¹ Lord Houghton: Life and Letters of John Keats, pp. 214, 215.

² Such as was fostered by Courthope and Mrs. Suddard. Mrs. Suddard summarizes her views in a sentence: “All the ordinary interests of humanity were to him unknown” (Studies and Essays in English Literature, 1912). Professor Courthope expressed the idea in different words: “The poetry of Keats exhibits the progressive efforts of a man of powerful genius to create for his imagination an ideal atmosphere, unaffected by the social influences of his age.” Further, “To the future of humanity which occupied so large a part of Shelley's thoughts he was profoundly indifferent.” And even more to the point: “but on the other hand, to the actual strife of men, to the clash and conflict of opinion, to the moral meanings of the changes in social and political life, he was blind or indifferent” (The Liberal Movement in English Poetry, 1883, pp. 181, 193). This is substantially the view held by such critics as Carlyle, Dawson, and Jusserand. A quite contemporary statement sums up the attitude: “Turn now to Keats and you are returned upon mere poetry, in the Latin sense of mere, Keats has no politics, no philosophy of statecraft: he is a young apostle of poetry for poetry's sake.” “Q”: Charles Dickens and Other Victorians. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1925).

³ This evidence has not heretofore been gathered together. Professor Garrod, who touches upon the subject of Keats's liberalism in a most illuminating way, has gone furthest in this direction (Keats, 1928). But he does this only in passing, without attempting a presentation of complete data or anything like a detailed interpretation. Sidney Colvin, Amy Lowell, and Takeshi Saito (Keats' View of Poetry, 1929), are others who have recognized the tendency and have added valuable comment, but again with no idea of a systematic treatment.

⁴ See John Keats, i, 190, 232, 249.

⁵ “He was haughty, and had a fierce hatred of rank.” B. R. Haydon. Autobiography and Journals. Edited by Tom Taylor.

⁶ See the letter quoted later in this paper (p. 1241) in which he champions the cause of the wronged Bailey. See also chapter v of The Mind of John Keats (Oxford) for evidence on Keats's sensitivity to human ills.

⁷ Memoranda. Quoted by Colvin, p. 145.

⁸ Charles Cowden Clarke: Recollections of Writers, p. 124.

⁹ Lord Houghton: Life and Letters of John Keats, p. 50.

¹⁰ “Vicissitudes of Keats's Fame,” The Atlantic, xi, 405.

¹¹ H. Buxton Forman: The Complete Works of John Keats. 5 vols. Glasgow: Gowans and Gray, 1900–1901. Vol. iv, Letter xi, p. 20. Subsequent references to this work in this article will be simply “Forman.”

¹² “You see, Bailey, how independent my writing has been ... I have written independently without Judgment, I may write independently and with Judgment hereafter.” Forman. iv, 170.

¹⁵ Clarke tells us how Keats read his Burnett at meal-time resting the folio volume on the table and eating his supper “from beyond it.”

¹⁶ The general robustness of Keats's mental make-up is demonstrated in his youthful responses to the masculine in literature, to the martial strains in Homer and to the scenes of adventure in Spenser. The beauty and harmony and felicity of expression in these poets captivated him, but it is plain that such qualities had to share honors with the vigorous and virile. The “big scenes” in Homer especially delighted him: such as “Senator Antenor's vivid portrait of an orator in Ulysses,” “the shield and helmet of Diomed,” “The prodigious descriptions of Neptune's passage to the Argive ships in the thirteenth book.” (Clarke, pp. 129–130) Achilles was a never-failing joy to him. In his letters he mentions himself as imaginatively entering into the scenes of his battles (Forman, iv. 187); and Bailey records his enthusiastic admiration of “Achilles, especially when he is described as ‘shouting in the trenches’.” (Colvin. p. 147). Witness his choice of passages in Spenser. “He hoisted himself up,” says Cowden Clarke, “and looked burly and defiant, as he said, ‘What an image that is, sea-shouldering whales!‘” And note the imaginative entrance into the spirit of exploration and discovery in his Sonnet on First Looking Into Chapman's Homer. All this was the natural response of a healthy-minded youngster to thrilling stories of life and action.

¹⁷ Though, as de Selincourt points out, the poem may have followed Waterloo as well as the banishment to Elba (1904 Edition. Notes, p. 562).

¹⁸ October, 1818. Forman. iv. 182. “Like that of Wordsworth and Coleridge,” writes Garrod (Keats. p. 25), “the republicanism of Keats is strongly tinged with what we call pacifism; a pacifism so sensitive indeed, that he cannot contemplate a patch of poppies in an oatfield, but he must needs exclaim upon them as

So pert and useless that they bring to mind

The scarlet coats that pester humankind.“

(Epistle to George Keats. ll. 127, 128).

¹⁹ See the sonnet To a Young Lady who sent me a Laurel Crown: “This mighty moment I would frown On abject Caesars.” (Dated by de Selincourt, 1815.)

²⁰ Printed by Miss Lowell from the Woodhouse Book, Morgan Collection. i. 66. Miss Lowell prints “while” in the first line. The sense plainly requires “will.”

²¹ This notion of startling princes from their complacency through force was capable of extension to suggestions of revolutionary extremes, as lines from the sonnet On Receiving A Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt written in 1816, show:

Only I see

A trampling down of what the world most prizes,

Turbans and crowns and blank regality.

²² Later, he was to write with sentiment upon seeing a picture of the slayer of Kotzebue, young Sandt, whose “very look must interest every one in his favor.” (Forman v, 108.) Sandt's act is now, I believe, regarded in a rather dubious light, but he was then a hero among all European democrats.

²³ “The faint conceptions I have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs.” (Forman iv, 174.)

²⁴ Sleep and Poetry. l. 157.

²⁵ Ibid. ll. 121, 122. The idea is of course repeated more emphatically in the revised Hyperion, Canto i, 147–150.

²⁶ Keats and Shakespeare, p. 229.

²⁷ Sleep and Poetry. ll. 246, 247.

²⁸ Forman, iv, 174.

²⁹ September 22, 1819. Forman v, 96. The public proceedings of which he speaks are probably in connection with the franchise reform and such of its incidents as the “Peterloo” affair. See below, p. 1237, note 36.

³⁰ April 24, 1818. Forman iv, 103.

³¹ Forman v, 99.

³² Forman iv, 117. In a letter to George relating to the same incident, he adds simply, “I was much disappointed.”

³³ Letter to Tom Keats. Quoted in Amy Lowell's Life of John Keats, ii, 21.

³⁴ Ibid. p. 22.

³⁵ This should probably read, to make the sense Keats intended: “Inasmuch as Loud disturbances have agitated this country many times and nothing serious has come of them.”

³⁶ Keats has in mind the struggle for the franchise reform that was especially lively from 1812 to 1824, marked by such violence as the “Peterloo” affair, where in St. Peter's Field, Manchester, 40,000 persons were gathered and as the result of an attempt to arrest the orator of the day ... seventy-five persons were killed and one hundred injured in a bloody riot. (See Forman v, 108.)

³⁷ Not Leigh Hunt. No doubt the Hunt of Manchester Massacre fame, who marched into London at the head of his followers cheered by thousands of people. The date was November 11, 1819. “Carlisle in the Republican,” says Forman, “speaks of 300,000 people as taking part in the demonstration.” The publisher's figures are probably nearer right than those of Keats.

³⁸ September, 1819. Forman, v, 107, 108.

³⁹ October, 1818. Forman, iv, 181, 182.

⁴⁰ Ibid. p. 182.

⁴¹ Miss Lowell, however, connects the passage with the sonnet On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt. (i, 389) The expression “crowns and turbans” lends some support to this view.

⁴² The Letters of John Keats. Two volumes. Oxford University Press. Letter 26, Vol. i, pp. 63, 64.

⁴³ Keats: Bernard Shaw. John Keats Memorial Volume. 1921. It happens that Mr. Shaw was not the first to point out the sociological implications in Isabella, for William Morris in his lecture Art under Plutocracy delivered at Oxford, November 14, 1883, had quoted from these same stanzas and had commented upon them in relation to the “half ignorant tyranny” of most rich people. And long before that, a reviewer of Keats's 1820 volume in The London Magazine for September, 1820, in an otherwise favorable discussion rather takes the poet to task for introducing these stanzas, “which, we think, dreadfully mar the musical tenderness of its general strain. They are no better than extravagant school-boy vituperation to trade and traders: just as if lovers did not trade,—and that often in stolen goods. ...”

⁴⁴ John Keats Memorial Volume.