ABSTRACT
Background. Keats and S. were first linked (together with John Hamilton Reynolds) in Leigh Hunt’s ‘Young Poets’ article published in the Examiner of 1 December 1816. The two poets met for the first time at Hunt’s house in mid-December 1816, and are known to have met thereafter on a number of occasions, without becoming very close. They took part in timed sonnet competitions, quite possibly more than are recorded (see headnote to To the Nile, Longman ii 349–50, no. 163), and exchanged their differing views on poetry, and life, in various contexts through the period from December 1816 to early 1818 when S. left England for Italy. Keats’s Endymion was according to Medwin composed in explicit competition with L&C from April to November 1817 (see headnote to no. 143, Longman ii 10–29). They probably met face-to-face for the last time in February 1818 (Claire Jnl 83). There is a good, detailed account of all known interactions between Keats and S. during this relatively brief period in SC v 401–10, and see also Cameron (1974) 422–7, P. M. S. Dawson’s discussion in Shelley Revalued 89–108, and Cox. Keats and his circle of friends were warily critical of S.’s ideas, work and personality, and Keats maintained a sometimes wry distance perhaps coloured by his sense of the difference in social class. As Hunt later expressed it, ‘Keats did not take to Shelley as kindly as Shelley did to him’; he was inclined ‘to see in every man of birth a sort of natural enemy’ (Hunt Autobiography ii 201–2). S. for his part offered critical advice to Keats from early in his publishing career. Keats recalled in his letter of 16 August 1820 replying to S.’s letter of 27 July 1820 (inviting Keats to stay with S. and his family in Italy for his health), ‘I remember you advising me not to publish my first-blights, on Hampstead heath’. Keats had doubtless not wholly appreciated this advice from his slightly older contemporary and rival, however helpfully meant. Keats’s 16 August letter famously repays S. for his advice of three years earlier: ‘You I am sure will forgive me for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity and be more of an artist, and “load every rift” of your subject with ore’ (Keats L ii 323). Just as Keats shared with his friends a critical scepticism about S., so several of S.’s most valued friends, including Byron and Peacock, were unconvinced of Keats’s poetic stature and in particular felt that his obvious talent was not well served by the perceived strong influence from Hunt’s practice and theories. Once in Italy, and until learning of Keats’s illness, S. refers to Keats hardly at all, except in a letter of 6 September 1819 to Ollier which expresses reservations concerning Endymion — ‘the Authors intention appearing to be that no person should possibly get to the end of it’ — but still acknowledging the promise of real poetic power in Keats (L ii 117). Keats offers no record of interest in S.’s life and career in Italy until their exchange of letters in the summer of 1820.
