ttle right one has to blame one's surroundings for not being more
suggestive. Indeed, I cannot help feeling that the very vulgarity of
Keats' circle, with its ill-flavoured jokes, its provincial taint, is
even more impressive than the romance in which Shelley lived, because
it marks his genius more impressively. Shelley was at least in contact
with interesting personalities, while Keats' circle was on the whole a
depressing one.

But the point which has been deeply borne in upon me, and which we are
apt, in reflecting on the posthumous glories of men of genius, to
forget, is the reflection how extraordinarily scanty was the
recognition which both Keats and Shelley met with in their lifetime.
Keats was nothing more than an obscure poetaster; he had a few friends
who believed in him, but which of them would have dared to predict the
volume and magnitude of his subsequent fame? Shelley was in even worse
case, for he was regarded by ordinary people as a monster of irreligion
and immorality, the custody of whose children had been denied him by
the most respectable of Lord Chancellors, on account of his detestable
opinions and the infamy of his mode of life. There are, I will venture
to say, a hundred living English writers who have more, far more, of
the comfortable sense of renown, and its tangible rewards, than either
of these great poets enjoyed in their lifetime. Byron himself, who by
the side of Shelley cuts so deplorable a figure, had at least the
consciousness of being an intensely romantic and mysterious figure,
quickening the emotional temperature of the world and making its pulse
beat faster. But Keats and Shelley worked on in discouragement and
obscurity. It is true that they judged their own work justly, and knew
within themselves that there was a fiery quality in what they wrote.
But how many poets have fed themselves in vain on the same hopes, have
thought themselves unduly contemned and slighted! There is hardly a
scribbler of verse who has not the same delusion, and who has not in
chilly and comfortless moments to face the fact that he does not
probably count for very much, after all, in the scheme of things. How
hard it is in the case of Keats and Shelley to feel that they had not
some inkling of all the desirous worship, the generous praise, that has
surrounded their memory after their death! How hard it is to enter into
the bitterness of spirit which fell upon Shelley, not once nor twice,
at the acrid cont