PREFACE.

Ir is now fifteen years ago that I met, at the villa of my distinguished friend Mr. Landor, on the beautiful hill-side of Fiesole, Mr. Charles Brown, a retired Russia-merchant, with whose name I was already familiar as the generous protector and devoted friend of the Poet Keats. Mr. Severn the artist, whom I had known at Rome, had already satisfied much of my curiosity respecting a man, whom the gods had favoured with great genius and early death, but had added to one gift the consciousness of public disregard, and to the other the trial of severe physical suffering. With the works of Keats I had always felt a strong poetical sympathy, accompanied by a ceaseless wonder at their wealth of diction and of imagery, which was increased by the consciousness that all that he had produced was rather a promise

than an accomplishment; he had ever seemed to me to have done more at school in poetry, than almost any other man who had made it the object of a mature life. This adolescent character had given me an especial interest in the moral history of this Marcellus of the empire of English song, and when my imagination measured what he might have become by what he was, it stood astounded at the result.

Therefore the circumstances of his life and writings appeared to me of a high literary interest, and I looked on whatever unpublished productions of his that fell in my way with feelings perhaps not in all cases warranted by their intrinsic merits. Few of these remains had escaped the affectionate care of Mr. Brown, and he told me that he only deferred their publication till his return to England. This took place two or three years afterwards, and the preliminary arrangements for giving them to the world were actually in progress, when the accident of attending a meeting on the subject of the colonisation of New Zealand altered all Mr. Brown's plans, and determined him to transfer his fortunes and the closing years of his life to the antipodes. Before he left this country he confided to my care all his collections

of Keats's writings, accompanied with a biographical notice, and I engaged to use them to the best of my ability for the purpose of vindicating the character and advancing the fame of his honoured friend.

As soon as my intention was made known, I received from the friends and acquaintances of the poet the kindest assistance. His earliest guide and companion in literature, Mr. Cowden Clarke, and his comrades in youthful study, Mr. Holmes and Mr. Felton Mathew, supplied me with all their recollections of his boyhood; Mr. Reynolds, whom Mr. Leigh Hunt, in the "Examiner" of 1816, associated with Shelley and Keats as the three poets of promise whom time was ripening, contributed the rich store of correspondence, which began with Keats's introduction into literary society, and never halted to the last; Mr. Haslam and Mr. Dilke aided me with letters and remembrances, and many persons who casually heard of my project forwarded me information that circumstances had placed in their way. To the enlightened publishers Messrs. Taylor and Hessey, and to Mr. Ollier, I am also indebted for willing cooperation.

Mr. Leigh Hunt had already laid his offering on

the shrine of his beloved brother in the trials and triumphs of genius, and could only encourage me by his interest and sympathy.

I have already mentioned Mr. Severn, without whom I should probably have never thought of undertaking the task, and who now offered me the additional inducement of an excellent portrait of his friend to prefix to the book: he has also in his possession a small full-length of Keats sitting reading, which is considered a striking and characteristic resemblance.

But perhaps the most valuable, as the most confidential communication I received, was from the gentleman who has married the widow of George Keats, and who placed at my disposal, with the consent of the family, the letters George received from his brother after he emigrated to America. I have taken the liberty of omitting some few unimportant passages which referred exclusively to individuals or transitory circumstances, regarding this part of the correspondence as of a more private character than any other that has fallen into my hands.

I am not indeed unprepared for the charge, that I have published in these volumes much that

might well have been omitted, both for its own irrelevancy, and from the decent reverence that should always veil, more or less, the intimate family concerns and the deep internal life of those that are Never has such remonstrance been more ably expressed than in the following passage from Mr. Wordsworth's "Letter to a friend of Robert Burns," and which, on account of the rarity of the pamphlet, I here transcribe:

no more.

Biography, though differing in some essentials from works of fiction, is nevertheless like them an art—an art, the laws of which are determined by the imperfections of our nature and the constitution of society. Truth is not here, as in the sciences and in natural philosophy, to be sought without scruple, and promulgated for its own sake upon the mere chance of its being serviceable, but only for obviously justifying purposes, moral or intellectual. Silence is a privilege of the grave, a right of the departed; let him therefore, who infringes that right by speaking publicly of, for, or against those who cannot speak for themselves, take heed that he open not his mouth without a sufficient sanction.

Published 1816.

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