Keats

During the fall of 1818 Keats began perion,' and wrote long letters to George and his wife in America. He also made the acquaintance of a handsome girl of 17, Miss Fanny Brawne, and speedily falling in love, be came engaged to her. Rarely at his best in his relations with women, owing partly perhaps to his antecedents, partly to his sensuousness, partly to the struggles of his spirit to escape from its actual environment to the ideal world of beauty and romance, Keats gave himself up to this passion with an abandonment that might be described as disgusting, did not one make allowances for his slowly failing health.

After the death of Tom Keats, 1 Dec. 1818, the poet resided for a time with Armitage Brown at Wentworth Place. Here he not onl. worked at but wrote many of the poems that mark the zenith of his genius, such as It was an extraordinary six months' work (December 1818-May 1819) for an ailing poet in his 24th year. And he was not merely sick in body but poor in purse, most of his patrimony having been tangled up by his guardian, or spent, or loaned to impecunious friends. Other friends, like Brown, stood by him, however, though this fact can scarcely have made the marriage he dreamed of seem much more pos sible. He took summer excursions, wrote on a tragedy, rightly judging that it was too Miltonic, yet he did not cease to form literary plans and to face the present and the future bravely. But on his return to London, he came once more under the influence of Miss Brawne, and he lost ground in health, courage and literary power. His work in the drama and in satire proved on the whole unavailing; he recast for the worse Fall of Hyperion'); and he lost his cheerfulness, becoming moody, sus picious and somewhat dissipated.

Early in February 1820 he had his first haemorrhage from the lungs and was confined for several weeks, Brown being his indefatigable nurse. With Fanny Brawne, who was living next door, he kept up a correspondence which many of his admirers could spare. When he was stronger, Brown having left for Scotland, Keats occupied himself by seeing through the press his third volume —one of the most mem orable in the history of our literature, for it can scarcely be disputed that in color and form latter-day English poetry owes more to Keats than to any other writer among the moderns.

It was entitled

During his new illness, Keats was kindly nursed by the Hunts; then ungrounded suspi dons of their friendship caused him to leave them, and he was welcomed by Mrs. Brawne and her daughter. Becoming more tranquil, he determined to see what the climate of Italy could do for him, and with Severn he sailed for Naples in September. On the voyage he wrote his last poem, the fine sonnet 'Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.' After reaching Rome about the middle of December, he suffered many violent attacks of fever and pain; then he lingered in a calmer state of mind and body until death' took him from the arms of the faithful Severn, in the early morn ing of 23 Feb. 1821. He was buried three days later in the old Protestant cemetery at Rome, and on his tomb was placed at his desire the non-prophetic epitaph. ((Here lies one whose name was writ in water.* In 1881 Severn was. laid by his side; long before (December 1822) the ashes of the author of (Adonai0 had been buried nearby.

In person Keats was small, but evidently in his early years strong and well made. His features were clear cut and his eyes large, dark and full of meditative depth. In character he seems to have been essentially open, kindly and manly. That his social status and his exception ally sensuous nature were without deleterious effects upon his life, as well as upon his poetry, it would be idle to assert; yet it would be equally beside the mark to think of him chiefly as a hyperasthetic anomaly among the men of his day. He was far more than a lower middle dass Briton of the Regency; but he was also more than the neo-Greek, or the neo-Eliza bethan, or the idolatrous priest of beauty that some have fancied him. He was a wonderfully endowed poet of strong human interests, keen intelligence, ever deepening moral sense, extraor dinary sensitiveness . to physical impressions not only upon eye and ear, but upon taste and touch — growing appreciation of artistic form, and steadily developing power of self-control. He filled all the roles his admirers have claimed for him ; but he filled them, or was learning to fill them, in combination—a fact which makes him greater than even some warm admirers have fancied.