have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs-that the solitary indifference I feel for applause, even from the finest spirits, will not blunt any acuteness of vision I may have. I do not think it will. I feel assured I should write from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labours should be burnt every morning, and no eye ever shine upon them.” Consumption had marked him for her own-whatever Mr. Gifford might or might not have done. Doubtless, as Mr. DeQuincey observes," in a condition of languishing decay, slight causes of irritation act powerfully. But it is hardly conceivable that one ebullition of splenetic bad feeling, in a case so proverbially open to revision as the pretensions of a poet, could have overthrown any masculine life," (such as Keats seems, by the above extracts from his correspondence, to have actually possessed,)" unless where that life had already been irrecoverably undermined by sickness."

The masculine and independent tone which he sometimes assumed may, it is true, have been rather a painfully acquired than an inborn and inbred quality; it may have been the artificial and spasmodic reaction of a natural and constitutional sensibility akin to the effeminate. Mr. Gilfillan holds the great defect of John Keats to lie in the want, not of a man-like soul or spirit, but of a man-like constitution-disappointment, disease, deep love, and poverty, combined to unman him. This is probably the key to our poet's literary memoirs, and their occasional air of seeming paradox. The illness and death at Rome make up what has (not too extravagantly) been called a tragedy of a pathos too painfully unmitigated. Severn the artist was the companion who soothed the last moments of genius, and drew the touching sketch, to be read by no heart of man without anguish. Most true is it that "his was no common struggle between vulgar life and death, but a terrible picture of life, love, and fame in desperate antagonism with the destroyer. It contains in it the finest poetic elements; but as a reality it affects us too deeply. In its contemplation, the mystery of life is fearfully intensified, and the burthen of the unintelligible world weighs wearily upon the heart."

From the poet, reader of the Miscellany, let us now turn to his poems. Α poetical pearl-Endymion-came out in 1818. It opens promisingly with that notable line, quoted, we suppose, in every tractate of æsthetics

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever!"

Imagination here disports ad libitum-almost puts on motley, and cuts capers in most admired disorder. What may not imagination do, or attempt, when set loose for an afternoon gambol in the paddock of ancient mythology? Whither might not Keats be led by the beams of his heroine Cynthia,

"What is there in thee, Moon, that thou shouldst move

My heart so potently?"

What else could we expect but exuberant invention and extravagant language from such a minstrel on such a theme? But invention and originality we surely have, sometimes of the pleasantest, which is more than can be said of the affectations of a century of would-be Keatses. Who can read without a singular consciousness of the writer's power and verbal opulence, that submarine episode in the third book, when Endymion visits the deep, deep water-world-the hollow

1

vast that foams above, around, and at his feet-where he wends his fated way among the secrets of the bed of ocean, among old rusted anchors, helmets, breastplates of gone sea-warriors, gold vases embossed with long-forgotten story, mouldering scrolls, rude sculptures in ponderous stone, skeletons of men, "of beast, behemoth, and leviathan, and elephant, and eagle, and huge jaws of nameless monster"-where he meets, in the green concave, with

"An old man sitting calm and peacefully :

Upon a weeded rock this old man sat,
And his white hair was awful, and a mat

Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet ;

And, ample as the largest winding-sheet,

A cloak of blue," &c.

The description makes one shiver-like Wordsworth's "Goody Blake and Harry Gill," albeit a very antipodes in style. The story of the "grey-haired creature" is strange enough to be in keeping with his peculiar position, and is delineated with metaphors, epithets, idioms, and ejaculations, proportionably eccentric. But some of the boldest are "things of beauty"; they are free from that laboured straining air which often mars and detects an aspiration after something new; they are spontaneous, the efflorescence of the moment, insomuch that therein lies the fault of many of them; for, had they been subjected to second thoughts and reflective revision, they would be less wild and audacious. "This kind of poetical audacity is very provoking to critics," Mr. Tuckerman remarks, "and doubtless incited them not a little in their endeavours to crush the new-fledged warbler. There are those who cannot welcome an angel with ruffled wings." Lord Jeffrey said, in that review which had too much of the paulo-post tense to be of real avail to the poet it was designed to serve, that there is no work from which a malicious critic could cull more matter for ridicule, or select more obscure, unnatural, and absurd pages; but, he added, that any one who on this account would represent the whole poem as despicable, must either have no notion of poetry, or no regard to truth. This arch-assailant of the jokers admired the poems of the author of Endymion, because "flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and so coloured and bestrewn with flowers of poetry, that, even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present." Certainly Keats challenges, in Mr. DeQuincey's words, "a fluctuating interest : sometimes an interest of strong disgust"—rather a strong word-"sometimes of deep admiration." How a first perusal of this poem affected the opium-eater, we are told in the following passage :— "The very midsummer madness of affection, of false, vapoury sentiment, of fastastic effeminacy, seemed to me to be combined in Keats' Endymion, when I first saw it near the close of 1821. The Italian poet Marino had been reputed the greatest master of gossamery affection in Europe. But his conceit showed the palest of rosy blushes by the side of Keats' bloody crimson." With all these sins upon his head, and spots upon his laurel, our poet has lavishly enriched Endymion with descriptive passages, sentences, words, of almost unrivalled felicity, and graphic significance. It is in Endymion we find (taken at random) tit-bits such as these:-" the trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temple's self"; "a lazy light spread greyly eastward"; "before the daisies, vermeil-rimmed and white,

hide in deep herbage"; "autumn bold, with universal tinge of silver gold" "the surgy murmurs of the lonely sea"; "the dreamy melody of bedded reeds in desolate places, where dark moisture breeds the hemlock to strange overgrowth"; "a lay more subtle cadencèd, more forest-wild, than Dryope's lone lulling of her child"; "the sullen day had chidden herald Hesperus away with leaden looks"; "tip-toe night holds back her dark-grey hood." Mr. Landon acknowledged that in Keats there are many wild thoughts, and expressions which even outstrip them in extravagance; but, he added, “in none of our poets, with the sole exception of Shakespeare, do we find so many phrases so happy in their boldness." If we must perforce find fault with Endymion, it would be rather with the womanish sentimentalism and die-away languor of the hero-a fault committed by Richter with most of his heroes (Gustavus, Victor, Emanuel, &c.) than with the diction. In the latter there may be a plethora of faultiness and exaggeration; but there is also an opulence of fresh and happy phraseology, rare even in the heights of Parnassus. If Keats was a loser by the one, the world is a gainer by the other. In 1820, another volume appeared by the same hand, containing Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of Saint Agnes, and miscellaneous verses. Lamia is founded on a story (from Philostratus) in Barton's Anatomy of Melancholy, of a young Greek fascinated by a phantom in the habit of a fair gentlewoman," which, when duly espoused by her admirer, turns out to be a serpent, a lamia. The catastrophe is revolting, but told with considerable power:

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"A serpent! echoed he; no sooner said

Than, with a frightful scream, she vanished;
And Lycius' arms were empty of delight,

As were his limbs of life, from that same night !
On the couch he lay his friends came round-
Supported him; no pulse or breath they found-
And into its marriage robe the heavy body wound !"

Isabella, or The Pot of Basil, is a tale from Boccaccio, telling how Lorenzo, the lover of "fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel," is murdered by her brothers, two rich Florentines, who are well-nigh mad that he, the servant of their tradedesigns, should be blithe in their sister's love. They pretend to her that Lorenzo has taken ship for foreign lands; but time wears on, and her beauty decays, because Lorenzo comes not. At last, she is told in a dream—

"Of the late darken'd time-the murderous spite

Of pride and avarice-the dark pine roof
In the forest-and the sodden turfed dell,

Where, without any words, from stabs he fell."

To the forest she hies. There is a terrible description of her labour in turning up the fresh-thrown mould-finding first a soiled glove, which she kisses with a lip more chill than stone, and puts into her bosom, freezing there her young heart's blood—and, after three hours' toil, the body itself is before her. She takes home the head, and places it in a garden-pot, set over with sweet basil :

"And she forgot the stars, the moon and the sun,

And she forgot the blue above the trees,

And she forgot the dell where waters run,

And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,

And the new moon she saw not: but in peace

Hung over her sweet Basil evermore,
And moistened it with tears into the core."

Her brothers are attracted by this strange love for such an object, and contrive to steal the basil-pot, and examine it in secret. They seek refuge from vengeance in voluntary exile; Isabel, robbed of her last treasure, pines and droops, and dies forlorn. How touching the lines

"And with melodious chuckle in the strings

Of her low voice, she oftentimes would cry
After the pilgrim in his wanderings,

To ask him where her Basil was ;

and why

'Twas hid from her: For cruel 'tis,' said she,

'To steal my basil-pot away from me.'"

The Eve of Saint Agnes is another tale of love-with some exquisite imagery and word-painting. How thoughtful Madeline sighs for a dream such as young virgins may have upon St. Agnes' Eve, and how Porphyro comes in real flesh and blood, and hurries her away, gliding like phantoms to the iron porch, and braving the storm of that bitter chilsome night, or rather midnight. This is perhaps the most artistic, the most elaborately finished of all Keats' poems. But his chef d'œuvre is Hyperion-a fragment, but a colossal one; Titanic-like its subject-" a granite peak his bright feet touch." "It seems," said Byron, "actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Eschylus." We are transported to the times of which Niebuhr makes such havoc, or rather, perhaps, such order; we tread the same earth, which vibrates to the footfall of the elder divinities; we are awed by the "sad demeanour, solemn, undisturbed" of the race of Saturn— by the presence of those gigantic forms who would have taken Achilles by the hair and bent his neck, or with a finger stayed Ixion's wheel-speaking in solemn tenor and deep and organ tone, till our very souls thrill as we listen to " that large utterance of the early gods." Hyperion, according to DeQuincey, who so disparages Endymion, presents the majesty, the austere beauty, and the simplicity of Grecian temples enriched with Grecian architecture. So again Gilfillan, who calls Endymion the " dyspeptic dream of a boy of genius," considers Hyperion "the greatest poetical torsos," true to the genuine classical spirit, austerely statuesque in its still or moving figures, antique to awfulness in its spirit, and indicating a rise so rapid and so great from his other works, as from Richmond Hill to an Alp, that those who love not Keats are compelled to admire Hyperion. Such was the triumph of one who

"Without Greek,

Contrived to talk about the gods of late

Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! his was an untoward fate."

Of the miscellaneous poems, our favourite is the Ode to a Nightingale-a delicious piece of melody, worthy of the "most musical, most melancholy" bird herself. Nothing can be more Keatsian in the better sense-nothing more illustrative of his own words, give me a life of sensation rather than of

thought."

His sense of the beautiful was vivid even to distress,-making his heart ache; and a drowsy numbness pains his whole being, as he hears the nightingale, for instance, singing "of summer in full-shorted ease," unconscious

of life's weariness, and fever, and fret, "pouring forth her soul in such an

The lines To Autumn are almost equally full, rich, and luscious—they are imbued with "poetry's genial self"; they are ingrained with the spirit of the picturesque. The Ode on a Grecian Urn is of the right " Attic shape," and, like so many of this poet's verses, exhales the atmosphere of Tempe, or the Vales of Arcady. Robin Hood is a lively strain, in honour of the bugle-horn, and Lincoln Green, and Sherwood haunts of the "tough-belted outlaw." Of the sonnets, those to Haydon are much and universally admired-also that on Old Chapman's Translation of Homer.

Had there never been a George Chapman, there might never have been a Hyperion by John Keats.

WEEDS OF POESY, BY G. L. F. (BOMBAY, 1860.)†

SUCH of our readers as have appreciated the poems printed in this Miscellany, from the pen of the author of "Weeds of Poesy," may be glad to have their attention directed to the little volume bearing that humble title, which was issued from the Byculla press a year ago, but which has hardly yet received the attention we think it merits. Unlike the greater number of modern books of verse, which seldom reach the level of mediocrity, and may be most kindly and judiciously disposed of by a simple transcript of their titles, we venture to claim the" Weeds" as genuine flowers of genius, fragrant and perennial. It has evidently been with the author, as with Bobert Burns, an ardent aspiration from his earliest years (and some of these effusions are dated five-and-twenty years ago), that it might be given him to "Sing a song at least"

Love's gay allurements, Pleasure's rosy smiles,

[toils,-
The field where Glory crowns her favourite's
Yea, tho' reluctant half, the hallowed door
Of Science, and the palm of Ethic lore,
The wreath which girds the classic student's
brow,-

All, all have I forsaken; and wilt thou
But bend on me a cold neglectful eye ?—
I do remember how, in years gone by,
Lone musing o'er some lay of old Romance,
And half-enslumbered in a dream-like trance,
The live-long day I wasted; yet even then
I longed to rise above my fellow-men,-
Not on the wheels of Conquest's crimson car,
Not in the whirlwind empery of War,
But rapt on high, sublimer Muse! with thee,
Upon the wings of Sacred Poesy.
O sacred Poesy! divinest name
Of all beneath high heaven's resplendent
[fired!
How few the lips thy hallowed. torch hath
How few, since beauteous Nature first inspired
The Morning-stars, and, as their numbers
flowed,
[GOD!

frame!

Taught His best gift-to praise the Giver,
And the fond hopes, that flashed athwart
Alas! and were those young aspirings vain?

my brain,

Unreal meteors? Will no worthier ray
Of Genius lighten in this frozen clay ?-
Thou who of old didst WARTON's song inspire,
Well-pleased who heard'st the tones of
HENRY's lyre,

Wake, Maid of melancholy Musings, wake!
The silence of thy sorrowing slumber break!
Still must the harp of Henry sleep in death?
O thou, if ever I have loved to wreathe
His fadeless urn with the fresh hues of Spring,
Aid my weak hand once more that holier harp
to string!

* About some twelve years ago, a critic observed in the Edinburgh Review that perhaps there was no other instance of a bodily constitution so poetical. With Keats, all things were more or less sensational; his mental faculties being, as it were, extended throughout the sensitive part of his nature-as the sense of sight, according to the Mesmerists, is diffused throughout the body on some occasions of unusual excitement.-His body seemed to think! -Edinburgh Review, October 1849.

† Chesson & Woodhall, Bombay; Smith, Elder, & Co., London.-(Rs. 2.)