Book I

., the dreamer in the Temple wonders why he has been preserved from death. The Prophetess tells him the reason (I italicise certain words):

'None can usurp this height,' returned that shade, 'But those to whom the _miseries of the world_ Are misery, and will not let them rest. _All else_ who find a haven in the world, Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days, If by a chance into this fane they come, Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half.' 'Are there not thousands in the world,' said I, Encouraged by the sooth voice of the shade, 'Who _love their fellows_ even to the death, Who feel the giant agony of the world, And more, like slaves to poor humanity, Labour for mortal good?'

If the reader compares with this the following passage from the Preface to _Alastor_, and if he observes the words I have italicised in it, he will hardly doubt that some unconscious recollection of the Preface was at work in Keats's mind. Shelley is distinguishing the self-centred seclusion of his poet from that of common selfish souls:

'The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead. They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. _All else_, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who constitute, together with their own, the lasting _misery_ and loneliness _of the world_. Those who _love not their fellow-beings_, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.'[35]

I have still a passage to refer to. Let the reader turn to the quotation on p. 236 from Keats's reply to Shelley's letter of invitation to his home in Italy; and let him ask himself why Keats puts the word "self-concentration" in inverted commas. He is not referring to anything in Shelley's letter, and he is not in the habit in the letters of using inverted commas except to mark a quotation. Without doubt, I think, he is referring from memory to the Preface to _Alastor_ and the phrase 'self-centred seclusion.' He has come to feel that this self-centred seclusion is _right_ for a poet like himself, and that the direct pursuit of philanthropy in poetry (which he supposes Shelley to advocate) is wrong. But this is another proof how much he had been influenced by Shelley's poem; and it is perhaps not too rash to conjecture that his consciousness of this influence was one reason why he had earlier refused to visit Shelley, in order that he might 'have his own unfettered scope.'[36]

If it seems to anyone that these conclusions are derogatory to Keats, either as a man or a poet, I can only say that I differ from him entirely. But I will add that there seems to me some reason to conjecture that Shelley had read the _Ode to a Nightingale_ before he wrote the stanzas _To a Skylark_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Letters (except those to Miss Brawne, and a few others) have been edited by Colvin, and (without exception) by Forman (pub. Gowans & Gray). I refer to them by their numbers, followed by the initial of the editor's name. Both editions reproduce peculiarities of punctuation, etc.; but for my present purpose these are usually without interest, and I have consulted the convenience of the reader in making changes.

[2] Keats himself, it is strange to think, was born in the same year as Carlyle.

[3] These passions were in his last two years overclouded at times, but they remained to the end. When, in the bitterness of his soul, he begged Severn to put on his tombstone no name, but only 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water,' he was thinking not merely of the reviewers who had robbed him of fame in his short life, but also of those unwritten poems, of which 'the faint conceptions' in happier days used to 'bring the blood into his forehead.'

[4] LII, C., LV, F. The quotations above are from XIV, XVI, C., XV, XVII, XVIII, F. The verses are a parody of Wordsworth's lines, 'The cock is crowing.'

[5] LXI, C., LXVI, F.

[6] LVI, C., LXI, F.

[7] LXXIII, C., LXXXI, F. Mr. Hooker, I may remark, would not have thanked Keats for his bishopric.

[8] From the letter last quoted. See also CXVI, CXVIII, CXIX, C., CXXXVII, CXXXIV, CXXXV, F.

[9] 'Pain had no sting and pleasure's wreath no flower.'

[10] XCII, C., CVI, F.

[11] XIX, C., XXI, F.

[12] LIV, C., LIX, F.

[13] CXXXI, C., CLII, F.

[14] CXVI, C., CXXXVII, F. The word 'turn' in the last sentence but two seems to be doubtful. Mr. Colvin reads 'have.'

[15] Keats's use of the word is suggested, probably, by Milton's 'pure intelligence of heaven.'

[16] XCII, C., CVI, F.

[17] CLXVI, F., LXXIII, C., LXXXI, F. In XLI, C., XLIV, F., occurs a passage ending with the words, 'they are able to "_consecrate whate'er they look upon_."' Is not this a quotation from the _Hymn_:

Spirit of BEAUTY that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon?

If so, and if my memory serves me, this is the only quotation from Shelley's poetry in the letters of Keats. The _Hymn_ had been published in Hunt's _Examiner_, Jan., 1817.

[18] The first critic, I believe, who seriously attempted to investigate Keats's mind, and the ideas that were trying to take shape in some of his poems, was F. M. Owen, whose _John Keats, a Study_ (1880) never attracted in her too brief life-time the attention it deserved. Mr. Bridges's treatment of these ideas is masterly. To what is said above may be added that, although Keats was dissatisfied with _Endymion_ even before he had finished it, he did not at any time criticise it on the ground that it tried to put too much meaning into the myth. On _Alastor_ and _Endymion_ see further the Note appended to this lecture.

[19] A notable (but not isolated) remark, seeing that the poetic genius of Keats showed itself soonest and perhaps most completely in the rendering of Nature.

[20] XXIV, C., XXVI, F.

[21] CXVI, C., CXXXVII, F.

[22] XIX, C., XXI, F.

[23] XXXII, C., XXXIV, F.

[24] He contemplates even the study of metaphysics, LI, C., LIV, F.

[25] L, C., LIII, F.

[26] XXIV, C., XXVI, F.

[27] Cf. in addition to the letters already referred to, the obscure letter to Bailey, XXII, C., XXIV, F., which, however, is early, and not quite in agreement with later thoughts. I should observe perhaps that if Keats's position, as formulated above, is accepted, the question still remains whether a truth which is also beauty, or a beauty which is also truth, can be found by man; and, if so, whether it can, in strictness, be called by either of those names.

[28] CLV, C., CCVI, F. See on these sentences the Note at the end of the lecture.

[29] An expression used in reference to Wordsworth, XXXIV, C., XXXVI, F.

[30] I have not space to dwell on this distinction, but I must warn the reader that he will probably misunderstand the important passage in the revised _Hyperion_, 161 ff., unless he consults Mr. de Selincourt's edition.

[31] XXII, C., XXV, F.

[32] That is, in 'half-knowledge,' 'doubts,' 'mysteries' (see p. 235), while the philosopher is sometimes supposed by Keats to have a reasoned certainty about everything. It is curious to reflect that great metaphysicians, like Spinoza and Hegel, are often accused of the un-moral impartiality which Keats attributes to the poet.

[33] LXXVI, C., LXXX, F.

[34] The ultimate origin of the dream-passage in both poems may well be Adam's dream in _Paradise Lost_,