the third puzzles your head; I admire the first, I enjoy the second, and I stare at the third; the first is claret, the second ginger-beer, the third is crême de Byrapymdrag; the first is inspired by Minerva, the second by Mercury, and the third by Harlequin Epigram, Esq.; the first is neat in his dress, the second careless, the third uncomfortable; the first speaks adagio, the second allegretto, and the third both together; the first is Swiftean, the second Tom Crib-ean, the third Shandean. I know three people of no wit at all, each distinct in his excellence, A., B. and C. A. is the foolishest, B. is the sulkiest, and C. is the negative; A. makes you yawn, B. makes you hate, and as for C. you never see him at all, though he were six feet high; I bear the first, I forbear the second, I am not certain that the third is; the first is gruel, the second ditch-water, and the third is spilt and ought to be wiped up; A. is inspired by Jack of the Clock, B. has been drilled by á Russian serjeant, C. they say is not his mother's true child, but she bought [him] of the man who cries" young I will send you a close written sheet on the first of next month; but, for fear of missing the mail, I must finish here. God bless you, my dear sister.

lambs to sell.'

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Your affectionate brother,

VOL. II.

E

JOHN KEATS.

The study of Italian, to which Keats had been latterly much addicted, had included Ariosto, and the humorous fairy poem on which he was engaged about this time appears to me to have originated in that occupation. He has stated, in a previous passage, that he still kept enough of his old tastes to prefer reading Chaucer to Ariosto, and the delightful vagaries of the master of Italian fancy would probably not have had so much effect on him but for Mr. Brown's intimate acquaintance with, and intense enjoyment of, those frailer charms of southern song. When, in after-times, Mr. Brown himself retired to Italy, he hardly ever passed a day without translating some portion of that school of Italian poetry, and he has left behind him a complete and admirable version of the first five cantos of Bojardo's "Orlando Innamorato."

Keats had a notion of publishing this fanciful poem under a feigned name, and that of "Lucy Vaughan Lloyd" suggested itself to him from some untraceable association. He never had even made up his mind what title to give it; the "Cap and Bells" and "The Jealousies were two he spoke of: I give here all that was written, not only because it exhibits his versatility of talent, but because it presents him, almost for the first time, in the light of a humorous writer, just at the moment of his existence when real anxieties were pressing most threateningly

upon him, when the struggle between his evergrowing passion and the miserable circumstances of his daily life was beating down his spirit, and when disease was advancing with stealthy, but not altogether unperceived, advances, to consummate by a cruel and lingering death the hard conditions of his mortal being. There is nothing in this combination which will surprise those who understand the poetic, or even the literary, nature, but I know few stronger instances of a moral phenomenon which the Hamlets of the world are for ever exhibiting to an audience that can only resolve the problem by doubting the reality of the one or the other feeling, of the mirth or of the misery.

I am unwilling to leave this, the last of Keats's literary labours, without a word of defence against the objection that might with some reason be raised against the originality of his genius, from the circumstance that it is easy to refer almost every poem he wrote to some suggestion of style and manner derived from preceding writers. From the Spenserian "Endymion," to these Ariosto-like stanzas, you can always see reflected in the mirror of his intellect the great works he is studying at the time. This is so generally the case with verse-writers, and the test has been so severely and successfully applied to many of the most noted authors of our time, that I should not

have alluded to it had I not been desirous to claim for Keats an access to that inmost penetralium of Fame which is solely consecrated to original genius. The early English chronicle-dramas supplied Shakspeare with many materials and outlines for his historical plays, and the "Adamo " of Andreini had indisputably a great effect on the frame-work of "Paradise Lost;" but every one feels that these accidents rather resemble the suggestions of nature which every mind, however independent, receives and assimilates, than what is ordinarily meant by plagiarism or imitation. In the case of Keats, his literary studies were apparently the sources of his productions, and his variety and facility of composition certainly increases very much in proportion to his reading, thus clearly showing how much he owed to those who had preceded him. But let us not omit two considerations:-first, that these resemblances of form or spirit are a reproduction, not an imitation, and that while they often are what those great masters might themselves have contentedly written, they always include something which the model has not-some additional intuitive vigour; and secondly, let us never forget, that wonderful as are the poems of Keats, yet, after all, they are rather the records of a poetical education than the accomplished work of the mature artist. This is in truth the chief interest of these pages; this is what these letters so

vividly exhibit. Day by day, his imagination is extended, his fancy enriched, his taste purified; every fresh acquaintance with the motive minds of past generations leads him a step onwards in knowledge and in power; the elements of ancient genius become his own; the skill of faculties long spent revives in him; ever, like Nature herself, he gladly receives and energetically reproduces. And now we approach the consummation of this laborious work, the formation of a mind of the highest order; we hope to see the perfect fruit whose promise has been more than the perfection of noted men; we desire to sympathise with this realised idea of a great poet, from which he has ever felt himself so far, but which he yet knows he is ever approaching; we yearn to witness the full flow of this great spiritual river, whose source has long lain in the heart of the earth, and to which the streams of a thousand hills have ministered.

One night, about eleven o'clock, Keats returned home in a state of strange physical excitement—it might have appeared to those who did not know him, one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered, but added, "I don't feel it now." He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on