dance of the impulsive quality in Shelley which makes us look up to him as a superior nature, which causes one of his harshest critics to call him “a beautiful angel." And Shelley's essential nature is beautiful — like the Venus of Milos. The Venus of Milos has a moral code different from ours; so had the "Cor Cordium" of Shelley. Yet we recognize in each a beauty that supersedes our ephemeral moral standards and that reveals a closer kinship than we possess with the divine.

The progress of civilization exhibits man passing out of the brute and rising by conquering the higher life with a conscience; and rising still higher toward divinity, where the possession of the spontaneous spiritual impulse liberates him, more and more, from the exacting scrutiny of conscience. Take an illustration. In primeval times the brute instinct of man was to kill a stranger. Ethics educated him and imposed duties. Nowadays we grant a stranger life and accord him rights. And often we do more than that: we give him a hearty welcome. This does not come from conscience-driven obligation, but from the spontaneous feeling of brotherhood. The imperative duty has been transformed into joy. When, in the millennium, virtue has become

in all men an irrepressible impulse, ethics will cease to be an important factor in life. The triune division of philosophy into the true, the beautiful and the good will be reduced to two. And when ultimate truth shall be manifest, it will be dissolved in beauty. Then truth will be beauty and beauty truth, and that will be all men know or need to know.

"Taste," says Ruskin, "is not only a part and index of morality; it is the only morality." This is the doctrine of Keats. He would regulate life by æsthetic taste. Shelley believed that men could be controlled by the persuasiveness of reason. And in his most characteristic poem, the "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," he conceived of the divine unseen power as an "awful loveliness" of mind. Keats went still further in his metaphysics. He subordinated intellect it lacked personality and conceived of this power as pure loveliness.

XXVI

FANNY BRAWNE

THE story of Keats as a poet draws toward the

close. In "Otho the Great" he is the phrasemaker for a collaborator's ideas. In "The Cap and Bells," done after the physical collapse, a distracted mind is pathetically trying to smile and be merry. We shall neglect these and turn to the man as he passed into the throes of death.

The love for Fanny Brawne was one of the malign forces of fate. The printing of the Brawne letters aroused much protest. One man, at least, has refused to read them. Mr. Colvin omitted them from his collection. Matthew Arnold read and regretted their publication. Mr. Buxton Forman, foremost in laborious service for Keats, first printed them for private circulation. "There is nothing," he says, "for any one to be afraid of." Certainly these letters add vividness to the tragic picture of the last days and reveal Keats' melancholy end as the operation of na

ture's immutable laws. It is a debatable question whether a great poet has a right to domestic privacy, if that privacy is necessary for the full comprehension of his character. While we incline toward the conservative attitude, we believe the publication of these letters was justifiable. The gain for Keats is greater than the loss. Our sympathies are deepened and our understanding is quickened. Keats, the lover, is still the poet. He loved a woman as he loved his art. The defects of the lover are the virtues of his poetry.

Matthew Arnold has found in the Brawne letters material for special discredit to the writer's character. He quotes the ninth and says it is a sign of enervation, of lack of restraint; such as might be expected from a surgeon's apprentice in a breach of promise case. He brings this letter down to the level of cheap scandal.

Surely there are times when the literary critic should cast aside his academic robe and be simply human! And at no time is such generosity in better taste than when he is invading the privacy of the dead and reading love letters in cold type. If we do intrude upon Keats' love affair and sit in judgment, let us confine that judgment to matters of public concern. There are bounds

of jurisdiction for courts of law. Why not for literary criticism? Let literary criticism beware of the temptations of Peeping Tom. Let it read such letters as these, if it must, with deference and common humanity.

When Matthew Arnold quoted the ninth letter he detached it wholly from its vital atmosphere. He cited and judged it like one of his specimen passages of the "grand style." Love letters, so detached, may easily be made the subject of jest or censure. Now this ninth letter, it chances, came with the Roberts collection into the possession of Haverford College. And as we hold that human document in hand, look upon the page, revive in imagination the figure of Keats, the circumstances of the moment and the darkness that was closing around him, we cannot, with any decency, think of it as on the level of cheap scandal. The sheet is stainless, without blot or scratch. The handwriting is clear, regular, measured; it has the neatness of the copybook. Keats, when he wrote, was at his lodgings in College Street. He had just returned to London and his "hertè mine" after a long absence at Shanklin and Winchester, where, with steaming exhausting speed, he had written the tragedy of "Otho the Great." That work was done; he