Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-FameColvin, Sidney
General
Life of John Keats: His Life and Poetry, His Friends, Critics and After-Fame
Colvin, Sidney
Keats, John, 1795-1821; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
Keats was by this time left alone in Well Walk, having seen his brothers
off for Teignmouth, whither George carried the invalid Tom for change of
climate. His regular occupation for the next two months was revising and
copying out _Endymion_ for press. Regular also was his attendance at
Hazlitt's evening lectures on the English Poets at the Surrey
Institution. Of the lectures on Shakespeare which Coleridge was in the
same weeks delivering in Fetter Lane Keats makes no mention, and it is
clear that he made no effort to go and hear them, though the distance of
the lecture-hall from his Hampstead lodging was so much less. The reader
who would fain conjure up for himself the contrasted personalities and
styles in public discourse of these two master critics, the shy and
saturnine, yet vigorously straight-hitting and trenchantly effective
Hazlitt, and the ramblingly mellifluous, sometimes beautifully inspired
and sometimes painfully drug-beclouded Coleridge, can draw but a faint
and tantalized satisfaction from the diaries of Henry Crabb Robinson,
that assiduous friend and satellite of men of genius, who punctually
records his attendance at both courses, but lacked the touch that
should have made his record live.
Keats's letters to his brothers in these winter months, with a few more
to Bailey and Reynolds, give us lively glimpses of his social doings,
and others, interesting in the extreme, of the inward growth and
workings of his mind. He tells of a certain amount of common-place
conviviality: an absurd dance and rackety supper at one Redhall's; noisy
Saturday 'concerts' at his own rooms, which means that two or three
intimates came to early afternoon dinner and spent the rest of the day
drinking claret and keeping up a concerted racket, each in imitation of
some musical instrument (Keats himself of the bassoon); but of this
pastime he soon got tired and rather ashamed. His social relations began
to extend themselves more than he much cared about, or thought
consistent with proper industry. We find him dining with Shelley's
friend, the genial and admirable stockbroker and man of letters Horace
Smith, in company with some fashionable wits, concerning whom he
reflects:--'They only served to convince me how superior humour is to
wit, in respect to enjoyment. These men say things which make one start,
without making one feel; they are all alike; they all know fashionables;
they have all a mannerism in their eating and drinking, in their mere
handling a decanter. They talked of Kean and his low company. "Would I
were with that company instead of yours," said I to myself.' Sunday
evenings were for a while set apart for dining with Haydon, and here, on
the last Sunday of the year, Keats met Wordsworth for the first time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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