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"written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left prison" the youth's attempts at verse-writing were to him unknown. The 3rd of February 1815 was the day of Hunt's liberation, so that the endeavour had by this time been going on in silence for something like a year or

more.

It was not till 1816—or let us say when he was just of age-that Keats produced a truly excellent thing. This is the sonnet "On first looking into Chapman's Homer." A copy of Chapman's translation had been lent to Cowden Clarke; he and Keats sat up till daylight reading it, the young poet shouting with delight, and by ten o'clock on the following morning Keats sent the sonnet to Clarke. It was therefore a sudden immediate inspiration, a little rill of lava flowing out of a poetic volcano, solidified at once. This is not only the first excellent thing written by Keats it is the only excellent thing contained in his first volume of verse.

This volume came out (as already mentioned) in the early spring of 1817. The sonnet dedicating the book to Leigh Hunt, written off at a moment's notice "when the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer," was evidently composed in winter-time. The title of the volume is "Poems by John Keats." The motto on its title-page is from Spenser

"What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"

-a motto embodying with considerable completeness the feeling which is predominant in the volume, and generally in Keats's poetic works. We always feel "delight" to

be his true element, whatever may be the undertone of pathos opposed to it by poetic development and treatment, and by adverse fate. "Liberty" also—a free flight of the faculties, a rejection of conventional trammels, whether in life or in verse-was highly characteristic of him; and perhaps the youthful friend of Hunt intended the word "liberty" to be understood by his readers as having a certain political flavour as well. In addition to some writings just specified, the volume contained "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill "; the three epistles "To George Felton Mathew" (who was a gentleman of literary habits, afterwards employed in administering the Poor Law), "To my brother George," and "To Charles Cowden Clarke "; sixteen sonnets; and "Sleep and Poetry." The question of the poetic deservings of these compositions belongs more properly to our final chapter. I shall here give only a few details bearing upon the circumstances of their production. The poem "I stood tiptoe" &c. was written beside a gate near Caen Wood, Highgate. It must have been begun in a summer, no doubt that of 1816, and was still uncompleted in the middle of December of that year. "The Epistle to Mathew," dated November 1815, testifies to the early admiration of Keats for Thomas Chatterton; though the dedication of "Endymion," "Inscribed to the memory of Thomas Chatterton," was but poorly forestalled by such lines as the following

"Where we may soft humanity put on,

And sit and rhyme, and think on Chatterton,

And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him
Four laurelled spirits heavenward to entreat him."

Moreover, the first of his youthful sonnets is addressed to Chatterton. The "Epistle to George," August 1816, opens with a reference to "many a dreary hour" which John Keats has passed, fearing he would never be able to write good poetry, however much he might gaze on sky, honey-bees, and the beauty of woman. The 66 Epistle to Clarke," September 1816, pays ample tribute to the guidance which he had afforded to Keats into the realms of poetry, and contains a couplet which has of late been very often quoted

"Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly
Up to its climax, and then dying proudly?"

The sonnet

"O Solitude, if I must with thee dwell,"

is the first thing that Keats ever published. It had previously appeared in The Examiner for May 5, 1816, and is clearly one of the best of these early sonnets. The sonnet which begins with the unmetrical line—

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was included in the very first batch of verses by Keats which Cowden Clarke showed to Leigh Hunt. Hunt expressed "unhesitating and prompt admiration " of some other one among the compositions; and Horace Smith, who was present, reading out the sonnet now before us, praised as "a well-condensed expression" the contorted and inefficient line

"That distance of recognizance bereaves,"

i.e. [sounds] which distance bereaves of recognizance, or, in plain English, which are too distant to be recognized. Two other sonnets are addressed to Haydon in a tone of glowing laudation.

"Sleep and Poetry " is (if we except the sonnet upon Chapman's Homer) by far the most important poem in the volume. It was written partly in Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hampstead, in the library-room, where a sofabed had on one occasion been made up for Keats's convenience, and the latter lines in the poem refer to objects of art which were kept in the room. Apart from the impressive line which all readers remember, saying of poetry

""Tis might half-slumbering on its own right arm,"

there are several passages interesting as showing Keats's enthusiasm for the art in which he was now a beginner, soon to be an adept—

also

"Oh for ten years that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy!"

"The great end

Of poesy, that it should be a friend

To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man;"

and again

66 They shall be accounted poet-kings

Who simply tell the most heart-easing things "

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both of these being definitions in which we might imagine Leigh Hunt to have borne his part, or at least notified

his concurrence. The following well-known diatribe is also important, and should be kept in mind when we come to speak of the reception accorded to Keats by established critics, more or less of the old school. He has been dilating on the splendours of British poetry of the great era, say Spenser to Milton, and then proceeds—

"Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism

Made great Apollo blush for this his land.
Men were thought wise who could not understand
His glories with a puling infant's force
They swayed about upon a rocking-horse,
And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal-souled!
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled
Its gathering waves-ye felt it not; the blue
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew
Of summer-night 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 smoothe, inlay, and chip, 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 decrepit standard out

Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large
The name of one Boileau."

Zeal is generally pardonable. Keats's was manifestly

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