of Illness in February—Rally in the Spring—Summer in Kentish Town—Publicationof the Lamia Volume—Relapse—Ordered South—Voyage to Italy—Naples—Rome—Last Days and Death. [October, 1819-Feb. 1821] | [180] |
| [CHAPTER IX.] | |
| Character and Genius | [209] |
| Appendix | [221] |
| Index | [234] |