other young men of literary tastes and occupations. His verses were beginning to be no longer written with a boy's secrecy, but freely addressed to and passed round among his friends; some of them attracted the notice and warm approval of writers of acknowledged mark and standing; and with their encouragement he had about the time of his coming of age (that is in the winter of 1816-17) conceived the purpose of devoting himself to a literary life. We are not told what measure of opposition he encountered on the point from Mr Abbey, though there is evidence that he encountered some'. Probably that gentleman regarded the poetical aspirations of his ward as mere symptoms of a boyish fever which experience would quickly cure. There was always a certain lack of cordiality in his relations with the three brothers as they grew up. He gave places in his counting-house successively to George and Tom as they left school, but they both quitted him after a while; George, who had his full share of the family pride, on account of slights experienced or imagined at the hands of a junior partner; Tom in consequence of a settled infirmity of health which early disabled him for the practical work of life. Mr Abbey continued to manage the money matters of the Keats family,-unskilfully enough as will appear,— and to do his duty by them as he understood it. Between him and John Keats there was never any formal quarrel. But that young brilliant spirit could hardly have expected a responsible tea-dealer's approval when he yielded himself to the influences now to be described. 1 See Appendix. C. K. CHAPTER II. Particulars of Early Life in London-Friendships and First Poems-Henry Stephens-Felton Mathew-Cowden ClarkeLeigh Hunt: his literary and personal influence-John Hamilton Reynolds-James Rice-Cornelius Webb-Shelley -Haydon-Joseph Severn-Charles Wells-Personal characteristics-Determination to publish. [1814-April 1817.] WHEN Keats moved from Dean Street to St Thomas's Street in the summer of 1815, he at first occupied a joint sitting-room with two senior students, to the care of one of whom he had been recommended by Astley Cooper'. When they left he arranged to live in the same house with two other students, of his own age, named George Wilson Mackereth and Henry Stephens. The latter, who was afterwards a physician of repute near St Albans, and later at Finchley, has left some interesting reminiscences of the time. "He attended lectures," says Mr Stephens of Keats, "and went through the usual routine, but he had no desire to excel in that pursuit.... Poetry was to his mind the zenith of all his aspirations-the only thing worthy the attention of superior minds-so he thought— all other pursuits were mean and tame....It may readily 1 See C. L. Feltoe, Memorials of J. F. South (London, 1884), p. 81. Houghton MSS. Asclepiad, vol. i. p. 134. See also Dr B. W. Richardson in the be imagined that this feeling was accompanied by a good deal of pride and some conceit, and that amongst mere medical students he would walk and talk as one of the gods might be supposed to do when mingling with mortals." On the whole, it seems, 'little Keats' was popular among his fellow-students, although subject to occasional teasing on account of his pride, his poetry, and even his birth as the son of a stable-keeper. Mr Stephens goes on to tell how he himself and a student of St Bartholomew's, a merry fellow called Newmarch, having some tincture of poetry, were singled out as companions by Keats, with whom they used to discuss and compare verses, Keats taking always the tone of authority, and generally disagreeing with their tastes. He despised Pope, and admired Byron, but delighted especially in Spenser, caring more in poetry for the beauty of imagery, description, and simile, than for the interest of action or passion. Newmarch used sometimes to laugh at Keats and his flights,-to the indignation of his brothers, who came often to see him, and treated him as a person to be exalted, and destined to exalt the family name. Questions of poetry apart, continues Mr Stephens, he was habitually gentle and pleasant, and in his life steady and well-behaved—“ his absolute devotion to poetry prevented his having any other taste or indulging in any vice." Another companion of Keats's early London days, who sympathized with his literary tastes, was a certain George Felton Mathew, the son of a tradesman whose family showed the young medical student some hospitality. "Keats and I," wrote in 1848 Mr Mathew,-then a supernumerary official on the Poor-Law Board, struggling meekly under the combined strain of a precarious income, a family of twelve children, and a turn for the interpretation of prophecy,-"Keats and I, though about the same age, and both inclined to literature, were in many respects as different as two individuals could be. He enjoyed good health-a fine flow of animal spiritswas fond of company-could amuse himself admirably with the frivolities of life-and had great confidence in himself. I, on the other hand, was languid and melancholy-fond of repose-thoughtful beyond my years -and diffident to the last degree....He was of the sceptical and republican school-an advocate for the innovations which were making progress in his time-a faultfinder with everything established. I on the other hand hated controversy and dispute-dreaded discord and disorder "—and Keats, our good Mr Timorous farther testifies, was very kind and amiable, always ready to apologize for shocking him. As to his poetical predilections, the impression left on Mr Mathew quite corresponds with that recorded by Mr Stephens :-" he admired more the external decorations than felt the deep emotions of the Muse. He delighted in leading you through the mazes of elaborate description, but was less conscious of the sublime and the pathetic. He used to spend many evenings in reading to me, but I never observed the tears nor the breken voice which are indicative of extreme sensibility." The exact order and chronology of Keats's own first efforts in poetry it is difficult to trace. They were certainly neither precocious nor particularly promising. The circumstantial account of Brown above quoted compels us to regard the lines In Imitation of Spenser as the earliest of all, and as written at Edmonton 1 Houghton MSS. They about the end of 1813 or beginning of 1814. are correct and melodious, and contain few of those archaic or experimental eccentricities of diction which we shall find abounding a little later in Keats's work. Although, indeed, the poets whom Keats loved the best both first and last were those of the Elizabethan age, it is clear that his own earliest verses were modelled timidly on the work of writers nearer his own time. His professedly Spenserian lines resemble not SO much Spenser as later writers who had written in his measure, and of these not the latest, Byron', but rather such milder minstrels as Shenstone, Thomson, and Beattie, or most of all perhaps the sentimental Irish poetess Mrs Tighe; whose Psyche had become very popular since her death, and by its richness of imagery, and flowing and musical versification, takes a place, now too little recognised, among the pieces preluding the romantic movement of the time. That Keats was familiar with this lady's work is proved by his allusion to it in the lines, themselves very youthfully turned in the tripping manner of Tom Moore, which he addressed about this time to some ladies who had sent him a present of a shell. His two elegiac stanzas On Death, assigned by George Keats to the year 1814, are quite in an eighteenthcentury style and vein of moralizing. Equally so is the address To Hope of February 1815, with its 'relentless fair' and its personified abstractions, 'fair Cheerfulness,' 'Disappointment, parent of Despair,' that fiend Despondence,' and the rest. And once more, in the ode To Apollo of the same date, the voice with which this young 1 What, for instance, can be less Spenserian and at the same time less Byronic than "For sure so fair a place was never seen Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye"? |