The Masque of Anarchy and Peter Bell the
Third, both written by Shelley in 1819, were published
later on; also various minor poems, complete or fragmentary.
Peter Bell the Third has a certain fortuitous
connexion with Keats. It was written in consequence
of Shelley’s having read in The Examiner
a notice of Peter Bell, a Lyrical Ballad (the
production of John Hamilton Reynolds): and this
notice, as has very recently been proved, was the
handiwork of Keats. Shelley cannot have been
aware of that fact. His prose Essays and Letters,
including The Defence of Poetry, appeared in
1840. The only known work of Shelley, extant
but yet unpublished, is the Philosophical View of
Reform: an abstract of it, with several extracts,
was printed in the Fortnightly Review in 1886.
MEMOIR OF KEATS.
The parents of John Keats were Thomas Keats, and Frances,
daughter of Mr. Jennings, who kept a large livery-stable,
the Swan and Hoop, in the Pavement, Moorfields, London.
Thomas Keats was the principal stableman or assistant
in the same business. John, a seven months’
child, was born at the Swan and Hoop on 31 October,
1795. Three other children grew up—George,
Thomas, and Fanny, John is said to have been violent
and ungovernable in early childhood. He was sent
to a very well-reputed school, that of the Rev. John
Clarke, at Enfield: the son Charles Cowden Clarke,
whom I have previously mentioned, was an undermaster,
and paid particular attention to Keats. The latter
did not show any remarkable talent at school, but
learned easily, and was ‘a very orderly scholar,’
acquiring a fair amount of Latin but no Greek.
He was active, pugnacious, and popular among his school-fellows.
The father died of a fall from his horse in April,
1804: the mother, after re-marrying, succumbed
to consumption in February, 1810. Before the close
of the same year John left school, and he was then
apprenticed, to a surgeon at Edmonton. In July,
1815, he passed with credit the examination at Apothecaries’
Hall.
In 1812 Keats read for the first time Spenser’s
Faery Queen, and was fascinated with it to
a singular degree. This and other poetic reading
made him flag in his surgical profession, and finally
he dropped it, and for the remainder of his life had
no definite occupation save that of writing verse.
From his grandparents he inherited a certain moderate
sum of money—not more than sufficient to
give him a tolerable start in life. He made acquaintance
with Leigh Hunt, then editor of the Examiner,
John Hunt, the publisher, Charles Wentworth Dilke who
became editor of the Athenaeum, the painter
Haydon, and others. His first volume of Poems
(memorable for little else than the sonnet On Reading
Chapman’s Homer) was published in 1817.
It was followed by Endymion in April, 1818.
