"What more felicity can fell to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"
Fate of the Butterfly,—SPENSER
LONDON:
PRINTED FOR
C. AND J. OLLIER, 3, WELBECK STREET,
CAVENDISH SQUARE.
1817.
Here, on the evening that the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer, and, as his biographer has recorded, upon being informed, if he purposed having a Dedication to the book, that it must be sent forthwith, he went to a side-table, and, in the midst of mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room,) he brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the Dedication-Sonnet to Leigh Hunt. If the original manuscript of that poem—a legitimate sonnet, with every restriction of rhyme and metre—could now be produced, and the time—recorded in which it was written, it would be pronounced an extraordinary performance; added to which, the non-alteration of a single word in the poem (a circumstance noted at the time) claims for it, I should suppose, a merit without a parallel.
"The poem which commences the volume," says Mr. Monckton Milnes, "was suggested to Keats by a delightful summer's day, as he stood beside the gate that loads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood"; and the lovely passage beginning,
"Linger awhile upon some bending planks,"
and which contains the description of the "swarms of minnows that show their little heads," Keats told me was the recollection of our having frequently loitered over the rail of a foot-bridge that spanned a little brook in the last field upon entering Edmonton. He himself thought the picture was correct, and liked it; and I do not know who could improve it.
Another example of his promptly suggestive imagination, and uncommon facility in giving it utterance, occurred one day upon his returning home and finding me asleep upon the sofa, with my volume of Chaucer open at the "Flower and the Leaf." After expressing his admiration of the poem, which he had been reading, he gave me the fine testimony of that opinion, in pointing to the sonnet he had written at the close of it, which was an extempore effusion, and it has not the alteration of a single word. It lies before me now, signed, "J.K., Feb., 1817."
If my memory does not betray me, this charming out-door fancy-scene was Keats's first introduction to Chaucer. Certain I am that the "Troilus and Cresseide" was an after-acquaintance; and clearly do I remember his approbation of the favorite passages that I had marked. I desired him to retrace the poem, and with his pen confirm and denote those which were congenial with his own feeling and judgment. These two circumstances, connected with the literary career of this cherished object of his friend's esteem and love, have stamped a priceless value upon that friend's miniature 18mo copy of Chaucer.
The little first volume of Keats's Muse was launched amid the cheers and fond anticipations of all his circle. Every one of us expected that it would create a sensation in the literary world; and we calculated upon, at least, a succession of reprints. Alas! it might have emerged in Timbuctoo with stronger chance of fame and favor. It never passed to a second edition; the first was but a small one, and that was never sold off. The whole community, as if by compact, determined to know nothing about it. The word had been passed that its author was a Radical; and in those blessed days of "Bible-Crown-and-Constitution" supremacy, he might with better chance of success have been a robber,—there were many prosperous public ones,—if he had also been an Anti-Jacobin. Keats had made no demonstration of political opinion; but he had dedicated his book to Leigh Hunt, a Radical news-writer, and a dubbed partisan of the French ruler, because he did not call him the "Corsican monster," and other disgusting names. Verily, "the former times were not better than these." Men can now write the word "Liberty" without being chalked on the back and hounded out.