39

INTRODUCTION TO ROBIN HOOD 240

NOTES ON ROBIN HOOD 241

NOTES ON 'TO AUTUMN' 242

NOTES ON ODE ON MELANCHOLY 243

INTRODUCTION TO HYPERION 244

NOTES ON HYPERION 249

LIFE OF KEATS

Of all the great poets of the early nineteenth century--Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats--John Keats was the last born
and the first to die. The length of his life was not one-third that of
Wordsworth, who was born twenty-five years before him and outlived him
by twenty-nine. Yet before his tragic death at twenty-six Keats had
produced a body of poetry of such extraordinary power and promise that
the world has sometimes been tempted, in its regret for what he might
have done had he lived, to lose sight of the superlative merit of what
he actually accomplished.

The three years of his poetic career, during which he published three
small volumes of poetry, show a development at the same time rapid and
steady, and a gradual but complete abandonment of almost every fault and
weakness. It would probably be impossible, in the history of literature,
to find such another instance of the 'growth of a poet's mind'.

The last of these three volumes, which is here reprinted, was published
in 1820, when it 'had good success among the literary people and . . . a
moderate sale'. It contains the flower of his poetic production and is
perhaps, altogether, one of the most marvellous volumes ever issued from
the press.

But in spite of the maturity of Keats's work when he was twenty-five, he
had been in no sense a precocious child. Born in 1795 in the city of
London, the son of a livery-stable keeper, he was brought up amid
surroundings and influences by no means calculated to awaken poetic
genius.

He was the eldest of five--four boys, one of whom died in infancy, and a
girl younger than all; and he and his brothers George and Tom were
educated at a private school at Enfield. Here John was at first
distinguished more for fighting than for study, whilst his bright,
brave, generous nature made him popular with masters and boys.

Soon after he had begun to go to school his father died, and when he was
fifteen the children lost their mother too. Keats was passionately
devoted to his moth