Keats was an undersized man, little more than five
feet high. His face was handsome, ardent, and
full of expression; the hair rich, brown, and curling;
the hazel eyes ’mellow and glowing—large,
dark, and sensitive.’ He was framed for
enjoyment; but with that acuteness of feeling which
turned even enjoyment into suffering, and then again
extracted a luxury out of melancholy. He had vehemence
and generosity, and the frankness which belongs to
these qualities, not unmingled, however, with a strong
dose of suspicion. Apart from the overmastering
love of his closing years, his one ambition was to
be a poet. His mind was little concerned either
with the severe practicalities of life, or with the
abstractions of religious faith.
His poems, consisting of three successive volumes,
have been already referred to here. The first
volume, the Poems of 1817, is mostly of a juvenile
kind, containing only scattered suggestions of rich
endowment and eventual excellence. Endymion
is lavish and profuse, nervous and languid, the wealth
of a prodigal scattered in largesse of baubles and
of gems. The last volume—comprising
the Hyperion—is the work of a noble
poetic artist, powerful and brilliant both in imagination
and in expression. Of the writings published
since their author’s death, the only one of
first-rate excellence is the fragmentary Eve of
St. Mark. There is also the drama of Otho
the Great, written in co-operation with Armitage
Brown; and in Keats’s letters many admirable
thoughts are admirably worded.
As to the relations between Shelley and Keats, I have
to refer back to the preceding memoir of Shelley.
ADONAIS:
ITS COMPOSITION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY.
For nearly two months after the death of Keats, 23
February, 1821, Shelley appears to have remained in
ignorance of the event: he knew it on or before
19 April. The precise date when he began his Elegy
does not seem to be recorded: one may suppose
it to have been in the latter half of May. On
5 June he wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne: ’I
have been engaged these last days in composing a poem
on the death of Keats, which will shortly be finished;
and I anticipate the pleasure of reading it to you,
as some of the very few persons who will be interested
in it and understand it. It is a highly wrought
piece of art, and perhaps better, in point of composition,
than anything I have written.’
A letter to Mr. Ollier followed immediately afterwards.
’Pisa, June 8th, 1821,
’You may announce for publication a poem entitled
Adonais. It is a lament on the death of
poor Keats, with some interspersed stabs on the assassins
of his peace and of his fame; and will be preceded
by a criticism on Hyperion, asserting the due
claims which that fragment gives him to the rank which
I have assigned him. My poem is finished, and
consists of about forty Spenser stanzas [fifty-five
