by the Court of Chancery, and with that intent a friendly suit was brought in the names of his daughter and her second husband (Frances Jennings, m. 1st Thomas Keats, and 2nd William Rawlings) against her mother and brother, who were the executors. The proceedings in this suit are referred to under the above title. They are complicated and voluminous, extending over a period of twenty years, and my best thanks are due to Mr Ralph Thomas, of 27 Chancery Lane, for his friendly pains in searching through and making abstracts of them. For help and information, besides what has been above acknowledged, I am indebted first and foremost to my friend and colleague, Mr Richard Garnett; and next to the poet's surviving sister, Mrs Llanos; to Sir Charles Dilke, who lent me the chief part of his valuable collection of Keats's books and papers (already well turned to account by Mr Forman); to Dr B. W. Richardson, and the Rev. R. H. Hadden. Other incidental obligations will be found acknowledged in the footnotes. Among essays on and reviews of Keats's work I need only refer in particular to that by the late Mrs F. M. Owen (Keats: a Study, London, 1876). In its main outlines, though not in details, I accept and have followed this lady's interpretation of Endymion. For the rest, every critic of modern English poetry is of necessity a critic of Keats. The earliest, Leigh Hunt, was one of the best; and to name only a few among the living-where Mr Matthew Arnold, Mr Swinburne, Mr Lowell, Mr Palgrave, Mr W. M. Rossetti, Mr W. B. Scott, Mr Roden Noel, Mr Theodore Watts, have gone before, for one who follows to be both original and just is not easy. In the following pages I have not attempted to avoid saying over again much that in substance has been said already, and doubtless better, by others: by Mr Matthew Arnold and Mr Palgrave especially. I doubt not but they will forgive me : and at the same time I hope to have contributed something of my own towards a fuller understanding both of Keats's art and life. Birth and Parentage-School Life at Enfield-Life as Sur- Particulars of Early Life in London-Friendships and First Poems-Henry Stephens-Felton Mathew-Cowden Clarke-Leigh Hunt: his Literary and Personal Influence —John Hamilton Reynolds-James Rice-Cornelius Webb -Shelley-Haydon-Joseph Severn-Charles Welis- Northern Tour-The Blackwood and Quarterly reviews- Death of Tom Keats-Removal to Wentworth Place- Fanny Brawne-Excursion to Chichester-Absorption in Love and Poetry-Haydon and money difficulties-Family Correspondence-Darkening Prospects-Summer at Shank- Return to Wentworth Place-Autumn Occupations-The Cap and Bells-Recast of Hyperion-Growing Despondency -Visit of George Keats to England-Attack of Illness in February-Rally in the Spring-Summer in Kentish Town -Publication of the Lamia Volume-Relapse-Ordered KEATS. CHAPTER I. Birth and Parentage-School Life at Enfield-Life as Surgeon's Apprentice at Edmonton-Awakening to Poetry-Life as Hospital Student in London. [1795-1817.] SCIENCE may one day ascertain the laws of distribution and descent which govern the births of genius; but in the meantime a birth like that of Keats presents to the ordinary mind a striking instance of nature's inscrutability. If we consider the other chief poets of the time, we can commonly recognize either some strain of power in their blood, or some strong inspiring influence in the scenery and traditions of their home. Thus we see Scott prepared alike by his origin, associations, and circumstances to be the minstrel of his clan' and poet of the romance of the border wilds; while the spirit of the Cumbrian hills, and the temper of the generations bred among them, speak naturally through the lips of Wordsworth. Byron seems inspired in literature by demons of the same froward brood that had urged others of his lineage through lives of adventure or of crime. But Keats, with instincts and faculties more purely poetical than any of these, was paradoxically born in a dull and middling walk of English city life; and 'if by traduction came his mind,'-to quote Dryden with a C. K. B |