Part 14 (1/2)
Woination, and theycan feel happy without any sense of cries, taken alone, even e observe his qualifications, would give a false impression of Keats; but they supply a curious coend of the sensuous Keats Weof the inferiority of poets (or rather of such 'drea' poets as himself) to men of action
In this same letter he copies out for his correspondents several recently written poe them the ballad _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_ He copies it without a word of introduction He could not say, 'Here is the record of my love and my despair,' for on this one subject he never opened his heart to his brother But when he has finished the copy he adds a few lines referring to the stanza (afterwards altered):
She took hed full sore, And there I shut her ild eyes With kisses four
'Why four kisses, you will say, why four? Because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse She would have fain said ”score”
without hurting the rhyination, as the Critics say, with Judged to choose an even nuht have fair play; and, to speak truly, I think two apiece quite sufficient Suppose I had said seven, there would have been three and a half apiece--a very aard affair, and well got out of on my side' This is not very like the comments of Wordsworth on his best poems, but I dare say the author of _Hae, let me add, to think that Keats and his friends were probably unconscious of the extraordinary merit of this poem? It was not published with the Odes in the volues to illustrate in different ways Keats's insight into human nature It appears, on the whole, more decidedly in the letters than in the poeifts were concerned, his hope of ultimate success in dramatic poetry ell founded The first is a piece of 'nonsense,'
rattled off on the spur of theonly for its last sentence He has been describing 'three witty people, all distinct in their excellence'; and he goes on:
I know three people of no wit at all, each distinct in his excellence--A, B, and C A is the foolishest, B the sulkiest, C is a negative A makes you yawn, B h he were six feet high I bear the first, I forbear the second, I aruel, the second ditch-water, the third is spilt--he ought to be wiped up
C, who is spilt and ought to be wiped up, how often we have ladly have fathered the phrase that describes him, and the words that follow are not much out of the tune of Falstaff: 'C, they say, is not his ht hi lae Keats is describing one of his friends:
Dilke is a man who cannot feel he has a personal identity unless he has thening one's intellect is to hfare for all thoughts, not a select party The genus is not scarce in population: all the stubborn arguers you in on a subject they have not pre-resolved on They want to hammer their nail into you, and if you turn the point, still they think you wrong Dilke will never co at it He is a Godwin Methodist[14]
These lines illustrate the instinctive feeling of Keats that it is essential to the growth of the poetic mind to preserve its natural receptiveness and to welcome all the influences that stream in upon it
They illustrate also his dislike of the fixed theories held and preached by some members of his circle We shall have to consider later the ht,' 'knowledge,'
'philosophy' It is iet the frequent expressions of his feeling that what he lacks and e' and 'philosophy' Here I will only observe that his poleh coloured by his tee extent with Wordsworth's dislike of 'a reasoning self-sufficing thing,' his depreciation of e, and his praise of a wise passiveness And, further, what he objects to here is not the pursuit of truth, it is the 'Methodis to the arguhout it a ready-hts and speculations freely enough to Bailey and to his brother-- to probe with him any serious idea--but not to Dilke It is clear that he neither liked nor rated high the confident assertions and negations of Shelley and his other Godwinian friends and acquaintances Probably froe in talking with the of no interest to a poet He thought about them, convinced himself that they were funda theiana Keats, is the nearest approach to be found in his writings to a theory of the world, a theology as he jestingly calls it; and although it is long, I , he says, Robertson's _History of America_ and Voltaire's _Siecle de Louis XIV_, and he observes that, though the two civilisations described are so different, the case of the great body of the people is equally laoes on thus:
The whole appears to resolve into this--that inally a poor forked creature, subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hardshi+ps and disquietude of sorees his bodily accoe, at each ascent, there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances--he is mortal, and there is still a heaven with its stars above his head Thequestion that can co endeavours of a seldoine such happiness carried to an extreme, but what must it end in? Death--and who could in such a case bear with death? The whole troubles of life, which are now frittered away in a series of years, would then be accu its approach, would leave this world as Eve left Paradise But in truth I do not at all believe in this sort of perfectibility The nature of the world will not admit of it--the inhabitants of the world will correspond to itself Let the fish philosophise the ice away from the rivers in winter tiht of summer Look at the Poles, and at the sands of Africa--whirlpools and volcanoes Let men exterminate them, and I will say that they may arrive at earthly happiness The point at which man may arrive is as far as the parallel state in inanimate nature, and no further For instance, suppose a rose to have sensation; it bloo; it enjoys itself; but then comes a cold wind, a hot sun It cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its annoyances--they are as native to the world as itself No more can man be happy in spite [?], the worldly elenouided and superstitious is 'a vale of tears,' from which we are to be redeemed by a certain arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven What a little circumscribed straitened notion! Call the world if you please 'The vale of Soul-' Then you will find out the use of the world (I ahest ter it to be iranted for the purpose of showing a thought which has struck uished froences or sparks of the divinity in millions, but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself Intelligences are atoms of perception--they know and they see and they are pure; in short they are God How then are souls to be made? How then are these sparks which are God to have identity given them--so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each one's individual existence? How but by the medium of a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to consider, because I think it a grander systeion--or rather it is a systerandthe one upon the other for a series of years These three ence_, the _huence or mind), and the World or elemental space suited for the proper action of _Mind_ and _Heart_ on each other for the purpose of forence destined to possess the sense of Identity_ I can scarcely express what I but die the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form possible I will call the _world_ a School instituted for the purpose of teaching little children to read I will call the _human heart_ the horn-book read in that School And I will call the _Child able to read_, the _Soul_ made from that School and its horn-book Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an Intelligence and make it a Soul? A place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways Not merely is the Heart a horn-book, it is the Mind's Bible, it is the mind's experience, it is the text froence sucks its identity As various as the lives of men are, so various becos, Souls, identical Souls, of the sparks of his own essence This appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation which does not offend our reason and humanity[16]
Surely, when Keats's education is considered, this, with all its crudity, is not a little re written at the sae by another poet of the tie of huht
About a fortnight after Keats wrote that description of A, B, and C, he received what he recognised at once for his death-warrant He had yet fourteen months to endure, but at this point the develop years it had been very rapid, and is easy to trace; and it is all thebecause, in spite of its continuity, we are aware of a decided difference between the Keats of the earlier letters and the Keats of the later The tour in Scotland in the summer of 1818 -line The earlier Keats is the youth who had written the _Sonnet on first_ _looking into Chap _Endyrave, sometimes despondent; but he is full of the enthusiasm of beauty, and of the joy and fear, the hope and the awe, that accompanied the sense of poetic power He is the poet who looked, we are told, as though he had been gazing on soht; whose eyes shone and whose face worked with pleasure as he walked in the fields about Ha of the wind through the trees and overeagle and so for some cry fro of beauty is a joy for ever'; who found 'the Religion of Joy' in the monuments of the Greek spirit, in sculpture and vases, and y; who never ceased, he said, to wonder at all that incarnate delight, and would point out to Severn how essentially modern, how imperishable, the Greek spirit is--a joy for ever
Yet, as we have seen already, he are, and we find hi more and more aware, that joy is not the only word He had not read for nothing Wordsworth's great Ode, and _Tintern Abbey_, and the _Excursion_ We know it from _Endymion_, and the letter about the 'burden of the mystery' ritten before the tour in Scotland But after this we feel a e, doubtless hastened by outward events The Blackwood and Quarterly reviews of _Endymion_ appeared--reviews not less inexcusable because we understand their origin Then came his brother's death A feeeks later he met Miss Brawne Henceforth his youth has vanished There are traces of e, painful traces; but they are connected, I think, solely with his passion His brother's death deepened his sy as health reood He rated theave hirowing keen, of the weaknesses and h them he saw a false but useful picture of himself, as a silly boy, dandled into self-worshi+p by foolish friends, and posturing as a enius, but he felt that hePoetry, he felt, is not mere luxury and rapture, it is a deed We trace at tiainst his old self harshly Some of his friends, he says, think he has lost his old poetic ardour, and perhaps they are right He speaks slightingly of wonders, even of scenery: the hu finer,--not its dreaaze is as intent as ever,--lory he would see walks in a fiery furnace, and to see it heat randoht in the norance
In one year he writes six or seven of the best poee, but he is little satisfied 'Thus far,' he says, 'I have a consciousness of having been pretty dull and heavy, both in subject and phrase' Two months later he ends a note to Haydon with the words, 'I am afraid I shall pop off just when my mind is able to run alone' And so it was
It is i his ideas about poetry; but we have first to look at the occur in detached remarks or aphorisms, and these I must pass by The others I intended at first to deal with in connection with Shelley's view of poetry; and, although that plan proved to be too large for a single lecture, I do not wish altogether to abandon it, because in the extracts which I have been reading the difference between the minds of the two poets has already appeared, and because it re-appears both in their poetic practice and in their opinions about their art Indeed, with so ht unlikely that these opinions would show also a marked resereat poets then alive the one least affected by the spirit of the time, or by that 'revolutionary' atmosphere of which I spoke in a previous lecture He did not concern hiress of hus in Naples He cared nothing for theories, abstractions, or ideals He worshi+pped Beauty, not Liberty; and the beauty he worshi+pped was not 'intellectual,' but visible, audible, tangible 'O for a life of sensations,' he cried, 'rather than of thoughts' He was an artist, intent upon fashi+oning his material until the outward sensible forhtful
In all this he was at the opposite pole to Shelley; and he himself felt it He refused to visit Shelley, in order that he ht keep his own unfettered scope; and he never speaks of Shelley cordially He told hiht be more of an artist and load every rift of his subject with ore; and that, while ard the purpose of a work as the God, and the poetry as the Mammon, an artist must serve Mammon And his practice, like his opinions, proves that, both in his strength and his lis to quite a different type
In such a plea there would certainly be nores other truths which reat differences between the two poets, but then in Keats hi with the differences, too, we find very close affinities And these affinities with Shelley also show that Keats was deeply influenced by the spirit of his time
Let me illustrate these statements
The poet who cried, 'O for a life of sensations,' was consoled, as his life withered away, by the remembrance that he 'had loved the principle of beauty in all things' And this is not a chance expression; it repeats, for instance, a phrase used two years before, 'the s' If Shelley had used this language, it would be taken to prove his love of abstractions How does it differ froe of the _Hyain, we noticed in a previous lecture the likeness between _Alastor_ and _Endyth in which the writer's genius decisively declared itself Both tell the story of a young poet; of a dream in which his ideal appears in human form, and he knows the rapture of union with it; of the passion thus enkindled, and the search for its complete satisfaction We may prefer to read _Endymion_ simply as we read _Isabella_; but the question here is not of our preferences
If we exaard to them, we shall be unable to doubt that to soorises this pursuit of the principle of beauty by the poetic soul This is one of the causes of its failure as a narrative Keats had not in hin, and hence in theination And the poeree the defect felt here and there in _Prometheus Unbound_ If ish to read it as the author ures, events, and actions Yet it is clear that not all of thenificance, and we are perplexed by the question where, and how far, we are to look for it[18]
Take, again, some of the most famous of the lyrical poems Is it true that Keats was untroubled by that sense of contrast between ideal and real which haunted Shelley and was so characteristic of the tiht more plausibly object to his monotonous insistence on that contrast Probably the best-known lyrics of the two poets are the stanzas _To a Skylark_ and the _Ode to a Nightingale_ Well, if we summarise prosaically the subject of the one poem we have summarised that of the other 'Our huing and satiety, a looking before and after We are aware of a perfection that we cannot attain, and that leaves us dissatisfied by everything attainable And we die, and do not understand death But the bird is beyond this division and dissonance; it attains the ideal;