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Building Python Programs
First Edition

Stuart Reges
University of Washington
Marty Stepp
Stanford University
Allison Obourn
University of Arizona

330 Hudson Street, NY, NY 10013

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in preparing this book. These efforts include the development,
research, and testing of the theories and programs to determine
their effectiveness. The authors and publisher make no warranty of
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the documentation contained in this book. The authors and publisher
shall not be liable in any event for incidental or consequential
damages in connection with, or arising out of, the furnishing,
performance, or use of these programs.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Reges, Stuart, author. | Stepp, Martin, author. | Obourn,

Allison, author.

Title: Building Python programs / Stuart Reges, University of

Washington, Marty Stepp, Stanford University, Allison Obourn,
University of Arizona.

Description: First edition. | New York, NY : Pearson, [2019] |

Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018028848| ISBN 9780135205983 | ISBN

0135205980

Subjects: LCSH: Python (Computer program language)

Classification: LCC QA76.73.P98 R445 2019 | DDC 005.13/3—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018028848

1 18
ISBN 10: 0-13-520598-0

ISBN 13: 978-0-13-520598-3

Preface
The Python programming language has become enormously popular
in recent years. Many people are impressed with how quickly you
can learn Python’s simple and intuitive syntax and that has led many
users to create popular libraries. Python was designed by Guido van
Rossum who has been affectionaly dubbed “Benevolent Dictator For
Life (BDFL)” by the Python community. He has said that he chose
the name Python because he was “in a slightly irreverent mood” and
that he is “a big fan of Monty Python’s Flying Circus” (a British
comedy show). Who wouldn’t want to learn a programming language
named after a group of comedians?

Our new Building Python Programs text is designed for use in a first
course in computer science. We have class-tested it with hundreds
of undergraduates at the University of Arizona, most of whom were
not computer science majors. This textbook is based on our
previous text, Building Java Programs, now in its fourth edition. The
Java text has proven effective in our class testing with thousands of
students including our own at the University of Washington since
2007.

Introductory computer science courses have a long history at many

universities of being “killer” courses with high failure rates. But as
Douglas Adams says in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “Don’t
panic.” Students can master this material if they can learn it
gradually.

Python has many attributes that make it an appealing language for a

first computer science course. It has a simple and concise yet
powerful syntax that makes it pleasant to learn and great for writing
many common programs. A student can write their first Python
program with only a single line of code, as opposed to several lines
in most other languages such as Java or C++. Python includes a
built-in interpreter and read-evaluate-print loop (REPL) for quickly
running and testing code, encouraging students to test and explore
the language. Python also offers a rich set of libraries that students
can use for graphics, animation, math, scientific computing, games,
and much more. This text has been built from the start for Python 3,
the most modern version of the language as of this writing, and it
embraces the modern features and idioms of that version of the
language.

Our teaching materials are based on a “back to basics” approach

that focuses on procedural programming and program
decomposition. This is also called the “objects later” approach, as
opposed to the “objects early” approach taught in some schools. We
know from years of experience that a broad range of scientists,
engineers, and others can learn how to program in a procedural
manner. Once we have built a solid foundation of procedural
techniques, we turn to object-oriented programming. By the end of
the text, students will have learned about both styles of
programming.
The following are the key features of our approach and materials:

Focus on problem solving. Many textbooks focus on language

details when they introduce new constructs. We focus instead on
problem solving. What new problems can be solved with each
construct? What pitfalls are novices likely to encounter along the
way? What are the most common ways to use a new construct?
Emphasis on algorithmic thinking. Our procedural approach
allows us to emphasize algorithmic problem solving: breaking a
large problem into smaller problems, using pseudocode to refine
an algorithm, and grappling with the challenge of expressing a
large program algorithmically.
Thorough discussion of topics. The authors have found that
many introductory texts rapidly cover new syntax and concepts
and then quickly race on to the next topic. We feel that the
students who crack open their textbook are exactly the sort that
want more thorough and careful explanation and discussion of
tricky topics. In this text we favor longer explanations, with more
verbiage, figures, and code examples than in many other texts.
Layered approach. Programming involves many concepts that
are difficult to learn all at once. Teaching a novice to code is like
trying to build a house of cards; each new card has to be placed
carefully. If the process is rushed and you try to place too many
cards at once, the entire structure collapses. We teach new
concepts gradually, layer by layer, allowing students to expand
their understanding at a manageable pace.
Emphasis on good coding style. We show code that uses
proper and consistent programming style and design. All
 complete programs shown in the text are thoroughly commented
and properly decomposed. Throughout the text we discuss
common idioms, good and bad style choices, and how to choose
elegant and appropriate ways to decompose and solve each new
category of problem.
Carefully chosen language subset. Rather than a “kitchen
sink” approach that tries to show the student every language
construct and feature, we instead go out of our way to explain
and use a core subset of the Python language that we feel is
most well suited to solving introductory level problems.
Case studies. We end most chapters with a significant case
study that shows students how to develop a complex program in
stages and how to test it as it is being developed. This structure
allows us to demonstrate each new programming construct in a
rich context that cannot be achieved with short code examples.

Layers and Dependencies

Many introductory computer science texts are language-oriented,
but the early chapters of our approach are layered. For example,
Python has many control structures (including loops and if/else

statements), and many texts include all of these control structures in

a single chapter. While that might make sense to someone who
already knows how to program, it can be overwhelming for a novice
who is learning how to program. We find that it is much more
effective to spread these control structures into different chapters so
that students learn one structure at a time rather than trying to learn
them all at once.

The following table shows how the layered approach works in the
first seven chapters:

Layers in Chapters 1 –7

Chapters 1 –5 are designed to be worked through in order, with

greater flexibility of study then beginning in Chapter 6 . Chapter
6 (File I/O) may be skipped, although the case study in Chapter
7 (Lists) involves reading from a file, a topic that is covered in
Chapter 6 .

The following figure represents a dependency chart for the book. A

strong dependency is drawn as a solid arrow; we recommend not
covering chapters outside of their strong dependency order. A weak
dependency is drawn as a dashed arrow. Weak dependencies are
ones where the later chapter briefly mentions a topic from the earlier
chapter, but the chapter can still be read and explored without
having covered the earlier chapter if necessary.
Chapter dependency chart

Here are more detailed explanations of the weak dependencies

between chapters:

A few examples from Chapter 7 on lists, and from Chapter

8 on dictionaries and sets, read data from files. File
input/output is covered in Chapter 6 . But overall file-reading is
not required in order to discuss lists or other collections, so
Chapter 6 can be skipped if desired.
A few examples from Chapter 11 on classes and objects
mention the concept of reference semantics, which is introduced
in Chapter 7 on lists. But the concept of references is re-
 explained in Chapter 11 , so classes can be covered early
before lists if desired.
Some of the recursive functions in Chapter 9 process lists,
and one recursive function recursively reverses the lines of a file.
So Chapter 9 weakly depends on Chapter 7 . But almost
every recursive function written in Chapter 9 can be written
and understood using only the Chapter 1 –5 core material.

As you can see from the diagram, Chapter 7 on Lists is perhaps

the most important chapter after the first five, and its material is
used by many other chapters. A common chapter order swap would
be to cover Chapters 1 –5 , then do Chapter 7 on Lists, then
go back to Chapter 6 on Files with the extra knowledge of lists to
help you.

Supplements
Answers to all self-check problems appear on our web site and are
accessible to anyone: http://www.buildingpythonprograms.com/

In addition, our web site also has the following additional resources
available for students:

Online-only supplemental content

Source code and data files for all case studies and other
complete program examples.
The DrawingPanel class used in Chapter 3 .
 Links to web-based programming practice tools.

Instructors can access the following resources from our web site:

PowerPoint slides suitable for lectures.

Solutions to exercises and programming projects, along with
homework specification documents for many projects.
Sample Exams and solution keys.

To access instructor resources, contact us at

[email protected]. For other questions
related to resources, contact the authors and/or your Pearson
representative.

MyLab Programming
MyLab Programming helps students fully grasp the logic, semantics,
and syntax of programming. Through practice exercises and
immediate, personalized feedback, MyLab Programming improves
the programming competence of beginning students, who often
struggle with the basic concepts and paradigms of popular high-level
programming languages. A self-study and homework tool, the
MyLab Programming course consists of hundreds of small practice
exercises organized around the structure of this textbook. For
students, the system automatically detects errors in the logic and
syntax of their code submissions and offers targeted hints that
enable students to figure out what went wrong—and why. For
instructors, a comprehensive gradebook tracks correct and incorrect
answers and stores the code inputted by students for review.

MyLab Programming is offered to users of this book in partnership

with Turing’s Craft, the makers of the CodeLab interactive
programming exercise system. For a full demonstration, to see
feedback from instructors and students, or to get started using
MyLab Programming in your course, visit: http://
www.pearson.com/mylab/programming.

Acknowledgments
We would also like to thank the staff at Pearson who helped produce
the book. Rose Kernan managed the project and was our primary
point of contact during book production. Rose did a phenomenal job;
she was diligent, responsive, and helpful at every step of the
process. Amanda Brands was our content producer, and she also
provided excellent support along the way. Thank you to Martha
McMaster for proofreading the text, and thanks to Shelly Gerger-
Knechtl for copy editing and indexing. We thank Yvonne Vannatta,
our marketing manager, and Meghan Jacoby, our editorial assistant.
We also want to thank the team of artists and compositors from
Pearson’s partner institutions who helped produce the chapters of
this text.

We would like to thank our lead editor at Pearson, Matt Goldstein.

Over a decade ago Matt believed in our work and partnered with us
to create the original Building Java Programs on which this text is
based. Matt has been a stalwart supporter and is always a pleasure
to work with.

Last but not least, the authors would like to thank the CSC 110
students at the University of Arizona who class-tested our chapters
in rough draft form. Students provided helpful suggestions for
improving the content and also submitted corrections for typos and
errors in drafts of chapters.

Stuart Reges
University of Washington
Marty Stepp
Stanford University
Allison Obourn
University of Arizona
MyLab Programming
Through the power of practice and immediate personalized
feedback, MyLab Programming™ helps students master
programming fundamentals and build computational thinking skills.

PROGRAMMING PRACTICE
With MyLab Programming, your students will gain first-hand
programming experience in an interactive online environment.

IMMEDIATE, PERSONALIZED
FEEDBACK
MyLab Programming automatically detects errors in the logic and
syntax of their code submission and offers trageted hints that
enables students to figure out what went wrong and why.

GRADUATED COMPLEXITY
MyLab Programming breaks down programming concepts into short,
understandable sequences of exercises. Within each sequence the
level and sophistication of the exercises increase gradually but
steadily.

DYNAMIC ROSTER
Students’ submissions are stored in a roster that indicates whether
the submission is correct, how many attempts were made, and the
actual code submissions from each attempt.
PEARSON eTEXT
The Pearson eText gives students access to their textbook anytime,
anywhere

STEP-BY-STEP VIDEONOTE
TUTORIALS
These step-by-step video tutorials enhance the programming
concepts presented in select Pearson textbooks.

For more information and titles available with MyLab Programming,

please visit www.pearson.com/mylab/programming

Copyright © 2018 Pearson Education, Inc. or its affiliate(s). All rights reserved. HELO88173 · 11/15
Brief Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction to Python Programming 1

Chapter 2 Data and Definite Loops 57

Chapter 3 Parameters and Graphics 132

Chapter 4 Conditional Execution 219

Chapter 5 Program Logic and Indefinite Loops 295

Chapter 6 File Processing 364

Chapter 7 Lists 418

Chapter 8 Dictionaries and Sets 517

Chapter 9 Recursion 563

Chapter 10 Searching and Sorting 636

Chapter 11 Classes and Objects 686

Chapter 12 Functional Programming 738

Appendix A Python Summary 785

Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction to Python Programming 1
1.1 Basic Computing Concepts 2
Why Programming? 2

Hardware and Software 3

The Digital Realm 4

The Process of Programming 6

Why Python? 7

The Python Programming Environment 8

1.2 And Now: Python 10

Printing Output 14

String Literals (Strings) 15

Escape Sequences 16

Printing a Complex Figure 18

Comments, Whitespace, and Readability 19

1.3 Program Errors 22

Syntax Errors 23

Logic Errors (Bugs) 25

 1.4 Procedural Decomposition 26
Functions 27

Flow of Control 31

Identifiers and Keywords 34

Functions That Call Other Functions 36

An Example Runtime Error 38

1.5 Case Study: Drawing Figures 40

Structured Version 41

Final Version without Redundancy 42

Analysis of Flow of Execution 44

Chapter 2 Data and Definite Loops 57

2.1 Basic Data Concepts 58
Types 58

Expressions 59

Literals 62

Arithmetic Operators 62

Precedence 66

Mixing and Converting Types 69

2.2 Variables 70
A Program with Variables 74
 Increment/Decrement Operators 79

Printing Multiple Values 80

2.3 The for Loop 83

Using a Loop Variable 87

Details about Ranges 90

String Multiplication and Printing Partial Lines 94

Nested for Loops 98

2.4 Managing Complexity 101

Scope 101

Pseudocode 103

Constants 108

2.5 Case Study: Hourglass Figure 111

Problem Decomposition and Pseudocode 112

Initial Structured Version 114

Adding a Constant 115

Chapter 3 Parameters and Graphics 132

3.1 Parameters 133
The Mechanics of Parameters 139

Limitations of Parameters 141

 Multiple Parameters 145

Parameters versus Constants 148

Optional Parameters 149

3.2 Returning Values 151

The math Module 153

The random Module 156

Defining Functions That Return Values 160

Returning Multiple Values 165

3.3 Interactive Programs 167

Sample Interactive Program 170

3.4 Graphics 172

Introduction to DrawingPanel 173

Drawing Lines and Shapes 176

Colors 179

Drawing with Loops 183

Text and Fonts 186

Images 188

Procedural Decomposition with Graphics 189

 3.5 Case Study: Projectile Trajectory 191
Unstructured Solution 195

Structured Solution 196

Graphical Version 199

Chapter 4 Conditional Execution 219

4.1 if/else Statements 220
Relational Operators 222

Nested if/else Statements 225

Factoring if/else Statements 231

Testing Multiple Conditions 232

4.2 Cumulative Algorithms 233

Cumulative Sum 233

Min/Max Loops 236

Cumulative Sum with if 239

Roundoff Errors 242

4.3 Functions with Conditional Execution 245

Preconditions and Postconditions 245

Raising Exceptions 246

Revisiting Return Values 250

 Reasoning about Paths 253

4.4 Strings 255

String Methods 257

Accessing Characters by Index 260

Converting between Letters and Numbers 264

Cumulative Text Algorithms 267

4.5 Case Study: Basal Metabolic Rate 269

One-Person Unstructured Solution 270

Two-Person Unstructured Solution 273

Two-Person Structured Solution 275

Procedural Design Heuristics 280

Chapter 5 Program Logic and Indefinite Loops 295

5.1 The while Loop 296
A Loop to Find the Smallest Divisor 298

Loop Priming 300

5.2 Fencepost Algorithms 303

Fencepost with if 306

Sentinel Loops 308

Sentinel with Min/Max 310

 5.3 Boolean Logic 312
Logical Operators 315

Boolean Variables and Flags 318

Predicate Functions 320

Boolean Zen 322

Short-Circuited Evaluation 325

5.4 Robust Programs 329

The try/except Statement 330

Handling User Errors 333

5.5 Assertions and Program Logic 335

Reasoning about Assertions 337

A Detailed Assertions Example 339

5.6 Case Study: Number Guessing Game 343

Initial Version without Hinting 344

Randomized Version with Hinting 346

Final Robust Version 348

Chapter 6 File Processing 364

6.1 File-Reading Basics 365
Data and Files 365

Reading a File in Python 369

 Line-Based File Processing 372

Structure of Files and Consuming Input 373

Prompting for a File 378

6.2 Token-Based Processing 381

Numeric Input 383

Handling Invalid Input 385

Mixing Lines and Tokens 386

Handling Varying Numbers of Tokens 388

Complex Input Files 392

6.3 Advanced File Processing 394

Multi-Line Input Records 395

File Output 397

Reading Data from the Web 400

6.4 Case Study: ZIP Code Lookup 403

Chapter 7 Lists 418

7.1 List Basics 419
Creating Lists 420

Accessing List Elements 423

Traversing a List 429

Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
Thus by his third winter in London our obscurely-born and half-
schooled young medical student found himself fairly launched in a
world of art, letters, and liberal aspirations, and living in familiar
intimacy with some, and friendly acquaintance with others, of the
brightest and most ardent spirits of the time. His youth, origin, and
temperament alike saved him from anything but a healthy relation of
equality with his younger, and deference towards his elder,
companions. But the power and the charm of genius were already
visibly upon him. Portraits both verbal and other exist in abundance,
enabling us to realise his presence and the impression which he
made. “The character and expression of his features,” it is said,
“would arrest even the casual passenger in the street.” A small,
handsome, ardent-looking youth—the stature little over five feet: the
figure compact and well-turned, with the neck thrust eagerly
forward, carrying a strong and shapely head set off by thickly
clustering gold-brown hair: the features powerful, finished, and
mobile: the mouth rich and wide, with an expression at once
combative and sensitive in the extreme: the forehead not high, but
broad and strong: the eyebrows nobly arched, and eyes hazel-
brown, liquid-flashing, visibly inspired—“an eye that had an inward
look, perfectly divine, like a Delphian priestess who saw visions.”
“Keats was the only man I ever met who seemed and looked
conscious of a high calling, except Wordsworth.” These words are
Haydon’s, and to the same effect Leigh Hunt:—“the eyes mellow and
glowing, large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a noble action or
a beautiful thought, they would suffuse with tears, and his mouth
trembled.” It is noticeable that his friends, whenever they begin to
describe his looks, go off in this way to tell of the feelings and the
soul that shone through them. To return to Haydon:—“he was in his
glory in the fields. The humming of a bee, the sight of a flower, the
glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature tremble; then his eyes
flashed, his cheek glowed, and his mouth quivered.” In like manner
George Keats:—“John’s eyes moistened, and his lip quivered, at the
relation of any tale of generosity or benevolence or noble daring, or
at sights of loveliness or distress;” and a shrewd and honoured
survivor of those days, “herself of many poets the frequent theme
and valued friend,”—need I name Mrs Procter?—has recorded the
impression the same eyes have left upon her, as those of one who
had been looking on some glorious sight[22].
In regard to his social qualities, Keats is said, and owns himself, to
have been not always perfectly well-conditioned or at his ease in the
company of women, but in that of men all accounts agree that he
was pleasantness itself: quiet and abstracted or brilliant and voluble
by turns, according to his mood and company, but thoroughly
amiable and unaffected. If the conversation did not interest him he
was apt to draw apart, and sit by himself in the window, peering into
vacancy; so that the window-seat came to be recognized as his
place. His voice was rich and low, and when he joined in discussion,
it was usually with an eager but gentle animation, while his
occasional bursts of fiery indignation at wrong or meanness bore no
undue air of assumption, and failed not to command respect. His
powers of mimicry and dramatic recital are said to have been great,
and never used unkindly.
Thus stamped by nature, and moving in such a circle as we have
described, Keats found among those with whom he lived nothing to
check, but rather everything to foster, his hourly growing, still
diffident and trembling, passion for the poetic life. His guardian, as
we have said, of course was adverse: but his brothers, including
George, the practical and sensible one of the family, were warmly
with him, as his allusions and addresses to them both in prose and
verse, and their own many transcripts from his compositions, show.
In August 1816 we find him addressing from Margate a sonnet and a
poetical Epistle in terms of the utmost affection and confidence to
George. About the same time he gave up his lodgings in St Thomas’s
Street to go and live with his brothers in the Poultry; and in
November he composes another sonnet on their fraternal fire-side
occupations. Poetry and the love of poetry were at this period in the
air. It was a time when even people of business and people of
fashion read: a time of literary excitement, expectancy, and
discussion, such as England has not known since. In such an
atmosphere Keats soon found himself induced to try his fortune and
his powers with the rest. The encouragement of his friends was
indeed only too ready and enthusiastic. It was Leigh Hunt who first
brought him before the world in print, publishing without comment,
in the Examiner for the 5th of May, 1816, his sonnet beginning, ‘O
Solitude! if I with thee must dwell,’ and on the 1st of December in
the same year the sonnet on Chapman’s Homer. This Hunt
accompanied by some prefatory remarks on the poetical promise of
its author, associating with his name those of Shelley and Reynolds.
It was by the praise of Hunt in this paper, says Mr Stephens, that
Keats’s fate was sealed. But already the still more ardent
encouragement of Haydon, if more was wanted, had come to add
fuel to the fire. In the Marlborough Street studio, in the Hampstead
cottage, in the City lodgings of the three brothers, and in the
convivial gatherings of their friends, it was determined that John
Keats should put forth a volume of his poems. A sympathetic firm of
publishers was found in the Olliers. The volume was printed, and the
last proof-sheets were brought one evening to the author amid a
jovial company, with the intimation that if a dedication was to be
added the copy must be furnished at once. Keats going to one side
quickly produced the sonnet To Leigh Hunt Esqr., with its excellent
opening and its weak conclusion:—
“Glory and Loveliness have pass’d away;
For if we wander out in early morn,
No wreathèd incense do we see upborne
Into the East to meet the smiling day:
No crowd of nymphs soft-voiced and young and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,
Roses and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
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.”
With this confession of a longing retrospect towards the beauty of
the old pagan world, and of gratitude for present friendship, the
young poet’s first venture was sent forth in the month of March
1817.
 CHAPTER III.
The Poems of 1817.
The note of Keats’s early volume is accurately struck in the motto
from Spenser which he prefixed to it:—
“What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?”
The element in which his poetry moves is liberty, the consciousness
of release from those conventions and restraints, not inherent in its
true nature, by which the art had for the last hundred years been
hampered. And the spirit which animates him is essentially the spirit
of delight: delight in the beauty of nature and the vividness of
sensation, delight in the charm of fable and romance, in the
thoughts of friendship and affection, in anticipations of the future,
and in the exercise of the art itself which expresses and
communicates all these joys.
We have already glanced, in connection with the occasions which
gave rise to them, at a few of the miscellaneous boyish pieces in
various metres which are included in the volume, as well as at some
of the sonnets. The remaining and much the chief portion of the
book consists of half a dozen poems in the rhymed decasyllabic
couplet. These had all been written during the period between
November 1815 and April 1817, under the combined influence of the
older English poets and of Leigh Hunt. The former influence shows
itself everywhere in the substance and spirit of the poems, but less,
for the present, in their form and style. Keats had by this time
thrown off the eighteenth-century stiffness which clung to his
earliest efforts, but he had not yet adopted, as he was about to do,
a vocabulary and diction of his own full of licences caught from the
Elizabethans and from Milton. The chief verbal echoes of Spenser to
be found in his first volume are a line quoted from him entire in the
epistle to G. F. Mathew, and the use of the archaic ‘teen’ in the
stanzas professedly Spenserian. We can indeed trace Keats’s
familiarity with Chapman, and especially with one poem of
Chapman’s, his translation of the Homeric Hymn to Pan, in a
predilection for a particular form of abstract descriptive substantive:
—
“the pillowy silkiness that rests
Full in the speculation of the stars:”—

“Or the quaint mossiness of aged roots:”—

“Ere I can have explored its widenesses.”[23]

The only other distinguishing marks of Keats’s diction in this first
volume consist, I think, in the use of the Miltonic ‘sphery,’ and of an
unmeaning coinage of his own, ‘boundly,’ with a habit—for which
Milton, Spenser, and among the moderns Leigh Hunt all alike
furnished him the example—of turning nouns into verbs and verbs
into nouns at his convenience. For the rest, Keats writes in the
ordinary English of his day, with much more feeling for beauty of
language than for correctness, and as yet without any formed or
assured poetic style. Single lines and passages declare, indeed,
abundantly his vital poetic faculty and instinct. But they are mixed
up with much that only illustrates his crudity of taste, and the
tendency he at this time shared with Leigh Hunt to mistake the air of
chatty, trivial gusto for an air of poetic ease and grace.
In the matter of metre, we can see Keats in these poems making a
succession of experiments for varying the regularity of the heroic
couplet. In the colloquial Epistles, addressed severally to G. F.
Mathew, to his brother George, and to Cowden Clarke, he contents
himself with the use of frequent disyllabic rhymes, and an occasional
enjambement or ‘overflow.’ In the Specimen of an Induction to a
Poem, and in the fragment of the poem itself, entitled Calidore (a
name borrowed from the hero of Spenser’s sixth book,) as well as in
the unnamed piece beginning ‘I stood tiptoe upon a little hill,’ which
opens the volume, he further modifies the measure by shortening
now and then the second line of the couplet, with a lyric beat that
may have been caught either from Spenser’s nuptial odes or Milton’s
Lycidas,—
“Open afresh your round of starry folds,
Ye ardent marigolds.”
In Sleep and Poetry, which is the most personal and interesting, as
well as probably the last-written, poem in the volume, Keats drops
this practice, but in other respects varies the rhythm far more boldly,
making free use of the overflow, placing his full pauses at any point
in a line rather than at the end, and adopting as a principle rather
than an exception the Chaucerian and Elizabethan fashion of
breaking the couplet by closing a sentence or paragraph with its first
line.
Passing from the form of the poems to their substance, we find that
they are experiments or poetic preludes merely, with no pretension
to be organic or complete works of art. To rehearse ramblingly the
pleasures and aspirations of the poetic life, letting one train of
images follow another with no particular plan or sequence, is all that
Keats as yet attempts: except in the Calidore fragment. And that is
on the whole feeble and confused: from the outset the poet loses
himself in a maze of young luxuriant imagery: once and again,
however, he gets clear, and we have some good lines in an approach
to the Dryden manner:—
“Softly the breezes from the forest came,
Softly they blew aside the taper’s flame;
Clear was the song from Philomel’s far bower;
Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower;
Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet’s tone;
Lovely the moon in ether, all alone.”
To set against this are occasionally expressions in the complete taste
of Leigh Hunt, as for instance—
“The lamps that from the high-roof’d wall were pendent,
And gave the steel a shining quite transcendent.”
The Epistles are full of cordial tributes to the conjoint pleasures of
literature and friendship. In that to Cowden Clarke, Keats
acknowledges to his friend that he had been shy at first of
addressing verses to him:—
“Nor should I now, but that I’ve known you long;
That you first taught me all the sweets of song:
The grand, the sweet, the terse, the free, the fine,
What swell’d with pathos, and what right divine:
Spenserian vowels that elope with ease,
And float along like birds o’er summer seas;
Miltonian storms, and more, Miltonian tenderness;
Michael in arms, and more, meek Eve’s fair slenderness.
Who read for me the sonnet swelling loudly
Up to its climax, and then dying proudly?
Who found for me the grandeur of the ode,
Growing, like Atlas, stronger for its load?
Who let me taste that more than cordial dram,
The sharp, the rapier-pointed epigram?
Show’d me that Epic was of all the king,
Round, vast, and spanning all like Saturn’s ring?”
This is characteristic enough of the quieter and lighter manner of
Keats in his early work. Blots like the ungrammatical fourth line are
not infrequent with him. The preference for Miltonian tenderness
over Miltonian storms may remind the reader of a later poet’s more
masterly expression of the same sentiment:—‘Me rather all that
bowery loneliness—’. The two lines on Spenser are of interest as
conveying one of those incidental criticisms on poetry by a poet, of
which no one has left us more or better than Keats. The habit of
Spenser to which he here alludes is that of coupling or repeating the
same vowels, both in their open and their closed sounds, in the
same or successive lines, for example,—
“Eftsoones her shallow ship away did slide,
More swift than swallow sheres the liquid skye;
Withouten oare or pilot it to guide,
Or winged canvas with the wind to fly.”
The run here is on a and i; principally on i, which occurs five times in
its open, and ten times in its closed, sound in the four lines,—if we
are indeed to reckon as one vowel these two unlike sounds denoted
by the same sign. Keats was a close and conscious student of the
musical effects of verse, and the practice of Spenser is said to have
suggested to him a special theory as to the use and value of the
iteration of vowel sounds in poetry. What his theory was we are not
clearly told, neither do I think it can easily be discovered from his
practice; though every one must feel a great beauty of his verse to
be in the richness of the vowel and diphthong sequences. He often
spoke of the subject, and once maintained his view against
Wordsworth when the latter seemed to be advocating a mechanical
principle of vowel variation.
Hear, next how the joys of brotherly affection, of poetry, and of
nature, come naively jostling one another in the Epistle addressed
from the sea-side to his brother George:—
“As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them
I feel delighted, still, that you should read them.
Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment,
Stretch’d on the grass at my best loved employment
Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought
While, in my face, the freshest breeze I caught.
E’en now I am pillow’d on a bed of flowers
That crowns a lofty cliff, which proudly towers
Above the ocean waves. The stalks and blades
Chequer my tablet with their quivering shades.
On one side is a field of drooping oats,
 Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats;
So pert and useless that they bring to mind
The scarlet coats that pester human kind.
And on the other side, outspread is seen
Ocean’s blue mantle, streak’d with purple and green.
Now ’tis I see a canvass’d ship, and now
Mark the bright silver curling round her brow;
I see the lark down-dropping to his nest,
And the broad wing’d sea-gull never at rest;
For when no more he spreads his feathers free,
His breast is dancing on the restless sea.”
It is interesting to watch the newly-awakened literary faculty in Keats
thus exercising itself in the narrow circle of personal sensation, and
on the description of the objects immediately before his eyes. The
effect of rhythmical movement attempted in the last lines, to
correspond with the buoyancy and variety of the motions described,
has a certain felicity, and the whole passage is touched already with
Keats’s exquisite perception and enjoyment of external nature. His
character as a poet of nature begins, indeed, distinctly to declare
itself in this first volume. He differs by it alike from Wordsworth and
from Shelley. The instinct of Wordsworth was to interpret all the
operations of nature by those of his own strenuous soul; and the
imaginative impressions he had received in youth from the scenery
of his home, deepened and enriched by continual after meditation,
and mingling with all the currents of his adult thought and feeling,
constituted for him throughout his life the most vital part alike of
patriotism, of philosophy, and of religion. For Shelley on his part
natural beauty was in a twofold sense symbolical. In the visible
glories of the world his philosophy saw the veil of the unseen, while
his philanthropy found in them types and auguries of a better life on
earth; and all that imagery of nature’s more remote and skyey
phenomena, of which no other poet has had an equal mastery, and
which comes borne to us along the music of the verse—
 “With many a mingled close
Of wild Æolian sound and mountain odour keen”—
was inseparable in his soul from visions of a radiant future and a
renovated—alas! not a human—humanity. In Keats the sentiment of
nature was simpler than in either of these two other masters; more
direct, and so to speak more disinterested. It was his instinct to love
and interpret nature more for her own sake, and less for the sake of
sympathy which the human mind can read into her with its own
workings and aspirations. He had grown up neither like Wordsworth
under the spell of lake and mountain, nor in the glow of millennial
dreams like Shelley, but London-born and Middlesex-bred, was
gifted, we know not whence, as if by some mysterious birthright,
with a delighted insight into all the beauties, and sympathy with all
the life, of the woods and fields. Evidences of the gift appear, as
every reader knows, in the longer poems of his first volume, with
their lingering trains of peaceful summer imagery, and loving
inventories of ‘Nature’s gentle doings;’ and pleasant touches of the
same kind are scattered also among the sonnets; as in that To
Charles Wells,—
“As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert,”—
or again in that To Solitude,—
—“let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavilion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.”[24]
Such intuitive familiarity with the blithe activities, unnoted by
common eyes, which make up the life and magic of nature, is a gift
we attribute to men of primitive race and forest nurture; and Mr
Matthew Arnold would have us recognize it as peculiarly
characteristic of the Celtic element in the English genius and English
poetry. It was allied in Keats to another instinct of the early world
which we associate especially with the Greeks, the instinct for
personifying the powers of nature in clearly-defined imaginary
shapes endowed with human beauty and half-human faculties. The
classical teaching of the Enfield school had not gone beyond Latin,
and neither in boyhood nor afterwards did Keats acquire any Greek:
but towards the creations of the Greek mythology he was attracted
by an overmastering delight in their beauty, and a natural sympathy
with the phase of imagination that engendered them. Especially he
shows himself possessed and fancy-bound by the mythology, as well
as by the physical enchantment, of the moon. Never was bard in
youth so literally moonstruck. He had planned a poem on the ancient
story of the loves of Diana, with whom the Greek moon-goddess
Selene is identified in the Latin mythology, and the shepherd-prince
Endymion; and had begun a sort of prelude to it in the piece that
opens ‘I stood tiptoe upon a little hill.’ Afterwards, without
abandoning the subject, Keats laid aside this particular exordium,
and printed it, as we have seen, as an independent piece at the
head of his first volume. It is at the climax of a passage rehearsing
the delights of evening that he first bethinks himself of the moon—
“lifting her silver rim
Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim
Coming into the blue with all her light.”
The thought of the mythic passion of the moon-goddess for
Endymion, and the praises of the poet who first sang it, follow at
considerable length. The passage conjuring up the wonders and
beneficences of their bridal night is written in part with such a
sympathetic touch for the collective feelings and predicaments of
men, in the ordinary conditions of human pain and pleasure, health
and sickness, as rarely occurs again in Keats’s poetry, though his
correspondence shows it to have been most natural to his mind:—
“The evening weather was so bright, and clear,
That men of health were of unusual cheer.
· · · · · · ·
The breezes were ethereal, and pure,
 And crept through half-closed lattices to cure
The languid sick; it cool’d their fever’d sleep,
And sooth’d them into slumbers full and deep.
Soon they awoke clear-ey’d: nor burnt with thirsting,
Nor with hot fingers, nor with temples bursting:
And springing up, they met the wond’ring sight
Of their dear friends, nigh foolish with delight;
Who feel their arms and breasts, and kiss and stare,
And on their placid foreheads part the hair.”[25]
Finally, Keats abandons and breaks off this tentative exordium of his
unwritten poem with the cry:—
“Cynthia! I cannot tell the greater blisses
That followed thine and thy dear shepherd’s kisses:
Was there a poet born? But now no more
My wandering spirit must no farther soar.”
Was there a poet born? Is the labour and the reward of poetry really
and truly destined to be his? The question is one which recurs in this
early volume importunately and in many tones; sometimes with
words and cadences closely recalling those of Milton in his boyish
Vacation Exercise; sometimes with a cry like this, which occurs twice
over in the piece called Sleep and Poetry,—
“O Poesy! for thee I hold my pen,
That am not yet a glorious denizen
Of thy wide heaven:”—
and anon, with a less wavering, more confident and daring tone of
young ambition,—
“But off, Despondence! miserable bane!
They should not know thee, who, athirst to gain
A noble end, are thirsty every hour.
What though I am not wealthy in the dower
Of spanning wisdom: though I do not know
The shiftings of the mighty winds that blow
 Hither and thither all the changing thoughts
Of man: though no great ministering reason sorts
Out the dark mysteries of human souls
To clear conceiving: yet there ever rolls
A vast idea before me”—.
The feeling expressed in these last lines, the sense of the
overmastering pressure and amplitude of an inspiration as yet
unrealized and indistinct, gives way in other passages to confident
anticipations of fame, and of the place which he will hold in the
affections of posterity.
There is obviously a great immaturity and uncertainty in all these
outpourings, an intensity and effervescence of emotion out of
proportion as yet both to the intellectual and the voluntary powers,
much confusion of idea, and not a little of expression. Yet even in
this first book of Keats there is much that the lover of poetry will
always cherish. Literature, indeed, hardly affords another example of
work at once so crude and so attractive. Passages that go to pieces
under criticism nevertheless have about them a spirit of beauty and
of morning, an abounding young vitality and freshness, that
exhilarate and charm us whether with the sanction of our judgment
or without it. And alike at its best and worst, the work proceeds
manifestly from a spontaneous and intense poetic impulse. The
matter of these early poems of Keats is as fresh and unconventional
as their form, springing directly from the native poignancy of his
sensations and abundance of his fancy. That his inexperience should
always make the most discreet use of its freedom could not be
expected; but with all its immaturity his work has strokes already
which suggest comparison with the great names of literature. Who
much exceeds him, even from the first, but Shakspere in momentary
felicity of touch for nature, and in that charm of morning freshness
who but Chaucer? Already, too, we find him showing signs of that
capacity for clear and sane self-knowledge which becomes by-and-
by so admirable in him. And he has already begun to meditate to
good purpose on the aims and methods of his art. He has grasped
and vehemently asserts the principle that poetry should not strive to
enforce particular doctrines, that it should not contend in the field of
reason, but that its proper organ is the imagination, and its aim the
creation of beauty. With reference to the theory and practice of the
poetic art the piece called Sleep and Poetry contains one passage
which has become classically familiar to all readers. Often as it has
been quoted elsewhere, it must be quoted again here, as
indispensable to the understanding of the literary atmosphere in
which Keats lived:—
“Is there so small a range
In the present strength of manhood, that the high
Imagination cannot freely fly
As she was wont of old? prepare her steeds,
Paw up against the light, and do strange deeds
Upon the clouds? Has she not shown us all?
From the clear space of ether, to the small
Breath of new buds unfolding? From the meaning
Of Jove’s large eyebrow, to the tender greening
Of April meadows? here her altar shone,
E’en in this isle; and who could paragon
The fervid choir that lifted up a noise
Of harmony, to where it aye will poise
Its mighty self of convoluting sound,
Huge as a planet, and like that roll round,
Eternally around a dizzy void?
Ay, in those days the Muses were nigh cloy’d
With honours; nor had any other care
Than to sing out and soothe their wavy hair.
Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism
Nurtured by foppery and barbarism
Made great Apollo blush for this his land.
Men were thought wise who could not understand
His glories; with a puling infant’s force
They sway’d about upon a rocking-horse,
And thought it Pegasus. Ah, dismal-soul’d!
The winds of heaven blew, the ocean roll’d
Its gathering waves—ye felt it not. The blue
Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew
Of summer night collected still to make
The morning precious: Beauty was awake!
Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead
To things ye knew not of,—were closely wed
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule
And compass vile; so that ye taught a school
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit,
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob’s wit,
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task:
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask
Of Poesy. Ill-fated, impious race!
That blasphemed the bright Lyrist to his face,
And did not know it,—no, they went about,
Holding a poor, decrepit standard out,
Mark’d with most flimsy mottoes, and in large
The name of one Boileau!
O ye whose charge
It is to hover round our pleasant hills!
Whose congregated majesty so fills
My boundly reverence, that I cannot trace
Your hallow’d names, in this unholy place,
So near those common folk; did not their shames
Affright you? Did our old lamenting Thames
Delight you? did ye never cluster round
Delicious Avon, with a mournful sound,
And weep? Or did ye wholly bid adieu
To regions where no more the laurel grew?
Or did ye stay to give a welcoming
To some lone spirits who could proudly sing
Their youth away, and die? ’Twas even so.
But let me think away those times of woe:
Now ’tis a fairer season; ye have breathed
Rich benedictions o’er us; ye have wreathed
 Fresh garlands: for sweet music has been heard
In many places; some has been upstirr’d
From out its crystal dwelling in a lake,
By a swan’s ebon bill; from a thick brake,
Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
About the earth: happy are ye and glad.”
Both the strength and the weakness of this are typically
characteristic of the time and of the man. The passage is likely to
remain for posterity the central expression of the spirit of literary
emancipation then militant and about to triumph in England. The
two great elder captains of revolution, Coleridge and Wordsworth,
have both expounded their cause, in prose, with much more
maturity of thought and language; Coleridge in the luminous
retrospect of the Biographia Literaria, Wordsworth in the austere
contentions of his famous prefaces. But neither has left any
enunciation of theory having power to thrill the ear and haunt the
memory like the rhymes of this young untrained recruit in the cause
of poetic liberty and the return to nature. It is easy, indeed, to pick
these verses of Keats to shreds, if we choose to fix a prosaic and
rational attention on their faults. What is it, for instance, that
imagination is asked to do? fly, or drive? Is it she, or her steeds, that
are to paw up against the light? and why paw? Deeds to be done
upon clouds by pawing can hardly be other than strange. What sort
of a verb is ‘I green, thou greenest?’ Delight with liberty is very well,
but liberty in a poet ought not to include liberties with the parts of
speech. Why should the hair of the muses require ‘soothing’?—if it
were their tempers it would be more intelligible. And surely ‘foppery’
belongs to civilization and not to ‘barbarism’: and a standard-bearer
may be decrepit, but not a standard, and a standard flimsy, but not
a motto. ‘Boundly reverence’: what is boundly? And so on without
end, if we choose to let the mind assume that attitude. Many minds
not indifferent to literature were at that time, and some will at all
times be, incapable of any other. Such must naturally turn to the
work of the eighteenth century school, the school of tact and urbane
brilliancy and sedulous execution, and think the only ‘blasphemy’
was on the side of the youth who could call, or seem to call, the
poet of Belinda and the Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot fool and dolt. Byron,
in his controversy with Bowles a year or two later, adopted this mode
of attack effectively enough: his spleen against a contemporary
finding as usual its most convenient weapon in an enthusiasm, partly
real and partly affected, for the genius and the methods of Pope. But
controversy apart, if we have in us a touch of instinct for the poetry
of imagination and beauty, as distinct from that of taste and reason,
however clearly we may see the weak points of a passage like this,
however much we may wish that taste and reason had had more to
do with it, yet we cannot but feel that Keats touches truly the root of
the matter; we cannot but admire the elastic life and variety of his
verse, his fine spontaneous and effective turns of rhetoric, the ring
and power of his appeal to the elements, and the glow of his delight
in the achievements and promise of the new age.
His volume on its appearance by no means made the impression
which his friends had hoped for it. Hunt published a thoroughly
judicious as well as cordial criticism in the Examiner, and several of
the provincial papers noticed the book. Haydon wrote in his ranting
vein: “I have read your Sleep and Poetry—it is a flash of lightning
that will rouse men from their occupations, and keep them trembling
for the crash of thunder that will follow.” But people were in fact as
far from being disturbed in their occupations as possible. The
attention of the reading public was for the moment almost entirely
absorbed by men of talent or of genius who played with a more
careless, and some of them with a more masterly touch than Keats
as yet, on commoner chords of the human spirit; as Moore, Scott,
and Byron. In Keats’s volume every one could see the faults, while
the beauties appealed only to the poetically minded. It seems to
have had a moderate sale at first, but after the first few weeks none
at all. The poet, or at all events his brothers for him, were inclined,
apparently with little reason, to blame their friends the publishers for
the failure. On the 29th of April we find the brothers Ollier replying
to a letter of George Keats in dudgeon:—“we regret that your
brother ever requested us to publish his book, or that our opinion of
its talent should have led us to acquiesce in undertaking it. We are,
however, much obliged to you for relieving us from the unpleasant
necessity of declining any further connexion with it, which we must
have done, as we think the curiosity is satisfied, and the sale has
dropped.” One of their customers, they go on to say, had a few days
ago hurt their feelings as men of business and of taste by calling it
“no better than a take in.”
A fortnight before the date of this letter Keats had left London.
Haydon had been urging on him, not injudiciously, the importance of
seclusion and concentration of mind. We find him writing to
Reynolds soon after the publication of his volume:—“My brothers are
anxious that I should go by myself into the country; they have
always been extremely fond of me, and now that Haydon has
pointed out how necessary it is that I should be alone to improve
myself, they give up the temporary pleasure of living with me
continually for a great good which I hope will follow: so I shall soon
be out of town.” And on the 14th of April he in fact started for the
Isle of Wight, intending to devote himself entirely to study, and to
make immediately a fresh start upon Endymion.
CHAPTER IV.
 Excursion to Isle of Wight, Margate, and
Canterbury—Summer at Hampstead
—New Friends: Dilke: Brown: Bailey
—With Bailey at Oxford—Return: Old
Friends at Odds—Burford Bridge—
Winter at Hampstead—Wordsworth:
Lamb: Hazlitt—Poetical Activity—
Spring at Teignmouth—Studies and
Anxieties—Marriage and Emigration
of George Keats. [April, 1817-May,
1818.]
As soon as Keats reached the Isle of Wight, on April 16, 1817, he
went to see Shanklin and Carisbrooke, and after some hesitation
between the two, decided on a lodging at the latter place. The next
day he writes to Reynolds that he has spent the morning arranging
the books and prints he had brought with him, adding to the latter
one of Shakspere which he had found in the passage and which had
particularly pleased him. He speaks with enthusiasm of the beauties
of Shanklin, but in a postscript written the following day, mentions
that he has been nervous from want of sleep, and much haunted by
the passage in Lear, ‘Do you not hear the sea?’—adding without
farther preface his own famous sea-sonnet beginning—
“It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns”—.
In the same postscript Keats continues:—
“I find I cannot do without poetry—without eternal poetry; half
the day will not do—the whole of it. I began with a little, but
habit has made me a leviathan. I had become all in a tremble
from not having written anything of late: the Sonnet overleaf did
me good; I slept the better last night for it; this morning,
however, I am nearly as bad again.... I shall forthwith begin my
 Endymion, which I hope I shall have got some way with before
you come, when we will read our verses in a delightful place I
have set my heart upon, near the Castle.”
The Isle of Wight, however, Keats presently found did not suit him,
and Haydon’s prescription of solitude proved too trying. He fell into a
kind of fever of thought and sleeplessness, which he thought it
wisest to try and shake off by flight. Early in May we find him writing
to Leigh Hunt from Margate, where he had already stayed the year
before, and explaining the reasons of his change of abode. Later in
the same letter, endeavouring to measure his own powers against
the magnitude of the task to which he has committed himself, he
falls into a vein like that which we have seen recurring once and
again in his verses during the preceding year, the vein of awed self-
questioning, and tragic presentiment uttered half in earnest and half
in jest. The next day we find him writing a long and intimate, very
characteristic letter to Haydon, signed ‘your everlasting friend,’ and
showing the first signs of the growing influence which Haydon was
beginning to exercise over him in antagonism to the influence of
Leigh Hunt. Keats was quite shrewd enough to feel for himself after
a little while the touches of vanity, fuss, and affectation, the lack of
depth and strength, in the kind and charming nature of Hunt, and
quite loyal enough to value his excellences none the less, and hold
him in grateful and undiminished friendship. But Haydon, between
whom and Hunt there was by degrees arising a coolness, must
needs have Keats see things as he saw them. “I love you like my
own brother,” insists he: “beware, for God’s sake, of the delusions
and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality of
our friend! He will go out of the world the victim of his own
weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the contempt
of his enemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he
undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character.” There
is a lugubrious irony in these words, when we remember how
Haydon, a self-deluder indeed, came to realise at last the very fate
he here prophesies for another,—just when Hunt, the harassing and
often sordid, ever brightly borne troubles of his earlier life left behind
him, was passing surrounded by affection into the haven of a
peaceful and bland old age. But for a time, under the pressure of
Haydon’s masterful exhortations, we find Keats inclining to take an
exaggerated and slightly impatient view of the foibles of his earlier
friend.
Among other interesting confessions to be found in Keats’s letter to
Haydon from Margate, is that of the fancy—almost the sense—which
often haunted him of dependence on the tutelary genius of
Shakspere:—
“I remember your saying that you had notions of a good genius
presiding over you. I have lately had the same thought, for
things which I do half at random, are afterwards confirmed by
my judgment in a dozen features of propriety. Is it too daring to
fancy Shakspeare this presider? When in the Isle of Wight I met
with a Shakspeare in the passage of the house at which I lodged.
It comes nearer to my idea of him than any I have seen; I was
but there a week, yet the old woman made me take it with me,
though I went off in a hurry. Do you not think this ominous of
good?”
Next he lays his finger on the great secret flaw in his own nature,
describing it in words which the after issue of his life will keep but
too vividly and constantly before our minds:—“truth is, I have a
horrid Morbidity of Temperament, which has shown itself at
intervals; it is, I have no doubt, the greatest Enemy and stumbling-
block I have to fear; I may even say, it is likely to be the cause of
my disappointment.” Was it that, in this seven-months’ child of a
consumptive mother, some unhealth of mind as well as body was
congenital?—or was it that, along with what seems his Celtic
intensity of feeling and imagination, he had inherited a special share
of that inward gloom which the reverses of their history have
stamped, according to some, on the mind of the Celtic race? We
cannot tell, but certain it is that along with the spirit of delight, ever
creating and multiplying images of beauty and joy, there dwelt in
Keats’s bosom an almost equally busy and inventive spirit of self-
torment.
The fit of dejection which led to the remark above quoted had its
immediate cause in apprehensions of money difficulties conveyed to
Keats in a letter from his brother George. The trust funds of which
Mr Abbey had the disposal for the benefit of the orphans, under the
deed executed by Mrs Jennings, amounted approximately to
£8,000[26], of which the capital was divisible among them on their
coming of age, and the interest was to be applied to their
maintenance in the meantime. But the interest of John’s share had
been insufficient for his professional and other expenses during his
term of medical study at Edmonton and London, and much of his
capital had been anticipated to meet them; presumably in the form
of loans raised on the security of his expectant share. Similar
advances had also been for some time necessary to the invalid Tom
for his support, and latterly—since he left the employment of Mr
Abbey—to George as well. It is clear that the arrangements for
obtaining these advances were made both wastefully and grudgingly.
It is further plain that the brothers were very insufficiently informed
of the state of their affairs. In the meantime John Keats was already
beginning to discount his expectations from literature. Before or
about the time of his rupture with the Olliers, he had made the
acquaintance of those excellent men, Messrs Taylor and Hessey, who
were shortly, as publishers of the London Magazine, to gather about
them on terms of cordial friendship a group of contributors
comprising more than half the choicest spirits of the day. With them,
especially with Mr Taylor, who was himself a student and writer of
independent, somewhat eccentric ability and research, Keats’s
relations were excellent from first to last, generous on their part,
and affectionate and confidential on his. He had made arrangements
with them, apparently before leaving London, for the eventual
publication of Endymion, and from Margate we find him
acknowledging a first payment received in advance. Now and again
afterwards he turns to the same friends for help at a pinch, adding
once, “I am sure you are confident of my responsibility, and of the
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