Or in the senate thunder out my numbers, troubled realities of human love. Let These are the living pleasures of the bard: But richer far posterity's award. it not be supposed that the creations of What does he murmur with his latest breath, even his young imagination were cold, While his proud eye looks thro' the film of death? What tho' I leave this dull and earthly mould, passionless, and unimbued with natural Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold feelings; so far from it, it may be con- With after times. The patriot shall feel jectured that it was the blending of the My stern alarum, and unsheath his steel; ideal and sensual life, so peculiar to the To startle princes from their easy slumbers; Grecian Mythology, which rendered The sage will mingle with each moral theme My happy thoughts sententious: he will teem it so attractive to the mind of Keats, With lofty periods when my verses fire him, and when the "Endymion" comes to And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him. be critically considered, it will at once Lays have I left of such a dear delight, That maids will sing them on their bridal night. appear that its excellence consists in the appreciation of that ancient spirit Then, as if feeling his presumptuousof beauty, to which all outward percep-ness, he checks himself and saystions so excellently ministered, and which Could I, at once, my mad ambition smother, undertook to refine and to elevate the For tasting joys like these, sure I should be instinctive feelings of those who would Happier and dearer to society. submit to their influence. orders of verse with which his friend had familiarized his mind. They betoken that he united clearness of perception to brilliance of fancy :— The sonnet swelling loudly Up to its climax and then dying proudly; the ode, Growing like Atlas, stronger for its load; the epic, Of all the king, Round, vast, and spanning all, like Saturn's ring; At times, 'tis true, I've felt relief from pain, When some bright thought has darted thro' my brain: Friendship, generally ardent in youth, Thro' all that day I've felt a greater pleasure would not remain without its impres-Than if I had brought to light a hidden treasure. sion in the early poems of Keats. With Mr. Felton Mather, to whom his first His third epistle (Sept., 1816), adpoetical epistle is addressed, he enjoyed dressed to his friend Cowden Clarke, is a high intellectual sympathy. This written in a bolder, freer strain than friend had introduced him to congenial the others. In it occur those just and society, both of men and books. Those sententious descriptions of the various verses were written just at the time Keats became aware of the little interest which he felt in the profession he was so studiously pursuing, and was already in the midst of that conflict between the outer and inner world, which is, alas! too often the poet's heritage in life. Mr. Mather remarks that at that time "the eye of Keats was more critical than tender, and so was his mind; he admired more the external decorations than felt the deep emotions of the muse. He delighted in leading you through the mazes of elaborate description, but was less conscious of the sublime and pathetic; he used to spend many evenings in reading to me, but I never observed the tears in his eyes, nor the broken voice which are indicative of extreme sensibility." This modification of a nature, at first passionately susceptible, and the succeeding development of the imagination, is not an unfrequent phenomenon in poetical psychology. His next poetic epistle, dated August 1816, is addressed to his brother George, and we find Spenser there too. By this time the delightful consciousness of latent genius had dawned upon him. After a gorgeous description of the present happiness of the poet, he betrays that he is not altogether free from what has been so aptly designated the "weakness of great minds," the love of fame. The sharp the rapier-pointed epigram; Spenserian vowels that elope with ease, And float along like birds on summer seas. Among his sonnets, of which he wrote several, some are of unequal merit, and relating to forgotten details of every-day life, are only interesting so far as they illustrate the progress of genius and the constant striving after something worthy of the high and noble art to which he A few, howhad dedicated his powers. ever, exist of surpassing lovelinesssublime in strength, rich in expression, and harmonious in rhythm. "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," has, by a high judge of poetry, been pronounced "the most splendid sonnet in the language." Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, That And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet did I never breathe its pure serene, Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific-and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmiseSilent, upon a peak in Darien. Leigh Hunt remarks, it is "epical in the splendour and dignity of its images, and terminates with the noblest Greek simplicity." These critical remarks have anticipated the termination of Keats's apprenticeship and his removal to London, for the purpose of walking the hospitals. He lodged in the Poultry, and having been introduced by his friend, C. Clarke, to some literary friends, he soon found himself in a genial and sympathizing atmosphere, which stimulated and encouraged him to exertion. One of his most intimate friends at that time, eminent for his poetical originality and political persecutions, was Leigh Hunt, whom all must admire for his noble, independent spirit, which recoiled from every species of oppression, as well as for the delightful, melodious poetry with which he has enriched his country. Miserable, indeed, was the return which his fearless advocacy of justice met with. In those days of hard opinion, which we of a "freer and worthier time," look back upon with strong indignation, Mr. Hunt had been imprisoned for an expression of public feeling, in his "Journal," a little too liberal for those times. The heart of Keats leaped towards him, in human and poetic brotherhood; and the earnest sonnet on the day Hunt left prison, cemented the friendship. They read and walked together, and wrote verses in competition on a given subject. "No imaginative pleasure," observes Mr. Hunt," was left unnoticed by us or unenjoyed, from the recollection of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer rain at our windows, or the clicking of the coal in wintertime." Thus he became intimate with Hazlitt, Shelley, and Haydon, Basil Montague and his distinguished family, and with Mr. Ollier, a young publisher, who offered to publish a volume of Keat's productions. The poem with which it commences was suggested by a delightful summer's day, as he stood by a gate on Hampstead Heath, leading into a field by Caen Wood; and the last "Sleep and Poetry," was occasioned by his sleeping in Mr. Hunt's cottage in the same year. These two pieces, of considerable length, show the sustained vigour of the young poet's fancy. Yet the imperfections of Keats's style are here more apparent than in his shorter efforts. Poetry to him was not yet an art; the irregularities of his own verse were to him no more than the irregula rities of that nature of which he considered himself as the interpreter. For what has made the sage or poet write, purify and elevate that nature which it A drainless shower Of light is poesy-'tis the supreme power; 'Tis might half slumbering on its own right arm. At the completion of the first volume, he gave a striking proof of his facility for composition. He was enjoying the evening with a lively circle of friends, when the last proof-sheet was brought him, with a message from the publisher that, if he intended to have a dedication, he must write one immediately; he adjourned to a side table, and, whilst the rest were busily conversing, wrote the Sonnet commencing, Glory and loveliness have passed away. This little book, the beloved first fruits of so great a genius, scarcely arrested the public attention; it had hardly a purchaser beyond the circle of ardent friends, who composed most of the great minds of that time—and the profuse admiration which they bestowed upon it, must have contrasted strangely with the utter neglect of the rest of mankind, and been a bitter lesson to his highly sensitive feelings. Haydon, Dilke, Reynolds, Woodhouse, Rice, Taylor, Wessey, Leigh Hunt, Bailey, and Haslam, were, at this time, Keats's principal, companions and correspondents. The uncongenial nature of the profession for which Keats was preparing himself, became daily more apparent to him. An extensive book of careful an notations testify his diligence-distaste-God forbid that I should be withful as he felt his profession to be out such a task.' I have heard though one of his fellow students de- Hunt say and I may be asked, 'why scribes him at the lectures as being very endeavour after a long poem?' to this I fond of mixing up the notes with dog- should answer, Do not the lovers of gerel rhymes, especially when he got poetry like to have a little region to hold of another student's syllabus. He wander in, where they may pick and did not meet with much sympathy choose, and in which the images are so among the students, and whenever he numerous that many are forgotten and showed them his graver compositions, found new in a second reading,-which they were sure to be severely ridiculed. may be food for a week's stroll in the They were therefore much surprised, summer? Do not they like this better when he presented himself at the than what they can read through before Apothecaries' Hall, that he "passed" | Mrs. Williams comes down stairs? a the examination with much credit. morning's work at most. When, however, he entered on the practical part, although successful in all his | operations, yet his mind was so oppressed with the dread of doing harm, that he came to the settled conviction that he was totally unfit for the profession, on which he had expended so many years of study and a considerable part of his property. "My dexterity," he remarks, "used to seem to me a miracle, and I resolved never to take up a surgical instrument again :" and thus he found himself on the threshold of manhood-without the means of daily subsistence, but with a host of friends deeply interested in his welfare, and indulging those proud hopes for the future which so often buoy up only to deceive the highest geniuses. "Besides, a long poem is a test of invention, which I take for the polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder. Did our great poets ever write short pieces? I mean in the shape of tales. This same invention seems, indeed, of late years, to have been forgotten in a partial excellence." 66 66 So much for what Keats says of his own composition-of its imperfections (which consist rather in the excessive luxuriance of imagery, and extreme sensibility, if these can be called faults, than in overdrawn and " spun-out description) he was well aware, as the reader may perceive by the preface to 'Endymion:" Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public, what manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error, denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished." 66 While at Margate in May, 1817, he commenced the poem of "Endymion:" it was finished on 28th November of the same year, as recorded by the existing manuscript, fairly written in a book, with various corrections of words and phrases, but with little transposition of sentences. In the following Endymion" is filled with imagery extract from a letter to his brother of the most startling loveliness, gorGeorge, he gives his reasons for working geous descriptions, and wild, rich, everout a simple mythological legend into varying Eolian music; the metre is so long a story. “As to what you say capricious, indeed, it can hardly be said about my being a poet, I can return no to have any versification, and the lines answer but by saying that the high are broken in the strangest, though not idea I have of poetical fame makes me unnatural manner, so that it is easy to think I see it towering too high above mistake it for blank verse, unless readme. At any rate I have no right to ing aloud, although the rhymes are retalk until 'Endymion' is finished. It markably correct and ingenious. The will be a test, a trial of my powers of whole poem displays a singularly accuimagination, and chiefly of my inven-rate acquaintance with the mythology tion-which is a rare thing indeed-by of Greece, and an exquisite appreciawhich I must make 4,000 lines of one tion of its beauties. In reading the bare circumstance, and fill them with poem we are constrained to own that in poetry. And when I consider that this bidding to live again the images of is a great task, and that when done it pagan beauty," Keats had not dulled will take me but a dozen paces towards their brightness. the Temple of Fame-it makes me say, 66 The winter of 1817-18 was spent cheerily enough among his friends at Hampstead; his society was much courted for the agreeable mingling of playfulness and earnestness which distinguished his manner towards all men. He was perfectly natural and unassuming; there was no striving to say "smart things;" he joked well or ill, as the case might be, with a laugh that still rings sweetly in many ears; but at the mention of oppression, or baseness, or any calumny against those he loved, he rose into grave manliness at once, and gave vent to his indignation in withering words of reproach; his habitual gentleness and self-control made these occasional looks of bitterest contempt almost terrible. At one time, hearing a gross falsehood respecting the artist Severn, repeated and dwelt upon, he left the room, declaring "he should be ashamed to sit with men who could utter and believe such things." At another time, hearing of some unworthy .conduct, he burst out-"Is there no human dusthole into which we can sweep such fellows?" To display of every kind he had especial abhorrence, and he complains, in a note to Haydon, that "conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavour at effect; if Bacon were alive, and to make a remark in the present day, in company, the conversation would stop on a sudden, I am convinced of this." "Plain practical life, on the one hand, and a free exercise of his rich imagination, on the other, were the ideal of his existence; his poetry never weakened his action, and his simple every-day habits never coarsened the beauty of the world within him," In a letter written to Bailey about this time, we find the following fine suggestive idea :—“ Twelve days have passed since your last reached me. What has gone through the myriads of human minds since the 12th. We talk of the immense number of books, the volumes ranged thousands by thousands; but perhaps more goes through the human intelligence in twelve days than ever was written." tellectual than the other features. His countenance lives in my mind, as one of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression as if it had been looking on some glorious sight. The shape of his face had not the squareness of a man's, but more like some women's face I have seen; it was so wide over the forehead, and so small at the chinhe seemed in perfect health, and with life offering all things that were precious to him." We cannot resist quoting three axioms which Keats penned in February 1818, to his friend Taylor (we presume the author of "Philip Van Artevelta," &c.) on poetry, which show what a simple correct taste he possessed, united to a most feeling appreciation of its exqui siteness. Axiom 1.-"I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. 2. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content, The rise, the progress, the telling of imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than to write it. And this leads me to another axiom-That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all. If Endymion' serves me as a pioneer, perhaps I ought to be content, for, thank God, I can read, and perhaps understand, Shakspere to his depths; and I have, I am sure, many friends who, if I fail, will attribute any change, in my life and temper to humbleness rather than pride-to a cowering under the wings of great poets, rather than to a bitterness that I am not appreciated." Keats's letters of this period are peculiarly his own; they exhibit great powers of perception, depth of thought, intensity of feeling, originality of conception. The following earnest paragraph will show how unwearied he was in the endeavour rightly to " occupy" the five talents entrusted to his stewardship-even to the sacrifice of his most darling hopes. A lady, whose intuitive perception only equals the depth of her understanding, says, she distinctly remembers Keats, as he appeared at this time at Hazlitt's lectures. "His eyes were large' and blue, his hair auburn, he wore it divided down the centre, and it "I was proposing to travel over the fell in rich masses on each side of his North this Summer. There is but one face; his mouth was full and less in-thing to prevent me. I know nothing -I have read nothing-and I mean to notice at all, (pity indeed that the refollow Solomon's directions, "Get learn- viewer set no higher value on his time, ing, get understanding." I find earlier than to waste it in such a manner!) days are gone by, I find that I can From the article, the reader would per have no enjoyment in the world, but ceive the writer's utter incapacity to continual drinking of knowledge. I appreciate poetry of any sort, and the find there is no worthy pursuit, but avowal that he could not read the book the idea of doing some good to the he had undertaken to criticise, (!) was a world. Some do it with their society; piece of impertinence so glaring, as some with their wit; some with their should have deterred all from reading benevolence; some with a sort of power the criticism. The notice in Blackof conferring pleasure and good humour wood was even more scurrilous, but on all they meet, and in a thousand more amusing and inserted quotations ways, all dutiful to the command of of some length. Now it has been curgreat nature. There is but one way rently believed that these severe cuts, for me. The road lies through applica- in two leading Reviews were so bitterly tion, study, and thought. I will pursue felt by Keats, that they brought on a it; and for that end, propose retiring consumption, of which he ultimately for some years. I have been hovering died-true, Keats did die shortly after for some time between an exquisite sense of the luxurious, and a love for philosophy; were I calculated for the former, I should be glad, but as I am not I shall turn all my soul to the latter." The usual monotony of Keats's life was now agreeably varied by a pedestrian tour, through the lakes and highlands, with his friend Brown. The rapture of Keats was unbounded when he became sensible to the full effect of mountain scenery. At the turn of the road above Bowness, when the Lake Windermere first bursts on the view, he stopped as if petrified with beauty. A sort of journal of this tour, remains in various letters written at this time, they are saturated with the spirit of delight which he felt at beholding nature in her wildest, grandest moods, and bear witness how eminently his mind was qualified to appreciate nature in her touchingly simple, as well as her overpoweringly grand forms, from the "trembling light heather bells" to "black mountain peaks," or "mossy waterfalls," yet there is a vein of rich humour in them, and they abound in remarks on the people, and their peculiar habits and modes of life. the criticisms upon him, and his friends out of honest anger, propagated the notion, that the brutality of the critics had a most injurious effect on his health, but a conscientious enquiry entirely dispels such a belief. It is sufficiently apparent from Keat's letters, how little importance he attaches to such opinions, how seldom he alludes to them at all, and with how little concern when he does so. Mark his own words in a confidential letter to his publisher, shortly after seeing the critiques. "I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest I begin to get a little acquaintance with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what "Blackwood," or the "Quarterly" could inflict; and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. I. S. is perfectly right in regard to the "Slip-shod Endymion;" that it is so is no fault of mine. No! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about it being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; In November, 1818, there appeared in the Quarterly, an article most severely and ungenerously criticising Keats's poems. It had no worth as criticism, (for the justness of the critic, must be tested by what he admires, not only by what he dislikes and abuses) it was eminently stupid; for the book for it is not in my nature to fumble. according to the reviewer, might have I will write independently. been one of those productions, which written independently without judgment, it is absolutely waste of time to I may write independently and with I have |