The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SEVERN'S AST PROSPECTS. 45- CHAPTER III. Severn's Art prospects?Haslam asks Severn to go with Keats?Severn decides to go with Keats?A gloomy departure?Sailing of the Maria Crowthe,?Keats's last poem?Incidents of the voyage?In quarantine in the Bay of Naples?Keats and Severn in Naples?Keats's indignation in Naples?Keats and Severn in Rome?Their early life in Rome ?Keats's relapse. So ill had fortune gone with Severn since his signal success in winning the Royal Academy gold medal, that he at last came to wish he had failed. Resentment among his fellow- students, disparaging remarks in art circles, and ill-content at home, made his life at times almost unendurable. If, he wrote a few years later, he had enjoyed better health, and had even had the most moderate resources to fall back upon, he would have had absolutely no fear of winning his way in London; as it was, he was thankful that miniature- painting promised to ensure him at least a living. But even by the summer of 1819, when, following his success of the previous December, he exhibited at the Academy his 'Hermia and Helena,' and his miniature of Keats, his general prospects seemed no whit bettered. From the acceptance and the exhibition of his picture and his miniature he had hoped much. The former was exhibited as No. 267, with the following quotation from 'A Midsummer Night's Dream':? " We, Hermia, like two artificial sods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key, As if our hands, our sides, voices and minds, Act III. So. ii. Had been incorporate. So we grew together, Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet an union in partition; Two lovely berries moulded on one stem; . . ." The subject was not i...Read More