is not only the first excellent thing written
by Keats--it is the _only_ excellent thing contained in his first volume
of verse.

This volume came out (as already mentioned) in the early spring of 1817.
The sonnet dedicating the book to Leigh Hunt, written off at a moment's
notice "when the last proof-sheet was brought from the printer," was
evidently composed in winter-time. The title of the volume is "Poems by
John Keats." The motto on its title-page is from Spenser--

"What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty?"

--a motto embodying with considerable completeness the feeling which is
predominant in the volume, and generally in Keats's poetic works. We
always feel "delight" to be his true element, whatever may be the
undertone of pathos opposed to it by poetic development and treatment,
and by adverse fate. "Liberty" also--a free flight of the faculties, a
rejection of conventional trammels, whether in life or in verse--was
highly characteristic of him; and perhaps the youthful friend of Hunt
intended the word "liberty" to be understood by his readers as having a
certain political flavour as well. In addition to some writings just
specified, the volume contained "I stood tiptoe upon a little hill"; the
three epistles "To George Felton Mathew" (who was a gentleman of
literary habits, afterwards employed in administering the Poor Law), "To
my brother George," and "To Charles Cowden Clarke"; sixteen sonnets; and
"Sleep and Poetry." The question of the poetic deservings of these
compositions belongs more properly to our final chapter. I shall here
give only a few details bearing upon the circumstances of their
production. The poem "I stood tiptoe" &c. was written beside a gate near
Caen Wood, Highgate. It must have been begun in a summer, no doubt that
of 1816, and was still uncompleted in the middle of December of that
year. "The Epistle to Mathew," dated November 1815, testifies to the
early admiration of Keats for Thomas Chatterton; though the dedication
of "Endymion," "Inscribed to the memory of Thomas Chatterton," was but
poorly forestalled by such lines as the following--

"Where we may soft humanity put on,
And sit and rhyme, and think on Chatterton,
And that warm-hearted Shakspeare sent to meet him
Four laurelled spirits heavenward to entreat him."

Moreover, the first of his youthful sonnets is addressed to
Chatterton. The "Epistle to George," August