ABSTRACT
On the face of it, Medwin’s Life of Shelley is an unlikely and surprising source for a memoir of Keats. Medwin was obsessed with Shelley and his posthumous literary reputation and never actually met Keats. In a short interlude in the Life, however, Medwin turns his attention to Keats, Shelley’s friend. Besides Shelley’s own memories and impressions of the poet, he relies for his account upon the evidence of ‘a lady, who better even than Leigh Hunt, knew Keats’. In contrast, Medwin’s account presents a picture of a rational, clear-sighted and sympathetic woman, with a warm but understated memory of Keats. Medwin met Brawne in Heidelberg in the 1840s and discovered her connection with Keats. Keats was ever a constant reader of Shakspeare. He might have forborne giving to the world some other of the short poems, his first attempts in the art.
