John Keats was born October, 1795, and died on the 23d of February, 1821. He was the son of a livery-stable keeper, who had married his former proprietor's daughter. The parents had wished to educate Keats and his two brothers, but before Keats was fifteen, both his father and mother had died. He was then apprenticed to a surgeon at Edmonton, under whom he remained four years, and then went up to London to complete his training for a medical degree. This he received in due time and began to practise, but he found literature so much more attractive that, in about a year, he gave up his attempt to practise medicine. At about this time he became acquainted with Leigh Hunt, who had a good deal of influence upon Keats's literary beginnings. His first volume of poetry, which appeared in 1817, shows this influence strongly. A year later his Endymion was published and was so severely criticised by Blackwood's and especially by the Quarterly that Keats took it much to heart; some have supposed that this attack very much hastened Keats's poetry is noted especially for its sensuous beauty, its descriptions, and its remarkable reproduction of the Greek and romantic spirits. The Eve of St. Agnes (Page 88)Around St. Agnes' Eve, which is the night before the Feast of St. Agnes on January 21, and which corresponds to the Scotch "Hallowe'en," there grew up the superstition that a maiden could, by observing certain traditional precautions, have in her sleep a vision of her future husband. Perhaps the most common way to obtain this vision was for the girl to go to sleep on her back with her hands behind her head; then at midnight she would dream that her lover came and kissed her. This is the superstition that Keats has made use of in The Eve of St. Agnes. St. Agnes was a Roman girl, who at thirteen was loved by the son of a Roman prefect, but, however, being like her parents a Christian and having vowed virginity, she told her lover that she was already betrothed. The youth, thinking he had some earthly rival, as a result fell so very sick that his father tried to intercede with the girl's parents. When he found these people were Christians, he tried to compel Agnes to become a vestal virgin or marry his son. Agnes, because she refused to do either of these things, was dragged to the altar, but because "But in a sieve I'll thither sail, And, like a rat without a tail, I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." "Madeline is asleep in her bed; but she is also asleep in accordance with the legends of the season; and therefore the bed becomes their lap as well as sleep's." —Leigh Hunt. |