from the light which they throw on the character of the writers; but in no case have they won for themselves an assured place in the records of English literature. Gray, Cowper, and Lamb have done so, though in different styles and for different reasons. Gray and Cowper both, indeed, wrote carefully finished letters, not so much, perhaps, from any view to subsequent publication as because it was the fashion of the times, and the course of their lives gave them both leisure and inclination to put much of their best thought and most characteristic writing into their familiar correspondence with their friends. But between Gray and Cowper there was a strong contrast in character and culture, which renders Gray's letters perhaps the more interesting to the trained literary intelligence, and Cowper's to the mind which delights in a simple but fresh and attractive record of a homely life and a lovable character. Lamb, on the other hand, is very different from both. His letters are certainly not carefully finished, neither can there be any question that they were written on the spur of the moment and with reference only to the correspondent to whom they were directed; but Lamb's mind was so saturated with literature and literary thought, and his wit and humour ran so naturally in the channels of familiar intercourse, that his letters are universally accepted as an integral part of his contribution to English literature, and so forming a fit supplement to the immortal Essays of Elia.

With Keats the case is different. Mr. Colvin does indeed say that his genius makes itself felt in prose-writing almost as decisively as in verse, and at their best these letters are among the most beautiful in our language;' but this judg ment may be partly due to the natural tendency of an editor to attach value to everything that in any way exhibits and illustrates the genius of a poet whom he admires. Otherwise it is difficult to understand such a criticism. The finest poems of Keats take rank with the best in the language; and if his prose was equal in merit to his verse he would stand with the greatest of English prose-writers, and would have achieved a feat at least equal to that of Milton. This we cannot think that he has done. The volume of his letters is full of interest, and contains occasionally fine passages of writing; but their chief value lies in their expression of his aims and aspirations, and as illustrating his character and genius. Were they not written by the author of Endymion and Hyperion they would command little attention, whereas the letters of Gray, Cowper, and Lamb would deserve to be

read even though the Elegy in a Churchyard, The Task, and the Essays of Elia had never been written.

Most of the letters in Mr. Colvin's volume have been published before, especially by Lord Houghton and Mr. Buxton Forman; but the copies given by the earlier editors were often incomplete, and Mr. Colvin has been able to draw from sources unknown or inaccessible to them, and he has also devoted much pains to the accurate chronological arrangement of the correspondence. Only in one point has he given less than his predecessors, and this is in his omission of the poet's letters to Fanny Brawne. His decision to omit these from what aspires to be a standard edition of Keats's correspondence is sure to be freely questioned, but for ourselves we consider it to be entirely right. How many critics would like their own love letters, if they ever wrote any, to be inspected by the world, and what right have they to deny to a poet the privacy which they would claim for themselves? Literary biographies have, for the most part, their justification solely in the light which they throw on the genius of a writer whose works are already the public property of the world; and beyond what is necessary for this purpose they have no right to pry into details which only satisfy curiosity without conveying one fragment of legitimate edification. It is perfectly right that the existence of the consuming passion which absorbed Keats's last years, and wrecked much of his work, should be known, and a judicious biographer could illustrate this, and at the same time preserve the finest passages (from a literary point of view) which these letters contain, by a careful process of selection. But beyond what is necessary for this purpose the public has no right to pry, and Mr. Colvin is to be thanked and congratulated for the courage which he has shown in refusing to include these letters in his present volume.

The letters of Keats make no claim to formal finish or literary polish, though they not unfrequently contain passages in which his literary instincts have full play when he discourses on poetry and kindred subjects. They include playful notes to his sister Fanny; running records, often scrappy and fragmentary, of his Scotch tour; long epistles, written up from time to time, and giving a nearly continuous history of the last years of his life, to his brother George in America; and miscellaneous letters to his friends Brown, Bailey, Reynolds, Dilke, Haydon, Taylor, and others. In these are interspersed fragments of verse, giving specimens (generally to his brother and sister) of the work which he has lately done.

All the poems arising out of the Scotch tour make their appearance in this way, and we also find here the first drafts of the Ode to Psyche, the Lines on the Mermaid Tavern, and others of his published works. The value of these records for biographical purposes is of course obvious. But the chief value and interest of the letters lies in their continuous illustration of the character of Keats and the development of his genius-a character and a genius which, from the wonderful results achieved in so short a time, rank among the most interesting of those contained in the records of English lite

rature.

Of the personal character of Keats it may be said at once that they give a most favourable impression. An undeveloped youth, filled with a passion for literary achievement and consciousness of poetic capacities, may sometimes say things in the privacy of confidential correspondence which would appear arrogant and presumptuous in print. Only the most coldblooded and cautious of men keep absolutely to themselves the aspirations and the hopes of success which they conceive in their happier moments; and it is not the cold-blooded and the cautious who do most in the world of poetry. But though there are passages in the private letters of Keats which would, if publicly expressed, have provoked the contemptuous indignation of the Quarterly and Blackwood critics of his day, and which would occasion some amusement now if they had been written by one who had failed to justify them by his subsequent work, there is nothing which to us, looking back at them in the light of that subsequent work, can appear unjustifiable or otherwise than honourable to the youth who wrote them. Genius, if it be genius, has a right to self-confidence; it is only if it publishes that self-confidence before it has established its claim to be recognized as genius that it will encounter the indignation of the critics. This (except, perhaps, in a well-known passage of Sleep and Poetry) Keats did not do. Nothing could have been more modest, and at the same time more just, than the preface with which he gave Endymion to the world, although it failed to conciliate critics who disliked his political and literary associates and were unable to discern the genius latent in that confessedly immature work. But it must not be understood that the prevailing note of these letters is one of self-assertion. There are passages of hope and there are passages of despondency; there are passages of criticism, both of himself and and of his contemporaries, which are sometimes just and sometimes mistaken; but on the whole the writer displays a very tem

perate judgment of his own performances, and a perfectly justifiable sense of the possibilities within his reach. Moreover these letters present Keats as a generous-hearted friend and a most kind and affectionate brother. His letters to his brother and sister are perfect in their tone of genuine affection and fullest sympathy for their troubles and difficulties, even in the midst of the sufficiently absorbing anxieties and preoccupations which surrounded the last few years of his life. Impetuous and enthusiastic, he was also most considerate and sympathetic; and if as a schoolboy he invariably fought with his friends, he was also usually a friend to those with whom he fought. No one less capable of making allowances for the shortcomings of his friends could have maintained the affectionate relations which Keats, almost without exception, did with Haydon and Leigh Hunt, or have avoided taking part with one or the other in the bickerings and jealousy which (principally, it must be stated, on the part of the painter) so frequently arose between them. The testimony of Keats's friends after his death (excepting only certain unjustifiable carpings of Haydon) with one voice declared him to be one of the most lovable of men; and his letters go far to confirm this eulogy.

But the personal characteristics of a poet are not our primary concern, and indeed as a rule it is more satisfactory to investigate as little as possible the private life of those whose genius we especially reverence. Genius in undress is seldom as attractive as genius with its singing-robes about it and speaking with a voice which comes from those higher realms to which we have no access save by its aid. If that private life will bear the investigation of the modern detective without diminution in our reverence for it, we may be thankful that it is so, and respect the individual as we respect the same character in those who are not endowed with genius; but if otherwise, Dogberry's advice is the best, that for such kind of men the less you meddle or make with them (as regards their private affairs), why, the more is for your honesty. Keats was a generous friend and an affectionate brother; but it is not for that reason that we study his biography and his letters. There are many generous friends and affectionate brothers in the world; but there is but one author of Hyperion and the Ode to a Nightingale. Therefore it is for the light that these letters throw on the poet's genius that they are most to be prized; and from this point of view they form a most excellent and instructive commentary on his published verse. John Keats was born in 1795; and for the benefit of the

1

godfathers and godmothers of fucure poets it may be observed that he did not find his first name a satisfactory one for the line of life which he adopted. "Tis a bad name, and goes against a man. If my name had been Edmund I should have been more fortunate.' And, in point of fact, it is not a poetic name, as anyone may realize for himself by reading the last line of Robert Browning's Respectability. No doubt it may be urged that the second among English poets bore the name of John, but who ever dares to speak of Milton with the familiarity of a Christian name? Keats was born in 1795; and in 1821 he died, the author of at least a dozen poems which rank among the masterpieces of the English language and the inheritor of much unfulfilled renown in addition. The performances of precocious geniuses should generally be received with suspicion. The premature development exhausts itself, and the later performance is not equal to the earlier promise; and consequently the might have been of youthful poets whose life was early cut short, such as Chatterton or Kirke White, does not impress us greatly. But Keats was no precocious or premature genius. On the contrary, though the genius was there, maturity was precisely what it lacked. The genius burns through the inexperience, the unrestrained judgment, the want of taste, which are characteristic of youth, and it is only in his latest work that we find the pure ore emerging from the refining fire, the froth and superfluity of fermentation clearing away from the now almost perfect wine. But possessing as we do both the early immature work and the later and more mature development, we are in a fair position to examine the character of his youthful poems, and to judge from them something of the extent of our loss by his early death. And such a study is full of interest for the lover of literature. It presents a mind filled to its brim with the genius of poetry, devoted to poetry as soon as it became capable of anything, striking out almost from the first an independent line of art, and working out its own salvation with much labour and through much discouragement, but with a strong and assured progress to the promised land, of which it did not live to take possession, although its feet had entered within its borders.

Keats published three volumes of verse in his lifetime, and other poems have been collected since his death, and added to the editions of his writings, from his letters and other unpublished sources. His first volume, published in 1817, contained tentative experiments, studies in various styles, familiar epis

1 Letters, p. 341.