Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/287

 Haydon and Leigh Hunt. Through Messrs. Taylor & Hessey he was on friendly terms with the painters Hilton and De Wint, and especially intimate with Richard Woodhouse, a young barrister of literary tastes, who seems to have acted as Taylor & Hessey's reader. In the last half of January and February he wrote a number of minor pieces, including the sonnet beginning 'O golden-tongue Romance with serene lute,' 'Time's sea has been five years at its slow ebb,' that on the Nile, written (4 Feb.) in competition with Leigh Hunt and Shelley, and the lines 'On seeing a lock of Milton's Hair,' 'To Apollo,' and 'To Robin Hood.' About the same time he agreed with Reynolds that they should each write some metrical tales from Boccaccio, and publish them in a joint volume, and himself made a beginning with 'Isabella or the Pot of Basil.'  George Keats having now come to London, bent on a scheme of marriage and emigration, John determined to go and take his place in nursing their brother Tom at Teignmouth. He started in the second week of March, and stayed till near the middle of May. His chief occupations were in writing 'Isabella,' a poem which marks a great advance in maturity and self-discipline on any of his previous work; seeing the last sheets of 'Endymion' through the press, and writing for it, first a laboured preface which was cancelled at Reynolds's advice, and afterwards the admirable short one with which it finally appeared; studying the style and metre of 'Paradise Lost,' with a view to a new classical poem he had already in his mind on the subject of 'Hyperion;' and writing charming letters to his friends, including the metrical epistle to Reynolds suggested by Claude's picture of the 'Enchanted Castle.'

About the middle of May Keats brought his brother Tom back to Well Walk, Hampstead, and stayed there for five weeks. In this interval the poem of 'Endymion' appeared, and beyond a few friendly notices from sympathetic hands, including one by Bailey in the 'Oxford Review' (10 June), attracted little attention at first. The poem shows no advance on the work of the earlier volume in point of restraint and knowledge of what to avoid. Intricate profusion of invention, a cloying exuberance of detail, and the overlaying of the fable with a fantastic luxuriance of episodes, make of 'Endymion,' what Leigh Hunt justly called it, 'a wilderness of sweets;' and the diction and versification are fuller of strained archaisms and fanciful liberties even than those of the 'Poems' of the year before. But the faults are such as arise not from defect, but from superabundance and youthful ferment, of poetical ideas and emotions; and the vital beauty of many passages and felicity of many phrases, together with the singular modesty and justice of the writer's own estimate of his work as expressed in his preface, ought to have convinced any candid reader of his gifts and promise.

Soon after the publication of 'Endymion' Keats lost for good the society of his brother George, who had determined to emigrate to America, hoping there to push the family fortunes, and taking out the chief part of the capital remaining to him under his grandmother's will. He married Miss Wylie in June, and the young couple immediately afterwards (22 June) started for Liverpool. John Keats and Brown, who had determined to go for a summer walking tour in the English lakes and Scotland, accompanied them as far as Lancaster on their way. Thence the poet and his friend started on foot, walking by Windermere to Ambleside, thence by way of Helvellyn to Derwentwater, and from Keswick by Treby and Wigton to Carlisle. Keats's unrivalled gift of intuition for the poetry of nature had hitherto been nourished, at first only on the scenery of Middlesex and Margate, and latterly on that of the Isle of Wight and Devonshire. The first sight of mountains had a great effect on him. 'Scenery is fine,' he says, however, 'but human nature is finer,' and his letters on his tour show quite as keen an eye for humanity as for landscape. The earlier part of the tour was a source of unmixed enjoyment both to him and his companion. From Carlisle they took coach to Dumfries, where Keats wrote a bad sonnet in the house of Burns, and from Dumfries walked by the Galloway coast to Portpatrick, whence they took packet to Donaghadee, but, abandoning the idea of a trip to the Giant's Causeway, came quickly back to Scotland, and walked by the Ayrshire coast and Burns's country to Glasgow: thence by Loch Lomond, Inverary, and Loch Awe to the coast again at Loch Craignish, and so to Oban, whence they made a fatiguing tramp across the island of Mull, and took boat to Staffa and Iona. Having gone from Oban to Fort William and made the ascent of Ben Nevis, they pushed on to Inverness, which they reached 6 Aug. On the course of this tour Keats kept up an active correspondence with his brother Tom, Bailey, Reynolds, and other friends, sending them the verses which he composed by the way. Some of these are mere playful doggerel, others show signs of effort and fatigue; two only, the lines on 'Meg Merrilies' and on 'Fingal's Cave,' are touched with real felicity and vigour.