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Unit 6: Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats

sure of Keats’s genius, a poet to support as he became one of England’s greatest writers. Soon Notes
after meeting, the two became close friends and Woodhouse started collecting Keatsiana,
documenting as much as he possibly could about Keats’s poetry, an archive that continues as one
of the major sources of information on Keats’s work. Motion casts him as Boswell to Keats’
Johnson, continually promoting the writer’s work, fighting his corner, encouraging his poetry
on to greater heights. At the end, Woodhouse would be one of the few people to accompany
Keats to Gravesend to embark on his final trip to Rome.
In spite of the unfavourable reviews of Poems, Hunt published the sonnet On First Looking into
Chapman’s Homer and the essay Three Young Poets (Shelley, Keats and Reynolds), predicting
great things to come. He introduced Keats to numerous prominent men in his circle, including
editor of The Times Thomas Barnes, writer Charles Lamb, conductor Vincent Novello and poet
John Hamilton Reynolds, who became a close friend. He was also meeting William Hazlitt
frequently, an influential literary figure of the day. It was a significant turning point for Keats,
establishing him in the public eye as a figure in, what Hunt termed ‘a new school of poetry’.
At this time Keats wrote to his friend Bailey: “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
Heart’s affections and the truth of the imagination. What imagination seizes as Beauty must be
truth”. This would eventually transmute into the concluding lines of Ode on a Grecian Urn:
“‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ – that is all/you know on earth, and all ye need to know”. In early
December, under the strong influence of his artistic friends, Keats said to Abbey that he had
decided to give up medicine in favour of poetry, to Abbey’s fury. Keats had spent a great deal on
his medical training and had made numerous large loans that he could barely afford.

After leaving his training at the hospital, suffering from a series of colds, and unhappy with
living in damp rooms in London, Keats relocated with his brothers into rooms at 1 Well Walk
in the village of Hampstead in April 1817. Both George and John nursed their brother Tom, who
was suffering from tuberculosis. The house was close to Hunt and others from his circle in
Hampstead, as well as to Coleridge, respected elder of the first wave of Romantic poets. Around
this time he got introduced to Charles Wentworth Dilke, Benjamin Bailey and James Rice.
Keats met and became engaged to Frances (Fanny) Brawne Lindon (9 August 1800 – 4 December
1865) also known for her betrothal to Keats, a fact largely unknown until 1878, when Keats's
letters to her were published. Their engagement, lasting from December 1818 until Keats's
death in February 1821, spanned some of the most poetically productive years of his life.
In June 1818, John Keats started a walking tour of Scotland, Ireland and the Lake District with his
friend Charles Armitage Brown. They lived in Ohio and Louisville, Kentucky until 1841 when
George’s investments failed. Like Keats’ other brother, they died poor and pained by tuberculosis.
No effective treatment was available for the disease until 1921. In July, while on the Isle of Mull,
Keats caught a bad cold and “was too thin and fevered to proceed on the journey”. After his
return south in August, Keats continuously nursed Tom, exposing himself to infection. Some
biographers suggest that this is when tuberculosis, his “family disease”, first took hold. Tom
Keats died on 1 December 1818.

6.1.3 Wentworth Place

John Keats relocated to the newly built Wentworth Place which was owned by his friend Charles
Armitage Brown. It was also on the edge of Hampstead Heath, ten minutes’ walk south of his old
home in Well Walk. The winter of 1818–19, despite being a problematic period for the poet,
marked the beginning of his annus mirabilis in which Keats wrote his most mature work. He
had been enthused by a series of recent lectures by Hazlitt on English poets and poetic identity
and had also met William Wordsworth. Keats may have appeared to his friends to be living on
comfortable means, but in reality he was borrowing frequently from Abbey and his friends.

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