DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61290#0083
INFLUENCE OF KEATS
59
is the more remarkable that Chatterton, now ac-
claimed as the herald of the romantic revival in
poetry, as was Blake in art, had no such charm for
Rossetti until quite late in life, when the tardy
discovery led to an exaggerated worship. But in
Keats, whose life (by Lord Houghton) Rossetti,
Holman Hunt, and Millais had been reading to-
gether about this time, they found the supreme
example in English poetry of that attainment of
harmony between the classic and the romantic
temper which was their aim in art. Eager as they
now were for subject-matter whereon to exercise
the artistic principles as yet but crudely formulated
in their minds, they turned with new delight to the
wonder-world revealed to them by the spirit of
Keats, and looked with him through
—“ magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.”
They saw that the reconciliation of the flesh to the
spirit, which is the task of the second Renaissance as
of the first, had already been achieved in poetry, and
was waiting its translation into pictorial art. Keats
had attained that perfect blending of the Greek
spirit with the temper of romance which Rossetti
was to reach in “Venus Astarte” and “Pandora.”
The first organized union of workers imbued
with the Pre-Raphaelite ideal, and further knit
together by a common enthusiasm for the poetry
59
is the more remarkable that Chatterton, now ac-
claimed as the herald of the romantic revival in
poetry, as was Blake in art, had no such charm for
Rossetti until quite late in life, when the tardy
discovery led to an exaggerated worship. But in
Keats, whose life (by Lord Houghton) Rossetti,
Holman Hunt, and Millais had been reading to-
gether about this time, they found the supreme
example in English poetry of that attainment of
harmony between the classic and the romantic
temper which was their aim in art. Eager as they
now were for subject-matter whereon to exercise
the artistic principles as yet but crudely formulated
in their minds, they turned with new delight to the
wonder-world revealed to them by the spirit of
Keats, and looked with him through
—“ magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.”
They saw that the reconciliation of the flesh to the
spirit, which is the task of the second Renaissance as
of the first, had already been achieved in poetry, and
was waiting its translation into pictorial art. Keats
had attained that perfect blending of the Greek
spirit with the temper of romance which Rossetti
was to reach in “Venus Astarte” and “Pandora.”
The first organized union of workers imbued
with the Pre-Raphaelite ideal, and further knit
together by a common enthusiasm for the poetry