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    Keats, His Work and His Character
    Keats, His Work and His Character
    Keats, His Work and His Character
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    Keats, His Work and His Character

    By Edward Thomas

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    This book contains a biographical and critical study of Keats written by Edward Thomas. It was originally published in 1916 and is here being republished with a new introductory biography on the author. Thomas took great influence from Keats and here the reader can read between the lines and see how Thomas created his own style and purpose within his own poetry.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWhite Press
    Release dateOct 3, 2016
    ISBN9781473359673
    Keats, His Work and His Character
    Author

    Edward Thomas

    Edward Thomas was born near Uxbridge in 1943 and grew up mainly in Hackney, east London in the 1950s. His teaching career took him to cental Africa and the Middle East. Early retirement from the profession enabled him to concentrate on writing. Along with authorship of half a dozen books, he has contributed regular columns to several journals.

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      Book preview

      Keats, His Work and His Character - Edward Thomas

      KEATS AND HIS FRIENDS.

      Wordsworth was a young man at the beginning of the French Revolution, and thought it good to be alive and, above all, to be young. But Keats came into the world twenty-five years later. That glorious time had flared into the Reign of Terror, and the Reign of Terror had died down into the settled government of the Directory. Abroad, England was carrying on war by land and sea, at home suffering from war and its expenses in men and money, from bad harvests and the loss of freedom to speak, to write, and to hold meetings. 1795 was the year of Keats’ birth, of the Prince Regent’s marriage with Caroline of Brunswick, of the mob at the opening of Parliament crying in the King’s ears, No Pitt! No Famine! No war! and smashing his coach windows.

      Keats came into the world on October 29 or 31, 1795, at a livery stable, The Swan and the Hoop, Finsbury Pavement. His father, Thomas Keats, had been head ostler, but now, having married Frances Jennings, his master’s daughter, was managing the business. John was the first-born, a seven-months’ child. The father was a man of common sense and native respectability, small, keen, brown-haired, hazel-eyed, and said to be from Devon or Cornwall: he was killed by a fall from his horse in 1804, leaving three sons and a daughter, his last born. The mother, tall, shapely, vivacious, talented, and pleasure-loving, resembled John in the face and apparently favored him and was passionately loved by him. In 1805 she married a second husband named Rawlings, but unhappily: a separation was arranged; and she settled with her children at Chruch Street, Edmonton, in the house of her widowed mother. Mr. Jennings had left £200 a year to his widow, to his daughter £50 to revert to her children after her death, and £1000 to be divided amongst them when they came of age. When the mother died of consumption in 1810 the orphans were provided for and put under the care of guardians by their grandmother, who died in 1814 at the age of seventy-eight.

      The brothers went to school at Enfield under the Rev. John Clarke. His son, Charles Cowden Clarke, became Keats’ friend, though seven years his senior. By him and other contemporaries the boy was remembered as a favorite at school, handsome, vivacious, high-minded, generous, fearless, of an ungovernable temper and fond of fighting, but very tender, with passions of tears and of outrageous laughter. Some of his fights were with George, his next brother, who records that John’s temper was always the cause, yet praises him for the goodness of his heart and the nobleness of his spirit. Towards the end of his schooldays he began to read, at meals and all other respites from lessons, histories, travels, romances, classical dictionaries, and Leigh Hunt’s liberal Examiner: he set about a translation of the Æneid into English prose.

      At fifteen, after his mother’s death, he was apprenticed by his guardian, Richard Abbey, to an Edmonton surgeon, but continued his translations. Reading Spenser’s Faerie Queene, which Cowden Clarke lent him, a wakened his genius. He romped through the cantos eagerly and luxuriously, tasting to the uttermost that

      "Most melodious sound,

      Of all that mote delight a daitie eare,

      Such as attonce might not on living ground,

      Save in this Paradise, be heard elsewhere."

      The Imitation of Spenser, afterwards printed in his first book, was probably written during this period, at about the end of 1813. He became a constant versifier, raving that women, wine, and snuff shall ever be his beloved Trinity, or praying for a drug to banish women from his mind, particularly one woman; honoring Spenser, Chatterton, Byron, Apollo; honouring also

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