Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure (Romanticism in Perspective)

Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure Ayumi Mizukoshi Romanticism in Perspective: Texts, Cultures, Histories Thi...

Author: Ayumi Mizukoshi

115 downloads 855 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure Ayumi Mizukoshi

Romanticism in Perspective: Texts, Cultures, Histories

This series aims to offer a fresh assessment of Romanticism by looking at it from a wide variety of perspectives. Both comparative and interdisciplinary, it will bring together cognate themes from architecture, art history, landscape gardening, linguistics, literature, philosophy, politics, science, social and political history and theology to deal with original, contentious or as yet unexplored aspects of Romanticism as a Europe-wide phenomenon. Titles include: Toby R. Benis

ROMANTICISM ON THE ROAD

The Marginal Gains of Wordsworth’s Homeless

Frederick Burwick

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

Knowledge and Power

Richard Cronin (editor)

1798: THE YEAR OF THE LYRICAL BALLADS

Péter Dávidházi

THE ROMANTIC CULT OF SHAKESPEARE

Literary Reception in Anthropological Perspective

Charles Donelan

ROMANTICISM AND MALE FANTASY IN BYRON’S DON JUAN

A Marketable Vice

Tim Fulford

ROMANTICISM AND MASCULINITY

Gender, Politics and Poetics in the Writings of Burke, Coleridge, Cobbett,

Wordsworth, De Quincey and Hazlitt

David Jasper

THE SACRED AND SECULAR CANON IN ROMANTICISM

Preserving the Sacred Truths

Malcolm Kelsall

JEFFERSON AND THE ICONOGRAPHY OF ROMANTICISM

Folk, Land, Culture and the Romantic Nation

Mark S. Lussier

ROMANTIC DYNAMICS

The Poetics of Physicality

Andrew McCann

CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE 1790s

Literature, Radicalism and the Public Sphere

10.1057/9780230285903 - Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure, Ayumi Mizukoshi

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-03-18

General Editors: Marilyn Gaull, Professor of English, Temple University/New York University; Stephen Prickett, Regius Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Glasgow

Ayumi Mizukoshi

KEATS, HUNT AND THE AESTHETICS OF PLEASURE

Jeffrey C. Robinson

RECEPTION AND POETICS IN KEATS

‘My Ended Poet’

Anya Taylor

BACCHUS IN ROMANTIC ENGLAND

Writers and Drink, 1780–1830

Nicola Trott and Seamus Perry (editors)

1800: THE NEW LYRICAL BALLADS

Michael Wiley

ROMANTIC GEOGRAPHY

Wordsworth and Anglo-European Spaces

Eric Wilson

EMERSON’S SUBLIME SCIENCE

John Wyatt

WORDSWORTH’S POEMS OF TRAVEL, 1819–42

‘Such Sweet Wayfaring’

Romanticism in Perspective Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71490–3 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England



Ashton Nichols

THE REVOLUTIONARY ‘I’

Wordsworth and the Politics of Self-Presentation

Ayumi Mizukoshi Lecturer Teikyo Heisei University Japan



Keats, Hunt and the

Aesthetics of Pleasure

© Ayumi Mizukoshi 2001

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–92958–6 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mizukoshi, Ayumi, 1967– Keats, Hunt, and the aesthetics of pleasure / Ayumi Mizukoshi. p. cm. — (Romanticism in perspective)

Based on the author’s thesis (doctoral—Oxford).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–333–92958–6

1. Keats, John, 1795–1821—Aesthetics. 2. Literature and society– –England—History—19th century. 3. English poetry—19th century– –History and criticism. 4. Hunt, Leigh, 1784–1859—Friends and associates. 5. Hunt, Leigh, 1784–1859—Aesthetics. 6. Aesthetics, British—19th century. 7. Social classes in literature. 8. Romanticism– –England. 9. Pleasure in literature. I. Series. PR4838.A35 M59 2001 821'.7—dc21 00–048339 10 10

9 09

8 08

7 07

6 06

5 05

4 04

3 03

2 02

1 01

Printed in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire



All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

Contents

vii

1 Introduction: A Problem of Interpretation A problem of pleasure A problem of politics The Cockney revival

1

1

4

6

2 The Bourgeois Cultural Revolution The ethics of luxury The aesthetics of pleasure The question of morality The question of vulgarity Culture, commerce and commercialism

10

10

13

21

25

29

3 The Aesthetics of Nature Nature for conspicuous consumption The suburban gardenesque The charge of Cockneyism Hunt's version of pastoral The Bower of Bliss: Spenser commodified

39

39

43

50

54

61

4 Classicism as Cultural Luxury The Greek revival The rise of nationalism The rise of the popular The attack on Cockney classicism Classicism for bourgeois consumption The politics of pagan pleasure

71

71

73

75

81

86

95

5 À Leafy Luxury': Poems (1817) A problem of canonisation À love of sociality ': epistles and sonnets Leafy luxury: Spenser suburbanised

104

104

109

117

6 `Wherein Lies Happiness?': Endymion (1818) Leafy luxury extended The aesthetics of Beauty and Truth

131

131

141

7 `Visions of Delight': Lamia (1820) Metamorphosis incomplete

148

148

v



Acknowledgements

8

A poet of sensation A problem of popularity

160

171

Conclusion: The Return of the Aesthetic

180

Notes

184

Index

222



vi Contents

This book is based on my doctoral thesis at the University of Oxford, and I wish to thank all those who have contributed generously to its evolution in the course of the last ten years. I would first like to thank Teikyo University in Tokyo, Japan, for the award of an Okinaga Scholarship, which enabled me to complete my doctorate. I am immensely indebted to my supervisor Professor Robert Young for his intellectual guidance throughout my uphill struggle. I am also grateful to my DPhil examiners Professor Nicholas Roe for his constructive criticism and Dr Jon Mee for his sympathetic advice and subsequent support. Professor Stephen Prickett encouraged me to publish the thesis, for which I am deeply thankful, and his energy and enthusiasm sustained me during the stressful days of endless revisions. Thanks also go to Eleanor Birne, Lucy Qureshi and Ruth Willats for their editorial help. Last but not least, I wish to express my gratitude to the staff of the following libraries: the Bodleian Library, the British Library, Keats House, London Metropolitan Archives and above all, Teikyo Heisei University Library whose staff kindly and most efficiently obtained the piles of inter-library loans without which this book could not have been what it is now.

vii



Acknowledgements

Introduction: A Problem of Interpretation

A problem of pleasure It is generally accepted that Keats's struggle towards the end of his life to produce poetry of high moral seriousness secured him a place in the literary canon. In perceived contrast, Keats's early productions have been considered problematic, or even as something of an embarrassment to modern scholars, for in these poems the poet seems to be in unashamed pursuit of aesthetic pleasure, wallowing in unreflected sensuous delight without showing any moral concerns. Twentieth-century Keatsians customarily divide the poet's short poetic career, spanning less than five years, into the early phase, in which Poems (1817) and Endymion (1818) were produced, and the later stage, during which Keats proved himself academically respectable (that is, `canonical') in his last Lamia volume (1820). Indeed, the history of twentieth-century Keats criticism may be seen as the history of how modern critics overcame a feeling of unease to transform Keats the sensualist into Keats the poetmoralist. In fact, this feeling of uneasiness about Keats's (seemingly natural) disposition to pleasure dates from the early nineteenth century. The most telling remarks were made by Keats's personal acquaintances (who were then branded as Cockney writers). In 1824, three years after Keats's death, William Hazlitt compiled à Body of English Poetry' from Chaucer to his own time.1 The avowed purpose of this anthology was to `satisfy individual curiosity and justify our national pride'.2 Hazlitt's selections ranged from `the four great English poets' (Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare and Milton) and `the second class of poets' (Dryden and Pope), to what we now call the Romantics (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley and Keats).3 It is evident that Hazlitt was presenting 1



1

2 Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure

He gave the greatest promise of genius of any poet of his day. He displayed extreme tenderness, beauty, originality and delicacy of fancy; all he wanted was manly strength and fortitude to reject the temptations of singularity in sentiment and expression.4 In 1828, even Keats's former mentor Leigh Hunt commented that `Mr. Keats's natural tendency to pleasure, as a poet, sometimes degenerated, by reason of his ill health, into a poetical effeminacy'.5 Some Victorian readers felt stronger repulsion towards the luxurious (hence enervating and effeminising) aspect of Keats's poetry. Ìt is impossible,' as Gerard Manley Hopkins put it, `not to feel with weariness how his verse is at every turn abandoning itself to an unmanly and enervating luxury.'6 Thomas Carlyle was even more relentless, depicting Keats as à miserable creature, hungering after sweets which he can't get; going about saying, `Ì am so hungry; I should so like something pleasant''.'7 Algernon Charles Swinburne, though associated with the Pre-Raphaelites who idolised Keats, also opposed his excessively sensuous quality, referring to the poet as `the most exclusively aesthetic and the most absolutely non-moral of all serious writers on record'.8 On the other hand, the Victorian period witnessed the increasing popularity of Keats as a poet of sensuous beauty.9 By transforming Keats from a Cockney rhymester to a Roman god in Adonais (1821), Shelley was already preparing the way for the positive revaluation and popularisation of Keats. Moreover, Shelley's own death in 1822 (with Keats's last volume in his pocket) led to a fraternal coupling of the two poets in the public mind.10 Both were increasingly idolised as prototypes of the young genius who died disappointed in exile, and this helped decontextualise Keats the Cockney poet, and considerably contributed to his posthumous popularity. Arthur H. Hallam, in reviewing Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical (1830), categorised Keats, Shelley and Tennyson as `poets of sensation' as opposed (and also superior) to Wordsworthian poets of `reflection'.11 Within a decade of his death, Keats had thus been reinvented as a true artist: someone for whom the only valid motive ought to be `the desire of beauty'.12 Young Tennyson was the first Victorian successor to Keats. By his intrinsic disposition to



something like a prototype of the modern canon. However, Keats was not at that time established as a high Romantic, but regarded as a Cockney, or at best, a poet of `promise'. Hazlitt's critical remark on the late Keats vividly reveals the contemporary view of the poet:

Keatsian pictorial sensuousness, Tennyson may also be said to have paved the way for the revival of Keats's reputation. Although Tennyson abandoned the sensuous strain in his later years, Keats did not lack his Victorian worshippers. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the father of the Aesthetic Movement, was the most devoted advocate of Keats the sensualist. In Rossetti's aesthetic propaganda, Keats was exalted as a paragon of art for art's sake. His aphoristic phrase `Beauty is truth, truth beauty' was interpreted as expressing the Aesthetes' Creed that art was self-sufficient, without needing moral or political purpose. The aesthetes thus idolised Keats as their forerunner who indulged in poetic daydreaming, blissfully indifferent to the vulgar bourgeois world. In 1887, Oscar Wilde dubbed Keats à Priest of Beauty'.13 Indeed, by the last decades of the nineteenth century, Keats had become a cult figure. Whereas most Victorian readers had no qualms about enjoying Keats's poetry for the sake of aesthetic pleasure, a few critics tried to answer the charge of amorality and effeminacy made against him. Richard Monckton Milnes and Matthew Arnold were the first public defenders of Keats's moral virtue and intellectual character.14 Milne's Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats (1848) served to redress the image of Keats as à wayward, erratic, genius', by emphasising `how love of pleasure was in him continually subordinate to higher aspirations'.15 Arnold also maintained that `we cannot but look for signs in him of something more than sensuousness, for signs of character and virtue'.16 Keats's letters were first published in Milne's Life, and Arnold's reassessment of Keats owed much to this new information. Quoting Keats's comment on beauty from his letters, Arnold argued that ```the yearning passion for the Beautiful'' . . . is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental poet' but àn intellectual and spiritual passion'.17 Milne's publication of Keats's letters and Arnold's revaluation of Keats as a poet of moral seriousness turned out to be landmarks in Keats criticism. Subsequent critics were heavily influenced by this moral and intellectual Keats reinvented by Milnes and Arnold. The history of Keats criticism in the first half of the twentieth century may be seen as a process of de-sensualising (and thereby canonising) Keats. F. R. Leavis discovered a profound thinker in Keats's letters, and gave high praise to The Fall of Hyperion, in which the poet was no longer a mere aesthete: here `poet and letter-writer are at last one'.18 T. S. Eliot also regarded Keats's letters highly as `the most notable and the most important ever written by any English poet'.19 However, even these critics were not without reservations about Keats's poetic achievement. Leavis argued that the greatness



Introduction 3

of Keats's poetry consisted ìn the perfection attained within a limiting aestheticism'.20 Indeed, during the first half of the twentieth century, the central issue of Keats criticism concerned the conflict between the poet's sensuousness and seriousness. As late as 1939 (when it was already `fashionable' to see Keats as a serious poet), H. W. Garrod still held the Victorian view of Keats: `the great poet he is only when the senses capture him, when he finds truth in beauty, that is to say, when he does not trouble to find truth at all.'21 From 1950 to 1980, however, Keats definitely became something more than a sensuous poet. Whatever their critical perspectives, such modern scholars as Walter Jackson Bate (erudite biographer), Earl R. Wasserman (`metaphysical' critic) and Jack Stillinger (Harvard Keatsian) all claimed that Keats was a serious poet whose artistic intelligence and humanitarian insights had earned him the status of a `major' Romantic. What the Victorians had cherished as a `precious gem of art'22 was now transformed into a complex work of art, contextualised by Keats's intuitive but insightful comments on poetry, human life and imagination in his letters. By foregrounding the poet's serious side in the Òdes' and Hyperions, and simultaneously downplaying the sensuous strain manifested in his early verse, modern critics together constructed a master narrative of Keats's evolution from an adolescent poet of luxurious sensation to a mature poet of moral reflection. By the 1970s, Keats, or more precisely later Keats, was firmly established as an intellectual poet of moral seriousness. This critical tradition persisted even into the 1990s, when Hermione de Almeida edited a collection of recent works on Keats as a `symposium on the intellectual Keats'.23

A problem of politics As has been suggested, liberal humanist critics managed to salvage the poet from (what they thought of as) a distorted Victorian view of Keats. Intellectualised as he was, however, Keats was still considered to be an àpolitical' poet. In marked contrast to Wordsworth and Shelley, Keats could not count as a representative of his age, as Eliot observed in a remark that has been taken for granted ever since: Keats's sayings about poetry, thrown out in the course of private correspondence, keep pretty close to intuition; and they have no apparent bearing upon his own times, as he himself does not appear to have taken any absorbing interest in public affairs. . . . He was occupied only with the highest use of poetry. . . . 24




Modern Keatsians certainly succeeded in canonising Keats as a serious poet who reflected on the use of true poetry for humanity. Yet one result of this invention was the portrayal of Keats as a `solitary genius'. In response to this increasing critical tendency to concentrate only upon the `literary' aspects of Keats's works, his biographers tried to bridge the widening gap between criticism and biography. In 1925, Amy Lowell considered Keats to have been `writing in a certain milieu' rather than `functioning in the timeless area of universal literature'.25 Claude Lee Finney also attempted `to reconstruct the environment in which Keats lived and to present and explain the personal, social, political, religious, philosophical, and poetical forces which inspired and influenced his poems'.26 But after the publications of the three `decisive' biographies of Keats in the 1960s, little more was said about Keats's external environment.27 Although these biographers assumed that a poet was not only born but also `made' under particular circumstances, the social or political forces which they discussed as influencing Keats's creative genius were limited to his most immediate and personal surroundings. This curious version of the Victorian or aesthetic Keats is to be found not only in liberal humanists but also in Paul de Man: In reading Keats, we are . . . reading the work of a man whose experience is mainly literary. The growing insight that underlies the remarkably swift development of his talent was gained primarily from the act of writing. In this case, we are on very safe ground when we derive our understanding primarily from the work itself.28 Interpretation of Keats remained apolitical until the late 1970s, by which time an astonishing number of critical studies (many of which were concerned with the texture, diction, symbolism or imagery of Keats's poems) had been produced.29 It was not until the 1980s, when new historicism emerged as a critical discipline, that Keatsians finally started to historicise and politicise their object of study.30 As this new trend came to the fore, scholars shifted their critical focus from the conflict between sensuousness and seriousness to a clash between aesthetics and politics in Keats's poetry. Their priority was now to restore and reinstate the historical and political dimensions of Keats's poetry. Jerome McGann's pioneering attempt at historicisation (1979) proved to be a watershed in the recent history of Keats criticism.31 Since McGann's essay, Keats has steadily been rediscovered as a social, political and historical being.32 The question became not `whether' but `how' to politicise Keats. Marilyn Butler was one of the first critics to discover



Introduction 5

the poet's awareness of `history' in the Hyperions. Daniel P. Watkins attempted to locate Keats in the broader historical context of an age of anxiety and social instabilities. A recent symposium on Keats and History (1995), edited by Nicholas Roe, was founded on the premise that Keats drew his view of history as a continual progress from eighteenth-century liberals. Whereas these critics were trying to place the poet in the macrocontext of contemporary history, Marjorie Levinson paid particular attention to the more immediate socio-political surroundings of the poet. In her Keats's Life of Allegory (1988), Levinson successfully removed the poet from the realm of àesthetics, metaphysics, or humanistic psychology', restoring him to the external, material and social sphere ± a sphere in which Keats was reconstructed as a bourgeois and distinctly `bad' poet.33 In focusing on the stylistic vulgarity of Keats, Levinson was part of a relatively minor critical tradition including John Bayley, Christopher Ricks and John Jones.34 Bailey was in fact the first critic to reassess Keats's `vulgarity' as a positive trait, arguing that the central Keats was not the sombre mature poet of the Hyperions, but the rich, sensual poet of Endymion and The Eve of St. Agnes. Levinson rejuvenated this lost tradition of reading Keats as a sensualist by relocating the poet in his contemporary socio-cultural context. Fully equipped with the critical apparatuses of cultural materialism, she attributed Keats's stylistic `badness' to his middle-class social origin. Thus the Keats of the 1980s was, to borrow Levinson's phrase, à dynamic reflection of social configurations'.35

The Cockney revival Levinson's iconoclastic study paved the way for further investigation into Keats as a middle-class poet. Although Levinson herself was not concerned with the socio-cultural kinship between Hunt and Keats, the reconsideration of Keats's class background has inevitably led to a reappraisal of Hunt and his circle. Indeed, the most recent Keats scholarship witnesses a growing trend towards the rehabilitation of the Cockney school. In 1996, Jeffrey N. Cox proposed à ``class reunion'' for the Cockney school' so as to restore `the cultural milieu of the Hunt circle'.36 Indeed, the Keats of the 1990s is the Cockney Keats.37 The first book-length study of the Cockney Keats is Nicholas Roe's John Keats and the Culture of Dissent (1997), in which the author seeks `to recover Keats's insolent presence for his first readers, modifying Levinson's image of the social-literary `èntrepreneur'' by relating Keats to the




tradition of English dissenting republicanism'.38 The purposes of Roe's study are not only to offer a new understanding of Keats, but also to encourage further reassessment of Hunt and other Cockney writers, for `these writers formed a coterie which did much to initiate the democratization of literary and political culture which is our inheritance today'.39 Taking over the task, Cox presents a bold redefinition of Hunt's coterie in his Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle (1998): what we now call the second generation of Romantic poets, including Byron and Shelley, constituted à self-consciously defined group, an association of intellectuals that centered on Leigh Hunt and that came to be known as the Cockney School'.40 Cox argues that the Hunt circle transcended class differences, thereby embodying a utopian republicanism in an ideologically fissured society, and that Keats can best be understood when situated in the collective ideological project of the Cockney school. The present book is also written with the aim of restoring Keats to the Cockney environment, but with a different emphasis from Levinson's, Roe's and Cox's works. While Levinson defines Keats's `middling' class position as being neither that of Byron (the aristocracy) nor of Wordsworth (the legitimate bourgeoisie), I focus attention upon Hunt in reinstating Keats as a Cockney poet. The contemporary charge of vulgarity against Cockney writers pointed to the fact that both Hunt and Keats belonged to the newly emerging middle class with increasing economic power and an insatiable desire for pleasure and prestige. Keats was at that time (dis)regarded as one of the aspiring poet(asters) clustering around Hunt, an indefatigable promoter of the `bourgeois' ethic and aesthetic. Thus I discuss the Cockney poets in the light of a rising bourgeois consumer culture. My main disagreement with Roe and Cox is over their interpretation of the key term `Cockney'. While I consider Cockney culture to be a product of an expanding commercial society, they both associate the Cockney milieu with radical politics. Roe's Cockney school is a new radical sect, reviving the English Jacobin movement of the 1790s. Cox also presents the Cockney school as a radical group in which its members sought to create a model of a reformed society. However, I do not share their opinion that Hunt's circle was a `radical' community. Rather, I entirely agree with Kevin Gilmartin that there had been a shift in Hunt's political strategies from radical opposition to moderate liberalism.41 Although the early Examiner boasted a language of aggressive defiance, Hunt's subsequent publications became more literary than political, and exclusively intended for a `cultured' audience. After his



Introduction 7

release from prison in 1815, Hunt increasingly devoted himself to promoting the interests of the new middle class at his Hampstead cottage. Both Roe and Cox perceive Hampstead as a site of radical opposition, but a comparison of Hunt's activities in suburban Hampstead with those of ultra-radical communities in metropolitan London reveals the fundamental cultural (and class) difference between the two social groups. In the late 1810s, members of Hunt's circle luxuriated in such a variety of leisured pursuits as poetry readings, musical performances, convivial conversations, country walks and tea-drinking. For plebeian radicals in London, however, it was a period of government repression and persecution during which they were forced to go underground. This London radical underworld flourished in numerous tavern debating clubs where mostly illiterate artisans and workers revelled in politically didactic songs and ballads, satirical toasts and jokes, blasphemous rituals and masculine camaraderie.42 Such alehouse free-and-easy conviviality is in stark contrast to the convivial yet cultivated ambience of Hunt's coterie. Hunt himself stood aloof from the celebrated radical orator and his namesake Henry Hunt (with whom he was sometimes confused).43 In this book, I see the Cockney school, first and foremost, as a peculiarly `middle-class' phenomenon.44 Chapters 2, 3 and 4 examine how Hunt's aesthetic and cultural project was implicated in a discourse of the new middle class in the early nineteenth century. The second chapter offers a socio-political picture of the Romantic period as an age of unprecedented social mobility, in which Hunt and his circle tried to vindicate their social status by means of a particular ethic and aesthetic. The third chapter focuses on Hunt's strategic espousal of the pastoral genre by which he attempted to transform a middle-class suburbanite into a pseudo-aristocratic `nature-lover'. The fourth chapter shows the way in which Hunt appropriated increasingly fashionable ancient Greek culture for his own poetic and political purposes. Chapters 5, 6 and 7 deal with Keats's Poems, Endymion and Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes respectively, attempting to locate these volumes within the socio-cultural milieu reconstructed in the previous chapters. However, I do not deem the poet's short life to be a rapid intellectual development. On the contrary, the premise is that Keats, profoundly imbued with Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics, remained a poet of sensuous pleasure until the end of his career. The major purpose of this book is to tackle the persistent problem of how to interpret Keats's `sensuousness' which has baffled not only modern Keatsians but also contemporary and Victorian readers. Lionel Trilling, clearly disconcerted by Keats's avowed devotion to sensuous




pleasure, confessed that `Such doctrine from a great poet puzzles and embarrasses us. It is, we say, the essence of Philistinism.' 45 Even the most recent critics, who are too busy politicising Keats, seem to have failed to answer this age-old problem of aesthetic interpretation. By the mid-1990s, as Grant Scott observes, ìt has become almost taboo to mention poetics anymore, just as it is taboo to talk about aesthetic value except to our students'.46 In the following chapters, I hope to redress the current over-politicising tendencies in Keats criticism, and to shed a new light on Keats's `philistinism' by relocating him in the historical context of the bourgeois aesthetics of pleasure.



Introduction 9

2

The ethics of luxury Since 1688, and throughout the eighteenth century, British society had undergone a dramatic and drastic transformation on every front. Though Britain experienced no political revolution, the eighteenth century was nevertheless a period of revolutions: in agriculture, industry and finance. Since my book deals with the discourse of the new middle class, I shall look at the socio-cultural conditions of the eighteenth century in the light of the consumer revolution. With the expansion of the capitalist mode of production, `middling' sorts of people were emerging with increasing economic power and self-confidence.1 In 1719, Daniel Defoe attempted to vindicate the new commercial class, arguing that the `middling' rank was the best, indeed the most respectable, class in society: the middle State . . . [is] the best State in the World, the most suited to human Happiness, not exposed to the Miseries and Hardships, the Labour and Sufferings of the mechanick Part of Mankind, and not embarrass'd with the Pride, Luxury, Ambition and Envy of the upper Part of Mankind.2 With its moderate affluence (in comparison to the extravagance of the glaringly rich), the middle station of society was blessed with àll kind of Enjoyments', àll agreeable Diversions, and all desirable Pleasures'.3 In 1772, Josiah Wedgwood regarded `the Middling Class of People' as a far more attractive market than the gentry and aristocracy.4 By the mideighteenth century, Britain had become a modern consumer society, prompting Adam Smith to refer to it in The Wealth of Nations (1776) as à nation of shopkeepers'.5 10



The Bourgeois Cultural Revolution

The Bourgeois Cultural Revolution 11

More men and women than ever before in human history enjoyed the experience of acquiring material possessions. Objects which for centuries had been the privileged possessions of the rich came, within the space of a few generations, to be within the reach of a larger part of society than ever before, and, for the first time, to be within the legitimate aspirations of almost all of it. Objects which were once acquired as the result of inheritance at best, came to be the legitimate pursuit of a whole new class of consumers.7 With their growing pecuniary strength and increasing demand for luxury, middle-class consumers were forging their own culture of affluence. Impressed by the consumer boom in late eighteenth-century England, a foreign historian exclaimed, Èngland surpasses all the other nations of Europe in . . . luxury . . . and the luxury is increasing daily!'8 Contemporary foreign commentators unanimously agreed that no other nation in Europe could match the English in luxury.9 Indeed, `luxury' was the most conspicuous ambition of a consumer society par excellence. It is also the key term in understanding the nature of this bourgeois phenomenon. According to John Sekora, `luxury was the single most significant social and political idea of eighteenth-century England.'10 The concept of luxury underwent a dramatic transformation during the consumer revolution, losing its negative and pejorative connotations to become a positive and even virtuous term. In Sekora's view, this 180-degree turn in meaning pointed to `nothing less than the movement from the classical world to the modern'.11 In the classical paradigm, luxury was associated with sin and depravity, and seen as a direct threat to both man's virtue and the order of the state.12 In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the meaning of luxury derived from the Old Testament and represented à theory of entropy that explains as it describes how men, singly or collectively, lose vitality and fall from grace. For individuals it bears a theory of ethics, for nations a theory of history'.13 The Hebrews and later Christians perceived original sin committed by the first humans as a sin of luxury. God defined the limits of necessity, but Eve, and then Adam, transgressed the threshold, indulging themselves in the luxury of tasting the forbidden fruit. The archetypal luxury of Adam and Eve led to



Throughout the eighteenth century, the consumer revolution was facilitated by the unmitigated rise of the new commercial middle class.6 Neil McKendrick describes the birth of a society of modern mass consumption as follows:

the Fall of the whole of mankind. Luxury was therefore seen as a violation of God's Law and of the original virtuous state of man. During the consumer revolution, however, the concept of luxury underwent a complete revaluation. In the classical and Christian tradition, luxury had been perceived as not only unnecessary, but inimical to a virtuous manly life and to stable social order. Classical denouncers of luxury had always adopted a form of moral criticism: they argued that luxury must be legally restricted in order to prevent individual moral corruption and to preserve social hierarchy. Yet as the whole nation became richer and richer, making possible a dramatic rise in luxurious consumption, sumptuary laws came to be seen as obsolete, and even detrimental to the legitimate pursuit of individual self-interest. Sekora remarks, ìn 1700 the edifice of laws and attitudes surrounding the concept [of luxury] seems wholly intact; yet by 1800 it is rubble.'14 This dramatic change reflected a lasting devaluation of the concept of luxury `from an essential, general element of moral theory to a minor, technical element of economic theory'.15 As the old social system based on land was transformed into modern capitalism, luxury came to be seen as a positive good and an admirable trait of society. On the other hand, by no means everyone welcomed a revision of the ethics of luxury. Since the consumer revolution was a predominantly middle-class affair, it was the rising middle class which was eager to revise the classical ethics of luxury in order to serve its economic and political interests. As the significance of luxury became economic rather than moral, the meaning of the term was divested of its implications of living beyond one's station and came to mean simply indulging in excessive consumption. In order to curb the surge of the upwardly mobile middle class, defenders of the traditional social order exploited the classical, moralistic view of luxury. The established ruling class condemned the newly affluent middle class for its excessive wealth and luxury, which in the classical paradigm were associated with moral corruption and political subversiveness. This debate about the moral status of luxury reached its peak in the mid-eighteenth century. Defenders of luxury included Daniel Defoe, Bernard Mandeville, David Hume and Adam Smith, all of whom tried to `deemphasize morality in favor of economics, arguing in the main that luxury could increase and redistribute wealth and was therefore a laudable trait in a society'.16 They argued that luxury was a prerequisite to the expansion of industry and trade, since the pursuit of individual self-interest led ultimately to the prosperity of the nation. These defenders of luxury were also defenders of economic individualism and liberalism, of social mobility and of the




middle-class culture of affluence. Their polemics against the traditional attack upon luxury greatly contributed to a vindication of a commercial society and of the bourgeois consumer ethic. With this new ethics of luxury, the newly affluent middle classes immersed themselves in consumer goods, luxury items and leisure pursuits. One may recall Hunt's creed of `cheerfulness', which encouraged the positive enjoyment of natural and poetic `luxuries'.17 In order to meet the burgeoning demand for luxury, whether in the form of goods or activities, society's approach to leisure came to be increasingly commercialised in the eighteenth century. J. H. Plumb regards the commercialisation of leisure as òne of the incontestable signs of growing affluence in eighteenth-century British society', for all the leisure pursuits `point to the growth of a middle-class audience . . . so large and so growing that its commercial exploitation was becoming an important industry, involving considerable capital'.18 These leisure industries ranged from theatres, concerts, sports and fashion to landscape gardening and the organised tour of country houses, all of which were designed to cater for (and also to create) the taste of the new leisured middle class.19 Literature also came to be seen as one of these commercialised leisure pursuits. The eighteenth century was the first age of an information explosion and witnessed an unprecedented rise in the number of printed books, journals and newspapers.20 Along with recipe books, gardening manuals, musical scores, primers and encyclopaedias, literature (or more specifically, fiction) comprised a significant part of the booming print culture. With money to spend and time to spare, middleclass audiences were avid seekers of knowledge and enjoyment, forging a taste of their own. The age in which literature was monopolised by a privileged few was long gone. Literature had now become available to anyone who coveted the luxury of reading.

The aesthetics of pleasure Born in 1784, Hunt was a product of this culture of affluence. And the climate of pleasure-seeking persisted well into the Regency period (1811±20): `when the Prince Regent (the ``Prince of Pleasure'') led fashion, there was more conspicuous consumption and greater public drunkenness than ever.'21 Even a cursory look at Hunt's biographical details tells us a great deal about the leisured life of the London middle class at the time.22 Though he publicly branded the Prince Regent as a disgraceful libertine (and consequently went to gaol), Hunt had no qualms about pursuing pleasure himself. His circle of friends frequently




gathered at his cottage on Hampstead Heath, diverting themselves with various leisure activities. They enjoyed rambling across the Heath, musical evenings, dinner parties, wine tastings and poetry readings.23 They were also keen to seize opportunities for leisure in town, attending the theatre, the opera, exhibition galleries and museums, and dining out. London was by then established as a centre of conspicuous consumption and of a variety of cultural activities.24 Keats, born the son of a manager of the `Swan and Hoop' livery stables in north London, was eager to join the leisured and `cultured' middle class. Becoming a member of a circle like Hunt's was for Keats synonymous with social advancement. His letters and biographies provide an abundance of examples of the aesthetic experience which Keats enjoyed with members of Hunt's coterie, involving pursuits as diverse as wine (especially claret) tasting, a visit to the Elgin Marbles, attending the exhibition of Benjamin West or going to the Drury Lane Theatre.25 Hunt's circle of friends included Charles Cowden Clarke, William Hazlitt, Benjamin Robert Haydon, Charles Lamb, John Hamilton Reynolds, Bryan Waller Procter, Percy Bysshe Shelley, James and Horace Smith, and many more. Most of them were from the professional and mercantile middle classes: Clarke was the son of a headmaster of the small yet liberal school at Enfield that Keats attended as a child; Lamb worked for the East India Company; Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon, and later became a medical student at Guy's Hospital; Bryan Waller Procter (alias Barry Cornwall) practised as a solicitor in London, and eventually obtained a large number of connections as a conveyancer; Reynolds worked as a junior clerk in the Amicable Insurance Office until 1817, when he took up the study of law; James Smith was an attorney to King's Court; and Horace Smith, after working as a clerk in a London counting house, became a speculator in the London Stock Exchange. Except for Shelley, who was a son of a baronet and went to university, the members of Hunt's literary circle were almost uniform in terms of their social advantages and educational credentials. By day they worked as clerks or apprentices in the City, but as members of the rising, modestly affluent new middle class, they were eager to spend their leisure hours cultivating their taste for literature and art. I have so far adopted the term `middle class' to describe the social position of the members of Hunt's circle, but the definition of this elusive term requires more detailed explanation. Lorna Weatherill gives a definition of the burgeoning middle class in early modern Britain as a class of people situated neither at the bottom (servants, labourers and wage-earners), nor at the top (the country gentry and aristocracy) of




the social hierarchy. She argues that this emergent social group was composed of the professions, merchants, shopkeepers, farmers, yeomen, husbandmen and craftsmen.26 Yet such a diverse group of people can hardly be seen as homogeneous; rather, one may as well regard them as the `middle classes'. Peter Gay refers to the common denominator among the nineteenth-century middle classes as `the negative quality of being neither aristocrats nor labourers, and of being uneasy in their middle-class skins'.27 The number of this middling rank of people had been increasing greatly through (to borrow Coleridge's phrase) `the mighty epochs of commerce'.28 Yet their self-perceptions were not remotely clear-cut, but disconcertingly ambiguous and conflict-ridden. It may be more appropriate to talk about a number of different classes such as the commercial, the professional, and the Dissenting middle classes, within the middling station of society, involving internal conflicts as well as considerable overlap. Since the middle classes were usually keen on climbing the social ladder, they tended to be anxious to distinguish themselves from other lower ranks, and they did so in cultural as much as in economic terms. The early nineteenth century witnessed the expansion and elevation of London suburbia as a residential area for the new middle classes. Yet there was also an internal conflict within the suburban middle class itself. One contemporary writer referred to an increasing number of `handsome country residences, which, within a few years, have ``risen like exhalations'' on . . . the south side of London'.29 In terms of taste, however, south London was not the best part to choose, for `the true country aspect' was retained in the north of London. Those who chose to live in, say, Hampstead or Highgate were considered men of good taste, in marked contrast to those who lived in the rougher side of London. The latter kind was just the typical `citizen [who], having a tendency to run upon a flat, prefers the more level side of London; where he can at once make a greater and more visible figure among his neighbours, go backwards and forwards to town with less wear and tear to his equipage'.30 Here the commentator subdivided the suburban middle class into two types: a cultivated man of taste who appreciated the `rural faces' of the countryside, and the more vulgar philistine who was occupied only with his money-making in the City, and impressing his acquaintances with his wealth. This self-definition of superior respectability within the middle classes was a necessary gesture, for the new middle classes were constantly attacked for being, as it were, illegitimate in socio-historical terms. Since a substantial number of the middle classes were also Dissenters,




middle-class liberalism was condemned for being politically illegitimate. Many members of Hunt's circle came from liberal or nonconformist backgrounds. Hazlitt was the son of a Dissenting minister; James and Horace Smith were educated in nonconformist institutions; and Keats attended Enfield School which was modelled on the Dissenting academies and offered a much more liberal curriculum than the public schools.31 John Clarke, headmaster of the school, was a staunch liberal and a friend of Joseph Priestley, and he never ceased to believe in political democracy and religious freedom, even during the reactionary hysteria of the 1790s.32 It seems that John Clarke's enlightened education exerted a formative influence on the young Keats.33 Charles Cowden Clarke, son of the headmaster, further encouraged the youngster's propensity for liberalism by lending him Hunt's radical weekly the Examiner (which was read by all the senior boys at Enfield) and ultimately by introducing him to Leigh Hunt himself.34 As has been said, the (self-)definition of the new middle class could be as varied as trading, manufacturing, commercial, professional, dissenting, liberal, suburban, metropolitan, cultivated and vulgar. Conservative reviewers were only too happy to exploit this kaleidoscopic identity of the new middle class, relegating the members and audience of Hunt's circle to a band of lower middle-class people containing tradesmen, apprentices, clerks and milliners (and this was to some extent a correct characterisation of their social position). People in trade belonged to a stratum only one stage up from the labouring class, and along with the labouring poor, they were susceptible to moral suspicion. However, Hunt and his circle regarded themselves not as men of trade, but as men of letters. Their daytime professions were as diverse as apprentice, clerk, journalist, lawyer and speculator, but the common denominator among them was that they were all in some sense involved in the literary world. Except for Hazlitt and Hunt, none of them could earn a livelihood entirely by writing, but they were all keen to live a life of literary pursuits in their leisure time. Most members of Hunt's circle were contributors to various literary reviews and magazines, and many of them published their own poems, dramas, novels and critical essays. James and Horace Smith were established writers, known for their immensely popular Rejected Addresses (1812). Lamb produced an astonishing number of literary works, especially considering that he spent most of his life in the East India Company. Reynolds worked as a literary and dramatic critic for a Sunday newspaper, and published his own poetical volumes, namely, Safie, an Eastern Tale (1814), The Eden of Imagination (1814) and The Naiad: A Tale, With Other Poems (1816).




Even after he started studying to become a lawyer, Reynolds never ceased to have interest in literature. Keats may appear rather anomalous in the group, in that he abandoned his medical career to become a poet.35 Richard Abbey, his guardian, was exasperated at his ward's refusal to set up as a surgeon. A prosperous tea dealer himself, Abbey persisted in urging Keats to go into the commercial world, whether as a bookseller, a tea broker or a hatter.36 This world of commerce was actually a potential market for Keats's poetry, for an increasing number of the middle-class audience demanded the luxury of reading as a leisure pursuit. Keats told Abbey: Ì mean to rely upon my Abilities as a Poet. . . . I know that I possess Abilities greater than most Men, and therefore I am determined to gain my Living by exercising them.'37 Unfortunately, none of the three poetical volumes published in his lifetime turned out to be a commercial success, compared to the moderate or even considerable successes enjoyed by many of the part-time poets clustering around Hunt. When Keats entered Hunt's coterie in 1816, quite a few of its members were already established as men of letters. Although not able to achieve a commercial success (the reasons for which I will discuss in Chapter 7), Keats absorbed the liberal, metropolitan middle-class values championed by Hunt and his circle, and his poetry embodied their particular ethic and aesthetic. The Hampstead literary circle as a whole catered for the taste of the metropolitan middle class. Hunt was the most conspicuous example, both embodying and providing for the bourgeois taste. He offered poetry as a form of luxury, as a pleasant diversion. The marketability of his poetry lay in its familiar style and pictorial descriptions; it was an easy read, lightweight and accessible. It did not require proper (that is, university) education to be appreciated, as neoclassical poetry did. Instead of making intellectual demands on the reader, it encouraged free enjoyment of `poetic luxuries'. In a word, Hunt àestheticised' poetry for easy consumption. Since the days of Philip Sidney, the status of literature had been poised precariously between its pleasurableness and its moral value. The pleasurable aspect of literature and its demoralising (hence subversive) effect had frequently been exposed to moral criticism. In opposition to this view, some of Hunt's immediate predecessors, including Samuel Johnson, were anxious to counteract the potential subversiveness inherent in aesthetic indulgence by emphasising its moral worth and ethically reforming effect. It may be argued that Hunt was a revolutionary who transformed a literature whose worth lay in its moral effect into a literature aestheticised and redesigned for




popular consumption.38 Just as the bourgeois consumer ethics of luxury enabled the rising middle class to erode the traditional ruling order, Hunt's aesthetics of pleasure qualified his reader to enter the world of high Literature (that is, poetry), which was formerly the preserve of the aristocracy. What Hunt attempted in his aesthetico-cultural project was to liberate poetry from the restrictive, exclusive and aristocratic poetics of neoclassicism. To start with versification, Hunt attacked `Pope and the French school' for their having `mistaken mere smoothness for harmony'. Against à marked and uniform regularity' of neoclassical poetry, Hunt put forward a poetic project which sought to regain à freer spirit of versification'.39 The merits of neoclassical poetry were considered to be its `wit, terseness, and acuteness', but Hunt dismissed these features as cold, artificial and monotonous.40 The confining aesthetics of neoclassicism enforced general rules so that poets should imitate a Nature methodiz'd. Hunt was pleased to witness `The downfall of the French school of poetry', whose artificial, imitative and systematised composition was superseded by a freer, more natural style of poetry in which ìmagination breathes again in a more green and genial time'.41 It is curious to see that Hunt branded Pope and his followers as `the French school', for the label was not widely used, either by his contemporaries or by modern critics. A close reading of Hunt's writing, however, reveals the political and cultural connotations embedded in this appellation of `the French school'. Since the last decades of the eighteenth century, England had witnessed in France the Revolution, the Terror and then the Napoleonic Wars. The constant threat of invasion from 1805 to 1815 brought about a consolidation of national identity as well as a conservative backlash in England, and this nationalistic consciousness further reinforced an increasing tendency to prefer indigenous to neoclassical literature.42 Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European (high) culture had been dominated by French neoclassicism, whose dogmatic doctrine imposed ùniversal' rules. Yet from the mid-eighteenth century, the rediscovery and revaluation of the native tradition of English literature and culture had been encouraged by a series of antiquarian publications such as Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762), Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765) and Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry (1774±81). Together, they presented the native alternative to the authority of French neoclassicism. In 1824, Hazlitt edited what we would now call an anthology of English poetry, the avowed purpose of




which was `to nourish our own taste . . . and also to silence the objections of foreigners, who are too ready to treat us as behindhand with themselves in all that relates to the arts of refinement and elegance'.43 Hazlitt's reference to `foreigners' here evidently means the French. France was thus increasingly seen as a political and cultural enemy. Hunt thought of Pope and his school as under the French yoke, and branded the eighteenth century as à very ``periwig-pated'' age in all that regarded poetry, from Waller down to the Doctor inclusive'.44 Hunt was thus essentially a patriot, but he was also a proponent of middle-class values and attitudes. The opposition between the English cultural heritage and French neoclassicism led to another dichotomy between the popular and the aristocratic. The rise of interest in the indigenous literature amounted to a rise of interest in the vernacular and popular, and the proliferation of middle-class journals further encouraged the dissemination of the newly discovered heritage of English native culture. Hunt was a product of a middle-class culture seeking its own voice, not in the elitist aristocratic tradition, but in the discourse of the popular. Hunt attacked the neoclassical poets for `their town habits, their narrow sphere of imagination, their knowledge of manners rather than natures'.45 Instead, Hunt argued that the properties of real poetry were a `sensativeness [sic] to the beauty of the external world, to the unsophisticated impulses of our nature, and above all, imagination, or the power to see, with verisimilitude, what others do not'.46 Hunt proposed that one's natural faculties were what was essential to appreciate poetry, rather than any artificial acquisition of the knowledge of classical manners and rules. In this sense, the middle-class writers of sentimental novels in the eighteenth century may be seen as precursors of Hunt. G. J. BarkerBenfield calls the burgeoning bourgeois culture a `culture of sensibility' in which middle-class readers indulged themselves in `the ``luxury'' of feeling'.47 The novel of sensibility, which aggrandised a man of feeling rather than a man of reason and classical erudition, offered a middleclass native alternative to the aristocratic French neoclassicism. The aesthetic opposition between natural sensibility and acquired art was deeply implicated in the ideological clash between liberal individualism and aristocratic elitism. Reading and writing neoclassical poetry required specific knowledge and learning, access to which was limited to the privileged class. However, what Hunt regarded as real poetry required only one's sensibility, which could be cultivated and refined according to one's effort. The requirement for appreciating poetry was




self-cultivation, not a classical university education. For Hunt, the downfall of the French school of poetry pointed to the increasing democratisation of literature, facilitated by the rise of middle-class readers and writers. The Monthly Review rebuked Hunt's bourgeois poetics for being `lowering and debasing' and bringing down `poetry from its ancient, retired, and lofty station to the level of ordinary life and society'.48 Yet it is telling that the Monthly Review, which had been regarded as the most `respectable' review throughout the eighteenth century, became outmoded in the early nineteenth century, failing to attract the new readership from the growing mercantile and professional classes.49 Hunt's emphasis on `free' versification and diction was therefore an integral part of his cultural strategy to emancipate poetry from a burden of classical learning. Hunt propounded à free and idiomatic cast of language' as follows: the proper language of poetry is in fact nothing different from that of real life, and depends for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of what it speaks. It is only adding musical modulation to what a fine understanding might actually utter in the midst of its griefs or enjoyments. The poet therefore should do as Chaucer or Shakspeare [sic] did, ± not copy what is obsolete or peculiar in either, any more than they copied from their predecessors, ± but use as much as possible an actual, existing language. . . . 50 In modern literary criticism, Hunt's poetic principles are usually dismissed as facile versions of those of his great contemporaries: for example, his aesthetic project to use a `natural' language is often considered to be a servile imitation of Wordsworth's creed that poetry ought to be written ìn a selection of language really used by men'. However, Hunt's seemingly Wordsworthian poetics was in fact a peculiarly middle-class cultural project. Hunt promoted a `natural' poetic language in order to democratise and popularise poetry. He regarded a free and idiomatic diction as òf still greater importance' than a freer versification, for it was the former that made poetry more readily accessible to the reader, particularly the reader without a classical education. The specific requirement for appreciating neoclassical poetry was the knowledge of rules and precepts prescribed in the classics, first and foremost, Aristotle's Poetics. However, `People have ceased to believe,' argued Hunt, `that wit and verse are the great essentials of the art; much less cant phrases, and lines cut in two.'51 Hunt considered Chaucer and Shakespeare not to have been servile to the authority of the tradition,




but rather to have advocated the authenticity of individual experience. Hunt's emphasis on originality rather than imitation may be seen as part of his cultural project to replace the elitist neoclassical poetic with a liberal bourgeois aesthetic. The sum and substance of Hunt's poetic aesthetic was that (every)one could and should take free pleasure from poetry as a form of luxury. Indeed, he proclaimed that his poetical creed was `not only hopeful, but cheerful'.52 For Hunt, a reader of poetry was also an enjoyer and consumer of luxury. Hunt himself wrote poetry not for the sake of a moral, but for the aesthetic pleasure it afforded him and his readers. Hunt offered his poetical volumes, Foliage and even The Story of Rimini (which tells a tragic story of illicit love) as what Defoe called `desirable Pleasures'. Hunt concluded the preface to Foliage by encouraging leisure activity: `he, in my opinion, wishes his countrymen most good, who would see fair play between their real wants and a cheerful leisure.'53 Hunt's aesthetics of pleasure thus served to transform poetry from an aristocratic accomplishment into a commercialised leisure pursuit.

The question of morality This aesthetics of pleasure, however, provoked an angry response from the literary establishment. The early nineteenth century was a period in which the struggle for political and cultural hegemony between the established ruling class and the new commercial middle class gained new fervour. Although the meaning of luxury underwent a drastic revaluation in the mid-eighteenth century, it was not the case that the traditional, moralistic attack upon the middle-class culture of pleasure became extinct. In the eyes of the traditional upper class in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the liberal (often Dissenting) and prosperous middle class was no less than a band of subversives. Coleridge attributed the post-war distresses and discontentments to `the OVERBALANCE OF THE COMMERCIAL SPIRIT'.54 Along with many other conservatives, Coleridge associated the spirit of trade with the moral depravation of society, contending that the only effective remedy for the overwhelming impetus of trade was Christianity. At the top of the agenda of the upper-class and conservative journals was the preservation of social stability by suppressing dissenting moral and political views. Any voice of heterodoxy, whether it clamoured for reform or for liberty of the press, was condemned as a threat to a stable social hierarchy. For these ideological conservationists, Hunt's aesthetics of




pleasure, which loudly promoted the luxury of sensuous experience, amounted to a tendentious and dangerous moral threat. One of the deplorable features of Hunt's poetry, in the eyes of conservative reviewers, was its licentiousness. The adulterous relationship between Paulo and Francesca in The Story of Rimini, and the over-sensuous descriptions of half-naked nymphs in `The Nymphs' were found particularly disconcerting. As for the end of canto III in The Story of Rimini, in which it was implied that the unfortunate lovers consummated their passion, the Monthly Review commented: `Though the scene, in which this unhallowed intimacy is related, is as delicately touched as such subjects are capable of being touched, yet enough occurs to alarm the vigilant and perhaps fastidious supervisors of female reading in the present nice era.'55 John Gibson Lockhart was more relentless in condemning Hunt's èxtreme moral depravity' and `rancid obscenities': `The author has voluntarily chosen ± a subject not of simple seduction alone ± one in which his mind seems absolutely to gloat over all the details of adultery and incest.'56 Hunt himself was well aware that The Story of Rimini would be vulnerable to the charge of immorality. In his preface to the poem, he admitted that such a story was `no means of recommending'.57 Nevertheless, the episode had long been admired by the Italians, including Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch, which may have done Hunt some credit.58 This was no excuse, however, for the sensual descriptions of a group of naked females in `The Nymphs', the most flagrant example of which was, à smooth down-arching thigh / Tapering with tremulous mass internally' (II, 75±6). The adamantly ToryAnglican British Critic insinuated that Hunt and his female acquaintances in Hampstead indulged themselves in licentiousness similar to that of the poet and the nymphs in `The Nymphs'.59 Hunt conceded that `voluptuousness' pervaded his poetical volume Foliage, `like a spectre at noon-day'; but argued that explicit sensuality was distinct from mere `grossness'.60 The Quarterly Review, however, branded Hunt's poetry as `practically pernicious' and contended that there could be no justification for `writing that which a modest woman cannot hear without pain'.61 Hunt thus promoted liberal middle-class values, distinct from the traditional morality of Christian ethics. Since the Anglican Church and the Tory government together formed the foundation of the traditional value system, being morally pernicious was equivalent to being politically subversive. Clarke later recalled the first decades of the nineteenth century as `those days of ``Bible-Crown-and-Constitution'' supremacy'.62 The Quarterly Review considered Hunt's poetry to be threatening to the established order:




He may amuse or deceive himself with distinctions between voluptuousness and grossness, but will he never learn that things indifferent or innocent in themselves may become dangerous from the weakness or corruption of the recipient? An author is bound to consider not how Adam and Eve in Paradise would have been affected by this or that description, but how in the present state of society it may operate on those for whom he writes.63 Hunt's aesthetic, with its celebration of the luxury of the senses and its lack of morality, was seditious enough to ruffle the sensibility of the upholders of the establishment. But Hunt went even further: he loudly condemned Christianity as Àn unattractive creed' and à gloomy and ascetic enthusiasm'.64 Christian morality and asceticism, especially the denial of earthly pleasures and the doctrine of eternal damnation, were the chief enemies to Hunt's aesthetics of pleasure. He contended that the moral of The Story of Rimini was not ùnjust, and bigoted, and unhappy', but `tolerant and reconciling'. The moral purpose of the tale was not to tell a story of the damnation of sinners, but rather to celebrate `the most natural impulses' of human passion.65 Such an open condemnation of Christianity provoked the wrath of conservative reviewers. Hunt's fame (or notoriety) had already been established as editor of the radical newspaper Examiner. Tory reviewers correctly observed the aesthetic project implied in The Story of Rimini (1816) and Foliage (1818) to be an integral part of Hunt's bourgeois politics. He was condemned as a seditious, libellous scribbler, abusing the rights of the press.66 The Eclectic Review branded his aesthetic principles as `the creed of the heathen and the morals of the libertine'.67 The British Critic criticised The Descent of Liberty (1815) for the `pert and vulgar insolence of a Sunday demagogue, dictating on matters of taste to town apprentices'.68 Lockhart also reprimanded Hunt's `paid panderism to the vilest passions of that mob of which he is himself a firebrand', and accused him of corrupting `milliners and apprentice-boys'.69 In the eyes of Tory reviewers, Keats was one of these town apprentice-boys seduced and corrupted by the demagogic Hunt, who certainly did imbue the young Keats with his liberal politics. Whereas conservatives perceived Hunt to be a parvenu transgressing the limits of his social position, Keats at that stage regarded Hunt, along with Alfred, William Tell, William Wallace and Kosciousko, as a liberal hero, òne of those who in the cause of freedom fell' (`To George Felton Mathew' 66). Hunt was idolised as `Libertas' in Keats's epistles `To My Brother George' (24) and `To Charles Cowden Clarke' (44), and in `Specimen of an Induction




to a Poem' (61). Even after becoming somewhat disillusioned with Hunt's personality, Keats did not abandon his liberal sympathies: Ì hope sincerely I shall be able to put a Mite of help to the Liberal side of the Question before I die.'70 In Endymion, he expressed what he thought of `the present Ministers' (III, 1±22), and Tory critics were quick to notice the young poet's contempt for authority in his questioning: Àre then regalities all gilded masks?' (III, 22).71 The British Critic considered the passage as à jacobinical apostrophe'.72 Lockhart quoted this apostrophe in full, informing the reader that `Keats belongs to the Cockney School of Politics, as well as the Cockney School of Poetry. . . . Hear how their bantling has already learned to lisp sedition.'73 As we have seen, Hunt may seem to be a quintessential product of the eighteenth-century bourgeois culture of affluence. Yet there was a crucial difference between Hunt and, for example, Defoe: Defoe felt a need to `reconcile plenty with morality',74 but Hunt was quite happy to eliminate morality from luxury altogether. In the age of Defoe, the gentry and aristocracy attacked the excessive wealth and the luxury enjoyed by the trading class, arguing that luxury-induced effeminacy and idleness were likely to corrupt both the individual and the nation, the most powerful precedent being `the history of the degeneracy of Rome, from virtuous republic to luxurious empire'.75 Defoe, refuting the charges of idleness and moral corruption levelled against the mercantile class, strenuously defended tradesmen, who were in his view sturdy and industrious, and therefore virtuous citizens.76 The eighteenth century was a period in which unprecedented wealth produced a profound cultural embarrassment as well as moralist suspicions of material pleasures. Members of the rising middle class typically felt a need to come to terms with their commercial prosperity, and in order to assert their character and integrity, middle-class writers had to invest sensibility with moral virtue in their novels.77 What distinguished Hunt from most eighteenth-century middle-class writers was that he was not concerned with morality at all. He forged an alternative aesthetic to the neoclassical poetic, but he did not find it necessary to justify pleasure ± the central element in this new aesthetic ± by appeal to morality. On the contrary, Hunt promoted pleasure without morality. This epicurean aesthetics, which seemed to prefer pagan amorality to Christian ethics, could not be more vulnerable to the charge of immorality and impiety. The Quarterly Review shrewdly commented on the moral danger implied in Hunt's aesthetics:




It may seem a wild apprehension to talk of the systematic revival of Epicureism [sic] amongst us in this age of the world; yet something very like it both speculatively and practically, and that too in its most dangerous because least offensive form, seems to be inculcated in all the writings we have alluded to. . . . their leading tenet is, that the enjoyment of the pleasures of intellect and sense is not to be considered as the permitted, and regulated use of God's blessings, but the great object, and duty of life. Strip Mr. Hunt of his `leafy luxuries,' `his flowrets,' `his wine, music, and sociality,' and this is the bare maxim on which he builds.78 (my emphasis) The hallmark of Hunt's aesthetic project was its total affirmation of pleasure, without any moral or religious justification. Hunt seemed to be the first middle-class writer to advocate pleasure for its own sake, and to regard the enjoyment of life as `the earthly possibility of the only end of virtue itself '.79 While the writers of sentimental novels struggled to reconcile indulgence with moral virtue, Hunt equated pleasure with virtue. Through his aesthetic project, he came to terms with ± or rather, thoroughly approved of ± the culture of affluence in which luxury had become èssential' to a bourgeois life. In this sense, Hunt may be best understood as an inheritor of the economic theories of Mandeville, Hume and Adam Smith, rather than as a successor to the eighteenthcentury writers of sentimental popular novels. However, Hunt's bourgeois ethic and aesthetic could not possibly be absolved from moral attack in an age of the political and ideological ferment, in which one pro-establishment critic could pontificate that `the germ of all true poetry is religion and patriotism'.80

The question of vulgarity It is well known in literary history that Hunt was savagely rebuked by contemporary reviewers for his vulgarity and Cockneyism. Along with that of morality, the question of vulgarity in Hunt's cultural project was directly related to the ideological class struggle in the early nineteenth century. In modern literary criticism, however, Hunt has been regarded as a minor poet mainly because of his `stylistic' vulgarity, which is considered unworthy of serious critical investigation. In the preface to The Story of Rimini, Hunt claimed that the language of poetry had to be derived from that of real life, to which he added, òmitting of course mere vulgarisms and fugitive phrases'.81 Yet, as both contemporary and modern critics noted, Hunt's poetry was full of excessive familiarity,




colloquialism and stylistic laxity. Modern Keatsians are content to dismiss Hunt as vulgar and insignificant, for they separate him from Keats by reinventing Keats as a `high' artist, both in moral and poetical terms. However, the contemporary charge of `vulgarity' against Hunt was not merely literary-critical, but also political-ideological. The most conspicuous and controversial feature of Hunt's poetry was a socio-cultural `vulgarity'. Although greater mobility became possible in early nineteenth-century English society, class pretensions were still rampant. One salient example was Hunt's unabashed exhibition of his friendship with Lord Byron, which incited the wrath of conservative reviewers. Hunt dedicated The Story of Rimini to Byron, using the over-familiar address, `MY DEAR BYRON'. John Wilson Croker and William Gifford, in their (in)famous attack on the Cockney school of poetry, condemned Hunt as a social climber: We never, in so few lines, saw so many clear marks of the vulgar impatience of a low man, conscious and ashamed of his wretched vanity, and labouring, with coarse flippancy, to scramble over the bounds of birth and education, and fidget himself into the stoutheartedness of being familiar with a LORD.82 In the eyes of conservative reviewers, Hunt's dedication betrayed `the shibboleth of low birth and low habits'.83 The New Monthly Magazine also reprimanded Hunt for his èasy impudence'.84 Even the liberal Augustan Review was uneasy: `The dedication is to Lord Byron. We could not help thinking it rather arrogant, till we had read the poem.'85 What contemporary reviewers found particularly vulgar was Hunt's presumption to appreciate and write `verse' despite his lack of social and educational credentials. Although literary activities were no longer centred on the court, and the production of literature was increasingly considered as a commodity subject to market forces, the pretensions of class and poetry were far from extinct. Hence Lockhart's indignation: Àll the great poets of our country have been men of some rank in society; and there is no vulgarity in any of their writings.'86 Lockhart was triumphant in disclosing Hunt's lack of the traditional requirements for writing verse: He is a man of little education. He knows absolutely nothing of Greek, almost nothing of Latin, and his knowledge of Italian literature is confined to a few of the most popular of Petrarch's sonnets,





In response to this charge, Hunt's defenders emphasised the authenticity of individual experience rather than the authority of tradition. Their argument was similar to Defoe's when he defended the industrious and independent tradesmen by valuing personal achievement over rank and wealth by birthright. The Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine praised Hunt as òne who has wrought his way in society independently, without truckling or chicane; and who comes, at length, by the mere force of superior genius, taste, talent, and application, to have an influence on public opinion'.88 Hazlitt, in The Spirit of the Age (1825), shrewdly commented that `Mr. Hunt ought to have been a gentleman born, and to have patronised men of letters. He might then have played, and sung, and laughed, and talked his life away . . . and his Story of Rimini would have been praised by Mr. Blackwood.'89 This fierce ideological dispute revealed ever-increasing mobility in the early nineteenth century. Just as the new middle classes were clamouring for political reform, so they also wanted to take a share of (high) culture. In the eyes of the establishment, however, Hunt's poetry was a potential threat to a traditional system of social and cultural hierarchy. Indeed, if Hunt had not tried to write verse, or more precisely, if his writings had not so glaringly embodied the cultural codes of the rising commercial class, he would not have been attacked so ferociously. Byron lucidly unravelled what distinguished the Cockney school from other plebeian poets: The grand distinction of the Under forms of the New School of poets ± is their Vulgarity. ± By this I do not mean that they are Coarse ± but ``shabby-genteel'' ± as it is termed. ± A man may be coarse & yet not vulgar ± and the reverse. ± ± Burns is often coarse ± but never vulgar. ± ± Chatterton is never vulgar; ± nor Wordsworth ± nor the higher of the Lake school, though they treat of low life in all it's [sic] branches. ± It is in their finery that the New-under School ± are most vulgar; ± and they may be known by this at once ± as what we called at Harrow ± `à Sunday Blood'' might be easily distinguished from a Gentleman. . . . 90 It was Hunt's very claim to be a poet that caused particular anger among conservative reviewers. What marked him as peculiarly vulgar was, as Byron shrewdly observed, his `finery', that is to say, his gesture of writing poetry proper.91



and an imperfect acquaintance with Ariosto, through the medium of Mr Hoole.87

It is telling that Byron considered Burns to be `coarse ± but never vulgar'. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it was fashionable among the educated audience to discover `peasant poets'. Yet these poets, who included Robert Burns, Stephen Duck, Robert Bloomfield and John Clare, were never allowed to transgress their social position. They were expected to remain uneducated children of nature, in order to be consumed and appropriated by the literate urban audience.92 Hence peasant poetry was not vulgar, but only coarse. It may be argued that Wordsworth tried to imitate the simple naivety of peasant poetry in his Lyrical Ballads.93 Although both Wordsworth and Hunt seemed to be trying to liberate poetry from neoclassical rules, there was a considerable cultural gap between them. For while Wordsworth created a high version of folk art for the educated audience, Hunt produced a popular version of high art for less (or not properly) educated readers. It was the transgression of his alloted socio-cultural position that branded Hunt as vulgar. Not surprisingly, Keats, who came from the lower middle class yet chose poetry as his ònly' vocation, was scurrilously attacked as a member of, to borrow Byron's phrase, `the Mockbirds & bards of Mr. Hunt [sic] little chorus'.94 Most members of Hunt's circle were engaged in prose-writing, if not novel-writing, including literary and dramatic reviews, miscellaneous essays and political articles. These prose-writings, whether fiction or journalism, presupposed an ever-expanding middle-class audience. The origin of a substantial group of middle-class prose writers and readers coincided with an unprecedented expansion in the literary market, driven by the phenomenal rise of journals, newspapers and sentimental popular novels in the eighteenth century. These were cultural innovations that catered for and also gave expression to the aesthetic, cultural and political demands of the new middle class. The most significant contribution to the history of this new literary market was evidently fiction, which was a major leisure pursuit during the eighteenth century. However, fiction was usually considered as a woman's genre (the majority of both writers and readers were women), or at least gendered as feminine; therefore it was vulnerable to moral criticism. Even in the first decades of the nineteenth century, the social stigma attached to fiction lingered on. One reason Keats never touched novel-writing, even when in dire financial straits, may be that it would have irretrievably revealed his lower bourgeois social origins. For Keats, joining a club of English Poets (could have) amounted to liberation from his place in society. While the eighteenth century witnessed the rise of the novel, the first decades of the nineteenth century saw an explosion in poetry publica-




tions, which reached its peak in 1820 when àt least 323 volumes or collections of verse were published in Great Britain, 204 of these at a minimum being original'.95 Stuart Curran attributes this phenomenal outpouring of verse to the nationalistic and also experimental enthusiasm for the inexhaustible wealth in the rediscovered `history' of English poetry.96 On the other hand, Lee Erickson argues that it was the technological conditions associated with publishing which determined the commercial and cultural status of poetry. He attributes à poetry boom during the first two decades of the nineteenth century' to the rise in the cost of paper during the Napoleonic Wars: The greater cost of books generally encouraged poetry at the expense of prose and made poetry a more important part of the publishing market by rewarding its concentrated language while discouraging diffusive prose . . . readers, able to afford fewer books than before and forced to read those few more often, demanded a verbal texture that would provide more pleasure upon reading and rereading than would prose.97 I would suggest that the phenomenon in which poetry became a national obsession was also facilitated by an increasing middle-class demand for elite culture. Since the eighteenth century, the new middle class had tried to acquire and vindicate its character by manifesting `good taste', rather than by flexing its pecuniary muscle. The eighteenthcentury vogue for the sentimental novel was superseded by a craze for poetry in the early nineteenth century, and in both movements, the driving force was the new middle class, avid for leisure and cultural pursuits. `The acquisition of increased leisure,' as Plumb puts it, `combined with a modest affluence in a rising social class, has usually led to a desire for self-improvement.'98 For the upwardly mobile middle class, which demanded both pleasure and prestige, a transition in its taste from fiction to poetry meant a cultural upgrading. `The language of poetry,' wrote Hazlitt, `naturally falls in with the language of power.'99 It is not at all surprising that Hunt and Keats were attacked for their vulgarity in such a period. Hunt was a standard-bearer of the bourgeois ethic and aesthetic, and never ceased to cultivate the middle-class taste for poetry.

Culture, commerce and commercialism There were quite a few contemporary comments on the poetry explosion of the day, and conservative reviewers generally disapproved of the





Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable, as well as the most common, seems to be no other than the Metromanie. The just celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of lyrics behind her in her band-box.100 The Literary Gazette also deplored the flood of so many schools of poetry, and suggested that the word `fashion' should substitute for `school': The phrase `School of Poetry' . . . has of late come much into vogue. Every person who departs from received canons in either art [poetry or painting], is said, pleasantly enough, to be the founder of a school, and all his fellow rhymesters to `belong to this school'. . . . Schools are, or ought to be, grave places, where wisdom is acquired; but Fashion admits of as many follies and fripperies as you please, the last being invariably the best, the newest the most enchanting. Cottage bonnets and insipid pastorals, hussar cloaks and martial odes, lace tippets and sonnets, long skirts and romantic tales, turbans and Eastern poems, costume a la Greque and Epics, may then be alternately and equally the rage for a month. . . . 101 This is a vivid description of the commercialised poetry industry in the early nineteenth century. While the rediscovery and redistribution of the wealth of English poetry had brought about ùnprecedented licence to all the vagaries of versification', the phenomenal expansion in the publishing industry further encouraged the proliferation of new `schools' of poetry, `whether given to the watery, cockney, be-natural, or sentimental'.102 Hunt was often seen as head of yet another new school of poetry. According to the Eclectic Review, `There are many new schools, for in fact, this cant phrase has become quite hackneyed in its application. The newest school is Mr. Hunt's little school.'103 Hunt's poetry, especially The Story of Rimini, was often considered to be idiosyncratic even during the poetry craze. The Edinburgh Review commented that `Mr Hunt . . . does not belong to any of the modern schools of poetry. . . . His poetry is not like Mr Wordsworth's, which is metaphysical; nor like Mr Coleridge's, which is fantastical; nor like



trend in which an increasing number of middle-class writers turned to verse. Lockhart described the poetry fever as follows:


We have, in the present affluence of poetical genius, almost every style of poetry yearly issuing from the press; the imaginative philosophy of Wordsworth, the bosom touches of Southey, the stir and spirit of Scott, the voluptuous elegance of Moore, the intense feeling of Lord Byron and Joanna Baillie: yet we have nothing exactly in the manner of the `Story of Rimini,' the easy graceful style of familiar narrative.105 This peculiarity of Hunt's poetry as `the easy graceful style of familiar narrative' was the manifestation of his bourgeois poetics. His poetry was written for the metropolitan middle class, and the considerable popularity it enjoyed may be attributed to its being an easy and pleasant read. The Monthly Review called Hunt `the present candidate for the laurel, ± the laurel, we mean, bestowed by popular approbation', rather than by `courtly favour'.106 It may be argued that Hunt was the first (or at least the most assiduous) writer both to cater for and to cultivate the middleclass market for poetry. The Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine later attacked Hunt's `popular' poetry for corrupting apprentices and clerks in the City. In other words, these conservative journals considered Hunt's poetry to be commercial and market-oriented, as opposed to serious art. Just as Wedgwood commercialised the Greek cultural heritage in the form of potteries, so Hunt popularised poetry in a familiar and accessible style.107 Byron, aristocratic and somewhat anachronistic, also accused Hunt of commercialising poetry: `Did you read his [Hunt's] skimble-skamble about [Wordsworth] being at the head of his own profession, in the eyes of those who followed it? I thought that Poetry was an art, or an attribute, and not a profession.'108 For Byron, who perceived poetry to be either an aristocratic attribute or high art, Hunt was catering for the plebeian taste of a mass audience. Ironically, while the upper class perceived Hunt as embodying the values and attitudes of the new commercial middle class, Hunt saw himself as offering his poetry as an antidote to the commercialism and materialism of the age. The new commercial middle class had always had to tackle an embarrassment of riches and the stigma attached to being `new money'. Defoe, it will be recalled, himself a former hosiery merchant, strenuously defended the commercial interests against the prevailing attack upon luxury, attempting to invest the pursuit of material pleasures with moral virtues of industry and diligence. In The



Mr Southey's, which is monastical.'104 Another reviewer tried to analyse what distinguished Hunt's poetry from others':

Complete English Tradesman (1726), he presented a new and ascendant mercantile class as `the trading gentry': industrious, diligent and virtuous men, superior to the landed gentry, who were idle, dissolute and luxurious. Almost a hundred years later, Hunt also had to deal with the traditional attack upon the nouveaux riches for being mercenary and tasteless. In order to vindicate the character and integrity of the new middle class, Hunt adopted a rather paradoxical strategy. He promoted the cultivation of a taste for poetry, as a means to acquiring a sort of classless status, that of à man of taste' or à man of letters'. The notable difference between Defoe and Hunt in asserting their identity as middle class was that while Defoe emphasised the virtuous labour of the trading class, Hunt tried to dissociate himself from tradesmen altogether. The mercantile class was traditionally attacked for a lack of taste, both in behaviour and character; parvenu wealth was generally considered to be antithetical to good taste, as was commerce to culture. For the commercial middle class to climb up the cultural ladder, it needed to divest itself of commercialism. Hunt claimed to popularise and disseminate high culture in the `money-injured land'.109 This attempt to segregate culture from commerce anticipated the modern condition in which the credentials of high culture are derived precisely from their status as noncommodities. Becoming a man of letters was synonymous with being transferred to a curiously classless realm which transcended the ideological turmoil in society. This strategy must have appealed to the young Keats, who was eager to transcend his lower bourgeois background. However, Hunt's decommercialising strategy contained a paradox which left it all the more vulnerable to the charge of vulgarity. Hunt promoted the bourgeois ethic and aesthetic, by which high culture was popularised and made available to everyone; possessing a portion of culture enabled one to transcend the restrictions of class. Or rather, the acquisition of taste amounted to the appropriation of `class'. As Pierre Bourdieu points out, `taste' is the most vital weapon in strategies of social distinction, and consequently functions as the key marker of class.110 The other side of the coin, however, was that Hunt could be seen as a `culture vulture'; and that his poetry inevitably turned out to be commercial, for the very reason that he tried to appeal to the greatest number of the public, in order to `democratise' poetry. The paradox of Hunt's strategy was that while his consumer aesthetic functioned as a form of counter-culture against the elitist aristocratic poetic, it nevertheless needed to address its audience as the chosen few in order to claim its cultural authenticity. Therefore, à literary man' constituted through Hunt's bourgeois aesthetic project claimed superiority not only




over neoclassicism, but also over the commercial middle class itself. Indeed, aristocratic neoclassicism and bourgeois mercantilism were common enemies to Hunt: `People have ceased to believe . . . that any given John Tomkins, Esq. upon the strength of his stock of Johnson's Poets, can sit down, and draw upon our admiration in the usual formulas, as he would upon his banker for money.'111 Yet this fabrication of the bourgeois subject as a literary man turns out to be a precarious fiction, once its inherent paradox is unravelled and exposed. Hunt's cultural project thus contained two contradictory aspects. On the one hand, he argued that high culture had to be popularised as a leisure pursuit, and democratised as a commodity. On the other, Hunt adopted a marketing strategy which offered his poetry as a cultural pursuit implying elitism and prestige. `The principle of poetry,' as Hazlitt shrewdly observed, ìs a very anti-levelling principle.'112 The biggest irony was that Hunt could not help but rely upon commercialism in order to sell his work to the greatest number of the public who considered themselves as the cultured few. Such a paradoxical marketing strategy was not unusual among the middle-class `literary' journals at the time. When a new Tory weekly, the Literary Gazette and Journal of the Belles Lettres, was launched, its advertisement stressed that the magazine was èxpressly designed for the Polite Circle', addressing itself èxclusively and at once to Men of Letters'.113 C. and J. Ollier, in their advertisement of A Literary Miscellany, adopted a similar strategy: Às this work will have no reference to Politics or Polemics, it may perhaps afford a channel for the communications of literary Gentlemen who are unwilling to have their writings surrounded by the fever and bitterness of party dispute.'114 Possessing a portion of culture enabled anyone to become a `gentleman' of letters in a curiously classless realm. The contradictory politics involved in inventing a respectable bourgeois subject were most glaringly embodied in one of Hunt's many cultural productions for the middle class, The Literary Pocket-Book. In the following, we shall take a detailed look at this annual pocketbook. The Literary Pocket-Book; or, Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art was a pocket diary and appointment book edited by Hunt. It was published annually by the Ollier brothers (Keats's first publisher) from 1819 to 1823, and sold by booksellers and stationers, not only in London but also in provincial towns such as Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. Its popularity and financial success at the time of publication are apparent from the facts that it was published for five consecutive years, and Hunt's essay À Calendar of Nature' in the first edition was reissued two years later in the form of a book called The Months: Descriptive of





a long Calendar of the Months written by myself & interspersed with quotations from dead & living poets, ± Lists of men of original genius from the earliest times & the present, ± of living authors of Europe, artists, & musicians, ± & extracts from Bacon & others, original poetry. . . . 115 The Literary Pocket-Book was a composite production of ephemeral popular culture, all the more ephemeral because it was replaced annually. It is almost completely ignored by modern critics, but I shall look at it as à given society's cultural production', to borrow Marilyn Butler's phrase, in order to decipher Hunt's project of constructing the image of a respectable bourgeois subject as a man of taste.116 The primary object of The Literary Pocket-Book was to cultivate the middle-class taste for literature in an accessible and democratic form. On the other hand, it was also a commercial venture, whose objective was a good sale. The booksellers persuaded Hunt to produce The Literary Pocket-Book, telling him that ìt will do exceedingly well'.117 And it did. It was intended to appeal to the growing middle-class public as a fashionable and yet affordable commodity. The London Magazine recommended the pocket-book as follows: `Five shillings cannot well be laid out more advantageously for a Christmas present (to a man, woman, or child), than in the purchase of the Literary Pocket-Book for 1821.'118 Even John Wilson in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, after heaping his usual abuse upon Hunt and Keats, concluded that the pocket-book itself could be recommended: `The price is only five shillings, and to a stranger in London it is worth three times five, if it were for nothing but the lists. . . . we have purchased six copies for new-year's gifts to six young ladies of our acquaintance.'119 Wilson also referred to its fashionable appearance in comparison with other pocketbooks: `the Literary Pocket-Book, though a sort of almanack, is quite dressy-looking with its scarlet coat.'120 Apart from the stylish binding and the affordable price, the strong sales point of The Literary Pocket-Book was, as the title says, its `literariness'. This was a period in which literature was increasingly commercialised and commodified in the handy and digestible forms of albums, anthologies and elegant extracts. For example, Hazlitt edited Select British Poets, or New Elegant Extracts from Chaucer to the Present Time (1824), which was meant `to conduce most beneficially to form the taste



the Successive Beauties of the Year. Hunt described the first edition of The Literary Pocket-Book as containing

and amuse the fancy of those who have not leisure or industry to make themselves masters of the whole range of English poetry'.121 Hazlitt's anthology can indeed be seen as the prototype of a number of our modern equivalents targeted at `general' (that is, non-academic) readers who have neither the time nor the inclination for close reading, but nevertheless want to become (or appear) cultured. In the early nineteenth century, poetry thus became everyone's commodity, not only educational and entertaining, but also embellished: it was the practice for books to be sold in simple wrappers or boards, and then to be bound at the customer's expense. The bindery side of Taylor & Hessey's firm was one of the most prosperous aspects of their business.122 Taylor and Hessey's poetical publications could be bound in `calf, russia leather, Morocco, vellum &c . . . ornamented and illustrated with Original drawings'.123 Select British Poets was equipped not only with Hazlitt's Critical Remarks, but also was Embellished with Seven Ornamented Portraits, after a Design by T. Stothard, R.A.124 The publication of pocket-books was another of the commercial projects set up by publishers in this period. Yet the marketing strategy of Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book was to emphasise its cultural aim of `forwarding the interests of Literature', and it was applauded by the middle-class journals.125 A liberal London weekly, the Literary Chronicle, selected The Literary Pocket-Book as a choice for the literary-minded: `From the great number and variety of Pocket Books which are published annually, we should select ``The Literary Pocket Book,'' and we are sure that our literary readers would commend our choice.'126 The London Magazine, whose staff was drawn largely from Hunt's circle, gave a catalogue of contemporary popular pocket-books such as `the ``Gentleman's Diary,'' and the ``Ladies Diary''', òne almanack for ``Farmers,'' and two for ``Clergymen; '' (none for lawyers), one ``London'' Almanack, and one ``Celestial'' ditto'.127 Not surprisingly, the distinctly middle-class London Magazine proceeded to heap hearty praise on The Literary Pocket-Book for its rare quality: And now, lastly, and, beyond all comparison, above its fellows, has arisen `like an exhalation,' and still stands the LITERARY POCKETBOOK! Before this book appeared, there were those which we have quoted above, and many others: one was useful, and another clever; a third ornamental, and a fourth amusing; but this was all. Now, our favourite has what the others contain . . . and it has original prose and





The great popularity of The Literary Pocket-Book was, in all likeliness, due to this literary cultivation which supplied the middle-class demand for cultural prestige. The pocket-book was composed of four sections: an essay by Hunt, a diary which occupied half of the entire volume, literary miscellanea, and an informative list ranging from the names of ancient Greek philosophers to hackney coach fares in London. The organisation of the book changed little throughout the period of its annual publications. The contents of the first edition were as follows: Introduction ± Calendar of nature ± Diary, &c ± Chronological list of eminent persons in letters, philosophy, and the arts, from the most remote areas ± Living authors, native and foreign ± Living musicians, native and foreign ± Musical performers and teachers, with their addresses ± Inns of court ± Universities ± Foundation schools ± Literary, philosophical, and philanthropic institutions ± Medical lectures ± Theatres ± Performers at the principal theatres ± Exhibitions ± Private collections of pictures in London ± Print and plaster-cast shops ± Booksellers and publishers ± Foreign booksellers ± Circulating libraries and reading rooms ± New books ± Teachers of languages ± Anecdotes ± Extracts, &c ± Original poetry ± Law and University terms ± London bankers ± Hackney-coach fares ± Rates of watermen ± Value of money ± Stamps.129 What is immediately apparent from these contents is that The Literary Pocket-Book presupposed an audience who were eager for self-cultivation. The pocket-book offered a handy and portable database, which enabled them to have easy access to useful information about educational institutions and cultural activities. Hunt made a list of eminent authors, artists and musicians according to their `great original genius', but his perception of original genius cannot be taken for granted as another Romantic commonplace.130 He based his selection of artists òn the strength of their talents, as distinguished from the ambiguous eminence arising from Societies and Academies'.131 The implication was that one should, and could, cultivate oneself through individual (that is,



poetry, which we will not place (even for the sake of comparison), by the side of other pocket-books; and it possesses really valuable lists of authors, and scientific men, in most quarters of the civilized world; thus yielding literary information which cannot be obtained in any other work whatever.128

original) efforts. Gay suggests that the middle-class claim to cultivation can be à piquant and useful ingredient in a possible definition of the bourgeoisie'.132 Along with information about booksellers, publishers and circulating libraries (which included C. and J. Ollier), Hunt gave a list of addresses of print shops where Èngravings from the Classical Masters are to be had', and of plaster-cast shops where `Casts, in Plaster of Paris, from Antique Statues and Busts are sold', so that middle-class people should be able to decorate their parlours with reproductions of Raphael or of Greek busts.133 Hunt himself was known for the collection of classical pictures and busts in his Hampstead cottage (with which Keats was fascinated). Bourdieu argues that àrt and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfil a social function of legitimating social differences'.134 Hunt directed all his cultural efforts towards articulating social distinction. This middle-class claim to cultivation was widespread in the beginning of the `bourgeois century': `Few bourgeois households were complete without pictures on the wall, music in the parlor, classics in the glassed-in bookcase. Bourgeois, men and women, sang, sketched, faithfully attended concerts and literary readings, recited and even wrote poetry.'135 In the eyes of English traditionalists, however, the middle classes, even equipped with the attributes of cultivation, were nothing more than `philistine' social climbers displaying their conspicuous consumption and invidious distinction.136 Coleridge perceived the everexpanding `READING PUBLIC' to be insatiably `dieted at the two public ordinaries of Literature, the circulating libraries and the periodical press', as opposed to the traditional `sound book learnedness, into which our old public schools still continue to initiate their pupils'.137 The democratic format of The Literary Pocket-Book directly challenged the traditional form of knowledge. Its miscellaneous inclusiveness meant to give a wide range of information about literature and art which was formerly inaccessible to the general public. The body of hierarchised knowledge had been overthrown, as the contents of The Literary Pocket-Book show, by placing literary anecdotes and hackney coach fares side by side. Although the purpose of The Literary Pocket-Book was to democratise and disseminate literature in an enjoyable and affordable form, it claimed to be manufactured not for the whole range of the commercial middle classes, but exclusively for `persons of taste or literature'.138 Its possessors were supposed to be the cultured elite, as distinguished from the other members of the new middle classes. Contemporary reviewers were quick to notice such class pretensions, whether favourably or not. The Literary Chronicle recommended The Literary Pocket-Book as a





This little manual is valuable to every poet, painter, musician, and lover of the fine arts; inasmuch as it gives him a sketch of the choice spirits who have knelt to genius, and who still hover round our earthly tenements and enchant us with subjects highly superior to the grovelling attractions of wealth.139 In the essay entitled À Calendar of Observers; or, Specimens of the greater or less Enjoyment which people derive from the World they live in, according the Number and Healthiness of their Perceptions', in the 1820 edition of The Literary Pocket-Book, Hunt presented an ideal bourgeois subject as a man of literature and òbserver of Nature', superior to a `Mere Man of Business'. He described the typical tradesman as follows: Sees his clerks or apprentices up. Sees his customers come in all day. Sees their money. . . . Sees shelves and bundles all about him. Sees his lawyer and broker. . . . Sees to his accounts in the evening, and endeavours to think himself a happy man. Sees his goods adulterated. Goes to bed, and sees in his dreams a great pale multitude looking at him, whom he sets down for people he has cheated. Sees himself exposed, and wakes in a trepidation.140 The man of business was thus presented as lacking taste and `culture', and Hunt strategically distinguished a man of culture and literature from the mercantile people. Inevitably, however, such a modus operandi for constructing a cultured bourgeois subject was constantly exposed to the charge of commercialism and vulgarity.



possession suitable for men of literary taste and artistic cultivation, in implied opposition to men of mere mercantilism:

3

Nature for conspicuous consumption The conception of nature underwent a dramatic transformation during the eighteenth century. The rise of consumer culture transformed the natural world, be it a fashionable picturesque site, a landscape garden or landscape painting, into an object of consumption.1 Nature was increasingly seen as a locale for relief and regeneration, as an antidote to the rapid industrialisation and capitalisation of the world. Not surprisingly, such familiar terms as `nature-lover' and `nature poetry' date from the late eighteenth century.2 Nature turned into an object of aesthetic pleasure, or more precisely, of conspicuous aesthetic consumption. One aspect of this phenomenon was an increasing idealisation of ùnspoiled nature' in the second half of the century. It was during this period that the view of the Alps was dramatically transformed from hideous heaps into sublime mountains.3 The writings of Edmund Burke and William Gilpin were hugely influential in establishing the taste for appreciating natural landscape.4 Such aesthetic categories as the sublime, the beautiful and the picturesque not only became the fashionable topics of the day, but actually encouraged and enticed people to travel in order to experience nature in an original and elemental state. Towards the end of the century, more and more people went on a tour to see sublime or picturesque sites ± if not the Alps, then attractions closer to home, such as the Lake District, the Wye Valley and South Wales, the Scottish Highlands, North Wales and the New Forest.5 The rise and rise of consumer culture enabled middleclass people to become mobile, in every sense of the word. Their passion for picturesque tours was one aspect of the bourgeois culture of affluence. 39



The Aesthetics of Nature

Keats himself was one of these middle-class consumers, ever-thirsty for leisure activities. In the summer of 1818, he went on a walking tour of Scotland with Charles Brown ± a `grand tour' that Keats could afford. Like many other middle-class travellers who had `been long in city pent', Keats and Brown set out in search of wild and original nature in the countryside. Thomas West, in his classic Guide to the Lakes (1778; tenth edn, 1812), advised that `The best season for visiting the lakes is from the beginning of June to the end of August.'6 Keats and Brown conformed to the established guidebook routes, as well as to the recommended season for travelling. Their walking tour of roughly 2,000 miles through northern England and Scotland, with a diversion to northern Ireland, began in late June, and ended prematurely, because of Keats's aggravated sore throat, in early August. For Keats, it was not merely a country holiday, but a grand tour celebrating the commencement of his new life. Writing to Haydon, Keats could hardly conceal his excitement at following the path of other English poets: I purpose within a Month to put my knapsack at my back and make a pedestrian tour through the North of England, and part of Scotland ± to make a sort of Prologue to the Life I intend to pursue ± that is to write, to study and to see all Europe at the lowest expence. I will clamber through the Clouds and exist. I will get such an accumulation of stupendous recollolections [sic] that as I walk through the suburbs of London I may not see them ± I will stand upon Mount Blanc and remember this coming Summer when I intend to straddle ben Lomond ± with my Soul!7 Keats must have borne in mind that Wordsworth had also made Scottish tours. He even dreamt of travelling through Europe to see (and even stand in the midst of ) the Alps. However, his dream was not to be realised, for he did not live long enough to stand on Mont Blanc; and in any case, might not have been able to reach Mont Blanc, considering his financial difficulties. Grand and almost Byronic as it was, Keats's life plan was in another sense humble: he hoped to lead a life of cultural pursuits àt the lowest expence'. Keats was to spend the rest of his life (except for the last few months) in the suburbs of London, whereas Shelley travelled through Continental Europe, saw the Alps and composed the poem `Mont Blanc'. A grand tour through northern England and Scotland was a middleclass equivalent of the traditional Grand Tour. Keats may have known that the sight of Mont Blanc excited in Shelley à sentiment of extatic




[sic] wonder, not unallied to madness' in the summer of 1816, for the poem `Mont Blanc' was published the following year in Percy and Mary Shelley's History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland.8 It was a period in which travelling became very much in vogue, facilitated by the proliferation of travel literature. Travellers' fascination with wilder scenes of unaltered nature was fuelled by a series of publications in the late eighteenth century, such as West's Guide to the Lakes, Gilpin's Observations, Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, in Several Parts of England, Particularly the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland (1786; third edn, 1792), Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757; with an added introduction, 1759), and Thomas Gray's Journal in the Lakes (1775). The authors of travelogues not only gave practical information and topographical description, but also analysed questions of taste such as Burke's distinction between the sublime and the beautiful, and Gilpin's definition of the picturesque. A travelogue was thus offered partly as a cultural pursuit, but, being also a commercial product, it was luxuriously illuminated with handsome illustrations, engravings and cartography. `By the time Keats and Brown set out,' as Carol Kyros Walker remarks, èven the most commercial guide books prescribed experiences of the beautiful, the sublime, the picturesque, and the historical for travellers.'9 During his walking grand tour, Keats saw Ailsa Crag, which was considered a `must' if one wanted to experience the sublime. In a letter to his brother Tom, Keats described his encounter with this conical granite island on the south-east coast of Scotland: we had a gradual ascent and got among the tops of the Mountains whence In a little time I descried in the Sea Ailsa Rock 940 feet hight ± it was 15 Miles distant and seemed close upon us ± The effect of ailsa with the peculiar perspective of the Sea in connection with the ground we stood on, and the misty rain then falling gave me a complete Idea of a deluge ± Ailsa struck me very suddenly ± really I was a little alarmed. . . . 10 Keats's awestruck response to Ailsa Crag, and his almost visionary grasp of the sublime landscape of unspoiled nature were quite conventional. As is apparent in his letter cited above, a Burkean response to nature, as well as the relevant topographical information, were pre-programmed into the consciousness of the traveller. In Keats's time, an increasing number of travellers from London set out for the North, and tourism



The Aesthetics of Nature 41

had been growing into a big business. Keats and Brown witnessed the tourist industry booming to cater for à London sharper' in the picturesque sites, which were supposed to preserve unspoiled nature. Brown wrote of Keswick: `Nothing was wanting in the town, at least by attempts, to please a London taste. It was full of lures to pass away the time ± a circulating library, a fossil museum, and exhibition of Mr. Green's drawings, and a camera obscura.'11 The Lake District had been established as a fashionable resort area, a haven for urbane travellers. It is well known that an alarmed Wordsworth later became what we would call today an environmental conservationist. Whereas wild and ùnspoiled' nature was newly established as an object of aesthetic consumption, the fascination with ìmproved' nature ± the beautifully and artificially organised gardens and parks ± persisted. The eighteenth century witnessed also the proliferation of `landscaped' properties. It was increasingly fashionable among the eighteenthcentury landed gentry to arrange their country estates into `pleasing prospects'. Landscape gardeners were willing to ìmprove' nature in order to make it appear more beautiful and, indeed, more `natural'. These landscaped parks and gardens were, however, coexistent with the enclosed lands `with their straight hedges and straight roads' in which tenants and labourers worked.12 But whereas enclosed lands were organised for production, landscaped prospects were arranged purely for aesthetic consumption. Just as Pope's pastoral poetry idealised the life of a shepherd as pleasant and delightful, the eighteenth-century landed classes sought to idealise rural life in its entirety by emptying their pleasing prospects of labourers altogether. Thus during the second half of the eighteenth century, nature, whether unaltered or improved, had become an object of conspicuous aesthetic consumption. Landscape gardening arose as an elite culture, in which the landed aristocracy hired landscape gardeners, poets and painters to invent `natural' beauty. Yet this vogue for artificial landscaping itself contributed to the development of a taste for ùnspoiled' nature towards the end of the century. The cult of the `picturesque' reached a peak in the 1790s, and spread beyond the aristocracy. Whereas Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight had defined the picturesque as `the delicate and sophisticated taste of a select few', Gilpin's guidebooks greatly served to democratise and commercialise the picturesque as `the popular pastime of the bourgeois'.13 Gilpin influenced the touring habits of several generations of Englishmen, setting a consumer trend towards the picturesque landscape in the lakes of Cumberland, the Devonshire coast and the Isle of Wight. Indeed, the middle-class cult




of the picturesque became a fad conspicuous enough to be satirised and ridiculed in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1818). The mass popularisation of nature was given even more impetus in the early nineteenth century. The middle-class people who did not possess large tracts of land increasingly turned to the cultivation of their villa gardens. Just as the domestic picturesque tour was a middleclass counterpart of the Grand Tour, so the cultivation of a villa garden and its plants was a popular version of the landscape gardening of a country estate. In the late eighteenth century, Horace Walpole asserted that `Poetry, Painting, and Gardening, or the Science of Landscape, will forever by men of Taste be deemed Three Sisters, or The Three New Graces who dress and adorn Nature'.14 In the early nineteenth century, gardening became, along with poetry and painting, a desirable leisure pursuit for the newly cultivated middle class. As Martin J. Wiener notes, it is peculiar to England that the new dominant bourgeois culture was parasitic on the already established preoccupations of the aristocracy, rather than an independent phenomenon: it was `gentrified', bearing the imprint of the old aristocracy.15

The suburban gardenesque The landscape gardens of the eighteenth-century landed aristocracy thus became popularised into the villa gardens of the nineteenthcentury metropolitan middle class. John Claudius Loudon was the foremost `suburban' gardener who advocated the cultivation of a villa garden. Loudon tried to replace the aristocratic picturesque aesthetic promoted by Price, Knight and Humphry Repton with the `gardenesque' aesthetic.16 He was the most widely read proponent of suburban gardening, his writings including Hints on the Formation of Gardens and Pleasure Grounds (1812), An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822; eighth edn, 1835) and The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion (1838). Loudon argued that the cultivation of the villa garden enabled (sub)urbanites not merely to emulate estate-owners in the arena of gardening, but also `to ascend to the ethical heights of Horace's beatus ille without possessing large estates, or travelling long distances to pursue the picturesque'.17 Land was traditionally associated with name and birth in English culture. Yet the new middle class tried to acquire a cultural status of their own without possessing vast property, through cultivating plants in the villa gardens at their suburban homes. As Elizabeth Jones shrewdly notes, the abundant descriptions of nature in the Cockney poetry of Hunt and Keats betrayed their social and




cultural aspirations ìn the same way that a middle-class professional and his wife were aspiring to gentrification by reading the gardening manuals of Loudon'.18 It was this popularised and domesticated kind of nature that so appalled and alarmed conservatives such as Lockhart and Byron, for it represented and propagated the new cultural ethos of the growing middle class. Hunt and Keats indeed anticipated the middleclass sensibility of the Victorian period, during which the mass domestication of nature was completed. The popularity of the earlier rural writings of Izaak Walton and Gilbert White date from the Victorian age, in which it was an often noted phenomenon that No sooner has a man made a little money in the city, than away he rushes to the fields and rivers, and nothing would so deeply hurt the pride of the nouveaux riches as to insinuate that he [sic] was not quite fully imbued with the spirit and the knowledge of the country.19 Hunt was not merely a suburban gardener in poetic terms, but also a proponent of the gardenesque aesthetic of suburban living, along with Loudon and Hunt's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent. Hunt's `Calendar of Nature', first published in The Literary Pocket-Book, may be seen as a gardening manual for suburbanites.20 The `Calendar of Nature' was so popular that it was republished two years later in a separate form as The Months: Descriptive of the Successive Beauties of the Year.21 The book is divided into twelve sections (months), each of which gives a catalogue of seasonal flowers, plants and trees, with practical information about gardening and planting. Hunt acknowledged that he was indebted to John Aikin and Gilbert White for botanical knowledge and horticultural information.22 Yet what distinguished Hunt's gardening book was that it offered useful tips for how to be à lover of nature' with little money. He advised that ìf ever money is well spent upon luxury, it is upon such as draws us on to love the cheap kindness of nature'.23 If one could not afford nursery flowers for a villa garden, one could still buy flowers in pots; or, alternatively one could plant trees, which were cheaper than nursery flowers. Hunt encouraged his readers to `plant a little shrubbery, or make a rural screen for their parlour or study windows, of woodbine, guelder-roses, bays, arbutus, ivy, virgin's bower . . . '.24 In May 1819, Keats tried to obtain for his sister Fanny (then living with Abbey at Walthamstow) `some seasonable plants' at `the tottenham nursery'.25 By planting flowering shrubs and trees àt the expense of not many shillings', a suburbanite with small property could get a portion of nature's èver-ready and exuberant treasures'.26 And however small a




portion, it could give a `retired and verdant feeling' and `something of the whispering and quiet amplitude of nature'.27 Here the effect of the suburban garden is clearly considered to be comparable to that of the huge parks and gardens in a country estate.28 As discussed above, the cultivation of a villa garden was a middle-class equivalent of the landscaping of a country estate. Yet for those who could not afford even domestic gardens, there were still other ways to enjoy nature. For such urbanites without properties, Elizabeth Kent published Flora Domestica, or The Portable Flower-Garden; with Directions for the Treatment of Plants in Pots (1823).29 In the preface, Kent explained the purpose of her book as follows: Although it is true that near London plants in general will not thrive so well as in a purer air, and that people in the country have usually some portion of ground to make a garden of, yet such persons as are condemned to a town life will do well to obtain whatever substitute for a garden may be in their power; for there is confessedly no greater folly than that of refusing all pleasure, because we cannot have all we desire. . . . Those who can afford it, indeed, have gardens elsewhere; but by far the greater number are obliged to content themselves with a portable garden. A lover of flowers, who cannot have a garden or a greenhouse, will gladly cherish any thing that has the aspect of a green leaf. . . . 30 What Kent called à portable garden' was a more affordable urban equivalent of a villa garden in the suburbs. Keats obviously enjoyed such container gardening. In April 1819, he wrote to his sister that Ì ordered some bulbous roots for you at the Gardeners, and they sent me some, but they were all in bud ± and could not be sent, so I put them in our Garden. There are some beautiful heaths now in bloom in Pots.'31 And even for the gardenless urbanites, as Loudon promoted, large public parks and gardens offered the same kind of recreation enjoyed by the wealthier classes. Hunt also suggested an alternative way to derive inexpensive pleasure from nature: he stressed that the hedges, the fields and walks àre free to every one, are sure to supply us with pleasure'.32 Barry Cornwall followed Hunt's advice, and wrote `Walks round London' (published in the second edition of The Literary Pocket-Book). In this `rambling' essay, Cornwall spoke of `Southgate Wood' in the language of the picturesque aesthetic: [its] proprietor, with an eye to economy of ground, rather than to taste, has run a path through it as straight as a plumb-line. I thought





Thus one did not necessarily have to go on a costly tour to experience the picturesque. Hampstead Heath could be, as Hunt argued, à most bright as well as picturesque object', when `the ground is broken up into little inequalities'.34 As a site of natural beauty, Hunt considered a neighbouring suburb to be as good as, or even more desirable than, the remote country: they [Milton, Boccaccio and other poets] had nothing about them which induced them to suppose that they must fly from . . . a classical metropolis, before they could realize a rural spot. Milton and others knew very well that they might go, for instance, two hundred miles on some of the roads from London, and not find such beautiful retreats as within three, or two, or one hour's walk of it. . . . 35 Here Hunt represented Milton as a suburban nature-lover, thereby vindicating the social status of London suburbia. While nature was seen as an object of aesthetic consumption, the cultivation of nature enabled one to acquire a certain cultural status. What Loudon, Kent and Hunt advocated in their gardening books was the democratisation of nature as common property: nature should be available to everyone, and everyone was entitled to be a lover of nature regardless of his or her social rank. They all stressed that the garden, whether domestic or portable, functioned as an antidote to the rampant mercantilism and consequent depravation of the City. Hunt recognised modern society as being engulfed in an unprecedented industrialisation, and attributed various social ills, such as `suspicion, scandal, envy, jealousy, self-love, worldliness and other-worldliness of all sorts', to industrial commercialism.36 As Hunt put it, `Poverty, discontent . . . and a mechanical and mercenary spirit that cannot see beyond what is falsely called matter-of-fact . . . have rendered many people unable to get pleasure.'37 In his poetry as well as in The Months, Hunt tried to construct a `cultivated' bourgeois subject as a lover of nature, as distinct from exclusively industrial or mercantile people. Hunt condemned the tradesmen as mercenary and untrustworthy `tricksters and hiders' living in midst of `bundles, and dust' (`To William Hazlitt' 110, 101).38 Keats also branded the common people as À money-mong'ring, pitiable



nothing of this when I used to come to collect roots of primroses and honeysuckle for my little garden, and to cut hockey-sticks. I despair of ever being so happy again, notwithstanding the improvement of my taste.33


. . . Vulgar he, who goes

By suburb gardens which she [Nature] deigns to dress,

And does not recognize her green caress. . . . (3±5)

Here Hunt implicated not only the uncultivated tradesmen, but also the wealthy merchants who could afford to keep a residence both in the country and the city. As Robert Fishman points out, From the early eighteenth century it was the custom for the London middle class to own a `villa' or `box' in the picturesque countryside around the metropolis and for the whole family to `retire' there each Saturday afternoon, returning Monday morning.39 In emulating the country houses of the rural landowning elite, wealthy Londoners built country villas in which even a merchant could live as an aristocrat at the weekend. Roy Porter describes their endeavours to keep up the appearances of the leisured class as follows: The eagerness of the professional, commercial and industrial middle classes to buy themselves into land and leisure, Society and its Season (summer in their shires, winter in London's West End), even at the risk of financial ruin, attests the formidable appeal of this ideal.40 In his epistle `To William Hazlitt', however, Hunt placed his own suburban residence above `the weekend villa': One's life, I conceive, might go prettily down

In a due easy mixture of country and town; ±

Not after the fashion of most with two houses,

Who gossip, and gape, and just follow their spouses,

And let their abode be wherever it will,

Are the same vacant, house-keeping animals still; ±

But with due sense of each, and of all that it yields, ±

In the town, of the town, ± in the fields, of the fields. . . . (9±16)

Although these merchants were wealthier, and hence closer to the landed aristocracy in terms of life-style, Hunt reduced them to `vacant,



brood' (Àddressed to Haydon' 8). In his sonnet `To Horatio Smith', Hunt accused the city-dwellers of being `vulgar', for they were not interested in the cultivation of nature:

house-keeping animals', for (he thought) they were incapable of appreciating either `culture' in the town or `nature' in the country. Whereas such merchants spent most of the week on their moneymaking in the town `where gain huddles its noisiest rout' (`To Horatio Smith' 12), Hunt could always `have the most rural of nooks / Just near enough town to make use of its books' at Hampstead (`To William Hazlitt' 27±8). Cornwall also rather resentfully referred to the presence of London merchants in the (suburban) countryside: Southgate is a very pretty village; adorned with the country seats of London gentlemen. This has gained it the title of à mercantile aristocracy:' but do not mind the opinions of the inhabitants upon this occasion; they cannot turn the fields into scarlet cloth, nor the trees into gold lace.41 As has been argued, it was not wealth but rather devotion to nature that allowed a middle-class suburbanite, or even an urban worker, to consider himself the `peer' of an estate-owner of the gentry. Such a gardenesque rhetoric adopted by Loudon, Kent and Hunt was in this respect fundamentally democratic and popular. Not surprisingly, such a democratising attitude towards nature jarred with the traditional sensibility of the landed gentry. Caroline Bowles (later the second wife of Robert Southey) annotated The Months in her possession as follows: À beautiful little work, tho' the Author sometimes betrays the cloven foot of cockneyism.'42 Bowles detected the social and cultural ambition of the suburban middle class underlying the cultured appearance of Hunt's gardenesque aesthetic. In Bowles' eyes, Hunt's gardenesque rhetoric was a manifestation of his limited experience in nature: `He knows no more of a flower-garden than what he has acquired from nursing up half a dozen flower-pots in a London balcony.'43 In this attack on Cockney taste, Bowles deliberately reduced Hunt from a cultured suburbanite to a city-dwelling worker. It was a common tactic deployed by conservative writers who found the emerging (sub)culture of the new middle class threatening to the traditional social hierarchy. For those who cherished traditional values, the cultivation of nursery flowers in the suburbs could not possibly be likened to that of the landscape garden in the `real' countryside. Hunt glorified Hampstead as `Nature's own ground' (`Description of Hampstead' 10), interspersed with `fine breathing prospects' or `delicious retreats' (`To Thomas Moore' 25, 41) such as gardens, bowers and hay-cocks. In sheer contrast, the town was swarmed with




. . . a throng of Canal-men, and hod-men, unfit to make song of, Midst ale-houses, puddles, and backs of street-roads, And all sorts of rubbish, and crashing cart-loads, And so on, eye-smarting, and ready to choke, Till you end in hot narrowness, clatter, and smoke! (Èxtract from Another Letter to the Same [Moore]' 13±18) The contrast between the Metropolis and Hampstead was likened to `Swift after Spenser', and À sea-song succeeding a pastoral of Handel's' (Èxtract from Another' 19, 20). Keats also grew so weary of the Metropolis that he wished to retire to the country: All I can say is that standing at Charing cross and looking east west north and south I can see nothing but dullness ± I hope while I am young to live retired in the Country. . . . Look at our Cheapside Trademans [sic] sons and daughters ± only fit to be taken off by a plague ± I hope now soon to come to the time when I shall never be forc'd to walk through the City and hate as I walk. . . . 44 In his epistle `To Thomas Moore', Hunt exclaimed in grandiose style, `Can the town, after all, with the country compare?' (70). However, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine reproached and reduced the suburban nature which Hunt exalted into mere `flowers seen in window-pots, or cascades heard at Vauxhall'.45 Blackwood's also ridiculed Hunt as `the most suburban of poets', for the reason that his `rural life was so limited and local'.46 Byron too was offended at Hunt's and Keats's dismissal of Pope as an àrtificial' poet: when they have travelled beyond the far-distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesex ± when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate ± and traced to it's [sic] sources the Nile of the New River ± then ± & not till then ± can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope. . . . 47 In the eyes of conservative critics, then, the suburban gardenesque incarnated in the poetry of Hunt and Keats represented nothing more than a `Cockney' taste.





It may be argued that Hunt adopted Loudon's gardenesque aesthetic in his poetry precisely to promote a distinctly middle-class ethos. In the preface to Foliage, he particularly advertised à love of the country' as one of the main features of the volume. Hunt regarded the pastoral tradition as the quintessence of real poetry: I need not inform any reader acquainted with real poetry, that a delight in rural luxury has ever been a constituent part of the very business of poets as well as one of the very best things which they have recommended, as counteractions to the more sordid tendencies of cities.48 Hunt was right in defining the pastoral as offering a description of the countryside as a source of pleasure and a refuge from a city life. Although it has been claimed that `Nothing better exemplifies the intractability of generic definition than pastoral', modern critics are almost unanimous in recognising a definable essence for the notion of the pastoral: a tension of opposite values between country and city, between simplicity of rural life and complexities of urban civilisation.49 In other words, the essential nature of pastoral is that it is written neither for nor by country folk, but rather for and by urban people. As Frank Kermode puts it, `the first condition of Pastoral is that it is an urban product.'50 A rural retreat had been coveted and idealised by urbanites of all periods, who sought refuge from cities as diverse as Hellenistic Alexandria, Augustan Rome, Elizabethan London and Neoclassical Paris. In nineteenth-century London, Hunt attempted to follow the long tradition of urban pastoral poets who had offered the description of the countryside as a respite from the stress and strain of the city. However, Hunt's pastoral poetics was distinctive in this tradition in that it also incorporated Loudon's suburban gardenesque: the luxuries which poets recommended, and which are thought so beautiful on paper, are much more within the reach of every one, and much more beautiful in reality, than people's fondness for considering all poetry as fiction would imply. The poets only do with their imaginations what all might do with their practice, ± live at as cheap, natural, easy, and truly pleasurable a rate as possible. . . . 51 It was this merging of the traditional literary form with a new cultural ethos that disturbed conservative reviewers. While employing the



The charge of Cockneyism

pastoral mode, Hunt at the same time promoted the enjoyment and cultivation of `suburban' nature in Hampstead. It may be said that the pastoral ethos in Hunt's writings mirrored the emerging bourgeois mode of living. Middle-class critics gave unstinted praise to Hunt's presentation of nature, in much the same way that they may have celebrated a carefully attended suburban garden. Through the aesthetics of suburban nature, Hunt's poetry offered `the luxury of literary lounging'.52 One reviewer confessed that he was more than happy to `loiter among the beautiful descriptions', and that he `cannot refrain from tantalizing our London readers with one extract more' of Francesca's garden.53 This was a period in which the status of the suburb was to some extent changing from an outer, inferior, area to a respectable residential district for those who wanted to live in the country, but who did not possess and could not purchase large tracts of land.54 In the eyes of conservatives, however, suburbia remained a dubious place, attracting only ambitious social climbers. Acutely aware of the charge of vulgarity against suburban residents, Hunt objected, `Some of the great men have taken delight in the neighbourhood of cities, and produced their greatest works there, ± as Milton part of his Paradise Lost, Boccaccio his Decameron, &c.'55 Yet Hunt's poetry suffered the stigma of Cockneyism, largely because his `suburban' aesthetic was so loudly advocated in his `pastoral' poetry. This coupling of the pastoral tradition with the gardenesque aesthetic was also found in the gardening books of Hunt and of Kent. In The Months, Hunt embellished the descriptions of suburban nature with citations from (those whom he considered to be) pastoral poets, ancient and modern, including Theocritus, Virgil, Horace, Spenser, Shakespeare, Herrick and Milton, as well as Hunt's contemporaries, such as Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats. It may be observed that Kent's Flora Domestica and Sylvan Sketches were remarkably similar to Hunt's book, in that botanical and horticultural information was interspersed with literary anecdotes and quotations. For example, in Flora Domestica, which promoted the cultivation of a portable garden in pots, Kent called attention to the fact that `Poets have taken pleasure in painting gardens in all the brilliancy of imagination', referring to the Garden of Eden, the garden of Alcinous in Homer's Odyssey, the gardens of Morgana, Alcina and Armida in the Italian poets, and the Bower of Bliss in Spenser.56 For the English conservatives attempting to uphold traditional values, this mingling of the elite tradition and (what they saw as) mass culture seemed not only jarring, but deeply offensive. Consequently, there was





He is the ideal of a Cockney Poet. He raves perpetually about `green fields,' `jaunty streams,' and ò'er-arching leafiness,' exactly as a Cheapside shop-keeper does about the beauties of his box on the Camberwell road. Mr Hunt is altogether unacquainted with the face of nature in her magnificent scenes; he has never seen any mountain higher than Highgate-hill, nor reclined by any stream more pastoral than the Serpentine River. But he is determined to be a poet eminently rural. . . . His books are indeed not known in the country; his fame as a poet . . . is entirely confined to the young attorneys and embryo-barristers about town. In the opinion of these competent judges, London is the world ± and Hunt is a Homer.58 Here Hunt's suburban nature at Hampstead was ridiculed ± in implied opposition to the sublime nature of the Lake District evoked in the poetry of Wordsworth. The Literary Gazette criticised Hunt for ignoring `the sublime and the immense', in favour of the domestic, `the most trite objects' of nature, calling à tree leafy, and a bird hoppy, and a cat purry'.59 Hunt's passion for rural retreat was exposed to particular ridicule in the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. They laughed at the pastoral landscape in Hunt's poetry for being confined to the suburb of London, within `the well-fenced meadows of his microcosm'.60 It was seen as a caricature or popularised version of Horace's beatus ille that `the Arcadian Hunt' was living in `his rural retreat at Hampstead'.61 Hunt was derided also in implied contrast with his aristocratic contemporaries, whose geographical mobility was naturally far greater than Hunt's: `Suppose for a moment, Leigh Hunt at sea ± or on the summit of Mont Blanc! It is impossible. No. Hampstead was the only place for him.'62 What underlay the charge of Cockneyism was the then popular notion of the distinction between the sublime and the beautiful which had gained great currency since the publication in the mid-eighteenth century of Burke's Philosophical Enquiry. Burke's book exerted a crucial influence on establishing and popularising, and also hierarchising the aesthetic categories of the sublime and the beautiful with regard to appreciation of the natural landscape. The hierarchical binary opposition



a storm of outcries against Hunt's rustication of Hampstead Heath. À most distressing cockneyism pervades Mr. Hunt's ideas of the beautiful in scenery', as one reviewer put it, for `we never get out of the reach of the smoke'.57 Lockhart was more relentless in exposing Hunt's bourgeois social origin:

between sublime and beautiful was overtly gendered as masculine and feminine, the former being superior to and more desirable than the latter. As Christopher Thacker puts it, `for many romantics in the second half of the century, there was little doubt that they not only preferred the sublime to the beautiful, but often thought it was ``better'' as well.'63 The Alps were considered to represent the quintessence of the natural sublimity, and they attracted a great number of tourists able to afford the Grand Tour. So in terms of the aesthetic consumption of nature, along with many other commercialised leisure pursuits, there was an apparent class difference between the haves and the have-nots. Those who could not afford the Grand Tour went on a domestic tour of the picturesque. As Ann Bermingham puts it, `The picturesque landscape, as popularized in guidebooks . . . represented a ``democratic'' landscape.'64 For the emerging class of consumers, the picturesque landscape in rural England was both familiar and accessible, yet precious and unspoiled enough for aesthetic appreciation. One may recall that Keats, an aspiring consumer as well as an ambitious poet(aster), was eager to set out on a tour to the Isle of Wight (in order to write Endymion), and then to the Lake District and the Scottish Highlands. There were, as mentioned above, still other ways to enjoy nature for those who could not afford even a domestic tour of the picturesque: possessing and cultivating their tiny but cherished villa gardens; or rambling through the beautiful (suburban) countryside for free. It was this kind of familiar and domesticated nature that Hunt encouraged his readers to possess and appreciate as a substitute for a country estate. Possessing (however small) a portion of `nature' allowed one to possess a portion of `culture' (of the traditional ruling class). However, although Hunt argued that an urbanite could in effect transform himself into an estate-owner through the cultivation of nature, his rhetoric could not conceal the fact that the nature he promoted was not in the form of the sublime, but rather in the form of, as it were, the beautiful (or the picturesque). Ironically, the very rhetoric that attempted to transcend the cultural inequalities between different classes revealed and reinforced the economic disparity between them.65 In the eyes of conservatives, suburban nature in the form of the beautiful was a devalued popular version of sublime nature in the `real' countryside. Therefore, nature in Hunt's writings was attacked for its inauthenticity and unnaturalness, as opposed to the purity and authenticity of nature in Wordsworth's poetry. Lockhart was appalled by Keats's sonnet Àddressed to the Same [Haydon]' in which Keats classed together Wordsworth, Hunt and Haydon as the three great




spirits of the age: `Wordsworth and Hunt! what a juxtaposition! The purest, the loftiest . . . and the most classical of living English poets, joined together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the most vulgar of Cockney poetasters.'66 What really underlay the discrimination between Wordsworth and Hunt was the distinction between natural birthright and acquired identity. Wordsworth, born the son of an attorney for a landowner, belonged to the professional middle class; he was educated at an established grammar school and at Cambridge University. At the age of twenty, he went on a tour of France, the Alps and Italy; although it was a walking tour, it was nevertheless the Grand Tour. Moreover, a small legacy allowed Wordsworth to concentrate upon his literary career. He was able to pursue his leisured life with the natural ease of the established class. In other words, he had no need to `labour' to climb up the social ladder, as the new commercial middle class did. In perceived contrast, Hunt and Keats were seen as `perpetually labouring to be genteel' and being `desirous of being airy, graceful, easy, courtly, and IT A L I A N '.67 However, although aping the aristocratic nonchalant ease and sprezzatura, the poetry of Hunt and Keats turned out to be full of `laborious affected descriptions' of pleasing prospects in the suburbs of London.68 The charge of Cockneyism was directed at the artificiality and affectation of both their poetry and their social origin. The new commercial middle class was something unnatural to, and incompatible with, the traditional social hierarchy; its `new money' was not related to the land, but emerged from the void of industrial capitalism. As a result, the new middle class had to labour incessantly to climb the social ladder in order to acquire the authenticity of its cultural identity. In this socio-cultural struggle, however, the new middle class could not help but imitate and embrace the culture of the established classes. Hence the charge of vulgarity against òur modern tuft-hunter', whose poetry was àlways on the stretch to be grand'.69 Hunt and Keats were seen as perpetually restless and affected, for they were always `labouring' to become something else. It was no wonder that conservative reviewers were all the more offended when Hunt and Keats attacked Pope's neoclassical poetry for its artificial manners and affectation. In the eyes of the traditional upper class of England, it was Hunt and Keats who exemplified the inauthenticity and unnaturalness of the new bourgeoisie.

Hunt's version of pastoral As mentioned above, Hunt adopted the pastoral mode in his poetry in order to claim and assert the authenticity of the middle-class ethos.




Pastoral is a respectable and authentic literary genre which dates back to classical times. The genre is considered to have originated with the Greek poet Theocritus in the third century BC. Ironically, the classical prestige attached to the pastoral genre was responsible not only for increasing the perceived respectability of Hunt's pastoral poetry, but also for leaving it vulnerable to the charge of Cockneyism. In this section, we shall take a closer look at Hunt's strategy of adopting a particular literary genre in order to propagate distinctly middle-class values and attitudes. The whole tradition of pastoral may be divided into two strands, Theocritean and Virgilian. Theocritus entertained the urban Alexandrian court of Ptolemy Philadelphus with a series of vignettes (ìdylls') of rural scenes of his native Sicily. The Idylls of Theocritus provided the polished and cultured audience with a natural landscape of the lush Sicilian summer as a source of pleasure. From the outset, pastoral poetry offered the description of nature for aesthetic consumption. However, with Virgil, who two centuries later modelled his Eclogues on Theocritus's Idylls, the genre became more complicated and somewhat transformed. Comparing Idyll V with Eclogue III (which is the closest of all to Theocritus's style) throws into relief the fundamental difference between the two poets. Both poems adopt the form of a singing contest between two herdsmen. Yet while Theocritean herdsmen have free leisure to praise the pleasures of country life, Virgilian shepherds lament the ravaged countryside. The Eclogues were written in the troubled times that followed the murder of Julius Caesar in 44 BC, when Italy was torn apart by civil war. The disturbance of wars and the consequent threat of eviction and land-confiscation often disrupt the pastoral surface of Virgil's Arcadian landscape. Paradoxically, however, the invasion of the contemporary political disturbances into Virgil's pastoral serves to make its landscape all the more idealised. Whilst Theocritus offers the immediate descriptions of idyllic nature in summer-ripe Sicily, Virgil's rural landscape is largely removed from the contemporary socio-political reality to a distant and remote land of Arcadia. Except for Eclogues I and IX, which directly refer to the political disturbance of the age, The Eclogues are set in a peaceful countryside inhabited by the Olympian deities and mythological creatures, offering the reader an imaginary refuge from Virgil's real world. It may be argued that Virgil `discovered' Arcadia as a poetical landscape. However, the imaginary landscape of Arcadia is presented not merely for immediate aesthetic consumption; it is also an ìnternalised' landscape in which the poet explores his own mental state. An irreversible





Its microstructure has as its centerpiece a stylized landscape, a locus amoenus, which is typically a quiet arbor surrounded by shady trees, perfumed by spring flowers, animated by a gentle breeze, and enlivened by a bubbling spring or stream. . . . This pastoral microcosm readily assimilates allusions to a golden age, paradise, Eden, or Arcadia. . . . the macrostructure embodies some of the following antitheses: between nature and art, country and city, otium and negotium, retirement and active life, leisure and work, summer and winter, happiness and melancholy, energy and acedia, past and present, communality and alienation.70 This move from simplicity to complexities, description to idealisation, immediacy to remoteness, unselfconsciousness to self-reflexivity, was part of a fundamental change in Western culture and sensibility. As Curran observes, àfter Virgil, with a few exceptions among later Roman and Hellenistic poets, there has been only a Christian pastoral.'71 While Theocritean pastoral offers nature itself for aesthetic pleasure, (post-)Virgilian pastoral transforms nature into the medium through which the poets perceive something beyond the merely physical forms of nature. What are commonly considered as central themes of the genre, such as a return to nature, to the golden age, and to primitive modes of human existence, are relevant only to Christian pastoral. Theocritean shepherds do not long to revert to the original unfallen state, for they have no idea of something outside and beyond their existence. They live in the eternal present of the golden age, in which the cyclical process of time always promises renewal. Yet in postVirgilian Christian pastoral, Eden is already irretrievably lost, so that the paradise can only be recreated in the individual soul. From the Renaissance onwards, such a myth of Christian pastoral had become a highly exploitable literary mode at a time of great social change and instability, when the world of innocence and simplicity was felt to be threatened or lost. Raymond Williams points out that there are three main periods of rural complaint in which a happier past is explicitly invoked: the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries;



transmutation occurs between Theocritean pastoral as the unmediated representation of unreflected pleasure, and Virgilian pastoral as a selfreflexive literary mode. Lore Metzger's definitions of pastoral's microstructure and macrostructure reflect the transition from Theocritean pastoral to Virgilian pastoral:


Both the Renaissance and the Romantic periods witnessed the dire social consequences of land enclosures in the name of higher productivity and economic profit. Modern capitalism was already making an appearance by Elizabethan times, but the Romantic period was the first age to experience a full-grown urbanised modern society. In each case, the pastoral mode provided the powerful means to recollect and idealise their immediate past for those who were exposed to the unprecedented social change. Thus, Arcadia in English pastoral poetry is presented as a remote, idealised and imaginary landscape of nostalgia and wishfulfilment. As Peter V. Marinelli puts it, Àll pastoral is in search of the original splendour.'73 Or one might say that all post-Virgilian pastoral expresses a longing to return to prelapsarian innocence. From the Renaissance to the Romantic period, English pastoral poetry had been written in the Virgilian tradition. Whether in Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender or in Milton's Lycidas, a pastoral landscape functions as the medium through which the poet explores his own psyche. The pleasure and pleasance of pastoral nature, therefore, are constantly overshadowed by the contemporary socio-political reality, or by the possibility of another Fall. The crucial difference between Theocritean pastoral and Virgilian pastoral lies in whether the poet presents nature as an object of aesthetic consumption, or as a spiritual landscape of his own mind. Virgilian pastoralists have been concerned more with exploring the moral limitations of the pastoral mode than with depicting nature simply for the sake of pleasure. In the neoclassical period, however, pastoral as the locus of a conflict between opposite values had been reduced to a mere polished representation of the ease and pleasure of country life. Pope's `Discourse on Pastoral Poetry' (1717) was the culmination of neoclassical theory of pastoral which maintained that pastoral poetry should present only an idealised image of the golden age, emptied of the actual misery and sufferings of country life. In this neoclassical version of pastoral, nature was presented for aesthetic consumption of the aristocracy; or that neoclassical pastoral was a poeticised version of a landscaped country estate of the landed class. Its foremost and most extreme instance was Marie Antoinette playing at shepherdess in her mock dairy farm le Petit Trianon. It was against such an aristocratic version of pastoral that George Crabbe and Oliver Goldsmith wrote



the late eighteenth and early nineteenth; the late nineteenth and early twentieth . . . it is then clear enough that each of these corresponds to a period of exceptional change in the rural economy. . . . 72

their counter-pastoral poetry. At a time of agricultural discontent resulting from enclosures, inflation and depression, the nostalgic myth of pastoral became a powerful and efficacious means to protest against the exploitative upper class in both economic and aesthetic terms. As mentioned above, English poets from Spenser to Pope, and even the counter-pastoralists, wrote their pastorals in the Virgilian tradition. In marked contrast, Hunt chose Theocritus as his model in both aesthetic and ethical terms, so as to promote his distinctly middle-class aesthetic. Theocritus could be seen as providing a perfect model for promoting Hunt's aesthetics, since Theocritean pastoral presents nature as an unsullied source of aesthetic pleasure. As Thomas G. Rosenmeyer points out, there is an affinity between Theocritean pastoralism and Epicurean hedonism.74 Theocritean herdsmen are obviously of the Epicurean type: they are embedded in the present, living a life determined by pleasure unhindered by moral reservation. They do not point beyond themselves: their pleasure is unreflected, their (un)selfconsciousness unreflective. Therefore, the locus amoenus of Theocritean pastoral has neither symbolic overtones nor philosophical dimension. It is a set-piece description of an exterior landscape in which the herdsmen `may pursue their objectives, their affections and their dreams, as easily as possible, against the smallest number of obstacles'.75 Such unashamed pursuit of uncomplicated pleasure and celebration of pure otium are exempt from moral degeneration, for his shepherds live in accord with nature, which is in itself good and innocent. Hunt espoused the Theocritean±Epicurean ethos as the appropriate expression, and also a powerful vindication, of the middle-class consumer ethic, according to which nature was another object of luxury consumption. Hunt regarded Theocritus first and foremost as a pastoral poet: the author who gives us the greatest relish and sense of things rural, in their genuine elements . . . is Theocritus. We shift with him from lounge to lounge, see his goats brouzing and his noons burning, hear the buzzing of his bees and the whispering of his pines, and revel among his dairies, orchards, and country lasses.76 Hunt adopted and adapted Theocritus as a chief sponsor of his suburban style of living, often trying to transform the rural landscape of London suburbs into Theocritean Sicily. In the June section in The Months, Hunt presented a vignette of `the fertile landscape' depicting the rural business of the month:




The white fleeces of the sheep on these occasions, the brown hue of the shearers, the blue of the sky, the running silver of the waters, the green of the grass, the various colours of the flowers, and the strawhatted damsels that wear them, make up a delightful picture to the imagination. . . . As to a seat against a hay-cock, on the side farthest from the sun, with the odour of the new-mown grass perfuming all the air, and a sense of slumberous beauty breathing from the warm sky above and the green earth below, ± it is a luxury which has still survived for the lover of the field. . . . 77 Hunt illustrated this summer-ripe landscape of the English countryside with his own translation of a rural debate between a goatherd and a shepherd from Idyll V. He tried to rejuvenate Theocritean ease and exuberance in his description of sheep-shearing and hay-making (which dated back to classical times), but his rather idealised portrait of rural labour pointed to the fact that the suburban middle class was interested in nature not in terms of production, but only in terms of consumption, just as the landed aristocracy was. The early nineteenth century witnessed even more rural distress than the time of Goldsmith and Crabbe; and John Clare (and in some ways Wordsworth) succeeded the late eighteenth-century counterpastoralists. Clare and Hunt both challenged the authority of neoclassical poetry. Yet while Clare (himself the son of an agricultural labourer) sought to expose the fact that stylised neoclassical pastoral both mystified and legitimised the actual relationship between the exploitative landowning class and the exploited rural poor, Hunt attempted simply to replace the aristocratic poetic with the metropolitan middle-class aesthetic. So while Clare and Wordsworth (especially in `Michael') were giving voice to the discontent and distress of the labouring poor, Hunt was propagating the interests of the bourgeois consumer class. It was against `the prevailing grave tendency of the English muse' in counter-pastoral that Hunt propagated the `combined requisites of imagination, of passion, of simple speaking, of music, of animal spirits' for pastoral poetry.78 Such Epicurean ethics and aesthetics were certainly not compatible with the form of counter-pastoral poetry which aimed to describe the actual sufferings of the rural poor: while Hunt's strategic adoption of pastoral helped the social and cultural upgrading of the middle class, it also served to repress and dismiss the interests of the labouring class. In The Months, Hunt frequently referred to the primitive egalitarianism of the pastoral in which the union between landowners and agricultural labourers was cemented through the universal




celebration of rural festivals. Yet as John Barrell argues, this exclusive idealisation of agrarian festivities typifies the function of pastoral `to mystify and to obscure the harshness of actual social and economic organization'.79 Hunt's perfunctory reference to the actual rural condition at the time reveals that he was essentially no different from the landowning class which separated nature for the purpose of production from nature designed for consumption. Hunt idealised agricultural labour with Theocritean mirth, and justified it by its economic profit. Rural suffering was ignored in his description of the agrarian toil as `the healthiest in its pursuit, and the most truly rich and returning in its interest'.80 Although Hunt mentioned `less happy labourers, who chiefly come over from Ireland', the political and the topical were instantly dismissed: `But they have at least fine weather and a secure pay.'81 Harvest-home was also idealised as àt once the most laborious and most lucrative of the farmer's employments', uniting `repose and profit'.82 In order to foreground the interests of the new middle class, Hunt legitimised the exploited rural poor by idealising them as Theocritean countrymen in the age of capitalism. This `bourgeois' character of Hunt's pastoral poetics becomes all the more apparent if his conception of nature is compared with that of his Romantic contemporaries. As the Edinburgh Review noted, Hunt `kept himself far more to the delineation of visible, physical realities, than any other modern poet'.83 While Hunt's pastoral poetry offered a popularised suburban version of the locus amoenus, his Romantic contemporaries were not concerned with nature solely for aesthetic pleasure, nor, indeed, with nature per se. In other words, Hunt presented no more than visible, tangible and physical aspects of nature, in marked contrast to Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley, for whom the material aspects of nature were only the medium through which they perceived the immaterial. Here the poet searches for the ideal through his communion with nature, the true object of the Romantic quest being located beyond the grasp of our ordinary physical senses. In order to get a glimpse of spiritual presence, the poet's imagination has to be activated to a liminal intensity. `Tintern Abbey', `The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and `Mont Blanc' all record the poet's experience of nature, in which some awful shadow of a metaphysical presence manifests itself through the physical forms of nature. Moreover, it is generally agreed that this Romantic perception of nature is closely associated with the aesthetics of the sublime.84 Burke wrote of nature in the form of the sublime as follows: The passion caused by the great and sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully, is Astonishment; and astonishment





Such a horrifying, and indeed painful, experience of the sublime may be seen as the typical Romantic response to nature's awesome grandeur. Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley chronicled in their poems such Burkean encounters with nature in the sublime mountains of the Lake District, of North Wales or of the Alps. In perceived contrast, Hunt and Keats recounted their pleasant and pleasurable experiences of nature in London suburbs. This particular perception of nature as the form of the beautiful points to their bourgeois mode of living, in ethical and aesthetic as well as in social and economic terms. Nature is an object of cultivation and consumption, not an object of philosophical and intellectual reflection. The former indicates a beautiful and popular version of nature which offers a sensory luxury, and the latter a sublime version of nature which requires the exertion of a certain intellectual labour (although a sublime nature may also be seen as a highbrow version of aesthetic consumption). There are, of course, quite a few poems in which nature is presented in the form of the beautiful ± domestic, familiar and pleasing ± in the Romantic canon. Wordsworth's minute observation of the humble objects of nature, however, belong to what are usually regarded as minor works in the Wordsworth canon. It is commonly agreed that Wordsworth's tour de force is the way he deals with nature in the form of the sublime; and even in his `pastoral' poems, Wordsworth succeeds in transforming a beautiful object of nature into the manifestation of a sublime emotion. Coleridge's conversation poems may also be seen as his version of pastoral pleasance, but they are not merely pastoral pleasance, due to the way in which a Christian God manifests itself through particular forms of nature. Romantic pastoral was also written in the post-Virgilian line of the tradition, in which pastoral landscape represented a state of mind rather than a state of nature.

The Bower of Bliss: Spenser commodified Hunt strategically chose Theocritus rather than Virgil as his poetic model for the reason that the former was more marketable than the latter as a leisure pursuit. Theocritean cheer and brightness were more pleasurable and less intellectually demanding than Virgilian pathos and darkness; nevertheless, enjoying Theocritean pastoral was a respectable cultural activity. The advantage was that appreciating Theocritean



is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror.85

pastoral did not require strenuous intellectual effort or a strict classical education. In his pastoral poetics, Hunt appropriated and, as it were, suburbanised Theocritus in order to make his Idylls more appealing to the taste of a metropolitan audience. He also reconstructed a history of English poetry as a history of pastoral poetry, and reinvented the English poets as Theocritean nature-lovers. It was an age in which the national cultural heritage of English poetry was revived with patriotic fervour, and the rediscovered history of English poetry was made available for mass consumption. In order to vindicate and reinforce an image of the bourgeois subject as a nature-lover, Hunt represented the English poets from the Renaissance down to his contemporary period as Theocritean pastoralists, or more precisely as suburban nature-lovers. During the second half of the eighteenth century, there was a prevailing sense of the restoration of the native literary tradition, especially Elizabethan poetry and drama. Hunt proudly hailed the Elizabethans as Òur wisest ancestors, ± those of Shakspeare's time . . . whom we begin to understand better than any of their posterity.'86 Shakespeare had been dismissed by the French neoclassicists as irregular, indecorous or even monstrous. Hunt was right in observing that the transition of preference from the French imitation to the English tradition was partly caused by `the revived inclination for our older and great school of poetry, chiefly produced . . . by the commentators on Shakspeare'.87 Encouraged by the writings of the German Romantics, the previously marginalised status of Shakespeare was indeed increasingly upgraded, while the nationalistic consciousness of the English was heightened as a consequence of rivalry with the cultural and military hegemony of France. It was in the early nineteenth century that Shakespeare was first apotheosised as the national poet, representing the essence of English culture.88 And the Elizabethan period was increasingly reinstated as the golden age of English history. While this campaign of restoration of the indigenous tradition may be understood as an aspect of nationalist ideology designed to assert superiority over the French character, Hunt's reinvention of the Elizabethans as Theocritean pastoralists was also a strategy to promote the bourgeois ethic and aesthetic. In his pastoral poetics, Hunt celebrated the restoration of the spirit of Elizabethan poetry to his age: `now that our poetry is come back, something like a love of nature must return with it.'89 So in the name of upholding the national culture in rivalry with French neoclassical culture, Hunt was in effect propagating the suburban middle-class ethos. In his version of a history of English poetry, the poets were remoulded into a group of suburban nature-lovers. The Elizabethan carpe diem




sensibility, whose moral innocence vindicated the unashamed pursuit of pleasure, was a convenient and respectable way to promote Hunt's aesthetic which regarded nature as an object of consumption. He argued that the golden age of English poetry could be regained only once one had successfully revitalised the spirit of the Elizabethan poets such as Shakespeare, Spenser and Drayton. Hunt deliberately (mis)read other poets such as Fletcher, Herrick, Cowley and Milton, as well as his contemporaries, as possessing the carpe diem sensibility. For example, Milton was presented not as the sombre and sublime poet of Paradise Lost, but as the youthful pastoral poet of `L'Allegro', Comus and Lycidas. In the eyes of Hunt, although `the Dragon Phantom Calvinism' temporarily intruded into Milton's `Hesperian gardens', he could never completely abandon the world of pastoral.90 Hunt regarded the pastoral interludes in Paradise Lost as the most poetically desirable elements of the work: àllusions to romance and to Greek mythology, which he never could prevail himself to give up, are the most refreshing things in his Paradise Lost and Regained.'91 In order to propagate Milton's poetry as a pleasant diversion, Hunt played down its status as a Christian epic, with the moral seriousness appropriate to that genre, and foregrounded its purely pleasurable aspects. Thus Hunt deliberately reinvented the English poets as pastoralists: and among this band of pastoralists, the most powerful was Spenser. Hunt referred to Spenser as his favourite poet throughout his life. In the sonnet `The Poets' (1815), Hunt confessed that he preferred Spenser over Horace (Hunt's favourite Latin poet), and even over Shakespeare; and as late as 1858, when he was 75 years old, he called himself a `Spenserophilist'.92 Hunt was the most vocal champion of Spenser in the early nineteenth century, promoting and popularising the sensory beauties of the Spenserian bower. Revising the eighteenth-century view of Spenser as a didactic moralist, Hunt reinvented him as a sensual pastoralist, so as to make Spenser more marketable and more suited to widespread aesthetic consumption. This popular version of Spenser became the dominant view in the nineteenth century, and Hunt and members of his circle contributed considerably to its formation. Hazlitt called Spenser `the poet of our waking dreams', and encouraged the reader to imbibe Spenser's sensual beauty rather than meddle with his allegory.93 Reynolds and the young Keats also cherished Spenser as their idol. The revised view, promoted by Hunt's circle, of Spenser as an enchanter transformed him into an object of luxury consumption for middleclass reader-consumers.




Hunt encouraged them to read The Faerie Queene as a gallery of discrete, delightful pictures, rather than as a coherent narrative or a philosophical allegory. He annotated his Todd edition of Spenser as follows: Ìf Spenser's plots & stories were the points by which he was to be judged, he would be as sorry a poet as he is a great one.'94 What Hunt extolled in Spenser was sensory pleasure unqualified by moral reservation. It was during his 1813±15 imprisonment, serving a sentence for a libellous article on the Prince Regent in the Examiner, that Hunt started annotating his Todd edition of Spenser's Works. It is obvious from the annotations that Hunt admired Spenser as `the painter of the poets', offering a series of enchanting vignettes.95 He noted his favourite passages on the flyleaves of the volume under the heading `Beautiful sequestered scenes', which included the Garden of `Muiopotmos', Cupid's appearance in The Shepheardes Calender, the riches of Mammon's cave, the Masque of Cupid, the dancing Graces on Mount Acidale, the description of Una and, foremost of all, the Bower of Bliss.96 These passages were also heavily marked in the volume. Later, in 1833, Hunt gave much the same catalogue of pictorial scenes from Spenser in the article À New Gallery of Pictures', dismissing allegorical design, narrative continuity and moral glosses as irrelevant to the enjoyment of the delightful pictures and sounds of Spenser's remote world.97 Arguably, Spenser was the dominant model for Hunt's own poetry. The structure of The Months is based on the Mutabilitie Cantos, each month being prefixed with a quotation from the procession of the months in Spenser. Hunt, however, perceives the procession not as part of a philosophical debate between permanence and mutability, but as a pageant of `the Successive Beauties of the Year'. The Months has an epigraph from Spenser's `Muiopotmos' (209±11), by means of which Hunt articulates his bourgeois aesthetic: What more felicitie can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with libertie, And to be lord of all the workes of nature? The function of poetry is to poeticise the luxury of strolling around the suburbs of London. Hunt contends that Spenser is at his most pleasurable (and hence at his best) when he pictures natural gardens and bowers. Spenser `wraps you, wherever you are, / In a bow'r of seclusion beneath a sweet star' (`To Charles Lamb' 31±2). Not surprisingly, the Bower of Bliss is Hunt's favourite description in The Faerie Queene, and he incorporates a number of blissful bowers into his own poetry.




Hunt thus greatly contributed to disseminating a `popular' version of Spenser in the early nineteenth century. Indeed, what is now considered to be the `Romantic' view of Spenser is actually a `bourgeois' version in which the Bower of Bliss is commodified in order to cater for the taste of the emerging consumer middle class.98 This aestheticised view of Spenser was drastically revised by twentieth-century literary critics, first and foremost by C. S. Lewis's Allegory of Love (1936). Lewis argues that the idea of an earthly paradise in the fallen world is, however celestial and prelapsarian it may appear, inevitably problematic. Bowers are places not only for physical pleasures, but for putting a quester's moral integrity to the test. A bower often turns into the mental state of a knight-errant, in which he explores his potential and limits as a moral being. Since Lewis's revision, it has generally been accepted that the seclusion of bowers is by nature ambiguous, and mostly disastrous: a blissful bower is in constant danger of turning into a prison. Earthly gardens, from `Muiopotmos' to the Bower of Bliss (with the exception only of Mount Acidale), always suggest the danger of another Fall. In Hunt's popularised and commercialised version of Spenser, however, earthly bowers are depleted of all their moral implications, and presented as poetical equivalents of suburban gardens. `Politics and Poetics' (1815) is one of a number of Hunt's poems in which he longs for leisure and pleasure in the Spenserian bower. Hunt desperately tries to engage himself in his `daily cares' (25) as a political journalist, setting aside his leisure pursuits such as the volumes of Homer, Milton, Tasso and Horace. However, he finally gives up `dull politics' (68) for `laurelled leisure' (70), invoking a locus amoenus of Spenserian pastoral bower (72 ff.). Pleasing and soothing as it is, the bower of bliss is constantly vulnerable to the intrusion of socio-political reality: such a leisure activity as enjoying a beautiful garden, whether suburban or Spenserian, is only a temporary relief from the daily business. Ànd lo! my Bower of Bliss is turned into jail!' (121), wails Hunt. However, Hunt's bower-turned-prison typically lacks Spenserian moral depth and complexity. In The Faerie Queene, a heroic quest is often diverted into a temporary relief in a locus amoenus. Yet pure otium cannot stand as a virtue by itself in the fallen world. Bliss in a bower is destined to turn out to be illusory and to be replaced by the moral virtues of a heroic life. In marked contrast, the only conflict embodied in Hunt's poem is that between the need to work and the desire for leisure in the consciousness of a professional middle-class man in the early nineteenth century.




`The Nymphs' (1818), which is composed of a series of beautiful sequestered scenes, catered precisely for the taste of those who craved a pleasant diversion in their leisure time. The whole poem may be seen as a sensuously intoxicating vignette, reminiscent of a series of temptations which Spenser's Guyon experiences, but totally devoid of the moral danger inherent in the Bower of Bliss. The song of the nymphs enchants Hunt, but it is a far cry from Siren's enticing but deadly song. Hunt's vision of the nymphs may be seen as a secular, popularised version of Calidore's vision of the Graces, for both the knight-errant and Hunt encounter neither obstacles nor moral danger as a result of seeing a pleasurable vision. Whereas Calidore's vision implies the earthly possibility of a glimpse of a heavenly paradise, Hunt's vision remains no more than a pleasant picture. Right at the beginning of `The Nymphs', Hunt invokes the muse of pastoral poetry Thalia, `most sylvan of the earnest Nine' (I, 9); and he immediately arrives at shady bowers, as effortlessly as Theocritean shepherds achieve their goals of pursuing pleasure. Hunt has a vision of `Nymphs of all names, and woodland Geniuses' (I, 38), including the Dryads, Hamadryads, Napeads, Limniad, Oreads, Ephydriads, Naiads and Nereids. In the poem, Hunt invokes and revives the golden age, in which the unashamed pursuit of pleasure is equivalent to `the wise health of everlasting youth' (I, 4), being morally innocent and unfallen. The overt sensuality in the descriptions of the Nepheliads (especially, II, 69±79) is therefore justified: because of Hunt's epicurean interpretation of pleasure as natural, wholesome and innocent, there is no apparent moral danger in the voluptuous presentation of the nymphs. In The Story of Rimini, his most successful work (both poetically and commercially), Hunt tried to recreate the pictorial opulence of Spenser's pastoral bower. In his `Sonnet' (1816), Reynolds praised Hunt's poem for offering the reader `still bowers, / Wreathed up with laurel-branches close and green' (7±8). Keats also asserted that a reader of The Story of Rimini would find à region of his own, / A bower for his spirit' (Òn The Story of Rimini' 11±12). As other contemporary readers also pointed out, a marketable property of The Story of Rimini was its pleasing description of Francesca's garden, in which the reader could take repose, or range freely from bower to bower. Just as he foregrounded the pastoral interludes in Paradise Lost or in The Faerie Queene as representative elements of these epic poems, Hunt regarded the episode of Paulo and Francesca as `the most cordial and refreshing one in the whole of that singular poem the Inferno, which . . . has always appeared to me a kind of sublime night-mare'.99 In other words, Hunt extracted a `refreshing' inter-




lude from Dante's sublime Inferno, and aestheticised it into a beautiful vignette. Hunt tended to linger on the lengthy descriptive passages, which considerably hindered the progress of the plot. There is a strong possibility that Hunt read H. F. Cary's translation of the Divine Comedy published in 1814 by Taylor and Hessey, both of whom were members of Hunt's circle, and also publishers of both Reynolds's The Naiad and Keats's Endymion and Lamia volumes. Whilst it takes only thirteen lines to relate the consummation of illicit passion in Francesca's bower in Cary's Dante (Inferno V. 123±35), Hunt's Rimini takes more than 100 lines merely to describe the garden (III, 382±487). Later Hunt revised most of the poems in his 1832 volume, but allowed the whole description of Francesca's garden to stand intact: `The long description . . . of the garden in The Story of Rimini, I have suffered to remain, though it may seem injurious to the progress of the action.'100 The whole poem, indeed, may be seen as a tapestry of beautiful vignettes: the Spenserian procession of the knights and squires in Ravenna in Canto I; the bride's rural journey to Rimini in Canto II; and Francesca's bower of bliss in Canto III. As for the catalogue of trees in Canto II, Hunt acknowledges that `the simile of the patches of moss to sunshine, in the second canto, was borrowed from Gilpin's Forest Scenery'.101 Here Hunt refers to one of Gilpin's influential writings on landscape, Remarks on Forest Scenery, and Other Woodland Views, Illustrated by the Scenes of New-Forest in Hampshire (1791; third edn, 1808). As we have seen, the New Forest was a fashionable picturesque site for middle-class consumer-tourists. Hunt was in effect poeticising a tourist resort in his description of nature. Yet it is also likely that he had in mind Spenser's `tree passage' (The Faerie Queene, I. i. 7±9) which he cited in The Months.102 Either way, the poem is written by and for a lover of nature: Ìf I have succeeded at all, the lovers of nature have still to judge in what proportion the success may be.'103 In Canto III, the reader is led from a `shadie grove' to Francesca's garden. In the description of Francesca's bower of bliss, Hunt seizes every opportunity to resuscitate the `lavish affluence' of Acrasia's Bower of Bliss. The Bower displays the characteristic features of the typical Renaissance garden, being skilfully composed of arbours, natural streams, fountains, arches, temples and pavilions with sculptures, in and through which one explores and enjoys its labyrinthine pleasance. Francesca's locus amoenus, featuring the fountain, the pleasance and the natural stream, may be seen as a popular version of Spenser's Italianate garden: A noble range it was, of many a rood,

Walled round with trees, and ending in a wood:




Indeed the whole was leafy; and it had

A winding stream about it, clear and glad,

That danced from shade to shade, and on its way

Seemed smiling with delight to feel the day.

....

And midst of the flowers, turfed round beneath a shade

Of circling pines, a babbling fountain played,

And 'twixt their shafts you saw the water bright,

Which through the darksome tops glimmered with showering light.

So now you walked beside an odorous bed

Of gorgeous hues, white, azure, golden, red;

And now turned off into a leafy walk,

Close and continuous, fit for lovers' talk;

And now pursued the stream. . . . (III, 382±7, 400±8)

Hunt guides the reader through the labyrinthine leafy walks into the pavilion at the heart of Francesca's `noble range', just as the Palmer leads Guyon to the Bower of Bliss. Yet while Guyon has to overcome a series of sensory temptations presented by the Bower, Francesca (and indeed the reader of Rimini) is free to indulge in `fifty luxuries more' (III, 516). The white marble pavilion is located in shady bowers of bay and myrtle, the `loveliest portion' (III, 435) of the whole range. In the pavilion, as a place for repose, there is a slight hint of moral danger: It was a beauteous piece of ancient skill,

Spared from the rage of war, and perfect still;

By most supposed the work of fairy hands,

Famed for luxurious taste, and choice of lands, ±

Alcina, or Morgana, ± who from fights

And errant fame inveigled amorous knights,

And lived with them in a long round of blisses,

Feasts, concerts, baths, and bower-enshaded kisses. (III, 456±63)

Francesca's bower of bliss derives from the literary tradition of the locus amoenus, chiefly from Acrasia's Bower and Alcina's isle, as well as from suburban gardens and parks. In both Spenser and Ariosto, the pagan enchantress seduces the Christian warrior into carnal pleasure and moral depravity. However, Hunt does not delve into the sinister implications inherent in any earthly paradise, but instead quickly restores the moral innocence of the golden age:




But 'twas a temple, as its sculpture told,

Built to the Nymphs that haunted there of old;

For o'er the door was carved a sacrifice

By girls and shepherds brought, with reverent eyes,

Of sylvan drinks and foods, simple and sweet,

And goats with struggling horns and planted feet:

And on a line with this ran round about

A like relief, touched exquisitely out,

That shewed, in various scenes, the nymphs themselves;

Some by the water side on bowery shelves

Leaning at will. . . . (III, 464±74)

Whereas the carving of the story of Jason and Medea in the ivory gate adumbrates the evil and deceptive nature of the Bower of Bliss, the sculptured nymphs in Francesca's bower remain mere decorative ornaments. As has been said, Francesca's bower is a place for the unashamed pursuit of pleasure. For Francesca, the whole garden is a retreat from daily cares such as her unhappy marriage and secret passion for her husband's brother. She freely indulges herself in the summer-ripe atmosphere and nature's luxuriance, which eventually leads her to commit adultery. Unlike the Bower of Bliss, however, Francesca's bower of bliss is not demolished, but kept intact, despite being the site of the adulterous act. There is a slight sign of danger on the day the unfortunate lovers yield to their fatal passion: She seemed to feel too lightly borne away, ± Too much relieved, ± too much inclined to draw A careless joy from every thing she saw, And looking round her with a new-born eye, As if some tree of knowledge had been nigh, To taste of nature, primitive and free, And bask at ease in her heart's liberty. (III, 521±8) Yet even the implied danger of another Fall is largely eclipsed by Theocritean brightness and prelapsarian pleasure. The lovers sinned, but they were not punished, nor was their àccustomed bower' (III, 508) demolished. The Bower of Bliss was destroyed by Guyon with puritan frenzy, for the whole locale had become internalised in his mind, driving him to exterminate his internal weakness. Francesca's bower, for all her grief and guilt, remained an external landscape pleasing to the eye. Just




as Theocritean herdsmen are part of a pastoral landscape, Paulo and Francesca appear as if they are figures woven onto a tapestry. Spenser's Bower of Bliss was thus appropriated and adapted for the taste and lifestyle of the new metropolitan middle class in Hunt's pastoral poetics and politics. In her companion to trees and shrubs Sylvan Sketches, Kent illustrated the botanical information with poetical citations, for example, the Bower of Bliss, `the most daintie Paradise on ground' (II. xii. 58. 1). Being one of the closest to Hunt in his circle, Kent was also particularly fond of Spenser. She invited the reader to luxuriate in the `leafy luxury' offered by the Bower of Bliss: `Spenser has pictured some spots so lovely, that nature herself could scarcely excel them; we must indulge in one or two of them; will the reader have any objection to accompany us?'104 Lockhart would have condemned her remark, for it was precisely this transformation of the elite tradition into consumer (sub)culture that indelibly stamped her writing as bourgeois. The cultural status of the newly emerging middle class was often denounced as spurious, for all its effort to embrace the elite tradition and its claim to authenticity. However, we can be fairly certain that in this period of unprecedented social change, Hunt's poetry contributed considerably to the cultural struggle of the new middle class in their bid to acquire a respectable identity.




4

The Greek revival The renewed interest in classical culture during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was distinct from the Renaissance classical revival in several respects. The most notable difference was its cultural emphasis upon Greece rather than Rome, a difference that was associated with many other power struggles: between France and England, between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, and between Christian ethics and liberal values. According to Timothy Webb, The fascination of Romantic Hellenism is in its endless variety, in the scope it offered for views that are radically opposed. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the image of Greece and of the Greek achievement was constantly refined, revised, refuted or reinterpreted through a complex and continuous process of redefinition.1 Indeed, Hellenism at the time was not a cultural monolith but à malleable model, an adaptable ideology'.2 Although early travellers had contributed to the gradual recognition and redefinition of Greek culture since the late seventeenth century, the substantial English rediscovery of ancient Greece dated from the mideighteenth century, when the Society of Dilettanti sponsored James Stuart and Nicholas Rivett in their architectural expedition to Greece. Their accurate and detailed accounts of the surviving ancient buildings were published between 1762 and 1816 in four volumes of The Antiquities of Athens. Their first volume triggered the Greek revival in English architecture, the models of Greece gaining instant currency, replacing 71



Classicism as Cultural Luxury


The spirit of enterprise is hovering over the land ± we are living in the `piping times of peace,' ± the country abounds in wealth ± men aspire to greater refinements and luxuries than formerly ± the population is progressively and largely augmenting ± and our public and private buildings are increasing to an amazing extent.3 Contemporary architects even compared their metropolis with Àthens and imperial Rome, in their zenith of power', for London was distinguished from any other capital in terms of `the numerous and splendid buildings'.4 Indeed, the early nineteenth century became a golden age for urban improvements in Britain: `By the beginning of the nineteenth century Palladianism was almost extinct, and Grecian was the predominant style. Throughout the country there arose churches and colleges, shire halls and assembly rooms with porticoes of plain Doric or elegant Ionic.'5 London witnessed a proliferation of public buildings in the Greek style, including the British Museum, the National Gallery, the General Post Office, the Covent Garden Theatre, University College, King's College, the Royal College of Physicians and a number of commercial buildings.6 This Greek revival was not limited to architectural style. In his hugely influential Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1755; Fuseli's translation, 1765), Johann Joachim Winckelmann proclaimed that `Good taste was first formed under Greek skies'. The Greek ideal in fact came to dominate not only architecture but aesthetic taste in general during the latter half of the eighteenth century.7 One aspect of this dominance was an increasing preference for Greek literature, eroding the canonical status of Latin literature. The first modern English translation of the complete works of Plato was published in 1804. William Collins and Mark Akenside derived their poetic inspiration from Greece rather than from Rome. Homer found an enthusiastic new audience, which facilitated a popular passion for learning the Greek language. Keats once planned to learn Greek longing `to feast upon old Homer'.8 Keats's close friend Reynolds dabbled in it, so that he became àble to read Homer in his own garb'.9 This shift in cultural authority from Rome to Greece had been slowly but surely facilitated by a number of archaeological researches and the consequent increase in understanding of ancient Greek civilisation during the eighteenth century. The Society of Dilettanti, founded in 1732 as



those of Rome. In a period of unprecedented economic strength, England then enjoyed a construction boom:

an exclusive dining club for men of high rank celebrating `Grecian taste and Roman spirit', had soon become the most devoted and powerful promoter of classical archaeology. In its early days, members of the Society brought back Greco-Roman statues from Italy; towards the end of the eighteenth century, Greece became the ultimate destination of the Grand Tour. Following the trend, Richard Payne Knight in 1790 decided to replace the Roman toga with the Greek chlamys as the official attire of the president of the Dilettanti Society. Moreover, such Grecomania was not merely an archaeological, architectural, or aesthetic phenomenon. Romantic Hellenism should be seen as an umbrella term loosely lumping together the complex socio-political realities of this cultural phenomenon.

The rise of nationalism The fact that the period of the national craze for Greek taste coincided with that of the political disturbances in France and the Napoleonic Wars was not entirely accidental. England and France had been historic enemies since the days of Sir Philip Sidney, who called his neighbouring country `sweet enemy'. While England had waged frequent wars against France until the mid-eighteenth century, France came culturally to dominate the whole of Europe during the age of neoclassicism. England, however, had been visibly gaining economic strength and domestic stability since the Restoration of 1660, and this gradually eroded the cultural hegemony of France in the English consciousness. Having witnessed the disastrous consequences of the Revolution in France, England had by the early nineteenth century become ever more confident in her national identity and cultural superiority.10 Since France had historically been associated with Rome, it was no wonder that England preferred and appropriated the Greek ideal: to challenge the cultural supremacy of Rome was ultimately to subvert the hegemony of French neoclassicism. The English reinvented ancient Greek culture as simple, natural, vital and above all, original, in opposition to Latin culture which was derivative and imitative, and hence artificial and frigid. Exalting `the long organic music of Homer' and à perfectly unshackled simplicity' of Greek poets, Hunt commented that the `literary genius of the Romans in general, besides being a copier from the Greeks, was inexpressibly cold and critical'.11 Rome came to be regarded as à nation of gladiators'12 much inferior to Greece, which was seen as a fair and cultivated country of poets and philosophers: `The cruelty was a bad Roman taste enough: the grace is from the Greeks.'13 Not surprisingly, the aggressive



Classicism as Cultural Luxury 73

Napoleon was identified with the barbarous Romans whose major concern was (considered to be) the expansion of their empire. The English were more than willing to affiliate themselves with the cradle of European civilisation, so as to assert their cultural legitimacy. Hunt claimed that the English language `has more in common with the Greek perhaps than any other'.14 And Shelley, inspired by the War of Greek Independence, rapturously declared in the preface to Hellas (1822) that `We are all Greeks. Our laws, our literature, our religion, our arts have their root in Greece.'15 Greece thus came to be recognised in England as the origin of European civilisation, whose perfection could not be surpassed by any Roman copy. Such a redistribution of cultural forces was in fact a joint strategy adopted by the Teutonic countries. Having both been dominated by French cultural hegemony and threatened by her military power, England and Germany formed a united cultural front against France. Such a revisionist strategy was, in fact, first and more assiduously sought by the Germans, whose need to reinterpret the history of Western Europe was greater and more urgent. This imperative to deconstruct the cultural domination of France led the Germans to the peculiar obsession with classical and romantic, ancient and modern modes of art. In their grand historical scheme, the Germans located an irretrievable fissure between classical and romantic cultures. The classical sensibility represented a finite but seamless perfection, conscious of no want or deficiency; but the introduction of Christianity rent the human consciousness into the state of deficiency and desire, yearning for the lost innocence and the infinite perfection of the world beyond.16 It was not at issue whether the flawless consciousness of the ancients or the fissured one of the moderns was superior; each was regarded as admirable in its own way.17 Rather, the major purpose in laying down this grand division between classical and romantic cultures in European history was to claim that, as Shelley put it in the preface to Hellas, the `human form and the human mind attained to a perfection in Greece' rather than in Rome.18 Thus the original purity and primitive simplicity of ancient Greek culture were regarded as the consummate embodiment of the classical sensibility ± far superior to Roman imitation and corruption. This hierarchical binary opposition between (Greek) original and (Roman) imitation was also strategically applied to the distinct contrast between Teutonic and Latin cultures: the former being indigenous and organically evolved (and still evolving); the latter imitative and artificially transplanted (therefore doomed to wither). Latin nations, long admired as the inheritors of classical tradition, were increasingly regarded as mere imitators. In perceived contrast, Teutonic nations




became more and more confident that they had originated their own indigenous traditions, and flourished under their native religion and institutions. It was obvious which culture was considered to be superior and desirable. This socio-historical revision of European cultural history, ardently carried out by the Germans, was introduced to England by Madame de StaeÈl and A. W. Schlegel. The translations of StaeÈl's De l'Allemagne (1810; translated in 1813) and Schlegel's Vorlesungen uÈber dramatische Kunst und Literatur (1809±11; translated in 1815) greatly facilitated a revival of the English interest in their Teutonic brothers during the second decade of the nineteenth century.19 At the time of publication of her book, de StaeÈl was staying in London as a political exile from France, where De l'Allemagne had been suppressed and condemned by Napoleon's censorship as `not sufficiently French'. England could not be a more favourable market for such a book, and De l'Allemagne became à London ``bestseller'' in the winter of 1813±1814', selling 3,500 copies in six weeks.20 Schlegel's Lectures owed not a little of its reputation to de StaeÈl's praise of the author as `the first literary critic of Germany'.21 The idea of the distinction between two European cultures, combined with the already rampant Francophobia and widespread Grecomania, gained instant currency in England. The Quarterly Review celebrated the idea às founded in a very accurate knowledge not only of character but of history'.22 Both books enjoyed a number of favourable, and often laudatory, reviews in the leading journals.23 The phenomenon of the Greek revival may thus be seen as partially constituting a new cultural awareness of European history. The language of Greek worship became inevitably interwoven with the rhetoric of nationalism, buttressed by a newly gained confidence in Teutonic culture. Ancient Greece was admired for its original perfection, which was seen as having deplorably degenerated into Roman corrupt imitation. Teutonic nations may be said to have invented this myth of originality in order to claim their own cultural legitimacy. The consequent cultural alliance amounted to Teutonic racialism, with the distinct emphasis on `the historical unity of the ``northern nations'''.24 This rise of nationalist ideology, accompanied by the language of `Teutomania', anticipated the Victorian commonplace of the Anglo-Saxon `race'.25

The rise of the popular The tension between Latin and Teutonic cultures involved another ideological struggle, namely a class conflict between the aristocracy




and the populace. The rise of nationalism in Teutonic countries was inevitably linked to the rise of the popular, for the chief enemy was France, the most classical and aristocratic of European nations. Indeed, de StaeÈl described French poetry as seldom popular, for the very reason that ìt has no connection whatever with our national feelings'.26 French neoclassical poetry, centring as it did around the court and admired among `cultivated minds' throughout Europe, was unknown to the common people, for it was not rooted in their native soil.27 Such aristocratic exclusiveness of French literature was in striking contrast with the vernacular and popular nature of German literature. German writers indeed arose against what were regarded as the shackles of neoclassical principles, and this rebellion comprised a significant part of the increasing national confidence in their indigenous culture towards È rger,' the end of the eighteenth century. `The poems of GoeÈthe and Bu as de StaeÈl put it, àre set to music, and repeated from the banks of the Rhine to the shores of the Baltic.'28 As for England, by the early nineteenth century the literature of the age of Pope had decidedly gone out of favour with the ever-expanding reading public. In the eyes of the largely middle-class readers (who were also most probably ardent patriots), neoclassical poetry seemed too aristocratic and too French. Hunt condemned the `French school of poetry' for its `cold and artificial compositions', and warned its adherents against `being left behind by the public whom they would lead'.29 As Rome came to lose its classical prestige, the species of classicism espoused by Pope and his followers became an easy target for ridicule and criticism. Hunt condemned their pretension to classical tradition as `their gross mistake about what they called classical, which was Horace and the Latin breeding'.30 Indeed, since neoclassical poetry was founded upon the Roman-French model, it may have been considered to be doubly distanced from the original. Hence the classicism of Pope was attacked for being cold, frigid, artificial and mechanical, in contrast to the original and èlementary inspiration of Greece'.31 Hazlitt branded Pope and Dryden as `the second class of poets, viz. the describers of artificial life and manners'.32 Neoclassical imitation of Roman copy seemed feeble and spurious in comparison with the natural vigour of Greek original. By the early nineteenth century, the elitism of neoclassicism had been superseded and subverted by the comparative egalitarianism of the Greek revival. Aristocratic accomplishments were no longer `the great essentials of the art', and, as Hunt put it, the `notions about poetry can no longer be controuled [sic], like the fashions, by a coterie of town gentlemen'.33 In marked contrast with the aristocratic




monopoly of neoclassicism, the Greek revival made anything Greek widely available to the public, be it Greek literature, language, fine art, furniture or architectural design. Thus the revival of ancient Greece was closely implicated in the rise of middle-class consumer culture. The unprecedented growth in the publishing industry also contributed greatly to the equal distribution of Greek heritage. An increasing number of (often lavishly) illustrated volumes on classical antiquities were published. Even learning the Greek language had become more accessible to middle-class people, for the early nineteenth century witnessed an information revolution in which primers and educational aids, along with poetry and fiction, `were produced in very considerable quantities at increasingly modest prices ± enabling any earnest apprentice to struggle up the ladder of self-education in his leisure hours'.34 From 1811 to 1813 young Reynolds taught himself Greek `by a new method which is by using an English & Greek Grammar instead of a Latin & Gk. one'.35 This new Greek grammar was The Elements of Greek Grammar; with Notes for the Use of Those Who Have Made Some Progress in the Language, which enjoyed considerable popularity (second edn, 1807).36 Reynolds claimed that learning Greek via his native English was `clearer & shorter and consequently the best', for the `Latin Rules cannot impress themselves upon the memory or appear half so clear to the understanding as Rules written in the very language we are accustomed to speak'.37 The Elements of Greek Grammar by which à person may learn Greek without understanding Latin'38 precisely targeted such learners as Reynolds (and Keats) with little classical education. Although he later gave up the idea of learning Greek, Keats was well aware of `the power the knowlege [sic] of any language gives one': learning a foreign language gave an access to à fund of curious literature'.39 Keats realised not only the educational but also entertaining potentialities of the classics, when he told Reynolds that ìf you understood Greek, and would read me passages . . . 't would be . . . a greater luxury than reading the thing one's self ' (my emphasis).40 The Greek revival may thus be seen as part of that process of democratisation and commodification of literature, whether native or foreign. Both Reynolds and Keats were motivated to learn Greek by their desire to read Homer in the original. The rise of Homer's popularity coincided with the decline and fall of neoclassicism, whose standard of taste had been unable to tolerate the savage violence of the Homeric epics. As archaeological researches discovered the less civilised aspects of Greek society, Pope's `genteel' translation of Homer fell out of favour with the less aristocratic audience of the early nineteenth century:





Hunt rebuked Pope for his èlegant mistake' of turning `the Dodonñan oak of his [Homer's] original into . . . smooth little toys'.42 However, the English audience did not replace Pope's Iliad with Homer's Greek original; instead, they rediscovered George Chapman from their native literary heritage. Chapman's translation had Elizabethan vigour and vitality, which was more in tune with the epic grandeur of the original. Hunt thought of Chapman's Homer as containing `more of his spirit than any other'.43 Keats discovered and explored a terra incognita of ancient Greek poetry by `looking into' Chapman's Homer. This rediscovery of Homer in Elizabethan translation again pointed to the association of the Greek revival with the rise of the popular. In the early nineteenth century, Elizabethan literature was revalued and recognised as a national heritage in the collective consciousness of the English. Hunt argued that the decline of French neoclassical poetry was partially caused by `the revived inclination for our older and great school of poetry, chiefly produced . . . by the commentators on Shakspeare'.44 Indeed, this great Elizabethan came to be regarded as representing the very essence of English culture. In marked contrast with French literature centred on the court, `Shakspear [sic] is as much admired by the populace in England as by those of a higher class.'45 As de StaeÈl justly observed, a growing number of the middle-class audience was eager to cultivate its taste for literature, including the classics. Chapman's Homer catered for such middle-class readers, who although without Greek, wanted to become acquainted with classical literature. Greek classics may thus be said to have been revitalised and popularised via Elizabethan poetry. Although the Elizabethans themselves did not rigidly distinguish the Greek from the Roman model, the Romantics in effect reinvented their great forefathers as Grecophiles, so as to subvert their immediate neoclassical predecessors: Shakspeare [sic], and the rest of our great school of poetry, saw farther into the beauty of the Greek mythology. Spenser, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, evidently sparkled up, and had their most graceful perceptions upon them, whenever they turned to the fair forms and leafy luxuries of ancient imagination.46



Many critics found that their newly developed historical sense was offended by the way in which Pope had transformed the simplicity and natural vigour of the original into the fop-finery of a gentleman of the eighteenth century. . . . Yet other readers objected specifically that Pope had deprived the original of its primitive brutality.41

In contrast with the Elizabethan instinct for the original Greek sentiment, the neoclassical use of Greek mythology was based upon Roman copy, and hence grossly mistaken. Moreover, the neoclassical mythological cultivation was rebuked for being far inferior to the Elizabethan `sensibility'. Shakespeare's `finest poetical instinct' was vividly set against the `school-boy common-places' of neoclassical poetry.47 Although he was not as educated as other Elizabethans, Shakespeare's genius transcended the classical erudition of, say, Ben Jonson: though not a scholar, he needed nothing more than the description given by scholars, good or indifferent, in order to pierce back at once into all the recesses of the original country. They told him where they had been, and he was there in an instant, though not in the track of their footing. . . . 48 Here the natural and original genius of Shakespeare was recognised as infinitely superior to artificially acquired classical education. Such rhetoric of `genius' greatly contributed not only to the rise of English nationalism against neoclassical France, but also to the cultural struggle and social climbing of the new middle class. Shakespeare, who himself was mocked for lack of classical education in his own lifetime, could not be a more appropriate role model for middle-class readers in the early nineteenth century. Shakespeare's genius enabled him to feel `something which it requires more than mere scholarship to understand'.49 And Shakespeare transcended not only mere scholarship, but also particular class or culture: Hunt called the national Bard of England `Humanity's divinest son' (`Thoughts of the Avon' 25). Having been reinvented as a poet of humanity, Shakespeare was now a living proof that a man with `small Latin, less Greek' could cultivate `the deepest taste of antiquity'.50 In order to `feel' the essence of the Greek spirit, all one needed was to cultivate one's sensibility. As has been said, the national craze for ancient Greece may also be seen largely as a popular rage for Greek `taste'. Hunt was a tireless promoter of the middle-class cultivation of good taste, which he identified with Greek taste. His Foliage was in part dedicated to à love of . . . the fine imagination of the Greeks'.51 Hunt translated a number of poems by Greek poets including Homer, Theocritus, Bion and Moschus, and in his translations tried to present `something pathetic in the Cyclops, something sunny and exuberant in the Rural Journey, and even some of the gentler Greek music in the Elegy on the Death of Bion' to the Greekless audience.52 Hunt's original poetry was also permeated with




the ambience of classical mythology. The third canto of The Story of Rimini, for example, was praised by Hazlitt as `chaste as it is classical'.53 `The Nymphs', the `principal original poem' in Foliage, was based on `that beautiful mythology, which it is not one of the least merits of the new school [of poetry] to be restoring to its proper estimation'.54 Taking a task upon himself, Hunt transformed the myths of Hero and Leander and Bacchus and Ariadne into beautiful verbal pictures (1819). And in The Months (1821), he cited Moschus and Theocritus both in Greek original and English translation.55 By offering Greek tales in pleasing narratives or agreeable translations, Hunt was trying to `popularise' Greek poetry and hence to cultivate the popular taste for classicism. Hunt's mythological poems made the Greek classics accessible and widely available to the middle-class audience, in marked contrast to neoclassical poetry which was a showcase of privileged learning. `With the Greek dramatists,' however, as Hunt himself confessed, Ì am ashamed to say I am unacquainted.'56 Translating Greek pastoral poets was much more congenial to Hunt's poetic composition than Homer, which he considered as `rather an experiment'.57 Hunt avowedly preferred the pastoral pleasures of Theocritus, Bion and Moschus to the epic grandeur of Homer and `the shocking plots and catastrophes of the Greek tragedy'.58 And the former was more suited to the popular taste than the latter. Hunt wholeheartedly agreed with Schlegel's view that `the Greeks have invented the poetry of gladness', yet on the other opposed the same author's melancholy taste for Greek tragedy.59 For Hunt, Greek tragedy seemed to be àll that was fiery and unjust in their mythology', and `átna among the fields of Sicily '.60 Hunt's circle of poets may be said to have mass-produced pastoral poems, by means of which they nurtured and shaped the popular taste. Procter (alias Barry Cornwall) remoulded a number of Greek myths and legends either into tapestries of dramatic scenes in Dramatic Scenes and Other Poems (1819) and Marcian Colonna, an Italian Tale with Three Dramatic Scenes, and Other Poems (1820), or into easy-to-read narratives in A Sicilian Story, with Diego de Montilla, and Other Poems (1820) and The Flood of Thessaly, The Girl of Provence, and Other Poems (1823). Horace Smith recreated the Theocritean rural setting in Amarynthus, the Nympholept: A Pastoral Drama, in Three Acts: With Other Poems (1821). Reynolds studded his poetry with dryads and naiads in The Naiad: A Tale. With Other Poems (1816) and The Garden of Florence; and Other Poems (1821). And last but not least, Keats was well known for his penchant for Greek gods and goddesses, nymphs and satyrs, throughout his short poetic career. Reynolds called Keats's poetical genius `peculiarly classical'.61 Another




contemporary reviewer praised the `Hymn to Pan' for being àmong the finest specimens of classic poetry in our language'.62 The classical poetry of Hunt's circle presented the world of antiquity in a readable fashion; Greek classics were transformed into pleasing tableaux for easy consumption. The catering for the cultural ambitions of the middle class and the popular vogue for ancient Greece complemented and facilitated each other, in what might justly be called an aesthetic revolution in the publishing market.

The attack on Cockney classicism As mentioned above, the members of Hunt's circle catered for the increasing popular taste for Greek antiquities. By producing pleasing vignettes of classical mythology, they transformed a hallmark of aristocratic accomplishment into one of an increasing number of leisure activities available to the new middle classes. At the same time, the classical poetry of Hunt's circle was offered as a respectable cultural pursuit. While the democratic nature of ancient Greek society sanctioned (or was understood to sanction) the freedom to pursue individual pleasure, the social prestige attached to the classical tradition greatly helped (or was thought to help) to enhance cultural status. By affiliating themselves with `Greek' tradition, the new middle-class audience tried to legitimise their uncertain social origin and cultural identity. In order to establish the authenticity and superiority of his class, Hunt could not have been more virulent in attacking neoclassical pretensions as mere aristocratic accomplishments. He tried to trivialise the neoclassical use of Greek mythology as à set of toys for ladies', or to emasculate it as à set of school-boy common-places which it was thought manly to give up'.63 The neoclassical authority was thus redefined as puerile, effeminate and frigid, in direct opposition to the masculine and virile Greek original. However, Hunt's strategy of effeminising and puerilising neoclassicism turned out to be a risky undertaking, because the upholders of the traditional social hierarchy could not tolerate such an audacious move against a mature and masculine cultural hegemony. Hunt's espousal of Greek culture could indeed be susceptible to the charge of effeminacy, due to the implicit link between the ancient Greeks and homosexuality.64 Interestingly, the vocabulary of Hunt's attack on neoclassicism was almost identical with the language of the conservative condemnation of the Cockney claim to classicism. In order to align himself with the authenticity of the Greek original, Hunt relentlessly branded




neoclassicism as a foppish and mere fashionable diversion for à coterie of town gentlemen'. However, one need only recall Byron's denunciation of the Cockney school to realise how risky and precarious Hunt's strategy was. For Byron, himself an aristocrat and, appropriately, an admirer of Pope, the shabby gentility of the metropolitan Hunt glaringly branded him as a Cockney. Hunt's denunciation of the neoclassical poets as fops and coxcombs seemed all the more offensive, because Hunt himself was faithfully and foppishly aping the fashionable activities of the beau monde. Hence the Cockney poets were branded as à Sunday blood' or `Sunday beaux', in marked contrast with real gentlemen who devoted their much more ample leisure and means to high art. Hunt also tried to reduce the neoclassical to `nothing but school-boy inexperience'.65 Yet this strategy caused a great stir of anger among conservative reviewers, for there was no denying that the Cockney poets themselves had no more than school-boy (in)experience of Greek classics via Chapman's translation or LemprieÁre's Classical Dictionary. By the early nineteenth century, even undereducated clerks and young apprentices could easily become acquainted with the Greek myths by thumbing through such mythological handbooks as Andrew Tooke's Pantheon (1698; 31st edn, 1809), Joseph Spence's Polymetis (1747; abridged sixth edn, 1802), and Classical Dictionary (1788; tenth edn, 1815). At school, Hunt saturated himself in those mythographic compendia, and was impressed by `the fine large prints' of Spence's `great folio edition', which had a lasting impact on his poetic taste.66 According to Haydon, Hunt `had been educated at Christ's Hospital, and was not deficient in classical knowledge, but yet not a scholar'.67 Keats's initiation into the classics was little different. Clarke attributed young Keats's ùncommon familiarity ± almost consanguinity with the Greek mythology' to `his reading LemprieÁre's Classical Dict[ionar]y Tooke's Pantheon, Spence's Polymetis abridged for schools; and latterly Chapman's Homer'.68 In his sonnet Òn First Looking into Chapman's Homer', Keats mapped out the development of his classical (self-)education. Fascinated with the realm of Flora and Pan, young Keats àppeared to learn' LemprieÁre.69 He had also `travell'd in the realms of gold, / And many goodly states and kingdoms seen' (1±2) through Tooke and Spence. Even while he was content with leafing through these mythological primers, Keats had often been told of òne wide expanse . . . / That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne' (5±6). Yet the world of Homer remained a terra incognita to young Keats, not only because the savageness of Homeric epics was beyond his boyish taste for the pastoral realm, but also because he could not read Greek. Hence, as he wrote,




. . . did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific. . . . (7±12) Here finding Homer's realm of gold is likened to an astronomical or geographical discovery. However, whereas both the stargazer and the voyager Cortez grasp their new discoveries within the naked èye', Keats `breathes' the pure ether of Homer's demesne. Keats could not directly `see' or `read' Homer, but only `hear Chapman speak out loud and bold' in his native English. For all his feeling of exhilaration about the new discovery, Keats's experience of Homer was second-hand. The inauthenticity of his classical knowledge itself speaks out `loud and bold' in the sonnet. In the eyes of conservatives, such self-taught classicists as the Cockney poets could not be comparable to university-educated neoclassicists. A reviewer in Blackwood's Magazine branded Cockney classicism as à laborious straining after the classical in the midst of a profound ignorance of the spirit of antiquity'.70 The British Critic derided Hunt's translation of the Iliad, in which Priam vented his anger on his sons `like an ostler to the stable-boys' before he went to the Greek camp to ransom the dead body of Hector.71 Keats's Endymion was ridiculed, for a supposed Greek shepherd was behaving like à young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at the full of the moon'.72 Lord Byron in his Don Juan relentlessly revealed Keats as an uneducated apprentice who `without Greek / Contrived to talk about the Gods of late, / Much as they might have been supposed to speak' (XI. vi. 3±5). Hunt and Keats were thus severely criticised again and again for their inadequate classical education: From his prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs . . . [yet] the one [Hunt] confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other [Keats] knows Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan, Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their education.73 Barry Cornwall was also seen as one of these `lieges of Leigh the First', and his Flood of Thessaly was chastised for being `miserable




common-place, or more miserable affectation'.74 A Blackwood's reviewer stigmatised the Cockney sort of classical poetry as `the most exquisite trash'.75 À Hottentot in top-boots,' he remarked, ìs not more ridiculous than a classical Cockney.'76 What particularly disturbed and infuriated conservative reviewers was the Cockney pretensions to classical connoisseurship. Hunt contended that neoclassical gods and goddesses, `compared with the Grecian ones, cut much about the same figure, as the perking shepherds and shepherdesses did on their mantle-pieces'.77 However, it was Hunt himself who actually placed plaster casts of Grecian gods on his mantelpiece, reducing Greek antiquities to objects of aesthetic consumption, and popularising classical `high' culture into a bourgeois fashion. Byron was right in observing that Hunt and Keats belonged to the `second-hand school of poetry'.78 Indeed, their experience of classical patrimony in general was largely second-hand. Rather than being overwhelmed by the grandeur of the Parthenon in Athens, the Cockney poets were (compelled by their financial circumstances to remain) content with replicas and reproductions offered by plaster cast shops in London. The Eclectic Review shrewdly pointed out that the marble or lead antique reproductions in `the Tea-Gardens' were `the original of some of his ``fair-limbed nymphs'''.79 Yet Hunt himself seemed not remotely dissatisfied with the way he was restricted to `consuming' the classical heritage in sculptors' shops. Hunt was more than happy to inform his middle-class readers of his favourite shops: Many persons are not aware that there are show-rooms in these places, which are well worth getting a sight of by some small purchase. For the best artistical casts, the Italian shops, such as Papera's in Marylebone-street, Golden-square, are, we believe, the best. . . . Shont in Holborn seems to deal chiefly in modern things; but he has a room up stairs, full of casts from the antique, large and small, that amounts to an exhibition. Of all the shop pleasures, that are `not inelegant,' an hour or two passed in a place of this kind is surely one of the most polite. Here are the gods and heroes of old. . . . Here the Celestial Venus, naked in heart and body, ties up her locks, her drapery hanging upon her lower limbs. Here the Belvidere [sic] Apollo, breathing forth his triumphant disdain, follows with an earnest eye the shaft that has killed the serpent.80 Hunt seemed to be wallowing in the `shop pleasure' of browsing around the plaster-cast showrooms. The passage above vividly describes the




contemporary consumer culture in which middle-class people eagerly purchased the inexpensive reproductions of the world-famous antique statues including `the Venus de Medici, the Gladiator, the Quoit-Player, the Antinous, the Piping Faun, the Apollo Belvedere'.81 Interestingly, Hunt did not seem to notice that he actually recommended the casts of Greco-Roman models rather than of Greek originals. He appeared to be completely ignorant of the dramatic change of taste among artists and connoisseurs from Roman copies to Greek originals. However, Hunt's `profound ignorance' amounted to the middle-class perception of `the antique' in general: the fundamental change of taste among the learned did not affect a preference for down-market antique reproductions among bourgeois consumer-cultivators. In the eyes of the culturally ambitious new middle class, collecting a wide range of plaster-cast busts and statues was not only a polite pursuit, but also an affordable luxury. Hunt earnestly advocated such commodification of antiquity: Fewer people are aware how cheaply these things are sold. The little statues are three or four shillings apiece, perhaps less; and a profit is got upon the head of Sappho at eighteen-pence. You may set a price upon Paris's head, and have the knave brought you at two shillings. . . . Thus for eighteen-pence, a room may be adorned with a cast after the antique.82 Hunt's library was adorned with a number of reproductions, including `Sappho's meek head' (381), as Keats described in `Sleep and Poetry': It was a poet's house who keeps the keys Of pleasure's temple. Round about were hung The glorious features of the bards who sung In other ages ± cold and sacred busts Smiled at each other. (354±8) As well as statues, there were pictures depicting fauns and satyrs, Diana and her nymphs, Petrarch and Laura. The closing part of Keats's poem was, as Clarke put it, àn inventory of the art garniture of the room'.83 Ian Jack suggests that `Leigh Hunt's study, with its busts of poets and its prints in portfolios and on the walls, was the most exciting (because probably the first) picture gallery that Keats ever visited'.84 Hunt was not embarrassed by the inauthenticity of reproductions as long as they were the copies of authentic originals. However, his strategic handling of the




natural±artificial, authentic±illegitimate binary opposition turned out to be rather flawed, for Hunt himself did not possess an adequate knowledge of the antique. Such second-hand pretensions to classical connoisseurship were irritating enough to conservative reviewers. Yet Hunt went even further, likening himself and his wife to a Grecian god and goddess: `Then tea made by one, who (although my wife she be), / If Jove were to drink it, would soon be his Hebe' (`To William Hazlitt' 49±50). Not surprisingly, Hunt's unabashed display of classical pretensions scandalised the upholders of the traditional cultural hierarchy. `The great craze of the Cockneys at present,' as a Blackwood's reviewer lamented, ìs to be Greekish.'85 The national craze for ancient Greek culture was largely driven by the middle-class consumer demand for aesthetic consumption. And Hunt was a tireless promoter of bourgeois classicism, by which I mean the pleasurable consumption of the classical tradition through a variety of inexpensive second-hand mediums such as prints, casts and the `second-hand' poetry produced by the Hampstead literary circle. In the eighteenth century, the notion of a man of taste referred to a wealthy collector and connoisseur of objets de vertu. In the early nineteenth century, however, a man of taste came to imply a middle-class consumer who was a cast and `print virtuoso'.86

Classicism for bourgeois consumption I have so far deliberately avoided the commonly used term `Romantic Hellenism', not only because it is too broad, but also because the inclusiveness of the term is liable to efface the contemporary socio-cultural realities of the period. The phrase may well be appropriate to the style of literary criticism which tended to lump together `major' Romantic poets under the nomenclature of `Romantic Hellenism'. However, I would prefer to look at the cult of Greece in the early nineteenth century as a bourgeois phenomenon, in order to focus on it as a discourse of middleclass consumers. In the case of the Hellenism adopted by Hunt and Keats, it may as well be named `Cockney classicism' or `bourgeois classicism'.87 For the aspiring new middle classes, luxuries for aesthetic consumption could also be objects of respectable cultivation. In other words, the middle-class audience was eager to divert itself with a decent variety of cultural pursuits. Addressing a reader with a desire for Greek taste, Hunt advised him to become intimate with the poetry of Milton and Spenser; of Ovid, Homer, Theocritus, and the Greek tragedians; with the novels of




Wieland, the sculptures of Phidias and others, and the pictures of Raphael, and the Caraccis, and Nicolas Poussin. But a single page of Spenser or one morning at the Angerstein Gallery, will make him better acquainted with it than a dozen such folios as Spence's Polymetis, or all the mythologists and book-poets who have attempted to draw Greek inspiration from a Latin fount.88 This passage vividly reveals the cultural activities of the Hampstead literary circle. The members of Hunt's circle immersed themselves in cultured conversation raging from the Greek poets to the Italian artists. It is also likely that they browsed in art galleries and antique shops, fancying themselves to be men of classical cultivation. Bourgeois classicism was marked by such amateur connoisseurship. Hunt's poetry was precisely targeted at such a newly literate audience with an appetite for high art, for his `classical' poems could be enjoyed and as easily consumed as a gallery of mythological pictures. Peter George Patmore, a friend of Hazlitt, recommended Keats's Endymion as an art gallery or an imaginary English country house, where we may wander about, and delightedly lose ourselves while gazing on the exquisite pictures which every here and there hang on its sun-bright walls ± the statues and flower-vases which ornament its painted niches ± the delicious prospects opening upon us from its arabesque windows. . . . 89 Here Endymion is regarded explicitly as a repository of classical pictures. Having witnessed how Endymion was bombarded with attacks for its Cockneyism, Patmore tried to foreground Keats as a poet of classical taste. He quoted the four pictorial passages from the poem, and presented them, respectively, as à picture by Salvator', à part of one of Claude's delicious skies', à sublime picture of the Deluge, by Poussin', and as exhibiting àll the voluptuous beauty of Titian'.90 Hunt's poetry was more universally regarded as picture-like. Favourable critics commended its sensuous pictorialness for being readily consumable, whereas unfavourable ones censured the same quality for being synthetic and inauthentic. The Quarterly reviewer admitted that `the faculty of placing before us, with considerable warmth of colouring, and truth of drawing, the groups [of `The Nymphs'] which his fancy assembles, he possesses in an eminent degree'; yet its `faulty excess' led the reviewer to suspect `that the whole scene has been actually copied from some old painting, rather than grown up under the creative hand




of the poet himself '.91 Another reviewer also dismissed Hunt's `needlework exhibition of nymphs' as à design for a drawing'.92 However, Hunt himself acknowledged that the description of the nymphs in the third canto of The Story of Rimini derived from `Poussin's exquisite picture of Polyphemus piping on the mountain'.93 For Hunt, painting was as much a respectable cultural pursuit as poetry, and the visual arts could be even more accessible to a relatively uneducated middle-class audience. Blackwood's Magazine missed no opportunity for exposing these cultural aspirations of the Cockney poets. Picking on the description of languishing Polyphemus in the epistle `To Charles Lamb', a Blackwood's reviewer alleged that instead of breathing òf the fine imagination of the Greeks,' it is nothing more than a copy in words of a picture in oil. Mr Hunt used to be a great lounger in picture-dealer's shops, and was a sad bore among the artists. . . . Whenever you meet with a vivid image in his verse, you are sure that it is taken from a picture.94 The writer was displeased with the way Hunt produced pseudo-classical poetry by means of turning mythological paintings into words; and to his even greater annoyance, the Cockney Hunt `consumed' the classical heritage only through replicas and reproductions. The Cockney pretension to classical culture was all the more offensive to traditional culturati, for Hunt did not have first-hand experience of the originals in Rome or Athens; even more appalling, he unabashedly preferred print shops over picture galleries: of all shops in the streets, a print-seller's pleases us most. We would rather pay a shilling to Mr. Colnaghi of Cockspur-street, or Mr. Molteno of Pall-mall, to look at his windows on one of their best furnished days, than we would for many an exhibition. We can see fine engravings there, ± translations from Raphael and Titan, which are newer than hundreds of originals.95 Hunt was an ardent collector of prints of Poussin, Claude, Raphael and Titian. An increasing number of print shops and plaster-cast shops in London catered for the taste of such bourgeois consumer-cultivators. As has been argued, classicism had become an object of popular aesthetic consumption by the early nineteenth century. Yet the process of popularising and commercialising the antiquities actually dated back to the eighteenth century, when the Grand Tourists ransacked the




ancient capitals for their cultural patrimonies. With their unparalleled spending power, the Augustan gentlemen eagerly sought relics and replicas of ancient culture. By the mid-eighteenth century, `the English were outbidding the Vatican Museums in buying any marbles and other antiquities that came on the market in Italy.'96 Many of the Grand Tourists, hugely impressed by the majestic classical splendour of Italian villas, (re)built their mansions in the Palladian style, and filled their halls and gardens with classical statues. These men of ample means and leisure were discriminating collectors and connoisseurs of ancient art, and became the leading authorities on classical taste. From the early days of the Society of Dilettanti, its aristocratic members bought and brought back large quantities of Greco-Roman statues on their return from the Grand Tour in Italy, `making the country houses of England one of the greatest repositories of Greco-Roman art and stimulating a booming industry in Italy to excavate, reconstruct, and restore statues for the English market'.97 In England, the commercialisation of classical antiquities had started as early as 1700, when sculptors began to produce `lead garden statuary and plaster casts after the antique', catering for the rising upmarket demand.98 Those who could not afford originals were happy to decorate their country houses with copies in bronze, marble, lead or plaster. While rich overseas Englishmen were eagerly purchasing a variety of original antiquities such as statues, vases, cameos and intaglios, the domestic middle-class market for antique reproductions was also soaring. The Staffordshire potter Wedgwood was inspired by Sir William Hamilton's catalogue of Etruscan vases to revive their designs in his own improved basalt known as Ètruscan ware'.99 Wedgwood adapted classical designs not only to the imitations of antique vases and small busts, but also to daily tableware and utensils for middle-class dining rooms. With their growing affluence, the new middle-class consumers were keen to invest their money in making their home comfortable and, even more importantly, tasteful. Answering the rising demand for elegant antique designs for domestic use, a number of books on furniture, ornaments and interior decorations were published. The wealthy collector Thomas Hope published Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (1807), in which he attempted to produce faithful and `judicious imitations' rather than the widespread `paltry copies'.100 Hope's detailed designs for a mantelpiece, tea table, couch, armchair, stool, candelabrum and picture frame were chiefly intended for the galleries and drawing rooms of country houses whose owners could afford `those objects of superior design and execution'.101 However, there was also an




increasing number of books on ornamental designs for more modest middle-class parlours and libraries, being advertised for their èlegant taste', and also for being èlegantly engraved' and èlegantly coloured' in their highly popular aquatint. Technological innovation also helped manufacturers to mass-produce inexpensive reproductions of antiques. In the late eighteenth century, Eleanor Coade invented an artificial `Coade stone' which was a cheaper alternative to lead or bronze copies and plaster casts. The Coade factory at Lambeth not only produced garden statues for wealthy consumers, but also introduced a new fashion for decorating the dining-room table and mantelpiece with copies after the antique on a smaller and more intimate scale. The Coade ornaments and jewellery for middle-class households were an immediate commercial success.102 Among such smaller, more affordable ornaments were cameos and intaglios. Wedgwood devised jasperware for ``ìntaglios, cameos, medallions and tablets'' adorned with copies of antique reliefs and statues ranging from the Dacia to the Farnese Hercules'.103 James Tassie, who once worked for Wedgwood, became an international name for his cameos and intaglios. Many of them were `copies of antiques such as the Laocoon Group, Antinous, Agrippina, Zingara, Papirius and the Apollo Sauroctonus', cast by Tassie in `coloured pastes, white enamel and sulphur'.104 Keats possessed Tassie's paste reproduction of the ancient gem featuring a Greek lyre.105 Writing to his sister Fanny, Keats offered to buy fashionable Tassie's seals for her: As I went through Leicester Square lately I was going to call [into Tassie's shop] and buy you some, but not knowing but you might have some I would not run the chance of buying duplicates ± Tell me if you have any or if you would like any ± and whether you would rather have motto ones like that with which I seal this letter [a lyre circled by a Latin motto]; or heads of great Men such as Shakspeare, Milton &c ± or fancy pieces of Art; such as Fame, Adonis &c. . . . 106 The letter reveals how highly popular and also affordable Tassie's paste gems and seals had become even for an apprentice-turned-poet. Another event indicates that Tassie's gems were popular gifts among the middleclass drawing rooms. Not long after Keats was introduced to the Reynolds family in late 1816, Jane Reynolds, one of John Hamilton's four sisters, gave Keats a small glass-paste gem whose carved design was Leander breasting the stormy waves. On this occasion, Keats composed a sonnet Òn a Leander Which Miss Reynolds, My Kind Friend, Gave Me'.107 The





Come hither all sweet maidens, soberly Down-looking ± aye, and with a chastened light Hid in the fringes of your eyelids white ± And meekly let your fair hands joined be. So gentle are ye that ye could not see, Untouch'd, a victim of your beauty bright ± Sinking away to his young spirit's night, Sinking bewilder'd mid the dreary sea:

'Tis young Leander toiling to his death. (1±9)

Here a mythological Leander is re-created as the one who is dying à victim' because of gentle and meek, but indifferent (and hence fatal) females. Keats mildly reproaches his lady friends for being ùntouched' by Leander's `horrid' fate. Yet the slight mocking tone also reveals Keats's perception of the young women as cherishing Tassie's gem merely as a pretty ornament, not as a cultural heritage. It is most likely, however, that Keats and the Reynolds sisters engaged in a pleasant conversation about the ancient tragic love story in (what they thought of as) a tastefully decorated parlour. Hunt, of course, never failed to recommend Tassie's gems for their quality and affordability: Impressions from ancient gems are now also to be had with singular cheapness, in consequence of an invention of Mr. Tassie's, of Leicester-square. He has found out a composition, which enables him to procure in a few days, for three and sixpence, an impression exactly resembling that of any gem you may select. This you may either have set for your watch-chain, or keep in your desk or pocket; for the composition is very hard, and does not easily wear or chip off, even at the edges. In a seal or a desk, it might last, we should think, as long as the gem itself. Mr. Tassie's collection of antiques appears to be very extensive. You may have your choice among all the gods and graces of the ancient world, ± Jupiters, Apollos, Venuses, the Graces, the Muses, Lyres, Poets, and Philosophers.108 A collection of Tassie's gems, along with a collection of prints, was regarded as the hallmark of the cultured. In fact, Tassie's gems, although



sonnet gives a vivid picture of middle-class young women gathering round the fashionable Tassie gem engraved with a classical scene in which Leander was swimming the Hellespont to secretly meet Hero:

inexpensive, were targeted not only at the newly rich middle class, but also at the traditional ùpper crust'. In the late eighteenth century, a catalogue of Tassie's gems in two quarto volumes was compiled by Rudolf Erich Raspe, who addressed his intended readers as `the Lovers of the fine Arts'.109 The catalogue's subscribers included the King and Prince of Sweden, as well as the greatest English connoisseur Richard Payne Knight; Raspe claimed that the polite Arts are, and always were, the blossoms and fruits of enlightened ages and public prosperity, and this is particularly the case of the art of engraving on hard and precious stones, which more than any other is an art of refined intellectual luxury.110 Tassie's gems were thus perfect commodities for middle-class consumers with increased yet still moderate spending power. The `refined intellectual luxury' of possessing Tassie's gems was synonymous with enjoying the traditional prestige conferred upon `the polite Arts'. À thing of beauty', as Keats exclaimed, must have felt like à joy for ever'. Richard Woodhouse reported that ìt was once Keats's intention to write a series of Sonnets & short poems on Some of Tassie's gems'.111 It was clear that Keats regarded Tassie's gems as belonging to the sphere of the fine arts, however domesticated, along with the grander Elgin Marbles and Greek vases displayed in the British Museum. While the domestic market for the inexpensive reproductions of the antique was expanding, the most popular destination for foreign travel had become Greece rather than Italy since the publication of Stuart and Rivett's first magnificently illustrated folio volume of The Antiquities of Athens in 1762. It became a common practice for prospective architects to spend a few years in Greece to get a head start in their career back in England. And as a greater number of young noblemen, architects, archaeologists, antiquarians and topographers flocked to Greece, the publication of accounts of Greek travels increased, which in turn stirred up the popular interest in contemporary Greece. In 1810, Byron described Athens, one of the most touristy cities on the Continent, as ìnfested with English people'.112 According to Byron's close friend John Cam Hobhouse, Until within a few years, a journey to Athens was reckoned a considerable undertaking, fraught with difficulties and dangers . . . . Attica at present swarms with travellers, and several of our fair country-





Indeed, more and more middle-class travellers found their way to Greece in the early nineteenth century. As the eighteenth-century Grand Tourists brought home with them vast quantities of classical statues from Italy, so the early nineteenth-century English tourists coveted whatever seemed to be an equivalent portion of the ancient relics in Greece. There were so many English `culture vultures' despoiling Athens that Byron condemned them in `The Curse of Minerva', and in the first two cantos of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (1812), he openly reprimanded Lord Elgin for shamelessly plundering `what Goth, and Turk, and Time hath spar'd' (II. xii. 2).114 However, what came to be called `the Elgin Marbles' revolutionised the English perception of the classical tradition when they began to arrive in London in 1803. As J. Mordaunt Crook argues, it was about this time that the [Dilettanti] society's virtual monopoly of English classical exploration was broken. Travelling in Greece became so frequent as to be almost commonplace. The Napoleonic blockade of the rest of Europe made the neutral Turkish empire doubly attractive to Grand Tourists. The Greek War of Independence (1821±30) supplied a great symbolic cause. And the poetry of Lord Byron turned philhellenism from an aristocratic cult into a bourgeois fashion.115 The public exhibition of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum in 1816 was in every sense a watershed in the way the English nation dealt with the classical heritage. The Elgin Marbles violated, yet incontestably overturned, the standards of neoclassical Ideal Beauty embodied in the Apollo Belvedere, the Medici Venus and the Laocoon. Whereas the aristocratic members of the Dilettanti Society were still adamant about the superiority of their antique collections and loath to acknowledge them to be Greco-Roman or Roman copies, independent artists such as Benjamin Robert Haydon and Henry Fuseli lavished unstinted praises on the Marbles. On seeing the Marbles, Fuseli exclaimed that `De Greeks were godes! de Greeks were godes!'116 A similarly ecstatic Haydon claimed that



women have ascended the rocks of the Acropolis . . . . So great, indeed, has been the increase of visitants, that the city . . . will soon be provided with a tavern, a novelty surely never before witnessed at Athens. A few more years may furnish the Pirñus with all the accommodations of a fashionable watering-place.113


A sense of rediscovery of the authentic origin of the classical tradition overwhelmed Haydon, who fervently and desperately yearned to identify himself with the ancient Greeks. For Haydon, the elementary vitality of the Greek original was a liberating force in his search for artistic identity: it would emancipate (or could have emancipated) him from the neoclassical authority of the aristocratic Dilettanti Society. Hazlitt also regarded the Elgin Marbles as ìn their essence and their perfection casts from nature . . . from real, living, moving nature', infinitely superior to the pedantic and artificial symmetry of the Apollo `theatrical coxcomb' Belvedere.118 The famous Greco-Roman statues such as the Apollo, the Antius and the Laocoon came to be associated with the haughtiness of the French, especially because Napoleon had plundered those treasures from Italy and displayed them in the Louvre at the time. The Dilettanti Society, whose classical idols were largely Greco-Roman, was seen as an English equivalent of the culturally arrogant French. In the eyes of the professional middle-class writers and artists, the neoclassical ideal was identified with the authority of the establishment represented by Richard Payne Knight. Hazlitt claimed that `these Marbles . . . may lift the Fine Arts out of the Limbo of vanity and affectation into which they were conjured in this country about fifty years ago'.119 By the early nineteenth century, the country houses gave way to the museums and galleries as repositories for classical treasures. Consequently the traditional connoisseurs were replaced by the professional artists as arbiters of virtu. That the public exhibition of the Marbles was so fiercely defended by the professionals pointed to the rising middleclass demand and desire for self-cultivation. Hazlitt insisted that [t]he only possible way to improve the taste for art in a country, is by a collection of standing works of established reputation. . . . where works of the highest character and excellence are brought forward in a manner due to their merits, and rendered accessible to the public . . . it is hard if they do not add something to the public taste. . . . It was a means to civilise the world.120 In the name of improving the national taste, Hazlitt actually attempted to uphold and upgrade the cultural status of the new middle classes. The



This is the beauty of form; this is the just blending of truth and refinement that you look for in vain in the hard, marbly, puffed figure of the Apollo, the muzzy Antinous, or the myriad fragments of the antique which have inundated Europe for the last three hundred years.117

Society of Dilettanti fought a rearguard action against the egalitarianism of bourgeois cultivation, and published a grand folio volume illustrating their antique collections in 1809.121 Yet privileged private collecting had decidedly become a thing of the past, and the public exhibition of the Elgin Marbles meant the demise of the elitism of aristocratic connoisseurship. One need only recall that Keats, who had never been to Greece, was able to compose a number of poems on Greek antiquity, and has always been regarded as the most `Greek' among the Romantic poets.122 London already abounded with the reproductions of antique statues, the replicas of Greek temples, and now originals such as the Elgin Marbles became accessible to the general public. There was even an illustrated book on Costume of the Ancients (1809) which aimed `to afford artists a convenient and a cheap collection of those leading features of ancient costume'.123 The author, Thomas Hope, claimed that the costume designs were copied and collected from `memorials of several curious specimens of ancient art not hitherto published; and the materials thus collected abroad, together with what my own little assemblage particularly of Grecian fictile vases afforded at home'.124 Living in an early nineteenth-century London inspired by ancient Greece provided Keats with ample reference material for his poetry.

The politics of pagan pleasure As has been argued, the rising demand for cultural luxury was a major driving force in Romantic Hellenism. Popular Grecomania was so prevalent that the Grecian style penetrated every facet of the English life, including tableware, furniture, clothing and even hairstyle. If, as Hope surmised, the Greeks `became the principal arbitri elegantiarum and fashion-mongers of the Romans', the Grecian became the style to seek among the English public.125 Even a Grecian headdress was available, as advertised in The Times of 1814: To the Nobility, Gentry and Fashionable World ± Ross's newly invented GRECIAN VOLUTE HEADDRESS, formed from the true marble models, brought into this country from the Acropolis of Athens by Lord Elgin, rivals any other hitherto invented. The elegance of taste and simplicity of nature which it displays, together with the facility of dressing, have caused its universal admiration and adoption.126 This language of praise may easily be adopted as a panegyric on the Elgin Marbles themselves. The adaptation of this èlegance of taste and




simplicity of nature' to daily life styles, however, did not go entirely unopposed. The Gothic architect Augustus Pugin, for example, fiercely opposed the fashion for adorning ordinary houses and shops with the `Templar' porticoes. In Pugin's eyes, a second-rate Grecian architect merely `works Stuart and Rivett on a modified plan, and builds lodges, cemetery chapels, reading-rooms, and fish-markets, with small Doric work and white brick facings'.127 Such architects were in great demand, for the middle-class clientele were keen to arrange their moderate homes in the Grecian style. Pugin, however, relentlessly criticised the Greek fashion not only for the sheer impracticality of adapting the Templar style to the English climate, but also for its ideological incompatibility with English religion. Indeed, the pagan origin and secular associations of the Greek model were potentially subversive from the viewpoint of the establishment, since middle-class consumers implicitly exploited the ancient Greek idea of democracy in order to justify their acquisition of material luxuries. While the Greek revival was predominantly a consumer trend, it also amounted to a religio-political counter-culture. That is, the craze for ancient Greece may be seen as a strategy to liberalise traditional moral codes in order to vindicate the bourgeois pursuit of sensory pleasures. Curran lucidly explains that Romantic Hellenism represented an officially sanctioned counter-culture, and the codes were universally understood. All the younger Romantics . . . use classical settings to sanction a sexual permissiveness that in a modern dress would be roundly condemned. That may not seem to threaten revolution, but the effect is compounded by the political implications that can be derived from such a setting.128 In this sense, Shelley was very much a member of Hunt's circle. Although Shelley and Hunt came from disparate class backgrounds, they shared Enlightenment liberal values, supporting, for example, the abolition of the Slave Trade, the mitigation of the Penal Code and the passing of the Reform Bill.129 Although his liberal political belief never wavered, Hunt himself had neither a coherent philosophy nor feasible schemes. Keats once described him as a man `who from a principle of taste would like to see things go on better'.130 `Though I was a politician (such as I was,),' Hunt himself later admitted, Ì had scarcely a political work in my library. Spensers and Arabian Tales filled up the shelves, as they do now.'131 The major aim of Hunt's liberalism was not to emancipate and enlighten lower-class workers, but to protect and promote the




interests of the newly educated middle class. And the espousal of (what he thought of as) Greek ethics was not only an efficacious, but also a respectable means to promote liberal middle-class values. From a conservative perspective, the ethics of the ancient Greeks amounted to pagan amorality and sexual depravity. Hence a `fierce dispute' between the ethics of Christian morality and the aesthetics of pagan pleasure ensued. Hunt was an avowed anti-Christian, yet he rebuked not Christianity per se, but the Methodist doctrine which seemed to prevail in the Anglican Church at the time.132 In 1809, he published a pamphlet called An Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism, in which he fiercely attacked `the doctrines of election and eternal punishment'.133 Hunt considered the God of Methodism to be à mere despot with a very ill choice of favourites, condemning the vast majority of his creatures to eternal misery'; and branded the Methodist notion of Deity as a gross anachronism which `the age has grown too enlightened to endure in the way of dogmatism'.134 This was where the religio-political stances of Hunt and Shelley converged. À religion,' as Hunt put it, ìs not fit for a free nation.'135 Both Shelley and Hunt viewed the Christian God as a tyrannical oppressor who fettered the human mind in the cave of unenlightened asceticism. In the sonnet `To Percy Shelley, on the Degrading Notions of Deity', Hunt censured Christian asceticism, implying its opposition to Epicurean ethics of the ancients: When in the midst of the all-beauteous skies, And all this lovely world, that should engage Their mutual search for the old golden age, They seat a phantom, swelled into grim size Out of their own passions and bigotries. . . . (3±7) Indeed, `the bigot' signified the Methodist Christian in Hunt's cultural vocabulary.136 In another sonnet `To the Same [Shelley]', Hunt referred to the Shelleyan `Spirit of Beauty' which was `by solemn quires / Hourly blasphemed' (9±10). Thus it was paradoxically the Christians who were the `depreciators of this world, ± the involuntary blasphemers of Nature's goodness'.137 And it was the Christian religion that served as `superstition . . . which, besides disturbing the present, make a Pandñmonium of the greater part of the future'.138 Hunt repeatedly attacked Christianity as à gloomy fanaticism', and Keats shared these religious views.139 In his sonnet `Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition', Keats condemned Christian dogma as




melancholy, gloomy and dreadful, by which `the mind of man is closely bound / In some black spell' (5±6). Such benighted souls were wailing ère they go / Into oblivion' (12±13), for they were frightened by `the sermon's horrid sound' (4) preaching eternal punishment in Hell. In The Story of Rimini, Francesca seemed to die into peaceful oblivion, not to descend into the second circle of Hell where `The carnal sinners are condemn'd, in whom / Reason by lust is sway'd' as in Dante's original.140 Hunt claimed that the moral of The Story of Rimini was not preaching the ùnjust, and bigoted' Christian doctrine of Hell, but showing `the danger . . . of setting authorized selfishness above the most natural impulses'.141 Such a `flippant and infidel remark' predictably provoked a storm of criticism: Whether Mr. Hunt disbelieves in the authority of Revelation, or is only ignorant of its doctrines, we know not; but on either supposition, this empty sneer at the doctrine of the atonement, is discreditable to his understanding, and does not augur well of his principles.142 Like Shelley, Hunt offered Platonic belief as a substitute for the Christian view of death and damnation: if the healthiest and most imaginative of us may feel their spirits pulled down by reflections connected with earth, its mortalities, and its mistakes, we should but strengthen ourselves the more to make strong and sweet music with the changeful but harmonious movements of nature. In no system is there really any such thing as death. All is but change and vitality. We become either spiritual essences, or new physical beings, or rather both. . . . 143 Hunt may have been influenced by Shelley's Platonic thought or, more likely, have had in mind the Garden of Adonis and the Mutabilitie Cantos from The Faerie Queene. In matters of death, Hunt preferred ìnfinitely the beauties of Pagan Mythology to the gloomy repentance of the Christians'.144 Francesca's death was thus not treated with the dismal prospect of damnation, but represented as `the soul freed from the body, and fluttering in the fresh air of Heaven'.145 Hunt was also more than willing to espouse Shelley's liberated sexual ethic, which terribly disturbed the religious sensibility of Haydon.146 Keats's Endymion also troubled his friend Benjamin Bailey, later an Anglican clergyman:




As a man of Genius I know Keats is defensible. . . . But the quarter I fear, & cannot defend, is the moral part of it. There are two great blotches in it in this respect. The first must offend every one of proper feelings; and indelicacy is not to be borne. . . . The second fault I allude to I think we have noticed ± The approaching inclination it has to that abominable principle of Shelley's ± that Sensual Love is the principle of things.147 The Tory-Anglican British Critic was also infuriated by `the gross slang of voluptuousness' of Endymion: not all the flimsy veil of words in which he would involve immoral images, can atone for their impurity; and we will not disgust our readers by retailing to them the artifices of vicious refinement, by which . . . he would palm upon the unsuspicious and the innocent imaginations better adapted to the stews.148 Wordsworth, with his `puling Christian feelings', must have detected a degree of moral ambiguity in the young poet's propensity to sensuality when he dismissed the `Hymn to Pan' as à Very pretty piece of Paganism'.149 Shelley, Hunt and Keats thus offered an alternative ethic to the traditional Christian morality. From a conservative perspective, however, their positive stress upon sensual pleasure was equivalent to `the demonology of Paganism'.150 A moralistic Josiah Conder criticised Keats's Hyperion and Òde on a Grecian Urn' for celebrating `the ``happy pieties'' of Paganism'.151 He also reprimanded Shelley and Hunt for promoting Greek mythology and ìts grossness ± its alliance to the sensitive pleasures which belong to the animal'.152 Shelley and Hunt indeed shared the same opinion that the introduction of oppressive Christianity had deplorably eradicated the graceful religion of the Greeks, and enslaved the (European) human mind ever since. `The very finest and most amiable part of our notions on those subjects [ideas of death, deity and humanity],' as Hunt put it, `comes originally from their [Greek] philosophers; ± all the rest, the gloom, the bad passions, the favouritism, are the work of other hands.'153 In the preface to Prometheus Unbound (1820), Shelley attributed the great Renaissance of English literature to `that fervid awakening of the public mind which shook to dust the oldest and most oppressive form of the Christian religion'.154 Hunt also regarded Elizabethan culture as àn evident relic of paganism'.155 Both saw Milton not as a poet of Puritan ethics, but as a poet of the classical spirit awakened by the




Renaissance. However, a comparison of Shelley's espousal of Milton with that of Hunt reveals the crucial socio-cultural difference between the two. Shelley revered Milton as à republican, and a bold enquirer into morals and religion'.156 Hunt, on the other hand, contrived to reinvent Milton as an epicurean pastoralist. This de-Christianised version of Milton was celebrated among the members of Hunt's circle. In his review of Endymion, Reynolds wrote that `Mr. Keats excels, in what Milton excelled ± the power of putting a spirit of life and novelty into the Heathen Mythology'.157 Hunt argued that Milton's allusions to Greek mythology in Paradise Lost were èscapes from every heartwithering horror, which Eastern storms and tyranny could generate together'.158 While Hunt espoused the pagan religion primarily as the aesthetics of pleasure, Shelley embraced the Greek ideal not merely as a creed of free love but mainly as a symbol of liberty. Thus while Shelley upheld the notion of liberty, whether political freedom from a foreign yoke or individual freedom from an oppressive authority, Hunt emphasised Epicurean hedonism which sanctioned the guilt-free pursuit of material and sensual luxuries. Their poetic propensities even more clearly revealed their cultural differences. Shelley's interest in Greek culture ranged from ancient Greek poetry and philosophy to modern Greek independence. He was well versed in the classics, as was appropriate for his social background. Hence Shelley was able to revive (and revise) the spirit of Aeschylus in Prometheus Unbound and Hellas, and that of Moschus in Adonais. Shelley also translated Plato, Homer, Euripides, Bion, Moschus, and even Prince Ypsilanti's Cry of War to the Greeks for publication in English newspapers. Shelley's idealistic disposition found its perfect apotheosis in Plato, and Platonic idealism permeated his poetry and prose.159 As a result, the intended audience of Shelley's work could not be found in the literary marketplace but in an abstract discourse of mankind. In perceived contrast, Hunt and Keats promoted a `popular' version of Hellenism designed for pleasurable aesthetic consumption. Hunt's version of `pastoral' Hellenism was, unlike Shelley's Platonic idealism or Schlegel's admiration for Aeschylus, clearly more to the taste of the middle-class audience. Accordingly, Shelley had no cultural sympathy with Hunt, despite their shared political beliefs. The same difference in class backgrounds also divided the reactions of conservative reviewers. Despite being shocked and scandalised by Shelley's avowed atheism, they were not reluctant to concede his credentials as a universityeducated classicist. Hunt's (and Keats's) espousal of the Greek ethic, however, was condemned principally for being socially inappropriate.




Wordsworth and Coleridge's objections to Greek mythology were aimed not only at its ideological dissidence but also at its imaginative limitations. In this respect, Wordsworth and Coleridge disapproved of Hunt and Keats's appropriation of Greek myth, rather than Shelley's. In the preface to the edition of 1815, Wordsworth professed that he preferred the Bible, Milton and Spenser over Greek and Roman writers, because the anthropomorphitism [sic] of the Pagan religion subjected the minds of the greatest poets in those countries too much to the bondage of definite form; from which the Hebrews were preserved by their abhorrence of idolatry.160 It was the pagan ànthropomorphitism' and its palpable sensuality that Hunt and Keats adopted and appropriated for their poetics. Wordsworth and Coleridge (and also Shelley) had propensities to the metaphysical and the sublime, in marked contrast with Hunt's and Keats's disposition to the physical and the beautiful. So while Hunt presented a rather exaggerated view of Milton as a classical pastoralist, Wordsworth saw him more astutely as a poet of the sublime in the Judeo-Christian tradition: This abhorrence [of idolatry] was almost as strong in our great epic Poet, both from circumstances of his life, and from the constitution of his mind. However imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a Hebrew in soul; and all things tended in him towards the sublime.161 Even Spenser, who was then widely admired as a poet of sensual beauty, was from this perspective viewed as a poet of allegorical abstraction and moral seriousness: Spenser . . . maintained his freedom by aid of his allegorical spirit, at one time inciting him to create persons out of abstractions; and, at another, by a superior effort of genius, to give the universality and permanence of abstractions to his human beings, by means of attributes and emblems that belong to the highest moral truths and the purest sensations, ± of which his character of Una is a glorious example.162 Wordsworth was thus totally at odds with the contemporary panegyric on Spenser. It is curious to see that both Wordsworth and Hunt regarded




Una as à glorious example' of Spenser's poetic power. Yet whereas Hunt luxuriated in the `description' of Una's beauty, Wordsworth found the union of moral truth and sensory pleasure in the `character' of Una. Wordsworth clearly thought of the English poets (himself included) as belonging to the Judeo-Christian tradition, while the religious consciousness of the ancient Greeks was considered to have reached no higher (or deeper) than à refined and ennobled sensuality'.163 For Wordsworth and Coleridge, such a `religion of the senses'164 was fundamentally flawed, for its emphasis on physical form enslaved the human mind in the realm of sensory pleasures. Hence, as Hazlitt observed, they were led to discard and dismiss `the whole heathen mythology' as à piece of antiquated foppery'.165 In contrast with those conservative poets, Hunt was more than willing to rejuvenate the ancient aesthetics of sensuality, for the realm of the senses was precisely the arena of his bourgeois poetics and politics. However, the moral ambiguity inherent in the pursuit of sensory pleasures provoked the bitterest criticism from a member of Hunt's own circle. In the winter of 1816 and 1817, when Keats had just entered Hunt's circle, Haydon and Hunt were engaged in a fierce argument over the relative aesthetic and moral values of Christianity and paganism. Haydon was appalled by Hunt's creed of `cheerfulness', which seemed totally at odds with Christian ethics. Hunt professed that he would rather enjoy the sensuality of a beautiful pagan god than revere the sublime authority of the Christian God. He also espoused the hedonistic ethic of the ancients, in order to vindicate the bourgeois ethic of luxury: They [the Greeks] dealt in loves and luxuries, in what resulted from the first laws of nature, and tended to keep humanity alive: ± the latter [the Christians] have dealt in angry debates, in intolerance, in gloomy denouncements, in persecutions, in excommunications, in wars and massacres, in what perplexes, outrages, and destroys humanity.166 The Quarterly Review considered this comment as `the political avowal of this votary of the ``loves and luxuries'''.167 The uneasy tension between aesthetic pleasures and moral dangers in Hunt's bourgeois ethics was unequivocally articulated by Haydon: No man feels more acutely than myself the poetical beauties of the Pagan mythology. Apollo, with his fresh cheek & God like beauty, rising like a gossamer from out a laurel grove, heated with love, after




having panted on the bosom of some wandering nymph, is rich, beaming, rapturous! But these are beauties fit for those who live in perpetual enjoyment of immortality, without a care or a grief, or a want. But what consolation to the poor, what relief to the widow & the orphan, to the sick, or the oppressed? Could the minds of such beings turn for assistance to a thoughtless & beautiful youth, warm with love & wine, just rising from having debauched a girl? Christianity is a religion adapted to give relief to the wretched & hope to the good. . . . 168 This ethical uncertainty inherent in the aesthetics of pleasure was later acutely felt by Keats, whereas Hunt was unabashedly and unscrupulously `kept in a continual excitement of pleasure & voluptuousness by amorous poems & bodily sensations'.169 Nevertheless, Keats admired and embraced the Greek spirit as `the Religion of the Beautiful, the Religion of Joy', in implied opposition to the solemn and sublime Christian religion.170 In the early nineteenth century, his bourgeois aspiration to be a respected poet was constantly exposed to the charges of social impropriety and moral depravity. But despite its ideological vulnerability, the pagan aesthetics of sensuality remained a powerful means to propagate the liberal middle-class ethic and aesthetic.




5

A problem of canonisation It is a modern academic fiction invented by twentieth-century critics that Keats's poetical and ethical development consists of an evolution from a poet of pure senses to a poet of moral seriousness. According to this narrative of poetical and personal growth, Keats's early poems (Poems and Endymion) should be (dis)regarded as immature, escapist, experimental and at best preparatory to his more mature works of 1819. Whether critics see Keats as a visionary transcendentalist or a sober realist, they are unanimously impressed by the rapidity and profundity of Keats's poetical and intellectual maturation.1 This academic majority vote is epitomised in Leavis's comment that Keats òffers some fine illustrations for a discussion of the theme of maturity'.2 Whatever their critical viewpoints, these critics are all attempting to `trace' the inner history of the poet's psyche as registered in his poems and letters: Keats moves gradually, though fluctuatingly, from the realm of unreflected pleasure to the nobler state of moral integrity. So in 1971, Stillinger claimed that it was Keats's final embrace of the tragic human condition, which, `more than anything else, guarantee[d] his place' in the modern literary canon.3 In this academic account of Keats's maturing process, the initial immaturity of Keats, whether stylistic, poetic, ethical or intellectual, is inevitably relegated to the status of `juvenilia'.4 Most critics find Keats's early poetry disconcerting or even embarrassing, for it exhibits too much undisciplined (and hence puerile) sensual indulgence. Keats's early style is something to be deplored and dismissed, but it is more than compensated for by his marvellous later `development'. In this critical framework, the immaturity and sensuality (which is associated 104



À Leafy Luxury': Poems (1817)

or even identified with vulgarity) of Keats's early verse tends to be attributed to the injurious influence of his one-time mentor Leigh Hunt: Àny discussion of the early poetic style, or styles, of Keats,' as Bate puts it, `must linger for a moment on Leigh Hunt, though the influence of Hunt on the early Keats has long been one of the elementary clicheÂs in the history of English poetry.'5 Indeed, there is an established critical consensus concerning the stylistic affinities between Hunt and the young Keats.6 Hunt's predilection for colloquialism and neologism is generally regarded as peculiar, and `vulgar'. Hence Leavis finds Keats's development all the more remarkable, given `the starting-point and the surrounding influences: the beginning in ``pleasant smotherings,'' with . . . such poetic models as are represented by Leigh Hunt and the Cockney taste'.7 Such (liberal humanist) Keatsians are typically keen to downplay the presence of a Cockney Hunt in Keats's poetic life, in order to gentrify and `canonise' their object of study. But whether defending or denouncing Hunt, those critics are unanimous in their acknowledgement of Keats's later emancipation from Hunt's influence: Keats was transformed from a sensuous to a serious poet as he became estranged from Hunt. Dismissing the poetical kinship between Hunt and Keats, J. R. MacGillivray concludes that Keats was scurrilously attacked ònly because he was in the way at the wrong time'.8 Even Bate, though defending Hunt as a beneficial mentor encouraging Keats's poetic fluency, argues that `he was a model who could in time be surpassed'.9 As we saw in the introductory chapter, Keats's sensuousness has long been seen as an interpretative difficulty to be overcome in canonising him. In such circumstances, modern critics are more than happy to blame Hunt for Keats's early sensuousness. The rise of Keats's poetic fame throughout the last three decades of the nineteenth century coincided with the fall of Hunt's. Immediately after his premature death, Keats began to appear in a sympathetic light as a poet of delicate beauty and frailty. Shelley's Adonais served a great deal to transform Keats from a Cockney poetaster to a sensitive adolescent, and this reinvented image of Keats had wide currency throughout the Victorian period.10 By the time an Àdonais' Keats was commodified and consumed by (largely female) Victorian readers, the `Cockney' Hunt had long been out of sight.11 In 1897, William Andrews remarked in the preface to the first reprint of The Months that Hunt's fame rested more on his friendship with his major Romantic peers than on his own poetry: Às a poet Leigh Hunt is little known at the present day, yet he was placed at one time on a level with Keats.'12 By the early twentieth



Poems (1817) 105

century, Hunt was regarded as a poet of mere historical and biographical importance rather than of critical interest.13 And in 1955, ReneÂ Wellek confirmed the marginalised status of Hunt in the canon as à middleman of romantic ideas and taste'.14 There were a few defenders of Hunt as a poet of critical notice, but the apologetic tone prevailed even in their claims. Hunt's most assiduous champion was Clarence DeWitt Thorpe, who attempted to restore him to the canon, not as a poet, however, but as a (less prestigious) `man of letters'.15 Conceding that Hunt's poetry ìs the most vulnerable part of his work', Thorpe tried to foreground Hunt as a literary critic and journalist: ìt is quite possible that Hunt . . . will be seen as . . . next to Coleridge and Hazlitt, and above Lamb, De Quincey, and Carlyle.'16 Then Thorpe conceded again that this claim was only a tentative and `partial justification'.17 John O. Hayden tried to reinstate Hunt as a canonical poet by focusing on The Story of Rimini.18 Hayden claimed that the poem ìs the greatest of his poems and deserves a place in the canon of Romantic literature'.19 However, even Hayden adopted the language of apologetic compensation rather than of unstinted commendation: his line of defence was that the stylistic vulgarity in the poem was sufficiently compensated for by its impressive descriptions and realistic characterisation. Hunt's poetry has rarely been thought to merit book-length treatment; indeed, only one contemporary critic has risked it. In 1994, Rodney Stenning Edgecombe claimed his book to be `the first to address the full range of Hunt's poetry'.20 Yet the avowed aim of the study ìs not so much a revaluation of Hunt . . . but rather to find ways of enjoying the minority of his decidedly minor poetry'.21 Edgecombe even asks: Ìf the talent [of Hunt] is slim, need we invoke a magisterial poet like Keats to measure the thinness . . . ?'22 Ironically, this most recent champion of Hunt revokes the earlier attempts to canonise him. The reversal of fortunes of Hunt and Keats in literary history reveals some implicit membership requirements for literary canonisation. The first is writing in appropriate literary genres. The concept of a hierarchy of poetic genres was firmly established in Sidney's Defence of Poetry (1595), in which he defined pastoral as the lowest and humblest, and epic and tragedy as the highest and noblest. Lack of Aristotelian endorsement (the genre came into being two generations after Aristotle's death) and of high moral seriousness in classical pastoral had troubled poets and critics alike from the Renaissance onwards. Samuel Johnson condemned Milton's Lycidas for being pastoral, which was èasy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting'. Such a feeling of uneasiness about the pastoral genre drove many ambitious poets to ascend the generic ladder. Having




started his career with The Eclogues and rounded off with The Aeneid, Virgil set a prime example of poetic progress. English canonical poets generally followed this Virgilian programme for poetic development: Spenser's poetry evolved from the humble Shepheardes Calender to the magnificent Faerie Queene; Milton's from the youthful Lycidas to the sublime Paradise Lost; and Pope's from his precocious Pastorals to the mock-heroic Dunciad. And Keats, whose poetry matured from the pastoral Endymion into the tragic Fall of Hyperion, is also regarded as belonging to this great poetical tradition. Indeed, the tone of embarrassment at the slightness of pastoral is still common in twentieth-century criticism. Rosenmeyer observes that `the pastoral lyric is often the preserve of lesser poets, as if a serious poet could not properly concern himself with a type of literature that lacked complexity and weight'.23 One may recall that pastoral lyricists were particular favourites of Hunt, and that among them Herrick was specially praised for being `the most rural of our lyric poets'.24 Indeed, throughout his life Hunt was a tireless promoter of pastoral or, more precisely, Theocritean pastoral. Having been writing in the pre-Virgilian period, Theocritus had no real conception of the pastoral as a genre, let alone a hierarchy of poetic genres. Consequently, Theocritus showed no impetus for stirring towards a higher strain of poetry. And neither did Hunt. Hunt's strategic espousal of Theocritean pastoral has already been discussed. Here I would like to suggest that Hunt's adherence to what has long been regarded as a minor, indeed the humblest genre, was at least partially responsible for his minor status in the canon.25 This literary-formalist question of genres leads to a broader discursive question of àesthetic pleasure'. As we noted earlier, pastoral has been viewed as the delightful representation of country pleasures. After this classical genre was assimilated into the Christian tradition, pastoral became more complex and self-reflexive. Hunt tactically adopted the Theocritean model in order to vindicate his bourgeois aesthetics of pleasure. Modern critics, however, tend to prefer Christian over classical pastoral, for the reason that the former mode is capable of accommodating the sombre and the sublime. As Rosenmeyer remarks, Much English criticism has, because of its attraction to complexity and ferment, encouraged the notion that the best pastoral is the least traditional . . . . [Classical pastoral] is frequently referred to as merely decorative. Dissatisfaction, even embarrassment, with the ``thinness'' of the Theocritean model has led to the conclusion that the value of a pastoral poem is proportionate to its distance from the ancient



Poems (1817) 107


Such a negative, or at best ambivalent, attitude towards ancient pastoral points to a fundamental anxiety in Western culture over the relation between aesthetic pleasure and cultural value. As Steven Connor acutely points out, twentieth-century critics have struggled to attribute a valorised status to aesthetic pleasure.27 Many (including I. A. Richards, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer) embrace the moralist view that pleasure should be converted into moral or ethical value; only a few (typified by Roland Barthes) hold the hedonist view that pleasure is valuable in and of itself. Connor argues that the moralist view of pleasure brings about a binary opposition between the sublimated pleasures of authentic art and the unsublimated pleasures of mass culture. The value of the aesthetic pleasure of high art lies in its (permanent) deferral of pleasure, as opposed to the instant gratification associated with mass pleasure.28 This prevailing anxiety about aesthetic pleasure may be seen as underlying modern critics' preference for Christian over classical pastoral and for epic over pastoral, and also their higher estimation of Keats than of Hunt.29 `The secret of aesthetic sublimation,' as Adorno and Horkheimer assert, ìs its representation of fulfillment as a broken promise.'30 This recalls the recurrent theme of frustrated dream and desire in Keats's later verse, especially in the Òdes' and Hyperions. Indeed, it is precisely to Keats's ultimate refusal of pleasure that modern critics ascribe high moral and ethical value. In perceived contrast, Hunt's poetry is too readily gratifying and too easily consumable. It may be argued that the moralist view of aesthetic pleasure prevailing in modern literary criticism is another significant determining factor in the process of canonical selection. The aim of this chapter, however, is not to consider the problem of canonisation itself. Rather, by restoring Hunt to a contemporary discourse of the suburban middle class, I shall reinstate Keats as a Cockney poet. In the early nineteenth century, the mutually exclusive opposition between canonical and Cockney did not exist. Keats was a Cockney ± not only in poetic style but also in social self-stylisation. I do not intend to object to the academic clicheÂ of Keats's `development' during the years of 1818 and 1819. What I would like to challenge is the standard narrative of Keats's poetic metamorphosis being caused by his withdrawal from Hunt's circle. In this chapter, I shall restore Hunt's importance in Keats's poetic and social life, in order to offer a cultural revaluation of his earliest Poems.



simplicities, and its convergence with the more complex structures of romance and drama.26

Poems (1817) 109

When Clarke formally introduced Keats to Hunt in the autumn of 1816, Keats had been a medical student at Guy's Hospital for one year. The medical profession was then comprised of an elite group of universityeducated physicians who served the wealthy, and a much larger number of surgeons and apothecaries who tended most of the population. Keats's career aspiration was to become an apothecary, and eventually to be licensed to practise as a surgeon. The surgeons and apothecaries were gradually gaining respectability in the early nineteenth century, but they had not been regarded as gentlemen at all until the mideighteenth century: In the eighteenth century they [apothecaries] were still classed as tradesmen and were forbidden by the physicians to dispense medical advice along with their drugs; in actuality they were the doctors of the poor. Only in 1815 did they finally win their independence of the physicians by an act of Parliament empowering the Society of Apothecaries to license candidates for general medical practice. By this time it was becoming customary for apothecaries also to qualify as surgeons by a year of ``walking the hospitals'' after the usual [fiveyear] apprenticeship.31 It may be argued that the profession of an apothecary was not a bad choice for a son of a livery stable manager in socially mobile early nineteenth-century London. Having registered at Guy's Hospital as a first-generation apprentice student shortly after the passing of the new Apothecaries Act, however, Keats was rather precariously situated on the bottom rung of the newly growing professional middle classes. One may only recall that Lockhart, in attacking Keats's class position, so cunningly and effectively exploited the grey area between the lower middle stratum and the labouring poor.32 If he had pursued his chosen career, `Keats would have been, at best, at the very edge of the lower-middle rank of the medical profession,' as Levinson remarks.33 Clearly, then, joining the aesthetic circle in suburban countryside represented a considerable social and cultural upgrading for Keats, and Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics had in effect a lasting impact on Keats's poetics to the end of his short career. Keats was so enthralled by the cultivated bourgeois culture of Hunt's circle that within a few months he had decided to abandon his career as a surgeon. Ìn no period of my life,' as Keats later confessed in 1819, `have I acted with any self will, but



À love of sociality': epistles and sonnets

in throwing up the apothecary-profession. That I do not repent of.'34 Now that his occupation was èntirely literary', Keats somewhat regretfully referred to Reynolds's part-time poetic profession as follows: ìf he was not in the law he would be acquiring, by his abilities, something towards his support.'35 Keats's fascination with the leisured literary culture in fact dated back to his early days of medical apprenticeship. After he left Enfield School, Keats became apprenticed to the surgeon at Edmonton from 1810 to 1815. During this period, Clarke served as an informal tutor to young Keats, steadily nurturing his pupil's appetite for poetry. Clarke later recalled that Ì saw him about five or six times a month on my own leisure afternoons. He rarely came empty-handed; either he had a book to read, or brought one to be exchanged.'36 The Òde to Apollo' written in February 1815 reveals the young Keats's taste for the great European poets ± Homer, Virgil, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser and Tasso ± a taste that had been fostered by Clarke. Under such cultural (and cultured) guidance, Keats's interest in the world of literature grew steadily, even while he was still studying medicine. Later, in 1816, in the epistle `To Charles Cowden Clarke', Keats expresses his hearty gratitude to Clarke who initiated him into àll that now my life endears' (75). However, George Felton Mathew was even more important to Keats's initiation into the literary culture and his consequent cultural upgrading. As Bate points out, ìn Mathew Keats met, for the first time, someone who at least pretended to be a poet of sorts.'37 To put it more precisely, Mathew was, like Reynolds, with whom Keats was later to be acquainted, one of an increasing number of part-time poetasterreviewers in the early nineteenth century. Mathew, the son of a prosperous Oxford Street textile dealer, was contributing poems and reviews to the European Magazine while working as a clerk in the firm of a West India merchant. Early in 1815, Keats's more sociable brother George introduced him to a domestic circle whose leading members were Mathew, his cousins Caroline and Ann Mathew (the daughters of a wine merchant), and their friend, Mary Frogley.38 It was Keats's first experience of a proper social intercourse consisting of pleasant conversation, poetry readings, `little domestic concerts and dances'.39 The social life of Mathew's circle typified the cultural effort being made by the new metropolitan middle class at that time. Keeping up convivial and cultivated appearances, `the young ladies tinkled on the pianoforte and attempted arias from Don Giovanni and the young gentlemen perspired through the quadrille.'40 Keats the apprentice was certainly attracted and drawn to the `sociality' of the circle. In the sonnet




Ò Solitude! if I must with thee dwell', Keats contrasted his medical life àmong the jumbled heap / Of murky buildings' (2±3) with his solitary hour of bliss among natural bowers. He enjoyed rambling in the suburban locus amoenus ± the hill, its slopes, the dell, its crystal river, the bowers amongst `boughs pavilioned' (7). But in the sestet of the sonnet, he declared that he preferred the pleasure of human society even to the bliss of solitude in nature: Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind, Whose words are images of thoughts refin'd, Is my soul's pleasure; and it sure must be Almost the highest bliss of human-kind, When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee. (10±14) Keats was thus delighted to find for the first time a poetical (not medical) friend of his age with whom to share his most cherished ideals. Keats's epistle `To George Felton Mathew', written in November 1815 (when he was already at Guy's Hospital), tells a good deal of his excitement and elation as a result of this new relationship. Keats calls their friendship à brotherhood in song' (2), comparable to the poetically productive partnership of Beaumont and Fletcher. Keats earnestly idolises Mathew as a muse's son of promise, while deploring his own poetically deprived situation: `far different cares / Beckon me sternly from soft ``Lydian airs,'' / And hold my faculties so long in thrall' (17± 19). Then Keats makes a plea for Mathew's aid, for `might I now each passing moment give / To the coy muse, with me she would not live / In this dark city' (31±3). In order to woo the muse, Keats feels a need to poeticise (or aestheticise) his medical daily life: Should e'er the fine-eyed maid to me be kind, Ah! surely it must be whene'er I find Some flowery spot, sequester'd, wild, romantic, That often must have seen a poet frantic. . . . (35±8) These stock phrases indicate not only Keats and Mathew's shared taste for contemporary popular verse such as Mary Tighe's Psyche (1811) and William Sotheby's translation of Wieland's Oberon (1798), but also the cultural ambition cherished by the middle-class youngsters working in the urban centre of London. In the summer of 1815, Mathew went with his cousins Ann and Caroline to Hastings for a holiday. Seaside resorts had become newly



Poems (1817) 111

fashionable by the turn of the century. That the notoriously sybaritic Prince Regent had chosen Brighton as his pleasure headquarters certainly inflamed even further the popular craze for the seaside. Such resort towns were typically equipped with amenities as various as assembly rooms, hotels, lodgings, shops and picturesque harbours.41 As souvenirs of their seaside holiday, Ann and Caroline Mathew sent Keats a shell and a copy of Thomas Moore's short poem `The Wreath and the Chain' (stylised as a pastoral courtship). Keats responded to the sisters' friendly and cultured gesture by gallantly composing `To Some Ladies' and Òn Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies'. In the former, Keats described a seashell from Hastings (a town with a shingle beach which in reality was probably swarming with middle-class people) as `the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean / Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw' (23±4). Also in the latter poem, he romanticised the shell as `the work of a fay; / Beneath its rich shade did King Oberon languish' (25±6). Writing verse was thus to some extent a social gesture, and it gave him a vicarious sense of a leisured life. Hence Keats was not ashamed to poeticise or Spenserianise his social intercourse by addressing the Mathew sisters as `fair nymphs' and Mathew as `valiant Eric' (`To Some Ladies' 22; Òn Receiving a Curious Shell' 41). Keats's early `love of sociality' is epitomised in the last stanza of `To Some Ladies': For, indeed, 'tis sweet and peculiar pleasure, (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,) To possess but a span of the hour of leisure, In elegant, pure, and aerial minds. (25±8) The significance of Keats's association with Mathew lies not so much in their shared poetic taste, but more in the way they assumed a posture of writing poetry. Through the bourgeois pretensions of Mathew's circle, Keats learned how to aestheticise his daily life, however puerilely, by composing verse in a leisured manner. Keats and Mathew eventually drifted apart, largely because Mathew disliked Keats's liberal political sentiment, and criticised his Poems for savouring `too much . . . of the foppery and affectation of Leigh Hunt'.42 However, this first experience of a bourgeois social circle prepared Keats for his debut in the Hampstead literary society. Hunt singled out à love of sociality' as one of the main features of his Foliage.43 Except for `The Nymphs' and `Translations from Poets of Antiquity', almost all the poems in the collection were addressed to




his friends, or composed upon the occasion of some social intercourse or other. Hunt's cultural creed of `sociality', or sociability, was an important part of his bourgeois politics.44 Sociability came to be highly regarded and recommended as an essential ingredient in the fashioning of the gentleman in the early eighteenth century. Shaftesbury's Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711) had been a hugely influential work in advocating the importance of conversation, sociability and most of all, `politeness'.45 The notion of politeness came into particular prominence as a synonym for `gentlemanliness', and it was regarded as a criterion of proper behaviour in the social space of the aristocratic salon. Shaftesbury defined politeness as `the art of pleasing in company', and advocated that the cultivation of a refined sociability in `conversation' would make an accomplished gentleman.46 Shaftesbury had imported the idea of politeness from France, then regarded as the most civilised and polite nation in Europe. He argued that practices of sociability modelled on those of France were essential to the construction of the English gentleman. Shaftesbury's book was originally targeted at the aristocracy, but his elitist ideology was channelled to a wider middle-class audience through the polite moralism of Addison and Steele. Indeed, the `politeness' first prescribed for a gentleman's behaviour became also the marker of intellectual and literary endeavours `to invoke the cachet of the gentlemanly'; hence there emerged `polite arts', `polite letters' and `polite learning'.47 Characteristicks went through at least ten editions between 1711 and the 1790s, which pointed to the fact that the notion of politeness became ingrained in English society from the early eighteenth century onwards. The enterprising new middle classes were eager to invest their newly gained wealth in keeping up `polite' appearances by cultivating sociability, for it was believed that `refined sociability was the sociability of gentlemen'.48 It may be argued that Hunt, born in 1784, inherited the cultural ethos of the new eighteenth-century bourgeoisie. Like Shaftesbury, Hunt seemed to believe in the civilising effect of sociability as à certain softness and sociality of spirit, without which . . . a nation might relapse into brutality'.49 He was also a great admirer of Addison and Steele, whose egalitarian claim to politeness was perfectly in line with Hunt's bourgeois politics.50 Hunt once remarked, I could never exactly understand what ADDISON meant, when, in answer to a correspondent who desired to know the chief qualification of a good poet, he replied `To be a very well-bred man.' But we may



Poems (1817) 113


Here Hunt cunningly exploited a (possibly deliberate) semantic confusion between politeness as good breeding and politeness as an acquired (and acquirable) character. Hunt claimed that `to be polite . . . [is] in other words to be perfectly well-bred', but not (necessarily) to be of good lineage.52 Addison might have simply meant that a poet had to be of noble family; yet, many middle-class people wished to believe that one could become a gentleman by cultivating politeness. In the economically vibrant and socially dynamic eighteenth century, the new bourgeoisie were anxious to buy into aristocratic politeness and pleasures. As the `polite' notion of sociability permeated the whole society, the new middle class established a number of their own vicarious salons. The eighteenth century, as Marie Mulvey Roberts puts it, turned out to be the era of collective sociality: While solitary mirth and delight were regarded as miasmic, the happiness arising from collective humour was seen to be healthy. . . . As an expression of communality, pleasure was predicated upon conviviality, and institutions such as the playhouse, the club and the coffee-house were formed in order to consolidate the joys of social intercourse.53 Like his predecessors, Hunt was happily pursuing the pleasure of social intercourse. What was more brazen was that he did not hesitate to publicise his polite sociality by publishing his verse. By combining poetry with sociability in his epistles and sonnets, Hunt doubly assumed and affected gentlemanly politeness. Foliage contained the epistles `To the Right Honourable Lord Byron, on his Departure for Italy and Greece', `To Thomas Moore', `To William Hazlitt' and `To Charles Lamb'; and the sonnets `To John Keats', `To Miss K. [Elizabeth Kent]', `To Percy Shelley', `To Horace Smith', `To Benjamin Robert Haydon' and `To John Hamilton Reynolds'. Hunt's social aspiration as a poet was most glaringly epitomised in his argument for the superior politeness of poetry: I have always thought it an argument for the superiority of poetry over the other polite arts, that it is more productive of polite manners than either painting or music. There is not a poet whose life is recorded by DR. JOHNSON, nor indeed any great poet, with whose



certainly gather from this reply, that he had a very high opinion of the general manners and polite character of great poets.51

Poems (1817) 115

By cultivating the politest of the polite arts, Hunt sought to acquire the character of the gentleman as if he had had a natural right to the title of a gentleman. Not surprisingly, his unabashed exhibition of his own bourgeois `laborious' efforts to gentrify himself infuriated Lockhart: The Founder of the Cockney School would fain claim poetical kindred with Lord Byron and Thomas Moore. Such a connexion would be as unsuitable for them as for William Wordsworth . . . as he [Moore] is a thorough gentleman, he must necessarily entertain the greatest contempt for such an under-bred person as Mr Leigh Hunt. But Lord Byron! How must the haughty spirit of Lara and Harold cotemn [sic] the subaltern sneaking of our modern tufthunter . . . . We dare say Mr Hunt has some fine dreams about the true nobility being the nobility of talent, and flatters himself, that with those who acknowledge only that sort of rank, he himself passes for being the peer of Byron. He is sadly mistaken. He is as completely a Plebeian in his mind as he is in his rank and station in society.55 Here Lockhart relentlessly disclosed and deconstructed the social fantasy in which the industrial and mercantile new middle classes had been investing their new money and leisure time since the previous century.56 The common dream of the new bourgeoisie was that one could become (or at least appear like) a gentleman by cultivating and gentrifying oneself. Writing verse was one way to assume gentility; cultivating refined sociability was another. The living room of Hunt's suburban cottage was a bourgeois equivalent of the aristocratic salon in a country house. Keats's sonnet, `Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there', written shortly after his meeting with Hunt, openly displayed his initial excitement at becoming part of what he must have thought of as the `glitterati' of the literary world: For I am brimfull of the friendliness That in a little cottage I have found; Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress, And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd; Of lovely Laura in her light green dress, And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd. (9±14)



private history we are acquainted, who did not bear the character of a gentleman. . . . 54

Indeed, Keats's first book was in good part dedicated to à love of sociality', containing poems addressed to his brothers, those to Mathew's circle of friends, and those inspired by the social life at Hampstead. It was the third category of composition that indelibly registered the cultivation of politeness in Hunt's society and consequently exposed him to public ridicule. Keats's Poems, published in March 1817, did not attract much attention from reviewing journals for the rest of the year, however. Although this maiden volume was `launched amid the cheers and fond anticipations of all his circle', as Clarke later recalled, `The whole community, as if by compact, seemed determined to know nothing about it.'57 Poems received faintly well-meaning reviews from the Eclectic Review and the Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine, both of which noted the influences of Spenser and Hunt on this young poet of àn immature promise of possible excellence'.58 Only such insiders as Hunt and Reynolds gave unstinted praise to Keats's poetical genius. Reynolds's review in the Champion was particularly extravagant in praising his personal friend for his `genius that is likely to eclipse' the popularity of Byron and Moore.59 Hunt, although more soberly aware of Keats's lack of experience, was no less enthusiastic about applauding his young proteÂgeÂ.60 However, these laudatory reviews were not compelling enough to stir up the public interest. In fact, it was the extended series of Lockhart's scandalous attacks (which started in October 1817) on Hunt's The Story of Rimini (1816) and Foliage (1818) that attracted some public attention to Keats's Poems (1817) and Endymion (1818). In the eyes of contemporary reviewers of Poems, it was evident that Keats was a member of Hunt's literary circle. The book was dedicated to Hunt; it contained a number of personal, poetical and political references to Hunt. Hunt himself in his review of Keats's Poems acknowledged that they were `personal friends'.61 It was Lockhart, however, who first attempted a thorough socio-cultural evaluation of the so far neglected Poems in the light of Hunt's bourgeois poetics and politics. If it had been read on its own, Poems might have appeared an innocuous, if juvenile, collection of insignificant verse.62 Yet reading Keats's Poems alongside Hunt's poetry and prose, one would find much evidence of their political and cultural alliance. There were the sonnets `To Kosciusko' in both Poems and Foliage, which pointed to the liberal sympathies shared by the two friends. Sonnets on (or to) `the Grasshopper and the Cricket' also appeared in both volumes, which suggested that Keats and Hunt were engaged in some kind of drawing-room sonnet-writing competition. In `Sleep and Poetry', Keats describes the familiar scene of




a sonnet contest as `the very pleasant rout' (322). Indeed, it was in their sonnets that Keats and Hunt most brazenly exhibited their social and cultural pretensions in the Hampstead literary salon. Lockhart was enraged by a series of Hunt's sonnets `To John Keats', Òn Receiving a Crown of Ivy from the Same [Keats]' and Òn the Same [occasion]'. Keats also wrote two sonnets on a similar (or perhaps the same) occasion: Òn Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt' and `To the Ladies Who Saw Me Crown'd'. According to Woodhouse, while having wine together after dinner, Hunt and Keats decided to `crown themselves with laurel after the fashion of the elder Bards'.63 Lockhart referred to Hunt's sonnet `To John Keats' as à very laughable picture' in which Keats crowned the `small poetaster and newsmonger' Hunt with an ivy wreath.64 In Lockhart's version of the `love of sociality' cultivated by the Hampstead coterie, Keats's status was reduced to that of a proper apothecary: ìf, instead of crowning poor Mr Hunt with ivy, he had clapped a blister upon his head, he would have acted in a way more suitable to his profession.'65 Lockhart thus tried to counter Hunt and Keats's bourgeois politics of politeness by relegating them to their appropriate position in society.

Leafy luxury: Spenser suburbanised It is an almost legendary anecdote that the poetical genius of the young Keats was awakened by his encounter with The Faerie Queene. While Keats was still an apprentice apothecary, Clarke lent him the first volume of The Faerie Queene, and initiated the legend: `He ramped through the scenes of that, (not-of-this-earth) ± that purely poetical romance, like a young horse turned into a Spring meadow . . . . This it was that first showed me his love of poetry.'66 In his Life of John Keats (1841), Charles Brown gave a similar account of Keats's poetical òrigin': Though born to be a poet, he was ignorant of his birthright until he had completed his eighteenth year. . . . It was the `Faery Queen' that awakened his genius. In Spenser's fairy land he was enchanted, breathed in a new world, and became another being; till, enamoured of the stanza, he attempted to imitate it, and succeeded. . . . This his earliest attempt, the `Ìmitation of Spenser'', is in his first volume of Poems, . . . 67 Keats's first (fragmentary) composition was thus said to have been inspired by Spenser, but in fact, this Ìmitation of Spenser' already



Poems (1817) 117


Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle That in that fairest lake had placed been, I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile; Or rob from aged Lear his bitter teen: For sure so fair a place was never seen,

Of all that ever charm'd romantic eye . . . . (19±24)

Here young Keats defines the function of poetry as beguiling and soothing, and sensuously pleasing. He seems already to have appropriated the then dominant view of Spenser's poetry as a form of luxury. This youthful invocation of a Spenserian pastoral muse recurs again and again in his later poems. While he was working in London, his poetic devotion only intensified. Four months before he formally became a member of Hunt's suburban coterie, Keats had already appropriated the old pastoral antithesis between city and country in the following sonnet: To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, ± to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. (1±4) In the sestet, however, the speaker mourns his inability to afford such leisure, for `day so soon has glided by' (12). The implied reason is that he has to work during the daytime among the grimy buildings of the city. The first line of the sonnet is an allusion to Book IX of Paradise Lost in which Satan, who has travelled from hell to Paradise, is presented as a townsman longing for a country walk (445±9).69 The pastoral convention of exalting the countryside was very much alive among the urbanites in the early nineteenth century. The great city was conceived as being, just like the world of Satan, a chaotic place of unbridled passion, pride and greed, whose residents had to fight their way through the hustle and bustle. Being city-dwellers born and bred, Keats and Hunt shared rural fantasies even before they met. Keats once remarked, when advised to revise the original preface to Endymion, that Ì am not aware



adumbrated his future identification with Hunt's poetics of pleasure.68 The poem consists of four Spenserian stanzas which semantically amount to very little. The fragment could be called a `landscape' poem, for the speaker is gazing at `woven bowers' (8) on an enchanted isle, selecting whatever charms his `picturesque' eye:

there is any thing like Hunt in it, (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I have something in common with Hunt)'.70 This is true, but the most conspicuous common denominator between Keats and Hunt is their bourgeois appetite for à leafy luxury'. As we have seen, Hunt rusticated and aestheticised Hampstead Heath in his predominantly pastoral poetry. And Spenser was Hunt's lifelong favourite. Modern critics often emphasise Keats's intrinsic affinity with Spenserian sensuousness. But what Keats actually appropriated was Hunt's version of Spenser ± sensuous, pictorial and pastoral. Like Hunt, Keats tried to create Spenserian-suburban bowers for pure pleasure, offering an escape from the real world.71 The title page of Poems contains an epigraph from Spenser's `Muiopotmos' (209±10): `What more felicity can fall to creature, `Than to enjoy delight with liberty.' Fate of the Butterfly. ± SPENSER.72 Hunt also attached the same epigraph to The Months (1821), which upheld his bourgeois claim to leisure, luxury and liberty (that is, freedom to pursue pleasure). Beneath the motto, Keats put a laurelled profile of an Elizabethan poet that has often been identified as Spenser.73 The title-page is followed by a dedication `To Leigh Hunt, Esq.', which, along with the epigraph from Spenser, epitomises the poetical and political principle of Poems. In the octave, Keats mourns the passing of the `Glory and loveliness' (1) of the mythological world, in implied opposition to urban, industrial and commercial early nineteenth-century London: But there are left delights as high as these, And I shall ever bless my destiny, That in a time, when under pleasant trees Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,

A leafy luxury, seeing I could please

With these poor offerings, a man like thee. (9±14) The sestet above suggests that Keats wished to recreate `The Kingdom of Flora' (as painted by Nicolas Poussin) in which the reader was allowed `to enjoy delight with liberty'. Poems, along with Hunt's The Story of Rimini and Foliage, was meant to offer the reader à free, leafy luxury' as a palliative for the demands of the world of work.74 Among the reviewers of Keats's maiden volume, Reynolds was the most enthusiastic and Hunt the most perceptive. In his review of Keats's



Poems (1817) 119


It is no longer a new observation, that poetry has of late years undergone a very great change, or rather, to speak properly, poetry has undergone no change, but something which was not poetry has made way for the return of something which is. The school which existed till lately since the restoration of Charles the 2d [sic], was rather a school of wit and ethics in verse, than any thing else. . . . 75 Keats's little volume was posited as òne of the greatest evidences' of this Elizabethan revival.76 Reynolds reiterated Hunt's poetics nearly verbatim in praising Keats: `The author . . . is likely to make a great addition to those who would overthrow that artificial taste which French criticism has long planted among us.'77 The contours of Hunt's aesthetics of pleasure most clearly and comprehensively manifest themselves in the last and longest poem in Keats's volume, `Sleep and Poetry'. It is regarded as the best and most substantial in Poems by modern critics as well as by Hunt, yet for very different reasons. Twentieth-century Keatsians consider `Sleep and Poetry' as the young poet's first `serious' attempt to outline his poetic aspiration for a `higher' species of poetry. Almost all modern critics agree that there are clear signs of Keats's later development in the much-quoted passage: And can I ever bid these joys farewell? Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, Where I may find the agonies, the strife Of human hearts: for lo! I see afar, O'er sailing the blue cragginess, a car And steeds with streamy manes ± the charioteer Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: .... . . . I will strive Against all doubtings, and will keep alive The thought of that same chariot, and the strange Journey it went. (122±8, 159±62) This portion of `Sleep and Poetry', which occupies only one-tenth of the whole poem (41 out of 404 lines), is customarily foregrounded and considered to be a proof of Keats's ambition for the Virgilian poetic



Poems, Hunt spent the first third of the article historicising the rise of a new school of poetry, or rather, the revival of à true taste for nature' which the great English ancestors possessed:

programme. It may be that modern Keatsians are identifying with Piers in The Shepheardes Calender, who encourages Cuddie to abandon his Òaten reede' for `higher veyne and more Heroicall argument'. However, Hunt's interpretation of Keats's poetic inclination was precisely the opposite. In his review of Poems, Hunt tried to locate his acolyte in the Theocritean-bourgeois poetic programme, and indeed, Keats seemed to fit in with the scheme very well. In `Sleep and Poetry', Keats extolled the Elizabethan times when `the Muses were nigh cloy'd / With honours' (178±9); then he attacked the neoclassical poets for being shackled by the `musty laws lined out with wretched rule' (195) set up by Boileau; yet he was glad to see the return of the Elizabethan spirit to modern poetry (206±29). Keats celebrated modern poetry for its pastoral simplicity and `heart-easing' pleasures (248±69). Moreover, Keats criticised some other contemporary poets for feeding ùpon the burrs, / And thorns of life; forgetting the great end / Of poesy, that it should be a friend / To soothe the cares' (244±7). Hunt noted that Keats objected to `the morbidity that taints the productions of the Lake Poets'.78 In the preface to Foliage, Hunt too objected to the Lake school, along with the French school of poetry. Grudgingly admitting that Wordsworth had `the reputation of being the most prominent ornament' of this new school, Hunt nevertheless had reservations about Wordsworth's moral system, which was founded on Christianity.79 It will be recalled that the arch-enemy of Hunt's creed of cheerfulness was principally an unattractive, mistaken, hypocritical, melancholy and, above all, pleasure-denying creed of Christianity. And Keats was seen as a leading member among the new generation of cheerful and pleasure-loving pastoralists. Appropriately, as a paradigmatic passage of Keats's Àspiration after Poetry', Hunt, unlike modern critics, picked out the passage below: O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen That am not yet a glorious denizen Of thy wide heaven; yet, to my ardent prayer, Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air, Smoothed for intoxication by the breath Of flowering bays, that I may die a death Of luxury, and my young spirit follow The morning sun-beams to the great Apollo Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring to me the fair Visions of all places: a bowery nook



Poems (1817) 121


Here poetic inspiration is likened to a state of excessive sensuous pleasure; and if the poet could endure an Excesse of such pleasures, he would be allowed to enter the poetical Bower of Bliss. Hunt correctly concluded that Keats preferred cheerful and happy poetry to the Virgilian style with which modern Keatsians attempt to align him.80 Indeed, `Sleep and Poetry' is composed of a series of youthful invocations to a pastoral muse, and these amount to the main substance of the poem. The poem begins with a series of rhetorical questions about sleep and poetry, and its loose dialectic yields only a vague and diffuse definition of `Poesy' ± strange, beautiful, smooth, regal, glorious, awesome and gentle at the same time (19±40). The terra incognita of poetry appears to be a boundless ocean whose vastness intimidates and overwhelms him (306±12). Even the most famous invocation Ò for ten years', in which Keats is supposed to proclaim his aspiration for a higher class of poetry, could not plausibly be equated with Spenser `whose Muse whilome did maske, / . . . in lowly Shepheards weeds, /. . . . / For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine Oaten reeds', in the prologue to The Faerie Queene. The contours of the Virgilian dialectic of poetic genres almost disappear among the ò'erwhelming sweets' of pastoral pleasures: O for ten years, that I may overwhelm Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed That my own soul has to itself decreed. Then will I pass the countries that I see In long perspective, and continually Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass, Feed upon apples red, and strawberries, And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees . . . . (96±104) Then the poet blissfully regresses to `the bosom of a leafy world' (119), and seems to remain in the womb of the humblest pastoral realm of Flora. Even in the following passage, Keats barely succeeds in weaning himself away from `these joys'. The charioteer is generally considered to be the `Personification of the Epic poet', but Keats most probably



Will be elysium ± an eternal book Whence I may copy many a lovely saying About the leaves, and flowers ± about the playing Of nymphs in woods, and fountains. . . . (53±67)

Poems (1817) 123

On the left of the painting . . . we see a statue of Pan, Ajax committing suicide, Clytia gazing at the sun, and Narcissus admiring himself in the water, with Echo beside him. In the centre Flora dances. At the right Hyacinthus and Adonis stand near each other, while Crocus and Smilax repose beside them.82 It may be argued that it is these mythological creatures which Keats poeticises into the `Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear' (138) invoked by the charioteer: Lo! how they murmur, laugh, and smile, and weep: Some with upholden hand and mouth severe; Some with their faces muffled to the ear Between their arms; some, clear in youthful bloom, Go glad and smilingly athwart the gloom; Some looking back, and some with upward gaze; .... . . . Most awfully intent, The driver of those steeds is forward bent, And seems to listen: O that I might know All that he writes with such a hurrying glow. (142±7, 151±4) Later in the poem, Keats reiterates that the end and aim of poetry is to `simply tell the most heart-easing things' (268). Hence it is likely that what the charioteer writes is not `the agonies, the strife / Of human hearts', but the pleasures of the pastoral world. Overall, `Sleep and Poetry' is an invocation to the pastoral kingdom of Flora in which Keats implores that `many, many more, / Might I indulge at large in all my store / Of luxuries' (344±6). Other longer poems, such as `Specimen of an Induction to a Poem', `Calidore: A Fragment', and Ì stood tip-toe upon a little hill', may all be seen as invocations to the leafy luxuries of a Spenserian pastoral bower. The first two of these poems are generally considered to have been most directly influenced by The Story of Rimini in terms of poetic diction, but all three poems are inspired by and imbued with Hunt's version of aestheticised Spenser. `Specimen of an Induction' is comprised of a



derived the image of a chariot driver from the figure of Apollo wheeling à car / And steeds with streamy manes' (126±7) in Poussin's The Kingdom of Flora.81 The painting depicts the mythological origin of the flowers of Flora's garden:


Spenser! thy brows are arched, open, kind, And come like a clear sun-rise to my mind; And always does my heart with pleasure dance, When I think on thy noble countenance: .... Therefore, great bard, I not so fearfully Call on thy gentle spirit to hover nigh My daring steps: or if thy tender care, Thus startled unaware, Be jealous that the foot of other wight Should madly follow that bright path of light Trac'd by thy lov'd Libertas; he will speak, And tell thee that my prayer is very meek; That I will follow with due reverence, And start with awe at mine own strange pretence. Him thou wilt hear. . . . (49±52, 55±65) This passage clearly shows that Keats identifies Hunt with Spenser, or rather, that he embraces Hunt's version of a pleasure-giving Spenser. It is important to notice that Keats invokes Spenser, not Shakespeare, as a `great bard' for poetic guidance. Although Shakespeare was universally admired as `the Bard of Avon' in early nineteenth-century England, Spenser seemed to be the utmost favourite in the Hampstead literary salon. In the European political context, Shakespeare represented the interests of the English nation as a whole, and we can be fairly certain that Englishmen in general idolised Shakespeare as the greatest national Bard. Even Reynolds described Spenser as being `the second Poet to Shakespeare'.83 Yet in choosing the ultimate favourite among his favourite poets, Hunt prefers Spenser over Shakespeare: But which take with me, could I take but one? Shakspeare, ± as long as I was unoppressed With the world's weight, making sad thoughts intenser; But did I wish, out of the common sun, To lay a wounded heart in leafy rest, And dream of things far off and healing, ± Spenser. (`The Poets' 9±14)



series of Spenserian chivalric tableaux, followed by an invocation to Hunt's version of Spenser:

Poems (1817) 125

Ye that have hearts vex'd with unquiet thought Of worldly grievance, and of lost delight; Oh! turn to Spenser's Faery Tale, ± so fraught With all that's mild, and beautiful, and bright, ± . . . . (1±4)84 Spenser was the muse promising ease and poetic release for the members of Hunt's circle. `Calidore' is a fragmentary attempt to `tell a tale of chivalry' promised in `Specimen of an Induction' (1, 11, 45). The fragment reads like a gallery of landscape paintings, rather than a coherent narrative. The name of Calidore is evidently derived from Book VI of The Faerie Queene, `The Legend of S. Calidore or of Courtesie'. One may recall that Hunt picked out the vision of the Graces to which Calidore was a fortunate witness as one of the most sensuously pleasing scenes from Spenser. Certainly Keats tries to revive the (particularly visual) pleasures of Calidore's pastoral truancy in his poem. Keats seems to identify himself with young Calidore who exhaustively gazes around his picturesque surroundings: Whence Calidore might have the goodliest view Of this sweet spot of earth. The bowery shore Went off in gentle windings to the hoar And light blue mountains: but no breathing man With a warm heart, and eye prepared to scan Nature's clear beauty, could pass lightly by Objects that look'd out so invitingly On either side. (25±32) Here `Nature's clear beauty' is presented as an object of aesthetic consumption. Calidore may be identified with a bourgeois nature-lover who `consumes' all that charms his eye, trained as it is in the picturesque aesthetic. The youthful knight-errant is thus in no haste to leave the luxury of `viewing / These pleasant things' (52±3), until `his glad senses caught / A trumpet's silver voice' (54±5). The sound of a trumpet indicates a turning point at which Calidore moves from the natural landscape to the human world. Spenser changes his Òaten reeds' for `trumpets



If Shakespeare was regarded as the most respected and honourable, Spenser the most luxurious and pleasurable. In his sonnet `To Spenser' (1816), Reynolds also embraced Hunt's version of Spenser as a hearteasing pastoralist:

sterne' in order to `sing of Knights and Ladies gentle deeds'. However, although Keats introduces Spenserian knight and ladies into the poem, he is primarily concerned with describing the interior of `the castle gloomy, and grand' (65), `the soft luxury' (92) of feminine beauties, and the decorative symbols of masculine virtues (that is, shining armour with waving plumes). And as soon as they arrive in a chamber and the main plot seems to begin, when `young Calidore is burning / To hear of knightly deeds, and gallant spurning / Of all unworthiness' (142±4), the poem breaks off. Appropriately for a fragment, `Calidore' remains a gallery of picturesque landscapes and Spenserian tapestries depicting scenes from chivalric romance. 'I stood tip-toe upon a little hill' is the opening poem in Poems, and appropriately so. The whole poem demonstrates the motto from Spenser ± let us enjoy the fate and felicity of the butterfly ± on the title-page. It is headed with an epigraph, `Places of nestling green for Poets made', from The Story of Rimini (III, 430). Indeed, Ì stood tip-toe' is a heartfelt manifesto of the suburban-Spenserian pastoral poetics. The poem may be considered to be composed of three parts: the description of the poet's natural surroundings (1±26), the imaginative vision of the locus amoenus (27±115) and, finally, the invocation of the moon as `Maker of sweet poets' (116 ff.). However, these stages are not logically or dialectically advanced. Rather, they proceed through a train of pleasurable images (`luxuries') loosely connected by what Hunt called the `fertile power of association and imagery'.85 The poem starts with the poet who stood tip-toe upon a little hill, delightedly and exhaustively gazing about a vast panorama: There was wide wand'ring for the greediest eye,

To peer about upon variety;

Far round the horizon's crystal air to skim,

And trace the dwindled edgings of its brim;

To picture out the quaint, and curious bending

Of a fresh woodland alley, never ending;

Or by the bowery clefts, and leafy shelves,

Guess where the jaunty streams refresh themselves.

I gazed awhile, and felt as light, and free. . . . (15±23)

One may recall that Gilpin defined the picturesque aesthetic as a way of `seeing' the variety of natural objects. And as we noted in Chapter 3, Hunt appropriated the prevailing language of the picturesque for his suburban aesthetic. For Hunt and Keats, the landscapes available for




consumption in the suburbs of London were no less picturesque than those in the Lake District. Hunt later noted that Ì stood tip-toe' was `suggested to him [Keats] by a delightful summer-day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the Battery on Hampstead Heath into a field of Caen Wood'.86 It may be argued that the first part of the poem is conceived in the language of the suburban picturesque, by which Keats styles himself a bourgeois lover of nature. The visual consumption of a natural landscape enables the gazer to `feel a free / A leafy luxury', which supposedly leads him into a poetic vision: . . . I was light-hearted, And many pleasures to my vision started; So I straightway began to pluck a posey Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy. (25±8)87 However, the following part is hardly more heightened or visionary than the catalogue of leafy luxuries in the first part: A bush of May flowers with the bees about them; Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them; And let a lush laburnum oversweep them, And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets, That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. (29±34) Keats minutely enumerates and enjoys every possible attribute of the locus amoenus, just as Francesca roams her `noble range' freely indulging in `fifty luxuries more'. Natural objects are presented in the domestic, suburban, feminine and beautiful forms, as opposed to untamed and savage nature perceived through the sublime vision. Certainly he would not bid farewell to those joys too hastily: he indulges himself in 26 more lines, in which he invokes a suburban version of the Bower of Bliss: Were I in such a place, I sure should pray

That nought less sweet might call my thoughts away,

Than the soft rustle of a maiden's gown

....

O let me lead her gently o'er the brook,

Watch her half-smiling lips, and downward look;

O let me for one moment touch her wrist;

Let me one moment to her breathing list . . . . (93±5, 101±4)



Poems (1817) 127

These lovers in a bowery recess also remind us of Paulo and Francesca. In Keats's leafy world, as well as Hunt's rural spot, there is no sign of moral danger. Neither Keats's maiden nor Hunt's Francesca can be likened to Acrasia who offers a man `depasturing delight'. In the suburban bower of bliss, pleasure is light, free and verdant; natural objects are aesthetic commodities to be consumed. Having been smothered with leafy luxuries throughout the first two parts of the poem, Keats still asks, `What next?' (107). This random and rambling association of pastoral pleasures seems almost accidentally to lead the poet to the invocation of the moon. Keats apostrophises the moon as a source of poetic inspiration: Thee must I praise above all other glories That smile us on to tell the delightful stories. For what has made the sage or poet write But the fair paradise of Nature's light? (123±6) The rest of the poem explores the relationship between nature and poetic inspiration, the idea of which Keats derives from Book IV of The Excursion (1814). Commentators agree that Keats was profoundly influenced by Wordsworth's animistic view of the origins of classical myths as man's imaginative response to the beauties of nature.88 Wordsworth describes how the ancient Greeks anthropomorphised the forces of nature into gods and goddesses through the ìmaginative faculty . . . lord / Of observation natural' (707±8). According to Wordsworth, the Greeks translated their perception of a spiritual presence permeating their `fair clime' (851) into a number of gods, goddesses, nymphs, naiads and satyrs. In other words, the physical forms of Greek gods were the materialised èmanations' (738) from one Life in nature. In the final part of Ì stood tip-toe', Keats also describes how ancient poets were inspired by their bowery or sylvan surroundings to conceive the tales of mythological lovers. Unlike Wordsworth, however, Keats does not manifest any metaphysical bent in his perception of nature; rather, Keats possesses what Hunt called `the most luxuriant fancy'.89 Hence Keats describes the state of poetic inspiration as follows: When it is moving on luxurious wings,

The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings:

Fair dewy roses brush against our faces,

And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases;

O'er head we see the jasmine and sweet briar,




Poems (1817) 129

This state of `pleasant smotherings', or of dying (and surviving) a death of luxury, is in Keats's view a requirement for poetic conception. The locus amoenus is supposed to lure and lead him from worldly cares into `poetic lore'. Throughout Poems, Keats constantly invokes a locus amoenus, whether actual or imaginary, in order to write poetry. Keats's view of poetic conception ± `while the Poet stood in this sweet spot, / Some fainter gleanings o'er his fancy shot' (177±8) ± could hardly be equated with what Hazlitt reckons as the èxpansive and animating principle' of Wordsworth.90 Appropriately, Keats's account of the origins of the myths of Cupid and Psyche (141±50), Pan and Syrinx (151±62), Narcissus and Echo (163±80), and Endymion and Cynthia (181±204) remains a gallery of Poussinesque verbal pictures. For Keats and Hunt, imagination is, as it were, an aestheticising principle, whose power lies in its sensory (mainly visual) evocation of mythological paraphernalia not only in the `Places of nestling green for Poets made' but also in the urban centre of the Metropolis. Òur whole talk,' as Hunt later recalled, `was made up of idealisms. In the streets we were in the thick of the old woods.'91 Ì stood tip-toe upon a little hill' was originally entitled Èndymion', and in it Keats planned to relate the nuptials of Endymion and Cynthia as the main subject. Yet despite his impassioned invocation, Keats could not, or rather would not, `burst our mortal bars; / Into some wond'rous region' (190±1). Hunt is right in observing that the poem `consists of a piece of luxury in a rural spot'.92 The poem ends as if it were a fragment: Cynthia! I cannot tell the greater blisses, That follow'd thine, and thy dear shepherd's kisses: Was there a Poet born? ± but now no more, My wand'ring spirit must no further soar. ± (239±42) Josiah Conder commented that `the whole poem has a sort of summer's day glow diffused over it, but it shuts up in mist and obscurity'.93 Overall, Keats's maiden volume offered pleasing (and often fragmentary) descriptions of the suburban locus amoenus, in which the reader was allowed freely to indulge in leafy luxuries and to escape the pain or banality of the ordinary workaday world. Certainly, occasional



And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire; While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles Charms us at once away from all our troubles: So that we feel uplifted from the world, Walking upon the white clouds wreath'd and curl'd. (131±40)

outbursts of poetic invocation pointed to Keats's aspiration for a higher `wond'rous region'. In his epistle `To My Brother George', Keats tells his brother that a poetic trance would surely enable a poet to see the `wonders strange' (53). Then, in `Sleep and Poetry', he invokes `many a verse from so strange influence / That we must ever wonder how, and whence / It came' (69±71). Keats wishes he could revive `the strange Journey' of the Apollonian charioteer. Yet in the end Keats favours `sweet relief ' over his `strange assay' (312, 313). The vast and vague realm of high poetry remained `strange' to Keats throughout Poems. Hunt described Keats as à young poet giving himself up to his own impressions, and revelling in real poetry for its' [sic] own sake'.94 Indeed, he rendered a cornucopia of aesthetic pleasure for its own sake, without demanding of the reader any intellectual or moral effort. Having been fascinated with the liberal and leisured culture of Hunt's circle of belles-lettres, Keats celebrated the leafy luxuries of Spenserian-suburban pastoral. Hunt's description of Poems (citing Milton) was absolutely appropriate: It is a little luxuriant heap of Such sights as youthful poets dream On summer eves by haunted stream.95




`Wherein Lies Happiness?': Endymion (1818)

Leafy luxury extended While he was composing Endymion during 1817, Keats gradually drifted away from Hunt. Indeed, the poem pointed to his personal and poetical distancing from the latter's influence. The sociality of Hunt's coterie celebrated throughout Poems was replaced by the weary solitude of the hero of Endymion. Whereas Poems consisted of poems about writing poetry, which amounted to no more than ìnvocations', Endymion handled a `real' subject matter ± the Greek legend of Endymion and Cynthia ± however thin it may have appeared. Keats considered Endymion to be à test, a trial of my Powers of Imagination and chiefly of my invention which is a rare thing indeed ± by which I must make 4000 Lines of one bare circumstance and fill them with Poetry; and when I consider that this is a great task, and that when done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the Temple of Fame ± it makes me say ± God forbid that I should be without such a task!'1 Endymion was his first serious poetic endeavour to `burst our mortal bars; / Into some wond'rous region'. During the period of its composition, Keats felt increasingly compelled to break free from Hunt's ± or indeed anyone's ± sway: `You see Bailey how independant [sic] my writing has been ± Hunt's dissuasion was of no avail ± I refused to visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfetter[e]d scope ± and after all I shall have the Reputation of Hunt's eleveÂ ± His corrections and amputations will by the 131



6


However, though attempting to attain his artistic independence, Keats's conception of poetry did not at this stage radically deviate from Hunt's pastoral poetics. Keats thought of the wondrous region of Endymion not as a metaphysical terrain, but as a realm in which òne bare circumstance' was smothered by poetic embellishments. In The Story of Rimini, Hunt also expanded the thirteen-line episode from Cary's Dante into a narrative poem of four cantos (1,706 lines). The citation below, while superficially taking issue with a point made by Hunt, does not indicate Keats's departure from Hunt so much as his extreme exertion of his mentor's poetic principles: Ì have heard Hunt say . . . why endeavour after a long Poem? To which I should answer ± Do not the Lovers of Poetry like to have a little Region to wander in where they may pick and choose, and in which the images are so numerous that many are forgotten and found new in a second Reading: which may be food for a Week's stroll in the Summer? Do not they like this better than what they can read through before Mrs Williams comes down stairs? a Morning work at most. Besides a long Poem is a test of Invention which I take to be the Polar Star of Poetry, as Fancy is the Sails, and Imagination the Rudder. Did our great Poets ever write short Pieces? I mean in the shape of Tales ± This same invention seems i[n]deed of late Years to have been forgotten as a Poetical excellence. . . . '3 Keats seemed to regard poetry as a region to escape to, to wander around and to indulge freely in aesthetic pleasure. It was indeed Hunt himself who defined poetry as a pastoral bower in which the reader could freely `pick and choose' poetic luxuries. Unlike Poems, however, Endymion was supposed to bring Keats poetic fame in his own right, not merely as Hunt's èleveÂ'. By writing à long Poem' which he regarded as the touchstone of à Poetical excellence', Keats tried to distinguish himself from Hunt. In fact, while exerting himself to surpass Hunt's poetics, the only way in which Keats really succeeded in outgrowing Hunt was in exceeding the customary length of his poetry. Hunt would surely have agreed with Keats that `the Lovers of Poetry like to have a little Region to wander in'; Francesca's `noble range' was just like it. However, Endymion turned out to be the verbal equivalent of a luxuriant wilderness, in perceived contrast to Hunt's



knowing ones be trased [sic] in the Poem ± This is to be sure the vexation of a day. . . . '2

poetry, which was presented as a poeticised version of a small but cosy suburban garden. The reader certainly could have finished reading Hunt's poem not in à Week's stroll' but at one sitting as à Morning work'. Hunt would have heartily agreed with Poe's `Philosophy of Composition' (1846): Ìf any literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression.'4 Keats indeed chose an appropriate motto for Endymion (from Shakespeare's Sonnet XVII): `The stretched metre of an antique song'. These excesses marked not only Keats's conscious retreat from the contemporary literary world, but also his attempt to identify himself with òur great Poets'. By the time the publication of Endymion was imminent, Keats's antagonism towards the reading public had considerably increased. He branded the reader-consumer as à thing I cannot help looking upon as an Enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of Hostility'.5 For the young Keats, full of tender pride, subduing his unfettered scope to the popular (vulgar) taste was nothing less than humiliation. Keats came to see Hunt as one of the contemporary `popular' writers who willingly catered for the taste of `that most vulgar of all crowds the literary'.6 In February 1818, Keats told Reynolds that I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. . . . Why be teased with `nice Eyed wagtails' [Hunt, `The Nymphs' II, 170], when we have in sight `the Cherub Contemplation' [Milton, Ìl Penseroso' 54]? ± Why with Wordsworths `Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand' [`The Two April Mornings' 57 ff.] when we can have Jacques ùnder an oak &c' [As You Like It, II. i. 31]. . . . Let us have the old Poets. . . . 7 Hunt readily recognised Keats's attempt to become independent of, or even aloof from, the prevailing taste, and tried to persuade his proteÂgeÂ (which was how he still thought of Keats) to mend his ways. However, Keats was determined not to take his advice. When Hunt objected to the unnatural (hence unconsumable) language of Endymion, Keats spurned his former mentor's objection by affiliating himself with Shakespeare: Leigh Hunt I showed my Ist Book to, he allows it not much merit as a whole; says it is unnatural & made ten objections to it in the mere skimming over. He says the conversation is unnatural & too highflown for the Brother & Sister. Says it should be simple forgetting do ye mind, that they are both overshadowed by a Supernatural Power,



Endymion (1818) 133


Hunt considered that Endymion's extravagant length and language made it unreadable, and ultimately unmarketable. Yet Keats triumphantly alleged that `he [Hunt] & Shelley are hurt & perhaps justly, at my not having showed them the affair officiously'.9 Their paternalistic attitude aside, they might have genuinely tried to make Keats's poem more commercially viable. Having been told that Keats was nearing 4,000 lines, Hunt reportedly said: `had it not been for me they would have been 7000!'10 However, Keats attempted to affiliate himself to the great tradition of English poetry in which (he thought) poetical excellence was ultimately achieved by writing a long (epic) poem. One may recall that Hunt contented himself with lingering on the lowest ladder of poetic genres, that is, within the comfortable region of pastoral. While emphasising that the great English poets did not `write short Pieces . . . in the shape of Tales', Keats must have had in mind The Faerie Queene. Whereas Hunt was content to recreate a scaled-down domesticated version of the Bower of Bliss, Keats ventured to emulate The Faerie Queene's magnificent scale and overflowing luxuriance. For Keats, Ìnvention' was a power to produce as many poetical luxuries as possible, and it was the guiding principle (to which Fancy and Imagination were subordinate) of a long narrative poem. Keats endeavoured to invent his own poetics which reinvented Spenser as a poet of supreme and sustained invention, `which is a rare thing indeed'. Nevertheless, Keats did not regard The Faerie Queene as an epic poem, for his reading of Spenser was shaped by Hunt's pastoral poetics. Consequently, Keats's whole notion of poetry could not go beyond Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics, for the central link between Keats and Hunt ± their appetite for leafy luxury ± remained intact. It was this `luxurious' quality of Endymion, however, that baffled contemporary and modern critics alike. Modern Keatsians tend to repress the overabundant luxuries of Endymion, so as to discover in it the embryonic ideas of the later Keats. Martin Aske, however, sees `the parergonal language' of Endymion differently.11 He proposes that Keats's embellished and excessive style affords a language of consolation and desire: `Keats's language of flowers compensates ± indeed, overcompensates ± for the sense of loss felt at the disappearance of classical antiquity.'12 Patricia A. Parker also tries to give critical significance to



& of force could not speak like Franchesca [sic] in the Rimini. He must first prove that Caliban's poetry is unnatural, ± This with me completely overturns his objections . . . . 8

Endymion, rather than dismissing it as an apprentice work. In her wideranging study of the romance mode, Parker situates Keats in the tradition of romance along with Ariosto, Spenser and Milton. She defines romance as à form which simultaneously quests for and postpones a particular end, objective, or object'.13 In terms of its poetic strategy of deferral and dilation, Endymion allies itself with `the older romances where diversion and `èrror'' allow the poem to unfold'.14 More recently, Alan Bewell has offered a new historicist reading of Keats's language of flowers. Bewell recognises the link between Keats's `floral rhetoric' and à nascent Victorian culture of flowers, in which floral imagery was produced for an urban public, who saw flowers as eminently aesthetic and decorative objects'.15 Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, gardens and flowers were increasingly associated, or even identified, with social and cultural status. Placing Keats in the context of the suburban culture of the early nineteenth-century middle class, Jones makes a similar claim: Keats's suburbanism reveals his association not with conventional Romanticism, but with an emerging Victorian and middle-class sensibility. . . . In keeping with the pre-Victorian domestication of nature, where the natural world was seen to offer leisure, recreation and community in the face of an alienating industrial environment, Keats's early verse rehearses the social and cultural protocols of the suburban project. . . . 16 As we saw in Chapter 3, the domestic suburban garden was the middleclass equivalent of a landscape garden. It may even be argued that in Endymion Keats laboured to emulate a country estate in poetic terms. His guest was expected to enjoy à Week's stroll in the Summer' through a seemingly boundless `noble range'. In writing Endymion, Keats aspired to the gentrified status of the established English poets. Keats thus created a wildly luxuriant locus amoenus in emulation of the Bower of Bliss. One may recall that Hunt thought of Spenser as a `sorry' poet in terms of his `plots & stories'.17 Yet as Patmore pointed out, Keats took this characteristic to extremes in Endymion: às a tale, this work is nothing. There is no connecting interest to bind one part of it to another. Almost any two parts of it might be transposed, without disadvantage to either, or to the whole.'18 It may even be argued that Endymion is less a poem than a pastiche composed of mythological allusions (derived principally from LemprieÁre and Elizabethan pastoral), reworkings of Spenserian bowers and catalogues of leafy luxuries. The



Endymion (1818) 135

reader could even open a page at random and still appreciate the work, for each episode is meant to be a set of poetical luxuries. Book I contains such scenes as the procession of shepherds and shepherdesses in an Arcadian landscape, the jovial festivities in honour of Pan and Peona's arbour on a bowery island. These episodes do not logically or teleologically advance; rather, they are put together to comprise a Poussinesque gallery. Peona's favourite retreat has a resemblance to Francesca's summerhouse. Just as Francesca seeks for a soothing hour in `her accustomed bower', so Peona leads Endymion to her bowery nest in order to ease her brother's anguish. For Keats and Hunt, a bower is the ultimate poetical luxury: in each book of Endymion, Keats cannot bear to go without recreating (himself with) the lavish affluence of a Spenserian bower. Even when the hero descends into a subterranean region in Book II, the main feature of this region is an aestheticised version of the Garden of Adonis (II, 339±587). And although his quest has started, the hero seems to be in no rush to pursue the object of his desire throughout Book II. Rather, he rambles from bower to bower until he is led to the Bower of Adonis: . . . sweeter than the rill To its old channel, or a swollen tide To margin sallows, were the leaves he spied, And flowers, and wreaths, and ready myrtle crowns Up heaping through the slab: refreshment drowns Itself, and strives its own delights to hide. . . . (II, 339±44, my emphasis) This sudden change of scene appears to be no more than a gratuitous wish-fulfilment. Indeed, the stretched and `Strange journeyings' (III, 93) of Endymion (appropriately in the plural form) are composed of a succession of moments of `refreshment'. The word `refreshing' was arguably one of Hunt's favourite adjectives. He promoted the creed of cheerfulness as an antidote to (what he thought of as the prevailing) despondent and melancholy spirits. And like Hunt, Keats declares that `there's refreshment even in toil' (II, 147). Drawing to the end of his quest, Endymion likens himself to à butterfly, a lord / Of flowers' (IV, 937±8). One may recall that both Hunt and Keats chose the motto from Spenser's `Fate of the Butterflie' for their own works, The Months and Poems respectively. Endymion's journey may be seen as analogous to the delightful fate of the butterfly. It certainly cannot be equated with the heroic quest of the Red Cross Knight as a




test of his martial valour, moral virtue and, above all, masculine value. Keats's emphasis is not on the completion of a quest, but on its delaying and digressive instances of `refreshment' which enable the hero to recover from his despondency and to resume his pursuit against àll doubtings'. Though frequently sinking into despair, Endymion is never in real danger. When he seems to reach an impasse and become despondent, he is simply sated, and then yearns for new refreshment. As mentioned above, each book contains Keats's versions of a Spenserian bower, in particular, the Bower of Adonis in Book II and the Bower of Circe in Book III. Keats's extensive and exhaustive descriptions of the Bower of Adonis are inspired by the Garden of Adonis in The Faerie Queene. But whereas Spenser presents the Garden of Adonis as natura naturans, the creative source of Nature, and Adonis as its (re)generative principle, Keats excludes Spenser's Platonic belief in the permanence of human existence, and emphasises only the èuerlasting ioy' (III. vi. 49. 1) of Adonis. The death and resuscitation of Adonis, and his reunion with Venus, are recounted in a series of vivid verbal pictures. Just as Francesca's bower of bliss is devoid of the moral implications of Spenser's Bower of Bliss, so Keats's Bower of Adonis is de-Platonised and aestheticised. Jeffrey aptly recommended the reader to `cull a few little morsels' in the citation of `the picture of the sleeping Adonis'.19 Book III features Glaucus's recollection of the Bower of Circe (III, 418±600). It has a strong resemblance to the Bower of Bliss in which the enchantress Acrasia entices and ensnares knights-errants in deviating (and ultimately deathly) sensual pleasures. Just like Acrasia (herself associated with and inspired by Circe), she seduces Glaucus into forgetting his quest for Scylla, and her `fierce temptation' (III, 451) over-sweetens, unmans and puerilises Glaucus. Acrasia also lays herself on à bed of Roses . . . / . . . dight to pleasant sin' (II. xii. 77. 1±2) where she cradles her lover in `lewd loues, and wastfull luxuree' (II. xii. 80. 7±8). And just as Acrasia's blissful bower turns out to be a baleful prison, so Circe's `specious heaven was changed to real hell' (III, 476). Glaucus finds out the identity of his àrbour queen' (III, 498) when he witnesses `the haggard scene' (III, 497) in which the sorceress Circe feeds and tortures the deformed beasts. When he realises that his mistress has transformed her former lovers into these beasts, Glaucus makes a vain attempt to flee. Chagrined at his rejection, Circe puts a curse on him and takes the life of Scylla. Similarly, one may recall that Acrasia changes her lovers ìnto figures hideous, / According to their mindes like monstruous' (II. xii. 85. 4±5). These beasts are restored to their original human form by a Palmer, but `being men they did vnmanly looke' (II. xii. 86. 3). Once



Endymion (1818) 137

fallen into the depraved state of sensual gratification, a man could never regain his former intelligence. Spenser draws from Plutarch's Gryllus the fable of Grill, who was transformed into a hog by Circe, but refused to be changed back to human shape. The moral drawn from the story of Grill is clear: `Sad end . . . of life intemperate, / And mournefull meed of ioyes delicious' (II. xii. 85. 6±7). The episode of Spenser's Bower of Bliss thus preaches against excessive sensual pleasures (or Ìntemperance'), which degrade and deprave the human mind. In Endymion, however, the story of the Bower of Circe is not related for any moral purpose, but presented primarily as the poetical equivalent of a pleasure garden. Circe's beasts are not turned back into men to betray their irretrievably debased nature, but dissolve into the air at Circe's nod. Glaucus does seem to be duly punished for his `life intemperate' in the Bower of Circe, but there is no moralising on his truancy. Rather, it is apparent to the reader from the first that Circe's curse on Glaucus promises to be revoked. As has been suggested, Endymion is best seen as an extended version of Huntian pastoral. In an induction to Book I, Keats unequivocally professes his aesthetics of pleasure: A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. (I, 1±13) This induction may be seen as the poetical expression of Hunt's creed of cheerfulness. In the cause of `cheerful leisure', Hunt reprimanded Methodists for their melancholy belief in an inherently depraved human nature, and their consequently gloomy view of this world which amounted almost to a solipsistic despondency: It is high time for them, and for all of us, to look after health and sociality; and to believe, that although we cannot alter the world




Endymion (1818) 139

Hunt deemed not only these `bigots' but also `men of business' to be his ideological adversaries. In his writings, merchants and tradesmen were repeatedly branded as `money-getters' who cooped themselves up in `their wainscotted twilight' (`To William Hazlitt' 101), living in the `yellow atmosphere of money-getting'.21 Keats also attacked those, whether Methodist or mercantile, who immersed themselves in `the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways'. While melancholic Methodists and mercenary merchants were equally insensible to things of beauty, Hunt and Keats celebrated and cherished (and consumed) them: refreshing pleasures invariably deliver us from the manacles of despondency. In other words, a thing of beauty forever sustains us on this imperfect earth. `Therefore,' as Keats himself claims, ` 'tis with full happiness that I / Will trace the story of Endymion' (I, 34±5), for some new shape of beauty should forever revitalise him to proceed with his poetic composition. Endymion may thus be seen as a pastoral poem in which the author attaches paramount importance to pleasure rather than to ethics. Keats seems to identify himself with Calidore, not Sir Calidore, the paragon of Courtesie, but his own version of an ebullient young Calidore. Appropriately, Keats's first poetic errantry is imagined as wayward wanderings in the realm of Flora: And now at once, adventuresome, I send My herald thought into a wilderness: There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress My uncertain path with green, that I may speed Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. (I, 58±62) This passage may be regarded as Keats's pastoral manifesto. The hero's path is ùncertain' precisely because his journey is not meant to be a teleological heroic quest. Although he blows his trumpet in his poetic region, Keats does not change his oaten reeds for stern trumpets which `sing of bloody Mars, of wars, of giusts' (The Shepheardes Calender, Òctober' 39). Rather, the voice of a trumpet signifies the youthful elation and exuberance of a lowly shepherd. In an induction to Book II, Keats exultantly claims the superiority of pastoral romance over epic poetry, invoking `sovereign power of love' (II, 1). Just like Hunt, Keats thinks of the tale of love between Troilus and Cressida as more refreshing,



with an ipse dixit, we need not become desponding, or mistake a disappointed egotism for humility.20

affecting and enduring than a Homeric epic. He places the private realm of sensibility above `the universe of deeds' (I, 15). Whereas what Hunt calls à feeling / . . . tear-dipped and healing' (The Story of Rimini III, 10) constantly refreshes and relieves us from òur dark spirits', heroic deeds of epic grandeur eventually dwindle into òld rotten-timber'd boats' on the `shore of memory' (II, 18, 17). In Keats's poetics, the feminine beauty and sensibility are regarded as more beneficial than the moral, martial and masculine ethos: But wherefore this? What care, though owl did fly

About the great Athenian admiral's mast?

What care, though striding Alexander past

The Indus with his Macedonian numbers?

Though old Ulysses tortured from his slumbers

The glutted Cyclops, what care? ± Juliet leaning

Amid her window-flowers, ± sighing, ± weaning

Tenderly her fancy from its maiden snow,

Doth more avail than these: the silver flow

Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen,

Fair Pastorella in the bandit's den,

Are things to brood on with more ardency

Than the death-day of empires. (II, 22±34)

Exalting Elizabethan heroines and dismissing classical heroes, Keats foregrounds the feminine realm of the poetical tradition as the most refreshing and therefore the most desirable genre. Like Hunt, Keats attempts to reverse the traditional hierarchy of poetic genres. In their bourgeois aesthetics of pleasure, romance, pastoral and Greek mythology significantly overlap in terms of their subversive as well as their pleasurable qualities. These literary modes promote personal feeling, pastoral relief and pagan pleasure, in opposition to epic poetry, characterised by its historic pomp and its hero's moral and martial virtues. Appropriately, Keats insisted on calling Endymion a romance, which he believed to be à fine thing notwithstanding the circulating Libraries'.22 Here Keats was not only aware but also weary of the symbiosis between the circulating libraries and `popular romances,' from which he attempted to distance himself. `The circulating libraries,' as Gillian Beer puts it, `provided a plentiful flow of wish-fulfilment literature in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries'.23 The highbrow Coleridge warned the reading public against glutting themselves on the circulating libraries, which, he claimed, would impair sound judgement




and moral values. Keats, however, often identified poetry with romance, or `high romance' as in `Sleep and Poetry' (10). Even Hyperion was initially dubbed `Romance'.24 For Keats, `romance' signified the traditional (culturally prestigious) poetic mode adopted by Spenser, as distinct from contemporary popular literature. Hence Keats did not hesitate to ùprear / Love's standard on the battlements of song' (II, 40±1) in Endymion. In emulating old high romance, he proudly labelled the poem as À Poetic Romance' in which he `dared to tread, / . . . / The path of love and poesy' (II, 36, 38).

The aesthetics of Beauty and Truth Modern critics have paid elaborate attention to what Keats called the Àrgument' of Endymion or the `Pleasure Thermometer', so as to give the poem a decent ìnterpretation'. The lengthy passage on `happiness' (I, 777±823) is indeed the most heavily dissected portion of this recalcitrant poem. However, this passage may also be seen as Keats's version of the aesthetics of pleasure: Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence; till we shine, Full alchemiz'd, and free of space. Behold The clear religion of heaven! Fold A rose leaf round thy finger's taperness, And soothe thy lips: hist, when the airy stress Of music's kiss impregnates the free winds . . . . (I, 777±84) À fellowship with essence' is often taken to be a transcendental communion with some spiritual principle; and the `Pleasure Thermometer' is read as an idealist hierarchy or neo-Platonic allegory. Such metaphysical readings are founded largely upon transcendental interpretations of `fellowship divine'.25 Yet Keats called the passage `the gradations of Happiness even like a kind of Pleasure Thermometer'.26 In my view, à sort of oneness' (I, 796) with essence denotes the state of sensuous immersion in things of beauty, and their pleasurability increases on the ascending scale of the Pleasure Thermometer: . . . But there are Richer entanglements, enthralments far More self-destroying, leading, by degrees,



Endymion (1818) 141


This passage is often seen as a reworking of the poet's progression from the realm of Flora to a nobler life of human hearts. Endymion certainly moves from the natural world to the human realm, but what Keats most celebrates in his Argument is not human bonding per se, but rather the intense pleasure it yields. It is well known that Keats possessed a remarkable ability to empathise with the animate objects surrounding him. À Poet,' as Keats maintained in his famous letter on the poetical character, `has no Identity ± he is continually in for ± and filling some other Body': When I am in a room with People if I ever am free from speculating on creations of my own brain, then not myself goes home to myself: but the identity of every one in the room begins [so] to press upon me that, I am in a very little time an[ni]hilated ± not only among Men; it would be the same in a Nursery of children. . . . 27 Keats could dissolve his sense of identity not only into fellow human beings but also into other living things: ìf a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existince [sic] and pick about the Gravel.'28 A Keatsian poet has neither a fixed character nor an ègotistical' self, so that he is able to `blend, / Mingle, and so become a part of ' (I, 810±11) the sensory organs (èssences') of other beings. Or to put it somewhat differently, one can experience vicarious pleasures of the senses through the `fellowship with essence'. Hence, the more the boundaries of one's ego dissolve, the more one's sensations are intensified. And at the maximum point of `the chief intensity', love enthrals and entangles us in the richest and the most `self-destroying' pleasure. One cannot fail to see that the `blending pleasurable' at its most intense implies sexual intercourse.29 Keats wrote that òur souls' interknit, melt, blend and mingle in àn orbed drop / Of light . . . that is love' (I, 806±7); however, Bailey rightly and righteously perceived the poem's principle to be `Sensual Love'. Since such sensual gratification is so delicious (and somehow never cloys), even a man of epic action would choose to remain ìn love's elysium' rather than to resume his worldly duties (I, 816±23). As we have seen, Keats's thoroughgoing indulgence in the realm of the senses does not in essence diverge from Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics of pleasure. Indeed, Keats's `gradations of Happiness' are best seen as an intense distillation of Hunt's creed of cheerfulness.



To the chief intensity: the crown of these Is made of love and friendship, and sits high Upon the forehead of humanity. (I, 797±802)

Endymion (1818) 143

I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination ± What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth ± whether it existed before or not ± for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty ± In a Word, you may know my favorite Speculation by my first Book and the little song [that is, Ò Sorrow'] I sent in my last [letter to Bailey] ± which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these Matters ± The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream ± he awoke and found it truth. . . . However it may be, O for a Life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts! It is à Vision in the form of Youth' a Shadow of reality to come. . . . 30 On the Pleasure Thermometer, `the holiness of the Heart's affections' points to the maximum degree of happiness where a `blending pleasurable' with the object of desire occurs. When he sent Taylor the revised version of `Wherein lies happiness?', Keats called it à regular stepping of the Imagination towards a Truth'.31 That is to say, one is able to brim the measure of content by means of the imagination. We have already noted that for Hunt and Keats, imagination served as a means of experiencing aesthetic pleasure. But in Endymion, Keats further invested the imagination with the character of sensuous ìntensity'. The imagination may thus be seen as a cognitive agent of sensory perception, and it is at its most intense working that the imagination seizes Beauty as Truth. `Nothing,' as Keats remarked, èver becomes real till it is experienced.'32 To put it another way, anything could become real `whether it existed before or not', as long as it is experienced and `proved upon our pulses'.33 At the moment of chief intensity, when the cognitive self dissolves into the essence of the perceived object, the former empathises with the throbbings of the latter. In such a sensation of the most intense pleasure, one `feels' Beauty on his pulses, therefore, the Beauty must be a Truth. In fact, the aesthetics of Beauty and Truth amounted to Keats's own theory of art: `the excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth.'34 A great artist is able to arrive at the temple of Beauty through Keats's version of the imagination, or, `Negative



The blueprint of this Argument of Endymion appeared in Keats's (probably most) famous letter proclaiming `the authenticity of the Imagination':

Capability'. This notion of `Negative Capability' is customarily taken to be a mark of Romantic genius, something akin to Wordsworth's `wise passiveness'.35 Yet I would suggest that Keats's theory of Beauty was really a version of Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics, in the light of which the Negative Capability appears to be a means of sensory, rather than logical, cognition. Keats's scepticism about logical induction as a means to a Truth is well known: I have never yet been able to perceive how any thing can be known for truth by consequitive reasoning. . . . Can it be that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections. . . . 36 In marked contrast to the great philosopher, a great poet is `capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason'.37 A poet has no need to disregard and dispose of àll disagreeables', for while he ascends a regular stepping of the Imagination, `the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration'.38 Through the intensity of sensuous experience, èssential Beauty' is distilled from a thing of beauty. While Hunt's imagination remains a means of a pleasant experience of nature and art, Keats's negatively capable imagination is developed into a medium of intense and indeed purified pleasure. This Speculation on the authenticity of the Imagination led Keats to ànother favorite Speculation' about pleasure: we shall enjoy ourselves here after by having what we called happiness on Earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated ± And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in sensation rather than hunger as you do after Truth ± Adam's dream will do here and seems to be a conviction that Imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as human Life and its spiritual repetition.39 This passage is germane to Endymion's insatiable pursuit of new refreshment driven by his unquenchable desire for heavenly bliss. Endymion describes his strange journeyings as follows: Ì have been wide awake / Night after night, and day by day, until / Of the empyrean I have drunk my fill' (IV, 855±7). Having burst into the empyreal region, Endymion enjoyed and experienced the supreme and sublimated pleasure to the full. The hero is now determined to soar into the empyrean, again on the wings of imagination. For such a man who delights in sensation,




a thing of beauty is indeed a joy for ever. Its loveliness intensifies, as it is repeatedly experienced in a finer tone by the agency of the sympathetic imagination. As cited above, Keats's second favourite Speculation is about earthly happiness and its empyreal distillation. Indeed, the demarcation line between the mortal and the empyreal realm is referred to recurrently throughout the poem. In the festival of Pan, Endymion and his shepherds `discours'd upon the fragile bar / That keeps us from our homes ethereal' (I, 360±1). A naiad prophesies Endymion's fate as follows: `thou must wander far / In other regions, past the scanty bar / To mortal steps' (II, 123±5). Soon afterwards, Endymion invokes the moon and rapturously exclaims, Ì do think the bars / That kept my spirit in are burst' (II, 185±6). Endymion's preoccupation with the boundary between these two realms points to Keats's major obsession in his later poems. For instance, `Dear Reynolds' conveys Keats's spatial conception of the liminal as follows: Or is it that imagination brought Beyond its proper bound, yet still confined, ± Lost in a sort of purgatory blind, Cannot refer to any standard law Of either earth or heaven? ± It is a flaw In happiness to see beyond our bourn. . . . (78±83) Here one may notice that the trajectory of the poet's consciousness bears a strong resemblance to the psychological structure of the sublime. As Connor elucidates, the word `sublime' illustrates in its history the crossing of the threshold it designates; the word sublime derives apparently from Latin sublimis, that is, sub, ùp to' and limen, `the lintel'. The notion, perhaps originally architectural, that height may be measured in terms of an approach or approximation to a boundary, the point of division between upper and lower, becomes simplified in the use of `sublime' to mean simply high or elevated. Usage therefore pushes the idea of going up to the lintel over the edge into pure transcendence, so that `the sublime' comes to mean that which goes beyond the threshold.40 This ascending move of the consciousness is identical with the basic structure of Keats's aesthetics of Beauty. He frequently uses such terms as `bar', `bound' and `bourn' (that is, boundary) in order to represent a



Endymion (1818) 145

kind of threshold which divides the empyrean from the earth. However, the aesthetics of the sublime is a cognitive means of perceiving a metaphysical principle. Àll versions of the sublime,' therefore, `require a credible god-term.'41 Hence the object of the sublime is ultimately unfathomable and unattainable. In contrast, Keats's aesthetics of Beauty does not draw on the language of religious mysticism, for its major purpose is not revelation but experience. The object is not an unknowable god, but rather the ultimate pleasure which is Beauty. In his famous letter elucidating the non-existence of the self-identity of a poet, Keats rather playfully claimed that `not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature ± how can it, when I have no nature?'42 However, only a sense of beauty verifies that the entity of Keats is a sentient being at all: Ì have not one opinion upon any thing except in matters of taste ± I never can feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty.'43 Indeed, Keats's sense of Beauty is so intensely rendered that it could appear to be metaphysical or Platonic at a cursory glance. Keats himself tended to make a fetish of Beauty, in avowed opposition to adverse worldly circumstances. Examples abound in his letters: Ì have not the slightest feel of humility towards the Public ± or to any thing in existence, ± but the eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty, ± and the Memory of great Men'; `Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own Works'; Ì should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the Beautiful even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning'; ``Ìf I should die,'' said I to myself, `Ì have left no immortal work behind me . . . but I have lov'd the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.'''44 Keats even identified his idea of Beauty with the sublime in his letter to George shortly after his marriage: Notwithstand your Happiness and your recommendation I hope I shall never marry . . . my Happiness would not be so fine, as my Solitude is sublime. Then instead of what I have described, there is a Sublimity to welcome me home ± The roaring of the wind is my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my Children. The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness ± an amiable wife and sweet Children I contemplate as a part of that Bea[u]ty. but I must have a thousand of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart.45




Having conceded the conception of beauty as domestic and minute, Keats drew a distinction between the Burkean notion of beauty and his own `mighty abstract Idea of Beauty'. It is this pseudo-sublime quality of Keats's conception of Beauty that puzzled and perplexed contemporary readers, and that also has impressed and impelled some modern critics to reinvent Keats as a poet of the sublime.46 Keats had managed to distil his own poetics of Beauty from Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics. But while it gave him a sense of poetic identity and independence, Keats's aesthetics of Beauty and Hunt's aesthetics of pleasure differed not in essence but only in degree.



Endymion (1818) 147

7

Metamorphosis incomplete It is unanimously agreed that Keats made great progress, and `matured' as a poet and a man, in his last volume Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820). Keats, as Marlon B. Ross puts it, `provides us with a paradigm of the boy . . . who transvalues poetic aspiration into the gaining of a mature masculine voice'. The cultural and poetic rituals of `male' maturation ± `gaining control, enforcing discipline, establishing rank' ± all find expression in modern discussion about his poetic development.1 When Endymion was condemned, Keats declared that Ì have written independently without Judgment ± I may write independently & with judgment hereafter'.2 There is certainly an abundance of evidence in his letters that the poet himself attempted during this period to move from romance to reality, from pastoral to epic, from Spenser to Milton, from otium to negotium, from pleasure to philosophy, from sensation to thought, from society to solitude, from the beautiful to the sublime, all of which may be epitomised as a progression from the feminine to the masculine domain. It was at the beginning of 1818 that Keats's aesthetics of Beauty and Truth began to be inflected by his `very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers': Ì have been hovering for some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious and a love for Philosophy ± were I calculated for the former I should be glad ± but as I am not I shall turn all my soul to the latter.'3 Even when he genuinely cried for à Life of Sensations' in late 1817, Keats conceded to Bailey that the luxury of sensations sufficed only for `the simple imaginative Mind', but not for à complex Mind . . . who would exist partly on sensation partly on thought'.4 About six months after he wrote this passage, Keats came to realise that he too had a complex philosophic mind. Keats 148



`Visions of Delight': Lamia (1820)

endowed Endymion with a simple imaginative mind, which enables the hero continuously to drink new refreshments and be content. However, the poet himself could no longer be satisfied with the òld Wine of Heaven': Ì find cavalier days are gone by. I find that I can have no enjoyment in the World but continual drinking of Knowledge.'5 Poetry as pure pleasure now seemed to be inadequate as a lifelong vocation: àlthough I take poetry to be Chief, there is something else wanting to one who passes his life among Books.'6 During his most productive years of 1818 and 1819, Keats was thus gradually, though vacillatingly, edging towards a Life of Thoughts. Keats seemed to feel compelled to chart his development in his attempt to reach intellectual maturity. In his famous letter on human life as à large Mansion of Many Apartments', Keats gave a detailed account of man's intellectual growth: The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think . . . we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of MaidenThought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight. . . . 7 A Life of Sensations may be seen as analogous to the first two Chambers. It is noteworthy that Keats expressed man's intellectual maturing as a growth from an infant, through a maiden, and finally to a man. In the first Chamber, an infant is `thoughtless', and hence not yet sexualised. In the second Chamber, his intellectual power in embryo endows him only with `Maiden-Thought'. It seems that woman is not required (or allowed) to go further, for the female domain is marked by little intellect and exuberant sensibility (and also lack of sexual experience). In a rather misogynist fashion, Keats claimed that women in general appeared to be `children to whom I would rather give a Sugar Plum than my time'.8 Being male, Keats was required (and expected) to proceed from effeminate adolescence into male adulthood. He explained to Reynolds how the initial sensation of pure pleasure in the Maiden Chamber became eclipsed by an intensifying awareness of pain: However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man ± of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression ± whereby This Chamber



Lamia (1820) 149


In his so-called mature phase, Keats is considered to have become òn his own', both literally and metaphorically. The poet's conscious move from society to solitude was certainly part of his struggle to grow out of the `Maiden-Thought' phase, or what Ross calls `the bower stage'.10 Keats attempted to cut himself off from everything he considered feminine (that is, immature and inferior): women, the reading public and his own èffeminate' self. In modern Keats criticism, Hunt is without exception grouped with the feminine or effeminate. It is taken for granted that while Keats was manfully striding into the epic quest, Hunt had been left behind in the realm of the pastoral goddess Flora. In referring to his lack of intellectual and theoretical power, modern academics are implicitly criticising Hunt for his effeminacy.11 However, contemporary critics deemed Hunt far less effeminate than the young and amiable John Keats.12 In fact, even though he had withdrawn from mixed society, Keats did not intend to, or rather could not, join the male club. As early as October 1817, Keats claimed that Ì am quite disgusted with literary Men and will never know another except Wordsworth ± no not even Byron'.13 In order to maintain his own manly independence, he felt the need to stand aloof not only from women, but also from such men of power, publicity and prestige as Wordsworth, Shelley, Byron and Hunt. Keats was particularly concerned to cut his ties with Hunt, finding his mentor's influence not so much effeminising as èmasculating'. By early 1818, Keats had decided to discard all contemporary poets as his models: It may be said that we ought to read our Contemporaries. that Wordsworth &c should have their due from us. but for the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a certain Philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist . . . . We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us ± and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket.14 It is noteworthy that Keats saw his powerful contemporaries as bullying Egotists who tried to control him in the literary playground. In the same letter, Keats repeatedly criticised contemporary poetry for being too selfassertive and obtrusive: Ì don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur &



of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open ± but all dark ± all leading to dark passages ± We see not the ballance of good and evil. We are in a Mist ± We are now in that state. . . . 9

Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teazed with grandeur & merit ± when we can have them uncontaminated & unobtrusive.'15 Keats's introversion was thus at least partly motivated by self-preservation, because he was so shut out from the contemporary male literary club. Having been reprimanded for his juvenile presumption to write poetry, Keats could not but retreat into his òwn solitary reperception & ratification of what is fine'.16 He confided to his brother George as follows: Th[i]nk of my Pleasure in Solitude, in comparison of my commerce with the world ± there I am a child ± there they do not know me not even my most intimate acquaintance ± I give into their feelings as though I were refraining from irritating [a] little child ± Some think me middling, others silly, others foolish ± every one thinks he sees my weak side against my will; when in truth it is with my will ± I am content to be thought all this because I have in my own breast so great a resource.17 Keats's move from society to solitude was thus not so simple and linear as his evolutionary outgrowing of Hunt. In December 1818, he concluded, Ì am anxious to exist with[out] troubling the printer's devil or drawing upon Men's and Women's admiration ± in which great solitude I hope God will give me strength to rejoice.'18 However, Keats did not have enough resources for residing in the resourceful solitude of his own breast. `Fame' was always of high (though ambivalent) priority in his poetic activities, for it could bring about financial security as well as social recognition. Keats also never cut personal ties with Hunt's society. It was Hunt who lived with and looked after him when his health was declining, during the period in which Lamia was published ( July 1820). Yet, on the other hand, Keats had certainly been irritated by Hunt's unabashedly bourgeois manners. Keats must have resented the fact that Hunt's poetic display of Hampstead society was responsible for exposing him to public ridicule. In criticising Hunt, Keats almost echoed the language of Tory reviewers: Hunt . . . is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him ± but in reallity [sic] he is vain, egotistical and disgusting in matters of taste and in morals ± He understands many a beautiful thing; but then . . . he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things



Lamia (1820) 151


When he delightedly joined Hunt's literary circle, Keats sincerely adored Hunt as òne of those, / Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things' (Hunt's sonnet `To John Keats' 1±2). However, he came eventually to realise that the circle's bourgeois pretension to aesthetic cultivation was vain and vulgar in the eyes of upper-class conservatives. While Keats became acutely self-conscious about his public image, Hunt did not care as much: Ì was in the habit, though a public man, of living in a world of abstractions of my own.'20 Hence Hunt was as happily as ever immersed in his own aesthetic world full of things of beauty. Towards the end of 1818, Keats commented that `Hunt keeps on in his old way ± I am complete[ly] tired of it all ± He has lately publish'd . . . the litrerary [sic] Pocket-Book ± full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine.'21 As we saw in the preceding chapter, Keats conceived of beauty as Beauty, something verging on the metaphysical. And it seems that the more he was attacked for his poetical presumption, the more he idealised poetry as `Poetry ± that is all I care for, all I live for'.22 It is not difficult to appreciate why Keats was irked by Hunt's `curious manner' of reducing beautiful things (including poetry) to mere commodities. Èvery thing is,' as Lockhart commented on The Story of Rimini, `pretence, affectation, finery, and gaudiness.'23 While Keats was annoyed by Hunt's vulgar showiness, some members of Hunt's circle encouraged him to distance himself from Hunt. When Keats entered Hunt's coterie, Bailey had been reading for holy orders at Oxford, and during the summer of 1817, he invited Keats to Oxford. While Keats was composing the third book of Endymion, Bailey was doing his best to Christianise him.24 Predictably, Bailey was an enthusiastic admirer of Milton rather than of Spenser.25 It may be argued that it was Bailey who initiated Keats into a sublime and religious, rather than an aestheticised, version of Milton. However, it was the Christian artist Haydon who most ardently tried to de-aestheticise Keats. When Keats joined Hunt's circle, Haydon was already an established painter whose artistic guidance Keats appreciated no less than Hunt's. Although both Hunt and Haydon were from a liberal middle-class background, Hunt did not share Haydon's religious belief: despite its potentially radical agenda, Hunt's democratic aesthetic remained the aesthetics of `pleasure'. It was, indeed, the limitations of Hunt's liberal aestheticism that Haydon found so deeply troubling:



hateful ± Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care not for white Busts ± and many a glorious thing when associated with him becames [sic] nothing. . . . 19

When I said `the Ancients had no hospitals,' Hunt said, `so much the better ± prevent poverty and not encourage it.' . . . Prevent poverty! ± prevent crime! ± take away evil ± but how? Evil is in the World; it can't be rooted out. Alleviate its consequences, give means of mental consolation to those who suffer from it . . . . Christianity is the only religion which affords consolation for these.26 As we noted in the previous chapters, Hunt was content to aestheticise the English contemporary landscape without caring about the actual conditions of the rural poor, or to commodify ancient Greece without bothering about the War of Greek Independence. His irresponsible attitude towards life was so manifest that Dickens later used him as the basis for the character of Harold Skimpole in Bleak House. Thomas Love Peacock wrote The Four Ages of Poetry (1820) in reaction to what he thought of as Hunt's aesthetic escapism.27 Keats, too, felt increasingly uncomfortable with Hunt's unscrupulous aestheticisation of real human conditions. Having studied in a hospital, Keats had more first-hand experiences of grim human reality than Hunt. Haydon obviously succeeded (at least partially) in de-aestheticising Keats, since Keats's earliest negative comment on Hunt occurred in his letter to Haydon in May 1817. Whereas he had dedicated his first Poems to Hunt, Keats was thinking of publishing Endymion ìn Quarto if Haydon would make a drawing of some event therein, for a Frontispeice [sic]'.28 Poems contained two sonnets Àddressed to Haydon' which registered Keats's early admiration for Haydon. These sonnets appear somewhat anomalous in the volume, for they echo the grand, indeed grandiose, language of Haydon's claim to artistic recognition. Keats conceived of Haydon as a `stedfast [sic] genius, toiling gallantly' or à stout unbending champion' whose glorious cause of the Elgin Marbles drew applause from the whole nation (Àddressed to Haydon' 10, 11).29 In the second sonnet Àddressed to the Same', Keats again praised Haydon for his `stedfastness' (7), in marked contrast with Hunt òf the rose, the violet, the spring, / The social smile' (5±6). Whereas Hunt had introduced Keats to the domestic gallery of pretty reproductions, Haydon brought him to the British Museum. By initiating Keats into the `masculine' tradition of classical heritage, Haydon contributed to de-aestheticising his pastoral Hellenism. Barely a month after dedicating his first volume to Hunt, Keats composed a sonnet Òn Seeing the Elgin Marbles'. The contrast between a `leafy luxury' and `Grecian grandeur' could not be more apparent. It may be argued that as Keats moved from Hunt and Haydon in personal terms, he evolved from pastoral to epic in poetic terms.



Lamia (1820) 153


My spirit is too weak ± mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky. (1±5) Such feelings of despair when confronted by antique fragments was quite common among the Romantics. After translating Winckelmann's Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (1765), Fuseli painted The Artist in Despair over the Grandeur of Antique Fragments (1788). As Shelley lamented in the preface to Hellas, the image of the once perfect human form was impressed òn those faultless productions, whose very fragments are the despair of modern art'.31 Keats's sense of despair, however, does not point so much to the inadequacy of modern art as to his inability to grasp and appropriate the grandeur of ancient Greece. Keats feels so overwhelmed and emasculated that he relapses into his old ways: Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. (6±8) In this sonnet, the poet is caught up in àn undescribable feud' (10) between the two conceptions of Greece: the epic world of Homer which Haydon exalted, and the pastoral realm of Theocritus celebrated by Hunt. Whereas Theocritean pastoral offers easy pleasure to the reader, the fragments of Homeric Greece cause the gazer à most dizzy pain' (11). All Keats could aspire to was a glimpse of `dim-conceived glories' and à shadow of a magnitude' (my emphasis, 9, 14). Unlike Hunt, who was content to linger in the pastoral genre, Keats was certainly aware of, and tried to exploit, the gendered hierarchy of literary genres.32 As mentioned above, Haydon had been asked to make a drawing for the frontispiece of Endymion, but Keats considered the masculine nature of Haydon's drawing to be more in tune with Hyperion: it would be as well to wait for a choice out of Hyperion ± when that Poem is done there will be a wide range for you ± in Endymion I think



However, Keats's sonnet Òn Seeing the Elgin Marbles' does not quite amount to what Hazlitt called `the hardy spirit or rigid forms of antiquity'.30 (The sonnet on Tassie's Leander gem was written in the same month.) In the very first line, the gazer confesses his artistic impotence:

you may have many bits of the deep and sentimental cast ± the nature of Hyperion will lead me to treat it in a more naked and grecian Manner ± and the march of passion and endeavour will be undeviating ± and one great contrast between them will be ± that the Hero of the written tale being mortal is led on, like Buonaparte, by circumstance; whereas the Apollo in Hyperion being a fore-seeing God will shape his actions like one.33 This passage may be seen as expressing Keats's conscious move from the feminine to the masculine genre. The pleasurable yet purposeless lingering of a lowly shepherd is replaced by the teleological quest of an Olympian god. Even Byron praised Hyperion for being às sublime as áschylus'.34 Nevertheless, Apollo in Hyperion does not quite live up to the determined action expected of a classical hero. While the first two books of Hyperion fully convey the colossal grandeur of the Titans, Book III, which introduces Apollo as `the golden theme' (III, 28) of the poem, relapses into the `bower stage'. At the beginning of Book III, Keats invokes a pastoral muse, as if he could no longer bear the immeasurable anguish of the ancient gods: O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes;

For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire:

A solitary sorrow best befits

Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief.

....

For lo! 'tis for the Father of all verse.

Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue,

Let the rose glow intense and warm the air,

And let the clouds of even and of morn

Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills. . . . (III, 3±6, 13±17)

The sublime spectacle, in which the Titans are defeated and distressed ìn the shady sadness of a vale' (I, 1), is replaced by the ìsle of the embowered Cyclades' (III, 23) where newborn Apollo is roaming about `the osiers of a rivulet, / Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale' (III, 34±5). The detached description of ponderous pain regresses into an indulgent description of pastoral pleasure. Apollo, weeping and wandering around ìn aching ignorance' (III, 107), hardly appears to be à fore-seeing God' who will shape his undeviating manly actions. Mnemosyne calls Apollo `loveliness new born' (III, 79). The `new blissful golden melody' celebrating the birth of Apollo is not solemn but `sweeter, sweeter than all



Lamia (1820) 155

tune' (II, 280, 292). And this prophesying music is attended by the Titaness Clymene, the most meek and timid among the fierce giant gods. Hunt shrewdly noticed Keats's inability to sustain the masculine ethos throughout the whole poem: Ìt strikes us that there is something too effeminate and human in the way in which Apollo receives the exaltation which his wisdom is giving him. He weeps and wonders somewhat too fondly.'35 Indeed, although Apollo is deified and matured by his `drinking of Knowledge', his deification appears rather like a sensuous experience: `Knowledge enormous makes a God of me.

Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,

Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,

Creations and destroyings, all at once

Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,

And deify me, as if some blithe wine

Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,

And so become immortal.' (III, 113±20)

Apollo's experience is likened to `the struggle at the gate of death', or rather, dying into life `with a pang / As hot as death's is chill, with fierce convulse' (III, 128±9). One may recall that the young Keats likened poetic initiation to the state of enduring excessive pleasure, or even of dying à death of luxury'. Apollo's initiation may be seen as a parody, or rather as an intense version, of dying a death of luxury. `The Genius of Poetry,' as Keats himself put it, `cannot be matured by law & precept, but by sensation & watchfulness in itself.'36 At a godlike speed, Apollo goes through the rite of passage from the infant chamber onwards. However, his progress from ignorance to knowledge is interrupted and the poem itself breaks off, for Keats does not know how to proceed. The revised version of Hyperion is (probably most highly) regarded as the poet's `serious' attempt to tackle the moral question of what makes a poet. Yet in fact the poem is not so much a progress as a retreat from Miltonic verse. Keats gave up the revision, claiming that `there were too many Miltonic inversions in it'.37 Indeed, The Fall of Hyperion may be seen as a relapse into the feminine, personal and sensuous realm. The main manifestation of this relapse is the way in which an Olympian god of poetry is replaced by the poet himself as a hero of the poem. Yet even more significantly, the Keatsian pattern of poetic initiation as a kind of luxurious death is fully restored. The poem begins with the locus amoenus `where trees of every clime, / Palm, myrtle, oak, and sycamore, and beech, /




With plantane, and spice blossoms, made a screen' (I, 19±21). There is, predictably, an arbour entwined with vines, bells and blooms, which offers à feast of summer fruits' (I, 29). The poet gorges himself on this gastronomic luxury, `more plenty than the fabled horn / Thrice emptied could pour forth' (I, 35±6). And at a full draught of à cool vessel of transparent juice' (I, 42), the poet falls into a swoon, which brings him to the desolate world of antique ruins. The first initiation is this death of luxury in the bower; the second is an experience of surviving a deathly pain on the steps of Moneta's temple. This ordeal is followed by the debate on the definition of a poet, a dialogue between Moneta and the poet which is commonly accepted and exalted as the expression of the humanitarian side of Keats the poet. Moneta accuses him of being à dreaming thing; / A fever of thyself ', to which Keats answers that `sure a poet is a sage; / A humanist, physician to all men' (I, 168±9, 189±90). The goddess relents, and explicates the difference between a poet and a dreamer: `The poet and the dreamer are distinct,

Diverse, sheer opposite, antipodes.

The one pours out a balm upon the world,

The other vexes it.' (I, 199±202)

However, Moneta stops short of fully elucidating what distinguishes a poet from a dreamer. Neither does she entirely recant her opinion of Keats as a dreamer. In fact, the definition of a poet as `physician to all men' really goes no further than `Sleep and Poetry', in which a poet is regarded as à friend / To soothe the cares . . . of man'. Indeed, it may be argued that Moneta's definition of poetry as à balm upon the world' still echoes Hunt's notion of poetry as soothing, healing and hearteasing. Moneta differentiates the dreamer from the common people who `seek no wonder but the human face' (I, 163), just as Keats distinguishes the real poet from contemporary `mock lyrists, large self worshippers, / And careless hectorers in proud bad verse' (I, 207±8). Then, what is a poet? The question remains unanswered for the rest of the poem, and indeed, for the rest of Keats's life. The poet's progression from the paradisial arbour, through Moneta's temple, to `the dark secret chambers' (I, 278) of Moneta's brain, where the `high tragedy' (I, 277) of the fallen Titans is still acting, may be likened to Keats's conception of personal growth from the infant through the maiden to the `third Chamber of Life'.38 However, Keats never reaches the point of describing this last stage. As soon as he begins to address the central theme of



Lamia (1820) 157

The Fall of Hyperion, the poem breaks off in `the antichamber' (I, 465) of A Dream. `He is a loss to our literature,' as Byron wrote of Hyperion soon after Keats's death, `the more so ± as he . . . was reforming his style upon the more Classical models of the language.'39 However, even if he had survived, it is unlikely that Keats would have been able to progress much further down `the road to an epic poem'.40 After he abandoned The Fall of Hyperion, he claimed that he had altogether renounced Milton as a poetic model: I shall never become attach'd to a foreign idiom so as to put it into my writings. The Paradise lost though so fine in itself is a curruption [sic] of our Language. . . . I prefer the native music of it [Chatterton] to Milton's cut by feet I have but lately stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me. Miltonic verse cannot be written but in the vein of art ± I wish to devote myself to another sensation. . . . 41 It is interesting to note that Keats placed Chatterton's `music' above Milton's Latinate style àccommodating itself to greek and latin inversions and intonations'.42 Bailey later recalled how Keats read aloud Chatterton's Rowley Poems: Ì now hear him recite, or chant, in his peculiar manner.'43 As argued above, Keats ultimately preferred the feminine (pastoral) over the masculine (epic) in terms of poetic genre. As regards the sensuous, especially auditory, quality of poetic diction, Keats here too favoured the feminine over the masculine, the flowing music over the heavier `Miltonic intonation'.44 For Keats, Miltonic verse was composed ìn an artful or rather artist's humour'; hence its beauty sounded `false'.45 Consequently, he chose to redress, or rather, feminise the Miltonic masculine measure in revising Hyperion, so that its language would be more in tune with `the true voice of feeling'.46 One result of this was that Saturn's defeated yet sublime figure was transformed into an enfeebled and pathetic man in The Fall of Hyperion (I, 404±41). As has been argued, Keats could (or would) not reach the mature, manly and moral phase in poetic terms: he wrote neither epic nor tragedy. Though the Spenserian pastoral bower in Endymion was transformed into the Miltonic vision in Hyperion, the latter did not have a moral argument comparable to the Christian faith in Paradise Lost. Critics are united in their belief that Oceanus's speech on the evolution of the world order embodies Keats's notion of progressive history (influ-




enced by Hazlitt's view of the French Revolution): `'tis the eternal law / That first in beauty should be first in might' (II, 228±9).47 Yet the notion of `beauty' as the evolutionary principle of history should not be equated with a representation of the Enlightenment view of history as progress. Although modern Keatsians tend (or wish) to agree with Bloom's recognition (`Though the poem [The Fall of Hyperion] breaks off . . . it has achieved the quest'),48 I would prefer to emphasise that Keats's poetic development occurred mostly within the limits of `feminine' genres such as narrative and lyric poetry. Poetic adulthood (in terms of gendered style) is ultimately `strange' to Keats, even in his Hyperion poems. Right to the end of his career, Keats remained one òf the dreamer tribe' (I, 198), a poet of the senses. Moneta characterises the dreamer as his fixation on pleasure and consequent awareness of pain: ` . . . Every creature hath its home; Every sole man hath days of joy and pain, Whether his labours be sublime or low ± The pain alone; the joy alone; distinct: Only the dreamer venoms all his days, Bearing more woe than all his sins deserve.' (I, 171±6) One may readily recall Keats's lifelong devotion to pleasure, or rather, to the intimate relationship between pleasure and pain. For Keats, joy and pain are never `distinct': even in his earliest Poems, pleasure is sometimes so intensely felt that it verges on pain. And Endymion may be seen as an attempt permanently to defer wish-fulfilment, in order that pleasure should remain forever new. However, Keats increasingly felt the transience of pleasure during the years of 1818 and 1819: `we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure . . . While we are laughing the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events ± while we are laughing it sprouts it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck.'49 Yet the more he became aware of the misery, sickness and pain in the world, the more he ached for ever-new and never-cloying pleasure. Instead of foregrounding the `moralist' Keats, I shall focus upon the persistence of the èarly Keats', a poet of aesthetic pleasure, in his last poetical volume. Significantly, Keats's name on the title page of the Lamia volume is followed by ÀUTHOR OF ENDYMION'. In its advertisement, Taylor and Hessey apologise for having printed the fragment of Hyperion against the author's will: `The poem was intended to have



Lamia (1820) 159

been of equal length with Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.'50 This reference to the author of Endymion was presumably a publishers' marketing strategy to attract the public (and possibly sympathetic) attention. Yet it may also have contributed to inviting contemporary readers to read the volume as another poetical luxury.

A poet of sensation Whereas modern critics regard the Òdes' and Hyperions as Keats's greatest poetic achievement, contemporary readers remembered Keats chiefly as the author of Endymion, Lamia, Isabella and The Eve of St. Agnes. As we saw in Chapter 2, the early nineteenth century saw a boom in poetry, in which middle-class readers' demand for poetry appeared insatiable. Hunt's circle of poets mass-produced poetry for the purpose of pleasurable consumption, aestheticising the classics or old romances into easy-to-read narratives. Keats, however, was probably the only member who had qualms about writing poetry solely for popular consumption. While writing for Poems, Keats claimed that he was not bothered `with the least Shadow of public thought'.51 He determined to write ìndependently' of the reading public in Endymion. Having been publicly condemned, however, Keats grudgingly (yet not entirely unwillingly) tried in his Lamia volume to adapt his style to the taste of the potential reader-consumer. He confidently wrote of the (first) title poem Lamia as follows: Ì am certain there is that sort of fire in it which must take hold of people in some way ± give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation. What they want is a sensation of some sort.'52 It is interesting to note that whereas Hunt offered his readers only pleasant sensation, Keats pledged to give them èither pleasant or unpleasant' sensation: it seems that Keats could not totally yield himself to Hunt's aesthetics of pleasure. Keats's commercial strategy of capturing the attention of the public turned out to be successful. The Lamia volume received more reviews than any of his other previous work, and this time critical opinions were mostly favourable. Having been well acquainted with Endymion's faults through the media exposure of the Cockney Keats, all reviewers recognised a significant improvement in this latest publication. However, very few contemporary critics thought of Keats as having matured as much as modern critics might wish to believe. Only two reviewers regarded the fragment of Hyperion very highly. The Monthly Review praised the whole volume as `the proof of deep thought and




energetic reflection', and especially Hyperion as `decidedly the best of Mr. Keats's productions'.53 Like Byron, the New Monthly Magazine considered Hyperion to have been written ìn the sublimest style of áeschylus'.54 Byron, commenting that `Hyperion is a fine monument & will keep his name', seemed to have in mind the Virgilian evolution from a pastoral to an epic poet, as did the New Monthly Magazine reviewer, who read Keats `with wonder at the gigantic stride which he has taken, and with the good hope that, if he proceeds in the high and pure style which he has now chosen, he will attain an exalted and a lasting station among English poets'.55 The British Critic, however, considered Hyperion to be a `failure', for the reason that the poem's subject was `somewhat above the pitch of Mr. Keats's peculiar genius, which lies altogether in the region of fancy and description'.56 Although the British Critic was probably the most politically biased journal of the day (it still criticised Keats for having Hunt as his poetic model), its verdict on Hyperion did not miss the mark. Conder, in the Eclectic Review, was even more relentless. In his previous review of Poems, Conder had warned its young author against à wasteful efflorescence that must be thrown off before the intellect attains its maturity'.57 Conder found no maturation of the poet's moral and intellectual faculties in his latest publication: `Mr. Keats . . . is a young man ± whatever be his age, we must consider him as still but a young man.'58 He went on to brand Keats as a `second-rate genius' whose poetical talent would be wasted on the exclusive exertion of exuberant imagination. For Conder, Hyperion pointed to `nothing worse than a school boy taste for the stories of the Pantheon and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and the fascination of the word classical', and its young author appeared to be `some lad with his fancy half full of Homer and half full of Milton, who might, as a school exercise, try to frame something out of the compound ideas of the Titan and the Demon, of Olympus and Pandemonium'.59 Conder thought of Hyperion as the puerile fantasy woven by a man without `the higher forms of a liberal education'.60 This denunciation appears to be all the more relentless, given that even the well-educated Lord Byron highly regarded Keats's Hyperion as the most sublime and `the best of his works'.61 The majority of the reviewers still saw Keats as a `young' poet, and yet had no qualms about praising him. Hunt, deliberately or mistakenly, informed the reader that the poems contained in Keats's latest volume `were almost all written four years ago, when the author was but twenty'.62 Other reviewers also failed to locate Keats within the context of the hierarchy of poetic genres, or of the evolutionary parable



Lamia (1820) 161


A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, All garlanded with carven imag'ries Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, And diamonded with panes of quaint device, Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon; Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint. . . . (208±22) Lamb called this stanza `the almost Chaucer-like painting, with which this poet illumines every subject he touches'.64 Hunt considered the whole poem to be `rather a picture than a story'.65 It is noteworthy that Hunt chose not Hyperion but The Eve of St. Agnes as à striking specimen of the sudden and strong maturity of the author's genius'.66 Hunt's celebration of Keats's gorgeous `description' of the stained-glass window derived from his own notion of poetry as an object of aesthetic consumption. Even Hyperion could be read as an enjoyable picture. Hunt cited the description of Hyperion's magnificent palace as `the core and inner diamond of the poem'.67 Hunt disapproved of Endymion mainly because the poem was too unconsumable or even painful to read: `When he wrote Endymion he could not have resisted doing too much.'68 Yet in his Lamia volume, Keats had successfully transformed (and matured) himself into a poet of aesthetic pleasure: The author's versification is now perfected, the exuberances of his imagination restrained, and a calm power, the surest and loftiest of all power, takes place of the impatient workings of the younger god



of a Virgilian poet. Rather, these favourable critics were happy to recommend Keats's Lamia volume as another brand-new object of pleasurable consumption. Not surprisingly, their favourite poem was The Eve of St. Agnes. Virtually all reviewers cited and celebrated the stanzas below:63

Lamia (1820) 163

Recognising the poet's greater poetic discipline, Hunt now ranked Keats with Milton and Chapman. In close comparison with the masculine energy of their poetry, however, Hunt deemed Keats's poetry to be more original, social and `sensual'.70 As mentioned above, Keats had renounced Milton as his poetic model, for this sombre poet ultimately stifled his natural inclination towards `voluptuousness'. Keats composed The Eve of St. Agnes a few months before giving up Hyperion. This relatively short poem must have been a `refreshing' relief from the sublime toil over Miltonic verse (which lasted from October 1818 to April 1819). Keats returned to his old muse, and adopted the Spenserian stanza for the first time since his earliest poetic attempt in Ìmitation of Spenser'. In The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats turned out to be a poet-painter par excellence, just like his (con)genial poetic master: Mr. Keats is no half-painter, who has only distinct ideas occasionally, and fills up the rest with commonplaces. He feels all as he goes. In his best pieces, every bit is precious; and he knew it, and laid it on as carefully as Titian or Giorgione.71 Here Hunt shrewdly observed that Keats's poetical merit lay in artistic density. Many members of his circle produced poetry of pleasing descriptions, but none of them seemed to rival Keats's painterly genius, in which èvery bit is precious'. Narrative poetry (especially in the stanzaic form) was particularly suitable for the newly literate middleclass audience, for it could be readily enjoyed as a gallery of verbal pictures. More than anyone else, Keats thoroughly exploited the stanzaic narrative form for description rather than for narration. The Eve of St. Agnes was the verbal equivalent of a sumptuous Gobelin tapestry. Modern critics have made every possible effort to de-aestheticise the poem, in order that it should pass for a respectable work in critical or intellectual terms.72 However, it was not profound intellect but dazzling artistry that distinguished Keats from other Cockney poets. Rather, the reputation of the so-called mature work of Keats rests on his craftsmanship in verbal density and dexterity. Keats himself characterised poetic artistry as concentration. In his letter to Shelley, he made critical comments on The Cenci:



within him. The character of his genius is that of energy and voluptuousness, each able at will to take leave of the other, and possessing, in their union, a high feeling of humanity not common to the best authors who can less combine them.69

There is only one part of it I am judge of; the Poetry, and dramatic effect, which by many spirits now a days is considered the mammon. A modern work it is said must have a purpose, which may be the God ± an artist must serve Mammon ± he must have `self concentration' selfishness perhaps . . . you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and `load every rift' of your subject with ore. The thought of such discipline must fall like cold chains upon you. . . . And is not this extraordina[r]y talk for the writer of Endymion? whose mind was like a pack of scattered cards ± I am pick'd up and sorted to a pip.73 Here Keats differentiated between the two kinds of poetry: poetry for moral, religious or political purposes, and poetry dedicated to artistic craftsmanship. The former included the Wordsworthian poetry `that has a palpable design upon us'. It may be argued that Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley (and also Milton) served their ideological causes by writing poetry. In perceived contrast, Keats devoted himself not to Christian (or metaphysical) principles but to Spenserian verbal virtuosity. It is telling that he thought he could only judge `the Poetry' of Shelley's Cenci. One may recall that Keats attempted to fill 4,000 lines with `Poetry' in Endymion. For him, poetry was almost synonymous with poetic embellishment, whose opulence emulated the riches in Mammon's cave. By the time he composed The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats was able to `load every rift' of his subject with rich òre'.74 The poem's disciplined yet dense representation, especially the passage describing Madeline's chamber, compelled utter admiration. Hunt lavished praise on its `perfect' beauty: `To the description before us, it would be a great injury either to add or diminish. It falls at once gorgeously and delicately upon us, like the colours of the painted glass.'75 It may be seen as the most flawless example of Keats's poetic concentration. `The whole volume,' as Hunt exclaimed, ìs worthy of this passage.'76 It was thus the verbal dexterity in The Eve of St. Agnes that, according to Hunt, ranked Keats with `the oldest and best of our living poets'.77 He also cited and commended Porphyro's preparation for a banquet as À DELICATE SUPPER': And still she slept an azure-lidded sleep,

In blanched linen, smooth, and lavender'd,

While he from forth the closet brought a heap

Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;

With jellies soother than the creamy curd,




Lamia (1820) 165

Twentieth-century critics generally do not know what to make of this stanza. Their feeling of bafflement is epitomised in Robert Bridges's comment: `The feast . . . is robb'd of its motiv [sic] and serves no purpos [sic] but to enrich the description.'78 In fact, Keats intended precisely to enrich the description of the poem, and for that purpose, Keats tried not only to present pictorial descriptions but also to charge every line with the pleasures of the senses. Hunt was indeed a discerning critic in appreciating the aesthetic qualities of Keats's verse: `The melody is as sweet as the subject, especially at ``Lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon''.'79 In this line, there is an interaction of alliteration and assonance, whose undulating cadence produces an almost onomatopoeic effect. Indeed, Keats tried to make the poem's epithets as luxurious (or sensuously appealing) as possible during the composition stages. In revising the scene of Madeline's undressing, he changed `bosom jewels' to `warmed jewels' (228), `her boddice' into `her fragrant boddice' (229), and `Her sweet attire falls light' into the more auditory `Her rich attire creeps rustling' (230).80 He thus fully exploited the sensuous qualities of language in The Eve of St. Agnes.81 After his long meandering truancy in Endymion, Keats was thus reinstated as a supreme poet of pictorial beauty, with his poetic expertise now perfected. And his latest volume was marketed as an object of popular consumption. The three main narratives, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, were showcased in the title. Yet the five great Òdes', which firmly establish Keats's `canonical' status in modern criticism, were relegated to the minor and miscellaneous Other Poems. Indeed, contemporary readers read and cherished the young poet's odes rather as charming vignettes, in marked contrast to modern academics who attempt to uncover ideas, themes or meanings (as well as to unravel the rich verbal `texture') in the great Òdes' of Keats.82 Although short lyrics were not as highly esteemed as narrative poems, Keats's reviewers did not hesitate to quote from Keats's odes. It is interesting to note, however, that while the Òde to a Nightingale' and `To Autumn' were frequently and favourably quoted, the Òde on a Grecian Urn', the Òde to Psyche' and the Òde on Melancholy' received little (or even no) attention. And arguably, the Òde to a Nightingale' and `To Autumn' were distinguished from the rest in their easier to consume (that is, more



And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon; Manna and dates, in argosy transferr'd From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one, From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon. (262±70)

`pictorial') quality. Reviewers merely presented some (or all) stanzas of each ode with no interpretative comments. One reviewer praised `To Autumn' for bringing `the reality of nature more before our eyes than almost any description that we remember'.83 Hunt was also more than happy to present the Òde to a Nightingale' to the reader: `we must indulge ourselves in quoting entire the Ode to a Nightingale' (my emphasis).84 For contemporary readers, these poems read like a series of tableaux which spoke for themselves. As we noted in Chapter 3, Hunt had adopted and appropriated Theocritus, who presented rural landscape in a series of Idylls (derived from Greek eidylion, `little form' or `brief sketch'). Keats's odes were likewise a set of ìdyllic' pictures for aesthetic consumption. In the Òde to a Nightingale', however, the picturesque èye' of early Keats (as in Ì stood tip-toe' 15±23) evolved into something like the mind's eye, which could only `guess' the locus amoenus around him in èmbalmed darkness' (43). The problem of sight in perceiving the metaphysical is germane to the discourse of the sublime.85 Despite the internalisation of the eye, however, Keats does not really commune with the metaphysical presence in Nature. On the contrary, the poet guesses and gropes for the physical and concrete objects of nature in this `darkling' bower: . . . each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows

The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;

White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;

Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. (43±50) The passage indeed reads like the familiar catalogue of leafy luxuries. The famous utterance of the poet's death drive in the next stanza, `Now more than ever seems it rich to die' (55), may be seen as another instance of `dying a death of luxury'. The poet himself recalls that `many a time / I have been half in love with easeful Death, / Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme' (51±3). Modern Keatsians heavily invest Keats's nightingale with symbolic or transcendental significance. Yet the nightingale's song of summer ìn full-throated ease' (10) may equally plausibly be seen as another poetical luxury. Even the seventh stanza, in which the poet apostrophises the nightingale as ìmmortal Bird!' (61), reads like a succession of paintings: a historical one with




èmperor and clown' (64), a Biblical one based on the story of Ruth, and Claude's The Enchanted Castle with `magic casements, opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn' (69±70).86 The whole poem is certainly more than merely descriptive, but it is not `visionary' in the Romantic sense, either. Hunt enjoyed the poem as `refreshment in his [the poet's] imaginary wine'.87 As we have seen, Hunt characterised ìmagination' not as visionary but as aesthetic(ising). The poem offered the reader the vicarious sensuous pleasure of à draught of vintage' (11), cooled in a deep cellar, yet tasting of `Flora and the country green, / . . . and sunburnt mirth' (13±14).88 Indeed, the delicious coolness of wine was often appropriated as a metaphor for poetical luxury. Keats labelled the refreshing pastoral interlude in Paradise Lost as `cups of old wine'.89 In his epistle `To Charles Cowden Clarke', he apologised to his former teacher for his poetic incompetence as follows: . . . my wine was of too poor a savour For one whose palate gladdens in the flavour Of sparkling Helicon . . . . (25±7) Here Mount Helicon is equated with the fountain of the Muses, Hippocrene, but it is seen not as the origin of poetic inspiration but as an object of aesthetic pleasure in which Clarke's `palate gladdens'. In the Òde to a Nightingale', Keats is also not so much concerned with the divine inspiration drawn from a cup of wine, as with the sensuous (or even sensual) experience of it: O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: (15±20) In `Politics and Poetics', Hunt also invokes a poetical bower in a similar manner: Oh for a seat in some poetic nook, Just hid with trees, and sparkling with a brook, .... While stealing airs come fuming o'er the stream, And lull the fancy to a waking dream! (72±3, 76±7)



Lamia (1820) 167


Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music: ± Do I wake or sleep? (79±80) In modern criticism, this passage is commonly regarded as Keats's questioning of the authenticity of visionary imagination. However, contemporary readers seemed to take these lines at face value, equivalent to: `was it a dream, or a daydream?' Keats used the word `vision' as a synonym for a `dream' throughout his narrative poems. Isabella dreams of Lorenzo in à vision' (273). According to the superstition of St. Agnes' Eve, young virgins will dream of their future husbands in `visions of delight' (47), and Porphyro in Madeline's dream is called `the vision of her sleep' (299). Even in the induction to The Fall of Hyperion, Keats equates `vision' with `dream'. Although he tries to tackle the question of whether `the dream now purposed to rehearse / Be poet's or fanatic's' (16±17), Keats nowhere discriminates poet's from fanatic's (that is, dreamer's) dreams. Moneta identifies `vision'ries' with `dreamers weak' (I, 161, 162), but she does not elucidate what makes a poet's dream authentic or `visionary' in the Miltonic or Blakean sense. In Keats's poetry, a dream remains a pleasurable (though temporary) relief, whether Lycius's `sweet dreams' (I, 377) or the poet's vision of the nightingale's bower. Having argued that the Òde to a Nightingale' may be read for the sake of luxurious consumption, I should emphasise that Keats's sense of the transitoriness of pleasure is certainly much more intense than Hunt's in `Politics and Poetics'. In the third stanza, Keats gives a grimmer view of the real world Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. (27±30) However, the more acutely he becomes aware of the fleeting nature of pleasure, the more intensely or even painfully he experiences it. `My heart aches,' as he begins the poem, ànd drowsy numbness pains / My sense' (1±2). A Keatsian death of luxury is already implied in the first



One may recall that Hazlitt praised Spenser as `the poet of our waking dreams'. Like Hunt's habitual escape into à waking dream', Keats's imaginative flight is easily or easefully achieved. Thus no contemporary critic found it necessary to unravel the deeper implications in the last two lines:

stanza, where the poet feels as if he had sunk `Lethe-wards' (4), `being too happy in thine [the nightingale's] happiness' (6). This awareness of the ephemeral nature of pleasure is given a full and poignant expression in the Òde on Melancholy'. The poem begins with an index of poisonous plants as the metaphoric symptoms of suicidal melancholia. This seems to be a macabre parody of the Keastian catalogue of leafy luxuries. Indeed, melancholy is inextricably linked with, or rather resides in, leafy luxuries themselves, `the droop-headed flowers', `the green hill', à morning rose', `the rainbow of the salt sand-wave' and `the wealth of globed peonies' (13±17). In the last stanza, the poet is fully àwake' to the indissoluble ties of pleasure to melancholy: She dwells with Beauty ± Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine. . . . (21±6) The Òde to a Nightingale', as Hunt observed, offers a `mixture . . . of real melancholy and imaginative relief'.90 Keats certainly feels àching Pleasure' in the nightingale's song, yet he stops short of surrendering himself fully to melancholy, and the poem remains a specimen of aesthetic refreshment. In the Òde on Melancholy', however, Keats's experience of pleasure is more intense, or even violent, with his `strenuous tongue' bursting `Joy's grape against his palate fine' (27±8). He concludes the ode by almost voluntarily hanging himself as a trophy in the shrine of Melancholy. Arguably, the Òde on Melancholy' was much too personal(ised) and overtly sexualised for the general public to sympathise with the poet ± indeed, no contemporary critic even mentioned the poem. Clearly, it was too morbid and macabre for contemporary aesthetic consumption. The Òde to Psyche' also attracted little attention. Like the Òde on Melancholy', this poem was too complicated and internalised for the reader-consumer to read for pleasure. Despite the title, the Òde to Psyche' was not a simple aestheticisation of a myth but the poet's appropriation of the legend of Psyche. Keats had learnt from LemprieÁre that the fable of Cupid and Psyche was first introduced by the Roman poet Apuleius, and hence Psyche had never been worshipped by the ancient Greeks. As we saw in Chapter 4, Hunt's circle of poets chose Greek rather than Latin material for their mythological poetry. In the



Lamia (1820) 169

Òde to Psyche', Keats attempted to celebrate this `latest born and loveliest' (24) goddess with the Grecian àncient fervour'.91 In order to revive the àntique vows' and `happy pieties' (36, 41) which Psyche had never enjoyed, Keats adopted a choral ode based on those of the Greek poet Pindar.92 The Pindaric ode, which had originally been sung for public praise, seemed to be in tune with Keats's intention to reclaim due reverence for this `hethen Goddess'.93 However, Keats's ode turned out to be not so much public as personal, private and reflective. The initial description of the natural bower was transformed into a mental landscape in which the poet became Psyche's one and only priest: Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

....

And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same . . . . (50±3, 58±63) What distinguished the Òde to Psyche' from the other `Greekish' (that is, Theocritean) poems produced by Hunt's circle was its self-reflexive (that is, Virgilian) pastoral mode. Keats told George that this ode was `the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains ± I have for the most part dash'd off my lines in a hurry ± This I have done leisurely ± I think it reads the more richly for it'.94 Indeed, Keats was uncommonly conscious of his own artistic (or àrtificial') craft, employed to create a `natural' bower in the Òde to Psyche'. Consequently, however, the poem turned out to be too reflexive and internalised to be enjoyed as a mythological picture. For the same reason, the Òde on a Grecian Urn' drew neither attention nor admiration. Although the poet is gazing round the surface of the urn in each stanza, the poem cannot readily be consumed as a series of ìdylls'.95 The Arcadian world of pastoral pleasures sculptured on the urn are from the first bombarded with the poet's fervent questionings, which are not by any means adequately answered at the end of the ode. Conder found it difficult to sympathise with the poet's ècstasy' throughout the poem, and criticised its concluding lines for being unintelligible:




Lamia (1820) 171

`That is,' as Conder observed, àll that Mr. Keats knows or cares to know. ± But till he knows much more than this, he will never write verses fit to live.'96 Contemporary readers were not at all interested in deciphering `who says what to whom' in the last two lines, or in unravelling the verbal texture of `the well wrought urn'.97 The Monthly Review dismissed such expressions as ùnheard melodies' and `ditties of no tone' as `concetto'.98 The Òde on a Grecian Urn' was too personal and puzzling to be consumed as the verbal equivalent of a classical artefact, or too overt in its aestheticism as expressed in the final two lines.

A problem of popularity In the summer of 1819, while he was composing most of the poems for the Lamia volume, Keats seemed to be acutely concerned about `popularity'. During August and September 1819, his letters abounded with ambivalent remarks about contemporary popular writers whom he branded as `the commonplace crowd of the little-famous'.99 Keats vented his frustrated anger upon his publisher Taylor: Ì feel every confidence that if I choose I may be a popular writer; that I will never be; but for all that I will get a livelihood.'100 Keats also told Reynolds that Ì feel it in my power to become a popular writer ± I feel it in my strength to refuse the poisonous suffrage of a public'.101 This may be seen as a classic expression of the artist's incompatible desires for popular recognition and creative independence. Furthermore, Keats's identification of `the favour of the public with the love of a woman' pointed to his resentment at the powerful influence which both women writers and women readers exerted upon the literary market.102 However, Keats remained inextricably associated with adolescents, women and the lower classes in the public mind. Just before the publication of Endymion, when he was strongly encouraged to temper the defiant tone of its preface, Keats proudly declared: I hate a Mawkish Popularity. ± I cannot be subdued before them ± My glory would be to daunt and dazzle the thousand jabberers about Pictures and Books. . . . if there is any fault in the preface it is not affectation: but an undersong of disrespect to the Public.103 What he did not expect was that he himself would be ridiculed as one of those affected `jabberers about Pictures and Books'. To his great chagrin,



`Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' ± that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (49±50)


Mrs Tighe and Beattie once delighted me ± now I see through them and can find nothing in them ± or [but] weakness ± and yet how many they still delight! . . . This same inadequacy is discovered . . . in Women with few exceptions ± the Dress Maker, the blue Stocking and the most charming sentimentalist differ but in a Slight degree, and are equally smokeable. . . . 104 Here Keats again linked popularity with all kinds of women whose ìnadequacy' of judgement made them `smokeable' (that is, àble to be ridiculed'; cited in OED). As has been shown, smokeability, mawkishness and popularity were closely linked, and all pointed to the hallmark of commercial art. In the eyes of Keats, the works of romancers and sentimentalists could not be taken `seriously', for they were too easily consumable. In other words, Keats objected to what I. A. Richards called bad art or non-art, which provided instant gratification and encouraged stock responses rather than the ironic play of `judgement'.105 To make matters worse, `the Reviews have enervated and made indolent mens [sic] minds ± few think for themselves.'106 Such popularity as originated from the enervated and erroneous judgement of the public inevitably turned out to be `mawkish'. However, it was not just writers of popular romances, but also Hunt and his followers who produced the `smokeable' literature for `popular' consumption. It was this popularisation and `commercialisation' of the highest stratum of the literary market that Peacock found so irritating and deplorable: there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds . . . the poetical reading public, being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge.107 (my emphasis) Ìf I should live to the age of Methusalem,' Peacock wrote to Shelley, ànd have uninterrupted literary leisure, I should not find time to read Keats's Hyperion.'108 Yet as he admitted in the preface to Endymion, Keats had already recognised the presence of `mawkishness' in his verse.109



Endymion did not sell at all. Consequently, Keats resented even more the contemporary popular (female or effeminate male) romancers and their loyal (and unthinking) female fans:

Lamia (1820) 173

I will give you a few reasons why I shall persist in not publishing The Pot of Basil ± It is too smokeable . . . There is too much inexperience of live [sic], and simplicity of knowlege [sic] in it ± which might do very well after one's death ± but not while one is alive. There are very few would look to the reality. I intend to use more finesse with the Public. It is possible to write fine things which cannot be laugh'd at in any way. Isabella is what I should call were I a reviewer À weak-sided Poem' with an amusing sober-sadness about it. . . . There is no objection of this kind to Lamia ± A good deal to St Agnes Eve ± only not so glaring. . . . 110 Indeed, Keats's last volume may be seen as the culmination of a tension between commercial prospects and creative freedom within his poetics. `Most of the Poems in the volume,' as Keats told Shelley soon after its publication, `have been written above two years, and would never have been publish'd but from a hope of gain.'111 However, Keats had attempted to minimise `smokeability' in these poems. Even in Isabella, he interwove the tale of tender love with an indictment of the mercantilism of the heroine's brothers. This digression from the main plot occupies five lengthy stanzas (XIV±XVIII), in which the poet describes how Isabella's mercenary brothers exploit or `pinch and peel' (120) their workers, not only in mines and factories but also in the colonies, including Ceylon, Gibraltar and Malaysia.112 Keats rebukes these brothers for their `hungry pride and gainful cowardice' (130), and persistently brands them as `ledger-men' (137), `money-bags' (142) and `BaaÈlites of pelf' (451). As we saw in Chapter 3, Hunt styled himself a lover of nature and culture, in opposition to the tribe of merchants and traders. Like Keats in Isabella, he reprimands these commercial people for being `sneaking, proud, faithless of trust' in his epistle `To William Hazlitt' (110, 100). He sarcastically advises such moneygrubbers to . . . shut up some bees in the till with their money, And look, on the Sabbath, to breakfast on honey. (80±1) It is noteworthy that Keats also adopted the `money / honey' rhyme in `Robin Hood: To a Friend' (included in his 1820 volume). This poem was written in reply to Reynolds's sonnets to Robin Hood. However, while Reynolds merely describes or at best idealises the merriment of the forest



What Keats wanted to achieve in his new publication was to break away from the double bind between popularity and smokeability:


She would weep that her wild bees Sang not to her ± strange! that honey Can't be got without hard money! (46±8) This passage unmistakably echoes not only Hunt's rhyming but also his bourgeois politics. Keats's dislike of uncultured money-getters finds full expression in the following passage of Isabella: Why were they proud? Because their marble founts Gush'd with more pride than do a wretch's tears? ± Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs? ± Why were they proud? Because red-lin'd accounts Were richer than the songs of Grecian years? ± Why were they proud? again we ask aloud, Why in the name of Glory were they proud? (121±8) Hunt also wryly refers to an anecdote according to which a merchant, with `due sense of trading', was totally insensible to his beautiful surrounding while `sailing from Greece to TrieÈsteÂ' (`To William Hazlitt' 93, 88). It is curious to note that Bernard Shaw highly regarded Keats's ìmmense indictment of the profiteers and exploiters' as a poeticisation of Marx's Das Kapital: Everything that the Bolshevik means and feels when he uses the fatal epithet `bourgeois' is expressed forcibly, completely, and beautifully in those three [from 14th to 16th] stanzas, written half a century before the huge tide of middle-class commercial optimism and complacency began to ebb in the wake of the planet Marx. . . . 113 Shaw even argued that Keats would have become à very fullblooded modern revolutionist'.114 However, Keats himself was a `bourgeois' man of letters whose aestheticising attitude to life distinguished him from òther' mercenary middle classes. Arguably, he deliberately inserted the



folk, Keats throws into relief that the mercenary spirit distinguishes modern times from Merrie England. If Maid Marian should witness the present day,

lengthy indictment of the merchant brothers into the poem not only to make Isabella less `weak-sided', but also to distance himself from the public image of the vulgar Johnny Keats. Whereas Shaw considered Keats's phrase `ledger-men' to be àt least better English than bourgeois', contemporary reviewers objected to such terms as `money-bags' and `ledger-men' as ìn bad taste'.115 They were unanimous in considering Keats's extensive reprehension in those passages to jar with the rest of the poem. John Scott, for one, chastised this èxtravagant school-boy vituperation of trade and traders' which `dreadfully mar the musical tenderness of its general strain'.116 One reason why contemporary reviewers opposed the discordant digression in Isabella was that they compared Keats's poem with Barry Cornwall's Sicilian Story, both of which drew on Boccaccio for material. A Sicilian Story (1820) was brought out shortly before the publication of Keats's Lamia volume, and so Keats and Cornwall were closely linked in the public mind. Conder called Cornwall a `poetical rival of Mr. Keats'.117 The Monthly Magazine regarded Keats and Cornwall as the fellow pupils of Leigh Hunt.118 And these reviewers tended to place Cornwall above Keats as a modern exponent of Boccaccio. `The poem of Mr. Keats,' as the New Monthly Magazine observed, `has not the luxury of description, nor the rich love-scenes, of Mr. Cornwall.'119 The Monthly Review thought Cornwall's versification superior to Keats's affectation, the major example of which was the `tirade against the mercantile pride of the brothers of Isabella'.120 A Sicilian Story was obviously more in tune with the popular taste than Isabella. The former was decidedly targeted at the `female' audience: . . . Sweet ladies, listen and believe, If that ye can believe so strange a story,

That woman ever could so deeply grieve. . . . (III)121

Cornwall eliminated the macabre elements of the original and transformed Boccaccio's tale into a tear-jerking romance. His version contained neither Isabella's exhumation of her lover's corpse, nor her morbid attachment to the pot of basil in which his head was kept. The poem ended with the grief-stricken heroine going mad and fleeing from home. This is precisely what Keats called a `smokeable' poem, but Cornwall seemed to be content to cater for the `mawkish' taste. In contrast to Keats's apology for his adolescent `mawkishness' in the preface to Endymion, Cornwall unabashedly attempted to revive in his poem his youthful fondness for a love romance:



Lamia (1820) 175

There is a spirit that comes upon us when

Boyhood is gone, before we rank as men,

Before the heart is canker'd, and before

We lose or cast away that innocent feeling

That gives life all its freshness.

....

I was an idler then, and life was green,

And so I loved and languish'd, and because

A worshipper of the boy-god's fickle flame. . . . (I)

Not surprisingly, Peacock branded the poetry of Cornwall as `drivelling doggrel'.122 (Recall that both Byron and Lockhart castigated Keats's Endymion for its `drivelling'.) Keats succeeded in making Isabella less smokeable than A Sicilian Story, but as a consequence of this decommercialising effort his poem was less saleable than Cornwall's version. As for Lamia, Keats was more confident about its unsmokeability. When he completed the first part of the poem, he claimed that Ì have great hopes of success, because I make use of my Judgment more deliberately than I yet have done.'123 The poem was certainly successful in terms of its consistently ironic tone, absence of sentimentality and disciplined heroic couplets. However, Lamia turned out to be the least noticed among the three major narratives of the volume. Although the poem could be enjoyed as a series of gorgeous descriptions, they are by no means simply pleasing or readily consumable ± one need only recall such poignant and disturbing descriptions as the violently convulsive metamorphosis of the serpent, and the gradual withering of Lamia's beauty at her wedding banquet. It is interesting to note, however, that Conder considered Lamia to be `decidedly the best' among the three narrative poems.124 Being a staunch moralist, Conder read the poem as a `semi-allegorical legend' in which a young man was seduced by à lamia' disguised as a `rich courtezan'. `The story,' as Conder remarked, `thus interpreted is not without a moral; though Mr. Keats does not make use of it.'125 It is telling that Conder objected to Keats's other `classical' poems (Hyperion and the Òde on a Grecian Urn') on moral grounds. Conder identified Lamia with Poetry, Lycius with the poet; and her magnificent palace turned out to be as insubstantial as the gold of Tantalus. Lamia was indeed the only poem that Conder regarded (though faintly) as moralising. For the rest of the volume, he found only `the imbecility of judgement . . . and the real emptiness of mind'.126 Conder's verdict pointed to the fact that Lamia was less readily




consumable or `smokeable' than Isabella or The Eve of St. Agnes. Indeed, Lamia may even be said to have been more sceptical about poetry itself as a form of luxury. Keats's own marketing strategy resulted in making his poems less saleable. What he regarded as `weak-sided' poems were actually those most in tune with the public taste. It is well known that Woodhouse and Taylor strongly objected to Keats's revisions of The Eve of St. Agnes on marketing grounds. Keats rewrote the last three lines `to leave on the reader a sense of pettish disgust, by bringing Old Angela in (only) dead stiff & ugly'.127 Like the narrator's castigatory digression in Isabella, the revised concluding lines of The Eve of St. Agnes disrupt the fairy-tale glamour of the whole poem. He also significantly revised the 36th stanza to make the love-making more unambiguous. Taylor and Woodhouse forcefully opposed this revision precisely because its explicitness would `render the poem unfit for ladies'.128 Keats defiantly proclaimed that he wrote for men, and he did not want ladies to read his poetry. Yet Taylor was determined: I will not be accessary (I can answer also for H[essey] I think) towards publishing any thing which can only be read by Men. . . . Had he known truly what the Society and what the Suffrages of Women are worth, he would never have thought of depriving himself of them.129 This comment indicated the predominant presence of female readers in the literary market. In revising The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats was attempting to make the poem less smokeable (that is, designed for the female audience). Yet his publisher was right in observing that Keats's revisions only made his poem less attractive to readers in general. In the end, Keats agreed to have the original version published, and the poem turned out to be a success. Keats was to be known as a poet of The Eve of St. Agnes for the rest of the century. As has been argued, there was a noticeable tension between Keats's artistic scope and market forces in his 1820 volume. Keats could not completely yield himself to either, and this helped to contribute to the unpopularity of the verse in his own lifetime. However, modern critics discover an almost inexhaustible wealth of interpretative possibilities in Keats's poetry. As Tilottama Rajan comments on Lamia, Isabella, and The Eve of St. Agnes, What is puzzling about these poems is their emotional indeterminacy, their lack of a clear rhetoric of fiction which will enable us to



Lamia (1820) 177


The layers of conflicting discourses in Keats's poems lead to their semantic ambiguity, which is indeed a marketable feature among the critical disciplines of modern English studies. Keats's typical semantic uncertainty results not only from discursive indeterminacy but also from stylistic idiosyncrasy. Amongst contemporary readers, Keats's `quaint' style made his poems òbscure', and hence unpopular. Scott, for one, considered the `quaintness' of language and consequent obscurity of thought to be `the principal faults of his poetry, impeding his popularity'.131 The Monthly Review also recommended Keats `to become somewhat less strikingly original, ± to be less fond of the folly of too new or too old phrases', so as to obtain à double portion of readers'.132 Hunt, however, regarded Keats's quaint diction as `the ill management of a good thing, ± exuberance of ideas', citing an example from the Òde to Psyche': Àt tender eye-dawn of aurorean love' (20). In the eyes of Hunt, Keats was trying to load every rift so full with ore that `he over-informs the occasion or the speaker'.133 Byron's response to one of these overcrammed lines was probably an accurate reflection of the general reader's feeling of puzzlement: It was Lord Byron, at that time living in Italy, drinking its wine, and basking in its sunshine, who asked me what was the meaning of a beaker `full of the warm south.' It was not the word beaker that puzzled him. College had made him intimate enough with that. But the sort of poetry in which he excelled, was not accustomed to these poetical concentrations.134 Indeed, while Keats's compressed poetic style perplexed his contemporary readers, it has compelled attention and admiration from modern scholars. It is interesting to note that Scott could not make sense of one typically Keatsian (hyphenated) epithet: he attaches the epithet of `leaden-eyed,' to despair, considered as a quality or sentiment. Were it a personification of despair, the compound would be as finely applied, as, under the actual circumstances, it is erroneously so. There are many, many passages too, in his last volume, as well as in his earlier ones, from which we are not able, after taking some pains to understand them, to derive any distinct notion or meaning whatever.135



classify them as either sentimental or ironic in tone, as either romantic or unromantic.130

In perceived contrast to Scott's bafflement, twentieth-century critics celebrate Keats's textural density which requires considerable academic endeavour to unravel, both in stylistic and semantic terms. It is thus precisely the ùnconsumable' qualities of Keats that have immensely contributed to his popularity in modern literary criticism throughout the twentieth century.



Lamia (1820) 179

Conclusion: The Return of the Aesthetic

The explosion in the poetry market during the first two decades of the nineteenth century was composed of and driven by too many complex factors ± social, political, cultural, economic and technological ± to be explained away in a few sentences. The rising status of the indigenous cultural heritage of English poetry, the expansion of general readership, the emerging bourgeois aspiration for poetry as an elite culture and the soaring cost of books (which heightened the desirability of poetry rather than prose) all contributed to the materialisation of the unprecedented socio-cultural phenomenon in which poetry became a lucrative business: At the height of the boom in the 1810s Scott received £2,000 in advance for Rokeby (1812) from Ballantyne so that he could buy Abbotsford; Byron was offered £1,000 by John Murray for minor poems such as his Giaour in 1813; Longman gave Thomas Moore £3,000 for Lalla Rookh (1817); and though he claimed to have lost money on the arrangement, Murray willingly paid £3,000 for Crabbe's Tales of the Hall and Poems in 1819.1 By contrast, Keats received only £100 from Taylor and Hessey for the copyright of Endymion, and another £100 for his other two volumes.2 However, when the young Keats announced to his guardian, Abbey, that he would make his living solely by writing poetry, he must have had some idea not only of the social status but also of the financial security with which poetry could have provided him. Indeed, the early nineteenth century was a peculiar period in the sense that poetry outsold prose in the publishing market. Never before or since had poetry been so profitable (as well as genteel) a pursuit. It is telling that the two best180



8

selling giants of poetry at the time were Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron. In 1810, Scott's Lady of the Lake sold over 20,000 copies in six months, but in 1814 Byron's Corsair achieved the same sales figure within the first two weeks.3 It is well known that Scott turned to fiction because of the meteoric rise in the popularity of Byron, the real poet-aristocrat. In the same year that The Corsair was published, Keats idolised Byron as an author of the oriental `tale of pleasing woe' (14) in his early sonnet `To Lord Byron'. The young Keats must have admired Byron's verse-tale not only as enchanting but also as a bestseller. However, Byron himself was sceptical about the contemporary popular craze for poetry. He wrote in 1813 that Poetry has always been so unprofitable a pursuit ± & the fame of our present race of bards depends so much upon the caprice of ye. public & ye. fashion of ye. day ± that I hardly know if it be not injurious to a young man to encourage him to proceed.4 Having been struck with metromania, however, Keats was determined to proceed. What followed was, as we saw earlier, a series of commercial disasters. In striking contrast to the sales bonanza enjoyed by contemporary popular poets, none of Keats's three volumes went into a second edition. The poetical volumes produced by Hunt's circle of poet(aster)s usually reached several editions. Even Wordsworth and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads, whose publishing success could only be described as modest, went through four editions between 1798 and 1805.5 It sounds almost incredible that Keats's last and acknowledgedly `best' book was published and failed in 1820, the year when the publishing market was at the pinnacle of the poetry boom ± the year which could have never been a better time to publish a poetical volume.6 It is curious to note that while Keats's poetics seemed to be subsumed within Hunt's bourgeois aesthetics of pleasure, the products of the former infinitely fell behind those of the latter in sales. Hunt catered for the taste of the newly educated middle-class audience by offering poetry as a form of luxury; his poem was always a pleasant read designed for easy consumption, rather than moral instruction requiring intellectual exertion of the reader. Keats also produced poetry for aesthetic consumption, but his poems were never so purely descriptive and readily readable as Hunt's. What made Keats's poetry unsuitable as an object of luxury consumption was, ironically, its over-luxurious quality. Throughout his short career, Keats explored and exploited the sensuous potentialities of poetic language. The consequent excesses ± stylistic, sensuous and



Conclusion 181

semantic ± of his poetry did not succeed in winning popular favour. Even in his earliest Poems, which offered a mainly `visual' representation of nature, Keats exceeded Hunt in sensuous intensity. Endymion's commercial deÂbaÃcle could be attributed to the poet's excessive foregrounding of the pleasures of the senses. The last Lamia volume was intended to offer à sensation of some sort', but Keats's deliberate rendering of ùnpleasant' sensations helped to alienate his potential readers. This last publication, however, demonstrated Keats's verbal artistry, by which he tried to `load every rift' with pleasure of the senses. Indeed, Keats proved himself to be a genuine poet of àesthetic' (derived from Greek aisthanomai, `to perceive by the senses') pleasure. In this book, I have been concerned to salvage the aesthetic Keats from the more academic ± moral, intellectual, philosophical ± Keatses. Yet this does not mean a return to the Victorian Keats, the dainty poet of ethereal beauty. Rather, a close investigation of `the aesthetic' in Keats's works has led to the revaluation of the underestimated, and indeed repressed, aspect of poetry as a commercial product or a `commodity'. As we saw at the beginning of Chapter 5, twentieth-century literary critics have made every effort to de-aestheticise and reinvent Keats as a high artist. This procedure of literary canonisation has resulted in not only the dehistoricisation and depoliticisation but also the decommodification of literature. Interestingly, Keats was transformed into a serious poet, at precisely the time when the academic discipline of English Literature emerged as a `serious' and respectable field of scholarship in universities. In his English and Englishness, Brian Doyle argues that the major institutional elevation and transformation of English occurred between 1880 and 1930, from à female domestic `àccomplishment''' to à distinctly male domain, having its own professional modes of research and teaching and ways of controlling admission'.7 It is notable that the gendered institutionalising of English paralleled the gendered canonical transformation of Keats from a poet of effeminate luxury to a poet of moral and masculine virtue. It was precisely during the first decades of this century that Keats became established as a canonical poet of moral seriousness. This coincidence seems more than accidental. As we noted in the introduction, the closing decades of the nineteenth century witnessed the zenith of Keats's fame, not only amongst the elite-aesthetes but also amongst the general public. In the late Victorian period, Keats was quite literally a `popular' poet, an object of widespread idolisation and consumption. During the first half of the twentieth century, however, the Victorian version of Keats was thoroughly revised and readjusted in the framework of the newly respectable culture of




English studies: his poetry was depopularised and decommodified, and thereby transfigured into serious art worthy of critical scrutiny in universities. Over the past few decades, an increasing number of attempts have been made to deconstruct the Romantic myth of solitary genius. It has become almost a critical commonplace that Romantic poets were writing in, influenced by and actively involved in certain milieux, whether social, cultural, political or historical. However, another myth seems to persist in the critical consciousness, namely the myth of poetry as a noncommodity. Although an increasing number of studies have explored the symbiotic or antipathetic relationship between a poet and his audience, they typically consider Keats's poetry primarily as a serious work of art deserving of academic attention rather than as commercial art (originally) intended for popular consumption.8 Consequently, little attention has been given to the aspect of his poetry as a commodity, a luxury item or an object of aesthetic pleasure. This neglect may be partly attributed to the seemingly inherent and ineradicable moral anxiety about (or even downright antipathy to) `consumption' in contemporary Western culture. Since Veblen coined and criticised `conspicuous consumption' in his Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), moralist protests against consumption have predominated in the disciplines of the social sciences. It is only in the last few years that a variety of disciplines have witnessed à considerable and relatively sudden expansion of interest in the topic of consumption'.9 As we have seen, the àesthetic' aspect of Keats's poetry ± the poet's seemingly other-worldly devotion to pure pleasure ± retrieves its contemporary worldliness in the light of bourgeois consumer culture.



Conclusion 183

Notes

Introduction: a problem of interpretation

1 William Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, or New Elegant Extracts from Chaucer to the Present Time, with Critical Remarks by W. Hazlitt (London: William C. Hall, 1824) p. i. 2 Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. i. 3 Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, pp. vi, viii±ix. 4 Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. xv. 5 Leigh Hunt, Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries; with Recollections of the Author's Life, and of his Visit to Italy (London: Henry Colburn, 1828) p. 253. 6 C. C. Abbott (ed.), Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins including his Correspondence with Coventry Patmore (London: Oxford University Press, 1938) p. 237. 7 See T. W. Reid (ed.), Life, Letters, and Friendships of Richard Monckton Milnes, First Lord Houghton (London: Cassell and Company, 1890) I, 435. 8 E. Gosse and T. J. Wise (eds), The Complete Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne (London: William Heinemann, 1926) XIV, 158. 9 See G. H. Ford, Keats and the Victorians: A Study of His Influence and Rise to Fame 1821±1895 (1944; Hamden: Archon Books, 1962). 10 Indeed, until the late 1840s, Keats was more widely known as the `Keats' in Adonais than by his own works. Even in the early twentieth century, this image of Keats persisted in D. Hewlett's Adonais: A Life of John Keats (London: Hurst and Blackwell, 1937). See S. J. Wolfson, `Keats enters History: Autopsy, Adonais, and the Fame of Keats' in N. Roe (ed.), Keats and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) pp. 17±45. 11 A. H. Hallam, `Poems, Chiefly Lyrical' in J. D. Jump (ed.), Tennyson: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967) p. 36. 12 Hallam, `Poems, Chiefly Lyrical', p. 35. 13 Ford, Keats and the Victorians, p. 173. 14 R. M. Milnes (ed.), Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats, 2 vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1848); Matthew Arnold, Essays in Criticism: Second Series (London: Macmillan, 1888). 15 Milnes (ed.), Life, Letters, and Literary Remains I, xvi, xviii. 16 Arnold, Essays in Criticism, p. 105. 17 Arnold, Essays in Criticism, p. 115. 18 F. R. Leavis, Revaluation: Tradition and Development in English Poetry (1936; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964) p. 223. The Fall of Hyperion was first published in R. M. Milnes, Ànother Version of Keats's ``Hyperion''', Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society 3 (1856±57). 19 T. S. Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism: Studies in the Relations of Criticism to Poetry in England (London: Faber and Faber, 1933) p. 100. 20 Leavis, Revaluation, p. 217. 21 H. W. Garrod, `Note to the Second Edition' in Keats, 2nd edn (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1939) n.p. 184



Chapter 1

22 Alexander Smith's comment on The Eve of St. Agnes in Encyclopaedia Britannica XIII (8th edn, 1857). Reprinted in G. M. Matthews (ed.), Keats: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971) p. 367. 23 H. de Almeida, Ìntroduction: Intellectual Keats' in de Almeida (ed.), Critical Essays on John Keats (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1990) p. 4. 24 Eliot, The Use of Poetry, p. 102. 25 A. Lowell, John Keats (London: Jonathan Cape, 1925) I, ix. 26 C. L. Finney, The Evolution of Keats's Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936) I, vii. 27 See W. J. Bate, John Keats (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963); R. Gittings, John Keats (1968; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985); A. Ward, John Keats: The Making of a Poet, rev. edn (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986), originally published in 1963. 28 P. de Man, Ìntroduction to the Poetry of John Keats (1966)' in L. Waters (ed.), Critical Writings, 1953±1978 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989) p. 181. 29 See the section on John Keats compiled by Jack Stillinger in F. Jordan (ed.), The English Romantic Poets: A Review of Research and Criticism, 4th edn (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 1985) pp. 665±718. 30 Keats was indeed the last to be politicised among the major Romantics. As late as 1993, P. M. S. Dawson considered Keats to be `the most apolitical of the great Romantic poets'. See his `Poetry in an Age of Revolution' in S. Curran (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to British Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) p. 49. 31 J. J. McGann's `Keats and the Historical Method in Literary Criticism', first published in Modern Language Notes 94 (1979), reprinted in his The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Method and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), pp. 15±65. 32 See M. Butler, Romantics, Rebels, and Reactionaries: English Literature and its Background 1760±1830 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Roe (ed.), Keats and History; D. P. Watkins, Keats's Poetry and the Politics of Imagination (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1989); S. Wolfson (ed.), `Keats and Politics: A Forum', Studies in Romanticism 25 (Summer 1986) 171±229. 33 M. Levinson, Keats's Life of Allegory: The Origins of a Style (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988) p. 5. 34 J. Bayley, `Keats and Reality', Proceedings of the British Academy 48 (1962) 91±125; J. Jones, John Keats's Dream of Truth (London: Chatto and Windus, 1969); C. Ricks, Keats and Embarrassment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974). 35 Levinson, Keats's Life of Allegory, p. 33. I will be discussing more contemporary Keats criticism in detail in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. 36 J. N. Cox, `Keats in the Cockney School', Romanticism 2.1 (1996) 36. 37 An increasing number of articles on the Cockney school have been produced throughout the 1990s. See J. N. Cox, `Leigh Hunt's Cockney School: The Lakers' `Òther''', Romanticism on the Net 14 (May 1999) http://users.ox.ac.uk/ ~scat0385/huntlakers.html; R. Cronin, `Keats and the Politics of Cockney Style', Studies in English Literature 1500±1900 36:4 (Autumn 1996) 785±806;



Notes 185

38 39 40 41 42

43 44

45 46

E. L. de Montluzin, `Killing the Cockneys: Blackwood's' Weapons of Choice against Hunt, Hazlitt, and Keats', Keats±Shelley Journal 47 (1998) 87±107; D. C. Goellnicht, `The Politics of Reading and Writing: Periodical Reviews of Keats's Poems (1817)' in D. L. Clark and D. C. Goellnicht (eds), New Romanticisms: Theory and Critical Practice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994) pp. 101±31; J. Kandl, `Private Lyrics in the Public Sphere: Leigh Hunt's Examiner and the Construction of a Public ``John Keats''', Keats±Shelley Journal 44 (1995) 84±101; G. Kucich, ```The Wit in the Dungeon'': Leigh Hunt and the Insolent Politics of Cockney Coteries', Romanticism on the Net 14 (May 1999) http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/cockneycoteries.html; N. Roe, À Cockney Schoolroom: John Keats at Enfield' in M. O'Neill (ed.), Keats: Bicentenary Readings (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997) pp. 11±26; K. Wheatley, `The Blackwood's Attacks on Leigh Hunt', Nineteenth-Century Literature 47 ( June 1992) 1±31; D. Wu, `Leigh Hunt's ``Cockney'' Aesthetics', The KeatsShelley Review 10 (Spring 1996) 77±97. Such a critical trend is reflected in the most recent biography of Keats. See A. Motion, Keats (London: Faber and Faber, 1997). N. Roe, John Keats and the Culture of Dissent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) p. 13. Roe, John Keats, p. x. J. N. Cox, Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) pp. 4±5. See K. Gilmartin, Print Politics: The Press and Radical Opposition in Early Nineteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) pp. 195±226. See I. McCalman, Ùltra-Radicalism and Convivial Debating-Clubs in London, 1795±1838', English Historical Review 102 (April 1987) 309±33. For a discussion of early nineteenth-century radicalism, see also S. C. Behrendt (ed.), Romanticism, Radicalism, and the Press (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997); J. A. Epstein, Radical Expression: Political Language, Ritual, and Symbol in England, 1790±1850 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); J. A. Hone, For the Cause of Truth: Radicalism in London 1796±1821 (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1982); S. Maccoby, English Radicalism 1786±1832: From Paine to Cobbett (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955); I. McCalman, Radical Underworld: Prophets, Revolutionaries and Pornographers in London, 1795±1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963; New York: Vintage Books, 1966); D. Worrall, Radical Culture: Discourse, Resistance and Surveillance, 1790±1820 (New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992). Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, pp. 675±6. Here I agree with P. M. S. Dawson that Byron and Shelley did not see themselves as belonging to the Cockney school. See his `Byron, Shelley, and the ``New School''' in K. Everest (ed.), Shelley Revalued: Essays from the Gregynog Conference (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1983) pp. 89±108. L. Trilling, Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning (London: Secker and Warburg, 1966) p. 68. G. Scott, Ìntroduction: Tabloid Keats', European Romantic Review 6 (Summer 1995) iv.



186 Notes

Notes 187

The bourgeois cultural revolution

1 J. Barry and C. Brooks (eds), The Middling Sort of People: Culture, Society and Politics in England, 1550±1800 (London: Macmillan, 1994); C. Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780±1850 (London: Hutchinson, 1987); P. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family Life in London, 1660±1730 (London: Methuen, 1989); I. Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727±1783 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); H.-C. Mui and L. H. Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England (London: Routledge, 1989); J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); D. Wahrman, Imagining the Middle Class: The Political Representation of Class in Britain, c. 1780±1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). 2 Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, 3rd edn (London: W. Taylor, 1719) p. 3. 3 Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, pp. 3, 4. 4 Cited in L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660±1760 (London: Routledge, 1988) p. 1. 5 Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) in M. J. Adler (ed.), Great Books of the Western World, 2nd edn (Chicago: Encyclopñdia Britannica, 1990) XXXVI, 298. 6 Weatherill estimates that in the mid-eighteenth century, more than half of the households in Britain belonged to the middling ranks. See her Consumer Behaviour, pp. 13±14. 7 N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (London: Europa Publications, 1982) p. 1. 8 J. W. von Archenholz, A Picture of England (London, 1789). Cited in McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, p. 10. 9 However, England was not the first European country to experience luxury on a widespread scale. Holland had already gone through a similar economic revolution in the seventeenth century. See S. Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Collins, 1987). 10 J. Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977) p. 9. 11 Sekora, Luxury, p. 1. See also C. J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. xii. 12 For the classical view of luxury established by the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans and the early Christians, see Sekora, Luxury, pp. 24 ff. 13 Sekora, Luxury, p. 26. 14 Sekora, Luxury, p. x. See also Berry, The Idea of Luxury, p. 241. 15 Sekora, Luxury, p. 112. 16 Sekora, Luxury, p. 113. See also Berry, The Idea of Luxury, pp. 126±76.



Chapter 2

17 Leigh Hunt, `Preface, including Cursory Observations on Poetry and Cheerfulness' in Foliage; or Poems Original and Translated (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1818) pp. 9±39. 18 McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp. 265, 284. 19 See J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (London: HarperCollins, 1997); J. H. Plumb, Georgian Delights (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980); R. Porter and M. M. Roberts (eds), Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1996). 20 McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp. 266±73. See also R. D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800±1900 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1957); J. P. Klancher, The Making of English Reading Audiences, 1790±1832 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987). 21 R. Porter, `Material Pleasures in the Consumer Society' in Porter and Roberts (eds), Pleasure, p. 34. See also S. David, Prince of Pleasure: The Prince of Wales and the Making of the Regency (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1998). 22 A. Blainey, Immortal Boy: A Portrait of Leigh Hunt (London: Croom Helm, 1985): E. Blunden, Leigh Hunt: A Biography (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1930); Thornton Hunt (ed.), The Correspondence of Leigh Hunt, 2 vols. (London: Smith, Elder, 1862); J. E. Morpurgo (ed.), The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt (London: The Cresset Press, 1949). 23 According to Roy Porter, `with the publication of sheet-music . . . it was easy for home music-makers to be playing Handel on their viols, harpsichords or flutes shortly after such music had been composed' (`Material Pleasures', p. 32). In his epistle `To Charles Cowden Clarke', Keats referred to the eighteenth-century composers ± Mozart, Thomas Arne and Handel ± whose music Clarke once played for him (109±11). Hunt also likened the beautiful countryside to à pastoral of Handel's' in his second verse letter to Thomas Moore (20). Hunt's circle of friends included a composer Vincent Novello, and Hunt wrote two short poems to be set to music by Novello. See Hunt, Foliage, pp. 63±7. 24 See R. Porter, London: A Social History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994) pp. 160±84. 25 Bate, John Keats; Gittings, John Keats; Ward, John Keats; H. E. Rollins (ed.), The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers and More Letters and Poems of the Keats Circle, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), and The Letters of John Keats 1814±1821, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958). 26 Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour, pp. 13±14. 27 P. Gay, The Bourgeois Experience: Victoria to Freud (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984) I, 31. 28 R. J. White (ed.), The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972) VI, 14. 29 `Walks round London. No. I' in Leigh Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book; or, Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art (London: C. and J. Ollier, 1820) p. 140. John Wilson attributed this essay on the beautiful country aspects of north London, to Barry Cornwall, another member of Hunt's circle. See Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (December 1819) 244. 30 `Walks round London. No. I', p. 140. 31 See A. Richardson, Literature, Education, and Romanticism: Reading as Social Practice, 1780±1832 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 80:



188 Notes

32 33 34 35

36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

`Some of the best private academies were those which catered to the sons of non-conformists, who were effectively shut out both from the grammar schools and the two universities. The dissenting academies prepared their students for commercial life and for the professions ± law, medicine, and the non-conformist ministry.' These academies served as a natural breeding ground for political opposition, for dissenters were excluded from public office and other civil rights. Ward, John Keats, pp. 7±8. For a detailed discussion of Enfield School and its dissenting culture, see Roe, John Keats, pp. 27±50. Roe attributes Keats's lifelong radicalism to Clarke's influence in his formative years at Enfield rather than Hunt's. Gittings, John Keats, p. 66. Charles Brown, one of the most intimate friends of Keats, quit business in 1815 to devote his life to literary pursuits, but he did so after years of hard work as a merchant. Horace Smith also retired a wealthy man from the Stock Exchange in 1821, to pursue a leisurely literary career. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 77, 192, 230, 237.

Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle I, 307.

Here I adopt the term àesthetics' as referring to an appreciation of the

beautiful through sensuous perception. The word's Greek etymology makes it clear that the term originally referred to `things perceptible by the senses'. The works of German philosophers, including Baumgarten's Aesthetica (1750±58), Kant's Critique of Judgement (1790) and Schiller's Aesthetic Education on Man (1794±95), served to popularise the concept of aesthetics as a theory of taste, or of the sensuous perception of the beautiful. They considered the aesthetic experience (intimately related to pleasure) as a mode of perception, distinct from and irreducible to reason or morality, and attempted to reconcile the sensuous with the rational (or the moral). What radically distinguished Hunt from those German philosophers was that Hunt elevated the aesthetic experience above the moral and ethical, as a supreme mode of perception: `We should consider ourselves as what we really are, ± creatures made to enjoy more than to know, to know infinitely nevertheless in proportion as we enjoy kindly' (Foliage, p. 16). The aesthetic was also an ideal mode of `consumption' of pleasures, be it poetry, painting or exquisite food. Hunt's bourgeois aesthetic, therefore, may be duly called the àesthetics of pleasure'. Leigh Hunt, The Story of Rimini, A Poem (London: John Murray, 1816) pp. xiv±xv. Hunt, Foliage, pp. 9, 11. Hunt, Foliage, p. 9. For other Romantics' awareness of the English national identity, see J. Lucas, England and Englishness: Ideas of Nationhood in English Poetry 1688±1900 (London: The Hogarth Press, 1990). Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. i. Hunt, Foliage, p. 22. Hunt, Foliage, p. 11. Hunt, Foliage, p. 13. G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in EighteenthCentury Britain (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) p. xxvi.



Notes 189

48 Monthly Review 2nd series, LXXX ( June 1816) 144±5. Most contemporary reviews cited in this book can be found in D. H. Reiman (ed.), The Romantics Reviewed: Contemporary Reviews of British Romantic Writers. Part C: Shelley, Keats,and LondonRadicalWriters, 2 vols. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1972). 49 See Reiman (ed.), The Romantics Reviewed: Part C, p. 681. 50 Hunt, The Story of Rimini, pp. xv±xvi. 51 Hunt, Foliage, pp. 12±13. 52 Hunt, Foliage, p. 17. 53 Hunt, Foliage, p. 39. 54 White (ed.), The Collected Works VI, 169. 55 Monthly Review 2nd series, LXXX ( June 1816) 138. 56 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine II (October 1817) 40. 57 Hunt, The Story of Rimini, p. x. 58 Hunt, The Story of Rimini, pp. vii±x. 59 British Critic 2nd series, X ( July 1818) 92. 60 Hunt, Foliage, pp. 33±4. 61 Quarterly Review XVIII ( January 1818) 329. 62 Charles Cowden Clarke and Mary Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1878) p. 140. 63 Quarterly Review XVIII ( January 1818) 329. 64 Hunt, Foliage, pp. 15, 34. 65 Hunt, Foliage, p. 17. 66 Satirist X (1 January 1812) 29±31; Quarterly Review XVI (October 1816) 228±78; Quarterly Review XVI ( January 1817) 511±22. 67 Eclectic Review 2nd series, X (November 1818) 485. 68 British Critic 2nd series, I (May 1814) 205±6. 69 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III ( July 1818) 453; II (November 1817) 201. 70 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 180. 71 J. Stillinger (ed.), John Keats: Complete Poems (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982) p. 435. All poetical texts of Keats are cited from this edition. 72 British Critic 2nd series, IX ( June 1818), 652. 73 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 524. 74 Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, p. xxxii. 75 Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, p. 104. 76 Sekora, Luxury, p. 117. 77 See Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility, pp. xvii±xxxii. See also L. Bellamy, Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); S. M. Conger (ed.), Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans to the Romantics (Toronto: Associated University Press, 1990); M. Ellis, The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); J. Mullan, Sentiment and Sociability: The Language of Feeling in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). 78 Quarterly Review XVIII ( January 1818) 327.

79 Hunt, Foliage, p. 15.

80 New Monthly Magazine X (September 1818) 163.

81 Hunt, The Story of Rimini, p. xvi.

82 Quarterly Review XIV ( January 1816) 481.



190 Notes

83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93

94 95 96

97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine II (October 1817) 39.

New Monthly Magazine V (March 1816) 140.

Augustan Review II (May 1816) 479.



Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine 2nd series, I (November 1817) 358.

P. P. Howe (ed.), The Complete Works of William Hazlitt (London: J. M. Dent

and Sons, 1932) XI, 177. See A. Nicholson (ed.), Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) p. 159. Byron's remark recalls (or even echoes) Emma's relentless opinion of Mrs Elton as À little upstart, vulgar being, with . . . all her airs of pert pretension and under-bred finery' in Jane Austen's Emma (1816). See M. Shiach, Discourse on Popular Culture: Class, Gender and History in Cultural Analysis, 1730 to the Present (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989) pp. 35±70. Robert Bloomfield's The Farmer's Boy (1800) sold 26,000 copies, going through seven editions in three years, whereas Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads (1798) sold only hundreds. See R. Sales, English Literature in History 1780±1830: Pastoral and Politics (London: Hutchinson, 1983) p. 18. Nicholson (ed.), Lord Byron, p. 159. S. Curran, `Romantic Poetry: Why and Wherefore?' in Curran (ed.), The Cambridge Companion, p. 218. Curran, `Romantic Poetry', pp. 223±6. See also M. Butler, `Repossessing the Past: the Case for an Open Literary History' in Marjorie Levinson, et al., Rethinking Historicism: Critical Readings in Romantic History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989) p. 67. L. Erickson, The Economy of Literary Form: English Literature and the Industrialization of Publishing, 1800±1850 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) pp. 20±1. McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, p. 265. Howe (ed.), The Complete Works IV, 214. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 519. Literary Gazette 4 April 1818, 210. Monthly Review 2nd series, LXXX ( June 1816) 145; Literary Gazette 4 April 1818, 210. Eclectic Review 2nd series, X (November 1818) 486. Edinburgh Review XXVI ( June 1816) 482. Eclectic Review 2nd series, V (April 1816) 380. Monthly Review 2nd series, LXXX ( June 1816) 138. For Josiah Wedgwood and the commercialisation of the potteries in the eighteenth century, see McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, pp. 100±45. See L. A. Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters and Journals (London: John Murray, 1976) VI, 47. Hunt, Foliage, p. 8. See Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979), (trans.) R. Nice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984). For a discussion of commodity and consumer culture, see also A. Appadurai (ed.),



Notes 191

111 112 113 114 115 116

117 118 119 120 121 122 123

The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); S. Bailey (ed.), Commerce and Culture: from Pre-Industrial Art to Post-Industrial Value (London: A Design Museum Book, 1989); R. Bocock, Consumption (London: Routledge, 1993); J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993); G. Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (1967), (trans.) D. NicholsonSmith (New York: Zone Books, 1994); M. Douglas and B. Isherwood, The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 1996); B. Fine and E. Leopold, The World of Consumption (London: Routledge, 1993); P. Falk, The Consuming Body (London: Sage Publications, 1994); T. L. Haskell and R. F. Teichgraeber III (eds), The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); C. Lucy, Consumer Culture (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996); D. Miller, Material Culture and Mass Consumption (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987); S. Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984); Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) in M. J. Adler (ed.), Great Books of the Western World, 2nd edn (Chicago: Encyclopñdia Britannica, 1990) LVII, pp. 1±169. Hunt, Foliage, pp. 12±13.

Howe (ed.), The Complete Works IV, 214.

Morning Post 13 January 1817. Cited in M. Gaull, English Romanticism:

The Human Context (New York: W. W. Norton, 1988) p. 29. Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1820), p. 212. K. N. Cameron and D. H. Reiman (eds), Shelley and his Circle 1773±1822 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973) VI, 740. M. Butler, `Culture's Medium: the Role of the Review' in Curran (ed.), The Cambridge Companion, p. 120. A few critics have mentioned The Literary Pocket-Book, but their main concern (whether biographical, literary-critical, or political) lies in reading Keats the poet, rather than in unravelling the cultural implications embedded in the pocket-book itself. See G. E. Bentley, Jr, `Leigh Hunt's ``Literary Pocket-Book'' 1818±22: A Romantic Source Book', Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 8 (December 1975) 125±8; R. Gittings, John Keats: The Living Year 21 September 1818 to 21 September 1819 (London: William Heinemann, 1954) pp. 236±7; W. Keach, `Cockney Couplets: Keats and the Politics of Style', Studies in Romanticism 25 (Summer 1986) 182±96; Reiman (ed.), The Romantics Reviewed: Part C, p. 594; Roe, `Keats's Commonwealth' in Roe (ed.), Keats and History, pp. 201±5. Cameron and Reiman (eds), Shelley and his Circle VI, 739. London Magazine III ( January 1821) 66. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (December 1819) 246±7. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (December 1819) 236. Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. iii. R. Woof and S. Hebron, John Keats (Grasmere: The Wordsworth Trust, 1995) p. 143. For a photograph of Keats's Lamia volume bound in a fine leather, see Woof and Hebron, John Keats, pp. 142±3.



192 Notes

124 Thomas Stothard (1755±1834) was a painter and book-illustrator who executed illustrations of Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Defoe, Milton, Pope, Shakespeare, Spenser and Rogers. 125 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1821), p. iii.

126 Literary Chronicle 30 December 1820, 834.

127 London Magazine III ( January 1821) 62.

128 London Magazine III ( January 1821) 62.

129 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), n.p.

130 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), p. 151. For various views of this

kaleidoscopic concept, see P. Murray (ed.), Genius: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). 131 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), p. 3. 132 Gay, The Bourgeois Experience I, 28±9. 133 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), p. 202. Hunt's promotion of `classical' taste will be discussed in Chapter 4. 134 Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 7. 135 Gay, The Bourgeois Experience I, 28. 136 OED records that the word `philistine' (À person deficient in liberal culture and enlightenment, whose interests are chiefly bounded by material and commonplace things') was first used in the English language by Carlyle in 1827. According to Stephen Prickett, it was Arnold who appropriated and widely popularised the term in his Culture and Anarchy. See his ```Hebrew'' versus ``Hellene'' as a Principle of Literary Criticism' in G. W. Clarke (ed.), Rediscovering Hellenism: The Hellenic Inheritance and the English Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) p. 138. However, I have noted that William Maginn, as early as 1823, attacked Byron for being associated with `the Philistines of Cockaigne'. It may be argued that the introduction of a new word `philistine' reflected the emergence of the newly educated middle class and the consequent social frictions in the early nineteenth century. See Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XIV ( July 1823) 88. 137 White (ed.), The Collected Works VI, 36, 38±9. From a liberal perspective, however, a public school education did not produce a man of `sound book learnedness' but rather a man `who has been breeched, in his boyhood, into a little bad prosody, and some imperfect verbal criticism . . . who, by dint of favour and acquaintanceship, gets bolstered up to a standing in the lower ranks of a learned profession . . . from which he may never emerge during a life of drawling insignificance and submission, except through such patronage as the political part of the profession can afford to him'. Here the writer was attacking the Oxford-educated Lockhart. See the Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine 2nd Series, I (November 1817) 358. 138 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), p. 1. 139 Literary Chronicle 30 December 1820, 834. 140 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1820), p. 3.

Chapter 3

The aesthetics of nature

1 The literature on nature designed for consumption in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is massive. See M. Andrews, The Search for the



Notes 193

2 3 4

5

6

7 8 9

Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760±1800 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989); A. Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The English Rustic Tradition, 1740±1860 (1986; London: Thames and Hudson, 1987); S. Coley and P. Garside (eds), The Politics of the Picturesque: Literature, Landscape and Aesthetics since 1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); C. Fabricant, `The Literature of Domestic Tourism and the Public Consumption of Private Property' in F. Nussbaum and L. Brown (eds), The New Eighteenth Century: Theory, Politics, English Literature (New York: Methuen, 1987) pp. 254±75; A. Hemingway, Landscape Imagery and Urban Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); J. D. Hunt, Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1992), and The Figure in the Landscape: Poetry, Painting, and Gardening during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1976); J. D. Hunt and P. Willis (eds), The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620±1820 (London: Paul Elek, 1975); S. Pugh (ed.), Reading Landscape: Country-City-Capital (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990); S. Ross, What Gardens Mean (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998); S. Schama, Landscape and Memory (1995; London: Fontana Press, 1996); D. Watkin, The English Vision: The Picturesque in Architecture, Landscape and Garden Design (London: John Murray, 1982); J. R. Watson, Picturesque Landscape and English Romantic Poetry (London: Hutchinson Educational, 1970); T. Williamson, Polite Landscapes: Gardens and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995); T. Williamson and L. Bellamy, Property and Landscape: A Social History of Land Ownership and the English Countryside (London: George Philip, 1987). R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, 2nd edn (London: Fontana Press, 1983) p. 223. M. H. Nicholson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: the Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959). See W. J. Hipple, The Beautiful, the Sublime, and Picturesque in EighteenthCentury British Aesthetic Theory (Carbondale: The Southern Illinois University Press, 1957); M. Price, `The Picturesque Moment' in F. W. Hilles and H. Bloom (eds), From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick A. Pottle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965) pp. 257±92. A more recent study of the sublime and the picturesque as a gendered dichotomy is J. M. Labbe, Romantic Visualities: Landscape, Gender and Romanticism (London: Macmillan, 1998). R. Williams, The Country and the City (1973; London: The Hogarth Press, 1993) p. 128. See also E. A. Bohls, Women Travel Writers and the Language of Aesthetics, 1716±1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); R. Jarvis, Romantic Writing and Pedestrian Travel (London: Macmillan, 1997); E. Moir, The Discovery of Britain: The English Tourists 1540±1840 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964). Cited in C. K. Walker, Walking North with Keats (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992) p. 17. For a discussion of Keats's walking tour, see also J. Glendening, The High Road: Romantic Tourism, Scotland, and Literature, 1720±1820 (London: Macmillan, 1997) pp. 195±219. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 264. F. L. Jones (ed.), The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1964) I, 497. Walker, Walking North with Keats, p. 16.



194 Notes

10 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 329. 11 Brown published his travelogue in the Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal 1, 8, 15 and 22 October 1840. Cited in Walker, Walking North with Keats, pp. 230, 233. 12 Williams, The Country and the City, p. 124. 13 Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology, p. 83. 14 Cited in Hunt and Willis (eds), The Genius of the Place, p. 43. This passage is Walpole's annotation to William Mason's Satirical Poems. 15 M. J. Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850±1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) pp. 7±10. 16 C. Thacker, The Genius of Gardening: The History of Gardens in Britain and Ireland (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994) pp. 189±249. 17 E. Jones, `The Suburban School: Snobbery and Fear in the Attacks on Keats', The Times Literary Supplement 4830 (27 October 1995) 14. 18 Jones, `The Suburban School', p. 14. See also her `Keats in the Suburbs', Keats± Shelley Journal 45 (1996) 23±43, and `The Cockney School of Poetry: Keats in the Suburbs' in R. M. Ryan and R. A. Sharp (eds), The Persistence of Poetry: Bicentennial Essays on Keats (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998) pp. 120±31. 19 W. J. Keith, The Rural Tradition: William Cobbett, Gilbert White, and Other Non-Fiction Prose Writers of the English Countryside (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1975) pp. 9±10. 20 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), pp. 5±40. 21 Leigh Hunt, The Months: Descriptive of the Successive Beauties of the Year (London: C and J Ollier, 1821) p. 5. 22 Hunt, The Months, pp. 5±6. 23 Hunt, The Months, p. 29. 24 Hunt, The Months, p. 111. 25 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 56. 26 Hunt, The Months, pp. 111, 23. 27 Hunt, The Months, p. 112. 28 For a discussion of the `real' life style of the landed classes, see O. Cook, The English Country House: an Art and a Way of Life (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974). 29 Elizabeth Kent, Flora Domestica, or The Portable Flower-Garden; with Directions for the Treatment of Plants in Pots; and Illustrations from the Works of the Poets (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1823). Kent produced Flora Domestica with Hunt's practical help and encouragement. Two years later, she published another botany, Sylvan Sketches; or, A Companion to the Park and the Shrubbery: with Illustrations from the Works of the Poets (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1825), whose purpose was to convey the botanical knowledge about trees and shrubs in non-technical terms. These two botanical books of Kent have much in common with Hunt's The Months, in terms of education as well as entertainment. 30 Kent, Flora Domestica, p. xxxii. 31 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 51. 32 Hunt, The Months, p. 113. 33 Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1820), p. 142. 34 Hunt, The Months, p. 100.



Notes 195

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

45

46 47 48 49

50 51 52

Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), p. 215.

Hunt, The Months, p. 69.

Hunt, The Months, p. 68.

All poetical citations are from H. S. Milford (ed.), The Poetical Works of Leigh

Hunt (London: Oxford University Press, 1923). R. Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987) p. 39. Porter, `Material Pleasures', p. 21. Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1820), p. 142. Cited in W. Bates, ` ``The Months'', By Leigh Hunt', Notes and Queries 4th series, VI (6 August 1870) 108. Bates, ```The Months'', By Leigh Hunt', p. 108. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 244±5. Retiring to the country and having a leisured life constituted every city-worker's dream. We can be fairly certain that an increasing number of middle-class people could afford early retirement in the early nineteenth century. J. Taylor's [not Keats's publisher John Taylor] catalogue of books on architecture (1816) includes Architectural Sketches for Cottages, Rural Dwellings, and Villas: with Plans, suitable to Persons of genteel Life and moderate Fortune: proper for Picturesque Buildings, and Sketches for Country Houses, Villas, and Rural Dwellings; calculated for Persons of moderate Income, and for comfortable Retirement, both of which are advertised as èlegantly engraved in Aquatinta'. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 521. Vauxhall was London's most sumptuous pleasure garden, equipped with walks, arbours, statues, tableaux and fountains, and entertaining its visitors with orchestras and fireworks. (In August 1814, the sight of an unknown woman at Vauxhall inspired the young Keats to compose a short poem `Fill for me a brimming bowl'.) There were numerous (indeed, 200 or so) pleasure gardens dotted amongst London suburbs, whose affordable accessibility `perfectly embodied the Georgian pleasure revolution'. See Porter, `Material Pleasures', p. 29. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 74, 73.

Nicholson (ed.), Lord Byron, p. 157.

Hunt, Foliage, p. 18.

S. Curran, Poetic Form and British Romanticism (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1986) p. 85. For the definition of pastoral, see P. Alpers, What Is Pastoral? (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996); W. Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (1935; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1995); F. Kermode, English Pastoral Poetry, from the Beginnings to Marvell (London: George G. Harrap, 1952); L. Lerner, The Uses of Nostalgia: Studies in Pastoral Poetry (London: Chatto and Windus, 1972); P. V. Marinelli, Pastoral (London: Methuen, 1971); A. Patterson, Pastoral and Ideology: Virgil to ValeÂry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); S. Snyder, Pastoral Process: Spenser, Marvell, Milton (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); H. Toliver, Pastoral Forms and Attitudes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971); R. Poggioli, The Oaten Flute: Essays on Pastoral Poetry and the Pastoral Ideal (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1975). Kermode, English Pastoral Poetry, p. 14.

Hunt, Foliage, pp. 18±19.

Augustan Review II (May 1816) 475.



196 Notes

53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

66 67 68

Eclectic Review 2nd series, V (April 1816) 382.

Jones, `The Suburban School', p. 14.

Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), p. 215.

Kent, Flora Domestica, p. xxix.

Eclectic Review 2nd series, X (November 1818) 492±3.


Literary Gazette 4 April 1818, 210, 211.

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 74.

Quarterly Review XVIII ( January 1818) 324±5. Hunt claimed that Horace was his favourite of the Latin poets. See The Story of Rimini, p. xviii. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 74. C. Thacker, The Wildness Pleases: The Origins of Romanticism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983) p. 78. Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology, p. 85. As Frances Ferguson points out, ìt is still somewhat startling to find that critics influenced by structuralist and deconstructivist approaches ignore the neat binarism of ``the sublime and the beautiful'' in their rush to the ``real'' subject, the sublime.' See her Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 45. However, the first study devoted to the discourse of the beautiful as an emerging middle-class taste is R. W. Jones, Gender and the Formation of Taste in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Analysis of Beauty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Tom Furniss is the first and only critic who pays close attention to an implicated and mutually constitutive relation between the sublime and the beautiful in his Edmund Burke's Aesthetic Ideology: Language, Gender and Political Economy in Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Furniss argues that Burke's Enquiry provided an philosophical underpinning to the political and economic project of the eighteenth-century new commercial middle class, enabling `the endeavours of economic individualism to appear as the very apotheosis of sublimity by shunning a particular figuration of the beautiful which associates it with sloth and indulgence' (p. 48). In perceived contrast to Burke's invention of a sublime labourer, Hunt forged an image of a nature-lover as a legitimate bourgeois subject. It may even be argued that the rising affluence of the new middle class enabled its identity to be upgraded from the sublimity of its commercial enterprise to the beauty of its cultivated gardens. For criticism of the sublime in general, see S. H. Monk, The Sublime: A Study of Critical Theory in Eighteenth-Century England (1935; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960); N. Hertz, The End of the Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985); W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1986); P. de Bolla, The Discourse of the Sublime: Readings in History, Aesthetics and the Subject (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); H. Sussman, Psyche and Text: The Sublime and the Grandiose in Literature, Psychopathology, and Culture (New York: State University of New York Press, 1993). Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 520. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine II (October 1817) 39, 40. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 521.



Notes 197

69 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine II (October 1817) 41, 39.

70 L. Metzger, One Foot in Eden: Modes of Pastoral in Romantic Poetry (Chapel

Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986) p. xii. 71 Curran, Poetic Form, p. 90. 72 Williams, The Country and the City, p. 291. 73 Marinelli, Pastoral, p. 11. 74 T. G. Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet: Theocritus and the European Pastoral Lyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969) pp. 11±12. 75 Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet, p. 186. 76 Hunt, The Months, pp. 86±7. 77 Hunt, The Months, pp. 72±5. 78 L. H. Houtchens and C. W. Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956) p. 596. 79 J. Barrell and J. Bull (eds), The Penguin Book of English Pastoral Verse (London: Allen Lane, 1974) p. 4. See also J. Barrell, The Idea of Landscape and the Sense of Place 1730±1840: An Approach to the Poetry of John Clare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), and The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting 1730±1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (eds), The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); N. Everett, The Tory View of Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); T. Fulford, Landscape, Liberty and Authority: Poetry, Criticism and Politics from Thomson to Wordsworth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); E. K. Helsinger, Rural Scenes and National Representation: Britain, 1815±1850 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); P. Horn, The Rural World, 1780±1850: Social Change in the English Countryside (London: Hutchinson, 1980); M. McKeon, `The Pastoral Revolution' in K. Sharpe and S. N. Zwicker (eds), Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics from the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) pp. 267±89. 80 Hunt, The Months, p. 30. 81 Hunt, The Months, p. 72. 82 Hunt, The Months, p. 95. 83 Edinburgh Review XXVI ( June 1816) 477. 84 For criticism of the sublime in Romanticism, see J. B. Twitchell, Romantic Horizons: Aspects of the Sublime in English Poetry and Painting, 1770±1850 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983); J. G. Voller, The Supernatural Sublime: The Metaphysics of Terror in Anglo-American Romanticism (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994); T. Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976). For criticism of individual Romantic poets and the sublime, see V. A. de Luca, Words of Eternity: Blake and the Poetics of the Sublime (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); A. O. Wlecke, Wordsworth and the Sublime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); S. Knapp, Personification and the Sublime: Milton to Coleridge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985); A. Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime: An Interpretation of the Major Poems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); S. A. Ende, Keats and the Sublime (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976); W. P. Albrecht, The



198 Notes

85 86 87 88

89 90 91

92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102

Sublime Pleasures of Tragedy: A Study of Critical Theory from Dennis to Keats (Lawrence: The University Press of Kansas, 1975). Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, (ed.) J. T. Boulton, rev. edn (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987) p. 57. Hunt, The Months, p. 9.


See J. Bate, Shakespeare and the English Romantic Imagination (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1986), Shakespearean Constitutions: Politics, Theatre, Criticism 1730±1830 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), and `The Politics of Romantic Shakespearean Criticism: Germany, England, France', European Romantic Review 1:1 (Summer 1990) 1±26; J. Bate (ed.), The Romantics on Shakespeare (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992); M. Dobson, The Making of the National Poet: Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Authorship, 1660±1769 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); O. LeWinter (ed), Shakespeare in Europe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963); G. Taylor, Reinventing Shakespeare: A Cultural History from the Restoration to the Present (1990; London: Vintage, 1991). Hunt, The Months, p. 53.


Hunt, Foliage, p. 26. Keats's marginalia in his copy of Paradise Lost indicates

his faithful absorption of Hunt's pastoral poetics: `he [Milton] had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of ease and pleasure, poetical Luxury.' While observing the predominance of Christian ethics over `the pleasures of Song' in Milton, Keats still regarded the latter as `the finest parts of the poem'. See H. B. Forman (ed.), The Complete Works of John Keats (Glasgow: Gowands and Gray, 1901) III, 256. The first systematic analysis of, and the most accurate and complete transcription of Keats's Paradise Lost markings is B. Lau, Keats's Paradise Lost (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998). See also L. Brisman, Milton's Poetry of Choice and Its Romantic Heirs (Ithaca: Cornell University press, 1973); L. Newlyn, Paradise Lost and the Romantic Reader (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). [Thornton] Hunt (ed.), The Correspondence II, 264.

Howe (ed.), The Complete Works V, 70±4.

Henry Todd's variorum edition of Spenser (London, 1805) III, 147. Cited in

G. Kucich, `Leigh Hunt and Romantic Spenserianism', Keats-Shelley Journal 37 (1988) 118. The volume is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum Library. I owe the information about Hunt's annotations in that volume entirely to Kucich. Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism, p. 421.

Kucich, `Leigh Hunt', p. 119. For Hazlitt's similar selection of the `finest

things in Spenser', see Howe (ed.), The Complete Works V, 38. Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism, pp. 420 ff. For modern critics' distaste for the Romantic view of Spenser, see G. Kucich, Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991) pp. 1±7. Hunt, The Story of Rimini, pp. vii±viii. Milford (ed.), The Poetical Works, p. xxvi. Hunt, The Story of Rimini, p. xiii. Hunt, The Months, pp. 83±4.



Notes 199

200 Notes 103 Hunt, The Story of Rimini, p. xix. 104 Kent, Sylvan Sketches, p. xx.

Classicism as cultural luxury

1 T. Webb, `Romantic Hellenism' in Curran (ed.), The Cambridge Companion, p. 150. 2 Clarke (ed.), Rediscovering Hellenism, p. xiii. 3 J. Britton and A. Pugin, Illustrations of the Public Buildings of London: with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of each Edifice (London: J. Taylor, 1825) I, iv. For another valuable contemporary record of London buildings, some of which have been irrecoverably demolished, see J. Elmes, Metropolitan Improvements; or London in the Nineteenth Century: Displayed in a Series of Engravings of the New Buildings, Improvements, &c. (London: Jones, 1829). 4 Britton and Pugin, Illustrations I, iv. 5 M. L. Clarke, Greek Studies in England 1700±1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1945) p. 211. 6 Clarke, Greek Studies, pp. 212±14. See also J. M. Crook, The Greek Revival: Neo-Classical Attitudes in British Architecture 1760±1870 (London: John Murray, 1972). 7 See D. Bush, Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937); J. Buxton, The Grecian Taste: Literature in the Age of Neo-Classicism 1740±1820 (London: Macmillan, 1978); H. Levin, The Broken Column: A Study in Romantic Hellenism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1931); T. Spencer, Fair Greece Sad Relic: Literary Philhellenism from Shakespeare to Byron (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954); B. H. Stern, The Rise of Romantic Hellenism in English Literature 1732±1786 (Menasha, Wisconsin: George Banta Publishing Company, 1940); T. Webb, English Romantic Hellenism 1700±1824 (New York: Manchester University Press, 1982). 8 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 274. 9 J. Richardson (ed.), Letters from Lambeth: The Correspondence of the Reynolds Family with John Freeman Milward Dovaston 1808±1815 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1981) p. 74. 10 For the rise of English nationalism, see L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707±1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); G. Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History 1740±1830 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987); M. B. Ross, `Romancing the Nation-State: The Poetics of Romantic Nationalism' in J. Arac and H. Ritvo (eds), Macropolitics of Nineteenth-Century Literature: Nationalism, Exoticism, Imperialism (1991; Durham: Duke University Press, 1995) pp. 56±85; R. Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: The Making and Unmaking of British National Identity, 3 vols. (London: Routledge, 1989); D. Simpson, Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Revolt against Theory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993). 11 Hunt, Foliage, pp. 31, 33, 35. 12 Hunt, Foliage, p. 35. 13 L. H. Houtchens and C. W. Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Dramatic Criticism, 1808±1831 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949) p. 324.



Chapter 4

14 Hunt, Foliage, p. 31. 15 R. Ingpen and W. E. Peck (eds), The Complete Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Ernest Benn, 1927) III, 8. 16 See Augustus William [August Wilhelm von] Schlegel, A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, (trans.) J. Black, 2 vols. (London: Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1815); Frederick [Friedrich von] Schlegel, Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern, (trans.) [ J. G. Lockhart], 2 vols. (Edinburgh: William Blackwood, 1818); Friedrich von Schiller, Naive and Sentimental Poetry and On the Sublime: Two Essays, (trans.) J. A. Elias (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing, 1966). See also E. M. Butler, The Tyranny of Greece over Germany: A Study of the Influence Exercised by Greek Art and Poetry over the Great German Writers of the Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935); H. C. Hatfield, Aesthetic Paganism in German Literature: From Winckelmann to the Death of Goethe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964); D. Simpson (ed.), The Origins of Modern Critical Thought: German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism from Lessing to Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 17 See Schlegel, A Course of Lectures I, 10.

18 Ingpen and Peck (eds), The Complete Works III, 8.

19 Baroness StaeÈl Holstein, Germany, (trans.), 3 vols. (London: John Murray,

1813); for the translation of A. W. Schlegel's Vorlesungen, see n. 16 above. During the last decade of the eighteenth century, German authors enjoyed unprecedented popularity in England. A number of rather inferior translations of Gothic novels, dramas and ballads flooded the English literary market. Around the turn of the century, however, the `Strum und Drang' literature came to be equated with Jacobinism and moral decay in antirevolutionary and politically sensitive England. The English rage for German literature died out, and a period of indifference followed until the longdrawn Napoleonic Wars sufficiently consolidated the Teutonic alliance in the second decade of the nineteenth century. See R. Ashton, The German Idea: Four English Writers and the Reception of German Thought 1800±1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); B. Q. Morgan, A Critical Bibliography of German Literature in English Translation 1481±1927 with Supplement Embracing the Years 1928±1935, rev. edn (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1938); B. Q. Morgan and A. R. Hohlfeld (eds), German Literature in British Magazines 1750±1860 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1949); T. G. Sauer, A. W. Schlegel's Shakespearean Criticism in England, 1811±1846 (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1981); V. Stockley, German Literature as Known in England 1750±1830 (London: Routledge, 1929). 20 The size of the first edition of Germany was 5,000 (the French edition was 2,750, the English 2,250); 3,500 was an impressive sales figure, given that the standard size of the first edition for a serious literary work in 1813 was said to be 750. Since Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespear's Plays (1817) was published in 1,000 copies, the size of Schlegel's Lectures (1815) was also likely to have been around 1,000. Yet even the highly influential Lectures took four years to be sold out. See Sauer, A. W. Schlegel's Shakespearean Criticism, pp. 58, 171±2. According to John Claiborne Isbell, however, the first French edition of 1,500 sold out in three days, so that Murray brought out a second six weeks later. Isbell agrees with Sauer about the size of the first English edition, which



Notes 201

21 22 23

24

25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

was à huge print run for a three-volume work'. See his The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in StaeÈl's `De l'Allemagne', 1810±1813 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 2. StaeÈl Holstein, Germany II, 380. Quarterly Review X ( January 1814) 362. For the reviews of Germany, see the British Review V (February 1814) 424±70; Critical Review V ( January, April 1814) 67±76, 359±73; Eclectic Review I ( January 1814) 1±27; Edinburgh Review XXII ( January 1814) 198±238; Monthly Review 2nd series, LXXII (December 1813) 421±6, LXXIII ( January, April 1814) 63±8, 352±65, and LXXIV ( July 1814) 268±75; Quarterly Review X ( January 1814) 355±409. For Hazlitt's review of Germany, which appeared in the Morning Chronicle 13 November 1813, 3 and 17 February 1814, and 3 March 1814, see Howe (ed.), The Complete Works XIX, 5±9, and XX, 12±36. For the reviews of Lectures, see the Augustan Review II (March, April 1816) 297±308, 349±60; British Review X (November 1817) 434±84; Champion 21 January 1816, 22±3; Edinburgh Review XXVI (February 1816) 67±107; Monthly Review 2nd series, LXXXI (October 1816) 113±28; Quarterly Review XII (October 1814) 112±46. G. W. Stocking, Jr, Victorian Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1987) p. 62. See also M. Oergel, `The Redeeming Teuton: Nineteenth-Century Notions of the ``Germanic'' in England and Germany' in G. Cubitt (ed.), Imagining Nations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) pp. 75±91; C. A. Simmons, Reversing the Conquest: History and Myth in NineteenthCentury British Literature (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990). Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, the grandson of Charles Wentworth Dilke, one of Keats's close friends, was an earnest advocate of such racial ideology. See C. W. Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries During 1866 and 1867, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1868). StaeÈl Holstein, Germany I, 310. StaeÈl Holstein, Germany I, 310. StaeÈl Holstein, Germany I, 310. Hunt, Foliage, pp. 9, 10. Hunt, Foliage, p. 11. For the aristocratic adoption of Roman ideals in the eighteenth century, see P. Ayres, Classical Culture and the Idea of Rome in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Hunt, Foliage, p. 12. Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. ix. Hunt, Foliage, pp. 13, 12. McKendrick, et al., The Birth of a Consumer Society, p. 272. Richardson (ed.), Letters, p. 70. Richardson (ed.), Letters, p. 178. The author was Richard Valpy, who served as a successful headmaster of Reading School from 1781 to 1832. Richardson (ed.), Letters, pp. 70, 74. Richardson (ed.), Letters, p. 70. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 212. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 274. Webb, English Romantic Hellenism, p. 15. Hunt, Foliage, pp. 31, 32. Hunt, Foliage, p. 31.



202 Notes

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67

68 69


StaeÈl Holstein, Germany I, 310.

Hunt, Foliage, pp. 22±3.





Hunt, Foliage, pp. 20, 18.


Hazlitt (ed.), Select British Poets, p. xiv.


Hunt, The Months, pp. 67, 74.

Hunt, The Story of Rimini, p. xvii. The English translation of Tragedies of Aeschylus was published in 1795, with the engraved illustrations by John Flaxman, who designed the pottery for Wedgwood from 1775 to 1787. Hunt, Foliage, p. 31.


Hunt, Foliage, p. 35. Hunt cited the phrase `the poetry of gladness' from

Schlegel, A Course of Lectures I, 12. Hunt, Foliage, p. 35. Examiner 11 October 1818, 648. Champion 7 June 1818, 363. Hunt, Foliage, pp. 21, 23±4. See L. Crompton, Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century England (London: Faber and Faber, 1985); L. Dowling, Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). In translating the pastoral conversation between Comatas and Lacon from Theocritus's Idyll V, Hunt cunningly transformed the latter's homosexual propensity into a heterosexual desire (The Months, p. 74). Hunt, Foliage, p. 21.

Morpurgo (ed.), The Autobiography, pp. 76±7.

T. Taylor (ed.), The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon

(London: Peter Davis, 1926) I, 122. One may wonder why Coleridge, who also attended Christ's Hospital as a charity boy, was never thought to be uneducated. Christ's Hospital provided children from poor families with a classical education no less prestigious than that of public schools. Whereas Coleridge became a `Grecian', the very best scholar intended for a university, Hunt left school when he was a `Deputy Grecian'. In fact, the disparity in academic achievement between the two to some degree mirrored that in their literary predilections. While young Coleridge (already interested in classical philosophy) was known to recite Homer or Pindar in Greek, Hunt was devouring Ènglish' poetry and novels from the circulating libraries as an escape from classical exercises. It was Hunt's overt fondness for vernacular (and hence `popular') literature that reviewers perceived as particularly vulgar and ill-educated. See R. Ashton, The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996) pp. 19±32; Morpurgo (ed.), The Autobiography, pp. 82±107. Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle II, 147±8. Clarke, Recollections, p. 124.



Notes 203

70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84

85 86 87

88

89 90 91

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XIII (May 1823) 534. British Critic 2nd series, X ( July 1818) 95. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 522. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine III (August 1818) 522. Hunt's ignorance of Greek dramatists (admitted in the preface to The Story of Rimini) may be attributed to the fact that only the Grecian (which Hunt was not) could learn Greek plays at Christ's Hospital. See Morpurgo (ed.), The Autobiography, p. 73. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XIII (May 1823) 534. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XIII (May 1823) 534. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XIII (May 1823) 541. Hunt, Foliage, p. 21. Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters VIII, 103. Eclectic Review 2nd series, X (November 1818) 493. Indicator 7 June 1820, 277. Indicator 17 November 1819, 47. Indicator 17 November 1819, 47±8. Clarke, Recollections, p. 134. I. Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967) p. 132. Although this is a pioneering study in the relationship of Keats's poetry to the visual arts, Jack's concern is mainly to discover, and hence recover, the `pictures' in Keats's poems, rather than to unravel the cultural implications in the poet's indebtedness to the visual arts. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine XIII (May 1823) 534. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 67. Roe and Cox also discuss `Cockney classicism' in John Keats, pp. 60±87, and in Poetry and Politics, pp. 146±86, respectively. While Roe identifies Cockney classicism with revolutionary neoclassicism in the 1790s, Cox sees the erotic poetics of a Roman poet Catullus as providing the programme for Cockney poetry. Neither of them, however, draws a distinction between Roman-based neoclassicism and Romantic Hellenism. Leigh Hunt, A Day by the Fire; and Other Papers, Hitherto Uncollected, (ed.) J. E. Babson (London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1870) p. 59. John Julius Angerstein (1735±1823) was a successful merchant, and also amateur of fine art. In 1824, the government obtained Angerstein's collection of pictures, which became the nucleus of the National Gallery. Along with the Stafford Gallery of Thomas Hope, the Marquis of Stafford and the Leicester Gallery of Sir John Leicester, the Angerstein Gallery was one of an increasing number of private galleries in which wealthy (and often aristocratic) collectors opened their own art collections to the general public. See Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art, pp. xxi±xxii. In April 1819, Keats went to the Leicester Gallery: Ì went with Hunt to Sir John Leicester's gallery there I saw Northcote ± Hilton ± Bewick and many more of great and Little note.' This partially substantiates Lockhart's complaint that Cockney bardlings were firing off sonnets at each other ìn the lobbies of the Theatres, and . . . in Sir John Leicester's gallery'. See Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 83; Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 76. London Magazine I (April 1820) 385. London Magazine I (April 1820) 385±6. Quarterly Review XVIII ( January 1818) 329±30.



204 Notes

92 93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100

101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109

110 111 112 113

Eclectic Review 2nd series, X (November 1818) 491. Hunt, The Story of Rimini, p. xiii. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 74. Indicator 31 May 1820, 271. Paul Colnaghi (1751±1833) was an Italian print dealer, who became naturalised and settled himself in England. W. St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, 3rd rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 170. St. Clair, Lord Elgin, p. 170. See also J. Black, The British and The Grand Tour (London: Croom Helm, 1985); E. Chaney, The Evolution of the Grand Tour: Anglo-Italian Cultural Relations since the Renaissance (London: Frank Cass, 1998); A. Wilton and I. Bignamini (eds), Grand Tour: The Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1996). F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500±1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) p. 79. Clarke, Greek Studies, pp. 186±7. T. Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807) pp. 11, 12. Hope acknowledged that he drew his designs from works èither representing actual remains of antiquity, or modern composition in the antique style' (p. 51). For a list of those works (which includes Stuart and Rivett's Antiquities of Athens, and John Flaxman's engraved illustrations to Homer and Aeschylus), see pp. 51±3. Hope, Household Furniture, p. 6. Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, pp. 96±8. Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, p. 96. Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, p. 98. Aileen Ward suggests that it was Fanny Brawne who gave Keats the Tassie gem with the Greek lyre and Latin motto for a Christmas present in 1818. See her John Keats, p. 237. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 45±6. For the pictures of Tassie's Leander gem and others, see the plate IX in Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art. Indicator 17 November 1819, 48. See R. E. Raspe, A Descriptive Catalogue of a General Collection of Ancient and Modern Engraved Gems, Cameos as well as Intaglios, Taken from the Most Celebrated Cabinets in Europe; and Cast in Coloured Pastes, White Enamel, and Sulphur, by James Tassie, Modeller; Arranged and Described by R. E. Raspe (London: James Tassie, and John Murray, 1791) I, ii. In a similar fashion, Wedgwood ware came to be regarded and respected not merely as faithful reproductions but as authentic art. For the socio-cultural upgrading of Wedgwood from a manufacturer to an antiquarian-artist, see M. Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992) pp. 38±40. Raspe, A Descriptive Catalogue I, ii. See Stillinger (ed.), John Keats, p. 428. Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters II, 23. J. C. Hobhouse, A Journey through Albania and Other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the Years 1809 and 1810, 2nd edn (London: James Cawthorn, 1813) I, 301±2.



Notes 205

114 For the excavating activities of such marble-mongers, see St. Clair, Lord Elgin, and also C. P. Bracken, Antiquities Acquired: The Spoliation of Greece (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1975). 115 Crook, The Greek Revival, p. 41. For philhellenism, see W. St. Clair, That Greece might still be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London: Oxford University Press, 1972); R. Clogg (ed.), The Movement for Greek Independence 1770±1821: A Collection of Documents (London: Macmillan, 1976). 116 Taylor (ed.), The Autobiography I, 67±8. 117 Taylor (ed.), The Autobiography I, 144. 118 Howe (ed.), The Complete Works XVIII, 100, and X, 222; see also X, 168±9. 119 Howe (ed.), The Complete Works XVIII, 101. 120 Howe (ed.), The Complete Works XVIII, 101±2. 121 See the Society of Dilettanti, Specimens of Ancient Sculpture, ágyptian, Etruscan, Greek, and Roman: Selected from Different Collections in Great Britain, 2 vols. (London: T. Payne and J. White, 1809, 1835). The specimens were largely taken from the private collections of Richard Payne Knight, Thomas Hope and John Townley. 122 `No poet,' as Douglas Bush puts it, `shows so clearly as Keats the active presence of classical myth in the air.' See his Pagan Myth and Christian Tradition in English Poetry (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1968) p. 45. For the comments made by contemporary, Victorian and modern readers on Keats's `Greekness', see S. A. Larrabee, English Bards and Grecian Marbles: The Relationship between Sculpture and Poetry Especially in the Romantic Period (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943) pp. 204±6. 123 T. Hope, Costume of the Ancients, new and enlarged edn (London: William Miller, 1812) p. ix. Grecian draperies of female dress were very much in vogue in the Regency period. 124 Hope, Costume, p. x. 125 Hope, Costume, p. xv. 126 Cited in Crook, The Greek Revival, p. 42. Hope's Costume of the Ancients included a number of illustrations of `Grecian head-dresses'. 127 Cited in Crook, The Greek Revival, p. 134. 128 Curran, `Romantic Poetry', p. 228. See also R. M. Ryan, `The Politics of Greek Religion' in de Almeida (ed.), Critical Essays, pp. 261±79. For a discussion of Keats's espousal of the mythology of Greece, of the folklore of Great Britain, and of the poetics of the Elizabethans, all of which constitute an alternative ± secular and matriarchal ± ideology to the `foreign' Hebrew religion, see D. Edwards, `Keats, Mythology and the Politics of Sexuality', D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1996. 129 For Hunt's views as a political journalist, see Gilmartin, Print Politics; G. D. Stout, The Political History of Leigh Hunt's Examiner Together with an Account of `The Book' (Saint Louis: Washington University Studies, 1949); C. R. Woodring, `Leigh Hunt as Political Essayist' in L. H. Houtchens and C. W. Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Political and Occasional Essays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1962) pp. 3±71. For the `literary' side of the Examiner, see E. Blunden, Leigh Hunt's Èxaminer' Examined (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1928). 130 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 396.



206 Notes

131 Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 257. 132 For the contemporary religious milieu, see R. M. Ryan, Keats: The Religious Sense (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976) p. 90: `The rise of Methodism and Evangelicalism, with their emphasis on sin and guilt, made damnation a popular subject among preachers, whose sermons would depict in lurid detail the eternal tortures awaiting unrepentant sinners. The doctrine, which receives little attention in the New Testament, was regarded by many in this period as close to the essential core of the faith.' See also Ryan's latest work, The Romantic Reformation: Religious Politics in English Literature, 1789±1824 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 133 Leigh Hunt, An Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism. In a series of essays, first published in the weekly paper called the Examiner, and now enlarged with a preface and additional notes (London: John Hunt, Examiner Office, 1809) p. vi. See also Hazlitt's satirical essay Òn the Causes of Methodism' in The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners (Edinburgh: Archibald Constable, 1817) I, 163±72. 134 Hunt, An Attempt, pp. vii, vi. 135 Hunt, An Attempt, p. vi. Byron's position was essentially the same as Hunt's and Shelley's in this respect. 136 In À Calendar of Observers', in the 1820 edition of The Literary Pocket-Book, Hunt labelled a melancholic Methodist as `The Bigot' in perceived contrast with the cheerful òbserver of Nature'. Barry Cornwall contributed to the same Literary Pocket-Book four sonnets on the respective seasons, in the first one of which he styled himself as an observer of nature who `sees beyond the slave's or bigot's guess' (p. 138). 137 Hunt, Foliage, p. 15. 138 Hunt, The Months, p. 121. 139 Hunt, The Months, p. 68. 140 Cited from the first volume of Cary's translation of Dante (Inferno V. 39±40). See H. F. Cary (trans.), The Vision; or, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. (London: Taylor and Hessey, 1814). 141 Hunt, Foliage, p. 17. 142 Eclectic Review 2nd series, V (April 1816) 385. 143 Hunt, The Months, p. 120. 144 W. B. Pope (ed.), The Diary of Benjamin Robert Haydon (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960, 1963) II, 68. 145 Examiner 12 November 1815, 731. 146 See Pope (ed.), The Diary II, 81, 83. 147 Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle I, 34±5. 148 British Critic 2nd series, IX ( June 1818) 652. 149 Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle II, 143±4. 150 Eclectic Review 2nd series, X (November 1818) 488. 151 Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 170. 152 Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 169. 153 Examiner 12 November 1815, 732. 154 Ingpen and Peck (eds), The Complete Works II, 173. 155 Hunt, The Months, p. 68. 156 Ingpen and Peck (eds), The Complete Works II, 173.



Notes 207

157 Examiner 11 October 1818, 649. 158 Hunt, Foliage, p. 26. It seems that Èastern' was understood as `Hebrew' or `Biblical' in Hunt's circle. See Keats's Endymion, Book VI, 10. 159 For a discussion of Shelley's Hellenism, see J. Wallace, Shelley and Greece: Rethinking Romantic Hellenism (London: Macmillan, 1997). 160 W. J. B. Owen and J. W. Smyser (eds), The Prose Works of William Wordsworth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974) III, 34. 161 Owen and Smyser (eds), The Prose Works III, 34±5. 162 Owen and Smyser (eds), The Prose Works III, 35. 163 Schlegel, A Course of Lectures I, 12. 164 Schlegel, A Course of Lectures I, 15. 165 Howe (ed.), The Complete Works V, 162. 166 Examiner 4 May 1817, 275. 167 Quarterly Review XVI ( January 1817) 551. 168 Pope (ed.), The Diary II, 67. 169 Pope (ed.), The Diary II, 68. 170 W. Sharp (ed.), The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Company, 1892) p. 29. For a discussion of Keats's embrace of the life-affirming `religion of Beauty', rather than Christianity, as a mode of consolation, see R. A. Sharp, Keats, Skepticism, and the Religion of Beauty (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1979).

Chapter 5

À leafy luxury': Poems (1817)

1 For the `metaphysical' analysis of Keats, see E. R. Wasserman, The Finer Tone: Keats' Major Poems (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953); and for the opposing `realistic' view held mainly by the `Harvard Keatsians', see J. Stillinger, The Hoodwinking of Madeline and Other Essays on Keats's Poems (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1971). For later criticism mediating those extremist views, see M. Dickstein, Keats and His Poetry: A Study in Development (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1971); K. Muir (ed.), John Keats: A Reassessment (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1958); S. M. Sperry, Keats the Poet (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973). 2 Leavis, Revaluation, p. 14. 3 Stillinger, The Hoodwinking, p. vii. 4 For a discussion of the stylistic development of Keats, see W. J. Bate, The Stylistic Development of Keats (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1945); C. L. Finney, The Evolution of Keats's Poetry, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936); M. R. Ridley, Keats' Craftsmanship: A Study in Poetic Development (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1933). 5 Bate, John Keats, pp. 77±8. 6 For the peculiarities of Hunt's poetic diction imitated by Keats, see Bate, John Keats, pp. 78±81; Finney, The Evolution I, 107±8; B. Miller, Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats (New York: Columbia University Press, 1910) pp. 57±9. 7 Leavis, Revaluation, p. 217. 8 J. R. MacGillivray, Keats: A Bibliography and Reference Guide with an Essay on Keats' Reputation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1949) p. xix. 9 Bate, John Keats, p. 78.



208 Notes

10 For the rising appreciation and appropriation of a posthumous Keats, see Wolfson, `Keats enters History'. 11 For the posthumous popularity of Keats especially among female readers, see Wolfson, `Feminizing Keats' in de Almeida (ed.), Critical Essays, pp. 317±56. 12 See Leigh Hunt, The Months: Descriptive of the Successive Beauties of the Year by Leigh Hunt. With Biographical Introduction by William Andrews (London: William Andrews, 1897) p. xi. Another reprint of The Months is R. H. B. (ed.), Leigh Hunt's `The Months': An Enchanting Companion For Nature Lovers (London: Ingpen and Grant, 1929). 13 See A. Symons, The Romantic Movement in English Poetry (London: Archibald Constable, 1909) p. 218. 14 R. Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism 1750±1950 (1955; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) III, 125. 15 C. D. Thorpe, Àn Essay in Evaluation by Clarence DeWitt Thorpe: Leigh Hunt as Man of Letters' in Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism, pp. 3±73. 16 Thorpe, Àn Essay', pp. 12, 14. Donald H. Reiman makes a similar claim more cogently in `Leigh Hunt in Literary History: A Response' in R. A. McCown (ed.), The Life and Times of Leigh Hunt: Papers Delivered at a Symposium at the University of Iowa, April 13, 1984 Commemorating the 200th Anniversary of Leigh Hunt's Birth (Iowa City: Friends of the University of Iowa Libraries, 1985) pp. 73±99. 17 Thorpe, Àn Essay', p. 14.

18 J. O. Hayden, `Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini: Reloading the Romantic Canon',

Durham University Journal 79 (1987) 279±87. 19 Hayden, `Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini', p. 287. 20 R. S. Edgecombe, Leigh Hunt and the Poetry of Fancy (London: Associated University Press, 1994) p. 12. Edgecombe finds the rococo sensibility ± ornamental, recreational and pleasurable ± in Hunt's poetry. He identifies the rococo mode as à transhistorical conception of a set of values, rather than a critical concept that defines a historic reality' (p. 23). Accordingly, Edgecombe entirely misses the social and cultural implications in Hunt's predilection for decorative descriptiveness. 21 Edgecombe, Leigh Hunt, p. 9.

22 Edgecombe, Leigh Hunt, p. 9.

23 Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet, p. 114. See also Marinelli, Pastoral, pp. 51±2.

24 Hunt, The Months, p. 51.

25 Edgecombe characterises Hunt's celebration of nature as `the highly un natural (because selected and filtered) vision of rococo pastorale' (Leigh Hunt, p. 29). Much more perceptively, Curran notes the centrality of the pastoral genre in Hunt's poetics in Poetic Form, pp. 237±8: `There can be no question that Leigh Hunt conceived of his first mature collection of poems, Foliage (1820), as centered in pastoral values. . . . The argument could be advanced that Hunt was more interested in the genre than Keats and the better poet in using it.' 26 Rosenmeyer, The Green Cabinet, p. 10. 27 See S. Connor, Àesthetics, Pleasure and Value' in S. Regan (ed.), The Politics of Pleasure: Aesthetics and Cultural Theory (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992) pp. 203±20.



Notes 209

28 Connor, Àesthetics', pp. 204±9. 29 Marie Mulvey Roberts points out a similar problem in the preface to Pleasure, (eds) Porter and Roberts, p. x: `Considering how important eighteenthcentury pleasure was to its participants, it is surprising that so little has been written directly on the subject. . . . To a great extent, its history has been marginalised by the more acceptable subjects of happiness or desire. Because of its associations with immediate gratification, the pleasurable has been devalued partly because it has been seen as being more accessible to the populace than to the elite.' 30 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), (trans.) J. Cumming, 2nd edn (London: Verso, 1986) p. 140. 31 Ward, John Keats, p. 24. 32 Although modern critics customarily use the word `profession' as a synonym for òccupation' (and Keats himself once mentioned `the apothecaryprofession'), the former assumes a distinct air of social superiority. While the term is now ùsually applied to an occupation considered to be socially superior to a trade or handicraft', it used to specifically denote `the three learned professions of divinity, law, and medicine' (OED). Here medicine refers to the occupation of physicians rather than of apothecaries. The disparity in social status between physicians and apothecaries derived from the superiority of professions over trades: `Profession in our country . . . is expressly that kind of business which deals primarily with men as men, and is thus distinguished from a Trade, which provides for the external wants or occasions of men' (1839; cited in OED). Lockhart clearly considered Keats to be a tradesman rather than a learned and respectable professional. One liberal reviewer tried to counter Lockhart's attack on the Cockney writers by dismissing him as one of `the raw-headed young men who fret their little hour in the lowest ranks of those professions to which, in this provincial town, the epithet learned is applied with a most ludicrous exclusiveness and impropriety'. See Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine 2nd series, I (November 1817) 357. 33 Levinson, Keats's Life of Allegory, p. 298. For a discussion of Keats and medicine, see H. de Almeida, Romantic Medicine and John Keats (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); D. C. Goellnicht, The Poet-Physician : Keats and Medical Science (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984). For a discussion of the dissenting politics of medicine in the revolutionary period after 1789, see Roe, John Keats, pp. 160±201. 34 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 176.

35 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 176.

36 Clarke, Recollections, p. 126.

37 Bate, John Keats, p. 52.

38 For biographical information about Mathew's circle, see Bate, John Keats,

pp. 51±8; Gittings, John Keats, pp. 76±8; Ward, John Keats, pp. 41±3. 39 See Mathew's account of his early friendship with Keats in Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle II, 185. 40 Ward, John Keats, p. 42. 41 Porter, `Material Pleasures', p. 27. A year later, after he finished the qualifying examinations at Apothecaries' Hall in July 1816, Keats himself took his first two-month holiday at fashionable Margate, whose attractions included a theatre and `Bathing Rooms'. See Bate, John Keats, pp. 67±8.



210 Notes

42 European Magazine, LXXI (May 1817) 436.

43 Hunt, Foliage, p. 18.

44 For a different reading of the politics of Hunt's sociality, see Roe, John Keats,

pp. 116±33, and Cox, Poetry and Politics, pp. 50±3. While I read the sociality cultivated by Hunt and Keats as a cultural gesture to politeness, Roe and Cox identifies it with a means of renovating and reforming a society. 45 See L. E. Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness: Moral Discourse and Cultural Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 46 Klein, Shaftesbury, p. 3.

47 Klein, Shaftesbury, p. 5.

48 Klein, Shaftesbury, p. 7. See also Brewer, The Pleasures, pp. 99±119.

49 Houtchens (eds), Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism, p. 111.

50 For Hunt's admiration for the principle of Addison and Steele, see Houtchens

(eds), Leigh Hunt's Literary Criticism, p. 80. 51 Leigh Hunt, Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres, including General Observations on the Practice and Genius of the Stage. By the Author of the Theatrical Criticism in the Weekly Paper called the News (London: John Hunt, 1807) p. 56. 52 Hunt, Critical Essays, p. 56.

53 Roberts, preface, Pleasure, p. xi.

54 Hunt, Critical Essays, pp. 55±6.

55 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine II (October 1817) 40±1.

56 Lockhart's well-known social arrogance was not totally unjustified. Both

Lockhart and Hunt were sons of clergymen, but while Hunt's parents returned impoverished from the West Indies to England, Lockhart's mother was the granddaughter of a peer. Lockhart, only one year older than Keats, was educated at the University of Glasgow, and then at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1816, he started his career as an advocate in Edinburgh, but was soon recruited for the newly launched Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine along with John Wilson (also an Oxford graduate). Appropriately for his social snobbery, he married the daughter of Sir Walter Scott in 1820, became an editor of the Quarterly Review in 1825, and published a biography of his father-in-law in 1838. 57 Clarke, Recollections, p. 140.

58 Eclectic Review 2nd series, VIII (September 1817) 270.

59 Champion 9 March 1817, 78.

60 Examiner 1, 6, and 13 July 1817, 345, 428±9, 443±4.

61 Examiner 1 June 1817, 345.

62 Here I agree with Kim Wheatley that Keats's poetry `would probably never

have been reviewed by major periodicals if Keats had not been associated with Leigh Hunt' (`The Blackwood's Attacks', p. 5). For the opposing view that Tory reviewers saw Keats as a threatening presence on his own, see Goellnicht, `The Politics of Reading', and Roe, John Keats. 63 Cited in Stillinger (ed.), John Keats, p. 427.

64 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 75.

65 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine VI (October 1819) 75.

66 Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle II, 148±9.

67 Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle II, 55±6.



Notes 211

68 Greg Kucich shrewdly points out the significant role of Hunt in Keats's early attachment to Spenser. See his Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism, p. 151: `Considering the thoroughness with which he re-creates that idea of ``the Poet's Poet,'' it would be more fitting to name his first attempt at poetry, `Ìmitation of Leigh Hunt's Spenser.''' 69 In his essay `Neighbourhood of Cities', Hunt cited the same passage and represented Milton, `who appears to have been even guilty of walking into the fields on Sunday', as a suburban stroller. See Hunt (ed.), The Literary Pocket-Book (1819), pp. 215±16. 70 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 266. 71 See J. Grundy, `Keats and the Elizabethans' in Muir (ed.), John Keats, p. 4: `because they [the Elizabethans] were so congenial and suited to his talent, he might have much to learn.' See also Bush, Mythology, p. 85: `Keats is commonly linked with the Elizabethans by virtue of his sensuous richness.' Modern critics typically contend that Keats eventually abandoned the Spenserian poetic model. Kucich offers the more comprehensive view that Keats's relationship with Spenser `deepened in complexity as he matured, and . . . continued as a valuable source of inspiration and support to the very end of his life' in his Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism, p. 137. 72 See John Keats, Poems (1817; Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1989) n.p. 73 See S. M. Sperry, Jr, `Richard Woodhouse's Interleaved and Annotated Copy of Keats's Poems (1817)' in E. Rothstein and T. K. Dunseath (eds), Literary Monographs (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1967) I, 120±1: `The vignette itself has been identified over and over again in bibliographies, editions, and studies as the portrait of Spenser. . . . Close inspection leaves no doubt, in fact, that the portrait was engraved after the Stratford monument bust of Shakespeare; and Woodhouse's underlined notation, ``Shakspeare,'' directly beneath the head of the title page of his copy shows that he, at least, was under no misapprehension as to its identity.' However, Kucich comments in Keats, Shelley, and Romantic Spenserianism, p. 145: Èven if Sperry is right, though, we should note that Keats gave the impression of introducing his volume with a Spenser portrait. While Woodhouse privately associated it with Shakespeare, most of the volume's early reviewers looked upon it as a head of Spenser put there to announce Keats's intimate identification with the author of The Faerie Queene.' 74 Miriam Allott notes that the early Keats, like Hunt, employed the word `luxury' as a synonym for `pleasure'. See Allott (ed.), The Poems of John Keats (London: Longman, 1970) p. 40. E. F. Guy argues that Keats's later use of `luxury' is best understood as sexual pleasure in `Keats Use of ``Luxury'': A Note on Meaning', Keats-Shelley Journal 64 (1964) 87±95. I would like to suggest that `luxury', unlike pleasure, implies superfluous material possessions, and that in the historical context of bourgeois consumer revolution, Hunt and Keats's use of `luxury' points to their desire for affluence. 75 Examiner 1 June 1817, 345 76 Examiner 1 June 1817, 345; 6 July 1817, 428. The blueprint of this literaryhistorical scheme of Hunt's poetics appeared in his article on `Young Poets' (Examiner 1 December 1816, 761).



212 Notes

77 Champion 9 March 1817, 78. Although he was also a devotee of Hunt, Reynolds did not seem to fully realise Hunt's bourgeois `politics' of pleasure. Reynolds attributed the poetical originality of Keats to his entire reliance on `the pure inspiration of nature' (78). The subversive power in Hunt's (and Keats's) aesthetics of nature was enfeebled in Reynolds's prose and poetry. 78 Examiner 13 July 1817, 443. However, Woodhouse noted that the passage alluded to Byron and Coleridge. See Sperry, `Richard Woodhouse's Interleaved and Annotated Copy', p. 155. 79 Hunt, Foliage, p. 10. 80 Examiner 13 July 1817, 444. 81 For Woodhouse's note on the charioteer, see Sperry, `Richard Woodhouse's Interleaved and Annotated Copy', p. 154. For the influence of Poussin's paintings on `Sleep and Poetry', see Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art, pp. 135±9. 82 Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art, p. 137. 83 L. M. Jones (ed.), The Letters of John Hamilton Reynolds (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1973) p. 10. Spenser remained a source of inspiration, or rather an object of imitation, for Reynolds throughout his life. Reynolds gave in the Spenserian stanza an autobiographical account of how his poetic ambition was frustrated by financial necessities in `The Romance of the Youth' (1821). 84 For the poetical text of Reynolds, see G. L. Marsh (ed.), John Hamilton Reynolds: Poetry and Prose (London: Humphrey Milford, 1928). 85 Examiner 6 July 1817, 429. 86 Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 249. 87 Keats seemed to pick up this kind of banal, flowery and feminine rhyme from Hunt. For example, Òr a spring green, powdered with April posies, ± / Or flush vermilion, wet with silver roses' (The Story of Rimini I, 197±8). 88 See Allott (ed.), The Poems, pp. 91±2; J. Barnard (ed.), John Keats: The Complete Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973) p. 550; Stillinger (ed.), John Keats, pp. 425±6. Hunt also referred to the final part of Ì stood tip-toe' as àn allusion to the story of Endymion and to the origin of other lovely tales of mythology, on the ground suggested by Mr. Wordsworth in a beautiful passage of his Excursion' in the Examiner 6 July 1817, 429. We can be fairly certain that Hunt typically misread Wordsworth's view of mythological figures as products of luxurious (that is, not metaphysical) imagination. Hazlitt more accurately interpreted the same lines as `the immediate intercourse of the imagination with Nature, and to the habitual propensity of the human mind to endow the outward forms of being with life and conscious motion'. See Howe (ed.), The Complete Works IV, 115. 89 Examiner 6 July 1817, 429. 90 Howe (ed.), The Complete Works IV, 115. 91 Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 257. 92 Examiner 6 July 1817, 429. 93 Eclectic Review 2nd series, VIII (September 1817) 272. 94 Examiner 6 July 1817, 428. 95 Examiner 13 July 1817, 444.



Notes 213

214 Notes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28 29 30

`Wherein lies happiness?': Endymion (1818)

Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 169±70.

Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 170.


G. R. Thompson (ed.), Essays and Reviews (New York: The Library of America,

1984) p. 15.


Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 43.





M. Aske, Keats and Hellenism: An Essay (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1985) p. 63. Aske, Keats and Hellenism, p. 49. P. A. Parker, Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979) p. 4. Parker, Inescapable Romance, p. 182. A. Bewell, `Keats's ``Realm of Flora''', Studies in Romanticism 31 (Spring 1992) 74. Jones, `The Suburban School', p. 14. Kucich, `Leigh Hunt', p. 118. London Magazine I (April 1820) 382. Edinburgh Review XXXIV (August 1820) 209. Hunt, Foliage, p. 16. Hunt, Foliage, p. 19. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 253. G. Beer, The Romance (London: Methuen, 1970) p. 1. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 168. For a summary of those metaphysical interpretations and counterarguments, see Sperry, Keats the Poet, pp. 46±51. Sperry himself regards the passage as describing the creative process by analogy with chemical distillation. While Sidney Colvin, Robert Bridges, Ernest de Selincourt, John Middleton Murry and Claude L. Finney opt for neo-Platonic readings, Newell F. Ford identifies èssence' with à thing of beauty', that is, à loose name for entities attractive to the aesthetic sense, entities both of the objective world and of the imagination' in The Prefigurative Imagination of John Keats: A Study of the Beauty-Truth Identification and Its Implications (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951) p. 15. I agree with Ford that ```fellowship with essence'' signified to Keats no wedding of finite mind with Infinite Being, but a kind of imaginative `èmpathy'' with individual, particular, concrete ``things of beauty''' (p. 15). However, Ford does not unfold the sexual implications in the fellowship with essence. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 218.



Cited from the original version of the passage in Barnard (ed.), John Keats,

p. 567. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 184±5.



Chapter 6

31 32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46





The most exhaustive, and still best-known account is found in Bate, John

Keats, pp. 243±63. For `the social inflection of negative capability which aligns Keats's idea of Shakespeare's genius with the revolutionary potential', see Roe, John Keats, pp. 230±47. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 185.




Connor, Àesthetics', pp. 213±14.

Weiskel, The Romantic Sublime, p. 249. See also p. 3: ìn the history of literary

consciousness the sublime revives as God withdraws from an immediate participation in the experience of men.' In The Disappearance of God: Five Nineteenth-Century Writers (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963), J. Hillis Miller starts his discussion from the premise that Romantic and Victorian writers had to search for a hidden spiritual force in nature or the depths of man's consciousness. For a fuller discussion of the sublime, see Chapter 3. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 387.


Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 266, 373, 388; II, 263.


Stuart A. Ende traces the psychological conflict in Keats between `poetic

sublimity, the state of being to which poetic ecstasy may transport him', and à form of self-regard that is not merely the selfhood . . . but his love for natural things, his wish for a sensual happiness' (Keats and the Sublime, p. xiv). James B. Twitchell places the poem ìn the context of the romantic quest for sublimity', and offers a new reading of Endymion as àn incomprehensibly confusing map to sublimity and Beyond' (Romantic Horizons, pp. 137±8). W. P. Albrecht sees Keats as a poet with a growing interest in the union of the sublime and the tragic in his The Sublime Pleasures of Tragedy.

Chapter 7

`Visions of delight': Lamia (1820)

1 M. B. Ross, The Contours of Masculine Desire: Romanticism and the Rise of Women's Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 157. See also Ross, `Beyond the Fragmented Word: Keats at the Limits of Patrilineal Language' in L. Claridge and E. Langland (eds), Out of Bounds: Male Writers and Gender(ed) Criticism (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1990) pp. 110±31. 2 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 374.

3 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 214, 271.

4 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 185±6.

5 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 186, 271.

6 Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 274.



Notes 215

7 8 9 10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36




Ross, The Contours, p. 168. For the feminisation of Hunt in modern criticism, see C. W. Houtchens and L. H. Houtchens (eds), The English Romantic Poets and Essayists: A Review of Research and Criticism, rev. edn (New York: New York University Press, 1966) p. 280. See my `The Cockney Politics of Gender ± the Cases of Hunt and Keats', Romanticism on the Net 14 (May 1999) http://users.ox.ac.uk/~scat0385/cockneygender.html. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 169.







Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 257.




See Bate, John Keats, pp. 217±18.

In 1817, Reynolds composed `Milton and Spenser: Sonnet to a Friend

[Bailey]': `We are both lovers of the poets old! / But Milton hath your heart, ± and Spenser mine; ± ` (1±2). Pope (ed.), The Diary II, 68. M. Butler, Peacock Displayed: A Satirist in his Context (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979) pp. 294±5. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 213. Reynolds's `Sonnet to Haydon' adopted a similar panegyric language: Ì watch while nations o'er thy works sublime / Bending' (5±6). Howe (ed.), The Complete Works VIII, 255. Ingpen and Peck (eds), The Complete Works III, 8. During the summer of 1819, Keats collaborated with Brown in composing Òtho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts', but he was deeply disappointed to hear that Edmund Kean could not play the leading role. If Kean had been able to play Otho, Keats claimed, ìt would have been a bank to me.' Although his main concern was quick money, he was also aware that writing a tragedy might redeem his reputation: `Were it to succeed even there [Covent Garden] it would lift me out of the mire. I mean the mire of a bad reputation which is continually rising against me. My name with the literary fashionables is vulgar ± I am a weaver boy to them ± a Tragedy would lift me out of this mess. And mess it is as far as it regards our Pockets. . . . ' See Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 186. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 207. Nicholson (ed.), Lord Byron, p. 113. Indicator 9 August 1820, 350. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 374.



216 Notes

37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 167. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 282. Nicholson (ed.), Lord Byron, p. 113. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 42. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 212. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 212. Rollins (ed.), Keats Circle II, 276. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 167. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 167. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 167. See Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 193±4. For the most recent reading of the Hyperion poems in the context of the French Revolution, see G. Friedman, The Insistence of History: Revolution in Burke, Wordsworth, Keats, and Baudelaire (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996) pp. 91±138. H. Bloom, The Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971) p. 34. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 79. John Keats, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820; Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1990) n.p. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 267. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 189. Monthly Review 2nd series, XCII ( July 1820) 305, 306. New Monthly Magazine XIV (September 1820) 247. Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters VIII, 163; New Monthly Magazine XIV (September 1820) 248. British Critic 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 261. Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 158. Conder referred to his previous review of Poems in the Eclectic Review 2nd series, VIII (September 1817) 267±75. Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 169. Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 169, 170. Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 169. Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters VIII, 163. Indicator 9 August 1820, 351. Keats actually composed his later poems at the age of 23 and 24. See the Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 167; Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine 2nd series, VII (October 1820) 314; Examiner 30 July 1820, 494; Indicator 2 August 1820, 344; London Magazine II (September 1820) 319; New Monthly Magazine XIV (September 1820) 247. Examiner 30 July 1820, 494. Indicator 2 August 1820, 343. Indicator 2 August 1820, 344. Indicator 9 August 1820, 348. Indicator 2 August 1820, 344. Indicator 9 August 1820, 352. Indicator 9 August 1820, 352. Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 259. Whereas `modern criticism of The Eve of St. Agnes has been sharply pointed, topical, and dogmatic' for fear of acknowledging the poem as a mere



Notes 217

73 74

75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88

romance, Sperry suggests that ìf St. Agnes has any ``meaning'' at all, it lies precisely in its quality as romance' (Keats the Poet, p. 218). Many critics agree that the narrator's (Keats's) self-conscious mastery of romance technique distinguishes the poem from à mere fairy-tale romance, unhappily short on meaning' (Stillinger, The Hoodwinking, p. 67). See M. H. Cusac, `Keats as Enchanter: An Organizing Principle of The Eve of St. Agnes', Keats±Shelley Journal 17 (1968) 113±19; R. Kern, `Keats and the Problem of Romance' in de Almeida (ed.), Critical Essays, pp. 68±87; M. Ragussis, `Narrative Structure and the Problem of the Divided Reader in The Eve of St. Agnes', English Literary History 42 (1975) 378±94. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 322±3. Keats slightly misquoted from the description of Mammon's cave in The Faerie Queene: `with rich metall loaded euery rift' (II. vii. 28. 5). One may recall that Hunt selected Mammon's cave as one of the most gorgeous pictures in Spenser's poetry. Indicator 2 August 1820, 344.

Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 259.

Indicator 9 August 1820, 352.

R. Bridges, Collected Essays (London: Oxford University Press, 1929) IV,

122±3. Douglas Bush also branded the poem as `no more than a romantic tapestry of unique richness of color'. See Bush (ed.), John Keats: Selected Poems and Letters (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1959) p. xvi. Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 260. For Keats's revision of the stanza in question, see Bate, John Keats, pp. 448±9, and Ridley, Keats's Craftsmanship, pp. 154±5. For a close analysis of Keats's sensory images, see R. H. Fogle, The Imagery of Keats and Shelley; A Comparative Study (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1949). For the most exhaustive study of Keats's odes based on close reading, see H. Vendler, The Odes of John Keats (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1983). Monthly Review 2nd series, XCII ( July 1820) 309. Indicator 9 August 1820, 345. For the visual deprivation in perceiving ( Judeo-Christian) God, see E. Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) pp. 3±23; Leighton, Shelley and the Sublime, pp. 18±20; Mitchell, Iconography, p. 130. For a discussion of the painting, see Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art, pp. 127±30. However, Jack does not consider `magic casement' to have been inspired by The Enchanted Castle. Indicator 9 August 1820, 345. For Keats's own way of enjoying `coolness' of wine (especially claret), see Haydon's comment in Taylor (ed.), The Autobiography I, 302: `[Keats] once covered his tongue and throat as far as he could reach with cayenne pepper in order to appreciate the ``delicious coldness of claret in all its glory'' ± his own expression.' Although Haydon's account was likely to be rather exaggerated, Keats's panegyrical references to claret abounded in his letters. For example, see Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 64: `'t is the only palate affair that I am at all sensual in. . . . it fills the mouth one's mouth with a gushing freshness ±



218 Notes

89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100 101 102

103 104 105

then goes down cool and feverless . . . it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee . . . this same Claret is the only palate-passion I have. . . . ' For other references to claret as an object of luxurious consumption, see Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 196, 220±1; II, 56, 90, 139, 265. Forman (ed.), The Complete Works III, 256.

Indicator 9 August 1820, 345.


The Pindaric ode consists of three verse-paragraphs: a strophe and an anti strophe of the same length and metrical pattern, followed by an epode of differing length and pattern. Although the Òde to Psyche' takes the form of a looser Pindaric ode (that is, the irregular or `Cowleyan' ode), it appears more `regular' than other Anglicised instances, such as Wordsworth's Òde on Intimations of Immortality' and Coleridge's `Dejection: An Ode'. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 106.

Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 105±6.

For the contemporary interest in Grecian vases which must have inspired

Keats's ode, see Jack, Keats and the Mirror of Art, pp. 214±24. Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 170. For a succinct summary of modern critical efforts to discover the meaning of these lines, see J. Stillinger, `Who Says What to Whom at the End of Ode on a Grecian Urn?' in Stillinger (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Keats's Odes: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1968) pp. 113±14. For a more recent interpretation, see E. Jones, `Writing for the Market: Keats's Odes as Commodities', Studies in Romanticism 34 (Fall 1995) 343±64; P. Magnuson, Reading Public Romanticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998) pp. 202±10; J. O'Rourke, Keats's Odes and Contemporary Criticism (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998) pp. 45±94; S. Peterfreund, `The Truth about ``Beauty'' and ``Truth'': Keats's `Òde on a Grecian Urn,'' Milton, Shakespeare, and the Uses of Paradox', Keats±Shelley Journal 35 (1986) 62±82; A. W. Phinney, `Keats in the Museum: Between Aesthetics and History', Journal of English and Germanic Philology 90 (April 1991) 208±29; D. B. Pirie (ed.), The Penguin History of Literature: The Romantic Period (London: Penguin Books, 1994) pp. 347±8, 372±80; T. H. Schmid, `Silence and Celebration: Pastoral Dialogism in Keats's `Òde on a Grecian Urn''', Keats±Shelley Journal 44 (1995) 66±83. Monthly Review 2nd series, XCII ( July 1820) 309. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 144. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 144. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 146. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 144. For a discussion of Keats's problematic relationship with `women' of letters, see S. Hofkosh, Sexual Politics and the Romantic Author (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) pp. 36±57; M. Homans, `Keats Reading Women, Women Reading Keats', Studies in Romanticism 29 (Fall 1990) 341±70: A. K. Mellor, Romanticism & Gender (New York: Routledge, 1993) pp. 171±86. Rollins (ed.), Letters I, 267.

Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 18±19.

I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (1924; London: Routledge and

Kegan Paul, 1983) p. 159.



Notes 219

106 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 65. 107 H. F. B. Brett-Smith and C. E. Jones (eds), The Works of Thomas Love Peacock (London: Constable, 1934) VIII, 219±20. 108 Brett-Smith and Jones (eds), The Works VIII, 219. 109 John Keats, Endymion: A Poetic Romance (1818; Oxford: Woodstock Books, 1991) p. ix. 110 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 174. 111 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 323. 112 Tim Fulford refers to the digression as ùnusually explicit for a Keats poem in its criticism of colonial and commercial endeavour'. See his `Romanticism and Colonialism: Races, Places, Peoples, 1800±30' in T. Fulford and P. J. Kitson (eds), Romanticism and Colonialism: Writing and Empire, 1780±1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) p. 46. 113 Barnard Shaw, `Keats' in The Keats House Committee, The John Keats Memorial Volume (London: John Lane, 1921) p. 175. 114 Shaw, `Keats', p. 176. 115 Shaw, `Keats', p. 176; Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine 2nd series, VII (October 1820) 313. 116 London Magazine II (September 1820) 316. 117 Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 167. 118 Monthly Magazine L (September 1820) 166. 119 New Monthly Magazine XIV (September 1820) 246. 120 Monthly Review 2nd series, XCII ( July 1820) 308. 121 For the text of the poem, see A Sicilian Story, with Diego de Montilla, and Other Poems (London: C. And J. Ollier, 1820) pp. 5±28. The poem is composed of 21 irregular verse-paragraphs based on the octave rhyme. 122 Brett-Smith and Jones (eds), The Works VIII, 219. 123 Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 128. 124 Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 163. 125 Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 163. 126 Eclectic Review 2nd series, XIV (September 1820) 169. 127 Stillinger (ed.), John Keats, p. 454. 128 Stillinger (ed.), John Keats, p. 455. 129 Stillinger (ed.), John Keats, p. 455. 130 T. Rajan, Dark Interpreter: The Discourse of Romanticism (London: Cornell University Press, 1980) p. 101. 131 London Magazine II (September 1820) 321. 132 Monthly Review 2nd series, XCII ( July 1820) 310. 133 Indicator 2 August 1820, 342. 134 Hunt, Lord Byron, p. 266. 135 London Magazine II (September 1820) 321.

Chapter 8

Conclusion: the return of the aesthetic

1 Erickson, The Economy, p. 22. Arguably, the bourgeois fashion for `narrative' (that is, easy-to-read) poetry constituted the poetry boom in the early nineteenth century. Hermann Fischer demonstrates that the popularity of verse narrative continued unabated from 1812 to 1818 in his Romantic



220 Notes

2 3 4 5 6

7

8

9

Verse Narrative: The History of a Genre (1964), (trans.) S. Bollans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) p. 212. Rollins (ed.), Letters II, 334. Erickson, The Economy, p. 23. Marchand (ed.), Byron's Letters III, 121. Erickson, The Economy, p. 23. The 1820s witnessed the declining sales of poetry despite an expanding publishing market, and by 1830 almost all publishers refused to publish poetry. Erickson attributed this shift in the taste of the reading public to technological changes in printing and their economic consequences. The rise of the cost of books during the Napoleonic Wars helped to make concentrated poetry rather than diffusive prose a precious (and less expensive) commodity. Yet as the improvements in the technologies of stereotyping and mechanical papermaking eventually reduced the cost of printing, periodicals and newspapers became powerful competitors for poetry's audience, offering short and serialised fiction as a new cultural commodity. See Erickson, The Economy, pp. 19± 48. B. Doyle, English and Englishness (London: Routledge, 1989) pp. 3, 4. Franklin E. Court traces a history of the institutionalisation of English as a discipline from Adam Smith's university lectures in the mid-eighteenth century to the formation of the Oxford English School by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1904. See his Institutionalizing English Literature: The Culture and Politics of Literary Study, 1750±1900 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992). For other studies of the origin(s) and rise of Ènglish', see C. Baldick, The Social Mission of English Criticism 1848±1932 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); I. Hunter, Culture and Government: The Emergence of Literary Education (London: Macmillan, 1988); J. McMurtry, English Language, English Literature: the Creation of an Academic Discipline (Hamden: Archon Books, 1985); D. J. Palmer, The Rise of English Studies: An Account of the Study of English Language and Literature from its Origins to the Making of the Oxford English School (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). For a recent discussion of the Scottish invention of Ènglish', see R. Crawford, Devolving English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); R. Crawford (ed.), The Scottish Invention of English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). For example, A. Bennett, Keats, Narrative and Audience: The Posthumous Life of Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Z. Leader, Revision and Romantic Authorship (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); J. Stillinger, Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). D. Miller (ed.), Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies (London: Routledge, 1995) p. 1.



Notes 221

Abbey, Richard, 17, 180 Addison, Joseph, 113, 114 Adorno, Theodor, 108 aesthetics, 189 n.38 Aikin, John, 44 Akenside, Mark, 72 Aristotle, 20, 106 Arnold, Matthew, 3, 193 n.136 Augustan Review, 26 Austen, Jane, 43, 191 n.91 Bailey, Benjamin, 98±9, 142, 148, 152, 158 Baillie, Joanna, 30, 31 Barthes, Roland, 108 Bate, Walter Jackson, 4, 105, 110 Beattie, James, 172 Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 31, 34, 49, 52, 83, 84, 86, 88, 211 n.56 Bloomfield, Robert, 28, 191 n.93 Boccaccio, 22, 46, 51, 175 Bourdieu, Pierre, 32, 37 Bowles, Caroline, 48 Brawne, Fanny, 205 n.105 British Critic, 22, 24, 83, 99, 161 Brown, Charles, 41±2, 117, 189 n.35, 195 n.11, 216 n.32 Burke, Edmund, 39, 41, 52±3, 60±1, 197 n.65 Burns, Robert, 27, 28, 30 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 1, 92, 116, 180, 181 and the Cockney school, 27, 44, 49, 82, 84, 193 n.136 and Hunt, 26, 27, 31, 44, 49, 82, 84, 115, 193 n.136 and Keats, 83, 150, 155, 158, 161, 176, 178, 181 Carlyle, Thomas, 2, 106, 193 n.136 Champion, 116 Chapman, George, 78, 82, 83, 163 Chatterton, Thomas, 27, 158 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 1, 20, 162

Christ's Hospital, 82, 203 n.67, 204 n.73 Clare, John, 28, 59 Clarke, Charles Cowden, 14, 16, 22, 82, 85, 109, 110, 116, 117 Clarke, John, 16 classicism against Christianity, 95±103 `Cockney classicism', 81±6 as a consumer trend, 86±95 as the cult of Greece, 71±81 and German Romanticism, 74±6 see also Romantic Hellenism Claude Lorrain, 87, 88, 167 Cockney school Byron's attack on, 27, 49, 82, 84 and classicism, 81±6 definition of, 7±8 members of, 14, 16 as middle-class, 8, 186 n.44 appropriation of nature, 43±54 recent reappraisal of, 6±7 see also under individual members Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1, 15, 21, 30, 37, 51, 106, 140±1, 164, 181

at Christ's Hospital, 203 n.67

and the sublime, 60±1, 101±2

Collins, William, 72 Conder, Josiah, 99, 129, 161, 170±1, 175, 176±7 Cornwall, Barry, see Procter, Bryan Waller Cox, Jeffrey N., 6 on `Cockney classicism', 204 n.87 on sociality, 211 n.44 Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle, 7, 8, 204 n.87, 211 n.44 Crabbe, George, 57, 59, 180 Croker, John Wilson, 26 Curran, Stuart, 29, 96, 209 n.25 Dante, 22 Cary's translation, 66±7, 98, 132

222



Index

Defoe, Daniel, 10, 12, 21, 24, 27, 31±2 de Man, Paul, 5 de StaeÈl, Madame, 75, 76, 78, 201±2 n.20 Dickens, Charles, 153 Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 202 n.25 Dryden, John, 1 Duck, Stephen, 28 Eclectic Review, 23, 30, 84, 116, 161 Edgecombe, Rodney Stenning, 106, 209 n.20, 209 n.25 Edinburgh Review, 30, 60 Edinburgh [Scots] Magazine, 27, 116 Elgin Marbles, 14, 92, 93±5, 153 Eliot, T. S., 3, 4 European Magazine, 110 Examiner, 7, 16, 23, 64 Flaxman, John, 203 n.56, 205 n.100 Fuseli, Henry, 93, 154 Gay, Peter, 15, 37 Gifford, William, 26 Gilmartin, Kevin, 7 Gilpin, William, 39, 41, 42, 67, 126 Goldsmith, Oliver, 57, 59 Gray, Thomas, 41 Hallam, Arthur, H., 2 Hamilton, Sir William, 89 Hampstead, 8, 15, 46, 48, 49, 51±2, 119, 127 see also nature; pastoral; suburbs Haydon, Benjamin Robert, 14, 53±4 on the Elgin Marbles, 93±4, 153 and Hunt, 82, 98, 102±3, 152±3 and Keats, 152±3, 154, 218 n.88 Hazlitt, William, 14, 16, 29, 33, 106, 154, 159

on the Elgin Marbles, 94

on Hunt, 27, 80

on Keats, 2

on Pope, 1, 76

on Spenser, 63, 199 n.96

on Wordsworth, 102, 129,

213 n.88

Characters of Shakespear's Plays,

201 n.20

Select British Poets, or New Elegant Extracts from Chaucer to the Present Time, 1±2, 18±19, 34±5 Herrick, Robert, 51, 63, 107 Hobhouse, John Cam, 92±3 Homer, 65, 77, 79, 86, 100 Chapman's translation, 78, 82

and Hunt, 65, 80

and Keats, 72, 77, 78, 110, 154

Pope's translation, 77±8

Hope, Thomas, 89, 95, 204 n.88, 206 n.121 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 2 Horace, 43, 51, 52, 63, 65 Horkheimer, Max, 108 Hume, David, 12, 25 Hunt, Henry (Òrator'), 8 Hunt, ( James Henry) Leigh aesthetics, 189 n.38 and Byron, 26, 27, 31, 44, 49, 82, 84, 115, 193 n.136 `cheerfulness', 13, 102, 136, 138, 142 attack on Christianity, 23, 97, 121, 138±9 at Christ's Hospital, 82, 203 n.67, 204 n.73 and Dante, 66±7 and Defoe, 24, 32 and the Elizabethans, 62±3, 78±9 Examiner, 7, 16, 23, 64 attack on `the French school', 18±19, 76, 82, 121 and Gilpin, 67 and Haydon, 82, 98, 102±3, 152±3 Hazlitt on, 27, 80 and Homer, 65, 80 compared with Keats, 26, 104±6 on Keats, 2, 119±20, 121±2, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 161, 162±3, 164±5, 166, 167, 169, 178 and Lockhart, 211 n.56 attacked by Lockhart, 22, 26±7, 52, 54, 115, 117, 152 and Milton, 46, 51, 63, 65, 86, 99±100, 212 n.69 seen as minor in the canon, 105±7, 108

modern defenders of, 106

recent reappraisal of, 6±7



Index 223

Hunt, ( James Henry) Leigh ± continued and Shakespeare, 20±1, 51, 63, 79, 124±5

and Shelley, 96±100

and Spenser, 51, 63±6, 67±70,

86±7, 96, 98, 101±2, 123±4, 125, 135 and Theocritus, 51, 58±9, 61±2, 79, 80, 86, 107, 154, 166, 203 n.64 and Wordsworth, 20, 28, 51, 52, 53±4, 59, 60±1, 101±2, 121, 213 n.88 An Attempt to shew the folly and danger of Methodism, 97 Bacchus and Ariadne, 80 The Descent of Liberty, 23 `Description of Hampstead', 48 Èxtract from Another Letter to the Same [Moore]', 49 Foliage; or Poems Original and Translated, 22, 23, 50, 79, 112, 114, 116, 119, 121, 189 n.38 Hero and Leander, 80 The Literary Pocket-Book, 33±8, 44, 45, 152, 192 n.116 The Months, 33±4, 44, 46, 48, 51, 58±9, 64, 80, 105, 119, 136 `The Nymphs', 22, 66, 80, 87±8 Òn Receiving a Crown of Ivy from the Same [Keats]', 117 Òn the Same [Occasion]', 117 `The Poets', 63, 124±5 `Politics and Poetics', 65, 167±8 The Story of Rimini, 22, 23, 25±6, 27, 30±1, 66±70, 80, 88, 98, 106, 116, 119, 123, 126, 132, 134, 140, 152 `Thoughts of the Avon', 79 `To Benjamin Robert Haydon', 114 `To Charles Lamb', 64, 88, 114 `To Horatio Smith', 47, 48, 114 `To John Hamilton Reynolds', 114 `To John Keats', 114, 117, 152 `To Kosciusko', 116 `To Miss K. [Elizabeth Kent]', 114 `To Percy Shelley, on the Degrading Notions of Deity', 97, 114

`To the Grasshopper and the

Cricket', 116

`To the Right Honourable Lord Byron, on his Departure for Italy and Greece', 114 `To the Same [Shelley]', 97 `To Thomas Moore', 48, 49, 114, 188 n.23 `To William Hazlitt', 46, 47, 48, 86, 114, 139, 173, 174 Hurd, Richard, 18 Jack, Ian, 85, 204 n.84, 205 n.107, 213 n.82, 218 n.86, 204 n.88, 213 n.81, 219 n.95 Jeffrey, Francis, 137 Johnson, Samuel, 17, 33, 106, 114 Keats, George, 110, 146 Keats, John seen as apolitical, 185 n.30 and Byron, 83, 150, 155, 158, 161, 176, 178, 181

canonisation of, 1, 2±4, 104±5,

106±7, 108, 182±3 and Enfield School, 16 and George Felton Mathew, 110±12, 116 seen as `Greek', 95, 103 and Haydon, 152±3, 154, 218 n.88 Hazlitt on, 2 and Homer, 72, 77, 78, 110, 154 and Hunt as Cockneys, 7, 8, 14, 17, 23±4, 96, 104±5, 112, 117±18, 118±19, 131±2, 150±2, 153, 173±4, 181 imagination, 129, 143±5 attacked by Lockhart, 24, 53±4, 109, 116, 117, 176, 204 n.88, 210 n.32 and medicine, 109, 110 and Milton, 100, 110, 118, 130, 135, 148, 152, 158, 163, 164, 167, 199 n.91 `Negative Capability', 143±4 as a poet of pleasure, 1±3, 8±9, 181±2 compared with Procter (`Barry Cornwall'), 175±6

Reynolds on, 100, 116, 119±20

and Shakespeare, 110, 133±4,

212 n.73



224 Index

and Shelley, 2, 105, 131, 134, 163±4, 173, 184 n.10 and Spenser, 63, 110, 116, 117±18, 119, 122±8, 134, 135±8, 139, 141, 148, 212 n.71, 212 n.73, 218 n.74 and the sublime, 145±7, 166 walking tour, 40±2 and wine, 218±9 n.88 and Wordsworth, 99, 128±9, 133, 144, 150±1, 164 Àddressed to Haydon', 46±7, 153 Àddressed to the Same [Haydon]', 53±4, 153 `Calidore: A Fragment', 123, 125±6 `Dear Reynolds, as last night I lay in bed', 145 Endymion: A Poetic Romance, 1, 24, 83, 87, 98±9, 100, 104, 116, 118±19, 131±45, 148, 152, 153, 154, 158, 159±60, 162, 164, 165, 171, 172, 175, 176, 180, 182 The Eve of St. Agnes, 162, 163, 164±5, 168, 173, 177 The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, 156±9, 168 `Fill for me a brimming bowl', 196 n.45 Hyperion: A Fragment, 99, 154±6, 158±9, 160, 161, 162, 163, 172, 176 Ìmitation of Spenser', 117±18, 163 Isabella; or, The Pot of Basil, 168, 173, 174±5, 177 Ì stood tip-toe upon a little hill', 123, 126±9 `Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there', 115 Lamia, 173, 176 Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, 1, 159±60, 162, 165, 171, 177±8, 182 Òde on a Grecian Urn', 99, 165, 170±1, 176 Òde on Melancholy', 165, 169 Òde to a Nightingale', 165, 166±9 Òde to Apollo', 110 Òde to Psyche', 165, 169±70, 178

Òn a Leander Which Miss Reynolds, My Kind Friend, Gave Me', 90±1 Òn First Looking into Chapman's Homer', 82±3 Òn Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses, from the Same Ladies', 112 Òn Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt', 117 Òn Seeing the Elgin Marbles', 153±4 Òn the Grasshopper and the Cricket', 116 Òn The Story of Rimini', 66 Ò Solitude! if I must with thee dwell', 111 Òtho the Great: A Tragedy in Five Acts', 216 n.32 Poems, 1, 104, 112, 116, 119, 120, 126, 129, 130, 131, 132, 136, 153, 159, 160, 161, 182 `Robin Hood: To a Friend', 173±4 `Sleep and Poetry', 85, 116±17, 120±3, 130, 141, 157 `Specimen of an Induction to a Poem', 23±4, 123±4, 125 `To Autumn', 165, 166 `To Charles Cowden Clarke', 23, 110, 167, 188 n.23 `To George Felton Mathew', 23, 111 `To Kosciusko', 116 `To Leigh Hunt, Esq.', 119 `To Lord Byron', 181 `To My Brother George', 23, 130 `To one who has been long in city pent', 118 `To Some Ladies', 112 `To the Ladies Who Saw Me Crown'd', 117 `Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition', 97±8 Kent, Elizabeth, 44, 45, 46, 48, 51, 70 Knight, Richard Payne, 42, 43, 73, 92, 94, 206 n.121 Lamb, Charles, 14, 16, 162 Leavis, F. R., 3±4, 104, 105 LemprieÁre, Classical Dictionary, 82, 135 Levinson, Marjorie, 6, 7, 109 Literary Chronicle, 35, 37



Index 225

Literary Gazette, 30, 33, 52 literature as a commodity, 13, 21, 28±9, 31, 34±5, 182, 183 poetry boom, 28±30, 160, 180±1, 220±1 n.1, 221 n.6 see also middle class(es) Lockhart, John Gibson, 30, 44, 70 and Hunt, 211 n.56 attack on Hunt, 22, 26±7, 52, 54, 115, 117, 152 attack on Keats, 24, 53±4, 109, 116, 117, 176, 204 n.88, 210 n.32 London Magazine, 34, 35 Loudon, John Claudius, 43, 44, 46, 48, 50 luxury Keats's and Hunt's use of, 212 n.74 revaluation of, 11±13 see also middle class(es) Maginn, William, 193 n.136 Mandeville, Bernard, 12, 25 Mathew, George Felton, 110±12, 116 McGann, Jerome, 5 middle class(es) definition of, 14±15, 37 and literature, 13, 28±9 rise of, 10±13, 187 n.6 suburban, 15, 46±9, 51 see also literature; luxury; nature; sociality; suburbs Milnes, Richard Monckton, 3 Milton, John, 1 and Hunt, 46, 51, 63, 65, 86, 99±100, 212 n.69 and Keats, 100, 110, 118, 130, 135, 148, 152, 158, 163, 164, 167, 199 n.91 and Shelley, 99±100 and Wordsworth, 101 Lycidas, 57, 63, 106, 107 Paradise Lost, 51, 63, 66, 107, 118, 158, 167, 199 n.91, 212 n.69 Monthly Magazine, 175 Monthly Review, 20, 22, 31, 160±1, 171, 175, 178 Moore, Thomas, 31, 112, 115, 116, 180

nature as the beautiful, 39, 41, 52±3, 61 as the picturesque, 39, 41, 42, 53 as the sublime, 39, 41, 52±3, 60±1 suburban, 52±3, 61 see also Hampstead; pastoral; suburbs New Monthly Magazine, 26, 161, 175 Ollier, Charles, 33, 37 Ollier, James, 33, 37 pastoral, 118, 154 definition of, 50 history of, 55±8 as a minor genre, 106±8, 134 see also nature; suburbs Patmore, Peter George, 87, 135 Peacock, Thomas Love, 153, 172, 176 Percy, Thomas, 18 Petrarch, 22, 26 Plato, 72, 100 pleasure, 107±8, 210 n.29 Poe, Edgar Allan, 133 poetry, see literature Pope, Alexander, 1, 18, 42, 49, 54, 57, 58, 76, 77±8, 82, 107 Poussin, Nicolas, 87, 88, 119, 123, 136, 213 n.81 Priestley, Joseph, 16 Prince Regent, 13, 112 Procter, Bryan Waller (`Barry Cornwall'), 14, 80, 83±4 in The Literary Pocket-Book, 45±6, 48, 207 n.136 A Sicilian Story, 175±6 Pugin, Augustus, 96 Quarterly Review, 22±3, 24±5, 31, 52, 87±8, 102, 211 n.56 radicalism, 7±8 Reynolds, John Hamilton, 14, 16±17, 80, 110, 133, 145, 149, 171, 213 n.77 and Homer, 72, 77

on Keats, 100, 116, 119±20

and Spenser, 63, 125, 213 n.83,

216 n.25

`Sonnet to Haydon', 216 n.29



226 Index

`Sonnet [to Hunt]', 66

`Sonnets to Robin Hood', 173±4

`To Spenser', 125

Richards, I. A., 108, 172 Rivett, Nicholas, see Stuart, James Roe, Nicholas on `Cockney classicism', 204 n.87 on sociality, 211 n.44 John Keats and the Culture of Dissent, 6±8, 189 n.33, 204 n.87, 211 n.44 Keats and History, 6 Romantic Hellenism, 71, 73, 86, 95, 96, 100 see also classicism Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 3 Schlegel, A. W., 75, 80, 100, 201 n.20 Scott, John, 175, 178±9 Scott, Sir Walter, 31, 180, 181, 211 n.56 Shaftesbury, Antony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 113 Shakespeare, William, 1 and Hunt, 20±1, 51, 63, 79, 124±5 and Keats, 110, 133±4, 212 n.73 revival of, 62, 78±9, 124±5 Shaw, Bernard, 174±5 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 1, 14, 40±1, 51, 74, 150, 154, 172 and Hunt, 96±100 and Keats, 2, 105, 131, 134, 163±4, 173, 184 n.10

and Milton, 99±100

and the sublime, 60±1, 101±2

Sidney, Sir Philip, 17, 73, 106 Smith, Adam, 10, 12, 25, 221 n.7 Smith, Horace, 14, 16, 80, 189 n.35 Smith, James, 14, 16 sociality, 112±14, 115, 211 n.44 see also middle class(es) Society of Dilettanti, 71, 72±3, 89, 93, 94±5 Southey, Robert, 31, 48 Spence, Joseph, Polymetis, 82, 87 Spenser, Edmund, 1, 152 Hazlitt on, 63, 199 n.96 and Hunt, 51, 63±6, 67±70, 86±7, 96, 98, 101±2, 123±4, 125, 135

and Keats, 63, 110, 116, 117±18, 119, 122±8, 134, 135±8, 139, 141, 148, 212 n.71, 212 n.73, 218 n.74 and Wordsworth, 101±2 The Faerie Queene, 64±70, 107,

117, 122, 125, 134, 136,

137, 138

The Shepheardes Calender, 57, 64, 107, 121, 139 `Muiopotmos; or, the Fate of the Butterflie', 64, 65, 119, 136 `The Mutabilitie Cantos', 64, 98 Steele, Richard, 113 Stillinger, Jack, 4, 104 Stuart, James The Antiquities of Athens, 71, 92 and Nicholas Rivett, 96, 205 n.100 sublime and the beautiful, 52±3, 197 n.65 Coleridge and, 60±1, 101±2 Keats and, 145±7, 166 nature as, 39, 41, 52±3, 60±1 Shelley and, 60±1, 101±2 Wordsworth and, 60±1, 101±2 suburbs status of, 46±9, 51 see also Hampstead; middle class(es); nature; pastoral Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 2 Tassie, James, 90±2, 154, 205 n.105, 205 n.107 Taylor and Hessey, 35, 67, 159, 180 Taylor, John, 171, 177 Tennyson, Alfred, 2±3 Theocritus, 55±6, 57 and Hunt, 51, 58±9, 61±2, 79, 80, 86, 107, 154, 166, 203 n.64 see also pastoral Tighe, Mary, 111, 172 Tooke, Andrew, Pantheon, 82 Trilling, Lionel, 8±9 Veblen, Thorstein, 183 Virgil, 55±6, 57, 106±7 and Hunt, 51, 61 and Keats, 110, 120±1, 122 see also pastoral



Index 227

Walpole, Horace, 43 Walton, Izaak, 44 Warton, Thomas, 18 Wedgwood, Josiah, 10, 31, 89, 90, 191 n.107, 203 n.56, 205 n.109 West, Thomas, 40, 41 White, Gilbert, 44 Wilde, Oscar, 3 Wilson, John, 34, 211 n.56 Winckelmann, Johann, Joachim, 72, 154 Woodhouse, Richard, 92, 117, 177, 212 n.73

Wordsworth, William, 1, 27, 31, 115 Hazlitt on, 102, 129, 213 n.88 and Hunt, 20, 28, 51, 52, 53±4, 59, 60±1, 101±2, 121, 213 n.88 and Keats, 99, 128±9, 133, 144, 150±1, 164 and Milton, 101 and Spenser, 101±2 and the sublime, 60±1, 101±2 The Excursion, 128±9 Lyrical Ballads, 28, 181, 191 n.93



228 Index

Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure (Romanticism in Perspective)

Romanticism and Pleasure

Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

The Truth About Romanticism: Pragmatism and Idealism in Keats, Shelley, Coleridge (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Romantic Dynamics: The Poetics of Physicality (Romanticism in Perspective)

Leigh Hunt: Life, Poetics and Politics (Routledge Studies in Romanticism)

Intercultural Aesthetics: A Worldview Perspective

Byron and Romanticism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Byron and Romanticism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Thomas De Quincey: Knowledge and Power (Romanticism in Perspective)

Romanticism and the Visual (Routledge Studies in Romanticism)

Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth (Romanticism in Perspective)

The Emergence of Romanticism

The Ethics of Romanticism

The Ethics of Romanticism

The Rhetoric of Romanticism

keats-poems

keats poems published in 1820

Aesthetics and Painting (Continuum Aesthetics)

Romanticism

Revolutionary Histories: Transatlantic Cultural Nationalism 1775-1815 (Romanticism in Perspective)

Pleasure in the Sand

Aesthetics and Architecture (Continuum Aesthetics)

Aesthetics of the Opressed

German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter (Routledge Studies in Romanticism)

The Romantic Idea of A University: England and Germany, 1770-1850 (Romanticism in Perspective)

Anger, Revolution, and Romanticism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

The Specular Moment: Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

Keats, Hunt and the Aesthetics of Pleasure (Romanticism in Perspective)

Romanticism and Pleasure

Romanticism, Aesthetics, and Nationalism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

The Truth About Romanticism: Pragmatism and Idealism in Keats, Shelley, Coleridge (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Romantic Dynamics: The Poetics of Physicality (Romanticism in Perspective)

Leigh Hunt: Life, Poetics and Politics (Routledge Studies in Romanticism)

Intercultural Aesthetics: A Worldview Perspective

Byron and Romanticism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Byron and Romanticism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Thomas De Quincey: Knowledge and Power (Romanticism in Perspective)

Romanticism and the Visual (Routledge Studies in Romanticism)

Romanticism, Maternity, and the Body Politic (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

The Politics of Romantic Poetry: In Search of the Pure Commonwealth (Romanticism in Perspective)

The Emergence of Romanticism

The Ethics of Romanticism

The Ethics of Romanticism

The Rhetoric of Romanticism

keats-poems

keats poems published in 1820

Aesthetics and Painting (Continuum Aesthetics)

Romanticism

Revolutionary Histories: Transatlantic Cultural Nationalism 1775-1815 (Romanticism in Perspective)

Pleasure in the Sand

Aesthetics and Architecture (Continuum Aesthetics)

Aesthetics of the Opressed

German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter (Routledge Studies in Romanticism)

The Romantic Idea of A University: England and Germany, 1770-1850 (Romanticism in Perspective)

Anger, Revolution, and Romanticism (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge Studies in Romanticism)

The Specular Moment: Goethe's Early Lyric and the Beginnings of Romanticism (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)

Recommend Documents