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I




THE
MIND OF JOHN KEATS
BY
CLARENCE D. THORPE
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
^.....-,,?,. 3
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NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32D STREET
LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE & BOMBAY
I926, is
I 'D,.




1 I,


COPYRIGHT, 1926,
BY OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
AMERICAN BRANCH


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




To




I


" I went to the Isle of Wight, thought so much about poetry so long
together that I could not get to sleep at night.... I was too much
in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of
thought."                 Letter to Leigh Hunt, May io, 1817.
"Then I should be most enviable -with the yearning Passion I
have for the beautiful, connected and made one with the ambition of
my intellect."
Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, October, i8i8.
"Keats was a philosopher first, a poet afterwards."
Arthur Lynch. John Keats Memorial Volume.
" Keats was a philosophic poet, and for that very reason he fell into
no philosophic errors in his conception of poetry."
A. Clutton-Brock. John Keats Memorial Volume.




PREFACE


THIS book is the outgrowth of an attempt to analyze the
poetic mind of Keats. About ten years ago, I began a study
of the development of Keats as a poet, with special reference
to his growth in self restraint. I had not proceeded far before
I became convinced that the key to the young poet's remarkable advance in power during the brief span of his working
years could be traced largely to a natural reaction to his own
serious thought on the nature of art and poetry. Accordingly,
I set to work to gather together from his letters and poems all
possible evidence as to what these ideas were. The total mass
of this material, a few lines of poetry here, a passage from a
letter there, a bit from one of his critical comments in another
place, was truly astonishing. Not less revelatory was the pertinence and the import of these utterances. There began to
dawn upon me a feeling that here was an aesthetic thinker of
significance. And as I came to analyze and organize, this feeling ripened into a conviction.
My first objective was to discover an adequate interpretation for the famous lines from the Ode on a Grecian Urn which
identify truth and beauty. I had often read the passage, had
often heard it discussed, but I must confess I had never been
able to reach a satisfying conclusion. Much has been written
and many things said to illuminate Keats's meaning here;
however, it seems to me these lines have never been, up to
this time, satisfactorily explained. And one reason is, I feel
convinced, that they have never been regarded in the light
of Keats's complete aesthetic theory. In my own interpretation of them, I have found it necessary to take into account
all of the poet's ideas of his art, to which these lines are
both the key and culmination. Consequently, my study began
and ended with that significant utterance"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty '-that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
V




vi


PREFACE


And if I have succeeded in throwing new light on these tantalizing phrases, it is entirely due to the fact that I have
analyzed them as a partial statement of the startlingly comprehensive aesthetic philosophy of a young poet and genius
whose thought-life, in his last years, was one long earnest
search for a solution to the problems of his art.
I had finished and submitted this book before Miss Amy
Lowell's new biography was released to the public, but not
wishing to let my volume appear without at least a brief
recognition of so important a work, I recalled my manuscript
from the press in order to add a few comments to this preface
and to make two or three textual revisions in places where
Miss Lowell's findings were of particular relevance.
Luckily, Miss Lowell's book and mine do not overlap. Miss
Lowell has contributed to Keats criticism a most admirable
biography, one of the most complete and minute records, it is
safe to say, of any poet's life ever made. It would seem, as
commentators have already pointed out, that from the factual
point of view this biography should be regarded as final and
authoritative. Lovers of Keats must be ever grateful to Miss
Lowell for the patient, systematic care with which she has
searched out the smallest details of the poet's life, and for
the loving sympathy and breadth of understanding with which
she has interpreted the facts as she has found them. Miss
Lowell has revealed to the world anew the manly man and
the divinely gifted singer, the artist to the core, that John
Keats was; she has rescued the name of Fanny Brawne from
the undeserved obloquy that was settling too permanently
about it; and she has done a genuine service to literature by
setting a fascinated world to reading the life history of one
of its greatest and truest poets.
Moreover, Miss Lowell has included in her notable book a
large amount of critical material based on Keats's poems.
Although of less importance than the biography proper, it is
fresh, vigorous, stimulating criticism that Miss Lowell gives
us, of a type that is certain to draw renewed attention to, and




PREFACE


vii


arouse new interest in, Keats's poetical works. That alone
would make this a memorable book.
But the thought-life of Keats, Miss Lowell, like so many
other critics before her, has touched upon only incidentally.
Not that she lacks interest in Keats's mind; on the contrary,
she is thoroughly interested: she has included in her pages
some of the most striking evidence as to his thinking, and has
often supplied pertinent critical comment on this evidence, but
she has not in any consistent way attempted to gather together,
and organize, and interpret the hundreds of bits of available
material that have direct bearing on Keats's aesthetic and
philosophic thought. For instance, she has made no serious
effort to explain Keats's idea of beauty, passing by even the
famous "Beauty is truth" lines without special analysis.
Likewise, though she quotes many passages that have bearing
on Keats's views of the imagination, she does not analyze and
set forth what his theories were. And, again, when such vital
letters as that on the Vale of Soul-Making are cited, she
usually lets the extracts stand by themselves without showing
their relation to the main current of Keats's thought.
That Miss Lowell fails to treat Keats's aesthetic and philosophic theory systematically is not in the least to the discredit of her work. On the contrary, to have done otherwise
would have been inconsistent with the larger plan of her great
book. My only point is, that a thorough examination of Miss
Lowell's biography has convinced me that, in spite of its wide
scope and its thoroughness in particular fields, there is still
a distinct place for such a volume as mine, with its emphasis
explicitly on the thought-life of Keats. The sum total of
Miss Lowell's new material does not in the least tend to invalidate my findings, but rather offers confirmation and corroboration. It is therefore with renewed confidence that I offer this
book to the public as a study of the poetic mind of John Keats.


ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN,
April, I925.




6-111




CONTENTS
CHAPTER                                                PAGE
I. KEATS, THINKER...........................................  I
II. THE DREAM    WORLD AND THE ACTUAL-AN ANTITHESIS....................  32
III. GRADUS AD PARNASSUM..............     48
IV. "SENSATION" VERSUS KNOWLEDGE AND PHILOSOPHY —
PARTIAL RECONCILIATION............           63
V. THE   "MYSTERY"................           72
VI. DETACHMENT AND     PHILOSOPHY- FURTHER     RECONCILIATION....................    90
VII. THE IMAGINATION................              I104
VIII. WHAT IS BEAUTY?................                   I127
IX. PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE.............             I 59
X. WHAT IS POETRY? CONCLUSION..........              183


ix








THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS
CHAPTER I
KEATS, THINKER
I
KEATS the philosophic poet is being discovered. Keats the
lover of sensuous beauty, the literary artist who knew how
to charm the English language into magic combinations of
lovely verse, the world well knows, but Keats the thinker
and philosopher is to many still an undiscovered soul. It was
Stevenson who said, " Man does not live by bread alone, but
by catchwords." The truth of this is well demonstrated in the
traditional attitude toward Keats, who happened to leave behind him, not all explained, a few striking phrases and sentences that early became catchwords by which his readers interpreted his verse and pigeon-holed him as a poet and a man.
His oft-quoted "Beauty is truth, truth beauty," and his
declaration that
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
appeared self-explanatory. While such exclamations as "O
for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! " and
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
seemed even more convincing. From such passages as these
it was taken for granted that Keats delighted in the sensuous
to the exclusion of interest in thought and life, and they became touchstones for the interpretation of all his poetry and
his character as a man.




2


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


In spite of much early and continued admiration of his
poetry, there grew up in the last century a sort of legend to
the effect that Keats was little better than a mere dreamer,
a maker of beautiful verses who spent his days in rapt intoxication with the sensuous world. This conception was
fostered by such influences as that caustic characterization of
Carlyle's in his Essay on Burns,
Poetry except in such cases as that of Keats, where the whole consists in a weak-eyed maudlin sensibility and a certain vague random
tunefulness of nature is no separate faculty.... The feelings, the
gifts, that exist in the poet are those that exist with more or less
development in every human soul.
Carlyle was not a great literary critic, but his voice extended
far. Even Matthew Arnold helped maintain the tradition by
his emphasis, in an otherwise appreciative essay, on the Keats
love letter:
It is the sort of love letter of a surgeon's apprentice which one
might hear read out in a breach of promise case, or in the Divorce
Court. The sensuous man speaks in it, and the sensuous man of a
badly bred and badly trained sort.
Such popular critics as George William Dawson have probably
done even more to keep the ghost astir. In Mr. Dawson's
Makers of Modern Poetry, we find such sentences as this:
Byron and Shelley were both filled with the fervor of the revolutionary spirit; but in Keats there is no trace of either. He had no
interest in man. In the passion and struggle of ordinary human life,
he discovered no food for poetry.... The only thought he has
elaborated in all his writings is that beauty is worthy of worship, and
loveliness should be worshipped for its own sake. The worship of
loveliness he thus substituted for the worship of truth, and this seems
to have satisfied all the religious instincts of his nature.
Now, whether we like to admit it or not, it is this sort of
thing that the rank and file of people who know anything at
all about Keats believe. It is what high school youngsters learn
about him in their literature classes. It is in the air. It slips




KEATS, THINKER


3


into our histories; it is the impression that gets abroad. In
M. Jusserand's abridged history of English literature, in the
page and a half devoted to Keats, one finds this paragraph:
Le demon Philosophique agitat l'ame de Shelley et la troublait au
point de la remplir de tenebres et de tempetes; jusque dans les vers
d'amour de Shelley parait sa passion pour la reforme du monde. De
ces reves et de ces aspirations Keats ne se soucie nullement, reformer
n'est point son affaire; admirer, desirer, aimer, voila ce qui occupe son
ame et sa coeur. II admire, il desire, il aime jusqu'a souffrir et a
mourir; toute beaute l'emeut; rien de ce qui n'est pas beaute ne le
touche: "Beaute, dit-il, c'est Verite; Vrite c'est Beaute. Nous ne
savons que cela et n'avons besoin de savior rien autre sur terre!
Nulle action dans ses vers, nulle intention morale....
Indeed the legend still lives.  "To admire, to desire, to
love, that is what occupied his mind. Only that which is beautiful moved him." Yet -i is not strange that a French scholar
should fall a victim to the certain blindness that has afflicted
so many of Keats's own good countrymen.
But I began by saying that Keats the philosopher is being
discovered. It has been no sudden revelation, but rather the
gradual evolution of critical impression, which, at first only
faintly suggested, has come to be expressed with bold certainty.
Let us note some of the evidence. In the John Keats
Memorial Volume, published in the Centenary year, I92I, one
finds two writers 1 explicitly calling Keats a philosophic poet,
a third 2 entitling an article Keats and " Philosophy," a fourth
devoting three-fourths of his lecture, the most substantial contribution to the volume, to a study of Keats's artistic growth
as related to his mental development,3 a fifth-and I hardly
need hint that this is G. B. Shaw, with a sly peek over his
spectacles to enjoy the consternation he creates - broadly suggesting that Keats had in him the germs of a bolshevist and
that had he lived he might have been a "propagandist and a
1 a. A. Clutton-Brock: Keats and Shelley, a Comparison. b. Arthur
Lynch: John Keats.
2 A. C. Bradley.
3 The Warton Lecture: E. de Selincourt.




4


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


prophet."4  Following the Centenary, came a "Post-Centenary View" from America devoted to proof of the overmastering influence of philosophy in Keats's later life.5 And
a year later there was published an English volume6 whose
theme is the development of Keats's philosophy from " naturalism" to "idealism "- a book which, though it only imperfectly covers its ground, yet contains many fertile suggestions
as to the growth of Keats in mental and artistic power.
But the essays and lectures appearing in the Memorial
Volume were not by any means the first indications of a perception of the fact that Keats was a thinker. The truth began
to be apparent when Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord
Houghton, published, in 1848, The Life, Letters and Literary
Remains of John Keats. Here was given to the world, along
with some fine discriminating critical comment by Mr. Milnes,
the first installment of Keats's letters, which, it should be said,
form an indispensable clue to an insight into the real Keats.
They were not all here; some of the most important ones were
not to appear for over half a century, -in Forman's and
Colvin's later editions, and now in Amy Lowell's new biography,-but there were enough, together with other testimony from the manuscripts of the poet's contemporaries, to
open up an entirely new world to students of Keats.
The first important critical work to pay attention to Keats's
ideas was F. M. Owen's Keats, a Study, published in i880.
Mrs. Owen's criticism is particularly sympathetic throughout,
but is of interest to us in this study chiefly because of hints
dropped here and there as to Keats's thought and of a first
attempt to trace the allegorical meaning of Endymion. She
suggests the possibility of an interpretation of Endymion as
" Imagination in all time searching for the spirit of Beauty,"
with Cynthia as the beauty of a bygone age when the world
was young, and with the Indian Princess as the representation
4 John Keats.
5 G. R. Elliott: The Real Tragedy of Keats, Publications of The Modern
Language Association, I92I, p. 315.
6 H. I'A. Fausset: Keats, A Study in Development.




KEATS, THINKER


5


of the "new phases on which Imagination has entered"Imagination having at last discovered " the eternal unity of
all Beauty," and become " one with it forever." But she
thinks there is a larger meaning, and this she develops.
Endymion, she suggests, is the story of the Spirit of man,
which becomes awakened by a higher spiritual power, and
thence begins a quest for the higher spiritual state. This he
eventually reaches, after a series of trials through earth, fire,
and water, by means of which his soul is so schooled as to
learn the one deepest lesson: "that no love is true which
does not realize itself as part of a larger whole -that all that
is beautiful is One." This he discovers when his beloved and
Cynthia are revealed to him as identical, " and he knows that
all love and beauty is one, that the fitful and dimly realized
beauty in common life and the beauty gained through suffering is one with the beauty of light and joy and that it was
necessary that some change should spiritualize him into that
belief." The interpretation is not satisfying, but it is evidence
of what one perceives throughout the study - that the author
has caught fleeting glimpses of thought, usually aesthetic in
nature, in Keats's poems. Lamia is the time of "yeasting
youth," when "philosophy is at strife with the enthralment
of the passions "; in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, we are told
that the " Past is made alive in these words, its beauty has
never died, and the very material in which the Attic shape is
wrought is infused with life ": all in all, Keats shows us in
this poem that to love Beauty is to love Truth, and that when
we are spiritualized enough to recognize them, both shall
appear to us as one." And so we find, sketched lightly
through or merely suggested, many ideas that have since been
built upon in more detail. There is something original and
stimulating in the author's perspective. It was a pioneer work
in exploring the mind of Keats.
In his Cobwebs of Criticism, Hall Caine, a little later, points
out that it is evident " that Keats at one period turned all
his soul to the love of philosophy " and that, though down to




6


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the last, perhaps, " he over-rated the Paradise of Sensation in
contrast with the Paradise of the Mind," he was yet " far
from indifferent to the problems of human life and destiny."
Moreover, there was a moral core in Keats, which might have
resulted in his becoming a "great teacher of men," but he
lacked the necessary sobriety of temper to realize this. Keats
came to understand, too, Mr. Caine says, the truth about
dreamers, that it is well for a mere dreamer to learn early
that his dreams are useless; but the knowledge came too late.
However, Caine does not go on with his leads; he only
suggests.
Then in Matthew Arnold's essay, which, in spite of the
misleading first two or three pages, is really a great encomium
on Keats, we find some advance. Arnold had new evidence to
work on,- the new four-volume edition of Keats's letters and
poems, by Forman, published I883, -and he made good use
of it. For the most part, the essayist is concerned with a
vindication of the character of Keats; but he goes further
than that, and comments upon his genius and his central ideas.
It is often said that Arnold gives Keats a place beside Shakespeare; and so, in a limited field, he does. "In one of the
two great modes by which poetry interprets, in the faculty of
naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic,
he ranks with Shakespeare," Arnold declares. And then he
adds, more emphatically, making use of a quotation from
Keats: "'I think,' he said humbly, 'I shall be among the
English poets after my death.' He is; he is with Shakespeare." As to Keats's idea of beauty, Arnold remarks: " The
truth is that the 'yearning passion for the Beautiful,' which
was with Keats, as he himself truly says, the master passion,
is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental poet. It is an
intellectual and spiritual passion. It is ' connected and made
one,' as Keats declares that in his case it was, 'with the ambition of the intellect.' " With this good start, the master critic
leaves us.
A notable criticism in which Keats's ideas and intellect are




KEATS, THINKER


7


given some prominence is the well known introduction written
by Robert Bridges for the G. Thorn Drury edition of Keats's
poems in 1894. Mr. Bridges' judgments are, to say the least,
conservative, his praise all nicely balanced by judicial reservations. Yet he recognizes that Keats's mind had a philosophic
bent, though he felt it to be more instinctive than reasoned.
He is not quite sure, but Endymion, Lamia, and Hyperion
appear to be capable of allegoric interpretation, so he gives
his ideas of their meaning for what they are worth,-and,
especially in the case of Endymion, shows some spirit in
doing it. The power to understand or to delineate human
passion is a part of Keats's nature. As for his doctrine of
beauty, Keats fails to " spiritualize" it; hence it cannot be
defended.
I give here a bare suggestion of the interpretation of the
Endymion that Mr. Bridges offers. "The Moon represents
'Poetry' or the Ideality of desired objects, The principle of
Beauty in all things: it is the supersensuous quality which
makes all desired objects ideal; and Cynthia, as moongoddess, crowns and personifies this, representing the ideal
beauty or love of woman: and in so far as she is also actually
the Moon as well as the Indian lady, - who clearly represents
real or sensuous passion, —it follows that the love of woman
is in its essence the same with all love of beauty." Man begins with some ambition, say, fame, and connecting " Moon
with his passion," he sees "Ideality in his desire."  "This
Ideality, assuming the form of the goddess, that is, of
woman, which it is, makes him renounce ambition and pursue
poetic love." He must now humanize this passion by contact
with tragedy and pain. This sympathy leads him to sensuous
passion, which seems in direct conflict with his ideal passion
until he discovers they are the same. I should add that the
four regions in which the action takes place are " Earth, Fire,
Water, and Air."
Mr. Bridges is interestingly suggestive, and though he approaches Keats with his fingers crossed, in general inclining to




8


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the traditional side of the question, his essay is one of the
most fruitful studies of Keats yet made.
In 1905, Mr. Ernest de Selincourt put out his splendid edition of Keats's poems, with its rare introduction and its
sumptuous notes, all breathing of ripe scholarship and patient,
devoted care. Mr. de Selincourt has from the first, it seems,
been deeply concerned in the intellectual Keats, and has
jealously sought to shield his loved poet from possible adverse
criticism. Mr. de Selincourt, too, offers an allegorical interpretation of Endymion and Hyperion, and points out the conflict between reason and emotion in Lamia; he contends, and
establishes his contention, that the expression "O for a life
of Sensations rather than of Thoughts," should not be read
literally, but that " Sensations " as used here should be interpreted as imagination or intuitive feeling. He traces certain
evidences of the influence of Wordsworth on Keats's thought,
successfully, I think, and in that light interprets various passages from both his poems and his letters. Altogether, in the
introduction and notes in this volume, we have the clearest
approach to the mind of Keats up to this time. But, although
we find many acute remarks on some of Keats's characteristic
utterances on poetic theory and his philosophy in general,
these are not followed up; they usually remain but intimations only. Moreover, Mr. de Selincourt's understanding of
Keats's idea of Beauty at this time is close to the traditional
one, and is at best merely sketched out.
In Mr. Hancock's agreeable biography of Keats, which
appeared in I908, there are two chapters to which the student
looking for comment on Keats's thought turns with anticipation, but reads with disappointment. One is called "Philosophy of His Art," the other, " The Principle of Beauty."
But Mr. Hancock only cursorily treats these subjects. The
first chapter becomes largely a discussion of the idea that
"first in beauty should be first in might," in its implication
as to moral conduct, and in the section entitled The Principle
of Beauty, we are told that Keats's artistic life was parallel




KEATS, THINKER


9


to Tennyson's Soul in the Palace of Art, except that " great
poetry and a passion for length of days " rather than nausea
is the result. However, even though Hancock has not gone
far with this phase of Keats, he does throw out interesting suggestions. He agrees with Mr. de Selincourt on the meaning
of "O   for a life of Sensations"; he declares that Keats
anticipates Browning in the "healthy humanism in which
the flesh helps the soul, and the soul helps the flesh," and he
gives as Keats's philosophy in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, an
interpretation, which, while it probably applies little to the
poem in question, does, nevertheless, express a conviction
somewhat related to one held by Keats as a condition necessary to all art creation and art appreciation - Schiller's idea
of freedom. But to Hancock, Keats " did not see life large."
"He passed through the clamor of the times singing, like
Horace, his Lalage of beauty."    "His message was first in
beauty, first in might"; but the author never makes clear
just what this beauty is.
A minor yet significant contribution to our subject is to be
found in Dr. Paul Starick's Die Belesenheit von John Keats
und Die Grundziige Seiner Literarischen Kritik, published in
Berlin, I9Io. This is a doctoral dissertation devoted largely
to Keats's literary background as it was built up through
reading and study.     But under the section    entitled  Die
Grundziige Seiner Literarischen Kritik, Dr. Starick briefly
outlines Keats's aesthetic philosophy. The treatment is incomplete, yet the author in one way or another touches upon
the majority of Keats's conceptions of what poetry should be,
and thereby suggests a more detailed study. Mr. Starick's
most distinct service, however, is to point out the similarity
7 "True art has for its object not merely to afford transient pleasure,
to excite a momentary gleam of liberty. Her aim is to make us intrinsically
and absolutely free. And this she accomplishes by awakening, exercising and
perfecting in us a power to remove to an objective distance the world of
the senses —which otherwise only burdens us as a dead weight, as blind
force-to transform it into the free working of our spirit and thus to
master matter by means of the idea."
Schiller: The Use of the Chorus in Tragedy.




.
I


IO         THE   MIND   OF JOHN     KEATS
between Keats's aesthetic views and those of Hazlitt and
Coleridge, especially as to the high seriousness of poetry and
the fundamental importance of the imagination in creative
work; though this likeness, Mr. Starick explains, rightly I
think, is to be traced less to direct influence than to parallel
thinking on the same subjects. For Keats-had read only the
poetry of Coleridge, not his critical works, and, although he
heard Hazlitt's lectures during the winter of 1817-1818, the
young poet's ideas were probably not much altered as a result.
Hazlitt's teachings may have deepened and clarified Keats's
conceptions, but did not materially change them.
In a volume also published in 191o, and entitled John
Keats, Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre, Lucien Wolff likewise detects the
philosophic trend in Keats. Though he denies to the poet
interest in life and the great public movements of his day, yet
he credits him with rather important aesthetic ideas. Mr.
Wolff interprets Endymion as an allegory, with the shepherd
prince representing Keats himself as a poet in search of the
"supreme beauty of the world " (beaute supreme du monde).
The moon is the most perfect beauty of the physical world;
Cynthia or Phoebus is the ideal or the supreme conquest of
humanity. Mr. Wolff fails to preserve a clear-cut definition of
his figures in explaining the allegory, but his general conclusions are distinct: Human affection, manifested through love
for woman and sympathy for humanity, and the ideal loves
are in essence one. An all-desirable goal for the poet is repose;
but " it is necessary to have each of these aspirations, to suffer
for them, and to be spiritualized by them before one can
arrive at the supreme object which reconciles the diverse impulsions of human nature and gives repose." It is the possibility of finding spiritual repose in a work of art, too, that
is celebrated in the Ode on a Grecian Urn. Here it is shown
that, subjectively, human sorrow may be vanquished forever
in the conquest of the infinite certitude that "eternal Beauty
and eternal Truth are one." Mr. Wolff also points out Keats's
emphasis on a poet's knowledge of the human heart and an




KEATS, THINKER                     I
understanding of the suffering of the world, as set forth in
the Fall of Hyperion and in certain letters. Yet, in general,
this French critic is only incidentally interested in Keats's
thought; he is more concerned with the poet's life and an appreciation of his poetry. Consequently, he does not attempt
a complete view of his philosophic ideas.
In S. J. Mary Suddard's Studies and Essays, written in I909,
but published in I912, we find in The Evolution of Keats's
Mind and Keats's " Prelude " the first evidence of a systematic
attempt to study Keats's mind. But Miss Suddard's outlook
is too limited, and the scope of her investigation too confined
for entirely satisfactory results. To her, Keats seems too preoccupied with one special form of truth to be deeply concerned with any of the other types. In his eager pursuit of
the one aim "beauty in art," he becomes oblivious of the
ordinary interests of humanity, and refuses to permit philosophy to hold his attention. The author first sets out to
interpret Keats's idea of poetry as revealed in the I8I7
volume of poems, incidentally using evidence found in later
letters to substantiate her claims. These early poems, especially, constitute Keats's " Prelude." Sleep and Poetry reveals his plan for poetic education, how he should first wander
through the region of the sensuous, only to pass from that to
a higher spiritual realm of interpretation of life. At first, as
shown in these poems, Keats " approaches art from the outside
through the methods, rather than the spirit of the masters."
From nature he expects direct inspiration without giving
anything in return. But soon he learns that he must take to
nature human emotion and sympathy. " The life he feels in
nature is his own." Then, a " subtler feeling steals" upon
him, as he understands more of the inner life of the physical
world. He sees an inner bond uniting all, "a new organic
life," that at once inspires to poetic creation and reveals the
" interpenetration of Nature and the soul." So all poetry is
"the outcome of an impression produced by Nature."  The
theory of poetic art evolved is that of " Pleasure as the end,"




12


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


supplemented by " Beauty as the means." In the beginning,
it had been enough for Keats simply to give his teeming being
self-expression; he failed in adequate ripeness of presentation;
but later he learns that he must take the reader into consideration. Now "instead of requiring the reader to accept
an alien ideal," he sees that poetry should " set before him
his own unconscious ideal incarnate." In order to do this,
Keats saw that he must know human psychology, and to
know human psychology he must get knowledge and experience; so the author fits to her thesis- that Keats refused to
incline his ears to any but the "truth of beauty" — all the
facts connected with the poet's eager desire to acquire knowledge, not that he might interpret life better, but that he might
speak to the world in its own language.
One cannot go to these essays for an adequate treatment of
Keats's views on poetry. The material used is too scanty, and
the conclusions often too far-fetched to be of value. Nevertheless, the work is important. No one before had so well
pointed out Keats's conscious application of himself to a
definite plan of poetic development; no one had before so
well interpreted Sleep and Poetry in its autobiographical
implications.
And now we come to Sidney Colvin's monumental Life of
John Keats, of I9I7. I must not attempt a summary of the
ideas as to Keats's thought contained in this volume. They
are so many, and so rich and varied that the task would be
too great. Not that Colvin makes any systematic attempt to
outline Keats's philosophic or aesthetic theories; his chief
anxiety is Keats the mai and Keats the poet. But he does
furnish abundant material for a study of the mind of Keats,
and often he goes further: he concurs with de Selincourt and
Hancock in their interpretation of "Sensations" as "intuitions of the mind "; he agrees in part with Bridges as to the
influence of Wordsworth in Sleep and Poetry and the Mansion
of Life letter; he furnishes an elaborate analysis of Endymion
as an allegory, which seems to me to be the most satisfactory




KEATS, THINKER


I3


interpretation yet advanced; treats Hyperion with the same
care; interprets Lamia as a thought poem; and, altogether,
makes many a fruitful excursion into the field of Keats the
thinker. But he does not bring home his fruits, does not
garner them into a separate storehouse for inspection and
classification. What strikes one most is Mr. Colvin's rightness
in these many ventures into the mental deeps of Keats. Were
he only to speak directly and systematically to the question
of Keats's thought, his analysis should be final and conclusive.
As to the meaning of Endymion, I can best give a suggestion
of Mr. Colvin's interpretation in his own words:
Let it be borne in mind, then, that besides the fundamental idea of
treating the passion of Endymion for Cynthia as a type of the passion
of the poetic soul for essential Beauty, Keats wrote under the influence of two secondary moral ideas or convictions, inchoate probably
in his mind when he began, but gaining definiteness as he went on.
One was that the soul enamoured of and pursuing Beauty cannot
achieve its quest in selfishness and isolation, but to succeed must first
be taken out of itself and purified by active sympathy with the lives
and sufferings of others: the other, that a passion for the manifold
separate and individual beauties of things and beings upon earth is in
its nature identical with the passion for that transcendental and essential beauty. (John Keats, p. 172.)
Mr. Colvin disagrees with Mr. Bridges and Mr. de Selincourt on the question of the Earth, Fire, Water, and Air theory.
His interpretation also puts the meaning of the poem on a
much more definitely spiritual and aesthetic basis than those
preceding. It is, in this respect, on a plane with that penetrative and sympathetic treatment of Keats and his poetry
which is the distinctive feature of this great biography.
A later interpretation of Endymion, which must be mentioned here, comes from far-away South Africa. Professor
H. C. Notcutt, writing in I9I9, from the University of Stellenbosh, also explains the poem as an allegory. His explanation
is the most elaborate yet advanced; but it differs essentially
from others only in that he sees Endymion largely as a representation of conflicting ideals in Keats himself - a passionate




I4


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


desire to serve his fellow creatures on one side and longing
aspirations after beauty on the other. In the end the poet
sees that there is no real conflict here, but these ideals " are
one and the same."
As I have said, the John Keats Memorial Volume of the
I92I Centenary contained much that bore directly upon the
subject of Keats's thinking. There is here no hesitation and
no reservation; the authors come out emphatically in their
conviction as to Keats's philosophic bent. Mr. Arthur Lynch
declares, "' Keats was a philosopher first, a poet afterwards.'
The words are his own, and they strike to the 'white of truth'
in the understanding of his poetry "; and A. Clutton-Brock
asserts, " Keats was a philosophic poet, and for that very
reason he fell into no philosophic errors in his conception of
poetry." Professor Bradley entitles his articles Keats and
" Philosophy," and, while he denies to Keats a philosophy in
the " strict or technical sense," he interprets the poet's word
" philosophy " to mean " such reflection on human nature and
life and the world as any thoughtful man may practice;... a
reflection intent no doubt, but neither technical nor systematic." He longed for advance in it because he hoped it
would lighten the burden of the mystery. But neither Mr.
Lynch, Mr. Clutton-Brock, nor Mr. Bradley essays to go far
into his subject. Mr. Lynch has a new interpretation for
certain passages in Endymion. It is in Endymion that he
finds justification for some of the most fulsome praise ever
lavished upon Keats. " Keats, a true poet," he exclaims, " becomes something more. He seems the mind the most finely
touched, the most deeply inspired by the celestial meaning, of
all in the range of literature." Endymion he calls a " book of
religion," and of Keats's philosophic contribution, he says,
"What he has done is to give us beams of illumination, flashes
of insight, indications, and aphorisms of genius. To the Greek
conception he added something that spoke of motive and purpose, something that responded to the search for an ideal true
and ethereal, yet not too remote from the scope of ordinary




KEATS, THINKER


I


lives."  Mr. Lynch's definition of Keats's " Beauty " is worth
quoting:
Truth and beauty were not to Keats the adornments of a high work;
they belonged to its inmost spirit. Beauty arises out of the full development in conformity with Nature of a living thing; but in the
great All of things the forces that are immortal, that are potent, are
not those of immediate violence but those of delicate and tender touch;
these respond to our aspirations in the most sensitive moods of vision
and thought.
Mr. Clutton-Brock places a high value on the letters.
Shelley, he says, could not write in prose, but " Keats could
put the whole of himself into a prose sentence as into a line
of verse; he felt and thought naturally in prose.... And in
his letters again and again we see an intellect of the first order
expressing itself naturally in prose, with the subtlety, the detachment, of the philosopher." Two more striking statements
from Clutton-Brock, I must quote: "Shelley was always
making an heroic attempt to live his imaginative life in reality,
to make the world what he desired. Keats, on the other hand,
began with an aesthetic; and until near the end of his life, it
was a principle of that aesthetic that the world of art and the
actual world were utterly separate "; and the other, " Poetry... was to him a separate state of being in which everything
became real; and his aim, as a poet, was to express this reality,
to draw everything in its peculiarity, which, he believed, was
its beauty."
Mr. Bradley, as I have indicated, shows little interest in the
aesthetic philosophy of Keats. But he undertakes to explain
Keats's thought on some of the perplexing problems connected
with this world of misery and troubles and his attitude toward
death. I shall later refer to these ideas in greater detail.
Mr. de Selincourt's Warton Lecture in the Memorial Volume
is, as he says, an expansion of what he had written sixteen
years earlier.  His emphasis on Keats's aesthetic ideas is,
however, even more pronounced than before. His problem
here is to trace the artistic evolution of the poet. " Keats,"




i6


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


he says, " is the most striking example of a poet self-educated
and disciplined by his own severe and strenuous effort. His
artistic evolution can be traced step by step, for he continually
reviewed his art in the light of his ideas which grew in acuteness, and of his experience which grew in depth and bitterness;... he had a mind and spirit bent on applying to his art
the searching test of hard thought and vital experience. We
only read Keats aright when we learn from his own lips that
he wrote, not for art's sake only, but for the sake of truth
and for the sake of life." Such is the tone of Mr. de Selincourt's lecture. He points out Keats's keen realization of a
need for knowledge after the failure of Endymion; he explains the expression "that first in beauty shall be first in
might," as a realization on Keats's part that perfect " power
can only spring from knowledge, from the widening of the
mind till it comprehends all intellectual and spiritual experience "- such knowledge as is won " through struggle and
through pain." Keats's decline in I8I9, he attributes to a
weakened body and to his passion for Fanny Brawne: he
wore himself out "' in vain reasonings against the reasonings
of love.'... He lacked the physical constitution to react
healthily against the strain of his experience."
In the Revision of Hyperion is the cry of a defeated man.
Even as Shelley confesses his failure in The Triumph of Life,
so Keats here admits how far he has fallen short of the mark.
Yet de Selincourt holds that at the time of writing the
Revision, Keats was passing through a necessary stage in his
growth to poetic stature. He had before sought to escape the
realities of life, but now he saw that it would be necessary to
grapple with them. " But that stature he did not live to
gain; and lovely as is much that he has left us, we know that
his greatest poetry was still unwritten at his death." It is
clear that had he lived, declares Mr. de Selincourt, " his poetry... would have gained an even firmer hold upon the realities
of human experience." In spite of pessimistic moods, Keats
was ever loyal to poetry. In the Ode to a Nightingale he




KEATS, THINKER


I7


had taught that man passes, but beauty is immortal; in the
Ode on a Grecian Urn he had shown that "what Nature
does in the eternal resurrection of her loveliness man can
achieve by the creative energy of art." In his most fevered
days, he could still cry, " Poetry is all I care for, all I live
for."
Mr. de Selincourt's lecture is written from the great heart
of a sympathetic and attentive critic. On the whole, his conclusions are solid bits of truth sifted from the often elusive
evidence before him. The author's limits, however, are fixed
by the nature of a lecture, and there is not opportunity to
expand and demonstrate. What we really have is a series of
large brush strokes that give a general effect without sufficient
detail to make the picture clear. Naturally, in the brief space
allowed, Mr. de Selincourt has not attempted to treat Keats's
aesthetic ideas fully; what he has done is to outline and
suggest, to lay a ground-work upon which others may later
build.
Mr. G. R. Elliott's The Real Tragedy of Keats-A Post
Centenary View, which appeared in the Publications of the
Modern Language Association for I92I, is arresting, for the
reason that it makes philosophy and not love, disease, and
poverty the cause of Keats's early death. Mr. Elliott argues
that "Nothing is more significant in the Letters than the
definitive alteration, within three years, of Keats's attitude to
philosophy." Indeed, this change was so radical, according
to Mr. Elliott, that there came to be in Keats a definite
struggle between philosophy and his art. And it was because
these two opposing elements had become obviously irreconcilable that Keats began to crumble. The "real tragedy"
then was a hopeless conflict between his " thought" and his
native imagination. The overpowering weight of the hopelessness of any reconciliation was what crushed Keats in late
I8I9; it was not illness, it was not love, the writer maintains,
it was the oppressive sense of impotence in facing the necessity for a peace of spirit he could not find. The fact is,




I8


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Elliott holds, had Keats lived, he probably could never have
escaped the clutches of these conflicting impulses, so could
not have gone on in his poetry. In all this, Mr. Elliott is in
direct conflict with Mr. de Selincourt, who in his Warton
Lecture felt Keats's mental perplexity at the time of writing
The Fall of Hyperion to be merely an incident in the poet's
upward march to greater heights. What Keats sought for,
insists Elliott, was supreme repose in poetry and " articulate
communion with high truth." In his day he could not attain
that: " the scale of human values had become too unsettled to
permit of that large certainty of judgment -at its worst, that
placid mental conventionalism, -which enabled Shakespeare
to watch the struggling spectacle of life with artistic quietude." So Keats sank in the mire of helpless inner conflict,
and we find him in The Cap and Bells and The Revision of
Hyperion at grips with his antagonistic impulses —in the
first " reaching anxiously for philosophic truth, and stultifying
his poetic perception "; in the second, " pulled in the other
direction by his instinct for immediate artistic effect." But
harmonization of these two forces was impossible, Elliott
argues. Keats understood this; hence the "profound pessimism" shown in later letters, which is "fully intelligible
only as an exhalation from the real incompetency which had
now come over his creative power." " He sought the peace of
wisdom; but this being too far above him, his spirit leaned
toward the stillness of death."
Mr. Elliott's argument is a mixture of truth and fallacy.
Taken in contrast with Mr. de Selincourt's lecture, it demonstrates what plausible argument can be made for or against
a proposition, all depending on what evidence the writer selects and emphasizes. It is from such argument that unfortunate legends, based on half truths, grow.
There remains but one more contribution to our subject.
This work is also an outgrowth of the Centenary year. It is
of special importance for the reason that it is the first complete volume dealing exclusively with Keats's mind ever pub



KEATS, THINKER


I9


lished. In his Keats, A Study in Development, Mr. H. I. 'A.
Fausset proposes, to use his own words, "to trace through
Keats's poetry, chronologically considered, the stages by
which he purified his imaginative insight, by which in fact
he advanced from sensationalism to idealism."  By " sensationalism," or " naturalism " as he often calls it, Mr. Fausset
seems to mean a disposition to live unreflectingly from sensation to sensation, to be steeped in the physical of the world,
and to place it first, the spiritual last. " Idealism " seems to
be not only the placing of the spiritual first, the sensuous
second, but the finding of a purposeful, harmonious unity in
the universe. Keats's poetry, declares Mr. Fausset, "reveals
an organic unity, to which each particular poem contributes a
part, representing a step or a stage in the direction of that
absolute goal for which we discover Keats to have been aiming." In the study of the details of Keats's "spiritual development," the author proposes to limit himself to the poems,
though he suggests that his conclusions may be doubly reinforced by reference to the letters. However, " the poetry, uncomplicated by notes or circumstantial exegesis, remains as
the only ultimate evidence" on the matter. The writer
frankly commits himself to a study in which " the philosophic
understanding " of Keats's poetry, " the metaphysical problem," hitherto neglected, shall be emphasized.
Mr. Fausset's method is to trace through Keats's poetry, in
alleged chronological order, the evidence of his advance in
aesthetic insight and in artistic power. He points out how,
beginning in I Stood Tip-Toe with almost pure " sensationalism," by the time Sleep and Poetry Is.reacl7..T. 'Ias
registered a decided advance toward " idealism." Tn  Stood
Tip-Toe there was no real understanding of nature; Keats
merely took " languid pleasure in her." But in Sleep and
Poetry, " he had turned not only to Shakespeare and Wordsworth in literature, but in critical sincerity to Nature herself. There is evident both a profounder if inconsistent consciousness of human values, and a corresponding improvement




20


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


in the power and purity of his expression. He had quickly
ceased in fact to see life as an exotic spectacle, women as
nymphs in tapestry, and virtue as the mock chivalry of Calidore. He had realized that poetry implied not pleasurable indulgence but a passionate struggle for truth." He perceived
at this time, too, the antithesis between "naturalism and
idealism."
In Sleep and Poetry, Keats was trying to formulate the
" vast idea" of poetry he had apprehended, but he failed. In
Endymion he again attempted to bring this infinite idea into
the realm of consciousness. His method is allegorical interpretation. The advance over Sleep and Poetry is " that Keats
has now greatly defined and particularized an idealism which
was previously only a vast intuition." But the net result is
again failure, for the poem proves that Keats "has only advanced to the point where he can speak intimately the language
of human instinct, expressing nature from within in language
rich and excessive as her own vegetation; but that a true
consciousness of her idea still escapes him, in the confusion
of matter which repeatedly overwhelmed his senses." Just as
in the I8 7 poems Keats had been unable fully to express his
conception of nature, so here his apprehension of the idea of
life is external, and adequate formulation of its spirit
escapes him.
And so the author goes on through the other poems. In the
Ode to a Nightingale and On a Grecian Urn, the "impermanence, the discord and the decay of man is contrasted with
a state of existence which Keats visions as eternal and unterable." But it is not the work of art itself which is permanent: <In both cases then, it is the idea of beauty, expressed
through a work of art and a voice of nature, which he contrasts with the fact of man*" There is here then an emerging
of aesthetic idea, but Keats's weakness, as revealed especially
in the Ode to a Nightingale, is that though (' he could apprehend truth through pleasure, he could not detect it behind pain
or apparent ugliness.




I


KEATS, THINKER                     2
But in the Revision of Hyperion, Mr. Fausset declares,
Keats truly finds himself. In the original version his ideas
had been vague, but this final poem represents very accurately
the philosophical conviction which the poet now possessed. He
" has attained at last to the idea, the central reality, into
which all the sensations of life are gathered, in which gladness
and sorrow, life and death, lose those attributes of contrast
conditioned by earth, in which the passion, whether of hatred
or of love is soothed and mitigated into a union of benignant
light. Good and evil are become one, not in a realistic surrender of distinction, but in ideal reconcilement, in the liberty
of Love."
Mr. Fausset's book contains many single passages of acute
critical suggestion. The volume is worth reading for these
alone. It is also worth study as an interesting attempt to
trace the development of Keats's mind as revealed in his
poetry. But the writer fails in the one object he sets out
to accomplish: namely, to show from the poems a progressive
development in Keats's poetic principles. In the beginning,
the writer commits himself to the proposition that " each particular poem contributes a part, representing a step or a stage
in the direction of that absolute goal for which we discover
Keats to have been aiming." He also promises to establish
his case on the evidence of the poems alone.
Now such a project must necessarily fail. It must fail, first,
for the reason that the poems in chronological arrangement do
not each' one in order reveal development in Keats's aesthetic
thinking. For instance, I Stood Tip-Toe, according to the
authority of Mr. Colvin,8 was written contemporaneously with,
or even followed, rather than preceded, Sleep and Poetry. Yet
Mr. Fausset spends many pages, nearly a tenth of the book in
fact, showing Keats's advance from naturalism to idealism in
Sleep and Poetry over I Stood Tip-Toe.
Other facts do not at all support the hypothesis of a pro8 In The Poems of John Keats in Chronological Order, I9I7, Sleep and
Poetry precedes I Stood Tip-Toe. - See also Colvin's John Keats, p. 115.




U


22         THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS
gression from poem to poem toward idealism. The argument
relative to Hyperion is a case in point. Hyperion, states Mr.
Fausset, is extremely significant for the reason that Keats,
"in the act of creating it, forced into the full daylight of his
mind the principle upon which he was acting when he wrote
The Eve of St. Agnes or the Ode to Autumn, namely, the
submission of the sensations received from nature to the
dictatorship of selective reason." This would be progression
indeed, but the whole statement loses its force when we recall
that the Ode to Autumn was written at least six months after 9
the first version was completed, and that The Eve of St. Agnes
probably followed, was at least written contemporaneously
with, Hyperion. A further examination of Mr. Fausset's conclusions as to Hyperion and The Eve of St. Agnes reveals the
extent of this odd discrepancy. Of the latter poem he declares: " If Keats's career had ended with the writing of The
Eve of St. Agnes there would have been every excuse for posterity's acceptance of him as a poet who sought beauty for
beauty's sake rather than for truth's." In other words, at the
time in which this poem was written, taking his poetry as
evidence, Keats would appear to be merely a poet of the
sensuous, with no high interest in truth, concerned only with
"beauty for beauty's sake," art for the sake of art. But, on
the other hand, in reading what Mr. Fausset has to say of
Hyperion, one discovers that he finds it to contain ideas which
should forever absolve its writer from the charge of art for
art's sake. The argument of Hyperion, he says, is, briefly, that
the Kingdom of Earth and of natural law must pass, to be
replaced by that of " Spirit and of the ideal reason of Love."
The poem expresses a " fine idea of evolutionary necessity."
The inspired intelligence of a poet is to use nature's varied
forces for the "creation of unadultered beauty, in perpetual
harmony with the soul of man, because it satisfies his rational
9 I accept Colvin's dates in The Poems of John Keats in Chronological
Order and the Life. For Hyperion, Colvin gives September-January, I8I8 -I8ig; for The Eve of St. Agnes, January, February, I8I9; for To Autumn,
September, I8I9.




KEATS, THINKER


23


as well as his sensuous perception." In Hyperion, Keats had
perceived that a poet's business is to resolve discord into
harmony, "to substitute a world of pure intelligence for one
of pure force."
Surely, a poet who believes all this could not at the time be
considered one who cared for " beauty for beauty's sake " only.
The argument for progression here goes limping fearfully;
obviously, there was no distinct change in Keats's aesthetic or
philosophic theory from the time of the first version of
Hyperion to that of the Eve of St. Agnes; could not be, unless
like a crab the poet had walked backward. Hyperion and
St. Agnes Eve were written in the same period; whatever
theories Keats held when he wrote the one, he must have held
when he wrote the other.
I might go on, but has not Mr. Fausset himself by his own
testimony show his theory of progressive advancement to be
fallacious? ]!as he not really admitted, what is indubitably
true, that in this matter of " naturalism " and " idealism, -
taking the author's own definition- Keats's poetry shows advance and recoil, progress and reaction and interaction, an
irregular pendulum-like movement, with first one in the ascendancy, then the other?
And that brings me to the second difficulty Mr. Fausset
faced, that is, his attempt to make the poems alone tell the
story of the development of Keats's mind. Now it is pretty
well agreed that if one is to get a clear conception of the
growth of Keats's ideas on his art, one must go to his letters,
studying them together with the poems. A study of the poems
in chronological order will indicate Keats's advance in poetic
capacity, in power of adequate expression, in self-restraint, but
not in ideas of his art. That Mr. Fausset at least unconsciously
felt this to be the case is witnessed by this sentence from his
discussion: " When... he turned to write The Fall of Hyperion, he had for the first time made the idea which had so long
vaguely eluded him sufficiently his own to demand a directer
expression." The facts are, though, that there is almost noth



24


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


ing new said in the Revision of Hyperion that had not already
been expressed before, chiefly in letters. But, unfortunately,
Mr. Fausset does not make consistent use of Keats's correspondence, and therefore does not show this. Perhaps it is in
this failure to use the letters that Mr. Fausset makes his chief
mistake. The difficulty in the plan of omitting the correspondence in any study of Keats's mind, and especially in a
study of his poetic ideas, is that the findings must necessarily
be incomplete. Whole fields of rich suggestion in this case
remain unplowed, and the harvest must necessarily be to that
extent scanty.
Consequently, as a treatise on Keats's aesthetic, it must be
confessed Mr. Fausset's book is not all a success. Valuable
suggestion and interpretation it contains, but if one is looking
for a complete, impartial study of the subject, in which all
the available facts are marshalled and analyzed, and from
them conclusions drawn without regard to the support or denial of any preconceived thesis, one will not find it here. In
the final analysis, Mr. Fausset's study becomes more valuable
as an examination of Keats's development of capacity to say
what he had to say than a revelation of the growth of the
theories of his art.
It is not remarkable that keen and sympathetic critics have
of late been turning their attention to the thought side of
Keats; the only wonder is that the movement has been so
long delayed. For any thorough study of the poems and
letters must end in the conviction that Keats was at core a
thinker, and not merely a poet of the sensuous and lovely
whose eye saw no deeper than the mere surface of things.
Contrary to widely accepted opinion, he took a keen interest
in, and showed profound insight into, the life about him, the
evidence for which, when gathered together, is astonishing;
he had a philosophy of life, balanced, sane, and in many re



KEATS, THINKER


25


spects, profound; and, finally, he had an aesthetic philosophy
- into which all his thinking eventually converged - that included striking theories upon most of the fundamental problems of poetry.
A candid scrutiny of available evidence must convince the
most sceptical that Keats cannot be regarded as an unconscious artist, - if there be any such, - but as one who studied
his art with eyes wide open, and, so far as power lay within
him, molded his verse to fit his ideals. Almost from the first
he was thinking hard on the nature of poetry and the poetic
art. Of the thirteen poems, exclusive of the sonnets, in the
1817 volume, seven have to do either all or in part with
poetic theory. In one of his earliest letters extant is contained the sonnet beginning " Great spirits now on earth are
sojourning" in which he declares his faith in Wordsworth,
Hunt, and Haydon 10 as agents in the regeneration of poetry" these will give the world another heart." Indeed, it is probable that had Keats concerned himself less with theory and
"philosophy " in his early days, his poems would have been
better understood and infinitely more appreciated. We have
been recently told again that Keats " had no moral purpose in
his work." 1 Yet his letters and his poems bear constant
testimony to the fact that he almost continually wrestled
with the most elusive problems of life; and he wrote hardly an
important poem that is not charged with more or less pregnant suggestions and reasoning on the nature and purpose of
poetry. One finds this in the poem that heads the list in the
1817 volume; it is in The Fall of HyP erion,_lAJ asLserious
pjejie eLL-.wrote.    Lamia, the Ode to a Nightingale,
Endymion, are filled with it; evidence of it may be found in
a dozen of his sonnets and fragments; it even dominates that
well-nigh perfect piece of artistry Ode on a Grecian Urn, to
say nothing of the testimony of the letters, which are rich with
10 I Stood Tip-Toe (all), Sleep and Poetry (all), To My Brother George
(all), To Felton Mathew (all), To Charles Cowden Clarke (all), Calidore
(in part), Specimen of Induction (in part).
11 Jusserand: Histoire de la Litterature Anglaise, p. 242.




26


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


significant comment on aesthetic problems, forming, as Sidney
Colvin says, "one of the most perfect commentaries on a
poetic life on record."
And yet the reader must not expect to find in Keats's views
on poetry any technical or scientific aesthetic philosophy.
Keats never professed a systematicaeshetic _he never put his
thought into a formal essay. " What he has done," to borrow
the words of Mr. Lynch, used with reference to Endymion,
" is to give us beams of illumination, flashes of insight, indications and aphorisms of genius." And as I study his works and
come to apprehend better the significance of these many
beams of illumination and flashes of insight given forth with
all the freshness and spontaneity of unpremeditated utterance,
the conviction grows upon me that Keats had developed aesthetic theories that should give him rank with Horace, Dante,
Wordsworth, Goethe, Schiller, and the rest of that brilliant
galaxy of geniuses who not only had ideas of what poetry ought
to be, but had the power and skill to compose it in forms of
truth and enduring beauty.
The best proof as to the authenticity and value of this aesthetic thinking is probably to be found in its effects on Keats's
own poetry. It is safe to say that no other English poet has
shown such remarkable advance in artistic power and self
restraint as did Keats within the brief working years of his
life. It is a little difficult to assign any one definite cause for
this unusual growth, but it would seem certain that much
of it came as a result of the earnest, even feverish, struggle for
clear thinking on the tormenting problems of the poetic art
that continually went on in his mind. His confession to Leigh
Hunt, "I went to the Isle of Wight, thought so much about
poetry so long together, that I could not get to sleep at night;... I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged
to be in continual burning of thought," gives a clue to the intensity with which he wrestled for clear vision. From the
purging fires of such thinking emerged a taste ever more and




KEATS, THINKER


27


more refined as the dross of immaturity and error was burned
away.
The splendid I8I9 poems were the fruit of years of intense,
even agonized effort to master the principles of poetic art. It
would appear that after the failure of Endymion there began
to take place in the mind of Keats a clarification process in
which the eternal facts of poetry in their relation to life were
to have proper perspective. Through the year I8I8, he was
studying, meditating, thinking, - refining his spirit by sitting
anew at the feet of Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and
Milton, steadying his intellect through contact with Hazlitt,
above all, schooling his critical taste through the most severe
self-analysis, as he sat in stern judgment on his own Endymion,
pronouncing the work " slip-shod " and full of faults, the product of youthful immaturity, with the final brave, sad sentence,
" It is just that this youngster should die away." By January,
I8I9, there was the beginning of a new light. It was merely
a glimmer through the darkness of unsparing " domestic criticism "; but it pointed the way to a clearer view. To Haydon,
he writes:
I have been writing a little now and then lately: but nothing to
speak of- being discontented and as it were moulting. Yet I do not
think I shall ever come to the rope or the Pistol, for after a day or
two's melancholy, although I smoke more and more my own insufficiency - I see by little and little more of what is to be done, and
how it is to be done should I ever be able to do it. On my soul, there
should be some reward for that continual " agonie ennuyeuse."
Haydon's reply, in view of the glorious outburst which produced the I8I9 poems, was almost prophetic:
The " agonie ennuyeuse " you talk of be assured is nothing but the
intense searching of a glorious spirit, and the disappointment it feels
at its first contact with the muddy world - but it will go off - and
bye and bye you will shine through it with " fresh Argent."
And indeed Keats did shine through with " fresh argent," in
all the immortal poems of the spring of I8I9- the Eve of St.




28


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Agnes, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode to Psyche, and the
Ode on a Grecian Urn. Then came another period of meditation in calm analysis of his mental experiences. Evidently, he
has been moulting once more:
I have great hopes of success, because I make use of my judgment
more deliberately than I have yet done; but in case of failure with
the world, I shall find my content.... I have spent too many
thoughtful days and moralized through too many nights for that, and
fruitless would they be indeed, if they did not by degrees make me
look upon the affairs of the world with a healthy deliberation.... I
have of late been moulting: not for fresh feathers and wings: they are
gone, and in their stead I hope to have a pair of patient sublunary
legs. I have altered, not from a chrysalis into a butterfly, but the contrary; having two little loopholes, whence I may look out into the
stage of the world: and that world on our coming here I almost forgot.
Thinking through thoughtful days and moralizing through
wakeful nights-what were the results of all this meditation?
It is that I would show, so far as this thinking had to do with
poetry, in the pages that are to follow. It is my immediate
problem in this book to discover Keats's leading aesthetic ideas.
I propose to bring together from all his writings his most
significant utterances on the poetic art, and by analysis and
interpretation of these to make clear what he believed.
In beginning this study I was faced by three possibilities:
First, to consider in detail all that Keats has said on the
theory of his art; second, to study the growth of his ideas
throughout the period of his poetic development;(third, to
treat rather fully his principal theories subordinating those
of a slighter and more transient nature.)After study and reflection I settled upon the last method as the one most likely
to yield satisfactory results. The first I discarded as impracticable. Keats throws out suggestions here and there quite
unrelated to anything else he says; some of his theories he
held to the end, others he abandoned almost as soon as they
were announced. To deal with all of these as of equal importance would plainly be illogical. The second method offers




KEATS, THINKER


29. attractions: Keats did show remarkable mental development
in the short span of years allotted him for his working life;
but when one comes to consider his aesthetic ideas, it soon
becomes apparent that practically all his main theories are
uncovered very early; these ripen and mature as time passes,
to be sure; they unfold into clearer definition and completer
significance; Keats learns to give them fitter, more adequate
expression: but in essential quality they remain the same. A
study of Mr. Fausset's book, for instance, will show that the
author has admitted in one way or another that by the time
Endymion was finished Keats had outlined most of the essential features of his belief. Mr. Fausset's contention, that
Keats did not know what he was saying and did not know
how to express in poetry what he wanted to say, does not
alter the fact that he actually believed these things at the
time.
Moreover, as I have pointed out in my discussion of Mr.
Fausset's thesis, there i not a steady  roression and devel-,Qpment in Keatss aesthetic ideas. It is evident that throughout his poetic career Keats was engaged in a continual intellectual struggle with himself as to the true nature and end of
poetry. It began with his firstproductiypeerods a study
of the I817 volume unmistakably proves: Sleep and Poetry,
especially, records an impassioned dispute between the instinctive, sensuous-loving side of Keats's nature, which delighted in
Fancy and the luxurious, and the sterner, deeper, more thoughtful self that saw in the poetic life a consecration to the heart
of humanity and to truth. The conflict went on even to the
last. In November, I8I9, only a month before he gave over
all serious writing, he is saying, " As the marvellous is the
most enticing and the surest guarantee of harmonious numbers
I have been endeavoring to persuade myself to untether Fancy
and let her manage for herself. I and myself cannot agree
about this at all."
The source of this disagreement lay within Keats's own dual
nature. Keats has been called an Elizabethan born out of his




30


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


time. But the fact is, he is not an Elizabethan any more than
he is a Romanticist, or a Greek. In him fate had so wrought as
to produce a nature akin to the great elemental geniuses of
all times - to Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, to Chaucer, Spenser, Wordsworth. In him was that youthful naivete that belongs to the childhood of all races; but no less instinctive was
the more grown-up yearning passion to know and understand
the human heart. If he stood in simple wonder in the presence
of nature and sensuous beauty, he was no less enthralled by
the eager pursuit of the mystery of life. His native instincts
led him as a lad straight to the heart of Greek mythology, and
carried him with the same unerring aim into the center of
Spenser's realms of beauty and delight; but with like power,
instincts no less his own drove him to the real world of men
of Schiller's dramas, of Wordsworth's pastorals, and Shakespeare's tragedies, to the ideal world of Plato, Hegel, and
Shelley.
This being true, there could not fail to be a clash, and a
clash there was. The opposing elements in Keats's nature
demanded reconciliation. The young Parnassian, instinctively
feeling himself endowed beyond the portion of ordinary poets,
yet withal confused by the very richness and profusion of his
gifts, bravely strove to master himself, to bring the mighty
impulses of his being into harmony, that all might sing in tune.
And as the months went on Keats often found partial means
of reconciliation, but his life was too brief for a consummation
of the task, and he died with many vexing problems still unsolved. yIn practise he had not even progressed so far as in
theory.) As was natural, the sensuous genius in him developed
in advance of the philosophic, and it ever strove for complete
mastery, even while Keats sought earnestly to repress it in
order to give the sterner, more robust impulses full sway. So,
sometimes one self was in the ascendancy, sometimes another.
The result of this is that one does not find in Keats's utterances on the poetic art a consecutive, chronological development. What one does find is not an advance from Greek




KEATS, THINKER


3I


" naturalism" to Romantic " idealism," such as Mr. Fausset
has tried to prove took place in his thinking, but, rather,
progress toward a reconciliation between the Greek, the Elizabethan, and the Romantic-philosophic demands into such a
harmony as would give each its place in a new, glorious type
of poetic nature.12  But enough to say that because the facts
are as they are, I rejected the possibility of treating Keats's
aesthetic purely from the point of view of development, and
chose the more feasible plan of outlining the main trend of
his thought, with reference, however, wherever possible to
chronological evolution.
As I proceed with this study I shall reveal the facts as to
Keats's beliefs as I have found them. From the material I
have been able to gather I shall present my findings as to the
young poet's views on certain definite problems that seemed
to concern him most, and shall indicate, as specifically as I
can, the conclusions at which he had arrived at the time of his
death. My aim is to attempt that which as yet has not been
done —to bring Keats's aesthetic ideas together into some
coherent whole, to weave the scattered, tenuous threads of his
thought into some tangible pattern. If in doing this I can
present to my readers a vision of a more real and serious Keats
in place of the " versifying pet lamb " of tradition I shall feel
that my efforts have been richly rewarded.
12 Note his own words:
" Then I should be most enviable- with the yearning Passion I have for
the beautiful, connected and made one with the ambition of my intellect."
-To George and Georgiana Keats. Oct., I818. Forman, Vol. IV. I87.
(All references to Forman in this volume are to the 9goi edition of The
Complete Works of John Keats. The older Library Edition is now out of
print, and is consequently inaccessible to many readers.)




CHAPTER II


THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL-AN
ANTITHESIS
"Do you know what it is," once said M. de Lamennais,
"which makes a man the most suffering of all creatures? It
is that he has one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and that he is torn asunder, not by four horses as in
the horrible old times, but between two worlds." With some
modification these words might be taken as descriptive of the
aesthetic schism in Keats to which I have referred in my last
chapter. The difference is that Keats was not finally torn
asunder between the two worlds, but on the contrary, in spite
of the sharp divergence in widely separated poles of his
thought, he had even during his short life progressed far
toward a reconciliation between these opposing claims.
As I have already indicated, there was one side of Keats
that demanded, as a condition for poetic creation, a state of
detachment in an imaginative flight into a dream world quite
separated from actuality; there was another side that insisted
that the world of reality, of men and women and pain and
sorrow, must have first place in all great poetry. Closely allied
and corollary to this was the conflict between the claims of
feeling, mere intuition or sensation, and those of thought,
reason, and knowledge.
A study of Keats's aesthetic leads us directly to a consideration of these antithetical elements in his nature, and to
his progress toward their reconciliation. A discussion of what
Keats's general philosophic ideas were I shall reserve for another chapter; I am here concerned with his struggles to find
a place in his poetic world for both dreams and actualities,
and with his progress toward a solution of this problem. I
32




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL 33
say " progress toward " because I doubt if he ever felt fully
satisfied in his own mind as to how the adjustment could take
place; in some of his utterances we see that which points to
a near solution, but probably it was never complete, for it
would seem from his poems that the conflict between the half
of him that longed to luxuriate in Fancy's pleasant realms and
the sterner philosophic half that demanded a curb and bridle
for the prancing steeds of his imagination, continued to
the end.
In one of Keats's comments on Milton's Paradise Lost he
admirably states as true of Milton's genius the antithesis which
he must have recognized in his own.
The genius of Milton,' more particularly in respect to its span of
immensity, calculated him, by a sort of birthright, for such an " argument" as the Paradise Lost: he had an exquisite passion for what is
properly, in the sense of ease and pleasure, poetical Luxury; and with
that it appears to me he would fain have been content, if he could,
so doing, have preserved his self-respect and feel of duty performed,
but there was working in him as it were that same sort of thing as
operates in the great world to the end of a Prophecy's being accomplished: therefore he devoted himself rather to the ardours than the
pleasures of Song, solacing himself at intervals with cups of old wine;
and those are with some exceptions the finest parts of the poem.
With some exceptions- for the spirit of mounting and adventure
can never be unfruitful or unrewarded: had he not broken through
the clouds which envelope so deliciously the Elysian field of verse,
and committed himself to the Extreme, we should never have seen
Satan as described -
" But his face
Deep scars of thunder had entrenched, &c."
This expresses concisely the dual elements in Keats's nature
of which we have been talking.2    He too loved the poetical
luxury of mounting and adventure; the " pleasures of song"
1 Reprinted by H. Buxton Forman in The Complete Works of John
Keats (I9go), Vol. III, p. 256. First published in The Dial, April, 1843, in
a memoir of George Keats. The notes occurred on a fly-leaf of Keats's
copy of Milton, inscribed to Mrs. Dilke.
2 R. D. Havens, in his Influence of Milton on English Poets, suggests a
similar idea. pp. 2I3, 2I4.




34


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


were dear to him and drew him like a polar magnet to the
expanses of the poetic dream world, but the more severe and
deeper self in him required that the "ardours" of verse too
should have their due: that, even though a poet's head
may float in the clouds, his feet must be firmly planted
on the ground; that the world of thought and actuality
must be carried into any poetry of such magnitude as to
entitle its writer to a place among the great poets after his
death.3
Plenty of writers have seen the first quality in Keats plainly,
but the pity is they have seen it to the exclusion of all else.
Thus, when critics like A. Clutton-Block declare that, for
Keats, " the aesthetic life was an escape," that the " aesthetic
dream life which he separated so sharply from the actual world
was to him more desirable just because it was more individual
in all its particulars," that Keats "began with an aesthetic;
and until near the end of his life, it was a principle of that
aesthetic that the world of art and the actual world were
utterly separated," we know that they have failed to see the
other side of Keats, that they are not taking into consideration the fact that very early he saw that the capacity for a
close and inimate touch with life was quite as vital a part of
the poet's equipment as his power to build an ideal dream
world for himself.
The facts are, we find in Keats both an early, immature
notion of detachment and a later, more developed conception
that correspond roughly to an early and a later theory of the
typical aesthetic experience. The first showed its beginnings
in a young instinct for aesthetic escape. The second grew out
of long attempts to reconcile the opposing demands of the
dream world and the world of reality. It found its realization in a subjective activity which, though removed from,
and independent of, the distractions of the world of reality,
yet owes its richness and validity to a conception of life ab3 "I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death." To
George and Georgiana Keats. Oct., I8I8. Forman. Vol. III. p. I76.




THE DREAM      WORLD    AND   THE   ACTUAL       35
stracted from that world through intimate acquaintance with
actuality and the human heart.
That the poet or artist must get outside of, or rise above,
things of the actual world in his moments of inspiration was
from the first almost axiomatic with Keats. The moment of
insight with him was a moment of complete emotional absorption, in which the poet lost even his own sense of being in
intense pursuit of his imaginative quarry. The extreme of I
this activity was flight far away from the fret and fever of
life into a realm of imaginative delight, into a region of abstractions of the poet's own creation.
It is this sort of experience Keats has in mind when he
writes, " But this morning Poetry has conquered, and I have
lapsed into those abstractions which are my only life." For
by " those abstractions" it seems he does not mean periods of
absorption in abstract thinking in the ordinary sense of the
term, as one might suppose. Keats could think in this way,
as we shall see when we come to study his ideas of life and
the "Mystery"; but in connection with poetry and art he
meant something different. This is proved by his use of the
word " abstract" in other places. In speaking of " the mighty
abstract Idea of Beauty," Keats goes on to explain, "I feel
more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that
I do not live in this world alone but in a thousand worlds.
No sooner am I alone than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is
equivalent to a King's body-guard-then 'Tragedy with
sceptered pall comes sweeping by.' According to my state of
mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or with
Theocritus in the Vales of Sicily. Or I throw my whole being
into Troilus, and repeating those lines, 'I wander like a lost
Soul upon the Stygian Banks staying for waftage,' I melt into
the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content
to be alone." The world of the abstractions here is distinctly
an imaginative real of the concrete, peopled by figures from
the heroic past and by shapes of epic greatness from the




36


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


glorious literature of all time. It is to this kind of experience
the poet has reference when he says, " When I am in a room
with people, if I am ever free from speculating on creations of
my own brain, then, not myself goes home to myself, but
the identity of every one in the room begins to press upon
me,..."    Speculating on the creations of his own brain
carries him into this world of abstractions. Writing to Haydon on the subject of painting, Keats throws out a suggestion that further helps us to understand his meaning of the
word " abstract ": "... for when a Schoolboy the abstract
Idea I had of an heroic painting - was what I cannot describe.
I saw it somewhat sideways, large, prominent, round, and
color'd with magnificence - somewhat like the feel I have of
Anthony and Cleopatra. Or of Alcibiades leaning on his Crimson Couch in his Galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly
heaving with the Sea. That4 passage in Shakespeare is finer
than this-' See how the surly Warwick mans the wall.'"
So it is apparent that when we recall Keats's expressions as
to the abstract we should remember he is using the term in a
very special sense as applied to his own imaginative experiences. These periods of abstraction are nothing more nor less
than poetic flights into dream-worlds, where the soul of the
poet is detached temporarily from the actuality of men and
things, and builds for itself a habitation of its own. There
was a side of Keats that demanded this type of poetic detachment to the exclusion of all else. What he seemed to feel
was that supreme artistic experience could be possible only
by such a flight or an elevation of spirit as would free the
mind and eye from the entanglements and limitations of
earthly realities. In the early poems we observe this idea in
its immaturity. Here high poetic experience is described as a
sort of ecstatic trance in which the poet flies from reality into
an ideal region of romance and love. This conception is most
adequately expressed in the epistle To My Brother George,
and in I Stood Tip-Toe. In the first, Keats explains:
4 This should probably read, "What passage in Shakespeare," etc.




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL 37
But there are times, when those that love the bay,
Fly from all sorrowing far, far away;
A sudden glow comes on them, naught they see
In water, earth, or air, but poesy.
(11. I9-22.)
It is " when a poet is in such a trance " that he sees in the
air "white coursers paw, and prance," each "bestridden of
gay knights," who, at the sound of a warder's trumpetwhose tones reach only the poet's ear, - glide out of "enchanted portals " and tilt in playful quarrel. Beyond these
magic portals, " open wide,"
The Poet's eye can reach those golden halls,
And view the glory of their festivals;
Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem
Fit for the silv'ring of a seraph's dream;
(11. 35-38.)
In I Stood Tip-Toe, nature furnishes the inspiration, is the
gateway, to poetic perception. The magic effects of contact
with nature are such that... we feel uplifted from the world,
Walking upon the white clouds, wreath'd and curl'd.
(11. I39-I40.)
The poet's mind is whirled away from the things of sense and
loses itself in imaginative creation. It is in this state of
tranced abstraction that there will come to the poet
Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing,
From out the middle air, from flowery nests,
And from the pillowy silkiness that rests
Full in the speculation of the stars.
(1U. I86-I89.)
in this manner Keats conceives the old mythological poetry
to have been created. A condition for poetical activity is a
soaring away from sensible reality. Thus in To My Brother
George, the poet exclaims:




38


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Fair world, adieu!
Thy dales, and hills, are fading from my view:
Swiftly I mount, upon wide-spreading pinions,
Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions.
(11. I03-Io6.)
These extracts hardly need comment. Discounting a little
for playfulness in the epistle to George, they probably stand
as a fairly clear expression of the young poet's ideas of the
quality of detachment. They belong to a period when, though
Keats dimly perceived his goal and knew the general direction he must follow, he had not yet distinguished the particular road he must take to reach it. His unschooled instinct
seized upon the method that seemed most obvious-a form
of " direct divination." Simply let the fancy roam; give reins
to the steed of imagination to soar away from the earth, to
" paw up against the light "; let the self be lost in an ecstatic
trance: whatever is then visible to the inward eye is fit material for high poetry.
There was to come a time when Keats should see clearly
what one half of him felt from the first, that mere dreaming
in this manner could not make a poet, yet he always adhered
to his belief in some form of detachment; and we see evidence
of his conception of poetic experience as a state of detached
imaginative flight throughout his work. We find it in Endymion, where the poet gets his glimpse of the ideal in a vision,
where the poet's stages of progression are described as a losing
of his self in various essences, and where most of the chief
events take place in a thoroughly other-world atmosphere;
it is to be seen in the Ode to Indolence, wherein the poet's
mind is described as in a state of tranced abstraction; it is
evident in The Fall of Hyperion, which is written as a vision,
and in which a magic draught removes the poet from the
world of reality; while there is no better expression of it anywhere than in the second, third and fourth stanzas of the
Ode to a Nightingale, finally all centered in the lines:




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL


39


That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away, for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
There is present here an expression of a longing to escape
from the world of pain and trouble to a haven of refuge in the
realm of the aesthetic. There is something too of a return to
the earliest form of the trance-like ecstasy, but it is a soberer,
more conscious soaring, which, withal, takes the very world
it is trying to flee along with it; therefore, the poem exhales
a breath of intense mortality and presents a vision of life on
earth and an intuition of the larger world behind. It belongs
to a period when Keats had arrived at a near reconciliation
between his desire for the luxurious in song and his urge
toward a close identity with man and an understanding of
nature and the world.
The other side to this antithesis, the disturbing conviction
that dreams are not enough, but that the poet must concern
himself with the realities of the world in which he is living,
finds expression early in Keats's poetry. But at first its demands seem feeble enough, and connected with the imagina



40


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


tive " luxuries " rather than with the " ardours of song." Thus
in the early epistle To George Felton Mathew, after dwelling in
a somewhat ecstatic vein on the fanciful pleasures of poetry
under the inspiration of nature, he invokes the aid of Mathew
in finding.. a place where I may greet the maid -
Where we may soft humanity put on.
Here they should "sit, and rhyme and think on Chatterton"
and the " warm-hearted Shakespeare,"
And thou shouldst moralize on Milton's blindness,
And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness
To those who strove with the bright golden wing
Of genius, to flap away each sting
Thrown by the pitiless world.
Not only the lives and fortunes of poets, but the spirit and
deeds of patriots should be dwelt upon:...We next could tell
Of those who in the cause of freedom fell;
Of our own Alfred, of Helvetian Tell;
Of him whose name to every heart's a solace,
High-minded and unbending William Wallace.
In To My Brother George, following the lines portraying
the blisses of the ecstatic trance-like experience, is a passage
in which Keats describes the more serious work of a poet:
What though I leave this dull and earthly mould,
Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold
With after times.- The patriot shall feel
My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel;
Or, in the senate thunder out my numbers
To startle princes from their easy slumbers.
The sage will mingle with each moral theme
My happy thoughts sententious;
(11. 71-78.)
And so on for twenty-five more lines.
In Sleep and Poetry, finished late in i816, the claims of the
real world are emphatically and unmistakably asserted. The




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL 41
poet has been again describing the rapturous delights of revelling in the fanciful and sensuous realm of " Flora and Old
Pan,"
And can I ever bid these joys farewell?
he asks. The answer is clear and decisive:
Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life,
Where I may find the agonies, the strife
Of human hearts:
(11. I23-I25.)
This is a creed to which Keats adhered to the end. It is
noteworthy that in this 1816 poem, belonging to a period
when Keats's reflective self is just beginning to awaken, he
should announce a theory that in The Fall of Hyperion,5 coming at the crest of his thought life, the last serious poem he
ever wrote, he is solemnly reiterating with tenfold emphasis.
The poet, he is declaring, must know and understand the
human heart, particularly its deepest and most painful experiences. The poetic aspirant in The Fall of Hyperion would
reach the very " penetralium of the mystery," the height of
poetic insight; Moneta explains the one way:
" 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."
(Book I, 11. I47-I49.)
The height is the lofty altar of poetic achievement, where
the " Mystery" is to be revealed. Only those can reach the
goal who have genuinely known the great suffering heart of
humanity, who have not only perceived, but have felt as a
deep personal pain the dead weight of men's misery.
5 According to the authority of Sidney Colvin and Ernest de Selincourt,
most of this poem, a revision of the earlier Hyperion, was written in November and December of I8I9. In her recent biography of Keats, Miss Amy
Lowell, however, contends that it was begun in I818, before the Hyperion.
Miss Lowell's evidence is ingenious and is in part convincing; but even
granting her contention as established, her arguments would apply only to
small sections of the revision, and not to the main substance of the poem,
with which we are here concerned.




42


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Never did Keats voice this conviction more eloquently than
in a letter to Miss Jeffrey written six months before the
Hyperion passage. To use one of Keats's own phrases, some
of the expressions in this letter " have rung through my head
like a chime a mending." How intense is that characterization of our English poets, as " miserable and mighty poets of
the human heart "!    How vividly does one's imagination fly
in quick sympathy to the Samuel Johnsons, the Thomsons,
the Chattertons, of the family of great poets whom the " English world has ill-treated," who have been "trampled aside
into the by-paths of life!
Under the pressure of low finances, Keats had been considering the possibility of shipping as a surgeon's apprentice on
board a vessel engaged in Indian trade. He writes:
Your advice about the Indiaman is a very wise advice, because it
just suits me, though you are a little in the wrong concerning its
destroying the energies of Mind: on the contrary it would be the finest
thing in the world to strengthen them - To be thrown among people
who care not for you, with whom you have no sympathies, forces the
Mind upon its own resources, and leaves it free to make its speculations of the differences of human character and to class them with
the calmness of a Botanist.6 An Indiaman is a little world. One of
the great reasons that the English have produced the finest writers in
the world is, that the English world has ill-treated them during their
lives and foster'd them after their deaths.7 They have in general been
trampled aside into the bye paths of life and seen the festerings of
Society. They have not been treated like the Raphaels of Italy. And
where is the Englishman and Poet who has given a magnificent Entertainment at the christening of one of his Hero's Horses as Boyardo
did? He had a castle in the Appenine. He, was a noble Poet of
6 Again the idea of detached contemplation.
7 How keenly the sense of the unhappy and tragic lives of these poets
weighed upon Keats's own spirit is shown in his almost sobbing confession
of what he felt in visiting the home and tomb of Burns: "One song of
Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole year in
his native country. His Misery is a dead weight upon the nimbleness of
one's quill —I tried to forget it —to drink toddy without any Care —to
write a merry sonnet —it won't do —he talked with Bitches —he drank
with blackguards, he was miserable. We can see horribly clear, in the
works of such a Man his whole life, as if we were God's spies."
-To Reynolds, July, i8r8. Forman. Vol. IV, p. I31.




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL 43
Romance; not a miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart. The
middle age of Shakespeare was all clouded over; his days were not
more happy than Hamlet's who is perhaps more like Shakespeare himself in his common every day Life than any other of his Characters -
Ben Johnson was a common Soldier and in the Low countries, in the
face of two armies, fought a single combat with a french Trooper and
slew him- For all this I will not go on board an Indiaman, nor for
example's sake run my head into dark alleys: I dare say my discipline
is to come, and plenty of it too. I have been very idle lately, very
averse to writing; both from the overpowering idea of our dead poets
and from abatement of my love of fame. I hope I am a little more
of a Philosopher than I was, consequently a little less of a versifying!Pet-lamb.
What more vivid proof of Keats's idea as to the kind of
stuff out of which real poetic fibre is made! No second-hand,
vicarious sympathy will do. The creation of great poetry
demands actual knowledge of the world. The finest poets are
made by being trampled into the by-paths of life, where they
see with unveiled eyes the " festerings of society "; thus only
may one become " a miserable and mighty poet of the human
heart." It is an unusual utterance, perhaps one of the truest
and most profound remarks on poetry ever made.
Even more decisive is the testimony in the famous letter to
Reynolds of May, 1818. Because of its close bearing on many
of Keats's poetic theories I shall have occasion to refer to this
frequently throughout this book, and shall therefore designate
it for the sake of convenience, The Mansion of Life letter.
Keats's conviction as to the necessity for sympathy with and
deep understanding of humanity is here set forth in the most
admirably lucid and suggestive manner. Milton and Wordsworth are being compared:
You say, " I fear there is little chance of anything else in this life"
-you seem by that to have been going through with a more painful
and acute zest the same labyrinth that I have - I have come to the
same conclusion thus far. My Branchings out therefrom have been numerous: one of them is the consideration of Wordsworth's genius and
as a help, in the manner of gold being the meridian Line of worldly
wealth, how he differs from Milton. And here I have nothing but




44          THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS
surmises, from an uncertainty whether Milton's apparently less anxiety
for Humanity proceeds from his seeing further or not than Wordsworth: and whether Wordsworth has in truth epic passion, and martyrs
himself to the human heart, the main region of his song...
I will return to Wordsworth -whether or no he has an extended
vision or a circumscribed grandeur —whether he is an eagle in his
nest or on the wing. And to be more explicit and to show you how
tall I stand by the giant, I will put down a simile of human life as
far as I now perceive it; that is, to the point to which I say we both
have arrived at. Well- I compare human life to a large Mansion of
many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the
rest being as yet shut upon me. The first we step into we call the
Infant, or Thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we.
do not think. We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the
doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly
impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle within us -We
no sooner get into the Second Chamber, which I shall call the
Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the
light and the atmosphere. We see nothing but pleasant wonders, and
think of delaying there forever in delight. However among the effects
this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's
vision into the heart and nature of Man - of convincing one's nerves
that the world is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness, and
oppression -whereby this Chamber of Maiden-Thought becomes
gradually darkened, and at the same time, on all sides of it, many
doors are set open- but all dark - all leading to dark passages. We
see not the balance of good and evil; we are in a mist, we are now
in that state, we feel the "Burden of the Mystery." To this point
was Wordsworth come, as far as I can conceive, when he wrote "Tintern Abbey," and it seems to me that his genius is explorative of those
dark Passages. Now if we live, and go on thinking, we too shall explore them. He is a genius and superior to us, in so far as he can,
more than we, make discoveries and shed a light in them. Here I
must think Wordsworth is deeper than Milton, though I think it has
depended more upon the general and gregarious advance of intellect
than individual greatness of Mind. From the Paradise Lost, and the
other Works of Milton, I hope it is not too presuming, even between
ourselves, to say, that his Philosophy, human and divine, may be
tolerably understood by one not much advanced in years. In his
time, Englishmen were just emancipated from a great superstition, and
Men had got hold of certain points and resting-places in reasoning
which were too newly born to be doubted, and too much opposed by




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL 45
the Mass of Europe not to be thought ethereal and authentically
divine. - Who could gainsay his ideas on virtue, vice, and Chastity
in Comus just at the time of the dismissal of Cod-pieces and a hundred other disgraces? Who would not rest satisfied with his hintings
at good and evil in the Paradise Lost, when just free from the Inquisition and burning in Smithfield? The Reformation produced such
immediate and great benefits, that Protestantism was considered under
the immediate eye of heaven, and its own remaining dogmas and
superstitions then, as it were, regenerated, constituted those resting
places and seeming sure points of Reasoning - from that I have mentioned, Milton, whatever he may have thought in the sequel, appears
to have been content with these by his writings. He did not think
~to the human heart as Wordsworth has done. Yet Milton, as a
Pilosopher, had sure as great powers as Wordsworth. What is then
to be inferred? O many things. It proves that there is really a grand
march of intellect, it proves that a mighty Providence subdues the
mightiest minds to the service of the time being, whether it be in
human Knowledge or Religion.
In this comparison of Milton with Wordsworth some striking principles for the judgment of genius and poetic creation
are suggested. The sentences in regard to the gregarious
march of the human intellect, and the work of Providence in
subduing the mightiest minds to the service of the time are
indeed significant. The first reveals the sturdy optimism so
characteristic of Keats -in spite of occasional gloomy outbursts- in regardto the world's advance towards perfection,
a " march of the human intellect " indicating a sense of steady
progression, just as in Hyperion the poet visions a world in
evolution passing successively from stage to stage. The second recalls Taine, who, it will be remembered, insists that only
a genius of a type harmonious with the temper of his time
can rise above mediocrity; that the men of great genius have
always been reflectors of the spirit of their respective ages.
Taine I believe is thinking for the most part of the mere
surface manifestations of life in poetry, such as an atmosphere
of gloom or joyousness, of pessimism or optimism, disbelief or
faith, and so forth, and goes no further except as these elements may be considered as indicative of the deepest life




46


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


processes. The idea of environmental influence as suggested
by Keats, however, is slightly different. For him the fundamental in poetic greatness is determined not so much by the
spirit of the age, as by intellectual and imaginative insightthe ability to understand the permanent facts of human life,
rather than to grasp temporary moral, theological, or political
problems. Yet Keats would hold, I should say, that though
the greatest poets should be prophets of a higher ideal order,
they can never be much more than the interpreters of the
highest life and thought of their day; at least they are bound
and restricted according to the level of the common intellect
and the pressing needs of their own time.
Most pertinent to the subject under direct discussion is the
fact that we here find reiterated the idea that that poet is
greatest who sees deepest into the secret of existence, and best
portrays what he sees.  Institutions, theology, matters of
morality-all become proper subjects for high poetry in a
limited sense only. And emphasis on any of them or all of
them, with the eternal laws of human nature subordinated,
leads to poetry in its nature inferior.
Interest in humanity and a capacity to martyr oneself to,
and think into the human heart become, then, the median
line of poetic greatness. It is true that the highest poetic
power is to be measured by the ability to penetrate into the
"dark passages" leading to the shrouded chamber of the
" Mystery,"8 and " make discoveries and shed light on them ";
but the necessary condition to an understanding of the " Burden of the Mystery " is that the vision "into the heart and
nature of man" shall be sharpened, and that the nerves be
convinced of the suffering and misery of the world. Moreover, this power is to be attained through a gradual evolutionary, educative process, in which the intellect expands from
a thoughtless stage to one where all knowledge and wisdom
8 He elsewhere calls it " the Penetralium of mystery." " Coleridge, for
instance, would let go by a fine isolated veri-similitude caught from the
Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with
half knowledge."                    Forman. Vol. IV, p. 50.




THE DREAM WORLD AND THE ACTUAL 47
will be its province,9 and all insight and understanding its
highest goal.
All this seems to furnish unmistakable proof that Keats
would make the human heart the main region of a poet's song
and the world of reality the proper field for his endeavor. But
we must not forget the obverse side of the shield, the legends
of which have been displayed earlier in this chapter. The
young poet could never for long escape his feeling for the
poetic experience as one of detachment in an ideal dreamworld existence, abstracted and separated from the visible
and real; he was never able to suppress entirely his innate
longing to fly away on " the viewless wings of Poesy," and in
a realm of abstractions to forget "The weariness, the fever,
and the fret" of actual life.
Sometimes, pendulum-like, swinging between the extremes,
but more often earnestly endeavoring to find a means to a
harmonious compromise, Keats's mind occupied itself with
these sharply conflicting claims. How were they to be reconciled? The progress the poet made toward a reconciliation
I shall show later. But before coming directly to that, it is
necessary to examine closely-related phases of Keats's thought
that have bearing on his more mature theories. The Mansion
of Life letter marks a high water level in the young poet's emphasis on knowledge of humanity and insight into the "Mystery " as requisites to great poetry. It also furnishes the most
concise expression of'Keats's ideas as to the evolution of a
poet's powers to a place where he may know and understand.
In the next two chapters I shall trace the main lines of his
thinking that led up to this point.
9 Robert Bridges, in his introduction to the G. Thorn Drury Edition of
Keats, p. xxxiii, points out the similarity in thought between Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey, Sleep and Poetry, and the Mansion of Life letter;
Mr. de Selincourt in the Introduction to his edition of the poems, p.
xxxix, comments upon the same likeness; so does Sidney Colvin in
John Keats, pp. I27, 128, though he justly criticizes Mr. Bridges' choice of
illustrative passages; Mary Suddard also briefly comments on the same
point in her Essays and Studies, p. 38.




CHAPTER III


GRADUS AD PARNASSUM
KEATS has often been likened to the Greeks, and there were
undoubtedly elements in him that suggest his kinship with
the best representatives of the Hellenic spirit. He sought their
reposeful serenity; he had their quick, warm imagination; he
felt much of their naive response to the sensuous beauty of the
earth. But there was this vital difference: Keats was an Englishman, living in the nineteenth century. If the high poetic
repose of the Attic sculptors seemed all desirable to him, it
was much more difficult to attain. His was not the selfcontained world of Phidias and Sophocles. Fate had placed
Keats in an age when poetic thought was turning passionately
toward an understanding of life and the universe, was insistently reaching out for a glimpse of the "unworldly blossom,
the blue flower," that larger spirit palpitating behind all
visible life and nature. And Keats very early, too, found himself instinctively seeking these same things. Unsatisfied with
the narrow world of sight and sense, he threw himself into
an earnest quest for a larger insight and understanding,
eagerly striving to pierce the white shroud, for a vision of
that higher unity that lies just beyond the ken of men.
But just as Plato had perceived that in the quest for absolute beauty, one cannot rise at one bound to complete apprehension, but the mind must pass from a view of particular
things of beauty through ever widening circles, becoming first
acquainted with the lesser objects preparatory to an understanding of the supreme ideal,1 so Keats became early convinced that poetic power and poetic insight could not come
at a single leap, but must rather evolve through successive
1 Symposium. Section 2II.
48




GRADUS AD PARNASSUM


49


gradations in conformity with the poet's growing maturity and
experience in his art and life.
In the Mansion of Life letter, quoted in the last chapter,
we find this idea most admirably and succinctly stated.
Here Keats conceives the intellect as expanding from  a
thoughtless stage to one where all knowledge and wisdom,
hence all insight, will be its province. Possibly under the
influence of Wordsworth, the poet suggests to us in this passage a rough parallel with the main lines of poetic development as set forth in The Prelude; and, as Robert Bridges,
Sidney Colvin, and other critics have pointed out, there is also
a close likeness between the stages in the different " chambers"
and those outlined in Tintern Abbey.
As in Tintern Abbey, too, it is evident that with Keats the
sensuous and the world of nature are chiefly significant in
poetry as leading to an understanding of the deeper spirit of
man and the " Mystery."
This becomes apparent in the 1817 volume of poems. It is
true that in I Stood Tip-Toe and in the Epistle to George, in
particular, nature seems to play an important part. But after
all it is a subordinate part, the role of chief exciter of the
imagination, and the poetry evoked by nature has all a human
quality. Especially is this true in the evident warmth of
sympathy in the passages relating to Pan and Syrinx, to Narcissus and Echo, and to Cynthia and Endymion in I Stood
Tip-Toe. Nature in itself in this poem, which might well
be entitled " The Influence of Nature on the Poet," is not suggested as a direct topic for poetry. But to nature the poet
goes for inspiration. " Maker of sweet poets," Keats calls
herFor what has made the sage or poet write
But the fair paradise of Nature's light?
(II. 126-127.)
That this is true, as the succeeding lines show, is evidenced
by the fact that in the very cadence and rhythm and tempo
of poetry there is re-expressed what the poet saw or felt in




50


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


nature -its grandeur, its silences, its luxury. The poet then
goes on to point out this influence in greater detail:
So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went
On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment;
What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips
First touch'd.                      (11. I4I-I44.)
It is nature that furnishes the inspiration, the starting point,
for the fainter gleamings that shoot over the fancy:
What first inspired a bard of old to sing
Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring?
In some delicious ramble, he had found
A little space, with boughs all woven round;
And in the midst of all, a clearer pool
Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool,
The blue sky here, and there, serenely peeping
Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping.
(1. I64-I 71.)
And so the old poetry came to be. One glimpse through forest
boughs is enough to start to life visions of " Nymphs, Fauns,
and Satyrs," and an evening on a hilltop in the clear smiling
moonlight is sufficient to inspire the birth of the EndymionCynthia romance.
Here Keats gives us in embryo his young theory of the
relation of nature to the artist and his work. In the presence
of natural objects of unusual beauty or significance, the poet
becomes oblivious of the present world. He loses himself in
contemplation, becomes detached from his surroundings, as
"fainter-gleamings" shoot over his fancy, and visions of
human form appear, until presently his imagination takes
wing, and poetic creation is accomplished. But as I have
said, even here this poetry is specifically of human quality,
' though it is a humanity far removed from the actual world;
nature is the means not the end. In Sleep and Poetry, written
at about the same time as I Stood Tip-Toe and probably
finished somewhat earlier, the emphasis upon humanity is
unmistakable. The view expressed here is not inconsistent




GRADUS AD PARNASSUM


5I


with that of I Stood Tip-Toe; it is merely another aspect of
his thought that through nature the poet ascends to an understanding of man. Here, as in the Mansion of Life letter,
Keats had suggested a progression for himself in the unfolding
of his poetic life. Here, too, the sensuous seems to furnish
the stepping stone to the higher realms:
First the realm I'll pass
Of Flora, and Old Pan; sleep in the grass,
Feed upon apples red, and strawberries,
And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.
(11. IOI-IO4.)
This is the Thoughtless Chamber, the period of revelry in the
charms of nature and in mythological fancies bred by nature
-the sensuous period, as it were. But he cannot be content
here; he must pass on to a " nobler life," where he may find
the agonies and the strife of human hearts, the true end of
poetic endeavor.
A study of Sleep and Poetry and the Mansion of Life letter
shows with what healthy sanity Keats looked at the whole
matter of becoming a great poet. It is not strange that with
his lofty reverence for poetry he should see that the ascents
to the pinnacles of success were not to be easy. Only through
the mellowing influences of time, the ripening effects of trial
and failure, can a poet reach the point of penetration into
the " Burden of the Mystery ":
O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.
(Sleep and Poetry, 11. 96-98.)
Moreover, it is to be at the cost of tremendous effort, of the
severest kind, an agonizing, heart-breaking striving toward
the goal:... How much toil!
How many days! What desperate turmoil!
Ere I can have explored its widenesses.
(11. 307-309.)




52


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


The very notion that he may ever succeed seems almost presumptuous, but he has resolved, even though his young infirmities are painfully apparent. He has caught a vision of
what poetry should be; a "vast idea" rolls before him, and
no difficulties, however real and great, shall daunt him:
What though I am not wealthy in the dower
Of spanning wisdom; though I do not know
The shiftings of the mighty winds that blow
Hither and thither all the changing thoughts
Of man: though no great minist'ring reason sorts
Out the dark mysteries of human souls
To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls
A vast idea before me, and I glean
Therefrom my liberty; thence too I've seen
The end and aim of Poesy.       (11. 283-292.)
Nothing testifies more strongly to the sound critical judgment of Keats than that he thus early perceives that, though
he knows what is to be done, he cannot expect to realize his
ideals until he has passed through a period of arduous apprenticeship. His reach exceeds his grasp, and he is fully aware of
it; moreover, because he has reasoned the thing through, he
accepts the situation philosophically. "A  vast idea" rolls
before him; he will follow it where it leads, even though as
yet no " great ministering reason " sorts out for him " the dark
mysteries of human souls," and the way, therefore, must be
long and hard. Meantime, he will advance as swiftly as may
be from "the region of Flora and old Pan," towards the
realms of higher conceiving, where he, too, may explore the
shaded chamber of the " Burden of the Mystery."
In Endymion, we find a further expression of Keats's conception of the route to the heights of great poetry, and of
the part nature and man must take in the upward climb.
When Keats wrote Endymion, his mind, he tells Shelley, was
"like a pack of scattered cards." He was, he admits, only
"straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness." Yet there is every reason to believe that in Endymion




GRADUS AD PARNASSUM5


53


we should find Keats's most mature thought up to that time.
The poem was begun after a spring of three intense poetical
experiences. Early in March or the last of February, Keats
had been introduced to the Elgin Marbles. How profoundly
they affected him we know from the two sonnets and the
Ode on a Grecian Urn for which they undoubtedly furnished
the inspiration. To Keats the study of the Elgin Marbles
raised the whole range of vexing problems as to the relation
between art and truth and beauty. But we shall come to
that later.
Secondly, he was re-reading Shakespeare with eager intensity and complete delight. His April and May letters to
Hunt, Haydon, and Reynolds show how he revelled in his
master.
His third experience was something less than a month in
solitude on the Isle of Wight. Along in April, 1817, Keats's
brothers had decided that he needed a rest and a vacation.
So they bundled him off to the Isle of Wight. Here he was
much alone, and it appears that he employed much of his
time in concentrated thought on poetry; for it was shortly
after his return that he wrote to Leigh Hunt that at the Isle
of Wight he had thought so much about poetry, so long together, that he could not get to sleep at night. " I was too
much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought," he declares.
Thus it was that with a newly stimulated mind and in burning thought on the problems of poetry Endymion was begun.
It seems logical to find something of all this reflected in the
substance of the poem.
I have noted in my first chapter, the various interpretations
of Endymion that have been offered by different critics, all of
them based upon allegory. There are those who decry any
attempt to read allegorical meaning into the poem. Mr.
George Saintsbury is one of these. In his contribution to
the centenary volume, he voices his protest. He has been
told, he says, that now, " You must busy yourself with its




54


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


problems; present the Latmian with a complete set of allegorical, symbolical, and all sorts of other ical explanations."
But as for himself, he has no patience with that sort of thing.
"Thank goodness," he exclaims, " no one ever suggested anything of that kind to me in the Boilers sixty-years since."
Another recent protest against an allegorical interpretation
has come from Amy Lowell in her notable biography of Keats.
"As to allegory," she declares, " that was completely foreign
to Keats's nature. There is no trace of allegory to be found
anywhere in his works." Symbolism she finds in The Fall of
Hyperion, and the Endymion " is full of suggestions," is, in
fact, "one of the most suggestive poems in English literature," but nowhere is there allegory.
Yet there are passages in the poem that seem to make allegorical interpretation inevitable. Keats himself invited just
this when, in revising his manuscript, he wrote to John Taylor,
his publisher, in January, 1818, altering and adding to the
passage beginning with " Wherein lies happiness? " in Book I,
the passage which above all others most plainly reveals allegory. I quote from the letter containing the amended
reading. It will be seen that the poet has added the lines
beginning with " In that which becks" and ending with " free
of space "- a significant addition indeed when considered in
connection, first, with its immediate context, and, then, with
the poem as a whole.
These lines as they now stand about "Happiness," have rung in
my ears like " a chime a mending." - See here,
Behold
Wherein lies happiness, Peona? fold, &c.
It appears to me the very contrary of blessed. I hope this will appear
to you more eligible.
Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks
Our ready minds to fellowship divine,
A fellowship with Essence till we shine
Full alchemized, and free of space -Behold
The clear religion of Heaven- fold, &c.
(Endymion, Book I, 11. 777-78I.)




GRADUS AD PARNASSUM


55


You must indulge me by putting this in, for setting aside the badness
of the other, such a preface is necessary to the subject. The whole
thing must, I think, have appeared to you, who are a consecutive man,
as a thing almost of mere words, but I assure you that when I wrote
it, it was a regular stepping of the Imagination towards a truth. My
having written that argument will perhaps be of the greatest service
to me of anything I ever did. It set before me the gradations of
happiness, even like a kind of pleasure thermometer, and is my first
step towards the chief attempt in the drama. The playing of different natures with joy and Sorrow.
Obviously, Keats understood himself to be saying more
than appeared on the surface. This passage about " Happiness " was an " argument," that needed a preface to be understood. It was an argument, too, that was a revelation to
himself, and was to be a first step " toward the chief attempt
in the drama." When we recall, too, that this alteration was
made upon mature reflection after the poem was completed,2
and this section of it in the hands of the printers, it gains in
importance. Not only, then, does this letter invite to a closer
study of the inner significance of Endymion, but it suggests
that in the " Wherein lies happiness " lines and the following
should be found a clue to the real meaning of the poem.
Those who have interpreted Endymion as an allegory have
been in agreement in making Endymion himself Man, Soul,
or Poet in pursuit of an ideal. This seems inevitable. To
me, Endymion is the poet in quest of the " Mystery," that is,
of ultimate, ideal truth. I believe, too, that Keats was dimly
outlining in this poem the successive stages of poetic development toward realization of this truth, and was, moreover,
showing the relation of these gradations and experiences to
each other. In other words, when in the final book it is disclosed that Cynthia, the ideal of sensuous beauty, the Indian
Maiden, representative of the realities of earth, and the Moon,
symbolic of the " Mystery," are one, Keats is declaring not
only for the necessity of rising to a height of insight into the
2 Endymion was finished in November, 1817. The following months
Keats was copying the poem out for the press. See Colvin, John Keats,
p. 162.




56


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


secret of the universe through the gradations of sensuous and
human reality, but he is also asserting an essential final unity
in the three orders - Nature, Humanity, and the higher
spiritual essence. That is, a poet not only reaches an understanding of the ideal through deep and thorough intimacy,
first, with the physical beauty of this world, then with the
depths of human passion and suffering, but must find in the
end that all merge into one.
The thought contained in this section on happiness bears
out the idea of successive stages. Happiness- and Keats
means the poet's goal —lies in that which invites our minds
to " fellowship with essence."  But this " fellowship divine "
can be attained only through gradations " leading by degrees
to the chief intensity." The first is a sort of higher sensuous
stage, where the " airy stress of music's kiss" touches the free
winds and unbinds the Aeolian magic. Old songs, old ditties,
"ghosts of melodious prophesyings, rave." And at the instant
of feeling all these things,...that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's.
(Book I, 11. 795-797.)
But there are richer entanglements than these sensuous
ones, "enthralments far more self-destroying." The highest of
these is love and friendship. Love is at the very " tip-top,"
" an orbed drop of light." Then follows an enlargement upon
the luxuries of the passion of love, a love in which most men
are content to live and "let occasion die."    Beyond this
human love is a love immortal.
Now, if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambition from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content: what merest whim,
Seems all this poor endeavor after fame,
To one, who keeps within his steadfast aim
A love immortal, an immortal too.
(Book I, 11. 843-849.)




GRADUS AD PARNASSUM


57


Mr. Fausset declares this merely " a rebellion against Keats's
surrender to ravishment," but it appears rather a continuation
of the main argument after a little side excursion into a
region of pleasing aspect. In Endymion the poet could not
resist such temptations to wander afield. " Must not lovers
of poetry have a little region to wander in?" asks Keats in
defending this same diffuseness in his verse. And we must
grant that in this poem he gave sufficient space to satisfy the
most ambitious, greedy rover. But underneath all is a substance of thought, none the less real because sometimes all but
concealed. So here he means that he is ever keeping his eye
steadfastly fixed on the final goal of poetry, an understanding
of the Mystery, his "immortal love" (represented by the
Moon), that above all mortal passion and all the treasures of
all the sensuous world, is that loftiest realm of the supersensuous world, into whose heights the true poet must ascend.
The allegory of Endymion seems to me to be this: In the
first trance-like state on the hillside, when Endymion's enraptured gaze falls on the moon, the poet gets a glimpse of
the ultimate goal for poetic endeavor, the Mystery. But the
entrancingly beautiful heavenly maiden, with "blush-tinted
cheeks," and a " paradise of lips and eyes," who then wafts
herself down to him from the skies, is merely symbolic of
sensuous beauty, the poet's first love.
I interpret the first whirling in the empyrean with the
beautiful apparition as his first wild taste of sensuous beauty
- the trance-like states, the stage of nymphs and knights and
blisses. The second, in Book II, was a far deeper experience
with sensuous reality; it was an illuminating, enriching experience, in which, after drinking to the depths the soul of the
sensuous world, Endymion feels the first stirrings of the breath
of human sympathy. It is nearly the same experience that
Wordsworth describes in Tintern Abbey, when he says,
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes




58         THE   MIND   OF JOHN     KEATS
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.
Similar, but not identical, for with Keats it is not communion
with nature alone, but with all sensuous objects, including the
surface and seeming of humanity, that opens the way to
the richer, more ennobling heights of sympathetic insight
into the soul of man and the heart of all reality.
This second book represents the poetic soul under the full
dominion of sensuous beauty. Those critics who have found
in this part of the poem full proof of Keats's absorption in
weak and amorous sentimentality should be reminded that
the state of poetic development here symbolized is not Keats's
ideal, but is a necessary step in the ascent toward the higher
plane. This is, however, an advanced stage in the " Thoughtless Chamber "; it represents the " awakening of the thinking
principle," and is even at the gradation where the poet's mind
by insensible degrees advances into " the Chamber of MaidenThought." The first flush of delight in the physically luxurious has passed; here is communion with, a complete penetration into, the spirit of the sensuous.
The setting is in harmony with the idea of an apotheosis of
the sensuous. The narrative movement takes Keats into the
" sparry hollows of the world;" It is a subterranean region of
magnificent grandeur, of giant ranges of " sapphire columns,"
of fantastic bridges spanning crystal floods, of towering ocean
cliffs shadowing the vast beneath, of diamond balustrades
mounting beyond the reach of eye, and, finally, of exquisitely
fashioned love chambers and " jasmine bowers bestrewn with
golden moss." It is a world of sensuous delight, and Keats lets
loose the reins of fancy in its building.
The two events of moment are the awakening of Adonis by
Venus and the long impassioned love union with the heavenly
apparition - Cynthia, in disguise, here representative of sensuous beauty. As described by the poet this is a scene of the
most death-like intensity of sensual love. But let us remem



GRADUS AD PARNASSUM


59


ber that this is symbolic, and, regretful as the scene is, it
loses some of its vulgarity. It is the only way Keats knows,
just now, of representing the consummation of the marriage
of the poetic soul with the spirit of sensuous beauty. And
from that marriage has come new vision, new insight, new
power, just as an understanding of the physical universe must
always impart new vigor to the wings of thought:
And now, thought he,
How long must I remain in jeopardy
Of blank amazements that amaze no more?
Now I have tasted her sweet soul to the core
All other depths are shallow; essences,
Once spiritual,3 are like muddy lees,
Meant but to fertilize my earthly root,
And make my branches lift a golden fruit
Into the bloom of heaven.4
(Book II, 11. 90o-909.)
It is at this moment that we step
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's,
the moment described in the revelatory passage on "Happiness," of Book I. It is so deep a draught of sensuous beauty
that it almost wafts the soul to higher airs, for now, after
tasting "her sweet soul to the core," he feels stirring within
him awakened sympathy for human beings. When he chances
upon Arethusa and Alpheus in their woe - loving, but unable
to realize their love because of Diana's wrath - he feels a glow
of divine compassion:...he wept, and said: 'I urge
Thee, gentle Goddess of my pilgrimage,
By my eternal hopes, to soothe, to assuage,
If thou art powerful, these lovers' pains;
And make them happy in some happy plains.
(Book II, 11. IOI3-IOI6.)
3 The first trance-like ecstasies in physical beauty.
4 Note that growth to this new stature, which at the instant seems godlike, has come through progress from former stages of poetic experience.




6o


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


So has the marriage with the soul of the sensuous world proved
a stepping stone to a union with the spiritual beauty of human
friendship and love.
The essential adventure in the third book is one in human
friendship and sympathy. The scene is under the sea. I shall
not stop to describe the.. hollow vast, that foam'd
Above, around, and at his feet;
(Book III, 11. I20-I2I.)
with its bed of sands and pearls, its fretted roofs and its crystal
palace, where lie rows and rows of lovers drowned in times
gone by. It is enough to explain that here, coming upon old
Glaucus, bound, under the spell of Circe, to paralyzed existence on the ocean bed, while his soul is torn by love for
dead Scylla, Endymion's heart is touched, even as it was at
sight of the sorrow of Alpheus and Arethusa, and he responds
to the old man's pleas by aiding in his release and in the
awakening of Scylla and all the thousands of lovers lying
drowned in the crystal palace of the sea.
It is all an act of human love and sympathy that prepares
the poet's spirit for the next higher experience, a complete
union of the soul with the heart of humanity, which is the
final key to the Penetralium of Mystery, the last step to the
altar of high poetic insight, the lamp to illuminate " the passages all dark " leading to the " Burden of the Mystery."
For Endymion's relations with the Indian Lady in Book IV
are not merely representative of the sensual love of man for
woman. It is true there is some of that in it, too, as one
of the highest human passions, yet it is not the love passion
alone that is portrayed here, any more than is the love of
Holiness for Una mere physical love, though it is represented
as such. But the union with the Indian Maiden is the marriage of the soul of a poet with the spirit of sorrow and suffering in the world, with the " Misery and Heartbreak, Pain,
Sickness, and Oppression " of mankind.- The thing that impels




GRADUS AD PARNASSUM


6x


Endymion to a decision is not the mere loveliness of the Indian
Maiden; it is her desolation, her sad song of sorrow. For
even as the maiden sang in surrender,
Come then, Sorrow!
Sweetest Sorrow!
Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
I thought to leave thee
And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.
(Book IV, 11. 279-284.)
so Keats believed that the poet must find in the tragedy of
the world his poetic salvation, that of all things of the universe,
he must cherish sorrow first. And it is directly to the poet
Keats is speaking, when the Indian Lady concludes:
There is not one,
No, no, not one,
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid;
Thou art her mother,
And her brother,
Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade.
(Book IV, 11. 285-290.)
Endymion's response is further corrobation of the fact that
this new alliance is with the world's sorrows:
Poor lady, how thus long
Have I been able to endure that voice?
Fair Melody! kind Syren! I've no choice;
I must be thy sad servant evermore:
I cannot choose but kneel here and adore.
(Book IV, 11. 288-293.)
It is true there is some attempt to carry out the episode as a
purely human love affair. But this does not go far. Hardly
has Endymion made his vow until the gods take a hand.
Mercury appears, swoops down to the earth, and is away.
From the turf outspring " two steeds jetblack." Upon these,
the lover and the lady soar away into space. They are carried
to the very bourne of Cynthia's realm and, in a dream, En



62'        THE MIND     OF JOHN     KEATS
dymion looks his vision - the Mystery - full in the face, at
first without recognition; then, knowing her, he springs
toward her, forgetful of " earth, and air and pains and care
and suffering." In the act he awakes and finds the dream
lcome true,5 but by his side the beauteous Indian Lady still lies,
and he is torn by conflicting desire for the immortal love and
the earthly maid. But full realization cannot be yet. Cynthia,fades away.
t Back upon earth, in perplexity and in a mood of sorrowful
renunciation Endymion is to discover that the Indian Lady is
Cynthia herself, the Moon, in another form, even as had been
the heavenly maiden in Books I and II. The heavenly dream
maiden, or sensuous beauty, the Indian Lady, or humanity,
and Cynthia the Moon, or ideal beauty, are all one.
So, first, through such close union with the spirit of the
sensuous world that he catches from her, breathings of higher
things beyond, and, second, through unconscious communion
with the Mystery in the form of human passion and suffering,
his sympathies with humanity having been enlarged to this
capacity by means of contact with love and sorrow, the poet
is able to envisage human passion completely, and in this he
attains to union with his immortal love, the "Mystery."
Thus, through nature and the sensuously beautiful in man,
the poet learns to know the human heart, and through the
human heart, the secret of all worth knowing in the universe.
And in the end he finds united in one ideal the visions that
drew him on in pursuit of each.
5 " The Imagination," says Keats, " may be compared to Adam's dream;
he awoke and found it truth." To Bailey. Nov., I8I7. Forman. Vol. IV,
p. 47.




CHAPTER IV


"SENSATION" VERSUS KNOWLEDGE
AND PHILOSOPHY
OF all English poets it may be safely said of Keats that he
was by nature the most deeply sensitive. He felt with his
whole being. His nervous organization was so delicately adjusted that the mere presence of very beautiful or ugly objects often threw him into violent extremes of sensation. As
Lowell declares of him, " He could feel sorrow with his hands."
It was possibly this fine susceptibility that led the young poet,
as naturally as leaves come to a tree, to put his entire trust,
in his early days, in intuitional, rather than in reasoned knowledge. He could well have cried with Whitman,
Yet again, lo! the soul above all science.
For he felt that through the power of the imaginative activity
the soul can know things that the reason can never understand.
It is only the soul that can speak directly to the soul, only
the soul that can ascend to the infinite and, mingling with
essence, bring back the fine flower of truth.
It is apparent that the trance-like experiences described
in the early poems - in I Stood Tip-Toe and To My Brother
George, for instance,- to which I have referred in Chapter II,
are purely the result of feeling, with no basis whatever in
knowledge. The poet simply yields himself to an indefinable
emotional ecstasy, in which he loses himself in "realms of
wonderment." This is poetic vision. In Endymion, while it
is true that there is emphasis on understanding human sorrow
and suffering, and some suggestion of contact with it, yet the
experiences of the chief personage are largely in the form of
63




64


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


visions, and strongly point to the trance-like state as the only
condition of poetic seeing.
But there is evidence that in the last months of I8I7, though
there has been no positive change of thought on this matter,
the poet is troubled by vague misgivings and has spent unquiet
hours on the subject. This is suggested by his well known
letter to Bailey, written November 22, 1817, on the imagination. Keats's argument is intended as a triumphant vindication of the claims of the pure imagination as opposed to
reason. But there are phrases in it that reveal a trace of
wavering, and perhaps the very energy and vehemence with
which he defends and explains his creed may be taken as an
indication of his need of fortifying himself against doubts as
to whether after all reason and philosophy have not a place
in poetic apprehension. Mr. de Selincourt suggests that the
letter was probably written in a controversial mood, and that
even at the time it expressed only one side of the truth as
Keats saw   it.  (Introduction to   The Poems, p. xxxviii.)
The passage is quoted at length in the chapter on the imagination, and I give here only the sentences that bear directly on
the present discussion. The poet has been dwelling on the
authenticity of the imagination as a revealer of truth, and
declares,
I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known
for truth by consecutive reasoning - and yet it must be. Can it be
that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at his Goal without
putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life
of Sensations rather than of Thoughts!
By "sensations" Keats here means feelings or intuitions,
the pure activity of the imagination, as Ernest de Selincourt,
and later Sidney Colvin have pointed out.' Mr. de Selincourt
1 I quote Sidney Colvin's interpretation:
"....if only the reader will bear one thing well in mind: that when
Keats in this and similar passages speaks of 'Sensations' as opposed to
'Thoughts' he does not limit the word to sensations of the body, of what
intensity or exquisiteness soever or howsoever instantaneously transforming
themselves from sensation into emotion: what he means are intuitions of the




"SENSATION" VERSUS KNOWLEDGE                    65
declares the whole letter to be " a passionate exaltation of that
part of Wordsworth's creed, with which Keats had, doubtless,
most natural sympathy, the belief that we
do well to trust,
Imagination's light when reason's fails.
But Keats is going to much greater lengths than did Wordsworth, especially in The Excursion, where this declaration occurs. For long before 1814, Wordsworth had conceded to philosophy and reason a high place in a poet's equipment, and
The Excursion itself is filled with passages extolling the knowledge to be gained through thought and books. It is only at
the point where reason fails that the older poet would trust to
imagination alone. Keats would find no sure place for reason
whatever -yet, after all, "there must be," he admits, half
doubtingly.
However, in the winter and spring of 1817-1818, there
came a great intellectual crisis in the life of the young poet.
Whether it was through direct association with Wordsworth
in January and February of 1818-Wordsworth was in London during the winter and was much in the Hunt-HaydonKeats circle -or through a more intelligent re-reading of
The Excursion, or through his recent study of Milton, as Mr.
de Selincourt thinks, or merely through the rapid maturity
of his own thinking powers, one can only guess, but, whatever
the cause, the effects were decisive.
During this period, there occurred in Keats's correspondence
and in some of his verse a new note indicative of what must
have approached a revolution in his thinking. He is now
for the first time, in contrast to his November declaration to
Bailey, emphasizing the need for knowledge and philosophy
for himself as a poet, and he practically resolves to put aside
writing until he can better fit himself for the task. The first
mind and spirit as immediate as these, as thrillingly convincing and indisputable, as independent of all consecutive stages and formal processes of
thinking: almost the same things, indeed, as in a later passage of the same
letter he calls ' ethereal musings.'" John Keats, p. I55.




66


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


distinct annunciation of these new ideas comes in his Lines
Written on a Lock of Milton's Hair, enclosed in a letter to
Bailey, January 23. Here he declares:
For many years my offerings must be hushed;.. vain is now the burning and the strife,
for
Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife
With old Philosophy,
And mad with glimpses of futurity.
By April, he is writing to John Taylor:
I was proposing to travel North this summer. There is but one
thing to prevent me.- I know nothing - I have read nothing - and
I mean to follow Solomon's directions, 'Get learning - get understanding.' I find earlier days are gone by-I find that I can have
no enjoyment in the world but continual drinking of knowledge. I
find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good in
the world. Some do it with their society - some with their wit -
some with their benevolence -some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good humour on all they meet - and in a thousand
ways, all dutiful to the command of great Nature -there is but one
way for me. The road lies through application, study, and thought.
I will pursue it; and for that end purpose retiring for some years. I
have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the
luxurious, and a love for philosophy,-were I calculated for the
former, I should be glad. But as I am not, I shall turn all my soul
to the latter.
It was at this time, too, he resolved to travel and see the
world -first England, and Scotland, then all Europe. To that
end, he planned the summer walking trip with Brown. Of his
determination to garner, at first hand, the experience he was
convinced he needed, he wrote to Haydon:
I purpose within a month to put my knapsack at my back and
make a pedestrian tour through the North of England, and part of
Scotland - to make a sort of Prologue to the life I intend to pursue -
that is to write, to study, and to see all Europe at the lowest expense.
I will clamber through the Clouds and exist. I will get such an accumulation of stupendous recollections that as I walk through the
suburbs of London I may not see them-I will stand upon Mount




"SENSATION" VERSUS KNOWLEDGE


67


Blanc and remember this coming Summer when I intend to straddle
Ben-Lomond - with my soul! - galligaskins are out of the Question.
It is significant that it was during this period that the
Mansion of Life letter, quoted in my second chapter, was
written. One will recall the emphasis there upon philosophy
and wisdom as a basis for great poetry. In this same letter
Keats declares, "An extensive knowledge is necessary to
thinking people-it takes away the heat and fever; and
helps, by widening speculation, to ease the 'Burden of the
Mystery.'" Here too, he wrote, continuing his discussion of
Wordsworth:
In regard to his genius alone - we find what he says true as far as
we have experienced, and we can judge no further but by larger experience - for axioms in philosophy are not axioms till they are
proved upon our pulses. We read fine things, but never feel them to
the full until we have gone the same steps as the author.-I know
this is not plain; you will know exactly my meaning when I say that
now I shall relish Hamlet more than I have ever done -Or better -
You are sensible no man can set down Venery as a bestial or joyless
thing until he is sick of it, and therefore all philosophizing on it would
be mere wording. Until we are sick, we understand not; in fine, as
Byron says, " Knowledge is sorrow "; and I go on to say that " Sorrow
is wisdom "- and further for aught we can know for certainty " Wisdom is folly."
From all this it would appear that the swing from the earlier
theory of pure sensation is complete. Keats's emphasis upon
wisdom and philosophy to be gained through study, thought,
and first-hand experience is unmistakable. In fact, at first
glance one might think that the life of the imagination is to
be abandoned altogether. But Keats has no thought of that.
He has simply found that philosophy and reason have a place
in poetry, and that, so far from being antagonistic to the
imagination, they are really adjuncts to it, and furnish the
only true and proper basis for its development to the highest
possible reaches. Only through study and experience can the
mind be so strengthened that the imagination shall have a




68


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


substance to it adequate to the production of great poetry. A
further study of extracts from Keats's writings of the time
makes this clear. In the same Mansion of Life letter, from
which I have so frequently quoted, a letter so rich in significant passages that it might well be taken as a test for
Keats's whole aesthetic thought of this period, he declares,
Were I to study Physic or rather Medicine again, I feel it would not
make the least difference in my Poetry.... Every department of
Knowledge we see excellent and calculated toward a great whole.2 I
am so convinced of this that I am glad at not having given away my
medical Books, which I shall again look over to keep alive the little I
know thitherwards....
And to Bailey he wrote,
I should not have consented to myself these four months tramping
in the highlands, but that I thought it would give me more experience,
rub off more prejudice, use me to more hardship, identify finer scenes,
load me with grander mountains, and strengthen more my reach in
Poetry, than would stopping at home among books, even though I
should reach Homer.
It is plain that both knowledge and experience are to be
sought for the sake of poetic power. All this load of experiences has for its objective the preparation of a poet for his
great task. Keats had evidently become dissatisfied with
poetry that had no firm basis in the world of thought and
reality, an idea he expressed vigorously to Haydon nearly a
year later in these words:
I am convinced of this, and from this I have come to this resolution-never to write for the sake of writing or making a poem, but
from running over with any little knowledge or experience which many
years of reflection may perhaps give me; otherwise I will be dumb.
Mere sensation will no longer do. Poetry must be based
on something more certain than mere feeling, or intuition, by
2 " The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man
into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according
to their relative dignity and worth."
Coleridge: Biographia Literaria.




"SENSATION" VERSUS KNOWLEDGE


69


itself. Keats was at this time in a state where his whole being
demanded certainties; he was planning to taste life to the
full that he might garner a rich sheaf of personal experiences
to serve as authentic background for imaginative creation
later. In January, he had written to his brothers, " Nothing
is finer for the purposes of great production than a very
gradual ripening of the intellectual powers." And then he
had gone on by way of illustration to quote his sonnet On
sitting down to read King Lear once again." In this sonnet
are lines that show the particular bearing Keats felt that a
"gradual ripening of the intellectual powers " and a load of
rich experiences might have on great production:
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
"Let me not wander in a barren dream," Keats is praying
to his great master, "but when I take flights into the dreamworld, give me the new wings of an imagination full-fledged in
knowledge of the world and experience." As Mr. de Selincourt
declares, in his Warton Lecture on Keats:
The significance of this appeal to Shakespeare is clear enough. As
he faces, in King Lear, a pitiless reality, he sees that he has unwittingly belittled even that golden-tongued romance which has first
awakened his poetic life, but which now he lays aside. For "in the
old oak forest " our dreams need not be barren: Spenser's poetic
world, for instance, was far away, but he took there a mind and a
heart stored with memories of his own experience. Keats realizes
that if he too is to be a "man of achievement," he must learn to think
and feel.
Keats had found that flights of the imagination into the
dream-world with wings unladen with the fertilizing pollen of
the wisdom of human knowledge were unfruitful. The poetic
world itself is a world of abstractions; but, unless the poet




70


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


carries with him in dream-flight a soul made wise by contact
with nature and humanity, a memory loaded with rich human experiences and adventure into the heights and depths of
life, that flight will be a barren one, and will end in empty,
aimless soaring. For Keats's best statement of this idea we
must turn again to the admirable Mansion of Life letter:
The difference of Sensations with and without knowledge appears to
me this: in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand
fathoms deep and being blown up again, without wings, and with all
the horror of a bare-shouldered creature - in the former case, our
shoulders are fledged, and we go through the same air and space
without fear.
Thus Keats picturesquely summarizes the whole truth of
the matter, as he had arrived at it by the May of I8I8. So
now he demands knowledge. It is not that a poet should give
up the life of Sensations entirely, though it is true that in a
few extreme moments he seems to suggest that; it is merely
that when excursions into the world of abstractions are taken,
the shoulders should be full-fledged, the flight on the wings
of an educated, disciplined imagination, rather than on the
bare sails of fruitless fancy. In other words, there must be an
intellectual as well as an imaginative basis for poetry.
These early months of hard thinking in the winter and
spring of i818 had indeed been fruitful. Keats had suddenly
discovered a serious deficiency in his poetic equipment. True
poetry required intellectual, philosophic, experiential background. In these things, compared with great cosmopolitans
like Wordsworth and Milton, he found himself to be sadly
defective. With unusual vigor and resolution, he determined
to remedy his lack. His whole mind was for the time turned
in this direction. It is not strange then that we should sometimes find him during this period stating the case for knowledge and wisdom with overemphasis-an overemphasis that
has led some critics to the conclusion that Keats had permitted his zeal for philosophy to override his belief in the
imaginative and poetic. A study of all his utterances, how



"SENSATION" VERSUS KNOWLEDGE                71
ever, proves that this was not the case: not only do the claims
of the imagination continually present themselves, but they at
times assert their rights so clamorously as seriously to threaten
to dispossess philosophy entirely. All of which shows that
though Keats had been able to state admirably the right relationship between sensation and philosophy, he had not yet been
able to accept his reasoned conclusions; he could not yet see
just how the marriage between the two faculties could be consummated. In a later chapter, I shall show how Keats gradually came to understand the means by which a poet could
still adhere to his dream world and yet " envisage all reality "
there, and how in so doing he arrived nearer the state toward
which he aspired-" with the yearning Passion I have for
the beautiful connected and made one with the ambition of
my intellect."




CHAPTER V


THE "MYSTER Y"
Read me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!
I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, - just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,
And there is sullen mist, —even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me, -even such,
Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet, -
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, - that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,
But in the world of thought and mental might!
IN these lines, written under the brooding influence of mountain scenery, we find the poet restating in his own admirable
way the old, old enigma of the ages: The universe and man!
Why? What? Whither? By the time this poem was written
this had become to Keats an urgent problem insistently demanding solution. Three weeks earlier, on the same walking
trip with Brown during which he had seen Ben Nevis, he had
come unexpectedly one morning in full view of Ailsa Rock,
rising sheer, one thousand feet, out of the sea. Keats, it seems,
surveyed the scene in awe and breathless wonder; it was sublime: Ailsa rearing her head high in misty vastness- it was
raining -gave him a " complete idea of a deluge."   "It was
fifteen miles distant and seemed close upon us," he wrote to
his brother Tom.... "Ailsa struck me very suddenlyreally, I was a bit alarmed." Some of the mystery and sub1 Written upon Ben Nevis, August 2, 1818. It was a cloudy, misty day,
but at times the mist lifted leaving all clear. The poem was evidently
composed at a time when the vapor had settled down thickly.
72




THE "MYSTERY"


73


limity of it he put into a sonnet - the sonnet known as To
Ailsa Rock. " When," asks the poet, as if fascinated and awed
by a sense of the infinitude of old slow-moving time and of the
magnitude of the power that underlies nature's long unfathomable processes,
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When, from the sun, was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is't since the mighty power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathoms dreams -
But Ailsa does not answer
Thou answer'st not; for thou art dead asleep;
Thy life is but two dead eternities,
The last in air; the former in the deep!
Again the age-old query; again the failure to find a fit reply.
In these two sonnets there is expressed something of the
"Burden of the Mystery" that throughout Keats's life so
often weighed heavily upon his spirit. The Ben Nevis lines
especially suggest a moment of agnosticism, and we detect in
them a note that recalls old Omar's sad confession of the
futility of thought:
Earth could not answer, nor the Seas that mourn
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn.
For it seems that Keats, like Omar, was facing here a "Door
to which " he " found no Key," a " Veil through which " he
"could not see." But this is only a temporary mood; he still
strives hopefully to pierce the veil. As we have seen, it becomes a part of his poetic creed that the mystery must be
solved, and he finds no rest nor peace of mind until the burden
upon his mind is lightened. Some of his attempts to unravel
the tangled skein amply demonstrate with what near approach
to prophetic vision the young poet had been endowed.
In considering this aspect of Keats's thought I wish to speak
first of the more immediate phase of the Mystery which gave
him unquiet hours, that is, the why of the pain and cruelty
here on earth.




74


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Contrary to the opinion so often held by critics, Keats approached life with vivid interest and wide-open eyes. He was
not blind to the truth of Nature, as was Shelley, who perceived
only beauty and harmony there; he saw her as she was, with
all her cruel disregard of life, and anticipated by many years
Tennyson's vision of " Nature, red in tooth and claw," shrieking " with ravine" against God's creed of love. Moreover, he
felt with all the shock of which keen sensibility is capable the
suffering of humanity.
The Epistle to Reynolds is a bit of verse remarkable as a
commentary on Keats's reaction to these things. The epistle
as a whole is really a running over in another form of that
chain of thought that had been haunting his mind since, he
wrote Sleep and Poetry and was finally so adequately expressed in the Mansion of Life letter-the progressive steps
in poetic development from the stage of the " Thoughtless
Chamber " to that of a perception of the " Burden of the Mystery." But the latter part of the poem, as Mr. Bradley has
clearly pointed out in his Keats and "Philosophy," specifically reveals what aspect of things " most especially and constantly reminded Keats of 'the burden of the mystery.'" It
shows, too, how heavily these things bore upon his spirit at
this time.
O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake,
Would all their colours from the sunset take:
From something of material sublime,
Rather than shadow our own soul's day-time
In the dark void of night. For in the world
We jostle,- but my flag is not unfurl'd
On the Admiral-staff,- and so philosophize
I dare not yet! Oh, never will the prize,
High reason, and the love of good and ill,
Be my award! Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought;
Or is it that imagination brought
Beyond its proper bound, yet still confin'd,
Lost in a sort of Purgatory blind,




THE "MYSTERY"


75


Cannot refer to any standard law
Of either earth or heaven? It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn, -
It forces us in summer skies to mourn,
It spoils the singing of the Nightingale.
And then he comes to the specific starting point of all this
mournful reflection:
Dear Reynolds! I have a mysterious tale,
And cannot speak it: the first page I read
Upon a Lampit rock of green sea-weed
Among the breakers; 'twas a quiet eve,
The rocks were silent, the wide sea did weave
An untumultuous fringe of silver foam
Along the flat brown sand; I was at home
And should have been most happy, —but I saw
Too far into the sea, where every maw
The greater on the less feeds evermore.But I saw too distinct into the core
Of an eternal fierce destruction,
And so from happiness I far was gone.
This relentless cruelty seems too awful to be borne; it sickens
him, and he cannot banish the sight from his mental eye:
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,The Shark at savage prey, - the Hawk at pounce, -
The gentle Robin, like a Pard or Ounce,
Ravening a worm,.
How heavy sits the " Burden of the Mystery" upon the
young shoulders of the poet! How glad would be a full escape
from all such thoughts! But Keats knows full well that for
him there is no escape. A month later almost to a day, April
25, he is writing, "There is but one way for me. The road
lies through application, study, and thought. I will pursue
it.... I have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious, and a love for philosophy; were
I calculated for the former, I should be glad. But as I am
not, I shall turn all my soul to the latter."
Keats's attitude toward the whole vexing question of the




76


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


why of a cruel world is further shown by his reactions to
human suffering. The sight and thought of physical misery
among men and women filled the young poet with sorrow.
In the presence of sickness and pain, he seems to have been
moved to the point of feverish concern and pity. From his
childhood, Keats had been in the midst of illness, suffering,
and death. It must have been in a sad mood, pondering on
these things, that he wrote to Fanny Brawne in July, I819,
"I have never known any unalloy'd Happiness for many days
together: the death or sickness of some one has always spoilt
my hours." When he was only nine years old, just after he
had been put to school at Enfield, in I804, his father was
killed, his skull fractured by a fall from his horse. Six years
later, in I8io, the mother died of consumption after a lingering illness, during which the affectionate lad John, facing the
possibility of losing his second parent, hung over her with
the most beautiful and patient devotion to the last. Then
came the slow wasting away and death of the loved brother
Tom, with Keats at his side always, watching, often in feverish
agony, the certain dissolution of body going on before him.
Something of this experience must be reflected in that line in
the Ode to a Nightingale, when Keats is describing a world of
fret and weariness and fever,
Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies.
How powerfully the whole situation affected him may be
discerned from passages in his letters at this time. Passionately he wrote to Dilke: " I wish I could say Tom was any
better. His identity presses upon me so all day that I am
obliged to go out —and although I intended to have given
some time to study alone, I am obliged to write and plunge
into abstract images to ease myself of his countenance, his
voice, and feebleness - so that I live now in a continual fever."
One of the records we have of the effect of all this upon his
thinking is that he was faced squarely by the problem of immortality. "I will not enter into any parsonic comments on




THE "MYSTERY"


77


death - yet the common observations of the commonest people
on death are true as their proverbs. I have scarce a doubt
of immortality of some nature or other- neither had Tom."
And we must not neglect another element in Keats's experience that brought him face to face with the mystery of pain
and death. Keats served his term as a surgeon's apprentice,
and must have seen at first hand some of the misery that sickness and disease bring. Before the days of improved methods
and twilight sleep the practice of obstetrics furnished experiences that would move a heart of stone, while the crude surgery
of the time, unalleviated by the blessing of anaesthetics, must
have been a recurrent agony to a witness of Keats's sensitive
nature. That the sufferings with which he came in contact
here did not pass unrecorded in his impressionable brain is
proved by later outbursts in his letters. To Benjamin Bailey,
he declares:
One saying of yours I shall never forget - you may not recollect
it - it being perhaps said when you were looking on the Surface and
seeming of Humanity alone, without a thought of the past or the
future - or the deeps of good and evil - merely you said, "Why
should woman suffer? " Aye, why should she? " By heavens, I'd coin
my very soul and drop my Blood for Drachmas." These things are,
and he who feels how incompetent the most skyey Knight-errantry is
to heal this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand
of thought.
Quite as significant is another passionate declaration to
Bailey: " Were it my choice, I would reject a Petrarchal coronation-on account of my dying day,2 and because women
have cancers."
The mystery of human life and its evils were preying heavily
on the spirit of Keats these days. In the beginning of the
letter in which he cries out so sharply, "Why should woman
2 In his article in the John Keats Memorial Volume, Professor Bradley
interprets this as a vehement expression against death as an obvious evil,
similar to, though more violent than, his usual attitude toward death in
the letters as distinguished from his prevailing attitude in the poemswhere he regards death as a "pure good, a friend, almost a Saviour."
(P. 53, 54.) But a few lines farther down in this same letter we find,




78


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


suffer? " he has been saying, " Twelve days have pass'd since
your last reached me. -What has gone through the myriads
of human minds since the I2th?     We talk of the immense
Number of Books, the Volumes ranged thousands by thousands- but perhaps more goes through the human intelligence
in Twelve days than ever was written. —How has that unfortunate family lived through the twelve?"
As Professor Bradley suggests in his Keats and "Philosophy" the results of all this musing on the "unfortunate
family" of human beings is a more or less " settled conviction
that wisdom is sorrow, happiness only to the thoughtless, life
something to be 'undergone.' "  Mr. Bradley says a " settled
conviction " but I say " more or less settled," for Keats was
not at all content to let the matter rest there. It is a fact
that, writing from Scotland, after a visit to the Burns memorials, Keats could say, "It is true that out of suffering
there is no dignity, no greatness, that in the most abstracted
pleasure there is no happiness." But it is also a fact that in
spite of his frequent revolt against the whole idea of dwelling
on such matters, as, over and over, his abstraction-loving impulses asserted themselves, he was constantly, earnestly striving to find a solution to the " Mystery "; and perhaps in this
solution he hoped to be able to discover a more smiling aspect
of existence.
There are various passages in his letters wherein we see his
mind at work reaching out after explanations. In November,
18I7, he is venturing an opinion on thelife after death. A
life of " Sensations," he says, is "a shadow of reality to come
-and this consideration has further convinced me, — for it
has come as auxiliary to another favorite speculation of mine,
-that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we
"... and now I am never alone without rejoicing that there is such a
thing as death -without placing my ultimate in the glory of dying for a
great human purpose." Is not Keats rather saying then that he would
reject a Petrarchal Coronation because in comparison with the glory of
dying for a great human purpose such an empty honor would be insignificant? A close reading of the lines seems to show this to be his meaning.




THE "MYSTERY"


79


called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone." And,
again, a year later, in the same letter that contains the expression of his own and his brother Tom's conviction that
there is some kind of immortality, he throws out a further
suggestion as to the nature of the future life:
The goings on of the world makes me dizzy. There you are with
Birkbeck -here I am with Brown -sometimes I fancy an immense
separation, and sometimes as at present, a direct communication of
Spirit with you. That will be one of the grandeurs of immortality.
There will be no space, and consequently the only commerce between
spirits will be by their intelligence of each other- when they will
completely understand each other, while we in this world merely comprehend each other in different degrees - the higher the degree of
good so higher is our Love and Friendship. I have been so little used
to writing lately that I am afraid you will not smoke my meaning, so
I will give you an example. Suppose Brown or Haslam or anyone
whom I understand in the next degree to what I do you, were in
America, they would be so much the farther from me in proportion as
their identity was less impressed upon me. Now the reason why I
do not feel at the present moment so far from you is that I remember
your. Ways and Manners and actions; I know your manner of thinking, your manner of feeling; I know what shape your joy or your
sorrow would take; I know the manner of your walking, standing,
sauntering, sitting down, laughing, punning, and every action so truly
that you seem near to me. You will remember me in the same manner
- and the more when I tell you I shall read a passage of Shakespeare
every Sunday at ten o'clock - you read one at the same time, and
we shall be as near each other as blind bodies can be in the same
room.3
Here, in addition to some lively intimations of the nature
of the human spirit in its possible power of annihilating space
so that even in this world, under right conditions, there may
be free "commerce" between sympathetic minds, no matter
how distant from each other physically, Keats seems to be
speaking as if upon at least one riddle of life, the question as
to whether this world of pains is the be-all and the end-all,
he has reached some fairly definite conclusions. There is to
3 To George and Georgiana Keats. Dec., 1818. Forman. Vol. IV, p.
I9I.




80


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


be a future life of some kind; it is to be a pleasurable existence in which the happiness of earth is to be " repeated in a
finer tone "; in a universal understanding by its participants,
through direct spiritual communication, it is to have a grandeur all its own. But this does not in any sense mean that
Keats accepted the Christian religion. Keats admired Jesus,
and classed him with Socrates as one of the two entirely disinterested men who have lived on earth.4  But he felt it was
to be lamented that the history of Jesus "was written and
revised by Men interested in the pious frauds of Religion."
Like Nietszche, Keats must have believed that there has lived
" only one Christian, and he died on the Cross." Perhaps on
his death-bed, he learned to believe that there had been born
a second, for Severn's beautiful disinterested care for him must
have seemed inspired by the Christ's teachings.
Though there is nothing in the poet's own writings to show
his trend that way, Severn records that in his last days Keats
became a Christian. Here is Mr. Severn's own account of it,
as it occurs in The Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame, published in
the Atlantic Monthly, April, I863:
On finding me inflexible in my purpose of remaining with him he
became calm and tranquilly said that he was sure why I held up so
patiently was owing to my Christian faith,- that he now felt convinced how much every human being required the support of religion
that he might die decently.... "Now, my dear Severn, I am sure
if you could get some of the works of Jeremy Taylor to read to me,
I might become really a Christian, and leave this world in peace.".. I read some passages to him, and prayed with him, and I could
tell by the grasp of his dear hand that his mind was reviving.... At
last I had the consolation of finding him calm, trusting, and more prepared for his end than I was.... In all he then uttered he breathed
a simple Christian spirit; indeed, I always think that he died a
Christian, that "Mercy" was trembling on his dying lips, and that
his tortured soul was received by those Blessed Hands which could
alone welcome it.
The most mature and complete expression of Keats's thinking on the whole vexing problem of life and its contradictions
4 See Chapter VI, p. 98.




THE "MYSTERY"


is to be found in the long journal letter of the spring of I819
written to his brother and sister-in-law in America. "Here,"
as Mr. Bradley explains, "he sets aside both the 'vale of
tears' doctrine of popular orthodoxy and the 'perfectibility'
doctrine of Dilke and Shelley, and, very apologetically, develops the idea that the obstacles and hardships which may
seem mere lamentable evils, and to him had once seemed incompatible with the Beauty which yet must be truth, are
necessary to the formation and development of individual
souls." Keats in effect outlines a scheme of individual salvation, with the world not a "vale of tears," but a " vale of
Soul-making"; the world is a school, and the human heart
the "horn-book" of the school.      He also suggests certain
philosophical problems as to the nature and origin of life and
the character of the ultimate reality. I know of nothing in all
Keats's writings that carries the mind further in so many
different directions, nothing that points more strongly to his
mental struggles to understand the meanings and relationships
of life's baffling phenomena, his persistent reaching out after
truth in the light of his own experience and observation, nothing that shows how far he had gone toward a satisfactory
philosophic reconciliation of the facts of existence. I quote
the passage at length:
I have been reading lately two very different books, Robertson's
America and Voltaire's Siecle de Louis XIV. It is like walking arm
in arm between Pizarro and the great-little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we see the great body of people in both instances; in
the first when Men might seem to inherit quiet of Mind from unsophisticated senses; from uncontamination of civilization and especially from their being as it were estranged from the mutual helps of
Society and its mutual injuries -and thereby more immediately
under the Protection of Providence -even there they had mortal
pains to bear as bad, or even worse than Bailiffs, Debts and Poverties
of civilized Life. The whole appears to resolve into this - that Man
is originally a poor forked creature subject to the same mischances as
the beasts of the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of
some kind or other. If he improves by degrees his bodily accommodations and comforts -at each stage, at each ascent there are waiting




82


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


for him a fresh set of annoyances- he is mortal and there is still a
heaven with its Stars above his head. The most interesting question
that can come before us is, How far by the persevering endeavors of a
seldom appearing Socrates Mankind may be made happy - I can
imagine such happiness carried to an extreme - but what must it end
in? —Death -and who could in any such a case bear with death?
The whole troubles of life which are now frittered away in a series
of years, would then be accumulated for the last days of a being who
instead of hailing its approach would leave this world as Eve left
Paradise. But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility - the nature of the world will not admit of it - the inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself.  Let the fish
Philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in winter time and they
shall be in continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at
the Poles and at the Sands of Africa, whirlpools and volcanoes. Let
men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly
Happiness. The point at which Man may arrive is as far as the
parallel state in inanimate nature and no further. For instance suppose a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morning, it
enjoys itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun-it cannot
escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances-they are as native to
the world as itself - not more can man be happy in spite, the worldly
elements will prey upon his nature. The common cognomen of this
world among the misguided and superstitious is " a vale of tears "
from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition
of God and taken to Heaven. What a little circumscribed straightened
notion!
The Vale of Soul-Making
Call the world if you please "The vale of Soul-making." Then
you will find out the use of the world. (I am speaking now in the
highest terms for human nature admitting it to be immortal which I
will here take for granted for the purpose of showing a thought which
has struck me concerning it.)  I say "Soul-making "- Soul as distinguished from an Intelligence. There may be intelligences or sparks
of divinity in millions —but they are not Souls till they acquire
identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of
perception - they know and they see and they are pure, in short they
are God.- How then are Souls to be made? 5 How then are these
5 There is a possibility that Hunt and Keats had talked on this subject
of soul-making. At any rate it is worth noting the similarity of Hunt's
ideas expressed in a letter to Shelley on the death of his child, William:




THE "MYSTERY"


83


sparks which are God to have identity given them - so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How but by
the medium of a world like this?. This point I sincerely wish to consider because I think it a grander system of salvation than the christian
religion -or rather it is a system of Spirit creation. This is effected
by three grand materials acting the one upon the other for a series
of years. These three materials are the Intelligence - the human
heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind), and the World or
Elemental space suited for the proper action of Mind and Heart on
each other for the purpose of forming the Soul or Intelligence destined
to possess the sense of Identity. I can scarcely express what I but
dimly perceive - and yet I think I perceive it - that you may judge
the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible. I
will call the world a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little
children to read- I will call the human heart the horn Book read in
that School —and I will call the Child able to read, the Soul made
from that School and its horn book. Do you not see how necessary a
World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it
a Soul? A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand
diverse ways. Not merely is the Heart a Hornbook, it is the Mind's
Bible, it is the Mind's experience, it is the text from which the Mind
or Intelligence sucks its identity.6 As various as the Lives of Men
are - so various become their Souls, and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Identical Souls of the sparks of his own essence.
This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does
not offend our reason and humanity - I am convinced that many difficulties which christians labour under would vanish before it  there
is one which even now strikes me- the salvation of Children. In
" I do not know that a soul is born with us; but we seem to me, to attain
to a soul, some later, some earlier; and when we have got that, there is a
look in our eye, a sympathy in our cheerfulness, and a' yearning and grave
beauty in our thoughtfulness that seems to say, 'O.ur mortal dress may fall
off when it will; our trunk and our leaves may go; we have shot up our
blossom into an immortal air.'"
Hunt's Correspondence. Vol. I, p. I30.
6 This idea as to the value of difficulties in the making of a man is not
a new one; back in May, 18i7, he had written to Haydon:
" However, I must think that difficulties nerve the Spirit of a Man -
they make our Prime Objects a Refuge as well as a Passion. The Trumpet
of Fame is as a tower of Strength, the ambitious bloweth it and is safe."
Forman. Vol. IV, p. I8.
Let us add this comment from Dostioevsky:
"May it not be that man occasionally loves something besides prosperity? May it not be that he loves adversity? And may not adversity be
as good for him as happiness? "- The Underworld.




84


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


them the spark or intelligence returns to God without any identityit having had no time to learn of and be altered by the heart -or seat
of the human Passions. It is pretty generally suspected that the
christian scheme has been copied from the ancient Persian and Greek
Philosophers.7 Why may they not have made this simple thing even
more simple for common apprehension by introducing Mediators and
Personages in the same manner as in the heathen mythology abstractions are personified? Seriously I think it probable that this system
of Soul-making may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and
personal schemes of Redemption among the Zoroastrians, the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the human species must
have their carved Jupiter; so another part must have the palpable and
named Mediator and Saviour, their Christ, their Oromanes and their
Vishnu. If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it
may not be, I will put you in the place where I began this series of
thoughts -I mean I began by seeing how man was formed by circumstances - and what are circumstances but touchstones of his
heart? and what are touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers
or alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but his Soul?
- and what was his soul before it, came into the world and had
these provings and alterations and perfectionings? -An intelligence
without Identity- and how is this Identity to be made? Through the
medium of the Heart? and how is the heart to become this Medium
but in a world of circumstances?
The letter forms an interesting commentary on so many
phases of Keats's thinking that there will not be space to
mention all. But we must pause briefly on some of the ideas
that suggest related aspects of his thought. For the poet, we
again must infer that the one way is to know the human heart,
and to live, to become able to feel the pulse-beat of a living
humanity. Concerning the powers and limitations of the
human mind, what Keats says here should be compared with
his own ideas as to the creative powers of the imagination
7 Keats probably spent more time thinking of and discussing like matters than is usually supposed, as may be guessed from such casual remarks
as the following:
"I have been over to Dilke's this evening —there with Brown we have
been talking of different and indifferent Matters —of Euclid, of Metaphisics, of the Bible, of Shakespeare, of the-horrid System and consequences
of the fagging at great schools."
-October, 1818. Forman. Vol. IV, p. 185.




THE "MYSTERY"


85


and with the thought of others of his day. It is plain that
the end toward which all things move is the creation of the
human Mind, or Intelligence, or Soul. This not only makes
the mind of man of tremendous importance, but it justifies a
world of pains and troubles as necessary.8    Only in such a
world could the heart "feel and suffer" in the thousand
diverse ways requisite to the molding of individual beings.
Thus, even as Wordsworth proclaims "How exquisitely the
Individual Mind" is fitted "to the external World," and
"how exquisitely," in turn this " external World is fitted to
the Mind," so Keats is here almost as sweepingly justifying
the whole scheme of creation because it is so admirably designed for soul-making. In this, Keats has something in common, not only with Wordsworth, but with the main current
of thought of his day, which, as Mr. Bradley says, evidenced
"an unusually strong sense of the power and the possibilities
of man or of the mind." 9 Yet Keats does not permit himself
to fall into any of the absurdities that some of the thinkers of
this school betrayed. He does go far with Wordsworth in his
feeling -
Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
Nor aught of blinder vacancy, scooped out
By help of dreams, can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man,
My haunt and the main region of my song
(The Recluse, 11. 788-794.)
But there is nothing of Fichte's wild extravagance in making
man's mind not only the center but the creator and controller
of the universe. Nor does he make the mistake of Schopen8 " And through this pressure of the world upon them, souls recover
their primitive unity with each other, and develop forms of life in which
the absolute begins to show itself, and the particular soul to be fused and
recast through larger experience, such as social self-sacrifice, art and science,
or religion."
-Bosanquet. The Value and Destiny of the Individual.
9 English Poetry and German Philosophy, p. 13.




86


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


hauer, who taught that the only means of escape from an intolerable world was through willing oneself away from it all,
into a subjective region of aesthetic beauty. It is true that
Keats does show at times a flash of something like Schopenhauer's will to aesthetic escape. It is plainly apparent in the
Ode to a Nightingale, as we have seen. But he is too clearsighted to be deluded into a belief that the will of man can
be so potent as to effect a permanent escape from the facts
of life. He is ready to trust the imagination to create even
greater things than the creator himself has made, when, as
we have seen, these creations are based on the realities of the
known world; but there is no escape from things as they are
-" the nature of the world will not admit of it ".. "Let
the fish philosophize the ice away" in winter time; let man
exterminate the Poles and the sands of Africa, and whirlpools
and volcanoes, then may he hope to be free from the "hardships and disquietudes" of existence. As Keats says in another place, " These things are," and there is no running away
from them. Keats's direct argument is against the Godwin
perfectibles in their belief that all our ills are due to manmade institutions and could be remedied by their abolition,
and it strikes indirectly at the heart of all theories that exaggerate the possible capacities of the mind to change the world
into whatever thing it would.
What shall be the ideal of the individual man in this " vale
of Soul-making," so excellently fashioned to produce identities from the sparks thrown off by the God of the universe?
We find Keats's answer in an earlier part of this same letter.'0
Man should adopt as his motto a " humble standard of disinterestedness," such as actuated the lives of Socrates and Jesus.
This is a feeling that should " be carried to its highest pitch,
as there is no fear of its ever injuring society- which it would
do, I fear, if it were pushed to an extremity. For in wild
nature the Hawk would lose his Breakfast of Robins and
the Robin his of worms- the Lion must starve as well as the
10 See Chapter VI, p. 97, where this letter is quoted at length.




THE "MYSTERY"


87


Swallow. The greater part of Men make their way with the
same instinctiveness, the same unwandering eye from their
purposes, the same animal eagerness as the Hawk." It follows
then that, even though life would be all upset by a too literal
observance of the excellent ideal of disinterestedness, it yet
remains the best standard for man to adopt: the conflict between his idealism and his native instincts will but lead to a
desirable practicable compromise.
And so again the healthy element of balance and equilibrium
in Keats's mental nature asserts itself. Disinterestedness is
the ideal, but those very facts in the world that make it a fit
place in which to develop souls - the necessity for direct " instinctive" pursuit of objects and the resultant struggle and
hardship —would make a complete realization of this ideal
impossible. "The life of Nature, he observes, depends on
such pursuit carried indeed so far that it involves the destruction of one creature by another; and here, it will be noticed,
he mentions those very proceedings of the hawk and the
robin which had once horrified him and appeared incompatible
with Beauty, but which now his philosophy has taught him to
accept."11 It is probably not altogether satisfactory, not quite
complete, reconciliation, but such as it is, it suggests a progress toward a healthy philosophic attitude with some of the
settled equanimity of spirit for which Keats so earnestly
strove. For its effect upon his poetic life, we may turn to a
continuation of the long journal letter in which these reflections on disinterestedness and the "vale of Soul-making"
occur. It is fifteen days later,12' and the Ode to Psyche is enclosed. It has been written, then, during the period of philosophic calm induced by these reasonings through which Keats
11 Bradley: Keats and "Philosophy." John Keats Memorial Volume,
p. 52. Mr. Bradley has treated this subject with his usual power and clearness. But he was simply making a few comments for the Memorial Volume
and did not go into the matter exhaustively. There are times too when I
cannot follow Mr. Bradley in his conclusions. Here, however, I am in
perfect agreement.
12 The section on "disinterestedness" was written March 19, that on
the "vale of Soul-making" April I5. This is April 30, I8I9.




88


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


had finally arrived at comparative peace with the world, in
spite of all its horrid incongruities, and had found a justification for its suffering and misery. Here is Keats's comment:
The following Poem - the last I have written - is the first and the
only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have for
the most part dash'd off my lines in a hurry.13 This I have done
leisurely- I think it reads the more richly for it, and will I hope
encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable and
healthy spirit.
This poem then was done in "a peaceable and healthy
spirit," obviously Keats's ideal for poetic composition. Is it
too much to attribute that peace and health of mind to the
recent philosophic triumph in reconciliation? The evidence
indeed points that way. It is worth recalling too that between
March and September of this year, all the great odes, beginning with the Ode on Indolence, evidently composed about
March I9, and ending with the Ode to Autumn, September,
I8I9, had their origin. It is the period of Keats's nearest
approach to philosophic resignation; it is also the period of
his supreme poetic achievement.
I have pointed out that in the Vale of Soul-Making letter
there is a clue as to Keats's metaphysical ideas -his notion
that men originate as sparks of being thrown out from God,
a conception of the universe as a unity -that we find borne
out in other places in his writings. But inasmuch as this
more strictly metaphysical phase of the "Mystery " was not
of such pressing concern to Keats as were those more directly
touching our immediate actualities, and inasmuch too as the
13 In view of testimony we have from Bailey in regard to the writing
of Endymion this statement seems a little questionable. Bailey says: "His
mode of composition is best described by recounting our habits of study for
one day during the month he visited me at Oxford. He wrote, and I read,
sometimes at the same table, and sometimes at separate desks or tables,
from breakfast to the time of our going out for exercise, - generally two or
three o'clock. He sat down to his task, - which was about 50 lines a day,
-with his paper before him, and wrote with as much regularity, and apparently as much ease, as he wrote his letters....  Sometimes he fell
short of his allotted task, but not often. But he never forced himself."
Houghton MSS. Quoted by Sidney Colvin in John Keats, p. I43.




THE "MYSTERY"                    89
poet's reflections on this problem are closely connected with
his theory of Beauty, I defer consideration of them until we
come to the chapter entitled What is Beauty? and shall here
proceed to what seemed to be a more difficult problem with
Keats than that of philosophic reconciliation: namely, the
adjustment of his theory of detachment to his theory that
the poet must concern himself with the vital matters of life,
and the combination of them into an aesthetic that could
comprehend both, and make each a complement to the other.




CHAPTER VI


DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY              FURTHER
RECONCILIATION
WE have seen in the last chapter how knowledge and thought
had led Keats to a place in his thinking where the " Burden
of the Mystery" was eased in his acceptance of the world as
it is, its pain and hardship a necessary part in the great scheme
of " Soul-making." I wish now to show how he came to a
further reconciliation of his theory of detachment, of poetry
as aesthetic escape, with his conviction that the great poet
must concern himself with humanity and the realities of life.
In Chapter IV I have shown that Keats had found that
"philosophy," that is, knowledge and reason, might have a
rightful place in poetry. Not only did it ease the "Burden
of the Mystery," but it aided in sharpening the vision into
the meaning of life. In the end, through the alchemy of the
imaginative powers of the poet, the passions and affections of
men may be almost etherealized; but in its inception, poetry
must draw from the materials of life, made intelligible through
the operation of reason and the intellect. But I also suggested
there, that Keats did not find aesthetic peace in this apparent acceptance of philosophy, but that, probably owing to his
difficulty in bringing himself to see how the imagination and
the intellect might unite harmoniously, the old conflict still
went on.
The letter and poems of late i8I8 and all of I8I9 contain
much direct and indirect evidence of this conflict. The argument for philosophy is to be found in such passages as that
in Keats's letter to George, March, I8I9, where he is exclaiming: " Give me this credit, and you will not think that
on my account I repeat Milton's lines
90




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY


91


"How charming is divine Philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose,
But musical as is Apollo's lute."
No, not for myself, feeling grateful as I do to have got into a state
of mind to relish them properly. Nothing ever becomes real until it
is experienced -even a proverb is no proverb to you till life has
illustrated it."
Then, in this same letter he confesses, "This is the very
thing in which consists Poetry, and if so it is not so fine a
thing as philosophy - for the same reason that an eagle is not
so fine a thing as a truth." It was about this time, too, that
he was declaring that he was determined to write no more except as a " running over " of knowledge and experience, - all
of which might be taken as evidence of a decisive swing
toward philosophy.
But one can find even stronger evidence condemning philosophy and exalting the dream world. There is, for example,
the Ode to a Nightingale, with its decisive elevation of imaginative luxury and poetic escape; there is the Ode on a Grecian
Urn, with its insistence on the authenticity of the imagination;
and, finally, there are the oft-quoted lines from Lamia:
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
expressing apparent extreme revulsion against the philosophic.
The truth is, Keats had neither accepted nor rejected either
philosophy or detachment to the exclusion of the other. He
had been long engaged in a labyrinthian dispute with himself,
in which he was earnestly seeking to reconcile his leaning
toward the pure dream-world with the equally decisive urge
toward the world of actuality and a philosophic understanding
of it. In that conflict, sometimes the dream-world had the
better of it, sometimes philosophy. But Keats never repudiated his early theory of poetic detachment; he never turned
to a pursuit of " the Burden of the Mystery " or to any form
of higher thought life whatever to the exclusion of his imagi



92


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


native abstractions. Even those lines in the Fall of Hyperion
which have of late been interpreted by Sir Sidney Colvin as
a deep pessimistic revulsion against any but philosophic poetry
and a special repudiation of the dreamer poet, read in their
proper setting, do not at all show a discarding of the dreamworld conception. Indeed the'Fall of Hyperion is in itself a
vision; it is captioned " A Vision"; the whole poem is set in
as much of an otherworld atmosphere as is Endymion itself.
The poet's vision in Hyperion, induced by the drinking of a
magic potion, is a trance as genuine as the ecstatic soaring
of the shepherd-prince in quest of his ideal Cynthia in the
earlier work.
The real point is that Keats here makes plain that no aspirants can be admitted to the holy of holies of poetic insight
except those who have first learned thoroughly the secrets of
the human heart; he is simply uttering a profound anathema
against mere visionaries, mere dreamers, those who would
ascend into the realm of the ideal bearing no wisdom, no experiences, no knowledge of men. There are some contradictions in the passage, let us remember, and the lines have been
too often explained without reference to these. Moreover, it
has come to be taken for granted that the whole additional
section in the Revision should be interpreted autobiographically, and that, forsooth, the aspiring poet here is Keats himself at the period in which he writes. This is probably not
the case. Just as the shepherd-prince in Endymion is any
poet, Keats no doubt had any poet in mind here. There is
some very good evidence to show that one of Keats's ideals in
poetry was that universals, not particulars, should be represented.1 As to the contradictions I have mentioned let us
read parts of the passage in question and study more closely
its significance:
"Those whom thou spakest of are no visionaries,"
Rejoin'd that voice; "they are no dreamers weak;
They seek no wonder but the human face,
1 See the testimony of Reynolds in What is Poetry? Chapter X, page I99.




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY


93


No music but a happy-noted voice:
They come not here, they have no thought to come;
And thou art here, for thou art less than they.
What benefit canst thou do, or all thy tribe,
To the great world? Thou art a dreaming thing,
A fever of thyself: think of the earth;
What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee?
What haven? every creature hath its home,
Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,
Whether his labours be sublime or lowThe pain alone, the joy alone, distinct:
Only the dreamer venoms all his days,
Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.
Therefore, that happiness be somewhat shared,
Such things as thou art are admitted oft
Into like gardens thou didst pass erewhile;
And suffer'd in these temples:...
Art thou not of the dreamer Tribe? 2
The Poet and the dreamer are distinct
Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.
The one pours out a balm upon the World
The other vexes it." (Canto I, 11. i6i-i8i.)
The inconsistency lies in this: The aspirant is condemned
as a weak, dreaming thing, belonging to a tribe at sheer antipodes from the poet kind; yet, take note, this dreamer, here,
now, is a poet; he has already entered the shrouded sanctuary
of high poetry, and that means that in the past he has been no
mere dreaming, fevered thing - for none can reach this height
but those " to whom the miseries of the world are misery "else he would have died on the pavement and " rotted there";
he has entered this sanctuary in a trance state; he is in a
dream world; and here his sight is cleared for the eternal
mysteries. The inconsistency is apparent. The single poetical aspirant is playing at the same time both the role
of those mere weak visionaries who because they have no in2 These last five lines are not in ordinary versions, but it appears they
should be. They were evidently cancelled by the publisher Woodhouse,
without full warrant. Vide de Selincourt. Notes, p. 518.




94


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


sight into life must be doomed to failure, and of those who by
virtue of having drunk deep of the cup of earthly woes and
sufferings are qualified to ascend the altar of poetic truth.
Even though this were autobiographical it is obvious that
Keats could not be both at once. At most there could be a
condemnation only of what he once was in the thoughtless
days, not of what he was now.
Now, admitting that Keats had attempted to do a hard
thing in a hard way and had got a little tangled up in doing
it, after all is not the general meaning clear? A mere dreaming poet is doomed to failure; but a dreaming poet made wise
by earthly wisdom may reach the summit of poetic heights,
where he may see and know all that it is in the power of
human vision to discern. But this does not prove that Keats
had discarded his theory of detachment in favor of philosophy;
it only indicates that he had found a means of reconciling the
two methods of poetic approach. The poet must still fly to
his dream world, but in his flight he does not escape reality;
rather he carries with him, to shape and inform his vision, the
stored-up experiences of a life spent in sympathetic contact
with his fellow-men.
How had this reconciliation come about? For answer we
must turn to certain passages from Keats's writing on what
I have chosen to call his more mature theory of detachment.
Not that this theory originated in Keats's last years; on the
contrary we see evidences of it as early as the spring of 1817.
But the idea is one that seems to belong to riper intellect and
to more highly developed thought than the early instinctive
impulse to aesthetic escape. In one of the Marginalia found
on a fly leaf of Keats's copy of Troilus and Cressida, an i808
reprint of Shakespeare's folio of 1623, one finds this second
type of detachment first suggested. This was probably written
in the spring of 1817, for Keats was at that time carefully
re-reading Shakespeare. "The genius of Shakespeare," he
says, "was an innate universality- wherefore he had the
utmost achievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY                     95
indolent and kingly gaze. He could do man's utmost. His
plans of tasks to come were not of this world- if what he
purposed to do hereafter would not in his own Idea 'answer
the aim' how tremendous must have been his conception of
the ultimates." Shakespeare was to Keats the high priest of
poetry, and what he saw in the great dramatist at this time
may be taken as his ideal. Here the goal for the poet is to be
able to rise above material things to a place where he may
look down from the heights of superior wisdom and insight
upon the affairs of this world. This gaze is to be " kingly "
and "indolent."  The word "kingly" needs no explanation.
What Keats means by "indolent" may in part be inferred
from a passage in a later letter to his brothers, in which he
appears to be working around the same conception.... it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable
of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go
by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of
mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with halfknowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no
further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
It is evidently from such expressions as this that Mr. G. R.
Elliott draws his conclusion that what Keats sought was " high
poetic repose." However, what Keats is seeking for is not
mere repose, but calm power, with all the surety and strength
that the knowledge of such power gives. Keats was too
dynamic to seek simple repose; he did, however, desire a selfcontrolled capacity for contemplation.  What he actually
craved was that easy, lofty, contemplative attitude which permits the artist to see and know and express without the fever
of doubt and untempered emotion. The poet must be willing
to take the universe as he sees it, making use of his best perceptions without "irritable reaching out" after the unattain



96


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


able, and that, even though his is only half-knowledge. This
is " Negative Capability." A genius like Shakespeare, who
" could do men's utmost with ease," had the capacity to lose
himself completely in detached, contemplative, but penetrative
absorption in the world and men; this was the secret of his
great achievement.
There is ample proof that Keats strove for this serenity and
calmness of spirit for himself. The ideal is suggested in the
following:
Some think I have lost that poetical ardour and fire 'tis said I once
had -The fact is, perhaps I have; but, instead of that, I hope I
shall substitute a more thoughtful and quiet power. I am more frequently now contented to read and think, but now and then haunted
with ambitious thoughts. Quieter in my pulse, improved in my digestion, exerting myself against vexing speculations, scarcely content to
write the best verses for the fever they leave behind. I want to compose without this fever. I hope I one day shall.
Again he writes, " I have great hopes of success because I
make use of my judgment more deliberately than I have yet
done." And still more to the point is his comment on his
Ode to Psyche quoted in the last chapter, to the effect that
this poem was the first and only one with which he had taken
even moderate pains, all his others having been written in a
hurry; this one he had done leisurely, and hoped that it might
read the more richly for it, and so probably encourage him to
write other things " in a more peaceable and healthy spirit."
There are in the letters passages that help explain the nature
of this attitude of contemplative detachment he craved. It
seems that Keats was fond of imagining a supreme being as
looking down upon this world, perceiving and interpreting all
things with infinite understanding. In kind, this understanding is such as he as a poet possesses, but more infinite in scope.
" Mrs. Tighe and Beattie once delighted me," he says,...
"now I begin to see through them, and find nothing in them
or 2 weakness, and yet how many they still delight! Perhaps
2 That is, "I now find nothing at all in them, or if I do see anything
it is but weakness."




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY                          97
a superior being may look upon Shakespeare in the same light."
The state of mind of this Being is that of a fine intellectual,
impartial curiosity that analyzes, that may be amused by, the
goings on in this world, but always understands and finds
pleasure in them. There is much more in the following letter
than illustration of the idea I am developing, but for the
sake of coherence I must quote much that is not quite to the
point. Keats did not set out to prove a proposition in logic
when he wrote in one of his delightfully whimsical, philosophic
veins to his friends. His letters are therefore full, as he once
declared Shakespeare's sonnets to be, of " fine things said unintentionally," and reveal a lively mind at play or intense
grapple as the case may be, with the thoughts that thronged
its threshold; and rarely does he deny himself the luxury of a
little side-excursion into some related subject wherever the
paths of association lead. In their naive ramifications, his
reasonings might well become an interesting psychological
study in the laws of association. But here is his letter as he
wrote it:3
This morning I am in a sort of temper, indolent and supremely careless - I long after a stanza or two of Thomson's Castle of Indolence
-my passions are all asleep, from my having slumbered till nearly
eleven, and weakened the animal fibre all over me, to a delightful
sensation, about three degrees this side of faintness. If I had teeth of
pearl and the breath of lilies I should call it languor, but as I am 4 I
must call it laziness. In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the
brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such
a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no
unbearable power. Neither Poetry, nor Ambition, nor Love have any
alertness of countenance as they pass by me; they seem rather like
figures on a Greek vase5 - a Man and two women whom no one
but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only
happiness, and is a rare instance of the body overpowering the Mind.6
3 To George and Georgiana Keats, March, I8I9. Forman, Vol. V, p. 36.
4 Keats's note: " Especially as I have a black eye."
5 See the Ode on Indolence, probably written about this time - Colvin
gives March, I819- for the same words and similar metaphors.
6 Yet the whole letter shows how alertly the mind is at work. The fact
is, it is the body that is quiescent.




98


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


I have this moment received a note from Haslam, in which he expects
the death of his Father, who has been for some time in a state of
insensibility; his mother bears up, he says, very well, - I shall go to
town tomorrow to see him. This is the world -thus we cannot expect to give away many hours to pleasure. Circumstances are like
Clouds, continually gathering and bursting. While we are laughing,
the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events -
while we are laughing it sprouts, it grows, and suddenly bears a
poison fruit which we must pluck. Even so we have leisure to reason
on the misfortunes of our friends; our own touch us too nearly for
words. Very few men have ever arrived at a complete disinterestedness of Mind: very few have been influenced by a pure desire of the
benefit of other, —in the greater part of the Benefactors of Humanity some meretricious motive has sullied their greatness - some
melodramatic scenery has fascinated them. From the manner in
which I feel Haslam's misfortune I perceive how far I am from any
humble standard of disinterestedness. Yet this feeling ought to be
carried to its highest pitch, as there is no fear of its ever injuring
society - which it would do, I fear, pushed to an extremity. For in
wild nature the Hawk would lose his Breakfast of Robins and the
Robin his of Worms - the Lion must starve as well as the Swallow.
The greater part of Men make their way with the same instinctiveness,
the same unwandering eye from their purposes, the same animal
eagerness as the Hawk. The Hawk wants a Mate, so does the Man -
look at them both, they set about it and procure one in the same
manner. They want both a nest and they both set about it in the
same manner - they get their food in the same manner. The noble
animal Man for his amusement smokes his pipe - the Hawk balances about the clouds- that is the only difference of their leisures.
This it is that makes the Amusement of Life -to a speculative
Mind - I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a Stoat or a
fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass  the creature hath
a purpose, and its eyes are bright with it. I go amongst the buildings of a city and I see a man hurrying along- to what? the creature
has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it. But then, as Wordsworth says, "we have all one human heart —."  (i) There is an
electric fire in human nature tending to purify —so that among
these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is, that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish. I have no doubt that thousands of people
never heard of have had hearts completely disinterested: I can remember but two- Socrates and Jesus - Their histories evince it.
What I heard a little time ago, Taylor observes with respect to




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY


99


Socrates, may be said of Jesus - That he was so great a man that
though he transmitted no writing of his own to posterity, we have
his Mind and his sayings and his greatness handed to us by others.
It is to be lamented that the history of the latter was written and
revised by Men interested in the pious frauds of Religion. Yet
through all this I see his splendour. Even here, though I myself am
pursuing the same instinctive course as the veriest human animal
you can think of, I am, however young, writing at random, straining
at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness, without knowing the bearing of any one assertion, of any one opinion. Yet may I
not in this be free from sin?  May there not be superior beings,
amused with any graceful, though instinctive, attitude my mind may
fall into as I am entertained with the alertness of the Stoat or the
anxiety of a Deer? Though a quarrel in the Streets is a thing to be
hated, the energies displayed in it are fine; the commonest Man
shows a grace in his quarrel. By a superior Being our reasonings may
take the same tone - though erroneous they may be fine. This is the
very thing in which consists Poetry, and if so it is not so fine a thing
as philosophy - for the same reason that an eagle is not so fine a
thing as a truth.
In this passage there is indicated much of what Keats must
have meant by "Negative Capability." For a time the passions are asleep, the body is quiescent, and the mind, freed
from the press of immediate demands, in a purely speculative
mood indolently roams over the field of human experience.
This state could come in its perfection only after the altar of
poetic truth had been attained, at the stage of " innate universality." It could come too only after the misery of the
world was deeply known. But the poet must not submerge
himself in that misery. He must be able to send his being out
like one of " God's spies," as it were, to partake in the existence of, and examine into, the heart of nature and all living
things; but at the same time he must have the power to sit
apart and contemplate in quiet mood and understand. He
enters with gusto into the dark and bright phases of life, he
enjoys both alike, because both end in speculation. He becomes a part of the identity of the sparrow under his window
and " picks about the gravel" with him; the field-mouse and




IO


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the stoat in their bright-eyed eagerness, man in his earnest
haste to carry out his infinitely little purposes, all become
objects of the poet's curious penetrative speculation. It is
an analytical detached contemplation; yet it is warm and intimate; it may perceive much that is little and mean and ugly,
but, because it has its genesis in the perfect knowledge of
identification, it can see something fine in every action, something pleasing in every appearance. A quarrel in the streets
is a thing to be hated, but the energies displayed are fine.
These reasonings, defective as they are, may yet please a
superior being who may take the same kind of pleasure in
them that a man finds in the alertness of a stoat or the
anxiety of a deer, that is, a speculative pleasure, a detached,
intellectual enjoyment, which takes a relish in a thing for its
own sake, that sees something fine even in the infirmities of
men, the weakness of animals, and the cruelty of nature.
"This is the very thing in which consists poetry." Objects
in the world, actions, men- no matter how trivial or mean or
ugly -become in themselves, apart from any moral relationships, of interest and value as subjects for poetry. That is
why Keats is led frankly to admit that if this is true, poetry
"is not so fine a thing as philosophy... for the same reason
that an eagle is not so fine a thing as truth." Philosophy
weighs with cold, analytical nicety, and judges on a basis of
intrinsic and moral worth. Therefore her judgments should
have the validity of reasoned conclusions based on all the
facts. Poetry merely takes delight in revelation, in the interpretation of life as it is, on its own account, without any
nice discrimination of ultimate values. But it is this very
quality that makes poetry infinitely more desirable to Keats
than is philosophy. Viewed in the abstract, philosophy may
be a " finer thing than poetry," but, actually, - and one need
only mention To a Nightingale and the Ode on a Grecian Urn
to substantiate this statement-in its special province of
illuminating life, poetry is to Keats unique and supreme.
For Keats, the artist, philosophy has a place, but it is a means,




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY


IOI


not an end: its function is to prepare the intellect of the poet
for its most significant and intensest adventures; in this
capacity, it is indispensable to the greatest poetry, enriching
its meanings, deepening its reach, and lending it, withal, the
voice of authenticity and power.
Keats's ideal for the poetic nature would be realized, it
would seem, in a serene, contemplative attitude of detachment, where, with ripe knowledge of the world and full ability
to " think into the heart of humanity," the poet could yet see
far beyond into the eternal universe of truth. He would be
one to whom " the miseries of the world are misery," but who
could yet assume toward men and all their " agony and strife "
and toward all nature in its heartless, fierce destruction something of that attitude which a superior being might display
in contemplation of the energies of man. Here indeed is suggested the "innate universality" and the ideal "Negative
Capability " that Keats found his master Shakespeare to possess to such great degree, and which he so earnestly craved for
himself. Detachment there still would be, but the poet would
no longer go through the old oak forest " in a barren dream ";
rather he would carry into that dream the sober wisdom of
human thought and knowledge, and the steadying influence
of a sympathetic understanding of the heart of man; the
apparent break with the world would never be real, for always
the dream would be enriched by the living presence of the palpitating actuality of the earth in a soul made wise by fellowship with its grief and pain. For Keats, the poet's realization
of truth can come only through a harmonization of the whole
realm of imaginative ideality with the visible world we know.
The spirit of this imaginative world can be known and comprehended only through a vivid comprehension of this. The
materials of the poetic imagination then are those of actuality
as we know it, abstracted from its accidents of time and place,
operated upon by the poet's intellect as certain chemicals
operate upon a mass of neutral matter, and, so, transformed
into symbols of universal truth and life. Finally, then, may




I02


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


we say, great poetry is of a world of its own, a world of abstractions, which yet draws its wisdom and its substance from
the realm of the human heart. "The poetry of Lear, Othello,
Cymbeline, etc., is the poetry of human passions and affections made almost ethereal by the power of the poet." The
right region for poetry is the ethereal one, but it must be
humanized by knowledge of the human heart, a knowledge
great enough and complete enough to find its content in a
state of abstracted, disinterested contemplation, which understands well enough the misery of the world, but " seeing all
excellent and calculated toward a great whole," takes no part
in the fret and fever of it all.
Thus far had Keats got in his reasoning on poetry and the
poetic nature when he gave over his work. It is to be doubted
whether he would have gone much further, or could have gone
much further, in theory, had he lived to be three score and
ten. His theory seems to be eminently satisfactory. It merely
needs to be remarked that he came to his death before he had
fully persuaded himself to an emotional acceptance of his
reasoned judgment. We know how in Lamia, begun in July
and finished in September, I819, he berates the old bald-head
philosopher and his lore, and we know how he confesses in
later letters his impulses to untether fancy and let her run
free. This all reflects a natural reaction toward the old first
false love.
Sometimes, I like to read allegorical meaning into Lamia,
and when I do, this is what I find: The ephemeral pleasure
palace with its lustrous, high-arched halls, its wreaths of light
perfume, and faery-roof upborne by nothing more than strains
of haunting music, is the pleasure house of unreflective dreams
of the young poet, who has lately met the seemingly beautiful
Lamia, not truly beautiful, but false, a serpent in disguisemere sensuous passion, feeling without knowledge, empty
dreams. The young poet-lover Keats espoused her on a day;
then came along " cold philosophy " - Keats's own unsparing




DETACHMENT AND PHILOSOPHY                   I03
domestic criticism, his awakening intellect and reason-and
fixed him with his eye; then, not only did the false Duessa
fade away, and the palace of barren dreams crumble, but the
youngster who loved so unwisely also died 7- though in his
place was born a stronger, firmer soul, - but the Lamia story
stops here.
7 In sober criticism of Endymion, Keats wrote: "It is just that this
youngster should die away."- Preface to Endymion.




CHAPTER VII


THE IMAGINATION
IN both his letters and his poems Keats has, first to last,
many things to say about the imagination. Always he understood it to be the supreme active principle in poetic composition. But how decisively with the rapid maturity of his
intellect and critical judgment during the brief, fitful working
period of his life did his ideas change and develop. Through
the unquiet days and restless nights of burning thought, the
puerile, vaporish notions of the I8I5-1816 period became
alchemized into sinewy convictions which, expressed in vigorous and picturesque language, stand as some of the most
striking comments upon the nature of the imagination to be
found in critical literature. In previous chapters I have
pointed out how Keats's early notions of the ecstatic trance
and "direct divination" methods of imaginative activity
merged into the later more ripened conception of insight based
on knowledge and experience. But in both of these views the
imagination is all important as the vital element in poetic
activity; Keats has merely arrived in his later thinking
at a more comprehensive understanding of the intuitive faculties.
An analysis of his utterances on the subject from the middle
of i817 on, reveals that he has reached two significant conclusions as to the nature and function of the imagination.
First, the imagination as an instrument of intuitive insight is
the most authentic guide to ultimate truth; second, the imagination in its highest form is a generative force, in itself creative of essential reality.
Io4




THE IMAGINATION


Io5


II
Plato has said, " Not by wisdom do poets write, but by a
sort of genius and inspiration." If by wisdom Plato means
knowledge through reasoning, and I think he does, Keats
would have been in complete agreement. For, though he believed firmly in the wisdom that springs from close contact
with a harsh world and flowers into gracious human sympathy, Keats had no faith in mere cold knowledge and reason.
" One of the first characteristics of the genuine and healthy
poetic nature," declares Professor Shairp, "is this - it is
rooted rather in the heart than in the head." So Keats
thought. For to him poetry has its genesis in imagination,
and feeling is both its rudder and its sails. Deep feeling
makes possible thinking with our whole selves, soul and body.
It emancipates the poet's mind from the incidental and temporary, leaving it free to probe the deeper mysteries of
existence.
Imagination, with its springs in the heart rather than the
head, though the head too has its place, becomes with Keats
the highest and most authentic guide to truth. Not only is
the imagination to be trusted more implicitly than reason in
matters where both are operative, but there are even things
clear to the imagination of which the reason knows nothing.
As Joubert says, in words that well express Keats's thought
on this subject, "Heaven, seeing that there were many truths
which by our nature we could not know, and which it was to
our interest, nevertheless, not to be ignorant of, took pity on
us and granted us the faculty of imagining them."
"Keats," says James Russell Lowell, "certainly had more
of the penetrative and sympathetic imagination which belongs
to the poet, of that imagination which identifies itself with
the momentary object of its contemplation, than any man of
these later days." If this be true, Keats had realized in
achievement one of his favorite poetic theories. For, supplementary to his demand for a detached state of spirit for poetic




Io6


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


experience, was his conception of the poetic nature as a free
entity with capacity to penetrate wherever it may choose, able
to project itself into and merge itself in complete identification
with the objects of its contemplation, yet in that mingling
never losing its proper native qualities of unity and power.
In Endymion, torn by conflicting earthly and immortal
loves, perplexed by a confusing, tangled web of circumstances,
drawn by feeling and instinct in one direction, by reason in
another, and, withal, carried out of himself by the power of
his emotions, the poet cries outWhat is this soul then? Whence
Came it? It does not seem my own, and I
Have no self-passion or identity.
(Book IV, 11. 475-477.)
This is Keats himself speaking, uttering a thought that often
came into his mind with the teasing interest of the novel and
unexplained. "Nothing startles me beyond the moment," he
declares to Bailey, evidently when thinking in this vein.
" The Setting Sun will always set me to rights, or if a Sparrow
come before my Window, I take part in its existence and pick
about the gravel." Again he writes, " One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one
Mind's imagining into another." And these reflections at
once suggest to our minds his definition of a poetWhere's the Poet? Show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
'Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan,
Or any other wondrous thing
A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato;
'Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren, or Eagle finds its way to
All its instincts; he hath heard
The Lion's roaring, and can tell
What his horny throat expresseth,
And to him the Tiger's yell
Comes articulate and presseth
On his ear like mother-tongue.




THE IMAGINATION


I07


Through the power of the imagination, then, the poet is
one who in spirit intimately lives with the feathered and wild
creatures of the forest, who shares the identity of, hence, in
thought and imagination, becomes equal to, king or beggar,
or any that wear the semblance of man, and who, because he
has partaken of the existence of bird or beast of prey, can
understand the meaning of its every move or cry.
In a second passage in Endymion, there is suggested the
other imaginative extreme - from the very earthy, we ascend
at a leap to the ethereal.   "Wherein lies happiness?" the
poet has asked. It is, he replies, in that which raises our ready
minds to a " fellowship with essence," leaving us completely
"alchemized and free of space."
Feel we these things? - that moment have we stept
Into a sort of oneness, and our state
Is like a floating spirit's. But there are
Richer entanglements, enthralments far
More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,
To the chief intensity.
(Book I, 795-800.)
Here plainly is implied a complete identity with the infinite,
when the mind of the poet shall merge itself imaginatively
into the spirit of the universe, to lose itself in a divine " fellowship with essence."
In a self-revelatory letter to Richard Woodhouse, written
October 27, I8I8, Keats presents further evidence. Here we
find that this power of identification is reciprocal-; not only
does the poet's self go out to others, but the identity of others
forces itself upon him, until he is helpless before its might:
ist. As to the poetical character itself (I mean that sort, of which,
if I am anything, I am a member; that sort distinguished from the
Wordsworthian, or egotistical Sublime; which is a thing per se, and
stands alone), it is not itself - it has no self - It is everything and
nothing. It has no character- it enjoys light and shade; it lives in
gusto,l be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.1 Tragic poetry, Hazlitt declares, "has its source and ground-work in
a common love of excitement."-On Poetry in General.




Io8


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen.2  What
shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does
no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than
from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation.
A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has
no Identity -he is continually in for and filling some other body.
The Sun, - the Moon, - the Sea, and men and women, who are
creatures of impulse, are poetical, and have about them an unchangeable attribute; the poet has none, no identity —he is certainly the
most unpoetical of all God's creatures. - If then he has no self, and
if I am a poet, where is the wonder that I should say I would write
no more? Might I not at that very instant have been cogitating on
the Characters of Saturn and Ops? It is a wretched thing to confess;
but it is a very fact, that not one word I ever utter can be taken for
granted as an opinion growing out of my identical Nature-How can
it, when I have no Nature? When I am in a room with people, if I
ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then,
not myself goes home to myself, but the identity of every one in the
room begins to press upon me, so that I am in a very little time annihilated - not only among men; it would be the same in a nursery
of Children.
Keats's conception is that the poet's being is a sort of detached entity - an unfettered spirit-like thing - independent
of earthy circumstances and vision, free to take leave of the
body to roam about where it will, penetrating into the mysterious chambers of the soul's deepest recesses, or, soaring
into the shadowy and illimitable spaces of the universe,
to mingle with "essence" in "fellowship divine "; its delight is ever fresh, adventurous speculation, whether down
into the darker regions of existence or up into the majestic
realm of " Saturn and old Ops." This process with Keats
is not merely a submergence of one's self into another; it
is not a substitution where the poet puts himself in the place
of the object of his contemplation: it is rather a sort
of etherized penetration, in which the poetic soul, acting as
2 Note Hazlitt's words: "Poetry is only the highest eloquence of passion, the- most vivid form of expression that can be given to our conception of anything, whether pleasurable or painful, mean or dignified, delightful or distressing." -On Poetry in General.




THE IMAGINATION


Io9


an ethereal chemical operating on man and the physical world,
liberates the fine essence of spiritual being in its purest and
freest state, to be condensed, through the agency of beautiful
verse, into new elements of living truth. " Men of Genius,"
declares Keats, writing to Bailey, " are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect
-but they have not any individuality, any determined
Character."
The remarks on the reciprocal phase of identity are an interesting commentary on the insistence with which life crowded
itself upon Keats. Whether he would or no, the personalities
about him pressed upon him, absorbed him, annihilated him.
How far may a poet's utterances be taken as expressing himself?  Keats would seem to say, " Not in the least"; for,
except in the rare instances of the " Wordsworthian egotistical
sublime," the true poet has no permanent identity to express,
and therefore cannot, if he would, lay bare the rooms of his
house, nor can he with sonnet or any other key unlock his own
heart.  Elsewhere Keats declares, "The only means of
strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about
nothing - to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts,
not a select party." What type of mind better fitted for this
thoroughfare than that of a poet who has no self-identity, but
whose penetrative mind can roam whither it will, can see and
apprehend all clearly, and bring home its fruits of truth untainted by bias or prejudice? Is it not a pleasing thought
that the mind of the greatest poet may be a sort of filter
through which the great truths of the eternal universe are
clarified, organized, and given to the world? Keats's logic
would lead one to consider the poet as so closely identifying
himself with his object, his own identity being submerged,
that his utterance really becomes a true and unhampered expression of the object itself. Keats " does not put himself on
an equality" with Nature, says Reynolds. "You do not
see him, when you see her.3 " This seems to be Keats's ideal -
3 Alfred, West of England Journal. Quoted in Forman. Vol. IV, p. I78.




MIO


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


to represent things as they are without putting himself into
the picture.
To such a poet, able to imagine himself into any living
thing, mere life itself and the things of life that lead to speculation are alone adequate to pleasurable activity. So he knows
no good and evil; he is as delighted to contemplate and portray the villainy of an Iago as to share in and represent the
white virtue of an Imogen. For each one embodies life and
a bit of the passion and truth of life, and for a poet that
is enough.
I have already quoted from the famous letter on the
Imagination written to Bailey in November, i8I7.4 But
Keats's discussion here is so crowded with suggestions as to
the nature, function, and importance of the imaginative activity that I wish to include a longer extract. In this passage
Keats addresses himself directly to the subject, and his observations are of all the worth that a real thinker's unpremeditated, spontaneous utterance on any subject close to his
heart always is- utterance where we arrive at the crux of a
matter directly without the sophistications of studied delivery.
But I am running my head into a subject which I am certain I
could not do justice to under five Years' study, and 3 vols. octavo -
and, moreover, long to be talking about the Imagination... O! I wish
I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain
of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections, and the truth
of Imagination! What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be
Truth -whether it existed before or not, - for I have the same
idea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime,
creative of essential Beauty. In a Word, you may know my favorite
speculation by my first Book,5 and the little Song I sent in my last,
which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of
operating in these Matters. The Imagination may be compared to
4 See Chapter IV, p. 64.
5 The first book of Endymion. The song was lost. Colvin writes, " Of
'my last,' that is of his preceding letter to Bailey, unhappily but a fragment is preserved, and the song must have been lost with the sheet or
sheets which went astray." Page I56.




THE IMAGINATION


III


Adam's dream, - he awoke and found it truth: 6 - I am more zealous
in this affair, because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning- and yet it
must be. Can it be that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived
at his Goal without putting aside numerous objections? However, it
may be, O for a life of Sensations 7 rather than of Thoughts! It is
" a Vision in the form of Youth," a shadow of reality to come - and
this consideration has further convinced me,- for it has come as
auxiliary to another favorite speculation of mine, - that we shall
enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we called happiness on Earth
repeated in a finer tone. And yet such a fate can only befall those
who delight in Sensation, rather than hunger as you do after Truth.8
Adam's dream will do here, and seems to be a Conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflexion, is the same as human life and its
spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the simple imaginative Mind
may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent Working coming continually on the Spirit with a fine Suddenness.9  To compare
great things with small, have you never, by being surprised with an
old Melody, in a delicious place by a delicious voice, felt over again
your very speculations and surmises at the time it first operated
on your soul? do you not remember forming to yourself the Singer's
face - more beautiful than it was possible, and yet, with the elevation of the Moment, you did not think so? Even then you were
mounted on the Wings of Imagination, so high that the prototype must
be hereafter -that delicious face you will see.... Sure this can
not be exactly the case with a complex mind - one that is imaginative,
and at the same time careful of its fruits, - who would exist partly
on Sensation, partly on thought - to whom it is necessary that " years
should bring the philosophic Mind? " Such a one I consider yours,
and therefore it is necessary to your eternal happiness that you not
only drink this old Wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion
of our most ethereal Musings upon Earth, but also increase in knowledge, and know all things.
Here Keats is confessing, perhaps to the point of exaggeration, his complete faith in the authenticity of the imagination.
6 Paradise Lost. VIII, 11. 288-311, or, more likely, VIII, 11. 452-490.
See Colvin, p. I55.
7 Let us remember that Keats means by "Sensations" intuitive imagination.
8 That is, factual and reasoned knowledge.
9 Sidney Colvin's comments on the meaning of this letter are valuable.
See John Keats, pp. 154-155.




1I2


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


It is a faith that wavers somewhat in the mental shake-up of
i8i8, when the young poet's conception of what constitutes
imagination is altered as he perceives ever more and more
that barren dreams are vain and breed only mawkishness in
verse; but even when under the influence of the insistent conviction that a poet must understand the " Mystery," and must
know life to the core, Keats perceives that the final way to
great poetry is through the imagination. Milton was his exemplar in philosophic attainment; yet when he writes in the
very spiritual presence of the " old scholar of the spheres," he
still adheres to his faith in the intuitive as the last resort for
poets:
But vain is now the burning and the strife
Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife
With old Philosophy,
And mad with glimpses of futurity.
(On a Lock of Milton's Hair)
To grow "high rife with old philosophy" is only a preparation for, and an accompaniment of, the highest type of seerlike vision —the vision of a prophet to whom all veils are
rent in " glimpses of futurity."
This does not mean that Keats would in the end minimize
the importance of knowledge. He came to see that for the
poet every avenue to the fullest and most complete knowledge
of reality should be left open. He realized, as Mr. Herford, in
his Is There a Poetic View of the World?, puts it, that " What
distinguishes poetic from religious or philosophic apprehension is not that it turns away from reality, but that it lies
open to and in eager watch for reality at doors and windows
which with them are barred or blind. The poet's soul resides, so to speak, in his senses, in his emotions, in his imagination, as well as in his conscious intelligence; and we may
provisionally describe poetic apprehension as an intense state
of consciousness in which all these are concerned." Most of
this Keats understood when he wrote this letter. His instinct




THE IMAGINATION


II3


taught him that the doors and windows to reality barred
to the scientists and   philosopher-men    of "consecutive
minds"- are the very ones the poet most uses, those of
"Sensation," or intuitive perception; only at this time he
had not yet realized the importance of " his conscious intelligence." That was to come when he should grow to see
the necessity for the " gradual ripening of all the intellectual
powers."
One word that follows is used carelessly and is confusing:
"And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in
sensation, rather than hunger as you do after Truth." But
taken in connection with the preceding sentences, it appears
that it is truth from reason alone that is meant, without respect to imaginative truth, and this, of course, is quite consistent with Keats's whole thought.
Santayana has shown in his admirable way the right relation between reasoning and philosophy and poetry:
In philosophy itself investigation and reasoning are only preparatory
and servile parts, means to an end. They terminate in insight, or
what in the noblest sense of the word may be called theory, Oeopia, -
a steady contemplation of all things in their order and worth. Such
contemplation is imaginative. No one can reach it who has not enlarged his mind and tamed his heart. A philosopher who attains it is,
for the moment, a poet; and a poet who turns his practised and passionate imagination on the order of all things, or on anything in the
light of the whole, is for the moment a philosopher.'
This is a doctrine to which Keats would have heartily subscribed. For in this larger sense he was always an intuitionist.
The imaginative is the highest, and most generative, of all
poetic functions. Reason and knowledge are requisites, it is
true; but only as educators of the imagination. They are but
guides to point the way. In the end the pupil far outruns
the master.
In his eager pursuit of truth Keats believed that intuitive
insight rather than reason is to be trusted as the authentic
10 Three Philosophic Poets, p. Io.




II4


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


guide to the hidden mysteries of the poetic world. To sound
the sea of imaginative reality to the depths was the passionate longing of his soul. To see, to know, as did Shakespeare,
Milton, Homer,- such was his young Parnassian dream.
And he believed the magic open sesame to all the fair realms
beyond to be the feelings, refined and spiritualized into poetic
imagination. We recognize this ideal in these lines to Homer:
Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.
So thou wast blind! - but then the veil was rent;
For Jove uncurtain'd Heaven to let thee live,
And Neptune made for thee a spermy tent,
And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;
Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light,
And precipices show untrodden green;
There is a budding morrow in midnight,There is a triple sight in blindness keen;
Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befel
To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.
The poet is one before whose insistent spirit the veils of
heaven are rent; through the power of imagination - for what
else can be this " triple sight in blindness keen? " - the poet
has power to ascend into the empyrean or to find a home in
the bottomless depths of the ocean; his seeing is like that of
the gods, to whom all things, in " Earth and Heaven and Hell,"
are clear. Reason could not do this. All his lifetime Keats
earnestly, passionately, sought truth, but not truth through
reason alone. Reason could never carry a poet to the heart
of man,
Be he King
Or poorest of the beggar clan,
nor help him find his way to all the instincts of bird, wren, or
eagle; and reason could never uncurtain " heaven," nor guide
in exploring the " passages all dark " that lead to the inner




THE IMAGINATION


II5


" Penetralium" of the " Burden of the Mystery," where the
miseries and agonies of the world are bared. Keats could not
trust reason to reveal ultimate reality to him.
It was this instinctive conviction which Keats held from
the very first that prompted his almost savage attack in Sleep
and Poetry upon the classical poets and their verse of reason
and good taste. It evolved naturally from his reflections on
the place of intuition and feeling in poetry; he could not help
contrasting the high imaginative power of the older poetry
with its decline in the verse of poets like Boileau and Pope.
He insists upon a return to imagination:
Is there so small a range
In the present strength of manhood, that the high
Imagination can not freely fly
As she was wont of old?...... Has she not shown us all?
From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning
Of Jove's large eye-brow, to the tender greening
Of April meadows? Here her altar shone,
E'en in this isle;" and who could paragon
The fervid choir that lifted up a noise
Of harmony, to which it aye will poise
Its mighty self of convoluting sound
Huge as a planet, and like that roll round,
Eternally around a dizzy void.
And then follows the indignant denunciation:
Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism,
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.
There came a time when the highest honors were paid to men
who had not the slightest understanding of real poetry; but
in sublime self-deception,
11 In the imaginative poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and
Milton.




II6


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS... with a puling infant's force
They sway'd about upon a rocking horse,
And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal soul'd!
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll'd
Its gathering waves -ye felt it not. The blue
Bared its eternal bosom and the dew
Of summer nights collected still to make
The morning precious: beauty was awake!
Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of, -were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile: so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!
That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face,
And did not know it, - no, they went about
Holding a poor, decrepid standard out
Mark'd with most flimsy mottos, and in large
The name of one Boileau!
(Sleep and Poetry, 11. 181-20I.)
Here Keats expresses his allegiance to freedom-giving, truthrevealing intuitive imagination as the informing spirit of
poetry, and his deep-rooted antagonism to the idea of verse
coldly thought out, cut by feet and chiseled by rule, all unwarmed by the penetrative fires of feeling. In this the young
poet is much in accord with the poetic thought of his day. In
these lines there are distinct echoes of Wordsworth's sonnet
beginning "The World is too much with us," with its emphasis upon a fresh imaginative enjoyment of beauty; and
there is expressed the same impatience of studied formalism
in art that Wordsworth voices in his "A Poet! He hath put
his heart to school "A Poet! He hath put his heart to school,
Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff
Which Art hath lodged within his hand —must laugh
By precept only, and shed tears by rule.




THE IMAGINATION


II7


Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,
In fear that else when Critics grave and cool
Have killed him, scorn should write his epitaph.
But Keats is not merely echoing Wordsworth. Young as he
is, he is declaring what was to him from first to last a basic
tenet of his poetic creed. To follow the teachings of Boileau,
he instinctively felt, would be to take the surest possible route
to artistic blight and stultification. To put such reins upon
the poetic faculties as the classical school proposed was, to
him, to falsify nature and to destroy the imagination.
Yet, Keats and Boileau agreed on one essential: each knew
that nothing is more dangerous than for a poet to write with
the imagination only; Boileau believed this firmly, and Keats,
at least after 1818, came to know that the highest poetry
could not be written in this way. But Keats took the more
balanced view. Where Boileau would make the imagination
subordinate, Keats would have the imagination and the intellect work together, like twin sisters, as it were, except that
the imaginative sister should have the stronger, clearer eyes
and the deeper, more accurate seeing power, and so should
always be the authority in case of dispute. In fact Keats
refused to trust the intellectual sister's vision at all until he
had appealed to the imaginative twin to corroborate her judgment -" I can never be sure of a truth except by a clear conception of its beauty." On the other hand he will even discredit or ignore the intellect if the imagination's penetrative
vision has pierced some misty haze and caught gleams that
her slower sister's eye cannot detect: "What the Imagination
seizes as beauty must be truth." Boileau's mistake, as Brunetiere points out in a statement with which Keats would agree,
is that he failed to " recognize that, in spite of all its excesses,
the imagination, that is to say the faculty of transcending nature, of even seeing in it what is not there, provided only that
he make us see it, that imagination remains the supreme
faculty of the poet, his original aptitude, one whose place




Ii8


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


can be supplied by no other, without which one may indeed
be artist, writer, orator, but never poet - for this it is we are
bound to upbraid him. The reason is that he himself was not
a poet...."12
So it was not that Keats discarded knowledge; we have
seen how earnestly he sought to know and understand: it was
not that he despised conscious craftsmanship in verse building; we shall see how much thought he himself gave to fitting
form for poetic substance: it was simply that he felt that
without the operation of the imagination there could be no
artistic perception nor revelation. In the education of the
imagination, all knowledge and intellect have a place. But
Keats would maintain firmly with Leigh Hunt that " thought
by itself makes no poetry at all." 13 For the conclusions of
the understanding can at best be only so many matters of
fact. "Sensation," on the other hand, in that it gives a sense
of deepest truth through direct emotionalized intuition, is a
fundamental to all real poetry; though without knowledge as
a ballast, it leads to lack of balance, and to irresponsible, giddy
soaring. In other words, "sensation " without knowledge is
mere fancy, with knowledge it becomes creative imagination,
the basis of all true art.
And now we come to those other lines that are so often
quoted to show how Keats elevated the " paradise of the sensations over the mind ":.. Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven:
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel's wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mineUnweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade.
(Lamia. II, 11. 229-238.)
12 L'Esthetique de Boileau in the Revue des deux Mondes, 93, I889.
Quoted in Cook's Art of Poetry, p. L.  13 Imagination and Fancy, p. 63.




THE IMAGINATION


II9


It is possible to interpret this passage by the application of a
fact earlier developed in this treatise - the fact that Keats
had a sort of dual nature, one half of which cried for the untrammeled sway of instinctive creative fancy, the other of
which turned toward wisdom and knowledge.
But there is a more satisfactory explanation. We must
interpret the passage in the light of all that Keats says elsewhere. Then it is cold "reason unmitigated by the warmth
of intuitive imagination" that Keats condemns, as he does
always. Just as we have seen that feeling or " sensation " by
itself is not enough until balanced by reason and knowledge,
so "cold philosophy" out of sympathy with the human heart
and natural beauty he as a poet rightly despises. As Goethe
declares, the Significant " must have a soul breathed into it
before it can be art."
Keats realized that poetry has a peculiar province of knowledge all her own, her proper realm being the imaginative as
opposed to the scientific. He probably felt as he may have
heard Hazlitt declare in his lectures of the spring of 1818,
that the progress of scientific knowledge and refinement has a I
tendency to circumscribe the limits of the imagination, and
" to clip the wings of poetry." Jacob's dream was a product
of imagination, but, says Hazlitt, " There can never be another
Jacob's dream. Since that time, the heavens have gone farther
off, and grown astronomical." Hard, dry, scientific fact, then,
must be indeed antagonistic to poetry. But that does not
apply to " philosophy " in its broader sense of spiritual wisdom
and knowledge of humanity. On the contrary, a proper union
of this sort of philosophy with feeling and sensation becomes
imagination, the great revealer of poetic truth. " What then
shall we say?" inquires Coleridge. " Even this; that Shakespeare, no mere child of nature; no automaton of genius; no
passive vehicle of inspiration, possessed by the spirit, not
possessing it; first studied patiently, meditated deeply, understood minutely, till knowledge, become habitual and intuitive,
wedded itself to his habitual feelings, and at length gave birth




120       THE   MIND    OF JOHN    KEATS
to that stupendous power by which he stands alone, with no
equal or second in his own class." It was such a power as this
that Keats longed to possess; and had he lived who knows but
that finally he would have realized his dream.
III
Keats's poetic world was an imaginative one. Byron " describes what he sees," he declared, " I describe what I imagine.
Mine is the hardest task." This was written in September,
1819, just when Keats was atthe peak of his poetic powers,
and may be trusted as a final utterance. Keats was not in
any sense confessing that the objects of his verse were lacking
one whit of the reality to be found in Byron's; indeed he
would have contended that his own poetry reflected the greater
truth and reality, in that his was universal, while Byron's was
only particular. Keats believed that the imagination of the
true poet was capable not only of perceiving, but of creating
essential reality. Sometimes it appears that he thinks of this
imaginative power as extending to the point of actual new
creations, as when he boldly announced, " What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth whether it existed before
or not." At other times, it would seem that he has reference
to a re-creative force able to seize visible materials and truth
that lies hidden and combine them into new forms, as when he
writes in elevated vein of his " readiness to measure time by
what is done and to die in six hours could plans be brought to
conclusions - the looking upon the Sun, the Moon, the Stars,
the Earth and its contents, as materials to form greater things
- that is to say ethereal things - but here I am talking like
a Madman - greater things than our Creator himself made."
Keats would logically hold that true art, the product of
this generative power of the mind, embodies both the visible
sensuous and the generative unseen spiritual, combined in a
single imaginative creation. In this Keats is Hegelian. Note
Hegel's own comment:




THE IMAGINATION


121


Genuine reality is only to be found beyond the immediacy of feeling and of external objects. Nothing is genuinely real but that which
is actual in its own right, that which is the substance of nature and
of mind, fixing itself indeed in present and definite existence, but in
this existence still retaining its essential and self-centered being, and
thus and no otherwise attaining genuine reality.... Art liberates the
real import of appearances from the semblance and deception of this
bad and fleeting world, and imparts to phenomenal semblances a
higher reality, born of mind. The appearances of art, therefore, far
from being mere semblances, have the higher reality and the more
genuine existence in comparison with the realities of common life.
With Keats the essential reality of these imaginative conceptions was not at all dependent on their expression in art
forms; it was only necessary for them to exist in the mind of
the poet, who, beginning with the appearances of men and
things, constructs for himself a world of his own, which includes but transcends the things of sense. " What creates the
pleasure of not knowing? " Keats reflects, as he reads Book I
of Paradise Lost. "A sense of independence, of power, from
the fancy's creating a world of its own by the sense of probabilities," he replies.
There is no room to doubt Keats's conviction as to the
capacity of the imagination to create spiritual reality. It is
made evident in the letter concerning the "mighty abstract
idea of beauty," where the poet declares that he feels more
and more as his imagination strengthens that he does " not live
in this world alone but in a thousand worlds "; the idea is
clearly conveyed in the passages just quoted -in his explanation that where Byron describes the visible, he describes what
he imagines; in his epigrammatic "What the imagination
seizes as Beauty must be Truth for I have the same idea of
all our passions as of Love, they are all in their sublime creative of essential beauty "; in his declaration that the poet
has power to create "ethereal things greater than those of
the Creator himself "   -and it is even more explicitly stated
in the following:




122         THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS
I want to hear very much whether Poetry and literature in general
has gained, or lost interest with you- and what sort of writingi s of
the highest gust with you now. With what sensation do you read
Fielding?- and do notHogarth'spictures seem an old thing to you?
Yet you are very little more removed from general association than
I am - recollect that no Man can live but in one society at a time -
his enjoyment in the different states of human society must depend
upon the Powers of his Mind - that is you can imagine a Roman
triumph or an Olympic game as well as I can. We with our bodily
eyes see but the fashion and Manners of one country for one age -
and then we die. Now to me manners and customs long since passed
whether among the Babylonians or the Bactrians, are as real, or even
more real than those among which I now live. My thoughts have
turned lately this way. The more we know the more inadequacy we
find in the world to satisfy us - this is an old observation; but I
have made up my Mind never to take anything for granted — but
even to examine the truth of the commonest proverbs.
In such passages as these we not only discover a complete
confession of Keats's idealism, but we find revealed the important function of the imagination in combining and creating
into forms of beauty the truths that lie beyond the visible.
The world of sense is imperfect and incomplete: "The more
we know the more inadequacy we find in the world to satisfy
us." Therefore, every appearance must be scrutinized for its
possible implications as to the larger reality. Perceptions of
this reality can come only through the operation of the imaginative faculty; only through the imagination can the poet
see the world true and see it whole, and only through the
imagination can he create and re-create new forms of beauty.
This holds in the realm of imaginative literature and history
as well as in relation to the real and ideal worlds; and the
capacity to create is largely independent of time or place or
circumstances. George and Georgiana Keats are in remote
America; yet -"recollect that no man can live but in one
society at a time - that is, you can imagine a Roman triumph
or an Olympic game as well as I can." Man's real ability to
know life to the full rests upon the resources of his imagination. Art treasures and general cultural environment are not




THE IMAGINATION


123


necessary to the fullest appreciation of the beauty of the
world. Give a man the gift of imagination, and in the Sahara
desert as well as London the whole universe is at his command.
Roman and Egyptian civilizations long since melted away,
are re-created at the call of this divine faculty, and form a
portion of the aggregate of all reality to make an ideal whole.
From what has just been said it is evident that the creative
power of the imagination is in no wise restricted by inability
to see with the physical eyes that which it creates or the materials with which it works. This fact is thrown into stronger
relief by a suggestive remark Keats made concerning Milton,
occurring in a note on the early lines of Paradise Lost. "A
poet," declares Keats, "can seldom have justice done to his
imagination- for men are as distinct in their conceptions of
material shadowings as they are in matters of spiritual understanding: it can scarcely be conceived how Milton's blindness
might here aid the magnitude of his conceptions as a bat in a
large gothic vault." Keats's statement is incomplete, yet as
Mr. Forman has pointed out (Volume III, page 258), the
general sense is clear. Milton is working with vast conceptions, the materials for which are visible only to the imaginative eye. How are such transcendent conceptions to be accounted for? Keats's suggestion is " that Milton's blindness
might so sharpen his imagination as to give him the same
advantage in the realm of the unseen as a bat has in the darkness of a gothic vault," that is, the ability to imagine ultimates
- infinite spaces peopled by personages of infinite scope and
power.
" Imagination then," says Professor Mackail, in his Lectures
on Poetry, " is the power or faculty which creates, in so far as
creation is within human power. It is the likeness or echo of
the divine creative power; like it, according to its measure, it
gives shape and substance to what had neither, what was
without form and void.l4  It dissolves in order to re-create,
14 " Must not the imagination weave garments, visible bodies, wherein
the else invisible creations and inspirations of our reason are, like spirits
revealed...." Carlyle: Sartor Resartus.




124


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


or if the word create be too strong, to unify and idealize."
This perhaps would sum up fairly well Keats's thoughts as to
the creative imagination. He would have added, as he matured
in intellect, that the authenticity of these creations must be
governed by the extent to which the poet knows the world
of men.
But the creations of the imagination are none the less real
because they are thus limited. No, "What the imagination
seizes as beauty must be truth, whether it existed before or
not." That is, what the imagination constructs for itself as
reality is truth. Note the real significance of certain phrases
in the letter quoted: "Now to me manners and customs long
since passed, whether among the Babylonians or the Bactrians,
are as real, or even more real than those among which I now
live." "Even more real," Keats says, for he ever trusted to
the light of imagination more fully than to the voice of reason.
And things imagined are never reasoned; they are felt. To
Keats, things of the mind, creations of the imagination, were
as real as to Wordsworth when he wrote:
Paradise, and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fields, like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main-why should they be
A history only of departed things.
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
(The Recluse, 11. 799-808.)
In his Sartor Resartus, Carlyle has most vigorously and
succinctly expressed a similar idea:
To clap on your felt, and, simply by wishing you were Anywhere,
straightway to be There! Next to clap on your other felt, and,
simply by wishing you were Anywhen, straightway to be Thenl
This were indeed the grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation
of the World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically present in




THE IMAGINATION


125


the first century, conversing face to face with Paul and Seneca; there
prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with
other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depths of
that late Fire.
Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is the Past annihilated then, or only past; is the Future non-extant, or only future?
Those mystic faculties of thine, Memory and Hope, already answer:
already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both Past and Future, and communist with them, though as
yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday
drop down, the curtains of tomorrow roll up; but Yesterday and Tomorrow both are. Pierce through the time-element, glance into the
Eternal, Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's
soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there:
that Time and space are not God, but creations of God; that with
God as it is a universal Here, so it is an everlasting Now.
And again:
Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were
formed within the bodily eye, or without it? In every the wisest Soul
lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire;
out of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively built
together, and now rests there, as on its dark foundations does a
habitable flowery Earth-rind.
Keats's belief is quite as thorough-going as Carlyle's. So
far from depending upon the sensuous world about him for
mental food and spiritual substance, he asserts in effect that
the poet's power rests largely on a subjective basis, upon his
ability to create from the materials of his own brain, his intellect operating upon things of the visible world, in close relation with ideal truth and beauty, a new spiritual reality that
embraces and comprehends both the known and the unknown
verities, like, yet unlike, each -ethereal substance "greater
even than our Creator himself has made." Of this the world
of environment need furnish but a fractional part; yet, let
us remember how vital a part it is. The world we see is entirely real, and, though it is but a small portion of a much
larger unseen whole, a thorough knowledge of it is necessary




126       THE MIND      OF JOHN     KEATS
to an understanding of the ideal entity to whose inner workings it gives the clue.
Such is the power of creative imagination, a seeing, reconciling, combining force that seizes the old, penetrates beneath
its surface, disengages the truth lying slumbering there, and,
building afresh, bodies forth anew a reconstructed universe in
fair forms of artistic power and beauty.




CHAPTER VIII


WHAT IS BEAUTY?
I
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
"To see things in their beauty," writes Matthew Arnold
rather enigmatically of this passage, " is to see things in their
truth, and Keats knew it." One wishes the great critic had
gone on to explain what Keats means by seeing "things in
their beauty." To know that would be to hold the key to
Keats's aesthetic philosophy. For it was the yearning passion
for the beautiful that held the young poet steadily to his
course. "I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful," he once declared
to Richard Woodhouse, in a moment of warm confidence,
"even if my night's labours should be burnt every Morning,
and no eye ever shine upon them." He looked to this passion
as the infallible sign of his fellowship with the poetic genius
of all time; it was to him the way to vision, power, and truth.
"If I should die," he wrote to Fanny Brawne, as he lay sick
shortly before his death, " I have left no immortal work behind me -nothing to make my friends proud of my memory
-but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and
if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd."
Beauty, with Keats, was not only the open sesame to poetic
life and truth, it was truth itself: "What the Imagination
seizes as Beauty must be Truth, whether it existed before or
not." As we have seen in the last chapter, the method of the
imagination as opposed to reasoning and the scientific approach is that of emotionalized intuitive perception. A sense
of spiritual reality which the mind apprehends imaginatively,
I27




I28


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


then, or immediately rather than indirectly, is Beauty; this
is also Truth. When Keats refers to Beauty in this sense, so
far from limiting himself to mere sensuous beauty, he is speaking of something entirely outside the realm of the sensuous,
except as physical objects may be its expression; he means
enduring universal truth- the Idea as it were.
The view that this beauty might be not only perceived, but
even created by the imagination, Keats held to the end, but
with conditional modifications. He believed in it just as
earnestly in March, I8I9, when he declared, " Beauty is truth,
truth beauty," as when he asserted his faith in the powers of
imagination to seize or even create beauty, in 1817, but long
before that he had learned to qualify specifically that the imagination should be trained and disciplined by close contact
with the world of men. He had discovered through experience
the wide gap between the futile soaring of uneducated Fancy
into this dream world, and the sober flights of an imagination
loaded with the stored-up wisdom of life. The first ends in a
vision of mawkish unreality, the second in revelations of high
truth. So in later years, Keats would have said, "What the
wise Imagination seizes as Beauty must be Truth." In other
words Beauty is truth arrived at through the intuitive perception of an intellectualized imagination —an imagination
weighted with experience, with thought, with judgment.
With reference to a work of art, Beauty is the emotional
recognition of the life-truth revealed there.  Indeed, this
beauty is the very essence of truth, for it is truth unclouded
by such extrinsic considerations as time or place or moral
relationships; it is truth subjective and emancipated; it is
truth eternal, an immortal verity of the everlasting universe.
I can best show what I mean by turning to the evidence
Keats himself has left us as to his conception of Beauty.
When the German critic Wincklemann first came into contact with Greek art his interest at once centered in form.
That which attracted him most as characteristic in the work
of Phidias, Praxiteles, and the rest was a harmony of propor



WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I29


tion, graceful lines, and pleasing contours. To him    physical
loveliness was of primary, expression, of secondary, importance. Hence, Wincklemann based his critique of Greek art
largely on beauty of form. But when Keats became acquainted with Greek sculpture, if we are to judge from the
testimony that comes down to us, loveliness of form seems to
have made little appeal to him. It rather seems that in the
presence of the Elgin Marbles his whole being was flooded
with the light of life that flashed into his soul through the
medium of the sculptured figures before him. It is worth
noting that in the two sonnets on the Elgin Marbles, the most
direct expression of this great artistic experience, there is
scarcely a reference to fair form or sensuous beauty. On the
contrary, we see that the young Keats had been numbed, awed,
almost overpowered by the mighty vision of life and truth
revealed to him. In the first he offers an apology to Haydon
for his inability to express his real appreciation of the sculpture, and praises Haydon for his part in securing national
recognition of their worth. I quote it here:
Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek.
And think that I would not be over-meek,
In rolling out upfollow'd thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak.
Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem?
For, when men stared at what was most divine
With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm
Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shrine
Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them!
1 Written early in March, I8I7. Haydon was from the first an ardent
champion of the Elgin Marbles, and maintained, in the face of the most
heated opposition, their validity and genuineness as true works of the
Phidian school. He talked and wrote until his arguments finally prevailed
and the public accepted the sculpture at its real value. Haydon had introduced Keats to the marbles at the British Museum a few days prior to the
writing of the sonnets.




I30


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


The second sonnet gives the better idea of the sensations
the poet felt as he stood in the presence of the marbles and
drank in their beauty:
My spirit is too weak; mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep,
That I have not the cloudy wings to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time -with a billowy main
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.
What do we learn from these sonnets? Simply that the
marbles have set the young poet's imagination all afire. The
impressions are vague and confused, partly because of the vastness of the images that come thronging into his brain, partly
because in the presence of true art, he realizes with a sort of
sick terror how far distant for him is the goal of success in
poetry. But it is evident that the mere surface beauty, the
appearance, of the marbles is not primarily what moves him;
he is concerned with their deeper significance, their emotional
appeal, the truth they portray.
Crowding his excited brain are dimly-conceived visions of
the whole cycle of human progress, the rise and fall of civilizations, the meaning of man and the world. There is here in
the splendid last lines almost a perfect expression of a momentary glimpse of infinitude, the sublime infinitude of eternity- a fluttering, elusive mental grasp of the vast and incomprehensible universe —" Grecian grandeur" mingled with
the "rude
Wasting of old Time - with a billowy main
A sun, a shadow of a magnitude




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


131


It is a partial re-echo of that overwhelming sense of wonder
and awe Keats experienced in first reading Chapman's Homer,
so admirably conveyed in the description of Cortez and his
men who stared at the Pacific, then
Look'd at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien.
It is also another instance of Keats's rare gift for unusually
vivid expression of the sense of vastness and mystery, two of
the best additional examples occurring, one at the end of his
sonnet, When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be... then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
and one in Endymion Book II, lines I60-163:... But for me,
There is no depth to strike in: I can see
Nought earthly worth my compassing; so stand
Upon a misty, jutting head of landAlone.
So it is evident from this sonnet, not one of his best, but
one of his most serious, that to Keats the beauty of the marbles
consists in their capacity to set the imagination into such play
as to arouse anew in the spectator the vision of life the artist
had originally caught and then portrayed in the plastic figures
upon which he worked. This for the observer is the moment
of arrival at " that trembling delicate and snail-horn perception of beauty," of which Keats writes elsewhere —the moment of realization of the identity of form with content, of
beauty with truth. It is the instant of the completed fabric
of the creative imagination, either for the artist or for him
who understands his art. That is, in looking upon a Grecian
urn the creative imagination of the observer arrives at the
same point as did the creative imagination of the artist - a
delicate, snail-horn perception of the truth -the Idea- expressed in the urn; hence the beauty of it. The mere external




I32


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


aspects of an urn would not make it beautiful, a thing of art,
to Keats. It is rather that the symbols executed there, themselves a product of mind and soul, still contain within themselves a dynamic something, itself the offspring of imaginative
insight, that has the power to set aflame the mind and soul of
an imaginative observer: that is true art, that, beauty; that
is truth preserved in enduring form for the ages. "For soul
is form and doth the body make."
To this add the evidence contained in one of Keats's letters
to his brother and sister-in-law concerning his enjoyment and
understanding of Raphael and others.
I never can feel certain of any truth, but from a clear perception of
its Beauty- and I find myself very young-minded even in that perceptive power - which I hope will increase. A year ago, I could not
understand in the slightest degree Raphael's Cartoons - now I begin
to read them a little. And how did I learn to do so? By seeing
something done in quite an opposite spirit-I mean a picture of
Guido's in which all the Saints, instead of that heroic simplicity and
unaffected grandeur which they inherit from Raphael, had each of
them both in countenance and gesture all the canting, solemn, melodramatic mawkishness of Mackenzie's Father Nicholas. When I was
last at Haydon's I looked over a Book of Prints taken from the
fresco of the Church of Milan, the name of which I forget - in it are
comprised Specimens of the first and second age of Art in Italy. I
do not think I ever had a greater treat out of Shakespeare. Full of
romance and the most tender feeling- magnificence of draperies beyond everything I ever saw, not excepting Raphael's. But Grotesque
to a curious pitch - yet still making up a fine whole - even finer to
me than more accomplish'd works- as there was left so much room
for Imagination. 2
Again the emphasis is not upon lines and colors, but upon
the meaning of the cartoons, as compared with the empty
superficiality of the Mackenzie picture. How does one get a
perception of meaning from a work of art? The Milan Prints
are even finer than many more accomplished works, for example, the Raphaels, for the reason that more is left to the
2 To George and Georgiana Keats. Dec., I818. Forman. Vol. IV,
page 202.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I33


imagination. Evidently, it is through the kindling of the
imagination into a flame of intuitive perceptive activity that
the beauty-the truth-of any work of art is revealed.
There is only one suggestion of sensuous beauty- the " magnificence of draperies "- but the emphasis is not on this.
In December, i8I7, Keats had the privilege of visiting the
private art gallery of Mr. West,3 then President of the Royal
Academy.4 He records his impressions in his usual direct and
acute manner:5
I spent Friday evening with Wells,6 and went next morning to see
"Death on a Pale Horse."   It is a wonderful picture, when West's
age is considered; but there is nothing to be intense upon, no woman
one feels mad to kiss, no face swelling into reality. The excellence of
every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate
from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth. Examine " King Lear," and you will find this exemplified throughout; but
in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth
of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness.
The " no woman one feels mad to kiss " and "no face swelling into reality " almost sounds like a sensuous man talking,
but the rest of the comment is redemptive, making clear that
Keats demanded of a work of art such an intensity of imaginative effect that figures in it should take their place in their
proper settings in real life, with enough dynamic suggestiveness to send the onlooker into a state of imaginative speculation upon life itself and his relation to it. Certainly it is this
"momentous depth      of speculation" that is of paramount
concern.
3 W. T. Young in his introduction to Keats's Endymion and Othef
Poems points out how large an influence painters and lovers and students
of art exerted in Keats's life. He names several of these, most of whom
were his closest friends- Hunt, art collector; Hazlitt, painter and critic;
Severn, painter; Haydon, painter; Lamb, student and critic of art. (Pp.
XX-XXI.)
4 This gallery is described by Hunt in his Autobiography, Vol. I, pp.
100-103.
5 To George and Thomas Keats. Dec., I8I7. Forman. Vol. IV, p. 49.
6 Charles Wells, the author of Stories After Nature and Joseph and
His Brethren.




I34


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Keats mentions King Lear as an example of a thing done in
the contrary spirit. Here is intensity in " such close relationship with Beauty and Truth " that all disagreeables evaporate
in contemplating the work. On January 23, I8I8, Keats sat
down to read King Lear again and wrote the sonnet, now so
well known, expressing the feeling and speculations that the
great tragedy inspired in him:
O Golden-Tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.
What is this fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay
but a picture of life itself projected in such intensity of reality
that disagreeables vanish and end in an imaginative grasp of
truth and beauty? 7 This is a beauty that far transcends sensuous loveliness; it is rooted in an intuitive knowledge of the
human heart and the spiritual laws of life.
Then let us turn to the Ode on a Grecian Urn itself. One
keen reading with an eye to the sonnets on the Elgin Marbles,
is sufficient to show that what has stirred the heart of the poet
is the imaginative picture of Greek life in its relation to all
existence represented here. Let us look for a moment at what
Keats sees in the various pieces of art that formed the inspira7 This could apply only to tragedy and serious epic. But when Keats
talked of the highest poetry he always meant these.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I35


tion for this poem. What he really does in the ode is to describe a series of pictures or scenes that he imagines must
have formed the basis for the artists' work, and to give us his
own speculations growing out of his contemplation of the
sculptured representation of these scenes. The external aspects of the urn do not constitute its beauty. It is rather
that the symbols executed here, themselves a product of mind
and soul, still contain within themselves a dynamic something
that has power to kindle the imagination of a sympathetic
observer, who not only is able to re-create the particular bit of life that furnished the material through which
the artist worked, but can also catch the gleam beyond, the
vision of the universal that the creator of the piece himself
conceived. This is what Keats saw in the urn, and in this is
its beauty.
The urn for Keats is a transparent glass, a powerful lens,
through which there stands revealed a miniature pageant of
the past merging into the present of all time; here is a portrayal of a tiny portion of the verities of the ages which it is
art's business to perceive, interpret, and preserve. This comes
to the mind of Keats in a pleasurable wave of recognition.
It is pleasurable because he detects, starting out at him from
the fair chiselled form, waves of intuitive whisperings that
seize his imagination and set it all aflame; it is pleasurable,
moreover, because in the intensity of speculation that follows,
there comes a sense of discovery of truth; and it is not mere
fact or logical conclusion he perceives, nor is it a moral precept, nor a religious idea; it is rather like a revelation of a
principle of existence, a perception of a law of life, an insight
into the universal human heart. So to Keats truth arrived
at through emotionalized imaginative perception is beauty,
and beauty is truth.
This is a conception of Beauty wide enough to include in
its scope representations of the ugly and tragic, as well as the
fair and pleasant things of life. We have already seen in our
study of Keats's attempts to reconcile his dream world with




I36


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the actual that he had found in the detached contemplative
state a means to a pleasurable attitude toward even the harsh
cruelty of nature and the false and mean activities of men -
because there was something fine in the energies displayed,
in themselves. Therefore, all ended, not in revulsion, but in
speculation. In the extracts I have given in this chapter, there
are passages that reveal flashes of rarest insight into the whole
problem of the ugly in art. One of these, " The excellence of
every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables
evaporate from their being in close relationship with Beauty
and Truth," is, as Sidney Colvin declares, "a sentence worth
whole treatises, and fit, sketchy as it is, to serve as text to all
that can justly be discoursed concerning problems of art in
its relation to nature, - of realism, romance, and the rest."
(John Keats, page 253.) Perhaps this is praise a trifle extravagant, but certainly we have here an admirable beginning for
a dissertation on the aesthetics of the painful and the ugly.
We may conclude from the tenor of the passage in which Keats
makes this observation that there was no beauty in Mr. West's
Death on a Pale Horse. Why? Because there was nothing
intense enough to grip the imagination and raise it from the
lowlands of the particular commonplace and sordid to the
heights of free speculation upon the universal. On the contrary, the prints of Milanese frescoes, many of them "grotesque to a certain degree," contain more beauty than many
a finer work -"they leave more to the imagination "; in
other words, give rise to images the mind may be intense upon,
and so excite more vivid perceptions of the real and true.
King Lear exemplifies the capacity of a work of art wrought
from the materials of pain and folly to produce that detached
speculative state of spirit essential to a memorable aesthetic
experience. This is brought about through an intensity sufficient to stir the imagination to a " momentous depth of speculation." How admirably do Keats's words describe the adventure! The phrase " burn through " depicts the nature and the
intensity of the imaginative re-creative revelation; and " fierce




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


137


dispute betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay" are words
that reveal in themselves without help from other lines how
far Keats's mind is projected on its way in speculation by this
vivid representation of tragic reality, all portrayed with such
intensity that disagreeables vanish and end in an imaginative
grasp of truth and beauty.
Here in brief, seems to be Keats's theory as to the possibility
of creating beauty out of the ugly and evil: Take any subject,
however repulsive, and represent it in an art form with enough
vigorous universal life-truth gleaming through to excite intense imaginative speculation and insight, and the unpleasantness vanishes - is not recognized; what one sees is a vision of
life, and there comes an elevation of soul that carries one for
the moment away from the accidents of time and place. But
that gleam of vitalized truth lacking, a repulsive object represented in art is —repulsive and ugly. It is a simple creed,
yet, as Colvin says, in its naked statement one worth whole
treatises on art. It is entirely and admirably consistent with
Keats's large theory that a direct and intuitive perception of
truth is Beauty.
II
Hyperion was undoubtedly planned by Keats as his greatest
poem. He had looked ahead to it while he was still writing
Endymion; he consecrated himself for his great task by a
year of study and reflection; that he might be better fitted
for it he plunged again into Milton and strove to understand
his mighty genius, travelled into Scotland on a toilsome walking tour in order to load his imagination with grander scenes
and mountains, and strengthened his intellect by the most
arduous thought on the great problems of art and life.
"Throughout twelve months of strenuous intellectual effort,"
declares Mr. de Selincourt in his Warton Lecture, " Hyperion
was seldom from his mind." Even more than the Endymion,
the Hyperion was to be a supreme test of his powers. What
was to be its theme? Milton had sung in his masterpiece of




I38


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the fall of man and the plan for his redemption; his setting
had been heaven and hell and all that lies between; his personages, the angels and archangels of the spheres. Dante had
traced the progress of a soul through the mysteries of the unknown other-worlds. Could Keats, who hopefully planned to
be " among the English poets after death," choose a less lofty
subject in marking out the limits of his supreme work? As
one would expect, he did not. His original plan was an epic
on a large scale, probably not less than ten books long. The
characters were to be the Titan gods of the infant world and
the Olympian powers who overthrew them; its setting was to
be the earth, the air, and the far-flung spaces of the revolving
sun. The theme is the triumph of Beaut   the progress of
the human intellect the evolution of man's mindfrom trust
in brute force and the imperfect knowledge of mere reason
to the god-like wisdom of intuitive understanding. Shelley
had been writing a large-scale dramatic poem representing the
emancipation of the mind of man from its age-long errors and
superstitions. It is not probable that Keats was influenced
by this, or even knew of it, but his conception is akin to
Shelley's evolutionary idea as a step in the general progress
of man's mind toward a higher level. But we must believe
that Keats is here portraying the last highest stage in human
mental progress-the stage where the imaginative wisdom
of man matches empyrean vision and reality.
It was as natural for Keats to turn to Greek mythology for
the setting and figures for his epic as for Milton to go to the
Bible and theology for his Paradise Lost, and for a parallel
in evolution it would be impossible to find metal more attractive than the Greek myths of successive creations.8 The evolutionary conception emerges in the speech of Oceanus in which
he points out that the Titan dynasty has fallen " by course of
natural law." To Saturn he explains,
8 Though it is probable that the Greeks themselves had no notion whatever of evolution. " The notion of a world evolution was wholly alien to the
Greeks," says Bosanquet in his History of Aesthetics, p. 325.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I39


And first, as thou wast not the first of powers,
So art thou not the last; it cannot be:
Thou art not the beginning nor the end.
(Hyperion, Book II, 11. 188-I90.)
For just as light succeeded chaos and "parental darkness,"
and touched "the whole enormous matter into life" and
form; just
As Heaven and Earth are fairer, fairer far
Than Chaos and blank Darkness,
so it is with the gods, since.. on our heels a fresh perfection treads
A power more strong in beauty.
Against this fate it is vain to murmur or complain. To do so
is as idle as for the dull earth to " quarrel with the proud
forests " that have sprung from it,... for 'tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might.
Here is evolution, upward evolution. Hyperion, as Mr. Ker
says, in his essay in the John Keats Memorial Volume, " was
a poem of progress "; moreover, it is a poem of steady, certain
progress. Keats had before talked of the gregarious march
of the human intellect.9  Now he gives some idea as to the
nature of that march and its destination.
The questions raised as we read Hyperion are, What does
this new race possess that is denied the Titans? What is this
beauty in which lies their strength? Was it that the individuals of the old dispensation were lacking in the glorious resplendent physical beauty due to gods? Hardly: it is a frequent comment among critics that Hyperion was given up
because Keats had made the Hyperion order so dazzling that
it would be hopeless to attempt to create beings to surpass
9 In the Mansion of Life letter. Mr. Ker mentions this too, but he does
not suggest toward what the intellect is marching.




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THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


them. It is not even that these gods were lacking in some of
the gentler virtues. Saturn mourns-...and I am smother'd up,
And buried from all godlike exercise
Of influence benign on planets pale,
Of admonitions to the wind and seas,
Of peaceful sway above man's harvesting,
And all those acts which Deity supreme
Doth ease his heart of love in.
(Book I, 11. i06-I13.)
Benignity, even love, Saturn has shown, in his rule of the
earth and the planets. And he has been powerful. He and
his kind have created and fashioned a universe. He could do
it again, he feels. And Hyperion! Brilliant, regal Hyperion,
blazing in glory and fortified in his splendid palace of light,
why must he fall?
To be concise, I think Hyperion and the rest went down
just as incomplete and imperfect knowledge, largely dependent
on reason, must ever give way to complete and perfect knowledge with its origin largely in direct imaginative perception.
Hyperion fell before a power " more strong in Beauty," more
strong, that is, in ability to understand and grasp and use
the secrets of the universe, more strong in soul knowledge, as
it were.
We have seen that there are two qualities that Keats held
to belong to perfect knowledge: first, to comprehend completely through disciplined imagination; second, to have
reached a state in mental stature where all facts, pleasant or
otherwise, will appear in their proper perspective as subjects
for contemplation, and not as materials to excite the fears and
passions. The ideal is nowhere better expressed than when in
Hyperion, Oceanus, Keats's own oracle in this poem, declares:
Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain;
O folly! for to bear all naked truths,
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty.
(Book II, 11. 202-205.)




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I4I


But the Saturn-Hyperion dynasty possesses neither of these
elements. Oceanus comes near to both; it is somewhat of a
defect in the consistency of the piece for him to have been
able to find the avenue
Through which I wandered to eternal truth,
and to have in his face...that severe content
Which comes from thought and musing.
But perhaps he is just " a little lower than the angels." He
can perceive, but cannot apply his wisdom. Gentle, poetic
Clymene stands next in intuitive perception and calm. Just
as Oceanus has come to an understanding of the laws of evolution and of the necessity for powers of less perfection to succumb to those of greater beauty, so she has detected something
of the secret of that new beauty in the music of Apollo and
knows that there is no hope of reinstatement. But as for the
rest, there seems no trace of knowledge or of calm. Old
Saturn searches his stock of lore and pores over "Nature's
universal scroll" all to no purpose; he cannot understand the
mystery of his humiliating fall. Then he gives himself up
to vain passions, and we behold the sad spectacle of.. the supreme God
At war with all the frailty of grief,
Of rage, of fear, anxiety, revenge,
Remorse, spleen, hope, but most of all despair.
(Book I, 11. 92-95.)
And so with the others. Keats's description of the scene is
a masterpiece in its delineation of the rage and despair of
frustrated ambition. Enceladus is plotting, " tiger-passion'd"
and "lion-thought'd "; a " shattered rib of rock" testifies to
the rage of Creus; Iapetus savagely squeezes with clenched
fingers the neck of a serpent, until its barbed tongue protrudes; and others show their pain and anger in various horrid




142


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


ways. As for Hyperion, he storms about the palace of the
sun all " full of wrath" and fear and foreboding.
Now this is all ungodlike, as Ccelus, whispering to Hyperion,
makes plain. In fact, it is in this likeness to mere mortals in
their inability to know and comprehend in serene strength and
repose that the weakness of these gods seems to lie. Ccelus
has seen Saturn fall and fears Hyperion is near the same doom:
For I have seen my sons most unlike Gods.
Divine ye were created, and divine
In sad demeanor, solemn, undisturb'd,
Unruffled, like high Gods, ye liv'd and ruled:
Now I behold in you fear, hope, and wrath;
Actions of rage and passion; even as
I see them, on the mortal world beneath,
In men who die. - This is the grief, 0 Son!
Sad sign of ruin, sudden dismay, and fall!
(Book I, 11. 327-336.)
This "fear, hope, and wrath " of the Titans grows from a
baffling sense of inferiority, a consciousness that greater powers
" more strong in beauty" have appeared and that for them
the sun has set -even as ambitious men rage without, but
tremble within when superiors threaten their domain.
In the meantime what of Apollo? In the island of Delos he
is wandering about, uncomforted. Even the consciousness of
his perfect accomplishment wrought from the lyre, of which
Mnemosyne speaksWhose strings touch'd by thy fingers, all the vast
Unwearied ear of the whole universe
Listen'd in pain and pleasure -
(Book III, 11. 64-66.)
gives him no joy. He is restless, weeping, utterly unhappy.
He craves knowledge, not ordinary knowledge, but a wide
all-embracing understanding. " Painful, vile oblivion " seals
his eyes, and his frantic soul strains to burst the barriers that
veil the mysteries from his sight.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I43


What are the stars? There is the sun, the sun!... Where is power?
Whose hand, whose essence, what divinity
Makes this alarum in the elements,
While I here idle listen on the shores
In fearless yet in aching ignorance?
(Book III, 11. 97-I07.)
He must know the secrets of existence, its creator, and his
purpose.
And then the miracle happens. The intense longing to
know is father of the realization. Mnemosyne does not speak;
nevertheless, Apollo learns all. In one mighty wave of revelation supreme truth flashes itself into the soul of this young
god - the representative of a new order of love and beauty
and wisdom on earth.
- Knowledge enormous makes a God of me,
he cries.
But it is intuitive knowledge, gained neither by book, nor
precept, nor consecutive reasoning, that he now possesses.
And it is this, linked with his already sweet gift of song, that
is to give Apollo the power, the strength, and the perfection to
enable him to dispossess the comparatively crass Hyperion.
With Apollo the moment of deification through knowledge
is the moment of the birth of Beauty in his soul. It is not an
easy birth, but is accomplished in a travail of agony that is
"like the struggle at the gate of death": Keats wanted to
show that only those could attain the heights of insight who
had known suffering and misery.
It is through this transcendent gift of Beauty that Apollo
was to dethrone the apparently incomparable Hyperion. For
proof that the other Titans had been displaced by the same
power, we may rely upon the testimony of the oracle Oceanus.
Of his own successor, he says:




144


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Have ye beheld the young God of the Seas,
My dispossessor? Have ye seen his face?
I saw him on the calmed waters scud,
With such a glow of beauty in his eyes,
That it enforc'd me to bid sad farewell
To all my empire.
(Book II, 11. 232-239.)
The " glow of beauty in his eyes " is the light from that higher
knowledge that is to take possession of the earth in the new
evolutionary order. Had Keats gone on with the poem, there
would have been presented the spectacle of the deposition of
the blazing, effulgent sun-god, not by one more brilliant in
physical beauty but by one with understanding and glorious
god-like knowledge.
And so we come back to our definition of Beauty as a subjective conception of truth reached through imaginative perception. I cannot agree with Mr. Bradley, in his Keats and
"Philosophy," that while the two are for Keats the same, they
are yet " reached, apprehended, and expressed " in different
ways. I believe that Keats knew only one way to the deepest
truths of life and the highest realities of the realms that lie
beyond consciousness of this and the super-world, and that
was through the power of the penetrative imagination -the
soul of man reaching out to the great all-soul. There is, however, always this qualification: the soul that is to see far must
have its lessons; it cannot be that of a mere dreamer, it cannot
be one of those contented beings, who, no matter how wise
and good, no matter how much they love their fellows and,
"like slaves to poor humanity, labor for mortal good," still
seek no wonder but the human face,
No music but a happy-noted voice.
(The Fall of Hyperion, Canto I, 11. 163-i64.)
It must rather be that of a dreamer who strives to see beyond
the limits of earthly things into the vast empyrean mists, and




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I45


yet knows well the " giant agony of the world," knows, in fact,
that it is only through the discipline of this world of misery
that the imagination can be strengthened for the higher flights.
That is one thing Keats tried to make very plain in The
Fall of Hyperion. He had failed to do this in the early version. He had meant to show that Apollo received his gift of
divine knowledge through agony and suffering, had intended
to prove that this experience was necessary to his transformation. But neither the fierce convulsions that shook him as he
was born into his new life, nor all his anguish and shrieks
were convincing. Keats recognized this. He had in Endymion
failed to convey his idea to the public, had realized it and
suffered for it. He had now grown more fastidious in the
matter of clearness, and was not content to go on in a course
that meant a repetition of his former failure. So he abandons the poem, right at the point where its obscurity is most
manifest, and then tries again. In The Fall of Hyperion, he
leaves no room for doubt. The ground is cleared in the first
third of the first book, and no one can now fail to see that
the highest beauty can be perceived only by those who know
life in its deepest aspects. In fact, in order to show that the
mere visionary cannot succeed, Keats goes so far that he
is likely to be misunderstood as condemning the "dreamer
tribe " altogether; but the facts are he does find a place of
honor for the true dreamer who can also tell his dreams:
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable chain
And dumb enchantment. (The Fall of Hyperion.
Canto I, 11. 8-I I.)
Decisively, Keats teaches in this book, however, that empty
dreams won't do. Mr. Bradley says that with Keats " Beauty
is reached through sense and imagination, truth in or by
'thought,' 'knowledge,' or 'philosophy.'"  But no; Keats
could not come to any real Truth, not the kind he talks of




I46


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


here, through " thought" or through "philosophy."  "I can
never be certain of a Truth except through a clear conception
of its Beauty "-its imaginative reality, —he declares; and,
again, " I cannot see how one can arrive at truth through consecutive reasoning." No, for Keats even the road to Truth 10
and Beauty are the same. Thought, knowledge, and philosophy are, as we have seen, essential components to clear intuitive seeing, but they are components only. They are often
ends of the seeing process, but they are never the uncompounded agents. Only an educated, seer-like imagination,
ballasted by the wisdom of the earth, can wing its way with
steady sureness to the heart of the " Mystery."  To possess
such an imagination is to be strong in a beauty that shall
some day rule the earth. It was this power that enabled the
Olympians to upset the Titan dynasty, and by virtue of its
perfect fruition Apollo was to cast the sun-god from his throne.
III
From what has preceded, it is not difficult to deduce an explanation for that other famed line, "A thing of beauty is a
joy forever." True pleasure, true joy and happiness, consist
in being able to perceive eternal beauty. What is beautiful,
that is, what is true, in any one age remains so for all ages;
therefore, what gives the highest joy remains ever the same.
Ruskin, condemning the line as untrue, declares it should read,
"A thing of beauty is a law forever." The chances are that
Keats understood what he was saying much more fully than
Ruskin, yet perhaps might have written law rather than joy
with equal truth. For with Keats, a thing of beauty is a
discovered law of life, an eternal principle of the universe.
The permanence of beauty does not depend upon the life
and death of any one individual; its agent is the individual,
but its existence transcends the cycles of generations through
10 I speak here of permanent, universal truth, not of the particular facts
and the reasoned conclusions of everyday life.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I47


which it reveals itself. The essence of beauty endures all
ravages of time.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
(Ode to a Nightingale, VII.)
Of this stanza, Mr. J. M. Robertson, in his New Essays
Toward a Critical Method, says, "It must be confessed -
even Mr. Forman allows it - that the logic of the stanza is
wrong; and it will scarcely do to argue, as Mr. Forman does
in regard to the first stanza, that the obscurity is appropriate."
But, on the contrary, is not the logic secure? Is not the
beauty of the nightingale's song immortal? Is not the fairness
of Sheba the same deathless loveliness of entrancing women
of all ages? Has not the sweetness of the rose that quickens
your glad pulses today the same ineffable enchantment that
softened the hearts of Indian princes in ages gone? Is not
Keats here saying anew, " A thing of beauty is a joy forever "?
The mere temporal agent for that beauty -the feathered
songster, the garden bush, the human body -may decay, but
the beauty, the essence of being, the truth, the idea, cannot
die; it is eternal.' The sensuous real present here recalls the
ideal eternal, and in imagination the poet feels the melodious
11 Compare Hegel's remarks on the same subject:
"Upon that which, in works of art, the mind borrows from its own
inner life, it is able, even on the side of external existence, to confer permanence; whereas the individual living thing of nature is transient, vanishing
and mutable in its aspect, while the work of art persists. Though, indeed,
it is not mere permanence, but the accentuation of the character which
animation by mind confers, that constitutes its genuine preeminence as
compared with natural reality."- Philosophy of Fine Art.




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THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


notes of the beautiful singer near him stirring the hearts of
men of all ages - and so for him this beauty " is a joy forever" -as all true beauty must be.
In the Ode on a Grecian Urn art in its enduring permanence
is compared with brief and fleeting human life, and there is
quite as clear an implication as to the eternity of the Truth
and Beauty which the artist has captured and fixed in his
medium of relatively temporary art form. The permanence
of the unheard melodies, the love, the beauty, is greater than
the life of a mere work of art. Grecian urns of whatever
beauty shall crumble away, but the human passions, the universal truths represented there, shall endure. An echo of the
idea of immortal beauty found in the Ode to a Nightingale
occurs in the lines,
And happy melodist, unwearied,
Forever piping songs forever new,
and an evidence of Keats's conception of the content of he
nightingale's song is found in these lines from Bards of Passion and of Mirth:
Where the nightingale doth sing
Not a senseless, tranced thing,
But divine melodious truth;
Philosophic numbers smooth;
Tales and golden histories
Of heaven and its mysteries.
These songs shall surely go on long after the most solid marble
has slivered into atoms.
Wherein does this permanent beauty have its being? What
is the nature of the universe in which it resides? There are
times when one finds in Keats strong leanings toward Platonic
conceptions, others when we think of him as Hegelian in his
thinking. Platonic and Hegelian he seems in turn, though
perhaps in truth his thought is that of neither, but something
all his own.
Sir Sidney Colvin, Professor Bradley, and others have noted




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I49


the Platonic strain, but have dismissed the idea of Plato's
influence as improbable. " He had read no Plato," says Colvin, " though he was of course familiar enough with Spenser's
mellifluous dilution of Platonic and neo-Platonic doctrine in
his four Hymns." And Mr. Bradley declares, "He uses the
name of Plato for a rhyme in a jocular poem, but there is
no sign that he had read a word of Plato or knew that he had
written of beauty as well as truth."
But these gentlemen are overlooking certain facts. Consider the schoolmasters of Keats-his circle of friends and
those whose writings he followed closely. There was Hunt.
Now Hunt was not a university man, but he was intimate
with those who were, Shelley for instance; Shelley knew his
Plato thoroughly. And Hunt was quite cognizant of this fact.
He speaks of Shelley's daily reading at Marlow as consisting
of "Plato, or Homer, one of the Greek tragedians, or the
Bible"; 12 and in connection with Shelley's loss of his children at the hands of the government for his opinions, Hunt
mentions other famous men who, like Shelley, would have
been deprived of their children on account of their writings:
" The virtuous Condorcet, if he had been an Englishman and
a father would have stood no chance. Plato, for his Republic,
would have stood as little." 13 It is needless to speak of the
large circle of Hunt's other literary friends, who of course
had read Plato-Lamb, Hazlitt, and Coleridge, for example.
So, undoubtedly, Hunt was himself versed in Platonic doctrine, even though he had read no Plato personally, which was
unlikely. In his Essays he writes of " The greatest of all poets
(who, according to Plato, is God)." 14 And again he says:
"Whether we think the sun is a substance, or only the image
of a divine thought, an idea, a thing imaginary, we are equally
agreed as to the notion of its warmth." 15 The point to this
is that if Leigh Hunt knew Plato, Keats must have understood
him quite as well; they were long the most intimate of com12 Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries. I. 323.
13 Ibid., p. 320.  14 On the Borders of Poetry, p. I.
15 On Realities of the Imagination, in Essays, p. 67.




I50


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


panions. Then there was Benjamin Bailey, the Oxford student and rector, one of Keats's closest friends. In the summer
of I8I7, Keats spent five or six weeks with Benjamin Bailey
at Oxford.'6 Keats was writing Endymion, Bailey was studying. Every day they took a walk and talked about everything. It is hardly possible that in these walks this young
Oxford scholar would fail to discuss Plato and the other philosophers he must have been reading. I need not mention the
possible influence of Cowden Clark, scholar and son of a
scholar, of Haydon, of Reynolds, Severn, and Lamb -all of
whom were unquestionably familiar with the Platonic doctrines; most of them, certainly through Coleridge, understood
something of Kant, Herder, Fichte, and Schelling. May it
not be supposed then that Keats was fairly familiar with
Plato and even with other philosophic ideas current in his day
-second hand perhaps; but an idea is quite as real received
by word of mouth as through the printed page. Curious that
we so often forget this fact. Jesus wrote no word, neither did
Socrates.
At any rate, here and there we get a distinct Platonic intonation. Thus in Hyperion, Ccelus whispers to the sun-god:
O brightest of my children dear, earth-born
And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries
All unrevealed even to the powers
Which met at thy creating; at whose joys
And palpitations sweet, and pleasures soft,
I, Ccelus, wonder, how they came and whence;
And at the fruits thereof what shapes they be,
Distinct, and visible; symbols divine
Manifestations of that beauteous life
Diffus'd unseen throughout eternal space:
Of these new form'd art thou, oh brightest child!
(Hyperion, Book I, 309-3I9.)
Distinct and visible shapes are all " symbols divine" of " that
beauteous life" pervading the universe. This indeed smacks
of Plato.
16 Sidney Colvin: Jozn Keats, pp. I43 I45.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I5I


In the following passage from Endymion the idea is not so
clear. Is Cynthia a reflection of things in the earth, or are
earthly objects a reflection of her? After verses describing
the potent influence the moon has always exerted over him,
how when he was a child she seemed his sister, how she had
ever been the presiding deity in all his work and play, the inspiration to all beauty and romance he has known, the poet
declares:
And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend
With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen;
Thou wast the mountain-top -the sage's pen -
The poet's harp - the voice of friends - the sun; 17
Thou wast the river - thou wast glory won;
Thou wast my clarion's blast -thou wast my steed -
My goblet full of wine  my topmost deed: -
Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon!
0 what a wild and harmonized tune
My spirit struck from all the beautiful!
(Endymion. Book III, 11. i63-I72.)
Cynthia, transcendent ideality, the essence of all reality, the
Mystery, is here identified in the poet's mind with everything
in the world, both material and immaterial- with mountain
tops and music; with the sun and with poet's verses; with
glorious deeds and the beauty of women. If all these things
are but images and reflections of the ideal, then this, too, is
distinctly Platonic.
The whole conception of Endymion must also suggest, if not
Plato himself, at least the poetic Platonism of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Cynthia or the moon, the supreme
ideality, may be easily connected with the " heavenly beautie "
and the " heavenly love " of Spenser, Herbert, Crashaw, and
others - only Keats, of course, is working without reference
to the religious element. Just as Keats in Endymion shows
17 "All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on
its own account; strictly taken is not there at all. Matter exists only
spiritually, and to represent some idea, and body it forth."
-Sartor Resartus. Book I, Chapter XI.




152


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the poet in quest of highest truth, so Spenser in his hymns
prays for the Almighty
To shed into my breast some sparkling light
Of thine eternall Truth, that I may show
Some little beames to mortall eyes below
Of that immortall beautie, there with thee.
(A Hymne to Heavenly Beautie.)
In describing the felicities that must attend ascent to the
ideal, Keats likewise portrays love as at the very " tip-top"
of the " richer entanglements" that, far more "self-destroying" than other "enthralments," lead by degrees "to the
chief intensity." Hanging by an " unseen film" as " an orbed
drop of light," it at first dazzles and confuses, but in the end,
Melting into its radiance, we blend
Mingle and so become a part of it.
(Endymion. I, 11. 8io-8II.)
Now this would seem to be the very height of possible ethereal flight; but on the contrary, the enthralments of earthly
love are only a step toward the supremest bliss, that of union
with immortal love, for... if this earthly love has power to make
Men's being mortal, immortal; to shake
Ambition from their memories, and brim
Their measure of content: what merest whim
Seems all this poor endeavor after fame,
To one, who keeps within his steadfast aim
A love immortal, an immortal too.
(Endymion. Book I, 11. 843-849.)
This immortal love then is supreme. But in spite of the fact
that human love is supposed to be a mere gradation to the
higher stage, the young poet has really left nothing more to
be said of union with heavenly essence, and we must therefore
simply take the melting, mingling, and blending in the lower
order as indicative of what occurs when the very chiefest intensity is reached. Understanding this " immortal love " as




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I53


"heavenly love" or " heavenly beauty " we need read no further than Spenser's four hymns to find a prototype in earlier
English Platonism. In Spenser, too, there is a lifting of the
soul through " love."
From this base world unto thy heaven's light
Where I may see those admirable things
Which there thou workest by thy sovereign might.
(Of Heavenly Love.)
And with him, also,... Love is a celestiall harmonie
Of likely harts composed of starres concent
Which joyne together in sweete sympathie
To worke ech others joy and true content.
(In Honour of Beautie.)
Moreover, to pass back for a moment to earthly love, it is
quite possible, it seems to me, to throw light on the meaning
of Keats's exclamation to Fanny Brawne in the middle days
of their courtship, " I cannot conceive any beginning of such
love as I have for you but Beauty," by referring for a moment
to certain Plato-tinctured passages from earlier English poetry.
Take, for example, this one from Drummond,
My mind me told that in some other place
It elsewhere saw the idea of that face,
And lov'd a love of heavenly pure delight,
(Poems. The First Part, Sonnet VII.)
or the following from Vaughan's A Song to Amoret,
For I not for an hour did love,
Or for a day desire,
But with my soul had from above
This endless, holy fire.
These lines read in connection with Keats's sentence, inevitably suggest parallel thought.
All this would seem to point rather unmistakably to the
fact that in one way or another Plato exercised a considerable
influence on the young poet.




I54


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


However, striking as is the evidence, I do not find Keats's
thinking consistently Platonic. He undoubtedly knew of
Plato's ideal world and his " Idea," and through various
channels absorbed elements of Platonism into his thought;
but it would seem that, while perhaps he knew nothing of
Hegelian doctrines, he is in reality much closer to Hegel than
to Plato in his prevailing metaphysical conceptions.
That Keats thought of the universe as a unity, there can be
no doubt; and it is quite as clear that he was confident of an
existence beyond this sensuous world. Very early he has
talked about the " imagination and its empyreal reflections,"
suggesting an unseen world to whose secrets the imagination
is the only key. What the imagination seizes as truth belongs to this supersensuous reality. In the Endymion, we find
not only that this mysterious ideality exists, but that in essence it is one with nature and with man. And the Hyperion
suggests unity, a divine plan, and a working toward
a one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
(In Memoriam. Last lines.)
There is no more illuminating thought on this matter in all
of Keats than that contained in the " Vale of Soul-Making" 18
letter. Here is a universe with a God who has planned so
wisely that the world of circumstances he has created is
exactly adapted to the making of individual identities out of
the soul sparks he throws out. The highest end is the building
of human souls, with fundamental, human qualities, alike in
that their genesis is in God, yet distinct from each other, developed into separate individualities, and, may we say at a
venture, having something of their own to contribute to the
all-soul when they leave this earth and return to the enveloping bosom of the infinite. And all these creations are subject
to the great moral law of the universe, an unchanging order
which no voice can alter. Thus, restless Hyperion, chafing
18 See Chapter V, The Mystery.




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


I55


fearfully and wrathfully in the presence of his impending
doom, would fain start the day a few hours earlier -
Fain would he have commanded, fain took throne
And bid the day begin, if but for change.
He might not: - No, though a primeval God:
The sacred seasons might not be disturbed.
(Hyperion. Book I, 11. 290-293.)
Here it seems things have all been ordered from the beginning;
yet this has nothing to do with man after all, only nature, for
in Keats, we find no evidence of the doctrine of necessitarianism as applied to men which early occupied the minds of
Coleridge and Wordsworth. In the idea of the " vale of Soulmaking," in spite of the part the external world plays in developing souls, it is the individual heart that, reacting on these
external impressions, always determines the direction of the
soul's growth. But unity, plan, and a spiritual super-world,
we find, were all a part of his conception.
Perhaps one of the best intimations of Keats's view can be
obtained from his letter of October, 1818, to George and
Georgiana Keats in which he discusses the abstract idea of
beauty. The poet is evidently replying to a recommendation
that he should marry:
Notwithstanding your Happiness and your recommendation, I hope
I shall never marry. Though the most beautiful Creature were waiting for me at the end of a Journey or a Walk; though the Carpets
were of Silk, the Curtains of the morning Clouds; the chairs and
Sofa stuffed with Cygnet's down; the food Manna, the Wine beyond
Claret, the window opening on Winander mere I should not feel - or
rather my Happiness would not be so fine, as my Solicitude is sublime. Then instead of what I have described there is a sublimity to
welcome me home. The roaring of the wind is my wife, and the
Stars through the window pane are my Children. The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles the more divided and
minute domestic happiness-an amiable wife and sweet Children I
contemplate as a part of that Beauty, but I must have a thousand
of these beautiful particles to fill up my heart. I feel more and
more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in




156


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


this world alone but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone
than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my
Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's bodyguard -then,
" Tragedy with sceptered pall comes sweeping by." According to my
state of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or with
Theocritus in the Vales of Sicily. Or I throw my whole being into
Troilus, and repeating those lines, ' I wander like a lost Soul upon
the Stygian Banks staying for waftage,' I melt into the air with a
voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone.
The " mighty abstract Idea of Beauty " here appears to be
an imaginative conception of a concrete reality of which the
things of this world are an integral part, yet only a small
portion of the whole. Keats can contemplate a wife and children as a part of that Beauty, but only as particles of which
it takes a thousand to fill his heart. It is to be noted, however, that the things of the purely imaginative reality take
their color from the known actuality of the world; not as reflections nor as prototypes, but as elements akin in nature, and
all by the same spirit interfused, behind all the sense of the
sublime and the mysterious. There is little of Plato in this
abstract idea of beauty; there is in it a nearer approach to
the Hegelian theory of the Absolute. Keats is too conscious
of the world in which he lives - the actual, the present - as
a vital part of the ideal to be consistently Platonic. We have
seen how his thinking drove him more and more to turn to the
actual as the basic principle in his scheme of poetic salvation.
To be sure, the sensuously real is merely a starting point upon
which he constructs his imaginative universe, but there must
be always that point of departure, and, too, it is in itself ever
a part, however small, of the absolute unity that is reached,
not merely a symbol of it.
This instinctive insistence on beginning with and building
on the actual possibly saved Keats from wandering afield into
an abstract mysticism or into a philosophic haze of exaggerated ideality, with "no earthly depth to root in." It was
leading him to a poetry whose central theme would be humanity, with a warp and woof of the character, sentiment, and




WHAT IS BEAUTY?


157


passions of mankind, yet with the divine touch of eternal truth
upon it, within it the breath and spirit of the infinite.
To Keats, the secret of the ability to penetrate into the
very borderlands of being, which is the poet's field, is to know
life and the world about us to the depths, and especially to
have entered into its pain. And knowing this, we have the
light which illuminates all the dark and hidden passages that
lead to the " Penetralium of mystery," to the heart of the
whole universe; by knowing this world, we know the inner
spirit of all; for all are of one substance joined. And this
gives us our right clue to Keats's conception of the relation
between this world of sense and the invisible real in the realm
of poetry and art.
To Shelley the actual things of the world were a veil to the
hidden reality and harmony of the universe, to Plato they
were a sign and a symbol, to Hegel they were an extension,
but to Keats they were both an extension and a revelation.
Keats was a philosophical idealist to whom divine and eternal
laws become apparent through visible and present phenomena,
themselves both a part and a manifestation of absolute reality
and truth. He was as distinctly this when in Endymion he
made the sensuous, the deeply human, and ideality one, as
when he gave The Fall of Hyperion to the world. It was a
settled tenet of his metaphysical faith.
From the foregoing, it will be seen that Keats's conception
of beauty was on a higher plane than has often been supposed.
To him beauty is the subjective reaction to a glimpse beyond
the veil. It is truth -truth made to live through the power
of a creative imagination able to dissolve the flying vapors of
intangible substance into reality, or truth seized through the
power of the re-creative imagination capable of reconstructing
the images with which an original artist has wrought. The
rulership of the universe is to fall to that power most strong
in beauty, that is, most strong in the god-like capacity to
seize and apprehend truth through the intellectualized, educated intuitive faculties; even so did the Apollo-Neptune




158       THE MIND      OF JOHN    KEATS
dynasty triumph over the Titans. Finally, this beauty is
eternal: it is of the everlasting reality that lies behind the
mere surface and seeming of earthly things; whoever has imaginative power sufficient to grasp it, has laid hold of permanent, indestructible truth; he has enjoyed, moreover, the
highest type of aesthetic experience -he has known Beauty
face to face.




X     CHAPTER     IX
PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE
I
IN poetry I have sought to avoid system and mannerism,"
wrote Shelley to Keats. " I wish those who excel me in genius
would pursue the same plan." Shelley's indirect advice is
aimed at Keats, as a part of the little interchange of mutual
admonition that went on between the two poets. Shelley had
advised Keats not to publish his "first blights on Hampstead Heath," and had later invited him to visit him at Marlow. But the young poet did not accept the advice nor the
invitation. He gave as his reason for refusing to visit Shelley
during the composition of Endymion his desire to " have his
own unfettered scope." And now, as if a little nettled at
Shelley's implication, he includes in his reply, along with
some humble acknowledgment of debt for former counsel it is
true, a bit of gratuitous advice to the elder poet. The " poor
poem " mentioned in Keats's opening sentence is Endymion,
which Shelley had recently re-read, " with a new sense of the
treasure of poetry it contains."
I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor poem, which I would
willingly take the trouble to unwrite, if possible, did I care so much
as I have done about reputation. I received a copy of the Cenci, as
from yourself, from Hunt. There is only one part of it I am judge
of - the poetry and dramatic effect, which by many spirits now-adays is considered the Mammon. A modern work, it is said, must
have a purpose, which may be the God.   An artist must serve
Mammon; he must have " self-concentration "- selfishness, perhaps.
You, I am sure, will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you
might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load
every rift of your subject with ore. The thought of such discipline
must fall like cold chains upon you, who perhaps never sat with your
I59




I6o


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


wings furled for six months together. And is not this extraordinary
talk for the writer of Endymion, whose mind was like a pack of
scattered cards? I am picked up and sorted to a pip. My imagination is a monastery, and I am its monk..... I remember you advising me not to express my first blights, on Hampstead Heath. I am
returning advice upon your hands. Most of the poems in the volume 1
I send you have been written above two years, and would never have
been published but for the hope of gain; so you see I am inclined
enough to take your advice now.
This letter is interesting and valuable, not only for the
direct artistic principle expressed in the injunction to the poet
to load every rift of his subject with ore, but for the confession of a capitulation to something like Shelley's way of
thinking as to the badness of the first poems and to a coincident development in Keats's own ideas in regard to technical
merit in a work of art. The sentence, " The thought of such
discipline must fall like cold chains upon you, who perhaps
never sat with your wings furled for six months together,"
recalls Keats's metaphoric description of his periods of moulting.2 In such periods of intense reflection and self-examination he had repudiated many of those "mannerisms" and
much of the " system" that Shelley deplores. The HuntBeattie-Mrs. Tighe influences had early been discredited, and
some of his early verse mannerisms partly borrowed from
Hunt he had discarded even before Endymion was written.
The reason was probably a developed taste to which his own
rigorous reasoning and a continued study of his poetic masters
contributed much. "No one," writes Cowden Clarke, than
whom no one knew more of Keats's real self, "could chastise
his thoughts more earnestly than Keats." And Professor
Saintsbury, in his discussion of Keats in The History of
English Prosody, attributes his growth in poetic taste to the
study of Milton and Shakespeare -" who, as has been said,
are between them sufficient to destroy all prosodic error."
At any rate, long before his death, Keats had learned to apply
to himself the wise suggestion of Longinus contained in his
1 The Lamia-Hyperion Volume.       2 See Chapter I, p. 27.




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


OrI


epigrammatic dictum, " Genius may sometimes want the spur,
but it stands as frequently in need of the curb," and had sincerely undertaken to impose upon himself the severest selfrestraint.
Unlike many of the romantic school of thinkers, Schiller for
example, Keats did not put form. above substance, but the
reverse. To him matter was chief, though he quite realized
'that only in a perfect marriage of form and content could
beauty be expressed. Keats understood thoroughly the necessity of mastering the technique of his art. When he urged
Shelley, to be more of an artist, and loa,;d every rift of his
subject with ore, he was thinking partly of the art side of
poetry. To Keats much of Shelley's verse must have appeared
diffuse, vague, and meaningless. Shelley needed discipline in
thought and expression, the same discipline to which Keats
himself was ever subjecting his muse.
What Keats earnestly sought for was exact veracity in expressing his conception of reality. His aim, as A. CluttonBrock, writing in the John Keats Memorial Volume, says, was
to express this reality, " to draw everything in its peculiarity,
which, he believed, was its beauty. That was why he looked
upon ' fine phrases like a lover,' not merely and vaguely for
their sound, but because a fine phrase meant for him a sharp
drawing, the rhythmical drawing of poetry in which the very
momentum defines and expresses."
Keats's ears were attuned with exquisite sensibility to beauty
of language and rhythm, but with regard to sound and sense,
in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, he loved
sound chiefly for its power to project sense on its right way.
" A melodious passage in poetry," he says, " is full of pleasures
both sensual and spiritual. The spiritual is felt when the very
letters and points of charactered language show like the hieroglyphics of beauty; the mysterious signs of our immortal freemasonry! 'A thing to dream of, not to tell.'" Even when
he speaks of what he calls the " sensual " quality, he seems
to be thinking of the expression of the inner emotional, rather




I 62


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


than of purely sensuous, effects: "The sensual life of verse
springs warm from the lips of Kean and to one learned in
Shakespearian hieroglyphics- learned in the spiritual portion of those lines to which Kean adds a sensual grandeur;
his tongue must seem to have robbed the Hybla bees and left
them honeyless! There is an indescribable gusto in his voice,
by which we feel that the utterer is speaking of the past and
future while speaking of the instant. When he says in Othello,
' Put up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them,' we
feel that his throat had commanded where swords were as
thick as reeds. From eternal risk, he speaks as though his
body were unassailable. Again, his exclamation of 'blood,
blood, blood! ' is direful and slaughterous to the deepest degree; the very words appear stained and gory." All this is
indeed but further testimony to the poet's instinctive demand for the word and phrase of deep suggestive power,
for expression that rings true to the heart's deepest emotions,
and to his native response to the beauty of true organic
rhythm.
Keats did indeed love " fine phrases."  "There is a cool
pleasure in the very sound of vale," he exclaimed rapturously,
in writing of Milton's Paradise Lost. " Milton has put vales
in heaven and hell with the very utter affection and yearning
of a great Poet." And in a letter to Woodhouse, September,
i8i9, he includes a few lines from Hyperion " on account of a
word in the last line of a fine sound." The line is,
Though it blows legend-laden through the trees,
and the word, as one would guess, is " legend-laden." In a
letter to Fanny Brawne, July, i8i9, there is a sentence that
throws light on Keats's sensitive feeling foj language. He is
trying to express his love and admiration. l" I want a brighter
word than bright, a fairer word than fair,' he exclaims. As
Mr. Draper says in comment, in his article in the Memorial
Volume, "' Bright' and 'fair' are words that have been used
a long time in the world, and have been taken for granted:




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


i63


they are signs, but are not any longer expressions of what
men have felt." The poet-lover wants a word newly-minted
that will exactly and completely carry the sense of the vivid
emotion that wells within him.
It was this exquisite feeling for freshly lucent language that
enabled Keats to write with the marvelous felicity of phrase
that marks the works of his maturity. How his mind worked
in its search for the right expression we may see from the
emendations he made in reworking his poems. In Mr. de
Selincourt's admirable editions and in Mr. Forman's Prose
and Poetry of John Keats, containing variations in reading in
manuscripts, one may study his revisions in detail. There is
not space to go far into these here. But to note only two or
three examples from the matchless Ode to a Nightingale is
sufficient to show the delicacy and accuracy of taste which
guided the poet in his search for perfection in organic rhythm.
In the opening line, " a drowsy numbness pains " first read
" a painful numbness falls "; in the second stanza " Cool'd a
long age " was first " Cooling an age "; and the almost indescribably exquisite " Forlorn " in the eighth stanza was added
in the second draft, a repetitive effect of inimitable melancholic beauty. The change in each case is toward a fine rightness, a closer harmony of sound and sense. A hint as to the
principles that guided the young poet in his selection of words
and sounds in verse building is to be had from Benjamin
Bailey's memoranda:
One of his favorite topics of discourse was the principle of melody
in verse, upon which he had his own notions, particularly in the
management of open and close vowels. I think I have een a somewhat similar theory attributed to Mr. Wordsworth... ( It was, that
the vowels should be so managed as not to clash one with another,
so as to hear the melody, - and yet that they should bi interchanged,
like differing notes of music to prevent monotony.3
Keats's delight in the music of beautiful verse, where sound
and sense unite in forms of loveliness, finds constant expres3 Memoranda of Benjamin Bailey, Houghton MSS. Quoted by Colvin,
in John Keats, p. I47.




164        THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS
sion in his remarks on other poets. On the blank space at the
end of the " Floure and The Lefe " he wrote:
Oh! what a power has white simplicity!
What mighty power has this gentle story!
And in the Marginalia to his Paradise Lost, apropos of the
rhythm of the verse, was penned this comment:
Heaven moves on like music throughout. Hell is also peopled with
angels; it also moves on like music, not grating and harsh, but like
a grand accompaniment in the Base to Heaven.
In sound and phrase and sense, merged and dissolved into one
single harmony, each fitted to each as if by nature formed, as
in the best of Milton, Keats found supreme aesthetic satisfaction.
In his own verse, he strove for this effect. Knowing that
poetic beauty is dependent on an emotional arousal, a mental
excitation attuned to the key of imaginative perception, his
great care was for rhythmic forms so adequately adapted to a
vital and beautiful expression of the mood and thought as to
satisfy the demands of his exacting inner ear, and, moreover,
to reproduce in the mind of the reader the exact images he
sought to convey. What Keats wanted was to make the reader
live the scene imaginatively, to feel it. And to achieve this
end he sought ever to make his verse express what he called
"the voice of true feeling."
II
In the John Keats Memorial Volume of I92I, there is a contribution in verse by Amy Lowell that seems to be expressive
of her idea of Keats's attitude toward the art of poetry. It
begins:
Well, John Keats,
I know how you felt when you swung out of the inn
And started up Box Hill after the moon.




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


i6-51


Then it continues with the ecstatic emotions which the poet
felt in contact with the moon, how he gloried in her loveliness,
until she finally slipped through his hand and left him " tor~
tured with this anguish of unbearable beauty." After that
Keats went home and wrote and wrote by a wavering candle,
and finally as he " tumbled into bed " he said: " It's a piece
of luck I thought of coming out to Box Hill."
As if Keats were the most veritable hack writer scouting
for a thrill and a punch for his sensational feature next day!
But the less Keats he, and the less Amy Lowell she, if either
one ever depended upon such " luck " for the inspiration to
poetry. No, Keats was not out like a Sunday supplement
writer looking for tips and thrills.
It was in silent, deep communion that his spirit wrought
upon the materials of the world and transmuted them into
poetic beauty. The account of Charles Brown as to the source
and evolution of the "Ode to a Nightingale " is authentic
evidence on this point:
In the spring of i8i9 a nightingale had built her nest near my
house. Keats felt a tranquil and continued joy in her song; and
one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass
plot under a plum tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When
he came into the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in
his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On
inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his
poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale.
It was thus that with quiet, observant soul Keats waited
upon life for truth and his own sincere reactions to it.
Superficiality and insincerity of any kind the young poet
hated with all his soul. Such a character as Byron's, for example, seems to have irritated him; Byron's egoism, his eternal pose, his coxcombry, all in direct contrast to Keats's own
simple honesty, were at times extremely distasteful to him.
An interesting expression of this is to be found in an incident
recorded by Severn. When Keats and Severn were on their
way to Italy during Keats's illness, they were overtaken by a




x66


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


violent storm. " After the tempest had subsided, Keats was
reading the description of the storm in Don Juan, and cast
the book on the floor in a transport of indignation. ' How
horrible an example of human nature,' he cried, 'is this man,
who has no pleasure left him but to gloat over and jeer at
the most awful incidents of life. Oh! this is a paltry originality, which consists in making solemn things gay, and gay
things solemn, and yet it will fascinate thousands, by the very
diabolical outrage of their sympathies. Byron's perverted
education makes him assume to feel, and try to impart to
others those depraved sensations which the want of any education excites in many.' "4
Keats craved truth. And since to him the most truth is to
be discovered through the emotions and intuitions,' his career
was one earnest quest for authentic poetic feeling. He was
impatient with superficiality; he delighted in the genuine.
This attitude is voiced in Endymion's distressed cry,5 C I have
no depth to strike in "; it is apparent in Keats's dissatisfaction with himself for his lack of first-hand experience and his
determination to seek knowledge expressed in the early i8i8
letters; and there is abundant other evidence of it in his writings. Of his own work he once declared, " My poetry will
never be fit for anything; it doesn't cover its ground well."
Of Wordsworth he wrote severely, in commenting on his
Gypsy, " It seems to me that if Wordsworth had thought a
little deeper at that moment, he would not have written the
poem at all." In other words he is accusing Wordsworth of
superficiality. " I should judge it," he continues, " to have
been written in one of the most comfortable moods of his life
it is a kind of sketchy intellectual landscape, not a search
after truth." Keats required of himself this search for truth,
and was on his guard against the entrance into his writing of
any element that seemed hostile to it- for instance, foreign
4 Houghton: Life and Letters of John Keats. Universal Library Edition,
p. 259.
5 Book II, 1. i6i.




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


I67


idioms. Native words, he felt, are most expressive of English
life and thought. Upon this subject he writes emphatically:
I shall never become attached to a foreign idiom, so as to put it
into my writings. The Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a
corruption of our language. It should be kept as it is, unique, a
curiosity, a beautiful and grand curiosity, the most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect accommodating itself to
Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I
think - or what ought to be the purest - is Chatterton's.  The
language had existed long enough to be entirely incorrupted of
Chaucer's Gallicisms, and still the old words are used. Chatterton's
language is entirely Northern. I prefer the native music of it to
Milton's, cut by feet.... Miltonic verse cannot be written, but is
the verse of art. I wish to devote myself to another verse alone.
"Miltonic verse cannot be written but is the verse of art."
Whatever Keats means by "cannot be written," it is clear
enough that when he says " Miltonic verse... is the verse of
art," he is declaring that it will not do for him; he is instinctively setting against " a verse of art," a verse best fitted to
express deep, true feeling. That becomes clear from a second
more explicit utterance on the same subject:
No I will not copy a parcel of verses. I always somehow associate
Chatterton with autumn. He is the purest writer in the English
Language. He has no French idiom or particles, like Chaucer -'tis
genuine English Idiom in English words. I have given up Hyperion -
there were too many Miltonic inversions in it. Mion- ic verse cannot
be written-but in an artful, or, rather artist's humour. I wish to
give myself up to other sensations. English ought to be kept up. It
may be interesting to you to pick out some lines from Hyperion, and
put a mark + to the false beauty proceeding from art and one I[ to
the true voice of feeling. Upon my soul 'twas imagination - I cannot make the distinction. Every now and then there is a Miltonic
intonation. But I cannot make the division properly.
Professor Cook declares in his Art of Poetry, " The imitable
and compassable qualities of a work of art are always matters
of detail, rarely or never the vital and animating principle.
Hence where grandeur is present in a composition, it springs




i68


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


directly from the soul of the artist. Taking thought will add
no cubit to the moral stature of the thinker, and just as little
to that of his literary product." In Hyperion, Keats had taken
fthought as to his literary product by deliberately studying
Milton and seeking heights of sublimity by modelling his
verse to some extent after the form of the older poet. But
this touch of borowed grander irked Keats; his sensitive
Lfeeling for faithful and truthful expression of his own deepest
self was offended.
Keats had discovered that, for him at least, the Miltonic
manner was productive of artificiality; to write in this fashion
simply meant "art for art's sake" rather than art for the
sake of expressing simply and sincerely the thought and emotions of the heart. His suggestion, " and put a mark + to the
false beauty proceeding from art, and one II to the true voice
of feeling," tells the whole story. In itself it is worth a volume of critical comment on the high-minded seriousness with
which Keats viewed his art.
In the quotations just cited, there is contained, it seems to
me, the most logical explanation to be found for Keats's giving up the first Hyperion. Many foolish conjectures have
been made by various critics, but here is the secret. (Keats
felt that in following false fires he was prostituting his art,
and had no heart to go on./ In his essay entitled The Second
Version of Hyperion in the Memorial Volume, LascellesTAbercrombie has put the matter nicely and precisely. There was
nothing wrong with the subject in the first Hyperion, he explains; the real trouble was, " The splendours had become
decoration.... And in the instant he realized that he was
not getting complete and prec:ise expressonToihls' inspiration,
he discarded the poem, and started again. -There is no clearer
or more poignant instance of the artistic conscience than this.
It was the grandest piece of blank verse since Samson
Agonistes that Keats thus so sternly discarded." And that
was it. Keats felt that he was sacrificing truth and clarity
in the interests of false art, that is, false for him, for it was




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


I69


not his native mode of expression. Therefore, he determined
to abandon his first version and start anew. Itjs illuminating,
in the light of this fact, to note that KeatSevidently began
the Revision of Hyperion with the intention of saying what
he had to say clearly enough and adequately enough so that
people could not fail to understand  He could not do that
in the Miltonic verse of art, so he determined upon a radical
revision.
It is worth noting here in parenthesis that in giving up the
Miltonic style, Keats is not giving up Milton. CAlways, Milton
stands next to Shakespeare in the affections of the youthful
poet. Keats simply came to realize that the ultimate verse
form he was seeking in his struggle for perfect harmony of
content and expression did not lie in the Miltonic direction.
For him Miltonic verse could not be organic, hence his use
of it approached the merely rhetorical.
Even in the sometimes extravagantly phrased, often mawkish Endymion, Keats had consciously worked for naturalness
and truth in speech. If he failed it was due to defect in reach,
not to lack of true vision of the thing to be attained. His own
comment sets forth his ideal:
Leigh Hunt I showed my ist Book to- He allows it not much
merit as a whole; says it is unnatural and made ten objections to it
in the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural and
too high-flown for Brother and Sister, - says it should be simple,
forgetting do ye mind that they are both overshadowed by a supernatural Power, and of force could not speak like Francesca in the
"Rimini." He must first prove that Caliban's poetry is unnatural.
This with me completely overturns his objections.
All good proof that what Keats sought was the true voice of
feeling.
One of the most striking comments on Keats's artistic conscience and its scrupulous regard for depth and sincerity as
opposed to the mawkish is to be found in the interesting letter
to Woodhouse recently unearthed by Miss Amy Lowell and
contributed to the John Keats Memorial Volume in I92I.




170


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Woodhouse has been urging Keats to publish. The poet
replies,
I will give you a few reasons why I shall persist in not publishing
The Pot of Basil. It is too smokeable. I can get it smoak'd at the
Carpenters shaving chimney much more cheaply. There is too much
inexperience of line, and simplicity of Knowledge in it —which
might do very well after one's death, but not while one is alive.
There are very few would look to the reality. I intend to use more
finesse with the Public. It is possible to write fine things which
cannot be laugh'd at in any way. Isabella is what I should call were
I a reviewer "A weak-sided Poem " with an amusing sober-sadness
about it. Not that I do not think Reynolds and you are quite right
about it — it is enough for me. But this will not do to be public.
If I may say so, in my dramatic capacity I enter fully into the feeling: but in Propria Persona I should be apt to quiz it myself. There
is no objection of this kind to Lamia - A good deal to St. Agnes Eve
- only not so glaring. Would as I say I could write you something
sylvestian. But I have no time to think: I am an otiosus-preoccupatus
Man. I think upon crutches like the folks in your Pump room.
The trouble with Isabella, Keats is saying, was its thinness:
there was too little poetic power displayed in its making;
there was "too much inexperience of line and simplicity of
l-knowledge in it." He had not really in his proper self entered into the feeling of it all; hence the weak-sidedness of
the poem. Writing to Taylor, September 20, I8I9, Woodhouse
speaks of Keats's attitude toward Isabella: " He said he could
not bear tIe former (Isabella) now. It appeared to him
mawkish." (The Eve of St. Agnes too suffered somewhat from
_this same defect - too many of its phrases were mere drapery
and decoration. )But Lamia was better.6 It was " the voice
of true feeling." That was probably why Keats was so sure
it would give people a " sensation," and sensation, he declared,
is what they want in poetry.
6 Mr. Fausset says, "A letter recently published by Miss Amy Lowell
shows with what a ruthless sense of values he dismissed Lamia and The
Eve of St. Agnes to the haunts of prettiness and sentimentality." (P. 65.)
But Keats does not so condemn Lamia and the Eve of St. Agnes. Indeed,
the statement, "There is no objection of this kind to Lamia," shows that
Keats places the poem entirely above the region of "prettiness and
sentimentality."




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


I7I


I have been reading over a part of a short poem I have composed
lately, called Lamia, and I am certain there is that sort of fire in it
which must take hold of people in some way. Give them either
pleasant or unpleasant sensation - what they want is a sensation of
some sort.
"What they want is a sensation."    And in the sense he
meant it, yes. Enthusiasm, " transport," Longinus would have
called this quality - the one valid test for literature. ( Keats
knew that warm response can be had from the reader only
when the poet himself has felt deeply and seen truly, and is
capable of clothing his vision in language of simplicity and
power. It takes fire to draw fire; it requires " the true voice
of feeling " to arouse the glow of warm emotional response.
III
Spontaneity, ease, and fitness of expression became with
Keats an eager passion which led him to discontent with the
old and outworn and drove him on ever in restless quest for
faultless forms in which to clothe his thought.
It was in this spirit that he tried for an improved sonnet
arrangement. "I have been endeavoring to discover a better
Sonnet Stanza than we have," he explains in a letter to George
and Georgiana Keats. "The legitimate does not suit the language over well from the pouncing rhymes - the other appears
too elegiac —and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a
pleasing effect - I do not pretend to have succeeded - it will
explain itself." And another time, he encloses the verses entitled Ever let the Fancy roam and Bards of passion and of
mirth, with the comment:
These are specimens of a sort of rondeau which I think I shall become partial to - because you have one idea amplified with greater
ease and more delight and freedom than in the sonnet.
Thus Keats went on through all his working days studying
the old forms, selecting, rejecting, ever seeking to adapt and




I72


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


fashion his expression to meet the requirements of fresh vision
and fine taste. From I Stood Tip-Toe to Endymion; from
Endymion to the Odes; from the Odes to the final revision
of Hyperion, the search continued. Sometimes feverishly, but
patiently apd painstakingly, the young poet labored at his
great task. The important truth that art must 1e experimental, that mastery cannot come at a single bound| but that,
as Bjdrkman says, " Art must wrestle with its technique, conquer its ma4rialbe~ it can             n   s final and true
midion," was one of the principles that Keats adopted in his
theory of poetry. He eagerl sought perfection, but his good
judgment told him that a final marriage of perfect form to
substance can come only after much struggle) only after many
trials and failures have schooled the creative and critical faculties to a higher reach and a firmer grasp. The necessity for
experimentation is delightfully expressed in what I like to call
the Snailhorn Perception of Beauty letter. Keats is writing
to Haydon in April, i8i8.
Believe me Haydon your picture is part of myself -I have ever
been too sensible of the labyrinthian path to- eminence in Art (judging
from Poetry) ever to think I understood the emphasis of painting.
The innumerable compositions and decompositions which take place
between the intellect and its thousand materials before it arrives at
that trembling delicate and snail-horn perception of beauty. I know
not your many havens of intenseness - nor ever can know them:
but for this I hope nought you achieve is lost upon me; for when a
Schoolboy the abstract Idea I had of an heroic painting -was what
I cannot describe. I saw it sometimes sideways, large, prominent,
round and colour'd with magnificence- somewhat like the feel I have
of Anthony and Cleopatra. Or of Alcibiades leaning on his Crimson
Couch in his Galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with
the Sea.
May we not believe that in this passage we have a pretty
clear exposition of Keats's idea of the creation of any art
form from the artist's standpoint? Given an intellect with its
" thousand materials" to work with, - with images on one
hand, and, on the other, sensuous symbols: in poetry, words




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


I73


and metrical relations; in painting, lines and color; in music,
sounds in rhythmical arrangements, - there is a necessity for
a long struggle for a fitting form, which, when attained, is
not only a perfect expression of the imaginative beauty sought,
but is, moreover, a means of the artist's coming to a true intuition of that beauty, "that trembling, delicate and snailhorn perception," Keats describes. Only with true expression can come true perception. This is the completed fabric
of the creative imagination- the moment of realization of
the identity of form with content, of beauty with truth.
How are we to reconcile this idea with what Keats has written elsewhere, " That if poetry comes not as naturally as the
leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all "? There may
be some explanation in the fact that this second idea was expressed two months earlier than the first. Keats was growing
rapidly in these days -in the spring of 1818 - and these two
passages might indicate a changed attitude. But I believe we
need find no such great discrepancy as to make this belief
necessary. Possibly these compositions and decompositions he
mentions may occur in the mind of the artist before they are
set down in any symbols whatever. Endymion, for instance,
which, Benjamin Bailey tells us, was written steadily and
rapidly, so much a day, with as much ease as one could write
prose, probably grew out of long periods of reflection in some
of those days when Keats " thought so much about poetry, so
long together," that he " could not get to sleep at night." At
such times, no doubt, the formative process went on in much
the same manner as he has described it to Haydon.
Moreover, we know that to some extent there was, as he
wrote Endymion, a gradual unfolding of the Beauty, the imaginative idea, for which he was striving. We have seen how
in writing to his publisher, John Taylor, concerning the lines
on happiness in Book I, he had declared that this whole passage was, when he wrote it, "a regular stepping of the Imagination tards a truth," that his having written this argument
would perhaps be the greatest service to him of anything he




174


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


had ever done, for, he says, "It set before me the gradations
of happiness, even like a kind of pleasure thermometer, and is
my first step towards the chief attempt in the drama. The
playing of different natures with joy and sorrow."
Again, of Endymion as a whole, while itself written off rapidly without apparent testing and revision in a search for true
expression, Keats realized it was but one of the attempts
among the numerous " compositions and decompositions "
necessary to an approach toward his ideal. " It is just that
this youngster should die away," he wrote in his preface to
Endymion: " a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope
that while it is dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself
for verses fit to live."
To be intelligently self-critical, to be ever on the alert to
detect elements of weakness and strength, only so may a poet
truly realize his largest self. Keats, unlike Wordsworth, was
fortunate enough to be endowed with sound critical sense.
Hence the great value of his experiments. On the subject of
criticism he declares manfully:
I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my
part. As for the rest, I egin to get a little acquainted with my own
strength and weakness. + Praise or blame has but a momentary effect
on the man whose love oi9 beauty in the abstract makes him a severe
critic on his own Works., My own domestic criticism has given me
pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly
could possibly inflict- and also when I feel that I am right, no external praise can give me suchN glow as my own solitary reperception
and ratification of what is fine.).. The Genius of Poetry must work
out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and
precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. TjhaL.wijch is
creative must create itself.
These ideas of the necessity for experiments in art and the
function of such trials in his development as a poet appear
clearly in various enlightening remarks on Endymion. Writing to Benjamin Bailey in October, i8I7, Keats says:
As to what you say about my being a Poet, I can return no Answer
but by saying that the high Idea I have of poetical fame makes me




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


175


think I see it towering too high above me. At any rate, I have no
right to talk until Endymion is finished, it will be a test, a trial of
my Powers of Imagination, and chiefly of my invention which is a
rare thing indeed -by which I must make 4000 lines of one bare
circumstance, and fill them with poetry - and when I consider that
this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen
paces towards the temple of fame - it makes me say - God forbid
that I should be without such a task!
Quite as illuminating are these additional extracts from the
letter to James Augustus Hessey, already partially quoted:
In " Endymion," I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have
become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and
the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and piped a
silly pipe...  Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece,
and with that view asked advice and trembled over every page, it
would not have been written.
Endrnion was to be a test a trial of his* powers, et it was
but a preparation for greater things to come. "If Endymion
serves me as a pioneer," he wrote to John Taylor, " perhaps I
ought to be content." And again, with level sanity and calm
judgment, rating his first long poem at its true worth, he
declared to Haydon:
My Ideas with respect to it I assure you are very low -and I
would write the subject thoroughly again -but I am tired of it and
think the time would be better spent in writing a new Romance which
I have in my eye for next summer - Rome was not built in a Day -
and all the good I expect from my employment this summer is the
fruit of Experience which I hope to gather in my next Poem.
As late as March, i8i9, he is writing to George and Georgiana
Keats:
I am, however, young, writing at random, straining at particles of
light in the midst of a great darkness, without knowing the bearing of
any one assertion, of any one opinion.
Though most of Hyperion and many other fine things had
been written before this, Keats's search for the ideal beauty




I76


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


of form and content had not yet resulted satisfactorily. With
humility and good sense he had striven to attain it, but when
he gave over the task of revising Hyperion he was still far
from content. What he sought was a union of free form with
grandeur and sublimity of substance. Endymion was free,
but it was not sublime. Hyperion was grand, but it was
not free.
- In the poetry Keats has left us we find two almost distinct
methods: there is, on one hand, the extravagant freedom and
the excess of imagery and detail of I Stood Tip-Toe, Endymion,
and The Eve of St. Agnes; on the other, is the chaste severity
and restraint of thei(Hyperion, To Autumn, and The Eve of St.
Mark. The Endymion manner, Keats early saw, was all too
unrestrained, and before he came to Lamia, his next long narrative poem, he had prepared himself against his earlier faults
by a careful preliminary study of Dryden. In Isabella and
The Ev.eoStAgnes, which had come between, he had sternly
held himself within bounds by fitting each into the moulds of
a set form, and, though both are done in the earlier free style,
he had in them achieved a distinct advance in control. As a
reward for his pains in preparation, he secured in Lamia what
must have been a near approach to that ideal he sought. For
here is an easy flowing narrative movement, lyric in tone, yet
held within the confines of the couplet form, free from both
the formal precision of Dryden and the objectionable enjambement and unbridled excess of Endymion. The result is a
verse of power and delight, admirably adapted to the lyric tale
he here relates.
Before this had come the Hyperion experiment., Milton was
now the model, and for the first time Keats tried the blank
verse of the great masters of English poetry. Here was restraint and to spare. But the sober Miltonic latinisms did not
please the fastidious Keats; they fettered and shackled his
free spirit. ".I have but lately stood on my guard against
Milton," we find him declaring. " Life to him would be death
to me." In the Revision he tried to amend what seemed to




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


I77


him the artificiality of Hyperion by letting out the reins a
little in a manner more his own. But even here he could not
please himself, and soon gave over the attempt entirely.
In the meantime, however, Keats had written the great i8i9
odes, subjecting himself to the severe discipline of established
form, yet allowing himself the freedom and independence necessary to achieve distinct individual effects. The odes are
quietly chaste in tone, yet richly luxuriant in thought and
imagery; they are sober, yet magnificent; restrained, but
gloriously free. Here, I think, and in Lamia, Keats had most
nearly found himself. Had he gone on writing, it would probably have been in a verse similar to that of these poems of
the middle manner, the excresCences of Endymion pruned
away, the austerity of Hyperion relaxed into forms of rich,
abundant beauty. Only this we cannot know. Sad that this
most gifted singer should never have been given opportunity
to go beyond the experimental stage. Yet how marvellous
those experiments!
IV
"The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in
a man." Here Keats is declaring for a doctrine of poetic independence that he amply upholds in other utterances. No
matter how much suggestion he has received from contemporary poets, Keats is saying, no matter how servilely he may
have followed the masters in the period of raw apprenticeship, the true poet must in the end break his own paths and
work his way to his destined goal in his own individual
fashion. Keats well knew that he himself might be justly
charged with lack of originality in his maiden days - the
stamp of Spenser, Hunt, and others was only too plainly
marked upon his early verses.- But by the time he began
Endymian he had obviously resolved upon complete emancipation. As we have seen, Shelley had invited him to visit him
while he was writing the poem; but, jealously intent upon
guarding his precious originality, the young poet had refused.




I78


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


After Endymion was finished, it seems he was ready to resent
vigorously any charge of outside influences imputed to him in
the process of creating the poem. "You see, Bailey," he
wrote, " how independent my Writing has been, Hunt's dissuasion was of no avail -I refused to visit Shelley that I
might have my own unfettered scope;- and after all, I shall
have the Reputation of Hunt's eleve. His corrections and
amputations will by the knowing ones be traced in the Poem.
This is, to be sure, the vexation of a day...." The studious
care with which Keats had avoided Hunt and Shelley during
the composition of Endymion may be inferred from a passage
from a later letter in which the young poet is smarting a bit
under the sting of undoubtedly well-meant criticisms from
Hunt. Keats is writing to his brothers George and Thomas.
" The fact is he and Shelley are hurt, and perhaps justly, at
my not having showed them the affair officiously and from
several hints I have had they appear much disposed to dissect
and anatomize any trip or slip I may have made." This was,
quite likely, unfounded suspicion, for Shelley and Hunt seem
to have had a genuine desire to befriend their young brother
genius at every opportunity; but it at least corroborates other
testimony to the effect that Keats worked on his first long
poem with the nearest to absolute independence possible.
Later he went to Milton for a partial model, but him also
he forswore, and, if, as certain critics believe, he still later was
turning to Dante for guidance, it is pretty certain he would
have deserted him too. For Keats's convictions, once formed,
were strong. And one of his firmest beliefs was that the poet
must permit himself " his own unfettered scope." He wanted
to write independently of popular opinion, and he declared,
" I feel it in my power to refuse the poisonous suffrage of a
public"; he wanted to write independently of the reviewers,
and he spoke bravely of the difficulties involved, " for the
Reviews, have enervated and made indolent men's minds,"
until "few think for themselves "; he wanted to write independently of tradition, and he confessed, " One of my Ambi



PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


I79


tions is to make as great a revolution in modern dramatic
writing as Kean has done in acting-Another, to upset the
drawling of the blue-stocking literary world." Independence
seemed the one condition to his poetic salvation. And it was
not a silly self-vaunting egotism that had bred this view; it
was not a cheap desire for the bizarre and different- Keatswas always willing to learn all the past had to teach: it came
rather as a result of a deep insight into the fundamental principle that to write with truth, and sincerity, and power, a poet
must always speak from the deepest wells of his most vital
self. So Keats declared, " I will write independently. I have
written independently without Judgment. I may write independently and with Judgment hereafter."
v
Keats many times expressed a desire to be of use to the
world; his ideal was service, performed in a natural, unassuming way- to do the world some good but not to preach. " I
am convinced more and more every day that (excepting the
human friend philosopher), a fine writer is the most genuine
being in the world." - When Keats said that, he was placing
the human friend philosopher above even the poet. But a
poet, too, can be of service. "I am ambitious of doing the
world some good," he wrote: " if I should be spared, that may
be the work of maturer years." Much earlier he had declared,
"I would jump down 2Etna for any great Public good." Again
he speaks of placing his " ultimate in the glory of dying for a
great human purpose." And in the well-known letter to
Taylor in which he confesses his need for knowledge and wisdom, he expresses his conviction most forcefully of.all: "I
find there is no wort  ursuit but the idea of doing some
good to the world. Some do it with their   - so me withtheir wit - some with their benevolence -... there is but
one way for me. The road lies through application, study
and thought. I will pursue it." "There is but one way for




i8o


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


me, that is to prepare myself to write great poetry," he might
have said. After all, that was the end of his study. For in
spite of his mention of a wish to write on the " Liberal side
of the question," when he was expressing a desire to be of some
service to the world, after all he must have had in mind in
these many iterations of his great longing to do some good,
principally the doing of his best through poetry. In the pain
of sickness and hopeless love during his latter days, he confided to Fanny Brawne his longing to write a poem to be a
consolation for people in such a situation as his own. Yes,
that would be it -a poem that by a fuller revelation of the
meaning of life would assuage the doubts and fears of struggling souls, and lift the spirit to a higher plane. It would be
a poem accomplishing its purpose by " bringing to utterance
the Divine Nature, the deepest interests of humanity, and the
most comprehensive truths of the mind."
But such a poem would have no moral tacked on to tell its
tale, nor would its aim be to unravel any religious or moral
problems. Such poetry needs no label to proclaim its messages. " Here are the Poems," wrote Keats to his brother
and sister-in-law -" they will explain themselves - as all
poems should do without any comment." Keats was a philosophic poet, as was Shelley, but equally with Shelley, he hated
palpable didacticism.7 We have seen how at times Keats al} most idealized Wordsworth, but there were sides of the older
poet that he thoroughly disliked, and one of these was his
penchant for preaching and moralizing. This feeling led him
at one time to denounce Wordsworth roundly. He is writing
to Reynolds in February, i8i8. The vigor of his sentiments
may be taken as a measure of the intensity of his conviction:
It may be said that we ought to read our contemporaries, that
Wordsworth &c. should have their due from us. But, for the sake of
a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into
a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist? Every
7 " Didactic poetry is my abhorrence; nothing can be equally well expressed in prose that is not tedious and superogatory in verse." Preface to
Prometheus Unbound.




PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICE


i8i


man has his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock
over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself. Many
a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven, and yet want confidence to put down his half-seeing. Sancho will invent a Journey
heavenward as well as anybody. We hate poetry that has a palpable.
design upon us, and, if we do not agree, seems to put its hands into
its breeches pockets. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive, a thing
which enters into one's soTi and does not startle it or amaze it with
itself, but with its subject. How beautiful are the retired flowers!
How would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway, crying out, "Admire me, I am a violet; dote upon me, I am a
primrose! " Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this; each
of the modems, like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state, and
knows how many straws are swept daily from the Causeways in all
his dominions, and has a continual itching that all the Housewives
should have their coppers well scoured. The ancients were Emperors
of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and
scarcely cared to visit them. I will cut all this - I will have no more
of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the
tribe of Manasseh when we can wander with Esau? Why should we
kick against the pricks when we can walk on Roses? Why should we
be owls, when we can be eagles? Why be teazed with " nice-eyed wagtails " when we have in sight the Cherub Contemplation? Why with
Wordsworth's " Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand " when
we can have Jacques " under an oak " &c.? The secret of the Bough
of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it. Old
Matthew spoke to him some years ago on something, and because he
happens in an Evening Walk to imagine the figure of the old Man, b,'
must stamp it down in black and white, and it is henceforth sacred. I
don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I
mean to say we need not be teazed with grandeur and merit when we
can have them uncontaminated and unobtrusive. Let us have the old
Poets and Robin Hood.
One is glad to believe with Keats's contemporaries that this
letter owed the evidence of rancor in it to a temporary fit of
anger growing out of Wordsworth's careless characterization
of The Hymn to Pan in Endymion as " a pretty piece of
Paganism.8"   It is certain, however, that the attitude towards
the didactic expressed here is the result of permanent convic8 See Houghton's comment in Formnan. Vol. IV, p. 72. (Note.)




I82        THE   MIND    OF JOHN    KEATS
tion. The whole being of Keats rebelled at the idea of prostituting art, with its supreme function of interpreting and transmitting universal life truth, by any attempt to make it the
vehicle of particular doctrine. Great art should be unobtrusive; it should be of the soul, speaking directly to the soul, of
the hidden mysteries and patterns of life; it should never be.
the means of social, political, or religious propaganda.




CHAPTER X


WHAT IS POETRY?- CONCLUSION
A STUDY of what Keats has to say about art challenges one
to attempt a formulation of his definition of poetry. The task
is no easy one, for, in order to discover Keats's answer to the
question, What is poetry? it becomes necessary not only to
examine the young poet's direct utterance on the subject, but
to take into account his whole aesthetic theory. Occasionally,
one finds a near approach to a definition, but it is never complete and is intelligible only when linked with other passages
of like import. It is convenient to begin with one of Keats's
own attempts to explain what he thought great verse should be.
" In Poetry, I have a few axioms," wrote the young poet to
his friend and publisher, John Taylor, in February, i8i8,
"and you will see how far I am from their centre.
ist. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and
not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording
of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.
2nd. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The
rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery, should, like the
sun, come natural to him, shine over him and set soberly,
although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than
to write it. And this leads me to
Another axiom -That if poetry comes not as naturally as
the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. - However
it may be with me, I cannot help looking into new countries
with ' 0 for a muse of Fire to ascend! '')
Keats is emphasizing here one phase of poetry only, its effect
upon the reader; but in his exposition of this, he touches upon
i83




I84


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


the fundamentals that must lie behind that effect. " Poetry
should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity." By
surprise, Keats means to create a feeling of strangeness. This
is not to result from singularity or the bizarre, such as the
drapery from an Oriental setting or other distant scene; but
rather, this effect is to consist in the largeness and fullness of
imagery and feeling that is aroused in the pleasant recognition
of one's own sincerest thoughts, which " appear almost a remembrance." This last seems to echo Wordsworth's "emotion
recollected in tranquillity," and the whole idea recalls a remark
of Walter Pater's: "A certain strangeness, something of the
blossoming of the aloe, is indeed an element in all true works
of art: that they shall excite or surprise us is indispensable.
But that they shall give pleasure and exert a charm over us is
indispensable, too; and this strangeness must be sweet alsoa lovely strangeness." 1 This lovely excess, beauty never halfway, but luxuriant and luxurious, we find in most of Keats's
poetry. It is found in its completest charm in some of the
chastened descriptive scenes in Hyperion: it is at its fullest,
freest splendor in the blending of beauty of sight and sound
and inner sense into a symphony of loveliness in the Eve of
St. Agnes.
Such fine excess and strangeness Keats found in much of
Shakespeare. It is associated in his mind with a freedom and
a fullness of imagination that must carry the poet into a region
of his own creation, into a state of disentanglement from the
particular facts and accidents of life and history. There are
places where even the master poet fails in this, as Keats points
out. But at his best, Shakespeare is the ideal artist, and
Keats's critical remarks on Shakespeare are always instructive
as to his own poetic theories. Speaking of the history plays
and the three parts of Henry VI, he says:
They are written with infinite vigour, but their regularity tied the
hand of Shakespeare. Particular facts kept him in the high road, and
would not suffer him to turn down leafy and winding lanes, and to
1 The Poetry of Michelangelo, in The Renaissance.




WHAT IS POETRY?


i85


break wildly and at once into the breathing fields. The poetry is for
the most part ironed and manacled with a chain of facts, and cannot
get free; it cannot escape from the prison house of history, nor often
move without our being disturbed with the clanking of its fetters.
The poetry of Shakespeare is generally free as is the wind- a perfect
thing of the elements, winged and sweetly colored. Poetry must be
free! 2 It is of the air, not of the earth; and the higher it soars the
nearer it gets to its home. The poetry of "Romeo and Juliet," of
" Hamlet," of " Macbeth," is the poetry of Shakespeare's soul - full
of love and divine romance. It knows no stop in its delight, but
"goeth where it listeth " - remaining, however, in all men's hearts a
perpetual and golden dream.  The poetry of "Lear," "Othello,"
"Cymbeline," &c., is the poetry of human passions and affections,
made almost ethereal by the power of the poet. Again, the poetry
of "Richard," "John," and the Henries is the blending the imaginative with the historical: it is poetry! but oftentimes poetry wandering
on the London Road.3
This last quotation is rich in the essence of Keats's ideas
on the nature of poetry. In Henry VI, particular facts kept
Shakespeare " on the high road, and would not suffer him to
turn down leafy and winding lanes, and to break wildly and
at once into the breathing fields." Here is the criterion of
luxuriance, of " fine excess " boldly applied to Shakespeare.
" Do not the lovers of poetry like to have a little region to
wander in, where they may pick and choose, and in which the
images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found
new in a second reading; which may be food for a week's
stroll in the summer? "' Keats asks elsewhere, in argument
against Hunt's query, "Why endeavor after a long poem? "
Keats's own imagination was tropical and demanded a poetical
garden of rich abundance.
" Poetry must be free! It is of the air, not of the earth;
and the higher it soars the nearer it gets to its home." -The
2 " In short," says Hazlitt, "it is to take the language of imagination
from off the ground, and enable it to spread its wings where it may indulge its own impulses, without being stopped or fretted, that poetry was
invented." On Poetry in General.
3 The Champion. Sunday, Dec. 28, I817. Forman. Vol. III, pp.
234-235.




i86


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


poetry of Richard, John, and " the Henries " is to Keats inferior, for, even though there is here a blending of the imagination with the historical, yet the earthly touch is too obtrusive, and it is at best " poetry wandering on the London Road,"
poetry not triumphantly free, but chained by particular facts.
Does Keats mean then that in the best poetry there must be
a complete escape from the earth and the earthy? Part of
the foregoing might suggest such a conclusion. But read down
a few lines: "The poetry of 'Romeo and Juliet,' of ' Hamlet,' of 'Macbeth,' is the poetry of Shakespeare's soul -full
of love and divine romance." And further: " The poetry of
'Lear,' ' Othello,' ' Cymbeline,' etc., is the poetry of human
passions and affections made almost ethereal by the power of
the poet."
In this direct discussion of the characteristics of true poetry
Keats reveals the fundamental antithesis that marks so much
of his aesthetic thought - the conflict between a desire for
escape and a sense for reality. The difficulty is apparent.
It is obvious that poetry of " the human passions and affections " cannot be a literature of escape, no matter how much
etherealized. It must have its genesis in a knowledge of mankind and in imaginative insight into the human soul. Such
poetry cannot be entirely free, cannot soar indefinitely near
heaven, its home, for always it must be bound to the unchanging actualities of existence. To be sure, it can get away
from the certain particular facts of history, but it cannot
escape life.
As we have seen, a great deal of Keats's aesthetic theory
is concerned with an attempt to reconcile these conflicting
claims; and with his progress toward reconciliation came
greater clarity as to the nature and function of poetry. Consequently, before we can go on with our definition, it will be
necessary to review briefly the ground already covered in
this book.
It would seem that in the beginning of his poetic career,
Keats had only a general notion of what it was all about. At




WHAT IS POETRY?


187


first, he appears to have felt that it was only necessary to
give the imagination free rein, especially when under the influence of nature, and poetic vision would result. The content
was not clearly defined. In the early poems of i8I5 and i8i6
knights, ladies, and nymphs, chivalry and love would seem to
be the principal objects, though there is a suggestion of more
substantial, more serious earthy subjects, as parts of the three
epistles of the period would indicate. In Sleep and Poetry,
however, there is a clear-cut enunciation of the theory that
all other deligh           must yield to the nobler life of
humanity, where the poet shall " find the agonies and strife
oT~a hearts." Then came the rich aesthetic experiences
of i8I7, the period of the first acquaintance with the Elgin
Marbles, the period of a new reading and understanding of
Shakespeare, of a serious study of Wordsworth at Oxford, and
of the " burning of thought 7 on poetry on the Isle of Wight.
Keats was at this time seeking for that " centrality," which
Professor Irving Babbitt declares the Romantic poets lack.
"The truly Romantic universe," says Mr. Babbitt, in his
Rousseau and Romanticism, " has no centre."
The young Keats early began to realize that his poetic universe was indeed without a centre; but he was not content
to let it remain so. He set himself to analyze; he sought to
define the nature of the world in which he was living and the
poetic relationships of the various elements of that world to
each other. Endymion was the first result of this thinking.
Keats's universe, as revealed in Endymion, does have " centrality," only imperfectly expressed perhaps, yet truly existent to him who will study the poem carefully in the light of
the whole of the poet's writings. The universe of Endymioq
is made up, first, of the surface and seeming of life, visible
sensuous things; second, of humanity, with all its passions andi
sorrows; third, of an invisible existence behind all this, of
which, it develops as Keats's meaning unfolds itself, the first
two are but a part: for in the end, the heavenly dream-maiden
of Books I and II symbolizing the realm of the sensuous, the




i88


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


Indian Maiden representing humanity, and Cynthia, embodying the ideal world, prove to be identical.4 Later, Keats
was to define these conceptions more clearly. In his comments on the mighty abstract Idea of Beauty5 and in the
letter on the Imagination to George and Georgiana Keats, of
December, I8I8,6 he clearly suggests that the nature of this
invisible world can be known only through a knowledge of
the reality about us, which the creative imagination makes
its starting point in the building of an abstract universe of
which all that can be seen and known is but a small part.
The world of sense is incomplete and can furnish but a clue
to the vast invisible reality. Further, in his discussion of the
world as a "vale of Soul-making" Keats suggests his belief
in an animating principle pervading the universe, a God, who
throws off soul sparks. These, through contact with a world
of pain and troubles admirably fitted for the work of soulmaking, develop into identities and individualities, which at
death must pass back into the all-soul. Here, too, we find
expressed a conviction as to a higher law, which neither man
nor nature can evade. There is no escape from the world as
it is: when " fish philosophize the ice away in winter-time,"
then can man change the order of things in this world, no
sooner.
The.conception of an unchanging order is also manifest in
Hyperion. The action of this poem represents the operation
of an " eternal law," so inflexible that even a " primeval god"
cannot change so much as the beginning of a day. According
to this law, too, the evolutionary processes of the world go on,
and to the eternal decree
That first in beauty should be first in might,
all creatures, both gods and men, must bow. Keats uses in
4 See Chap. III, p. 62. Also Bridges, Introduction to the G. Thorn
Drury edition of Keats, p. XXIII. Mr. Bridges' particular interpretation
is somewhat different, but he was the first critic to point out the identity
of the three objects of Endymion's love.
6 See Chap. VIII, p. 156.  6 Chapter VII, p. IIo.




WHAT IS POETRY?


i89


different places, different names for the transcendent power.
In Endymion, the unseen presence is the Moon, or Cyntia,
or again essence or immortal love; in the passage on the vale
of Soul-making it is God; in Hyperion, Coelus apostrophizes
the sun-god as...brightest of my children dear, earth-born
And sky-engendered, Son of Mysteries
All unrevealed even to the powers
Which met at thy creating. (Book I, 11. 309-312.)
But essence, love, God, or powers, whatever the appellation,
the eternal invisible was to Keats a very real, dynamic existence, which he felt the true poet must know and understand.
Of this universe man is the centre. In Endymion, Cynthia,
t    othel   h idalwnrl r, the embodiment of all-that-isworth-knowing, is indeed the apparent object of the poet's
desire, but she is reached and apprehended only through a
close communionwith  nd udrtandi       of       nity and
throusymp             human misery and sorrow: in fact,
she is finally discovered to be identical, as an ideal of poetic
endeavor, with man. The chief business of the poet then comes
to be to know the human heart to its depths and to interpret
it to the world. This idea is expressed with infinitely greater
clarity in the Mansion of Life letter of  i 8, where a comparative " anxiety for humanity," an ability "to think with the
human heart," the capacity to sharpen one's " vision into the
heart and nature of man," and th power to convince " one's
nerves that the world is full of misery, and heartbreak, pain,
sickness, and oppression," are made the tests by which a great
poet must be meu4        It is repeated with unmistakable
emphasis in the revised Hyperion, of 1819, when Moneta abjures the aspiring poet that the one way to enter(the high
sanctuary of true poetry is to know and feel th suffering and
misery of the world until there can be no rest
It would appear from this then, that Keats was at least one
romanticist who had sought and found " centrality." He had
discovered it not in the high serenity of Greek poetry and




I9go


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


sculpture, which found its repose in a self-contained world
where disturbing speculations as to the universe beyond seldom
obtruded - the complexities of modern thought would not permit that, neither would his own nature, and he could not if he
would escape the conviction of a supersensuous world; he had
not permitted himself to be lured into seeking it, as did weaker
spirits of his age, in vague and indefinable longings for the
secrets of a mysterious, invisible existence: but, rather, he
sought for this centrality in wisdom through knowledge and
" continual burning of thought " upon the facts of poetry and
existence as he found them. And, with remarkable clarity of
judgment, he came to the conviction that all that can be
known or imagined as to a world beyond visible reality must
be deduced from that reality itself) that there is no more valid
basis for an understanding of the infinite than a thorough
knowledge of the finite,)especially a knowledge of the human
heart itself, which, to know in its fullness and profundity, is
to know the burden of the mystery) and, since it is in the
darkest, most tragic and miserable hours of life that the soul
of man approaches nearest to infinite and god-like capacities,
then that poet understands most of all-that-is-desirableto-know who has probed to the depths the most profound
misery, pin, and heartbreak of the great suffering heart of
humanity. )
Thus Keats linked his metaphysical speculations with his
aesthetic. It led him direct to the world in which we live for
his materials for poetry, which should be great in proportion
as in it the most significant of human experiences and the
sharpest of men's passions should be portrayed.
But it must be remembered that Keats came to this conclusion, marking as it did a decisive antithesis to his original
idea of imaginative detachment, only after a severe struggle.
It was a conflict that really continued on down to the end,
for it involved the two opposing fundamentals in his aesthetic
thought, which as we have seen were probably never quite
reconciled.




WHAT IS POETRY?


I9I


Keats began with an apotheosis of the imagination. Revery
merging into the ecstatic trance seemed to him the condition
for poetic vision. Thus, he felt, the old Greek poetry must
have come into being. However, as we have seen, he early
perceived that great poetry must have a serious aspect and
must reflect the deeper experiences of life. But at first, he
only vaguely perceived the means to this end. We marn suppose that by the time Sleep and Poetry was finished( though
Keats understood to some extent that the great poet must
know the human heart before he can ascend to the heights
of poetic power) he knew no other process whereby this knowledge might be obtained than that of emotional revery and
direct divination.) It would seem that even in Endymion,
while there is evidence of a higher plane of thought on the
part of Keats, and the poem as a whole emphasizes the need
of knowing mankind, the principal means to this knowledge
is the feelings. And at the end of i8I7, about the time
Endymion was completed, Keats is exclaiming, in exaltation
of the imagination and in rebellion against philosophy, "O
for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts!
But shortly after this came the advance in his thinking of
the spring of i8i8, which drove him to accept knowledge and
philosophy as necessary elements to insight. He was now to
seek knowledge through every possible avenue, through books,
reasoning, experiences, travel, contacts with men. But even
in the early months of i8i8, during which the balance had
swung so strongly toward knowledge, there are evidences of
rebellion and reaction. For practically at the same time that
he is declaring that he means to follow Solomon's directions
and " Get learning - get understanding " - for he has found
that he "can have no enjoyment in the world but continual
drinking of knowledge," he is also writing such lines as those
entitled What the Thrush Said, which reflect an entirely
different attitude:
o fret not after knowledge. I have none
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.




I92


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


O fret not after knowledge! I have none,
And yet the evening listens.
It is a case of conflict between head and heart, between an
impulse to complete abandonment to imaginative flights and
a will to a rigid discipline of the poetic faculties through
knowledge and philosophy. Another bit of verse written at
this time admirably demonstrates the nature of this schism,
and at the same time points the way to reconciliation. " Hence
Burgundy, Claret, and Port," exclaims the poet,
Too earthly ye are for my sport;
My bowl is the sky,
And I drink at my eye,
Till I feel in the brain
A Delphian painBut this draught of ethereal nectar is not an unreproved and
free pleasure, as the apostrophe to Apollo that follows shows:
God of the Meridian,
And of the East and West,
To thee my soul is flown,
And my body is earthward press'd. -
It is an awful mission,
A terrible division;... God of Song,
Thou bearest me along
Through sights I scarce can bear:
O let me, let me share
With the hot lyre and thee,
The staid Philosophy.
(A Draught of Sunshine. January 31, 1818.)
The conflict is severe, but not a hopeless one. Not only here
but in other poems and letters of the period a near reconciliation is suggested. In the sonnet on King Lear, where he
exclaims,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But, when I am consumed in the Fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire,




WHAT IS POETRY?


I93


and in the passage from his May letter to Reynolds in which
he explains the difference between sensations with and without knowledge - without knowledge, " we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again,
without wings, and with all the horror of a bare-shouldered
creature," with knowledge, " our shoulders are full fledged
and we go through the same air and space without fear "Keats shows that the imagination is to be still triumphant.
Only now it is to be educated; it will no longer be irresponsible, unguided soaring, but will be the activity of a seeing
power in which the whole intellectual and emotional life of
the poet is concentrated.
If the young poet could only have fully accepted this
reasoned judgment now, along with his conclusion that the
real world and the human heart must be the object of poetic
insight, he could have been at peace with himself. But
there were too many subsidiary problems left unsolved. The
operations of the imagination seemed too complex to be so
easily disposed of. Its capacity for complete insight, for
identification, for projection of itself into the lowest or highest entities; its creative pwers, with its ability to construct
ideal worlds of its own in general, its inherent tendency to
unrestrained, unshackled flight  all this insistently deman4ed
recognition. And then there were times when the whole
hideous business of the world bore so upon Keats's senses as
to make escape seem imperative, as in the Epistle to Reynolds,
when, after describing the heartless cruelty of it all,
where every maw
The greater on the less feeds evermore,
he exclaims that he is still " sick of it," for
Still do I that most fierce destruction see,
The Shark at savage prey, -the Hawk at pounce
The gentle Robin like a pard or ounce,
Ravening a worm.
"Away ye horrid moods! " he cries, in feverish revulsion,




I94


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


and one understands how deeply these vivid images of the
grim bloody struggle for existence in the animal world have
cut into his soul, and one realizes, too, how difficult it was
for an individual of such temper to live at peace with a world
where this cruelty seems such a commonplace as to be accepted by the generality as a mere matter of course, scarce
worth a comment.
Yet Keats seemed to feel that in order for a poet to interpret life adequately he must find a way to this peace; in other
words, the pot must be in harmony with the world in which
he is living. /Taine, commenting on this same problem, once
declared that " there are indeed but two modes of agreeing
with the world: mediocrity of mind and superiority of intelligence -the one for the public and the fools, the other for
artists and philosophers: the one consists in seeing nothing,
the other in seeing all."  K   ts likewise perceived but two
possible paths to agreement: one was to shut out the actualities of existence and flee away to a dream-world; the other
was to fa~e the realities of life squarely, to see and understand all.) Strongly as his young instincts urged him to
follow the' first course, Keats's deeper judgment taught him
that his artistic salvation lay in his turning to the latter as
the necessary basis for the creation of great poetry. But
often the task he had set for himself seemed too much for
him. He frequently found himself unable to accept the facts
of life and be content; instead of the harmony he desired,
he sometimes found himself sick at heart and distracted, sadly
loathing the whole machinery of a brutal creation. It was
in such moods that he wrote The Epistle to Reynolds and
those letters to Bailey in which he rebelled at the thought
that delicate women must have cancers and must suffer in
childbirth.  At such times he evidently found the whole
problem of reconciling himself to reality so difficult that he
was tempted to renounce a poetic creed that demanded an
understanding of, and harmony with, the world as it is, and
7 See Chapter V.




WHAT IS POETRY?


I95


flee for refuge to the sunny warmth of an entirely ideal
universe.
The consequence is we find Keats continuing to express
an impulse to aesthetic escape and a revulsion against "philosophy," as in To a Nightingale and in Lamia. But in spite
of these emphatic reactions, he was ever advancing toward
a more complete reconciliation between the demands for detachment and the claims of actuality. He came to see that
no matter how alluring the poetic dream-world, no matter how
necessary it may be for the poet to enter it in his periods of
artistic creation, this dream-world itself must be built upon
the foundations of the real. He was working toward a conception of a calm, contemplative, penetrative activity for the
poet, who might view the world with all knowledge, but, in
the wisdom of perfect understanding, escape its fevers and
fret, beholding even in cruel or apparently purposeless acts
something fine as material for poetry.
This in no way bars the imagination; it merely provides a
means for the sensitive soul of the poet to bear with a harsh
world while he accumulates the knowledge and philosophy
necessary to great production. At any rate, in the end,
all must be dissolved and re-created in the firec nf the
poetic imagination, which in its highest form is the one
supreme poetic faculty, the most authentic guide to truth and
beauty, the vital constructive shaping spirit in poetry and all
art.
In the Fall of Hyperion, we have Keats's most mature
thought on this subject. Whether it would have been his
final word had he lived, one cannot tell. But it would seem
that a poet could advance little beyond an acceptance of the
doctrines expressed in the scene between Moneta and the poet
in the first book. The poetic aspirant is seeking to ascend
the steps to the high altar in the temple of poetry; he is in a
trance, Keats's orthodox condition for entering the poetic
dream-world. But just as in Endymion when the poet would
rush madly and blindly after the vision of the ideal, he is




i96


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


I taught that he must be lessoned in the great school of Nature
I and humanity before he can reach his goal, the poet is here
t sternly told how useless it is to seek the poetic heights until
to him " the miseries of the world are misery, and will not let
(Ihim rest." (Keats is saying that a simple, natural response
to the beauties of the world cannot alone make a poet; moreover, that mere aimless projections of the imagination are not
the stuff out of which poetry is made: that is mere dreaming,
and a po st who tries to build on such a basis is a weak
visionary. )The secret of real poetic achievement lies in an
intuitive insight enriched by knowledge and thought, actual
contact with mankind, genuine experience with the pains and
sorrows of humanity. Only with such a disciplined imagination can the veil to the " Mystery " be pierced. Like Ralph
Touchett's ghost, the  Mystery " can be seen only by those
who have "suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained
some miserable knowledge.")  In that way the eyes are
opened to the meaning of human life in its relationship and
unity with the ineffable spiritual forces of the universe.
That which the intellectualized and experienced imagination
apprehends is truth; and to see a thing in its truth is also to
see it in its beauty, that is, in its deepest, most universal
aspects, yet emotionalized, living, vital. There came a time
to Keats when Grecian beauty meant not pleasant revery upon
the old mythology, but rather warm recreation of Grecian life,
a lively perception of something of the meaning of it all, a
vivid sense of the onward rush of the universe, as in his brain
there grew a dizzy pain in the intuition of " Grecian grandeur "
mingled with the " rude wasting of old time." (The quest for
Beauty then became to Keats a search for the heart of spiritual
verity as it was to be found in the most significant experiences of existence. The business of the poet, as a discoverer
and interpreter of this Beauty, consequently comes to be to
catch the quiet, mysterious overtones of life and to body them
forth in objective forms of truth and power. Beauty is found
8 Henry James. Portrait of a Lady, p. 40.




WHAT IS POETRY?


197


in a work of art, Keats felt, 9o1ny when there is within it
something to grip the imagination, something that rouses the
mind to a full and free speculative activity and reveals to it,
in a pleasant glow of apprehension, inexpressible thoughts
and visions of almost ethereal meanings.
This, of course, is beauty in its deeper and more philosophic
sense. Keats was also a lover of beauty in its purely sensuous
aspects. The lovely in sound, color, and form struck upon his
senses with a pleasure akin to exquisite pain. It was the
melody and smoothness of Spenser's poetry that early won his
applause; his own line, " Spenserian vowels that elope with
ease," gives a clue as to a quality the young poet much admired in his early master. The harmony of Milton's verse,
moving on like music throughout, " like a grand accompaniment to the Base of Heaven," excites his warm praise. He
was so sensitive to the beauties of nature that " the humming
of a bee, the sight of a flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed
to make his nature tremble," his eyes flash, his cheeks glow,
and his mouth quiver; the motion of " the inland sea "  the
passage of a violent wind over a field of oats or barley - was
sufficient to transport him entirely out of himself; in his last
illness, he fondly recalls the loveliness of the English spring:... how astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world
impress a sense of its natural beauties upon us! Like poor
Falstaff, though I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I
muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known
from my infancy.- " Keats did indeed love external beauty.
But, after all, for the true poet, this loveliness is only secondary, and at its best is chiefly significant as an aid in expressing
the inner soul of things, the final aesthetic beauty and truth
of being. Thus the Ode on a Grecian Urn has for its main
theme, not the sensuous beauty of the marbles described, but
the imaginative pictures that the artistic representations
arouse. The urn is lovely to look at, but the poet gives this
loveliness mere passing notice. His real interest is in more
vital elements. What Keats does in this great ode is to give




I98


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


us his most authentic interpretation of a typical aesthetic
experience. Here we have that which may be considered the
young poet's ideal of what should be the effect of a great work
of art? And what should be that effect? In a word, beauty
-the vision of truth flashed upon the inner eye in moments
of aesthetic concentration.' In its mere sensuous aspects the
urn represents specific acts of particular individuals: the " mad
pursuit " of maidens, the "struggle to escape," the warm
music of love, the "wild ecstasy" of excited wooing by
impassioned youths; quieter love-making, with the gentle
melodist in the sweetness of spring bowers " for ever piping
songs for ever new" to his young mistress in the shade;
religious ceremonies that have emptied a peaceful little town
of all its folk, to follow the "mysterious priest" and the
fated heifer, richly garlanded, and "lowing at the skies,"
toward the sacrificial pyre. But the quality that raises all
this to the plane of high art is the power of the artist to
suggest through these figures the motives, the emotions, the
ideals, the life-principles that lie behind the representations
--  what these people felt, believed, experienced, what might
be their significance in the vast procession of human creation.
What the observer gets is much what the original artist got,
an intuitive perception of the indefinable mysteries of existence an insight into the deepest human experiences and into
the essential unity of the soul of man with the universal allspirit of the universe/ It is not mathematical nor scientific
truth that is reveals; it is, instead, that shadowy inexpressible sense of truth, which not the intellect and understanding
alone grasp, but rather one's whole illumined, emotionalized
being. )'Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought as
doth eternity," exclaims Keats. That is, there are no ends,
no boundaries to this sort of knowledge, any more than to
eternity. Its limits are set only by the restrictions to man's
especulative activity. Yet it is none the less real and
genuine for all that (rather it is perhaps the nearest approach
to the ultimate all-truth yet open to finite minds. )




WHAT IS POETRY?


I99


So with poetry. Melody, charm, loveliness, all great verse
should possess, but only as subsidiary adjuncts to its deeper
function, the conveying of truth.
Taking this as an ideal for his own work, the poetry that
Keats would create should accurately convey the vision of the
poet; its every phrase should ring with the " voice of true
feeling," and the least word and sound should be cho6sen to
that end.   At the same time there should be &- fullnesS&Lj
ima      in it: "its touches of beauty should never be halfway "; it " should surprise by a fine excess." But in it all
there should be such a universal human quality that "it
should strike the reader as his own highest thoughts and
appear almost a remembrance."       That Keats placed this universal quality above other considerations, especially above
mere ornamentation and strangeness of effect, is to be seen
from the testimony of John Hamilton Reynolds, long most
intimate with the young poet on these matters, in an article in
which he explained and defended his friend's theories.9 Reynolds writes of Keats:
His feelings are full, earnest, and original, as those of the olden
writers were and are; they are made for all time, not for the drawingroom and the moment. Mr. Keats always speaks of, and describes
nature, with an awq and a humility, but with a deep and almost
breathless affection. A He knows that Nature is better and older than
he is, and he does not put himself on an equality with her) You do
not see him, when you see her.... Poetry is a thing of generalities -
a wanderer amid persons and things -not a pauser over oneii& thing, or
with one person. The mind of Mr. Keats, like the minds of our
older poets, goes round the universe in its speculations and its dreams.
It does not set itself a task. The manners of the world, the fictions
and the wonders of other worlds, are its subjects.... The true poet
confines his imagination to no one thing - his soul is an invisible ode
9 In the fall of i8i8, John Hamilton Reynolds replied to the savage
attacks of the Quarterly Review and Blackwoods Magazine by an article
in the Alfred, West of England Journal (October 6, i8i8). Reynolds and
Keats had been on such terms of intimacy that we may be sure that when
Reynolds essays here to describe Keats's ideas of poetry, he may be almost
thought of as Keats himself speaking. The passage is quoted by Forman.
Vol. IV, p. 178.




200


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


to the passions - He does not make a home for his mind in one
land- its productions are an universal story, not an eastern tale....
Here are many of the best things Keats himself might have
written of poetry, not only of its universality, but of its
permanence, its sincerity, its depth. The soul of the poet, " is
an invisible ode to the passions." Keats himself had declared,
in the spring of 1817, describing his ideal in poetry, " The
poetry of ' Romeo and Juliet,' of ' Hamlet,' of ' Macbeth,' is
the poetry of Shakespeare's soul, full of love and divine
romance.... The poetry of ' Lear,' ' Othello,' ' Cymbeline,'
etc., is the poetry of human passions and affections, made almost ethereal by the power of the poet." This early description of great poetry gives the clue, after all, to such a definition as Keats might have written in December, 1819. He
could at most only have expanded upon it and particularized;
for, as he went on, he saw ever more clearly that great poetry
has its genesis in the universal human heart and that the soul
of the poet must vibrate in unison with that heart, that he
must possess the wisdom and sympathy to understand it to its
depths, and then must have the power of imagination and the
creative ability almost to etherealize his vision and crystallize
it into forms of beauty and of truth. With Keats the object
of poetry is to interpret, to give the sense of the inner mystery
of life and nature that we may know them intheir essential
qualities, not as science presents them but, as Matthew Arnold
suggests, by awakening in us " a wonderfully full, new, and
intimate sense of them and our relations with them."
It is apparent that up to the end, Keats felt that he had
never realized his ideal. He planned to write plays, and
looked forward to a time when he might have wealth of
experience and depth enough to nerve himself to his chief
attempt in drama. He looked upon the drama as the highest
form in poetry and longed to revolutionize it, even as Kean
had acting. But from the first, the poet understood that before
he could be fitted for that he must subject himself to a long
period of apprenticeship. He told himself that he must first




WHAT IS POETRY?


20I


pass through the " regions of Flora and old Pan " before he
could enter the higher realms of human passions. The writing
of Endymion was but an exercise that could scarce take
him " a dozen paces towards the temple." " The high Idea
I have of poetical fame," he tells his brother George, " makes
me think I see it towering too high above me." And to Hunt,
he declares, " I have asked myself so often why I should be
a poet more than any other man, seeing how great a thing it
is - how great things are to be gained by it, what a thing to
be in the mouth of Fame -that at last the idea has grown
so monstrously beyond my seeming power of attainment, that
the other day I nearly consented with myself to drop into a
Phaeton. Yet 'tis a disgrace to fail, even in a huge attempt;
and at this moment I drive the thought from me."
But, luckily, Keats did not drop " into a Phaeton," and he
did not fail. For though he did not reach his lofty goal. he
certainly approached it. In Hyperion, the stage is set for a
poem in which the deepest miseries are revealed, and in the
mental suffering of deposed Saturn sunk " deep in the shady
sadness of a vale," where Gods speak "much as they might
have been supposed to speak," Keats is indeed getting into
the borderlands of his poetic ideal. But he felt failure. A
year after the first Hyperion, he was expressing his wish to
" diffuse the colouring of St. Agnes Eve, throughout a poem
in which character and sentiment would be the figures to such
drapery." And even such poems would merely be stepping
stones: " Two or three such Poems, if God should spare me,
written in the course of the next six years would be a famous
gradus ad Parnassum altissimum. I mean they would nerve
me up to the writing of a few fine Plays - my greatest
ambition."
There is in all of Keats's writings, no passage more illuminating than this: it flashes light into remote recesses of his
aesthetic thought otherwise all dark; it is at once a revelation of what he thought great poetry ought to be and a commentary on how such poetry can be created. The Eve of St.
Agnes, beautiful, melodious, luxuriant in sensuous imagery,




202


THE MIND OF JOHN KEATS


was looked upon by Keats merely as a finger exercise in
preparation for the high tasks to follow. Exquisite as were
its sensuous beauties, they were at best fitted to serve but as
external " drapery " for the great poems of " character and
sentiment," he hoped to create in the full perfection of his
powers. In these works - dramas, representing men in action,
in conflict, under stress of powerful emotions - mere prettiness and triviality, all superficiality and mawkishness would
be banished. And in their place, drawn from a heart made
wise by life's most vital and thrilling experiences, would appear depth of insight, truth and sincerity of line and sentiment,
intensity of human passion.
As I have indicated, it would seem that in Keats's own
works his theory of what great poetry should be is best exemplified in his Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion. The
i scene is better portrayed in the Hyperion; the poetic theory
is the more apparent in the Revision. But for the present
purpoe it is unnecessary to differentiate between the two
poems. The Hyperion story is a story of evolutijn  aarprgDess; that I have already pointed out. But it is also something more: it is tragedy, suprere, irrevocable tragedy -the
tragedy of downfall and defeat. Ancient Saturn and all his
IC   t  f    tIT   oder save Hyperion, have been ruthlessly deposed and cast out of heaven.) Beings of pristine
splendor, born to power and uncontested rule, now suddenly
overthrown and supplanted by a younger more brilliant
dynasty before whose might resistance is folly, their sufferings
are tremendous. Hyperion alone, in proud, regal magnificence,
still reigns on; but knowing full wellthat he, too, is to fall,
he lives in weak, ungodlike dread. All this is laid bare to the
soul-penetrating vision of the poet, who, having qualified himself through knowledge of the misery of the world, has been
permitted to ascend the high altar of poetic truth, where,
under the guidance of hid monitress Moneta, in one supreme
imaginative leap, he finds himself i9 a position from which
he may see and understand everythi g.
From this point, setting himself " Upon an eagle's watch"




WHAT IS POETRY?


203


that he may see, " and seeing ne'er forget,"(the poet contemplates the tragedy of the fallen gods. )And as he looks
there grows " a power " within him
of enormous ken
To see as a god sees, and take the depth
Of things as nimbly as the outward eye
Can size and shape pervade.
(The Fall of Hyperion. Canto I, 11. 278-281.)
This is the point of Shakespearian " Negative Capability," of
"innate universality," that Keats has before shown himself
to crave as his poetic goal.
/'Imbued with god-like power to penetrate into the depths of
htuman experience, the poet now records what he perceives.)
His characters in the allegory are gods, but these gods talk
like men, and their sufferings and passions are those of men
under stress of like fundamental intense and tragiceiLeexp eriences. Here are rage, hate, revenge, hope, fear, despair; here
are misery, abasement, shame, humiliation; here, also, are kindness, love, and sad sympathy: all represented with an insight
and poetic power that mark the Hyperion torsos, fragmentary
though they are, as on a par with some of the grandest poetry
in the English language. Surely, we have here one of those
" two or three such poems " of " character and sentiment"
that were to nerve the young poet " in the course of the next
six years " to his "chief attempt in the drama."  How the
world must ever regret that those six years were not allotted
to this gifted young singer that he might have had opportunity
to bring his dreams to something near fruition!
The high idea Keats had of real poetic achievement led him
to look upon years of toil in preparation and experimentation
as a logical and natural requirement in the " gradus ad Parnassum altissimum." He had humbly set himself to the long
task of ascending the heights; he had advanced far up the
steep slopes and had written poetry of immortal accents; but
he was not permitted to attain to his lofty ideal - death came
too soon.








BIBLIOGRAPHY


THE WORKS OF KEATS
ERNEST DE SELINCOURT: The Poems of John Keats. Dodd Mead and
Company. 1905.
H. BUXTON FORMAN: The Complete Works of John Keats. Five
Volumes. Gowans and Gray, London. I901.
H. BUXTON FORMAN: The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John
Keats (Library Edition). Four Volumes. Reeves & Turner,
London. 1883.
H. BUXTON FORMAN: The Poetical Works of John Keats. Three
Volumes. J. B. Lippincott Company. i89i.
H. BUXTON FORMAN: The Letters of John Keats. Reeves and
Turner, London. 1895.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES: (Lord Houghton): Life, Letters, and
Literary Remains of John Keats., In Two Volumes. Moxon,
London. I848.
LORD HOUGHTON: (Richard Monckton Milnes): Life and Letters of
John Keats (The New Universal Library Edition). George Routledge and Sons, London.
SIDNEY COLVIN: The Poems of John Keats in Chronological Order.
Two Volumes. The Florence Press, Chatto and Windus, London,
I917.
SIDNEY COLVIN: Letters of John Keats. Macmillan & Company, London. 1891.
WILLIAM T. ARNOLD: The Poetical Works of John Keats. Kegan
Paul, Trench, & Company, London. 1884.
W. T. YOUNG: Poems of Keats, Endymion. The Volume of i820 and
Other Poems. Cambridge University Press. I917.
M. R. HILLS: Keats Odes, Lyrics and Sonnets. Oxford University
Press. London. I916.
ARTHUR C. DOWNER: John Keats: The Odes. Oxford, The Clarendon
Press, i897.
ERNEST DE SELINCOURT: Hyperion, A Facsimile of Keats's Autograph
Manuscript. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. i905.
JOHANNES HooPS: John Keats' Hyperion. Heidelberg. Carl Winter's
Universitatsbuchhandlung. 1898.
205




206


BIBLIOGRAPHY


CRITICISM
SIDNEY COLVIN: John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics,
and After-Fame. Charles Scribner's Sons. I917.
F. M. OWEN: John Keats, A Study. C. Kegan Paul & Company,
London. i880.
D. G. Rossetti: Life of John Keats. Walter Scott, London. 1887.
SIDNEY COLVIN: Keats (In English Men of Letters Series). Macmillan and Company, London. 1887.
AMY LOWELL: John Keats. Houghton Mifflin Company, I925.
S. J. MARY SUDDARD: Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare; Studies and
Essays in English Literature. Cambridge, University Press. I912.
ALBERT ELMER HANCOCK: John Keats. Houghton Mifflin Co. I908.
LUCIEN WOLFF: John Keats, Sa Vie et Son Oeuvre. Hachette & Cie,
Paris. I9Io.
H. I'A. FAUSSET: Keats, A Study in Development. Secker, London.
1922.
MATTHEW ARNOLD: Essays in Criticism. Second Series. Macmillan
and Co. i888.
J. M. ROBERTSON: New Essays Toward A Critical Method. John
Lane. I897.
J. W. MACKAIL: Lectures on Poetry. Longmans, Green and Co. 19II.
A. C. BRADLEY: Oxford Lectures On Poetry. Macmillan & Co. I909.
ROBERT BRIDGES: Introduction to the G. Thorn Drury Edition of
Keats's Poems. George Routledge and Sons, London. 1894.
HALL CAINE: Cobwebs of Criticism. E. Stock, London. 1883.
HENRY C. NOTCUTT: An Interpretation of Endymion. South African
Electric Printing Co., Capetown, South Africa. 1919.
H. A. BEERS: History of English Romanticism in the Igth Century.
Henry Holt and Company. I899.
LEIGH HUNT: Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, Two
Volumes. Colburn, London. 1828.
WILLIAM J. COURTHOPE: The Liberal Movement in English Literature.
J. Murray, London. I885.
ALGERNON SWINBURNE: Miscellanies. Chatto and Windus, London.
I886.
WILLIAM  GRAHAM: Last Links with Byron, Shelley, and Keats.
Leonard Smithers & Company, London. I898.
COWDEN CLARKE: Recollections of Keats. Atlantic. VII: 90.
JOSEPH SEVERN: Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame. Atlantic. XI: 401.
The John Keats Memorial Volume. The Bodley Head. I921. MR.
DE SELINCOURT: The Warton Lecture on Keats; LACELLES




BIBLIOGRAPHY


207


ABERCROMBIE: The Second Version of Hyperion; JOHN BAILEY:
The Poet of Stillness; A. C. BRADLEY: Keats and "Philosophy ";
A. CLUTTON-BROCK: Keats and Shelley. A Contrast; SIDNEY
COLVIN: A Morning's Work in Hampstead Garden; W. P. KER:
Note on Hyperion; AMY LOWELL: The Lost Letter of Keats;
ARTHUR LYNCH: John Keats; J. W. MACKAIL: A Note on the
Composition of Endymion; GEORGE SAINTSBURY: A Reminiscence
of Endymion; G. BERNARD SHAW: Keats; ARTHUR SYMONS:
A Note on John Keats; FREDERICK BOAS: On First Looking Into
Chapman's Homer; ARTHUR LYNCH: John Keats.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL: Literary Essays. Houghton Mifflin and
Company. I890.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE: Studies in Poetry. G. P. Putnam's Sons. I907.
WILLIAM J. DAWSON: The Makers of Modern Poetry. Whittaker.
1902.
J. MIDDLETON MURRY: The Problem of Keats. The Athenaeum.
July 25, I919.
R. D. HAVENS: Influence of Milton on English Poets. Harvard
University Press. 1922.
DAVID MASSON: Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays. Macmillan and Company. I874.
J. J. JUSSERAND: Histoire Abregee de la Litterature Anglaise. C. Delegrave, Paris. I896.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY: A History of Nineteenth Century Literature.
Macmillan and Company. I896.
C. H. HERFORD: John Keats, in The Cambridge History of English
Literature. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
S. GEEST: Der Sensualismus bei John Keats. C. A. Wagner. Freiburg Im. Breisgau. 1908.
PAUL STARICK: Die Belesenheit von John Keats und die Grundziige
Seiner Literarischen Kritik. Mayer & Muller, Berlin. I9o0.
W. A. REED: Keats and Spenser. Ph. D. Dissertation, Heidelberg.
I897.
JOHANNES HOOPS: Keats' Briefe in Ihrem Wert fur die Charakteristiks des Dichters. Anglia, XXIV, p. I33. I90I.
TOM TAYLOR: Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon. Three Volumes.
Longmans, London. 1853.
GEORG BRANDES: Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature.
W. Heinemann, London. I90I-'05.
C. H. HERFORD: Shakespeare's Treatment of Love and Marriage and
Other Essays. T. F. Unwin, London. I92I.




208


BIBLIOGRAPHY


OTHER WORKS CONSULTED
EDWIN BJORKMAN: Is There Anything New Under the Sun? M. Kennerley. I9II.
IRVING BABBITT: Rousseau and Romanticism. Houghton Mifflin
Company. I919.
A. C. BRADLEY: English Poetry and German Philosophy in the Age
of Wordsworth. Manchester, The University Press. I909.
A. S. COOK: The Art of Poetry. Ginn and Company. I892.
J. C. SHAIRP: Aspects of Poetry. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1882.
CHARLES AND MARY COWDEN CLARK: Recollections of Writers. Sampson Low. 1878.
WILLIAM SHARP: The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn. Sampson
Low. I892.
BENJAMIN ROBERT HAYDON: Correspondence and Table Talk. With
a Memoir by His Son, Frederic Wordsworth Haydon. Two
Volumes. Chatto and Windus, London. I876.
LEIGH HUNT: Imagination and Fancy. Second Edition. Smith, Elder,
and Company, London. I845.
LEIGH HUNT: Autobiography. Two Volumes. Harper & Brothers.
i860.
LEIGH HUNT: Essays, Edited by Arthur Symons. The Walter Scott
Publishing Co., London, I887.
GEORGE SAINTSBURY: A History of English Prosody. Macmillan and
Company. 191o.
THOMAS CARLYLE: Sartor Resartus. Edited by J. A. S. Barrett.
A. C. Black, London. I897.
SAMUEL COLERIDGE: Biographia Literaria.   Everyman's Edition.
E. P. Dutton and Company.
HEGEL: The Philosophy of Fine Art. Four Volumes. Translated,
With Notes, by F. P. B. Osmaston, B.A. G. Bell and Sons.
London. I920.
GEORGE SANTAYANA: Three Philosophical Poets. Cambridge, Harvard
University. 191o.
GEORGE SANTAYANA: Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. C. Scribner's Sons. I900.
GEORGE SANTAYANA: The Life of Reason. C. Scribner's Sons. 1905 -o6.
PLATO: Works. Jowett translation. Bigelow, Brown & Co., New
York.
HAZLITT: Spirit of the Age and Lectures on English Poets.  1818.
Everyman's Library. E. P. Dutton and Company.




BIBLIOGRAPHY                         209
KANT: Kritik of Judgment. Translated by J. H. Bernard. Macmillan and Company. I892.
B. BOSANQUET: The Value and Destiny of the Individual. Macmillan
and Company, London. 1913.
BENEDETTO CROCE: Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General
Linguistic.  Translated by Douglas Ainslee.  Macmillan and
Company, London. 1909.
DEWITT HENRY PARKER: Principles of Aesthetics. Silver Burdett
and Company. 1920.
E. F. CARRITT: The Theory of Beauty. The Macmillan Company.
1914.




I




INDEX


Abercrombie (Lascelles), 168.
Abstractions, 35, 92; defined, 36,
37.
Aesthetic escape, 34, 39, 86, i86,
I95.
Aesthetic experience, 34, 187, 198.
Aesthetic ideas, Keats's, 24, 32,
I86; progression in, 29.
"A Poet," quoted, 116-II7.
Apollo, 141, 142, 143, I57.
Arnold (Matthew), quoted, 2; his
essay discussed, 6, 127.
Art, 130, I3I, 132, I33, I36, 172,
173, 182; permanence of, 148;
experimentation in, 171 seq.
Artistic evolution, Keats's, 16;
ideas of, 55.
Babbitt (Irving), quoted, 187.
Bailey (Benjamin), 62(n.), 65,
io6, IIo, I50, I63, 173, 178,
I94; letters to, 64, 68, 77.
"Bards of passion and of mirth,"
quoted, 148.
Beattie (James), 96, i6o.
Beauty, Arnold on Keats's idea
of, 6, I27; de Selincourt on, 8;
Hancock on, 9; Wolff on, I0;
principle of, 7, 127; abstract
idea of, 35, 156, I88; and truth,
117, 12I, 128, I3I, 132, 146,
I73, I96, I98; definition of, 127,
I28, i57, I96; Keats a lover of
sensuous, I97; snail-horn perception of, I31; eternal nature
of, 146, I47, 148; quest for, 196.
Ben Nevis, 72; quoted, 73.
Bjorkman, (Edwin), quoted, I72.


Bosanquet (Bernard), 85(n.).
Boileau (Nicolas), I15, 117.
Bradley (A. C.), quoted, 74, 77 -78(n.), 81, I44, I45, I49.
Brawne (Fanny), 76, 153, 162,
I8o.
Bridges (Robert), 7, I2, 13, 47,
i88(n.).
Brown (Charles), 66, 72, I65.
Brunetiere (Ferdinand), 117.
Burns (Robert), Keats on, 42(n.).
Byron (Lord), 121, I65; "describes what he sees," 120.
Caine (Hall), his Cobwebs of
Criticism discussed, 5, 6.
Calidore, 25(n.).
Cap and Bells, 18.
Carlyle (Thomas), quoted, 2,
I23(n.), 124-125.
"Centrality," Keats seeks, 187,
I89, 190.
Chapman (George), I31.
Chatterton (Thomas), 42.
Chaucer (Geoffrey), ii5(n.).
Christian, was Keats a?, 80.
Clark  (Charles Cowden), I5o;
quoted, I60.
Clutton-Brock, A., 3; quoted, 14,
15, 34, i6i.
Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), I0,
95, 155; quoted, 68(n.), 1I9,
120.
Colvin (Sidney), 4, i2, 41, 47(n.),
55(n.),   lIo(n.),   II(n.);
quoted, 64-65, 88(n.), 136,
137,  149;  interpretation  of
The Fall of Hyperion, 92.
II




212


INDEX


Condorcet, I49.
Conflicts, aesthetic and philosophic, 29, 30, 32, 33, 39, 47,
7I, 9I, I92, I93.
Cook (A. S.), Art of Poetry, I 8;
quoted, I67.
Crashaw (Richard), I5I.
Critical judgment, Keats's, 52,
I74.
Dante, 26, 178.
Dawson (William J.), quoted, 2.
de Lamennais (M.), 32.
de Selincourt (Ernest), 8, 9, 13,
17, 4I(n.), 47(n.), 64; quoted,
I5, i6, 69, I37.
Detachment, Keats's ideas of, 32,
34; conflict between desire for
actuality and, 90; theory of,
never repudiated, 91, 92; mature theory of, 94, 95; ideal of
contemplative, 95, 96, Ioi.
Didacticism, Keats's opposition
to, I8o seq.
Dilke (Charles), letter to, 76, 8i.
Disinterestedness, of Jesus and
Socrates, 86; as an ideal, 87,
98.
Drama, Keats's ambitions to
write, 201.
Dreaming, 38; not enough for a
poet, 93, 94, 196.
Dream-world, 34, 36, 94; knowledge and the, 69, 70; Keats
tempted to flee to, I94; must be
built on real, 195.
Drummond (Henry), quoted, I53.
Dryden (John), I76.
Elgin Marbles, 53, 129, 187.
Elliott (G. R.), 4; his Real


Tragedy of Keats discussed, 17,
95.
Endymion, F. M. Owens on, 4, 5;
Robert Bridges on, 7; de Selincourt on, 8; Wolff on, io; Sidney Colvin on, 12, 13; Notcutt
on, 13; Fausset on, 20; interpreted as an allegory, 57-62;
references to, 25, 26, 27, 38, 50,
52, 53, 54, 63, I03(n.), I37, 150,
154, 157, 159, I69, 172, 173,
174, I75, I76, 177, I78, I87,
I9I, I95, 201; quoted, 56, 59 -6i, 92-93, io6, 107, 131, I5I,
152.
Enfield School, 76.
Epistle to Reynolds, 7; quoted,
74-75, I93.
Eve of St. Agnes, I76, 201; Fausset on, 22.
Evolution, in Hyperion, 138, 139.
Experience, needed for poetry, 66 -69; Keats's practical, 76-78.
Fall of Hyperion, II, I6, I8, 25,
38, 4I, 54, 72, I57, I69, 176,
I89, 202; Fausset on, 2I;
poetic theory in, 145, I95;
quoted, 41, I44, I45, 203.
Fausset (H. I'A.), 4; quoted, 19,
20, 57.
Fichte (J. G.), 85, I50.
Fine excess, criterion of, I83-I85.
Fine phrases, love for, i6I, 162.
"Floure and Lefe," quoted, I64.
Form in poetry, I6I.
Forman (H. Buxton), 4, I23, 147,
163; edition of Keats, 3I(n.).
Godwin (William), 86.
Goethe, 126.




INDEX


213


Grecian grandeur, I30, I96.
Greeks, Keats and the, 30, 48.
Hancock (A. E.), 8, 9.
Happiness, identified with poetic
power, 56.
Havens (R. D.), 33.
Haydon (Benjamin Robert), 36,
53, 65, I29, 132, I50, 173, I75;
quoted, 27; letter to, 68.
Hazlitt (William), IO, 27; quoted,
I07(n.), io8, II9.
Hegel (George W. F.), 120, I54,
I57; quoted, 121, I47(n.).
"Hence Burgundy, Claret, and
Port," quoted, 192.
Herbert (George), 15i.
Herder (Johann Gottfried von),
I50.
Herford (C. H.), quoted 112.
Hessey (James Augustus), I75.
Homer, 30, 68, I49; insight of,
I4; lines to, quoted, 114.
Horace, 26.
Humanity, sympathy with, 42, 43 -45, 46, 50, 56, 60, 62, 74, ioI,
I96, 202, 203.
Hunt (Leigh), 53, 65, II8, I60,
I77, 178; quoted, I49, I54, I68,
172, I75, I76, I88, 201, 202,
203.
Hyperion, de Selincourt on, 8;
Fausset on, 22, 23; plan and
theme of, 137 seq., 202, 203;
quoted, I39, 140, 141, I42, I43,
150, 155, I62, i88, I89.
Idealism, Keats's, I7, I9, 20, IoI,
122, I47, I5I, I87-I90.
Imagination, a curb for, 33; the
world of abstraction and, 35;
the abstract and, 36; nature


and, 49, 50; early conception of,
38, I04, I87, 19I; compared to
Adam's dream, 62(n.); defense
of, 64; "sensations" identified
with, 64; knowledge and, 69,
70, I93, I95, I96; versus philosophy, 64, 69, 70, 9I, IgI; the
vital element in poetry, Io4,
I 2; creative power of, 84, 120 -I26; the guide to truth, 104; as
identification, io6-iio; Keats's
faith in, IIO-II2; reason and
knowledge requisites of, 113;
but in themselves nothing, II4,
Ii6, 118, II9; differs with
Boileau on, I15-I17.
Immortality, 79, 80.
Independence, of Keats, 177 seq.
Intuition, 32, 39, 64, II8, 128.
Innate universality, Shakespeare's,
94, IOI, 203.
Isabella, 170, 176.
Isle of Wight, thoughts on poetry
at, 26; visit to, 53.
I Stood Tip-Toe, 19, 21, 25(n.),
36; Fausset on, I9, 20; date of,
21; quoted, 37, 49, 50, 51.
James (Henry), quoted, I96.
Jeffrey (Miss), 42.
Jesus, 80, 86, I50.
John Keats Memorial Volume. 3,
I4, I39, I62, I68.
Johnson (Samuel), 42.
Joubert (Joseph), quoted, I05.
Jusserand (Jules), quoted, 3.
Kant (Immanuel), I50.
Kean (Edmund), 162, I79.
Keats (George), 90, I78, 20I.
Keats (George and Georgiana),
122, 155, 171, 175, i88.




214


INDEX


Keats (John), quoted, 26, 27, 28,
29, 33, 35, 36, 42, 43, 54; to
Bailey, 64, 68, 77; to Taylor,
66; to Haydon, 67; Mansion of
Life letter, 67-68; to Tom
Keats, 72; to Dilke, 76; to
Fanny Brawne, 76; Vale of
Soul-Making letter, 81-84; on
Ode to Psyche, 88; to George
Keats, 90-91, 95, 96; to George
and Georgiana Keats, 76, 97 -99; on the poetical character,
107-108; on Byron, I20, on men
of genius, Io9; on imagination,
IIO-III, 122; on truth and
beauty, 132; on West's picture,
133; abstract idea of beauty,
I55; to Shelley, I59; on Wordsworth, I66; on Miltonic verse,
167; on Isabella, I70; on sonnet
and rondeau, 171; on the snailhorn perception of beauty, 172;
on Endymion, I69, 175; high
idea of poetry, 174; on didacticism, i80; axioms in poetry,
183; independence of, 178-179;
desire to do public good, 179,
i80; on being a poet, 20I; dual
nature of, 29, 30, 31, 32, 36,
47; sensitivity of, 63, I97, (to
language) 162; the sensuous
poet, 2, 30, I97; the philosophic poet, i, 3 seq., 14, 15,
I7, i8, I9, 20.
Keats (Tom), 178; letter to, 72;
death of, 76.
Ker (W. P.), quoted, I39.
Knowledge, power and, i6; of life,
43; thought, reason and, 32;
and wisdom, 49; necessary to
thinking people, 67; unity of,
68; and imagination, 69, 70; of


human heart, 92; and philosophy, I9I.
Lamb (Charles), I50.
Lamia, 5, 25, I70, I76, I77, I95;
passage from interpreted, 118,
II9;  de  Selincourt  on,  8;
quoted, 91, ii8; allegorical
meaning, 102.
Life, must be experienced, 43, 67;
must be accepted, 86.
Longinus, I60, I7I.
Lowell (Amy), VI, VII, I69;
biography of Keats, 4I (n.); on
allegory, 54; quoted, 164, i65.
Lowell (James Russell), quoted,
63, I05.
Lynch (Arthur), 3, quoted, 15,
26.
Mackail (J. W.), quoted, 123.
Mansion of Life letter, 12, 13, 47,
49, 5I, 67, 68, 70, 74, I89.
Melody in verse, I63, I99.
Metaphysical ideas, Keats's, 8i
seq., 88, I87 seq.
Milnes, Monckton, Life, Letters
and Literary Remains of John
Keats. 4.
Milton (John), 27, 37, 70, I12,
II4, II5(n.), 138, i6o, 162, I64,
I68, I69, 176, I78; compared
to Wordsworth, 43; quoted, 91;
Keats's study of, 65; Keats on,
121, 123.
Miltonic latinisms, I76.
Mind, Keats, Fichte, and Wordsworth on the, 84, 85.
Mystery, the, 4I, 49. 55, 57, 95,
I96; pentralium of, 46; burden
of the, 47, 51, 67, 72-89; immortal love and, 62.




INDEX


215


Nature, effects of, on imagination,
37, 50, 51; knowledge of, necessary, 56; Keats on, 87; cruelty
in, 74, 75, 193, I94.
Negative capability, Shakespeare's,
95, 96, 99, Ioi, 203.
Neptune, I57.
Nietszche (Friedrich Wilhelm),
80.
Notcutt (H. C.), 13.
Oceanus, I40, 14I, I43.
Ode on a Grecian Urn, V, 5, 28,
53, 9I, Ioo, 148, 197; de Selincourt on, 17; Fausset on, 20;
interpreted, 134 seq., 197, I98.
Ode to Autumn, 22, 88, I76.
Ode on Indolence, 38, 88; date,
97(n.).
Ode to a Nightingale, i6, 25, 28,
38, 86, 9I, Ioo; de Selincourt
on, i6; Fausset on, 20; quoted,
39, 76, I47, 148; revisions in,
163; composition of, i65, 195.
Ode to Psyche, 28, 96; writing of,
87.
Omar Khayyam, quoted, 73.
On a Lock of Milton's Hair,
quoted, 112.
On First Seeing the Elgin Marbles,
quoted, 130.
On Sitting Down to Read King
Lear Once Again, quoted, 69,
I34, I92.
Othello, 162, I85, I86, 200.
Owens (F. M.), Keats a Study, 4,
5.
Paradise Lost, 138; Keats on, 33,
I64. 167.
Pater (Walter), quoted, I84.
Phidias, 48, 128.


Philosophy, of life, 24; as a basis
for poetry, 65; poetry versus,
100.
Plato, 48, I50, 153, 154, 156, 157;
quoted, 105; Keats and, 148
seq.
Platonic, Keats not consistently,
154 seq.
Poetic beauty, source of, I6o, I64,
I99.
Poetic composition, To Psyche,
88; on Keats's methods of, 88,
173; discipline in, I77.
Poetry, Keats's theories of, 25,
51, 52, 55; universals not particulars, 92, I99; qualities of,
171, I72, I99 seq.; strangeness
in, 183, 184; and insight, 203.
Pope (Alexander), II5.
Praxiteles, 128.
Public good, ambition to do, I79,
I80.
Raphael, I32.
Real, the sensuous, 147.
Reality, poet must know, 39, 41
seq., 71, II3, 199 seq.; Cynthia
essence of, 151; Keats's idea of,
157; reconciliation with, I94.
Reason, 64, 65, 113; cold, condemned, II9; not able to reach
truth through, III.
Reconciliation, progress toward,
31; philosophic, 88; between
theories of detachment and
knowledge, IOI, 102, I86, I94,
I95.
Repose, Keats seeks, I8, 95, 96,
IOO, IO0.
Reynolds (John Hamilton), 42,
43, 53, 92(n.), I50, I99(n.);
quoted, o09, I99.




2l6


INDEX


Robertson (J. M.), quoted, I47.
Ruskin (John), quoted, 146.
Saintsbury (George), on allegory,
53; quoted, i60.
Samson Agonistes, I68.
Santayana (George), quoted, II3.
Schelling (Friedrich Wilhelm J.
von), I50.
Schiller (Johann Cristoph Friedrich von), I6I; quoted, 9(n.).
Schopenhauer (Arthur), teachings
of, 85-86.
Sensation, not enough, 68.
"Sensations," versus thought, 8,
I9I; defined, 12, 64; and experience, 70.
Severn (Joseph), I33(n.), I50;
care of Keats, 80; quoted, 80,
i66.
Shairp (J. C.), quoted, o05.
Shakespeare, 6, 36, 84(n.), 94-95,
96, II4, II5(n.), II9, I6o, 187,
200; re-reading of, 53; the ideal
artist, I84-I86.
Shaw (G. B.), sees in Keats
germs of a bolshevist, 3.
Shelley (Percy Bysshe), 52, 74,
8i, 138, I49, 157, i6o, I6I, 177,
178; quoted, i80.
Sincerity, Keats's, i65, i66.
Sleep and Poetry, 25 (n.), 40,
47(n.), 74, I9I; Suddard on, II;
Colvin on, I2; Fausset on, I9,
20; date of, 21; theory    of
poetry in, 50, 5I; quoted, 41,
51-52; reveals conflict, 29.
Socrates, 80, 86, 150.
Sophocles, 48.
Specimen of Introduction, 25(n.).
Spenser (Edmund), 27, II5(n.),
I5; quoted, 152, 153, I77.


Starick (Paul), on Keats's literary
background, 9.
Suddard (S. J. M.), II, I2, 47(n.).
Taine (H. A.), 45; quoted, I94.
Taylor (John), 54, I70, I73, 175,
183.
Tennyson (Alfred), vision of
nature, 74.
The Excursion, 65.
The Indiaman, letter on, 42, 43.
The Prelude, 49.
The Recluse, quoted, 85, I24.
Thomson (James), 42.
Tighe (Mrs.) 96, i6o.
Tintern  Abbey,   47(n.),  49;
quoted 57-58.
Titans, I58.
To Ailsa Rock, quoted, 73.
To   George   Felton  Mathew,
quoted, 40.
To Haydon, quoted, I29.
To My Brother George, 25(n.),
36, 40, 49, 63; quoted, 37.
Troilus and Cressida, Keats's copy
of, 94.
Truth, relation of art and beauty
to, 53, I27 seq., I34-I36, I46,
I96, I07; imaginative versus
truth from reason, 113; eternity
of, I47, 148; apprehended by
imagination, I96; sense of in
art, 198.
Ugly, in art, I35-I37.
Vale of Soul-Making, 82, 88, 154,
I90.
Vaughan (Henry), quoted, I53.
Verse of art, 167, i68.
Voice of true feeling, I64, 170.




INDEX


217


Warton Lecture, de Selincourt's,
I5, 69, I37.
Wells (Charles), I33(n.).
West (Benjamin), I33.
What the Thrush Said, quoted,
I9I.
"When I have fears," quoted,
I3I.
"Where's the poet? " quoted, io6.
Whitman (Walt), quoted, 63.
Wincklemann (Johann Joachim),
128.
Wolff (Lucien), io.


Women, suffering of, 77, 78, I94.
Woodhouse (Richard), 93(n.),
I27, i62, I69, I70.
Wordsworth (William), 27, 70,
I55, i66, I74, i8o, 184, I87;
compared to Milton, 43-45;
Tintern Abbey, 47(n.), de Selincourt on creed of, 65; influence
on Keats of, 65; Keats on, 67;
The Recluse, 85; quoted, 124;
Bailey on, I63.
Young (W. T.), I33(n.).




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DATE


U     t.U  71995


FEB 29


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