y knew not whether sprung from earth And then would glide to Hulbrand's side

"Throughout this vast and goodly world, Oh, great the burden of a soul,

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF KEATS.*

THIS is a wished-for and welcome book. Keats, the poet, we well knew, and had many pleasant memories of, from the time when our boyhood was first enlightened as to the wealth that was in him by the sweet criticism of Leigh Hunt, to when, in our 'Love's young dream," we used to read im to fair women among canvasses that rivalled the pictures in his pages, and flowers that breathed as sweet an odor as his verse. But Keats, the man, was a blank That he was killed by the Quarterly and lamented by Shelley--such was all we knew, or thought we knew about him personally-just enough to make us wish to know more. Truly gratifying was the

to us.

announcement that Monckton Milnes had collected his correspondence and written his life. Not that we should have pitched upon Milnes as the most natural or likely man to write a life of Keats.

In

tions of themselves, but rather by something different from, and unattainable by them. It is a truth which our small writers of both sexes have yet to learn, that true appreciation may provoke rivalry, but must deter from imitation.

But how came Milnes to single out Keats from among the many unfortunate and ill-used poets? What connection was there between them that furnished the requisite material? Monckton tells us how it happened, in this wise. He was at Landor's villa "on the beautiful hill-side of Fiesole "that villa from which Savage, in his wrath against Willis, savagely threatened to turn away any American traveller who might come to visit him. There he met Mr. Charles Brown, a friend of Keats, who had collected and was preparing to publish the poet's literary remains. But circumstances afterwards preventing this gentleman from carrying out his intention, he placed his manuscripts in the hands of Milnes, rightly judging that he would do them justice. As soon as it was known who had the work in hand, every one was ready to oblige him; assistance flowed in from various quarters, and a goodly number of letters, &c., were amassed; quite enough to have been spun out into three or four volumes, had the editor followed the usual plan of writing biography by sandwiching every page of his subject between two of his own reflections. But Milnes had a truer notion of what is re

deed there is scarcely a point in which the poet and biographer do not present a striking contrast. Keats, a poor surgeon's apprentice, sensitive and struggling, without resources of his own, or friends at court to help him, ridiculed and proscribed by the dominant party in the stateMilnes, a wealthy M. P., confident and successful, the spoiled child of the literary aristocracy, petted alike by Tories and Whigs. Keats, a genius without art, displaying marvellous beauties and glaring faults, gems and rubbish mingled-Milnes, an artist without genius, endowed with that mediocrity of versification, which, un-quired from a poet's biographer. “If,” happy in awakening no enthusiastic admiration, is happy in avoiding all sweeping censure. And yet, for all this, Milnes may be the very best man to write about Keats; for dei rov ouoiov is only half true after all. Literary admirations, like love-matches, spring from contrasts quite as often as from resemblances. Men, Anglo-Saxon men at least, are not charmed by repeti

says he, "I left the memorials of Keats to tell their own tale, they would in truth be the book, and my business would be almost limited to their collection and arrangement; whereas, if I only regarded them as the materials of my own work, the general effect would chiefly depend on my ability of construction, and the temptation to render the facts of the story sub

* Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats; edited by Richard Monckton Milnes. London,

; New York, G. P. Putnam.

servient to the excellence of the work of art, would never have been absent." Accordingly there is very little of the editor here, but that little of a quality to make us regret that he does not cultivate prose in preference to verse composition. There may, perhaps, be fifty pages of Milnes in the volume. Could we by any amount of brain-work elaborate fifty pages of such crystal-flowing prose, we would not give them for "Palm Leaves enough to shadow a crusade.

The great fact of interest about Keats, which his enthusiastic biographer has made known to us, is the cause of his premature death. The universal belief was that he had died of the London Quarterly; a belief natural enough after Shelley's Adonais and Byron's well-known doggrel. It was a double pity that Keats should have so died; pity for the whole craft of reviewers, and pity for himself. To critics one and all, it was an ever-ready and everrecurring reproach that one of them had "killed John Keats." On the memory of Keats, it threw more than a suspicion of weakness that he had let a critic kill him. But now comes Millnes and tells us for which all thanks to Milnes-that Keats did not die of the reviewers at all; but of a disease to which, if to succumb be a weakness, still it is a nobler weakness and one more worthy of a poet. Keats died of love.

|

union indefinitely. This deepens the pie-
ture by introducing another sufferer. But
at this point our skepticism is awakened,
and-over-captious we may be—but Mil-
nes' intimation (it is not a positive asser-
tion) does not command our entire belief.
We cannot persuade ourselves that if the
decision of the affair had rested with
Keats, he would have hesitated to run the
risk. He would have leaped into the |
sea" of matrimony, as he did into that of
authorship. Is it conceivable that a man
who deliberately threw up the profession
on which he had spent some of the most
valuable years of his life, and no inconsid-
erable part of his small means-not be
cause he was unsuccessful in it, but be-
cause it was "uncongenial" to him-is it
conceivable that he should have postponed
to any prudential considerations that love
which was literally a matter of life and
death to him? Moreover, it looks as if the
editor's language, in the few sentences he
devotes to the lady, were even vaguer tha
delicacy demanded, and purposely made
susceptible of more than one construction.
As this is a point of some nicety, it will '*
but fair to give the ipsissima verta «
Milnes:-

"However sincerely the devotion of K: →
may have been requited, it will be seen that
outward circumstances soon became such as
to render a union very difficult, if not in-
ble. Thus these years were passed in a
flict in which plain poverty and mortal s
inet a radiant imagination and a redes
heart. Hope was there, with Genius, his e
lasting sustainer, and Fear never an
but as the companion of Necess ty
strong power conquered the physics.twit

These four words open to us a prospect very different from any of our former visions of Keats ; melancholy enough yet, but grander and loftier in its melancholy. A poor young poet perishing of a silent sorrow, the cause of his fatal malady conceal-made the very intensity of his passi ed from all but his most intimate friends.

"This great disease for love I dree;

There is no tongue can tell the woe; I love the love that loves not me:

I may not mend, but mourning mo."

It is impossible not to feel some indignation against his "sweet enemy."

"Ye shall have sin an ye me slay."

Truly it were no small sin to have slain
Keats. But here again our biographer

certain sense accessory to his death: he
have lived longer if he had lived !...
this should be no matter of self-repraisal
object of his love, for the same might >
of the very exercise of his poetic fuenly
of all that made him what he was.
enough that she has preserved his n-
with a sacred honor, and it is no vas

tion that to have inspired and sustain of
passion of this noble being has been a
of grave delight and earnest thank
through the changes and chances of ter
ly pilgrimage."

Now it seems to us that not on to the rescue, and intimates that his of the above is incompatible with 1. was not unreturned. It was his un-sumption that the lady did t * want of means that delayed their | Keats.

21