Shelley was one among the sons of Rousseau who did not falter and turn back to feudalism, Catholicism, or mysticism of any sort. He fixed his eyes upon the future, and never wavered for a moment. He attacked class privilege, not merely political, but industrial; and so he is the coming poet of labor. Some day, and that not so far off, the strongholds of class greed in Britain will be stormed, and when the liberated workers take up the task of making a new culture, they will learn that there was one inspired saint in their history who visioned that glad day, and gave up everything in life to bring it nearer. They will honor Shelley by making him their poet-laureate, and hailing him as the supreme glory of English letters. CHAPTER LIX THE STABLE-KEEPER’S SON There is one more poet of this period with whom we must deal, and that is John Keats. “And now you are going to have your hands full,” says Mrs. Ogi. “Everyone is quite sure that Keats is one poet who cannot possibly be accused of propaganda.” “Yes,” says her husband; “an amusing illustration of the extent to which leisure-class criticism is able to take the guts out of art. Here is a man whose life and personality constitute one of the greatest pieces of radical propaganda in the history of English literature.” “At least the issue is fairly joined,” says Mrs. Ogi. “Go to it!” Let us first take the life and personality, and afterwards the writings. John Keats was the son of a stable-keeper; and if you don’t know what that meant to British snobbery there is no way I can convey it to you. He did not attend a public school or a university; he did not learn to walk and talk like an English gentleman. He was a simple, crude fellow--a little chap not much over five feet high--and his social experiences early taught him the lesson of extreme reserve; he held himself aloof from everyone who might by any possibility spurn him because of his low estate. Even with Shelley he would not forget that he was dealing with the son of a baronet; everyone who surrounded Shelley was trying to get money from him, and so Keats despised them and stayed apart. “He was of the skeptical, republican school,” wrote one of his boyhood intimates. “A fault finder with everything established.” And the first poem which he got up the courage to show was a sonnet upon the release of Leigh Hunt, who had been sent to prison for two years for writing an article denouncing the prince regent. This poem was published in Hunt’s paper, the “Examiner,” and the notorious editor became the friend and champion of this twenty-year-old poet.