White JohnKeatsCritic 1926
White JohnKeatsCritic 1926
White JohnKeatsCritic 1926
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copy of the first book of the Faerie Que ene. No one will deny
the great influence of Spenser on Keats, especially in the young
man's first volume of poetry ; Miss Lowell in her biography gave
a most interesting account of Cowden Clarke's introducing Keats
to Spenser. Keats showed his own instinct for the poetical art
by fastening with fine discernment on epithets of special felicity
or power in Spenser. For instance, says Cowden Clarke, "he
hoisted himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said,
'What an image that is?sea-shouldering-whalesl' " Passages in
Keats's copy of the Faerie Queene are marked and re-marked by
Keats, indicating clearly his early preoccupation with descrip
tions appealing to one or .more of the senses?with "images of
effect," as Miss Lowell calls them. The 1817 volume of Poems
shows an enormous effect of his reading and assimilation of Spen
ser ; and in his sonnet on the "poets' poet," he says :
The flower must drink the nature of the soil
Before it can put forth its blossoming:
Be with me in the summer days and I
Will for thine honour and his pleasure try.
regret that time will not permit my treating, even briefly, Keats's
method of composition.12 Unlike Wordsworth and Coleridge,
Keats does not write a formal or prefatory essay on the theory of
poetry, but scattered throughout his letters and his poetry are
clear-cut statements as to what he conceived to be his task as a
poet. Let us take up in order Keats's consideration of such poeti
cal fundamentals as the "negative capability" (as he calls the
greatest of all poetic requisites), beauty, imagination, and sensa
tion.
We have seen, in one of Keats's comments on Shakespeare, that
the quality that is most essential for a man of achievement, espe
cially in literature, is negative capability ; a quality which Shakes
peare possessed "enormously," making him, for Keats, the great
est of all poets; while Coleridge lacked it, to his detriment as a
poet.13 Pbetry must be impersonal, and as far as the poet is con
cerned, he should have no identity.14 For "men of genius are
great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on the mass of neutral
intellect-?but they have not any individuality, any determined
character?I would call the top and head of those who have a
proper self, men of power."15 "We hate poetry that has a palpa
ble design upon us. . . . Poetry should be great and unobtrusive,
a thing that enters into one's soul, and does not startle or amaze
it with itself?but with its subject."16 But this does not mean
that poetry itself is purposeless; for Keats is ambitious of doing
the world good through his poetry. He will strive to reach as
high a summit as he is capable of, but he has fears that he may
lose all interest in human affairs?"that the solitary Indifference I
feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not blunt any
acuteness of vision I may have."
In summarizing what he means by negative capability, Keats
quickly shifts to his theory of beauty. "This [consideration of
negative capability] pursued through volumes would perhaps take
us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty
In Sleep and Poetry (1817), Keats emphasized the fact that the
field of poetry is not reason and philosophy: its field is the free
play of the imagination, and its aim is the creation of beauty.20
Keats, in his consideration of the imagination, again, unlike
Wordsworth and Coleridge, does not attempt to distinguish be
tween imagination and fancy, but impressionistically writes to his
friend Bailey:21
I long to be talking about the imagination. ... I am certain
of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections, and
the truth of Imagination. What.the Imagination seizes as
Beauty must be truth?whether it existed before or not,?
for I have the same idea of all our passions as of Love : they
are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. In a
Word, you may know my favourite speculation by my first
Book [Endymion] . . . The Imagination may be compared
to Adam's dream,?he awoke and found it truth :?I am more
zealous in this affair, because I have never yet been able to
perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive
reasoning?and yet it must be. . . . However it may be, O
for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts !
Keats struck the keynote of his verse in the 1817 volume in the
motto from Spenser prefixed to it :
What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?
In the poetry found in this little volume there are liberty, restraint
from all classical rules, and an enthusiastic outpouring of the
delight in nature, in romance, in friendship, and in poesy. As far
as he is able to do so, he is carrying out his poetic theories with
reference to beauty, imagination, and sensation. In this volume
his attempts are always immature, and at times crude, but he
^Letter LXXII, p. 167, to James August Hessey, October 9, 1818.
^Oxford Keats, pp. 47-49, lines 161-229 ; Cf. also Epistle to C. C. Clarke,
p. 31, lines 55-59; Epistle to George Keats, p. 27 ; Epistle to G. F. Matthew,
p. 24ff.
"Lowell, I, p. 607.
"Oxford Keats, p. 56.
^Letter LXXII, pp. 167-68, to James Hessey, October 9, 1818.
breast, and acts all the acts of a bonafide husband, while she
fancies she is only playing the part of a wife in a dream.
This alteration is of about 3 stanzas.
When Woodhouse expresses his apprehension that the poem will
not be fit for ladies to read, Keats retorts that he did not want
ladies to read his poetry: he wrote for men. The three stanzas
referred to by Woodhouse seem to be lost, the only hint of them
being the very mild lines which were cancelled,
See while she speaks his arms encroaching slow
Have zon'd her, heart to heart?loud, loud the dark winds blow.
Of his odes, which all the critics esteem as some of Keats's best
poetry, he has very little to say.40 The Ode to Psyche he says he
wrote leisurely, and he believes that it reads the more richly for
that reason.41
In his Preface to Endymion, he had stated that he intended to
return to Greek mythology in a later poem, which was to be
Hyperion. He wrote to Hay don :42
... In Endymion I think you may have many bits of the
deep and sentimental cast the nature of "Hyperion" will lead
me to treat it in a more naked and grecian Manner?and the
march of passion and endeavour will be undeviating. . . .
He finally abandons the poem, however,43
I have given up Hyperion?there are too many Miltonic in
versions in it?Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an
artful or rather, artist's humour. I wish to give myself up
to other sensations. English ought to be kept up.
At about this time he wrote to his brother in America that he con
sidered Paradise Lost, though fine in itself, a corruption of our
language, and that he thought Chatterton's English the purest of
all English. "Chatterton's language is entirely northern. I prefer
the native music of it to Milton's cut by feet. I have but lately
stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death
^Cf. Ruskin, John, 1860, Modern Painters, Part VI, Ch. IX; Swinburne,
A. C, 1882-86, Keats, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Misc., p. 211 ; Rossetti, Wil
liam M., 1887, Life of John Keats (Great Writers), p. 194; Bryant, William
Cullen, 1870, A New Library of Poetry and Song, Introd., I, p 43. Cf.
also H. W. Mabie, Sir Sidney Colvin, and Miss Amy Lowell on Keats's
Odes.
"Letter XCII, to George and Georgiana Keats, p. 259, April 30, 1819.
^Letter, to Benjamin R. Haydon, January 23, 1818.
"Letter CXVII, p. 321, to J. H. Reynolds, September 22, 1819.
"Letters XVXIV, p. 68; LII, pp. 107-09; and LXXX, pp. 248-49; Keats
review of Reynold's Peter Bell.
^Oxford Keats, The Fall of Hyperion, lines 217-18, p. 448. Do not these
lines refer to Byron?
"Letter CLV, p. 366.
^Letter XLIII, p. 87, to B. R. Haydon, March 21, 1818.
"Letter LXXX, p. 193, to George and Georgiana Keats, December 18,
1818.
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