Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats (Volume 26) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1910. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER II Keats's meeting with Hunt--Growth of their friendship--Haydon's intervention--Keats's residence with Hunt--His departure for Italy--Hunt's Criticism of Keats's poetry--His influence on the Poems of 1817. It was about the year 1815 that Keats showed to his former school friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, the following sonnet, the first indication the latter had that Keats had written poetry: "What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, In his immortal spirit been as free As the sky-searching lark, and as elate. Minion of grandeur think you he did wait? Think you he nought but prison walls did see, Till, so unwilling thou unturn'dst the key? Ah, no I far happier, nobler was his fate In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair, Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew With daring Milton through the fields of air: To regions of his own his genius true Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?" This admiration, expressed before Keats had met Hunt, was due to the influence of the Clarke family and to Keats's acquaintance with The Examiner, which he saw regularly during his school days at Enfield and which he continued to borrow from Clarke during his medical apprenticeship. Clarke later showed to Leigh Hunt two or three of Keats's poems. Of the reception of one of them (How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time) Clarke said: "I could not but anticipate that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed approvingly, of the compositions--written, too, by a youth under age; but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the first poem."1 1 Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, Recollectio...