Keats longed for fame, but
longed above all to deserve it. To his friend Taylor he writes, "There is
but one way for me. The road lies through study, application, and
thought." Thrilling with the electric touch of sacred leaves, he saw in
vision, like Dante, that small procession of the elder poets to which
only elect centuries can add another laurelled head. Might he, too,
deserve from posterity the love and reverence which he paid to those
antique glories? It was no unworthy ambition, but everything was against
him,--birth, health, even friends, since it was partly on their account
that he was sneered at. His very name stood in his way, for Fame loves
best such, syllables as are sweet and sonorous on the tongue, like
Spenserian, Shakespearian. In spite of Juliet, there is a great deal in
names, and when the fairies come with their gifts to the cradle of the
selected child, let one, wiser than the rest, choose a name for him from
which well-sounding derivatives can be made, and, best of all, with a
termination in _on_. Men judge the current coin of opinion by the ring,
and are readier to take without question whatever is Platonic, Baconian,
Newtonian, Johnsonian, Washingtonian, Jeffersonian, Napoleonic, and all
the rest. You cannot make a good adjective out of Keats,--the more
pity,--and to say a thing is _Keatsy_ is to contemn it.
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