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Keats and Hazlitt: A Record of Personal Relationship and Critical Estimate
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Keats had many and intense literary admirations. Some of these were seasonal and passed away with maturity: such were his youthful fondness for Beattie and Mrs. Tighe. Others were permanent and deepened with time: among these were his affection for Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser, and Chaucer and his continued love for Homer and Dante. Keats's attitudes toward important writers of his day were varied. Toward a considerable group of them he appears to have been more or less neutral, at least non-committal; for others early admiration was later wholly or partially reversed, with Hazlitt, among those he first esteemed, virtually the sole exception to a modified estimate. Thus, his early devotion to Leigh Hunt gave way to critical coolness as he began to see through the fellow's weakness; and though he once read Byron with pleasure and praised his poetry in a sonnet, he later learned to despise him for what he regarded as insincerity and perverted taste. He sometimes praised Moore and on occasion imitated his verse, but in a more final judgment he classed him with Southey and Rogers as poets he did not like. His feeling for Wordsworth alternated between almost reverential acceptance and modified rejection. Keats owed much to Wordsworth and was, perhaps, in one way or another influenced by him to the end; but after meeting the poet in London in the winter of 1817-1818, he began to see traits in him not to his taste and was thereafter inclined to speak of him and of some of his work with reservations.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 Letter to Haydon (May 11, 1817), The Letters oj John Keats, edited by Maurice Buxton Forman (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), I, 32. This edition is hereafter referred to as “Forman.”
2 Letter to George and Thomas Keats (February 21, 1818), Forman, i, 115
3 Letter to J. H. Reynolds (March, 1817), Forman, i, 13.
4 May 11, 1817, Forman, i, 32.
5 Ibid., 24.
6 To George and Georgiana Keats (March 13, 1819), Forman, ii, 333.
7 “How is Hazlitt? We were reading his Table last night. I know he thinks himself not estimated by ten people in the world—I wish he knew he is” (Letter to Reynolds [September 21, 1817], Forman, i, 50).
8 The promptness with which he read the book may be inferred from his remark to Haydon in a letter dated May 10, 1817 (Forman, i, 32): “I am very near agreeing with Hazlitt that Shakespeare is enough for us.” P. P. Howe dates the publication of the Characters “April or May” (The Life of William Hazlitt [New York, Richard R. Smith, 1930], p. 228).
9 To Reynolds (April 24, 1818), Forman, ii, 431.
10 To C. A. Brown (September 23, 1819), Forman, ii, 431.
11 June 25, 1818, Forman, i, 170.
12 To Benjamin Bailey (October, 1817), Forman, i, 59.
13 To B. R. Haydon (January, 1818), Forman, i, 90.
14 Januar 10, 1818, Forman, i, 85.
15 January 13, 1818, Forman i, 86.
16 Quoted in P. P. Howe's Life of William Hazlitt, p. 242.
17 February 21, 1818, Forman, i, 115. It also appears likely that he personally voiced his objection to Hazlitt, and effectively too; for at the beginning of his next lecture (the seventh), Hazlitt did what was for him a rare thing—he made a sort of apology and explanation: “I am sorry that what I said in the conclusion of the last Lecture respecting Chatterton, should have given dissatisfaction to some persons, with whom I would willingly agree on all such matters.”
18 Amy Lowell, John Keats (Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1925), i, 201. As for Haydon's remark, repeated by Sidney Colvin (John Keats [New York, Scribner's, 1917], p. 68), and carried from him into her book by Amy Lowell, the known lack of accuracy in Haydon's reports on Keats allows us to discount it heavily.
19 Op. cit., p. 68.
20 Ibid., p. 77.
21 “Haydon used to complain that it was only after Keats's death that he could get Hazlitt to acknowledge his genius” (John Keats, p. 68).
22 Introduction to The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, in twelve volumes, ed. by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (London, 1904-1906), p. xiii.
23 The last recorded instance of any personal relationship between them was Keats's gift to Hazlitt of his 1820 volume (published in July), for which W. Carew Hazlitt is our authority: “Keats sent Hazlitt his Endymion and his Poems, 1820, of which both survive. In the latter there is the inscription: ‘To William Hazlitt, Esq. With the Author's sincere respects’ ” (The Hazlitts, i, 176).
24 Autobiography of R. B. Haydon, edited by Aldous Huxley (New York, 1929), i, p. 282.
25 John Keats, p. 407.
26 Letter to George and Thomas Keats, M. B. Forman, i, 94.
27 May 28, 1818, Forman, i, 160. W. Carew Hazlitt quite mistakenly thought this the date of Keats's first meeting with Hazlitt. (See The Hazlitts, i, p. 176.)
28 Letter to Dilke, September 21, 1818. M. B. Forman, i, 236. It is also true, of course, that there were parties attended by Hazlitt to which he was not invited, as Colvin (op. cit., p. 68) points out: “But he never frequented, presumably for lack of invitation those Wednesday and Thursday evening parties at the Lambs. …”
29 See H. B. Forman, The Complete Works of John Keats (Glasgow: Gowans and Gray, 1901), iv, 163-165.
30 April 10, Forman, i, 138.
31 October, 1818, Forman, i, 260.
32 Ibid., 270. The date is evidently late in December, 1818.
33 In this same journal letter, entry dated January 2, 1819 (Forman, i, 287, 288), Keats quotes from Hazlitt's remarks on Godwin. It is a long quotation, and Keats must have had the manuscript before him; hence the deduction that Hazlitt had lent it to him.
34 It appears, though there is no positive evidence, that P. P. Howe and Colvin are right in setting the first meeting of Keats and Hazlitt as at some time in the summer or autumn of 1816. (See Colvin, op. cit., p. 68, and Howe, op. cit., p. 229.)
35 “He was interested only in the highest achievement; and to be the highest even that must lie behind him” (W. E. Henley, Introduction to Waller and Glover, i, p. xiv).
36 See Colvin's John Keats, p. 41, for this account.
37 “Critical List of Authors,” Select British Poets or New Elegant Extracts from Chaucer to the Present Time (London, 1824), p. xv.
38 Table Talk, The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, edited by P. P. Howe (London and Toronto, 1930-1934), viii, 168 f. This edition is hereafter referred to as Works. Several years later, in an article in The Examiner for March 29, 1829, entitled “The Reverend Edward Irving: An Hypothesis,” he uses part of this line again: “Suppose the Rev. E. Irving to be a mile high …: let him resemble one of earth's firstborn, Titan, or Briareus, or ‘blind Orion hungry for the morn’ ” (Works, xx, 223).
39 Table Talk, Works, viii, 90.
40 Ibid., vi, 189.
41 Ibid., xviii, 368(n).
42 The Hazlitts, an Account of their Origin and Descent, two volumes (Edinburgh, Ballantyne, Hanson, & Co., 1911-1912), i, 175.
43 Ibid., i, 175. (See also, Colvin, op. cit., p. 52.)
44 Ibid., 176.
45 Whether Genius Is Conscious of Its Powers,“ Works, 123.
46 “The Periodical Press,” Works, xvi, 237.
47 “Mr. Gifford,” Works, xi, 118.
49 Ibid., 122-123.
50 “On Living to One's-self,” Table Talk, Works, viii, 98-99.
51 Notes of a Journey through France and Italy, Works, x, 247.
52 Works, xx, 159.
53 Works, xix, 109.
54 “Dramatic Essays,” London Magazine (December, 1820), Works, xviii, 368(n).
55 “Shelley's Posthumous Poems” (July, 1824), Works, xvi, 279.
66 Ibid., 269.
57 Works, 254-255.
58 Works, 211. The date is 1821.