since Shakspeare; the true Marcellus, as his first biographer has called him, of the realm of English song; and that in his premature death our literature has sustained its greatest loss. Something like this, it would seem, is also the opinion of his foremost now living successors-as Lord Tennyson, Mr. Browning, Mr. Matthew Arnold. Others have formed a different judgment, but among those unfortunate guests at the banquet of life—the poets called away before their time-who can really adjudge the honours that would have been due had they remained? In a final estimate of any writer's work we must take into account not what he might have done, but only what he did. And in the work actually left by Keats, the master-chord of humanity, we shall admit, had not yet been struck with fulness. When we sum up in our minds the total effect of his poetry we can think, indeed, of the pathos of Isabella, but of that alone, as equally powerful in its kind with the nature-magic of the Hymn to Pan and the Ode to a Nightingale, with the glow of romance colour in St. Agnes's Eve, the weirdness of romance sentiment in La Belle Dame sans Merci, the conflict of elemental force with fate in Hyperion, the revelations of the soul of ancient life and art in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, and the fragment of an Ole to Maia. It remains to glance at the influence exercised by Keats on the poets who have come after him. In two ways, chiefly, I should say, has that influence been operative. First, on the subject-matter of poetry: in kindling and informing in other souls the poetic love of nature for her own sake, and also, in equal degrees, the love both of classic fable and of romance. And secondly, on its form: in setting before poets a certain standard of execution—a standard not of technical correctness, for which Keats nev er cared sufficiently, but of that quality to which he himself refers when he speaks of "loading every rift of a subject with ore." We may define it as the endeavour after a continual positive poetic richness and felicity of phrase. A typical instance is to be found in the lines already quoted that tell us of the trembling hopes of Madeline "But to her heart her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side." The beauty of such a phrase is no mere beauty of fancy or of sound; it is the beauty which resides in truth only, every word being chosen and every touch laid by a vital exercise of the imagination. The first line describes in perfection the duality of consciousness in such a moment of suspense, the second makes us realise at once the physical effect of the emotion on the heroine, and the spell of her imagined presence on ourselves. In so far as Keats has taught other poets really to write like this, his influence has been wholly to their advantage-but not so when for this quality they give us only its simulacrum, in the shape of brilliancies merely verbal and a glitter not of gold. The first considerable writer among Keats's successors on whom his example took effect was Hood, in the fairy and romance poems of his earlier time. The dominant poet of the Victorian age, Tennyson, has been profoundly influenced by it both in the form and the matter of his art, and is indeed the heir of Keats and of Wordsworth in almost equal degrees. After or together with Coleridge, Keats has also contributed most, among English writers, to the poetic method and ideals of Rossetti and his group. Himself, as we have seen, alike by gifts and training a true child of the Elizabethans, he thus stands in the most direct line of descent between the great poets of that age and those, whom posterity has yet to estimate, of our own day. ture. Such, I think, is Keats's historic place in English literaWhat his place was in the hearts of those who best knew him, we have just learned from their own lips. The days of the years of his life were few and evil, but above his grave the double aureole of poetry and friendship shines immortally. APPENDIX. Page 2, note 1.-As to the exact date of Keats's birth the evidence is conflicting. He was christened at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, Dec. 18, 1795, and on the margin of the entry in the baptismal register (which I am informed is in the handwriting of the rector, Dr. Conybeare) is a note stating that he was born Oct. 31st. The date is given accordingly without question by Mr. Buxton Forman (Works, vol. i., p. xlviii). But it seems certain that Keats himself and his family believed his birthday to have been Oct. 29th. Writing on that day in 1818, Keats says, "this is my birthday." Brown (in Houghton MSS.) gives the same day, but only as on hearsay from a lady to whom Keats had mentioned it, and with a mistake as to the year. Lastly, in the proceedings in Rawlings v. Jennings, Oct. 29th is again given as his birthday, in the affidavit of one Anne Birch, who swears that she knew his father and mother intimately. The entry in the St. Botolph's register is probably the authority to be preferred.-Lower Moorfields was the space now occupied by Finsbury Circus and the London Institution, together with the east side of Finsbury Pavement. The births of the younger brothers are in my text given rightly for the first time, from the parish registers of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, where they were all three christened in a batch on Sept. 24, 1801. The family were at that date living in Craven Street. P. 2, note 2.-Brown (Houghton MSS.) says simply that Thomas Keats was a "native of Devon." His daughter, Mrs. Llanos, tells me she remembers hearing as a child that he came from the Land's End. Persons of the name are still living in Plymouth. P. 5, note 2.-The total amount of the funds paid into Court by the executors under Mr. Jennings's will (see Preface, p. vii.) was £13,160 19s. 5d. P. 10, note 1, and p. 70, note 1.—Of the total last mentioned, there came to the widow first and last (partly by reversion from other legatees who predeceased her) sums amounting to £9343 2s. In the Chancery proceedings the precise terms of the deed executed by Mrs. Jennings for the benefit of her grandchildren are not quoted, but only its general purport; whence it appears that the sum she made over to Messrs. Sandell and Abbey in trust for them amounted approximately to £8000, and included all the reversions fallen or still to fall in as above mentioned. The balance, it is to be presumed, she retained for her own support (she being then seventy-four). P. 16, note 1.-The following letter written by Mr. Abbey to Mr. Taylor the publisher, under date April 18, 1821, soon after the news of Keats's death reached England, speaks for itself. from Woodhouse MSS. B. The letter is "Sir, I beg pardon for not replying to your favor of the 30th ult. respecting the late Mr. Jno. Keats. "I am obliged by your note, but he having withdrawn himself from my controul, and acted contrary to my advice, I cannot interfere with his affairs. "I am, Sir, "Yr. mo. Hble St., "RICHD. ABBEY." P. 33, note 1.-The difficulty of determining the exact date and place of Keats's first introduction to Hunt arises as follows: Cowden Clarke states plainly and circumstantially that it took place in Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hampstead. Hunt in his Autobiography says it was "in the spring of the year 1816" that he went to live at Hampstead in the cottage in question. Putting these two statements together, we get the result stated as probable in the text. But on the other hand there is the strongly Huntian character of Keats's Epistle to G. F. Mathew, dated November, 1815, which would seem to indicate an earlier acquaintance (see p. 30). Unluckily Leigh Hunt himself has darkened counsel on the point by a paragraph inserted in the last edition of his Autobiography, as follows (Pref. no. 7, p. 257): "It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was at York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the Indicator, and he resided with me while in Mortimer Street, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I am one." The student must not be misled by this remark of Hunt's, which is evidently only due to a slip of memory. It is quite true that Keats lived with Hunt in Mortimer Street, Kentish Town, during part of July and August, 1820 (see page 195), and that before moving to that address Hunt had lived for more than a year (from the autumn of 1818 to the spring of 1820) at 8 New Road. But that Keats was intimate with him two years and a half earlier, when he was in fact living not in London at all but at the Vale of Health, is abundantly certain. P. 37, note 1.-Cowden Clarke tells how Keats, once calling and finding him fallen asleep over Chaucer, wrote on the blank space at the end of the Floure and the Leafe the sonnet beginning "This pleasant tale is like a little copse." Reynolds on reading it addressed to Keats the following sonnet of his own, which is unpublished (Houghton MSS.), and has a certain biographical interest. It is dated Feb. 27, 1817: "Thy thoughts, dear Keats, are like fresh-gathered leaves, The glow of meadows, mornings, and spring eves |