Oxford Lectures on Poetry Part 15

Keats was by nature both dreamer and poet, and his ambition was to become poet pure and simple. There was, in a further sense, a double strain in his nature. He had in him the poetic temper of his time, the ever-present sense of an infinite, the tendency to think of this as an ideal perfection manifesting itself in reality, and yet surpa.s.sing reality, and so capable of being contrasted with it. He was allied here especially to Wordsworth and to Sh.e.l.ley, by the former of whom he was greatly influenced. But there was also in him another tendency; and this, it would seem, was strengthening at the expense of the first, and would in time have dominated it. It was perhaps the deeper and more individual. It may be called the Shakespearean strain, and it works against any inclination to erect walls between ideal and real, or to magnify differences of grade into oppositions of kind. Keats had the impulse to interest himself in everything he saw or heard of, to be curious about a thing, accept it, identify himself with it, without first asking whether it is better or worse than another, or how far it is from the ideal principle. It is this impulse that speaks in the words, 'If a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel';[31] and in the words, 'When she comes into a room she makes an impression the same as the beauty of a leopardess'; and in the feeling that she is fine, though Bishop Hooker is finer. It too is the source of his complaint that he has no personal ident.i.ty, and of his description of the poetical character; 'It has no self; it is everything and nothing.... It enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated. It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation.[32] A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no ident.i.ty. He is continually in, for, and filling some other body.'[33] That is not a description of Milton or Wordsworth or Sh.e.l.ley; neither does it apply very fully to Keats; but it describes something at least of the spirit of Shakespeare.

Now this spirit, it is obvious, tends in poetry, I do not say to a realistic, but to what may be called a concrete method of treatment; to the vivid presentment of scenes, individualities, actions, in preference to the expression of unembodied thoughts and feelings. The atmosphere of Wordsworth's age, as we have seen, was not, on the whole, favourable to it, and in various degrees it failed in strength, or it suffered, in all the greater poets. Scott had it in splendid abundance and vigour; but he had too little of the idealism or the metaphysical imagination which was common to those poets, and which Shakespeare united with his universal comprehension; nor was he, like Shakespeare and like some of them, a master of magic in language. But Keats had that magic in fuller measure, perhaps, than any of our poets since Milton; and, sharing the idealism of Wordsworth and Sh.e.l.ley, he possessed also wider sympathies, and, if not a more plastic or pictorial imagination than the latter, at least a greater freedom from the attraction of theoretic ideas. To what results might not this combination have led if his life had been as long as Wordsworth's or even as Byron's? It would be more than hazardous, I think, to say that he was the most highly endowed of all our poets in the nineteenth century, but he might well have written its greatest long poems.

1905.

NOTE

I have pointed out certain marked resemblances between _Alastor_ and _Endymion_, and it would be easy to extend the list. These resemblances are largely due to similarities in the minds of the two poets, and to the action of a common influence on both. But I believe that, in addition, Keats was affected by the reading of _Alastor_, which appeared in 1816, while his own poem was begun in the spring of 1817.

The common influence to which I refer was that of Wordsworth, and especially of the _Excursion_, published in 1814. There is a quotation, or rather a misquotation, from it in the Preface to _Alastor_. The _Excursion_ is concerned in part with the danger of inactive and unsympathetic solitude; and this, treated of course in Sh.e.l.ley's own way, is the subject of _Alastor_, which also contains phrases reminiscent of Wordsworth's poem. Its Preface too reminds one immediately of the _Elegiac Stanzas on a Picture of Peele Castle_; of the main idea, and of the lines,

Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone, Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind.

As for Keats, the reader of his letters knows how much he was occupied in 1817 and 1818 with thoughts due to the reading of Wordsworth, and how great, though qualified, was his admiration of the _Excursion_. These thoughts concerned chiefly the poetic nature, its tendency to 'dream,'

and the necessity that it should go beyond itself and feel for the sorrows of others. They may have been suggested _only_ by Wordsworth; but we must remember that _Alastor_ had been published, and that Keats would naturally read it. In comparing that poem with _Endymion_ I am obliged to repeat remarks already made in the lecture.

_Alastor_, composed under the influence described, tells of the fate of a young poet, who is 'pure and tender-hearted,' but who, in his search for communion with the ideal influences of nature and of knowledge, keeps aloof from sympathies with his kind. 'So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed.' But a time comes when he thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence like himself. His ideal requirements are embodied in the form of a being who appears to him in a dream, and to whom he is united in pa.s.sionate love. But his 'self-centred seclusion' now avenges itself. The 'spirit of sweet human love' vanishes as he wakes, and he wanders over the earth, vainly seeking the 'prototype' of the vision until he dies.

In _Endymion_ the story of a dream-vision, of rapturous union with it, and of the consequent pursuit of it, re-appears, though the beginning and the end are different. The hero, before the coming of the vision, has of course a poetic soul, but he is not self-secluded, or inactive, or fragile, or philosophic; and his pursuit of the G.o.ddess leads not to extinction but to immortal union with her. It does lead, however, to adventures of which the main idea evidently is that the poetic soul can only reach complete union with the ideal (which union is immortality) by wandering in a world which seems to deprive him of it; by trying to mitigate the woes of others instead of seeking the ideal for himself; and by giving himself up to love for what seems to be a mere woman, but is found to be the G.o.ddess herself. It seems almost beyond doubt that the story of Cynthia and Endymion would not have taken this shape but for _Alastor_.

The reader will find this impression confirmed if he compares the descriptions in _Alastor_ and _Endymion_, Book I., of the dreamer's feelings on awakening from his dream, of the disenchantment that has fallen on the landscape, and of his 'eager' pursuit of the lost vision.

Everything is, in one sense, different, for the two poets differ greatly, and Keats, of course, was writing without any conscious recollection of the pa.s.sage in _Alastor_; but the conception is the same.[34]

Consider, again, the pa.s.sage (near the beginning of _Endymion_, Book III.) quoted on p. 230 of the lecture. The hero is addressing the moon; and he says, to put it baldly, that from his boyhood everything that was beautiful to him was a.s.sociated with his love of the moon's beauty. The pa.s.sage continues thus:

On some bright essence could I lean, and lull Myself to immortality: I prest Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest.

But, gentle Orb! there came a nearer bliss-- My strange love came--Felicity's abyss!

She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away.

In spite of the dissimilarities, surely the 'wakeful rest' here corresponds to the condition of the poet in _Alastor_ prior to the dream. 'So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed'; but when his 'strange love' comes these objects, like the objects of Endymion's earlier desires, no longer suffice him.

There is, however, further evidence, indeed positive proof, of the effect of _Alastor_, and especially of its Preface, on Keats's mind. In the revised version of _Hyperion_, Book I., the dreamer in the Temple wonders why he has been preserved from death. The Prophetess tells him the reason (I italicise certain words):

'None can usurp this height,' returned that shade, 'But those to whom the _miseries of the world_ Are misery, and will not let them rest.

_All else_ who find a haven in the world, Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days, If by a chance into this fane they come, Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half.'

'Are there not thousands in the world,' said I, Encouraged by the sooth voice of the shade, 'Who _love their fellows_ even to the death, Who feel the giant agony of the world, And more, like slaves to poor humanity, Labour for mortal good?'

If the reader compares with this the following pa.s.sage from the Preface to _Alastor_, and if he observes the words I have italicised in it, he will hardly doubt that some unconscious recollection of the Preface was at work in Keats's mind. Sh.e.l.ley is distinguishing the self-centred seclusion of his poet from that of common selfish souls:

'The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible pa.s.sion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no ill.u.s.trious superst.i.tion, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief; these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish, because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead.

They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through the intensity and pa.s.sion of their search after its communities, when the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. _All else_, selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing mult.i.tudes who const.i.tute, together with their own, the lasting _misery_ and loneliness _of the world_. Those who _love not their fellow-beings_, live unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.'[35]

I have still a pa.s.sage to refer to. Let the reader turn to the quotation on p. 236 from Keats's reply to Sh.e.l.ley's letter of invitation to his home in Italy; and let him ask himself why Keats puts the word "self-concentration" in inverted commas. He is not referring to anything in Sh.e.l.ley's letter, and he is not in the habit in the letters of using inverted commas except to mark a quotation. Without doubt, I think, he is referring from memory to the Preface to _Alastor_ and the phrase 'self-centred seclusion.' He has come to feel that this self-centred seclusion is _right_ for a poet like himself, and that the direct pursuit of philanthropy in poetry (which he supposes Sh.e.l.ley to advocate) is wrong. But this is another proof how much he had been influenced by Sh.e.l.ley's poem; and it is perhaps not too rash to conjecture that his consciousness of this influence was one reason why he had earlier refused to visit Sh.e.l.ley, in order that he might 'have his own unfettered scope.'[36]

If it seems to anyone that these conclusions are derogatory to Keats, either as a man or a poet, I can only say that I differ from him entirely. But I will add that there seems to me some reason to conjecture that Sh.e.l.ley had read the _Ode to a Nightingale_ before he wrote the stanzas _To a Skylark_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The Letters (except those to Miss Brawne, and a few others) have been edited by Colvin, and (without exception) by Forman (pub. Gowans & Gray). I refer to them by their numbers, followed by the initial of the editor's name. Both editions reproduce peculiarities of punctuation, etc.; but for my present purpose these are usually without interest, and I have consulted the convenience of the reader in making changes.

[2] Keats himself, it is strange to think, was born in the same year as Carlyle.

[3] These pa.s.sions were in his last two years overclouded at times, but they remained to the end. When, in the bitterness of his soul, he begged Severn to put on his tombstone no name, but only 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water,' he was thinking not merely of the reviewers who had robbed him of fame in his short life, but also of those unwritten poems, of which 'the faint conceptions' in happier days used to 'bring the blood into his forehead.'

[4] LII, C., LV, F. The quotations above are from XIV, XVI, C., XV, XVII, XVIII, F. The verses are a parody of Wordsworth's lines, 'The c.o.c.k is crowing.'

[5] LXI, C., LXVI, F.

[6] LVI, C., LXI, F.

[7] LXXIII, C., Lx.x.xI, F. Mr. Hooker, I may remark, would not have thanked Keats for his bishopric.

[8] From the letter last quoted. See also CXVI, CXVIII, CXIX, C., Cx.x.xVII, Cx.x.xIV, Cx.x.xV, F.

[9] 'Pain had no sting and pleasure's wreath no flower.'

[10] XCII, C., CVI, F.

[11] XIX, C., XXI, F.

[12] LIV, C., LIX, F.

[13] Cx.x.xI, C., CLII, F.

[14] CXVI, C., Cx.x.xVII, F. The word 'turn' in the last sentence but two seems to be doubtful. Mr. Colvin reads 'have.'

[15] Keats's use of the word is suggested, probably, by Milton's 'pure intelligence of heaven.'

[16] XCII, C., CVI, F.

[17] CLXVI, F., LXXIII, C., Lx.x.xI, F. In XLI, C., XLIV, F., occurs a pa.s.sage ending with the words, 'they are able to "_consecrate whate'er they look upon_."' Is not this a quotation from the _Hymn_:

Spirit of BEAUTY that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon?

If so, and if my memory serves me, this is the only quotation from Sh.e.l.ley's poetry in the letters of Keats. The _Hymn_ had been published in Hunt's _Examiner_, Jan., 1817.

[18] The first critic, I believe, who seriously attempted to investigate Keats's mind, and the ideas that were trying to take shape in some of his poems, was F. M. Owen, whose _John Keats, a Study_ (1880) never attracted in her too brief life-time the attention it deserved. Mr. Bridges's treatment of these ideas is masterly. To what is said above may be added that, although Keats was dissatisfied with _Endymion_ even before he had finished it, he did not at any time criticise it on the ground that it tried to put too much meaning into the myth. On _Alastor_ and _Endymion_ see further the Note appended to this lecture.

[19] A notable (but not isolated) remark, seeing that the poetic genius of Keats showed itself soonest and perhaps most completely in the rendering of Nature.

[20] XXIV, C., XXVI, F.

[21] CXVI, C., Cx.x.xVII, F.

[22] XIX, C., XXI, F.