Part 15 (1/2)

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 perfectionreality, and so capable of being contrasted with it He was allied here especially to Wordsworth and to Shelley, by the forreatly influenced But there was also in hi at the expense of the first, and would in time have dominated it It was perhaps the deeper and more individual It ainst any inclination to erect walls between ideal and real, or to rade into oppositions of kind Keats had the i he saw or heard of, to be curious about a thing, accept it, identify hi 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 ravel';[31] and in the words, 'When she comes into a room she makes an impression the sa that she is fine, though Bishop Hooker is finer It too is the source of his complaint that he has no personal identity, 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, o as an Ihts the chameleon poet It does no hars, any ht one, because they both end in speculation[32] A poet is thein existence, because he has no identity He is continually in, for, and filling some other body'[33] That is not a description of Milton or Wordsworth or Shelley; neither does it apply very fully to Keats; but it describes so 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 unes The ate, 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 idealisination which was common to those poets, and which Shakespeare united with his universal comprehension; nor was he, like Shakespeare and like soe But Keats had that ic in fuller measure, perhaps, than any of our poets since Milton; and, sharing the idealism of Wordsworth and Shelley, he possessed also wider syination than the latter, at least a greater freedoht not this co as Wordsworth's or even as Byron's? It would be hly endowed of all our poets in the nineteenth century, but hepoems

1905

NOTE

I have pointed out certain marked resemblances between _Alastor_ and _Endymion_, and it would be easy to extend the list These reseely 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 poe 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 Shelley's oay, is the subject of _Alastor_, which also contains phrases reminiscent of Wordsworth's poeiac 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 kno hts due to the reading of Wordsworth, and how great, though qualified, was his adhts concerned chiefly the poetic nature, its tendency to 'dreao beyond itself and feel for the sorrows of others They ested _only_ by Wordsworth; but we must remember that _Alastor_ had been published, and that Keats would naturally read it In coed 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 coe, keeps aloof fro 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 tience like himself His ideal require who appears to him in a dream, and to whom he is united in passionate 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 co 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 Goddess 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 i in a world which seeate the woes of others instead of seeking the ideal for hi himself up to love for what seems to be a mere woman, but is found to be the Goddess 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 _Endy from his dream, of the disenchanter' pursuit of the lost vision

Everything is, in one sense, different, for the two poets differ greatly, and Keats, of course, riting without any conscious recollection of the passage in _Alastor_; but the conception is the sainning 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 fro that was beautiful to him was associated with his love of the e continues thus:

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

But, gentle Orb! there cae 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 drea 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 Endyer 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 htless 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 ood?'

If the reader coe 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'sthe self-centred seclusion of his poet from that of common selfish souls:

'The picture is not barren of instruction to actual ed by the furies of an irresistible passion pursuing him to speedy ruin But that Pohich 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 dolorious as their delinquency is enerous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishi+ng no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof fro neither in hurief; 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 A those who attempt to exist without huh the intensity and passion 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 ether 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 e to refer to Let the reader turn to the quotation on p 236 from Keats's reply to Shelley's letter of invitation to his home in Italy; and let him ask himself why Keats puts the word ”self-concentration” in inverted co in Shelley's letter, and he is not in the habit in the letters of using inverted commas except tofrom memory to the Preface to _Alastor_ and the phrase 'self-centred seclusion' He has coht_ for a poet like himself, and that the direct pursuit of philanthropy in poetry (which he supposes Shelley to advocate) is wrong But this is another proof how much he had been influenced by Shelley'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 Shelley, in order that he ht 'have his own unfettered scope'[36]

If it seeatory 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 Shelley had read the _Ode to a Nightingale_ before he wrote the stanzas _To a Skylark_