SOURCE: Jones, Leonidas M. “Reynolds' ‘The Romance of Youth,’ Hazlitt, and Keats's The Fall of Hyperion.” English Language Notes 16, no. 4 (June 1979): 294-300.

[In the following essay, Jones compares poems by Reynolds and Keats, noting their similarities and arguing that Reynolds's work came first.]

Noting the marked similarity between Keats's encounter with Moneta in The Fall of Hyperion and Reynolds' poet's confrontation with the visionary female in “The Romance of Youth,” Robert Gittings suggested that Reynolds' passage was a rather tame and pale echo of the intense and poetically charged imagery of his great friend.¹ Since “The Romance of Youth” was not published until May 1821, that is the normal inference which anyone would make faced by the apparently earlier composition of Keats's poem. But Gittings could not know of Clayton E. Hudnall's revelation in his excellent study of the Leigh Browne-Lockyer Collection that in January 1817 Reynolds copied into commonplace books Stanzas 30, 31, 35, 92, and 93 of “The Romance of Youth,” as well as two partial stanzas that were not published.²

Hudnall's revelation, combined with Reynolds' prose introduction to the published poem, shows that Reynolds had almost certainly completed his fragment before Keats began The Fall. Reynolds reports in his introduction that “The plan of this poem came suddenly on the Author's mind some few years back, at a time when he was passing his hours in a most romantic part of the country, and when all his feelings were devoted to poetry”;³ that is, from 31 August through 11 September 1816 when he, James Rice, and his future wife Eliza Powell Drewe were visiting the Leigh sisters at Slade Hall in Devonshire. The strong probability is that he virtually completed the fragment in the three and one-half months before he returned to Slade Hall to copy the selected stanzas in January 1817. The fragment has 104 stanzas, and Stanzas 92 and 93, which he copied, lead directly into the final eleven stanzas. In the ensuing months, he doubtless did some revising of the first draft, as the rejection of the partial stanzas from the final version indicates, but he probably had the initial draft finished by January 1817. Even if he continued to work on it for a period after that date, it is highly unlikely that he extended the process for almost two years until Keats had completed the Induction to The Fall in October 1818.⁴

In the prose introduction to the published fragment, Reynolds stresses that he did not revise the version written years ago, and there was no conceivable reason why he should lie since Keats's The Fall was not published and Reynolds could not expect that it ever would be. In the light of all these clear facts, it is a safe conclusion that “The Romance of Youth” preceded The Fall of Hyperion.

After finishing the first canto of “The Romance of Youth” in 1817, Reynolds set it aside for a multitude of other activities: a flood of prose for The Champion and The Yellow Dwarf and thousands of lines of other verse. On 4 November 1817 he committed himself to becoming a lawyer, a step about which he remained ambiguous for the rest of his life. Sometimes he could be enthusiastic about it, but most of the time he hated it for distracting him from achieving the great dream of his life—to become a major poet. In the spring of 1818 when he was seriously ill with rheumatic fever for several weeks, he became depressed and reflected morosely upon what seemed to him the death of his earlier poetic hopes. Since almost none of Reynolds' letters to Keats have survived, we have to infer what Reynolds wrote from Keats's replies, but in this case the inference is easily made. On 3 May 1818 Keats wrote:

I see no reason, because I have been away this last month, why I should not have a peep at your Spencerian—notwithstanding you speak of your office, in my thought a little too early, for I do not see why a Mind like yours is not capable of harbouring and digesting the whole Mystery of Law as easily as Parson Hugh does Pepins—which did not hinder him from his poetic Canary—⁵

The “Spencerian” was “The Romance of Youth,” which was written in the Spenserian stanza. Reynolds evidently had been sensitive and reticent about it during the year and a half that he had come to know Keats so intimately, not showing it to Keats because so much of his poetic dream rested upon it. But now in his illness he took it out once again and wrote Keats dejectedly that he would have to abandon it because the dreary study of the law required all his time and attention.

Keats's counter argument that Reynolds might combine mastering of the law with continuing development as a poet did not succeed; Reynolds did not continue the poem beyond the first canto. But it seems highly probable that Keats must have followed through with his expectation and read the manuscript of “The Romance of Youth” on his return to London. When a few months later he turned to his own major effort and wrote the Induction to The Fall of Hyperion in September and October of 1818, the most graphic and memorable image from Reynolds' major effort recurred to him, either consciously or unconsciously, and he varied it and intensified it masterfully in his depiction of the encounter with Moneta.

Reynolds had written:

XCII

The distant world now wooed the boy, who knew
Nought of its deadly sorrows; …

XCIV

          But oft his sleep gave gloom;—and one night, late,
          A strange and dreary vision did arise:
That in the forest deep he lay with musing eyes;

XCV

          That when he lifted them—before him stood
          A figure tall, and in a shadowy dress:
          It was as some lone spirit of the wood,
          With eyes all dim, and fixed with distress,—
          And sunken cheeks,—and lips of pallidness,—
          Standing with folded arms, and floating hair,
          The shadow of a woman!—but a tress
          Was sometimes lifted by the gusty air,
And now the waved robe a heaving breast did bare.

XCVI

          He gazed—his hand paused on a turning leaf,
          And his blood ran in coldness to his heart:—
          He gazed—but still his eyes felt no relief;
          For that dim lonely form would not depart:
          It stood—as prison'd there by mystic art,
          Looking upon him steadily;—he tried
          To utter speech, but not a word would start
          From his weak lips—her very feelings died,
And he beheld the spirit of melancholy pride!

XCVII

          “I know thee, boy—and thou wilt know me better
          “Ere many years be past,”—the spirit said;
          “Of late thou hast pined to wear an earthly fetter,
          “And wish'd these woods by thee untenanted.
          “I've read thy inmost mind; and I have sped—
          “My wing is rapid as the wing of Time—
          “To wreak thy wish: the fault be on thy head;
          “Since 'tis thy will those bounding hills to climb,
“And pass into the world, I'll crown that wayward crime.

XCVIII

          “Thou knowest not the happiness that lies
          “In this romantic home, or thou would'st not
          “Seek in cold cities for it; thy young eyes
          “Have seen no other than a guileless spot,
          “A wood as peaceful as a fairy grot,—
          “Leaf-canopied,—and peopled all with deer,
          “And birds: the world thou seek'st will change thy lot;
          “There wilt thou meet with bitterness and fear,
“And in thy very heart,—the form thou seest here!”

XCIX

          It vanish'd—and his slumber vanish'd too;
          But not with that the frightful recollection:
          The shape—the shadowy hair—the snowy hue
          Of the dooming lip—the desolate dejection
          Of the whole form, sank him in mute reflection
          Day after day. He sought his friend, and told
          The terrors of his mind; but no election
          Was left him to depart or stay, for old
And cunning scoff that friend before him did unfold.(6)

Several months after he read this passage, Keats wrote:

But yet I had a terror of her robes,
And chiefly of the veils, that from her brow
Hung pale, and curtain'd her in mysteries
That made my heart too small to hold its blood.
This saw that Goddess, and with sacred hand
Parted the veils. Then saw I a wan face,
Not pin'd by human sorrows, but bright blanch'd
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
It works a constant change, which happy death
Can put no end to; deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage; it had pass'd
The lily and the snow; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face—(7)

I have quoted at length from Reynolds because copies of the poem are now rare and because it is important to show that the basic positions of the two poems are similar, though they have different emphases. Both poems indicate the superiority of a poetry based on worldly experience and human suffering over the sensuous and fanciful dreaming of the pastoral and romantic. However, in “The Romance of Youth” Reynolds presents the naive dreaming over the flowers, woods, streams, birds, and fairies of the rural scene as appealing, while in The Fall of Hyperion Keats is harsh and scathing in his disparagement of the poet as dreamer. But Reynolds is no less certain than Keats that it is essential for the poet who matures to pass beyond “the realm of Flora, and old Pan” to treatment of “the agonies, the strife / Of human hearts.” He regrets that the poet must leave the unsophisticated world of dreaming, but he knows that it is inevitable if the poet is to advance to great poetry. In his prose introduction to the poem he calls his glowing depiction of the rural dream “the mere picture” of poetry, and he promises, if the first canto is favorably received, to continue with “the passion itself of poetry” concerned with the hard reality of human experience.

Keats would have been interested to read this view of poetic development so close to his own by his “co-scribbler” Reynolds, but he must have snapped to attention when he saw that the cynical friend in the last four lines of the quoted passage scoffed at any suggestion that a worthy poet could remain in the realm of dream and accepted as inevitable the poet's proceeding to worldly experience and human suffering. Again it is necessary to quote at length from “The Romance of Youth” to identify the friend:

LXXXVI

          And he did find one friend whose heart was brave
          With doubt; who ample questionings could muster,
Which would with clouds inclose a mind of purest lustre.

LXXXVII

          How is it that the minds of mortals jar
          In what should be their music and their joy?
          The spirit, which might make itself a star,
          Doth wrap itself in clouds, and all destroy
          The innocent and lofty heart, and toy
          With idle questionings of serious things?—
          Is it that men were made themselves to annoy
          With dreams of ill, and mystic ponderings,
And doubts of old religion, and the bliss she brings.

LXXXVIII

          The friend was stern to all save him, and cold
          With high wrought caution,—full of fancies strange;
          A lover of the heathen times of old,—
          A questioner of all things in the range
          Of lofty hopes,—a worshipper of change
          In human practices—a denizen
          In scenes which he reviled:—he would estrange
          Men from their faith;—and smooth his words were, when
Such were to win the hearts and thoughts of quiet men.

LXXXIX

          This world was all he credited,—which gave
          To his retired hours a dreariness;
          Oblivion was the spirit of the grave,
          And chance lent life its ills and happiness,—
          So deem'd he,—ah! how sore was his distress
          By night, and in his meditative hours!—
          Hope had for him no soft blue eye—no tress
          Of golden hair—no fair and lovely bowers;
The soul was mortal all, like Summer's heedless flowers.

XC

          This wise friend marr'd the youngster's innocence,
          Put poison in the cup of his content;
          Made him no more a joyer in the sense
          Of forest comfort;—turn'd his mental bent
          To other scenes,—ah! scenes how different!
          And did estrange him from the oak and pine.—
          “Was it for such as he,”—the friend would vent
          His converse thus,—“to keep a mind supine,—
“A mind that might among the great and lofty shine!”

XCI

And then he set the young thoughts straying wide,
Through metaphysic labyrinths,—which none
Have ever yet explored;—and then the pride
Of youth he did awaken with a store
Of flatteries,—and promises of more
From learned men in cities of the wise. …

Some of these characteristics could apply to a number of men who were Reynolds' friends: the attack on religion, the general skepticism, the love of heathen times, and the worship of change could refer to Hunt or even to Keats himself. But other features point unmistakably to Hazlitt, and to Hazlitt alone. The sternness, coldness, and “high wrought caution” with all except his friends describe the saturnine Hazlitt exactly. “A denizen / In scenes which he [the young poet] reviled” refers to Hazlitt's flagrant patronizing of brothels, which was notorious. The “metaphysic labyrinths” recall The Principles of Human Action and Hazlitt's life-long pride in his philosophical ability. The confidence in Reynolds' ability and the assurance that Reynolds might command the admiration of learned and wise men come as a surprise to those unfamiliar with the Reynolds-Hazlitt relationship, but these items, too, fit Hazlitt precisely. Hazlitt always had a high regard for Reynolds' ability. He secured Reynolds as his chief collaborater on the one journal that he conducted himself, The Yellow Dwarf. He was so impressed with Reynolds' successful imitation of his own prose style that he called Reynolds “alter et idem” with himself.⁸ He read an entire poem by Reynolds at a public lecture, while merely quoting briefly from Keats: one suspects indeed that Hazlitt fell into one of his rare lapses in discrimination by actually valuing Reynolds over Keats. The promises of admiration from learned and wise men may sound exaggerated to twentieth century readers, if learned and wise are understood to apply to Francis Jeffrey and the regular contributors to the Edinburgh Review, but one must recall the enormous prestige of the Edinburgh at the time. And Hazlitt in a sense fulfilled that promise: he did in fact arrange to have Reynolds contribute to the Edinburgh Review.⁹

It seems impossible that Keats would have had to ask Reynolds who the friend was when he read the manuscript of “The Romance of Youth”; he would recognize the clear outline of the critical giant who was as much his mentor as he was Reynolds'. And the impact on Keats of the friend Hazlitt's expression of his final view would have had to be strong. Hazlitt's scoffing at the poet as dreamer may well have contributed its part to the sharpness, even the bitterness, of Keats's attack in The Fall of Hyperion.

Notes

1. Robert Gittings, “The Poetry of John Hamilton Reynolds,” Ariel, 1 (1970), 14-15.

2. Clayton E. Hudnall, “John Hamilton Reynolds, James Rice, and Benjamin Bailey in the Leigh Browne-Lockyer Collection,” Keats-Shelley Journal, 19 (1970), 21.

3. All Reynolds' poems are long out of print; we need new editions badly. I quote from photocopy of the typescript of “The Poetical Works of John Hamilton Reynolds,” ed. George L. Marsh, in the University of Chicago Library—six weeks after I submitted this article, Donald H. Reiman published in The Romantic Context: Poetry series The Garden of Florence, The Press, and Odes and Addresses to Great People (New York, 1978). Romanticists should be grateful to Professor Reiman for his very valuable service in providing texts for a wide range of significant poets.

4. I have argued for this new dating in my “The Dating of the Two Hyperions,” Studies in Bibliography, 30 (1977), 120-135.

5. Hyder E. Rollins, ed., The Letters of John Keats, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1958), I, 276.

6. Photocopy of George L. Marsh, ed., “The Poetical Works of John Hamilton Reynolds.” Here and in the later quotation, I have corrected obvious typing errors silently.

7. H. W. Garrod, ed., The Poetical Works of John Keats (London, 1939), p. 514, I, 251-263.

8. P. P. Howe, ed., The Complete Works of William Hazlitt, 21 vols. (London, 1930-1934), XVIII, 353.

9. Leonidas M. Jones, “Hazlitt, Reynolds, and the Edinburgh Review,” Studies in Bibliography, 29 (1976), 342-346.