Northern Tour--The _Blackwood_ and _Quarterly_ reviews--Death of Tom Keats--Removal to Wentworth Place--Fanny Brawne-- Excursion to Chichester--Absorption in Love and Poetry--Haydon and money difficulties--Family Correspondence--Darkening Prospects--Summer at Shanklin and Winchester--Wise Resolutions--Return from Winchester. [June, 1818-October, 1819] 111 CHAPTER VII. _Isabella_--_Hyperion_--_The Eve of St Agnes_--_The Eve of St Mark_--_La Belle Dame Sans Merci_--_Lamia_--The Odes--The Plays 147 CHAPTER VIII. Return to Wentworth Place--Autumn Occupations--The _Cap and Bells_--Recast of _Hyperion_--Growing Despondency--Visit of George Keats to England--Attack of Illness in February--Rally in the Spring--Summer in Kentish Town--Publication of the _Lamia_ Volume--Relapse--Ordered South--Voyage to Italy-- Naples--Rome--Last Days and Death. [October, 1819-Feb. 1821] 180 CHAPTER IX. Character and Genius 209 APPENDIX 221 INDEX 234 KEATS. 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.] Science may one day ascertain the laws of distribution and descent which govern the births of genius; but in the meantime a birth like that of Keats presents to the ordinary mind a striking instance of nature's inscrutability. If we consider the other chief poets of the time, we can commonly recognize either some strain of power in their blood, or some strong inspiring influence in the scenery and traditions of their home. Thus we see Scott prepared alike by his origin, associations, and circumstances to be the 'minstrel of his clan' and poet of the romance of the border wilds; while the spirit of the Cumbrian hills, and the temper of the generations bred among them, speak naturally through the lips of Wordsworth. Byron seems inspired in literature by demons of the same froward brood that had urged others of his lineage through lives of adventure or of crime. But Keats, with instincts and faculties more purely poetical than any of these, was paradoxically born in a dull and middling walk of English city life; and 'if by traduction came his mind,'--to quote Dryden with a difference,--it was through channels too obscure for us to trace. His father, Thomas Keats, was a west-country lad who came young to London, and while still under twenty held the place of head ostler in a livery-stable kept by a Mr John Jennings in Finsbury. Presently he married his employer's daughter, Frances Jennings; and Mr Jennings, who was a man