For help and information, besides what has been above acknowledged, I am indebted first and foremost to my friend and colleague, Mr Richard Garnett; and next to the poet's surviving sister, Mrs Llanos; to Sir Charles Dilke, who lent me the chief part of his valuable collection of Keats's books and papers (already well turned to account by Mr Forman); to Dr B. W. Richardson, and the Rev. R. H. Hadden. Other incidental obligations will be found acknowledged in the footnotes. Among essays on and reviews of Keats's work I need only refer in particular to that by the late Mrs F. M. Owen (Keats: a Study, London, 1876). In its main outlines, though not in details, I accept and have followed this lady's interpretation of _Endymion_. For the rest, every critic of modern English poetry is of necessity a critic of Keats. The earliest, Leigh Hunt, was one of the best; and to name only a few among the living--where Mr Matthew Arnold, Mr Swinburne, Mr Lowell, Mr Palgrave, Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr W. B. Scott, Mr Roden Noel, Mr Theodore Watts, have gone before, for one who follows to be both original and just is not easy. In the following pages I have not attempted to avoid saying over again much that in substance has been said already, and doubtless better, by others: by Mr Matthew Arnold and Mr Palgrave especially. I doubt not but they will forgive me: and at the same time I hope to have contributed something of my own towards a fuller understanding both of Keats's art and life. CONTENTS. PAGE CHAPTER I. Birth and Parentage--School Life at Enfield--Life as Surgeon's Apprentice at Edmonton--Awakening to Poetry--Life as Hospital Student in London. [1795-1817] 1 CHAPTER II. Particulars of Early Life in London--Friendships and First Poems--Henry Stephens--Felton Mathew--Cowden Clarke--Leigh 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] 18 CHAPTER III. The _Poems_ of 1817 50 CHAPTER IV. Excursion to Isle of Wight, Margate, and Canterbury--Summer at Hampstead--New Friends: Dilke: Brown: Bailey--With Bailey at Oxford--Return: Old Friends at Odds--Burford Bridge--Winter at Hampstead--Wordsworth: Lamb: Hazlitt--Poetical Activity-- Spring at Teignmouth--Studies and Anxieties--Marriage and Emigration of George Keats. [April, 1817-May, 1818] 67 CHAPTER V. _Endymion_ 93 CHAPTER VI.