233.-TO HIS BROTHER.

KEATS.

[JOHN KEATS was born in London in 1796. He died at Rome at the early age of twentyfour. Every one knows Byron's allusion to the supposed cause of his death:

""Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,

Should let itself be snuffed out by an article."

Mr. R. Moncton Milnes, himself no mean poet, has published a delightful Life of John Keats. It is a charming contribution to literary biography, and unquestionably tends to raise the general appreciation of the character of that most original poet. We find from his letters that Keats stood up manfully against neglect and abuse; that he had a noble confidence in his own powers to accomplish something excellent; that his poetical capacity was not an immature thing, but was gradually nourished and enlarged by earnest thought and patient study. But, with all his calm endurance, we can scarcely bring ourselves to agree with his accomplished biographer, that the ungenerous attacks upon him did not deeply trouble his spirit. Great minds have the same loathing as Coriolanus, of a display of their wounds. It is delightful, at any rate, to know that such oppression did not enfeeble his mental energy, and that the poetical temperament in his case and in hundreds of others, has been proved to possess the best courage-that of patience and fortitude.

Keats published, in 1818, 'Endymion, a Poetic Romance;' in 1820, 'Lamia, Isabella, the Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems.' These may now be obtained in a cheap form.]

Full many a dreary hour have I past,

My brain bewilder'd, and my mind o'ercast
With heaviness; in seasons when I've thought
No sphery strains by me could e'er be caught
From the blue dome, though I to dimness gaze
On the far depth where sheeted lightning plays;
Or, on the wavy grass outstretch'd supinely,
Pry 'mong the stars, to strive to think divinely:
That I should never hear Apollo's song,
Though feathery clouds were floating all along
The purple west, and, two bright streaks between,
The golden lyre itself were dimly seen:

That the still murmur of the honey-bee

Would never teach a rural song to me:

That the bright glance from beauty's eyelid slanting
Would never make a lay of mine enchanting,
Or warm my breast with ardour to unfold

Some tale of love and arms in time of old.

But there are times, when those that love the bay,
Fly from all sorrowing far, far away;

A sudden glow comes on them, nought they see

In water, earth, or air, but poesy.

It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it,
(For knightly Spenser to Libertus told it,)
That when a poet is in such a trance,

In air he sees white coursers paw and prance,
Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel,
Who at each other tilt in playful quarrel;
And what we, ignorantly, sheet-lightning call,
Is the swift opening of their wide portal,
When the bright warder blows his trumpet clear,
Whose tones reach nought on earth but poet's ear;
When these enchanted portals open wide,

And through the light the horsemen swiftly glide,
The poet's eye can reach those golden halls,
And view the glory of their festivals;
Their ladies fair, that in the distance seem
Fit for the silvering of a seraph's dream;
Their rich brimmed goblets, that incessant run,
Like the bright spots that move about the sun;
And when upheld, the wine from each bright jar
Pours with the lustre of a falling star.
Yet further off are dimly seen their bowers,
Of which no mortal eye can reach the flowers;
And 'tis right just, for well Apollo knows
"Twould make the poet quarrel with the rose.
All that's reveal'd from that far seat of blisses,
Is, the clear fountains, interchanging kisses,
As gracefully descending, light and thin,
Like silver streaks across a dolphin's fin,
When he upswimmeth from the coral caves,
And sports with half his tail above the waves.

These wonders strange he sees, and many more,
Whose head is pregnant with poetic lore;
Should he upon an evening ramble fare
With forehead to the soothing breezes bare,
Would he nought see but the dark silent blue,

With all its diamonds trembling through and through,

Or the coy moon, when in the waviness

Of whitest clouds she does her beauty dress,

And staidly paces higher up, and higher,

Like a sweet nun in holiday attire?

Ah, yes! much more would start into his sight

The revelries and mysteries of night:

And should I ever see them, I will tell you

Such tales as needs must with amazement spell you.

These are the living pleasures of the bard:

But richer far posterity's award.

What does he murmur with his latest breath,

While his proud eye looks through the film of death?
"What though I leave this dull and earthly mound,
Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold
With after times. The patriot shall feel
My stern alarm, and unsheath his steel;
Or in the senate thunder out my numbers,
To startle princes from their easy slumbers.
The sage will mingle with each moral theme
My happy thoughts sententious: he will teem
With lofty periods when my verses fire him,
And then I'll stoop from heaven to inspire him.
Lays have I left of such a dear delight,

That maids will sing them on their bridal-night.
Gay villagers, upon a morn of May,

When they have tired their gentle limbs with play

And form'd a snowy circle on the grass,
And placed in midst of all that lovely lass
Who chosen is their queen, with her fine head
Crowned with flowers purple, white, and red:
For there the lily and the musk-rose sighing,
Are emblems true of hapless lovers dying:
Between her breasts, that never yet felt trouble,
A bunch of violets full blown, and double,
Serenely sleep:-she from a casket takes
A little book,—and then a joy awakes
About each youthful heart,—with stifled cries,
And rubbing of white hands, and sparkling eyes:
For she's to read a tale of hopes and fears;
One that I fostered in my youthful years:
The pearls, that on each glistening circlet sleep,
Gush ever and anon with silent creep,

Lured by the innocent dimples. To sweet rest
Shall the dear babe, upon its mother's breast,
Be lulled by songs of mine. Fair world, adieu !
Thy dales and hills are fading from my view:
Swiftly I mount, upon wide-spreading pinions,
Far from the narrow bounds of thy dominions.
Full joy I feel, while thus I cleave the air,

That my soft verse will charm thy daughters fair,

And warm thy sons !" Ah, my dear friend and brother,

Could I at once my mad ambition smother,

For lasting joys like these, sure I should be

Happier and dearer to society.

At times, 'tis true, I've felt relief from pain

When some bright thought has darted through my brain :
Through all that day I've felt a greater pleasure
Than if I had brought to light a hidden treasure.
As to my sonnets, though none else should heed them,
I feel delighted, still, that you should read them.
Of late, too, I have had much calm enjoyment,
Stretch'd on the grass at my best loved employment,
Of scribbling lines for you. These things I thought
While in my face, the freshest breeze I caught.
E'en now I am pillow'd on a bed of flowers
That crowns a lofty cliff, which proudly towers
Above the ocean waves. The stalks and blades
Chequer my tablet with their quivering shades.
On one side is a field of drooping oats,
Through which the poppies show their scarlet coats,
So pert and useless, that they bring to mind

The scarlet coats that pester human-kind.

And on the other side, outspread, is seen

Ocean's blue mantle, streak'd with purple and green;
Now 'tis I see a canvass'd ship, and now

Mark the bright silver curling round her prow.

I see the lark, down-dropping to his nest,

And the broad-wing'd sea-gull never at rest;

For when no more he spreads his feathers free,
His breast is dancing on the restless sea.
Now I direct my eyes into the west,
Which at this moment is in sunbeams drest;
Why westward turn? 'Twas but to say adieu !
'Twas but to kiss my hand, dear George, to you!

234.-CHARACTER OF KEATS.

MONCTON MILNES.

The last few pages have attempted to awaken a personal interest in the story of Keats almost apart from his literary character-a personal interest founded on events that might easily have occurred to a man of inferior ability, and rather affecting from their moral than intellectual bearing. But now

"He has outsoar'd the shadow of our night;
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,
And that unrest which men miscall delight,
Can touch him not, and torture not again;
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain;
Nor, when the spirit's self had ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn:"

and, ere we close altogether these memorials of his short earthly being, let us revert to the great distinctive peculiarities which singled him out from his fellow-men, and gave him his rightful place among "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown."

Let any man of literary accomplishment, though without the habit of writing poetry, or even much taste for reading it, open 'Endymion' at random (to say nothing of the latter and more perfect poems), and examine the characteristics of the page before him, and I shall be surprised if he does not feel that the whole range of literature hardly supplies a parallel phenomenon. As a psychological curiosity, perhaps Chatterton is more wonderful; but in him the immediate ability displayed is rather the full comprehension of, and identification with, the old model, than the effluence of creative genius. In Keats, on the contrary, the originality in the use of his scanty materials, his expansion of them to the proportions of his own imagination, and, above all, his field of diction and expression extending so far beyond his knowledge of literature, is quite inexplicable to any of the ordinary processes of mental education. If his classical learning had been deeper, his seizure of the full spirit of Grecian beauty would have been less surprising; if his English reading had been more extensive, his inexhaustible vocabulary of picturesque and mimetic words could more easily be accounted for; but here is a surgeon's apprentice, with the ordinary culture of the middle classes, rivalling, in æsthetic perceptions of antique life and thought, the most careful scholars of his time and country, and reproducing these impressions in a phraseology as complete and unconventional as if he had mastered the whole history and the frequent variations of the English tongue, and elaborated a mode of utterance commensurate with his vast ideas.

The artistic absence of moral purpose may offend many readers, and the just harmony of the colouring may appear to others a displeasing monotony; but I think it impossible to lay the book down without feeling that almost every line of it contains solid gold enough to be beaten out, by common literary manufacturers, into a poem of itself. Concentration of imagery, the hitting off a picture at a stroke, the clear, decisive word that brings the thing before you and will not let it go, are the rarest distinction of the early exercise of the faculties. So much more is usually known than digested by sensitive youth, so much more felt than understood, so

much more perceived than methodised, that diffusion is fairly permitted in the earlier stages of authorship; and it is held to be one of the advantages, amid some losses, of maturer intelligence, that it learns to fix and hold the beauty it apprehends, and to crystallize the dew of its morning. Such examples to the contrary, as the Windsor Forest' of Pope, are rather scholastic exercises of men who afterwards became great, than the first-fruits of such genius, while all Keats's poems are early productions, and there is nothing beyond them but the thought of what he might have become. Truncated as is this intellectual life, it is still a substantive whole, and the complete statue, of which such a fragment is revealed to us, stands perhaps solely in the temple of the imagination. There is, indeed, progress, continual and visible, in the works of Keats, but it is towards his own ideal of a poet, not towards any defined and tangible model. All that we can do is to transfer that ideal to ourselves, and to believe that, if Keats had lived, that is what he would have been. Contrary to the expectation of Mr. Shelley, the appreciation of Keats by men of thought and sensibility gradually rose after his death, until he attained the place he now holds among the poets of his country. By his side, too, the fame of this his friend and culogist ascended, and now they rest together, associated in the history of the achievements of the human imagination; twin stars, very cheering to the mental mariner tost on the rough ocean of practical life and blown about by the gusts of calumny and misrepresentation; but who, remembering what they have undergone, forgets not that he also is divine.

Nor has Keats been without his direct influence on the poetical literature that succeeded him. The most noted, and perhaps the most original, of present poets, bears more analogy to him than to any other writer, and their brotherhood has been well recognised, in the words of a critic, himself a man of redundant fancy, and of the widest perception of what is true and beautiful, lately cut off from life by a destiny as mysterious as that which has here been recounted. Mr. Sterling writes; Lately I have been reading again some of Alfred Tennyson's second volume, and with profound admiration of his truly lyric and idyllic genius. There seems to me to have been more epic power in Keats, that fiery, beautiful meteor; but they are two most true and great pocts. When we think of the amount of recognition they have received, one may well bless God that poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind or left alone in its own magic hermitage." And this is in truth the moral of the tale. In the life which here lies before us, as plainly as a child's, the action of the poetic faculty is most clearly visible: it long sustains in vigour and delight a temperament naturally melancholy, and which, under such adverse circumstances, might well have degenerated into angry discontent: it imparts a wise temper and a courageous hope to a physical constitution doomed to early decay; and it confines within manly affections and generous passion a nature so impressible that sensual pleasures and sentimental tenderness might easily have enervated and debased it. There is no defect in the picture which the exercise of this power does not go far to remedy, and no excellence which it does not elevate and extend.

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One still graver lesson remains to be noted. Let no man, who is anything above his fellows, claim, as of right, to be valued or understood: the vulgar great are comprehended and adored, because they are in reality in the same moral plane with those who admire; but he who deserves the higher reverence must himself convert the worshipper. The pure and lofty life; the generous and tender use of the rare creative faculty; the brave endurance of neglect and ridicule; the strange and cruel end of so much genius and so much virtue; these are the lessons by which th sympathies of mankind must be interested, and their faculties educated, up to th Sterling's Essays and Tales, p. 168.

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