Heresy Concerning Keats

Extract

Of what song the sirens sang Sir Thomas Browne, being a quaint and theoretical old gentleman, probably had some private opinion, and of just what John Keats meant when he declared (or the urn rather obviously declared for him) that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” more than one critic has advanced a not so private opinion. The statement is so lucid and so guilelessly simple, taken alone, that it cannot be misunderstood, but put into its context it is like a man of too severe ideals in a naughty world—promptly at outs with the neighbors. It disagrees so sharply both with the ode it concludes, and the odes which follow it, that it is become what scholars in their odd language would call a “crux.” The answer is simpler than might be expected. One may very reasonably ask whether Keats ever even said “Beauty is truth,” and the answer is: No, he probably did not say it, nor anything like it.