It makes one discern the
quality of genius to realise how there is food for it everywhere, and
how little right one has to blame one's surroundings for not being more
suggestive. Indeed, I cannot help feeling that the very vulgarity of
Keats' circle, with its ill-flavoured jokes, its provincial taint, is
even more impressive than the romance in which Shelley lived, because
it marks his genius more impressively. Shelley was at least in contact
with interesting personalities, while Keats' circle was on the whole a
depressing one.
But the point which has been deeply borne in upon me, and which we are
apt, in reflecting on the posthumous glories of men of genius, to
forget, is the reflection how extraordinarily scanty was the
recognition which both Keats and Shelley met with in their lifetime.
Keats was nothing more than an obscure poetaster; he had a few friends
who believed in him, but which of them would have dared to predict the
volume and magnitude of his subsequent fame? Shelley was in even worse
case, for he was regarded by ordinary people as a monster of irreligion
and immorality, the custody of whose children had been denied him by
the most respectable of Lord Chancellors, on account of his detestable
opinions and the infamy of his mode of life. There are, I will venture
to say, a hundred living English writers who have more, far more, of
the comfortable sense of renown, and its tangible rewards, than either
of these great poets enjoyed in their lifetime.
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