produce effect by means of things real in themselves—as nature, history, or passion; or real in the mind-as popular superstitions. Keats him coffin." He never recovered from the impression, I sentiments, or wit; and these predominate when and he died three weeks afterwards. they are most successful-as in Chaucer's tales There was a period when the deaths in Paris of actual life, and many of the cantos of Spencer were calculated at 1300 or 1400 a day. Hearses where he vivifies allegory. The subject of Beaufell short, and recourse was had to artillery wag-mont and Fletcher was the drama their popuons. "These having no springs, the violent larity has passed away, not on account of their jolting burst the coffins, the bodies were thrown poetry, which supports their names, but because out, and the pavement was stained with them." of the exceptional vices and crimes they selected The people went mad with terror, believed the as subjects for their tragedies; the grossness of wildest fictions, and indulged in the most dreadful incidents, persons, and sentiments in their comeatrocities. It was rumored that the deaths were dies; and the predominance of temporary fashions all owing to poison, and that there was no such and opinions throughout. The only poet who, on thing as cholera at all. "Then you might behold the ground assumed by Jeffrey, could rival Keats all the horrid secrets of modern civilization dis- was Collins; but, except on subjects purely poetiplayed in the rolling billows of a seething popula-cal, as in some of his odes, Collins still sought to tion. From those darksome quarters where misery hides its forgotten head, the capital was suddenly inundated by multitudes of bare-armed men, whose gloomy faces glared with hate. What sought they? What did they demand? They never told this, only they explored the city with prying eyes, and ran about with ferocious mutterings. Murders soon occurred." A Jew was killed because he laughed in a strange manner and carried a packet of white powder (which turned out to be camphor) in his hand. A young man was butchered for looking into a wine-seller's window, and a coal-porter made his dog tear the dead body. Private subscriptions poured in on all sides; every imaginable precaution was taken by the authorities; the medical men made superhuman efforts; but no common method of treatment having been agreed upon, the most opposite systems were pursued, even in the same hospital or the same ward. "The attendants had to execute directly opposite orders for cases perfectly identical: the patient who was dosed with punch, saw ice given to the man in the next bed, and thinking himself used only as a subject for experiments, he died with rage in his heart." He But the assertion is not accurate. self never appears to have dreamed of founding the ideal on anything but the real. He failed, not through his poetry, but through his faults or his defects. His first and most wearying fault was a self-sufficient habit of outpouring. never seems to have selected his thoughts, or cared for his diction; he labored nothing and finished nothing. The effect of striking pictures, weighty lines, and descriptions at once natural and poetical, is weakened by prosaic expressions, obsolete, half unintelligible words, and silly mannerisms of the Cockney school; or they are overwhelmed by that species of expansion which distinguishes the platform and the pulpit, and consists in running down a theme. Thus, he opens Endymion with a line of power-"A thing of beauty is a joy forever ;" and then he fills three-and-twenty lines in expounding the text, without making it clearer after all. Deficiency was the great cause of Keats' imperfect productions and his ill-success. He wanted knowledge of life, of literature, and of poetical Although no specific has yet been discovered, it seems agreed that the stimulating mode of treat-art. ment is the best. Bad or unwholesome food of every sort is mentioned as a predisposing cause to cholera. From the Spectator. MONCKTON MILNES' LIFE OF KEATS. IF Jeffrey was correct in asserting that the works of Keats are the best test of a reader's relish of "pure poetry"—that is, as we understand him, poetry in its very essence, apart from the interest of the story, the vivacity of the characters, the weight and force of the maxims, and the embodied wit and humor-then Keats must stand at the very head of all poets, at least of all English poets. It is not the poetry of Chaucer or Spenser that encumbers their works for the general reader, but the minute detail and remote fashion of Chaucer, and the allegory and pedantry of Spencer's age, together with the diffuseness of both writers. They themselves intended to found the interest of their poems on story, characters, Some sense of his deficiency, probably, drove him upon mythological subjects for his narrative poems; perhaps on the notion that an exploded superstition, where he could not be tested, would better serve and shield him than any subject that came more within the range of men's experience. But it was a mistake. Mr. Monckton Milnes enforces a common idea, that Keats breathed a new life into classicality: Keats did nothing of the sort, in a classical sense. What he did, and it is deserving of great praise, was to strip heathen mythology of the pedantic formality of poetasters, and endow it with a sort of life by introducing living worshippers, and giving human passions to supernatural beings. The spirit, how. ever, was modern; sometimes of his own age, of rather of his literary school; sometimes imitative of the earlier writers. Spencer is visible in him ; the impression of pictures, statues, and we think the conversation of his enthusiastic artist friendsas Haydon are traceable in his antique descriptions; and in his magic we think we can perceive the influence of the Arabian Nights. But of the true classical spirit he had not a spark, except oc- less activity joined to an impatience of labor: he casionally where a distinct conception of nature found vent in weighty words or delicate delineation, which is classicality all the world over. would neither keep back what he had written nor revise what he wrote. Both of these results were perhaps owing to physical causes; the last cerBy choosing mythological subjects, on which tainly. The seeds of his fatal disorder were in his fancy could run riot without being charged the constitution. One of his brothers had a spitwith improbability, Keats in some sense escaped ting of blood, and seems to have died of consumpthe trammels of a human theme. But to escape tion. He himself complained, in 1819, that he from a difficulty is not to overcome it; and his was "scarcely content to write the best verse, deficiencies are visible in spite of his endeavors to from the fever they leave behind. I want to comevade them. His narrative, especially in Endym- pose without this fever; I hope I shall one day." ion, is bad in two points: judged by their own Once, after meeting Keats near Hampstead, when nature and position, the conduct of his persons is he was supposed to be in perfect health, Coleridge inconsistent; the progress of the story is impeded said to Leigh Hunt, "There is death in that by introductions that contribute nothing to the ac- hand,"-judging, we suppose, from the clammy tion, and have no other end than to furnish topics moisture indicative of a consumptive tendency. for description, or display the writer's dictionary Mr. Milnes intimates that it requires a peculiar knowledge of the heathen gods and goddesses. constitution to appreciate Endymion: we suspect These faults were less visible in his later poems; and he was becoming more artistical, as Mr. Milnes remarks, in avoiding the obvious points of gross affectation and frequent verboseness. Still, had these faults been conquered altogether, mythological subjects are too exploded to admit of a wide or a general interest: they must be false, or they must be heavy; the dead and buried cannot be revived; and of the living Keats had not much knowledge, and did not live in a circle adapted for acquiring it. But though Keats produced no complete poem, he exhibited a high poetical imagination; not, as Jeffrey seems to mean, a sort of poetical essence too ethereal or imaginative to present anything in nature, but founded altogether on reality. There is a wild freshness in his description of the forest of Latmos, which, if it does not carry us thither, removes us from all common landscapes; not by something dreamy, but by images very distinct. The procession of Endymion and the worshippers to the woodland altar, though rather after Poussin or Poussin's French imitators, is wonderfully distinct as a picture. There is a massy primeval grandeur about Saturn and Thea in Hyperion, which, if part of the impression seems to arise from a kind of Egyptian magnitude in size, is unrivalled in its way. Some of his descriptions exhibit great delicacy of touch-as where the smoke of incense from the woodland altar is "a hazy light spread greyly eastward;" some of his sentiments derive truth even from a seeming exaggeration as when Glaucus, gazing on the Circean transformations, sees 66 a sight too fearful for the feel of fear;" and we know of nothing in poetry more suggestive of aërial motion than Mercury floating over the woman serpent in Lamia. As Mr. Milnes justly observes, the actual reputation of Keats depends less on what he did than on what he might have done had he lived to develop his genius. It may be doubted whether his constitution or temperament would have admitted of this development. Besides great self-opinion, which he evidently possessed, (as is discernible in his preface to Endymion, and is visible throughout his correspondence,) he seems to have had a rest that a peculiar, not to say a morbid temperament, influenced all that Keats did. We can indeed suppose what he might have done had he been differently constituted; but that would only be supposing him somebody else. It is now thirty years since Keats first became conspicuous before the world from the attacks of the Quarterly Review and Blackwood's Magazine; and twenty-seven since he dictated his epitaph from his deathbed-" Here lies one whose name was writ in water." The reputation he has attained has perhaps exceeded his dying hopes, and the ideas of his enemies, though the adventitious circumstance of their attacks has somewhat contributed to it; but, be his fame extensive or limited, permanent or doomed to decay, his Life and Letters have more title to be given to the world than those of many persons that have lately figured in print. Nor. judging from the product, could the subject have been placed in better hands than those of Mr. Monckton Milnes. Mr. Milnes, it is true, had no personal knowledge of Keats, and his work must want those lively delineations of character and manners which can only be derived from actual observation. On the other hand, he has not those temptations to soften the truth into falsehood which personal friendship, hallowed by death, and reminiscences a little dimmed by time, are apt to produce. The best substitute for personal knowledge Mr. Milnes has had in the communications of surviving friends, and in the whole of Keats' extant letters, which those friends have placed at his disposal. But it is his peculiar genius that renders Mr. Milnes so preeminently fitted for a biographer of Keats. His genial goodnature and catholic sympathies enable him to perceive and appreciate the depth of feeling that may lie under weaknesses, affectation, and absurdities of manner, which repel many at the outset. The same disposition mingles with his criticism; inducing him to do full and favorable justice to the character and writings of Keats, without blinding him to their faults; though, true to his genial humanity, we think the poetical criticism of Mr. Milnes is a better specimen of judicial decision than his estimate of the poet's personal character. 1 The rarest feature of the work, however, is the particular to Leigh Hunt, with whom he soon belarge and comprehensive spirit which characterizes came intimate. There is some slight obscurity in it. The poetical power of Mr. Milnes is seen, we chronology in this period, Mr. Milnes not being think, to more advantage in these memoirs than in always attentive to dates; but it would seem that his poems. Without the slightest trace of poet- about 1817 Keats resolved to abandon his profesizing or rhetorical inflation, there is a depth of sion, (if he ever practised it,) for poetry. The thought, a vivacity of imagination, and a largeness reason assigned was, that the sense of responsiof grasp, which give to his prose some of the uni- bility in a surgical operation oppressed him but versal character of poetry, without in any way it is likely his own tastes and the example of his impairing its nature as prose. How much of preg-new friends had as much influence as the dread of nant closeness there is in the following introductory doing harm to his patients. view of Keats! Speaking generally, it says all that there is to be said. 66 : About this time, (1817,) Keats, having written verses from boyhood, published his volume of miscellaneous poems; which dropped still-born The biography of a poet can be little better than a comment on his poems, even when itself of long from the press." Notwithstanding the equanimity duration, and chequered with strange and various which he claims for himself, and which Mr. Milnes adventures: but these pages concern one whose concedes to him, Keats seems to have been sore whole story may be summed up in the composition upon the subject; he attributed the failure to the of three small volumes of verse, some earnest friend-"inactivity" of his publisher, Mr. Ollier, and ships, one passion, and a premature death. As thereupon quarrelled with him. Henceforth his men die, so they walk among posterity; and our life passed (to expand the terms of Mr. Milnes' impression of Keats can only be that of a noble nature perseveringly testing its own powers, of a manly heart bravely surmounting its first hard experience, and of an imagination ready to inundate the world, yet learning to flow within regulated channels and abating its violence without lessening its strength. half sentence) in the enjoyment of friendship, the composition of Endymion, Lamia, Hyperion, and some minor or unpublished poems that appear in the present work; and in the one passion, that, having begun apparently at the first development of his illness, only terminated with his life. Of the movements, literary habits, and feelings of Keats, we have a full account in these volumes, until the last months of his life, when he became too weak, nervous, and irritable, to write, or, latterly, even to read the letters addressed to him. But of this period a deeply interesting account has been preserved in the communications of Mr. Severn the artist, who accompanied him to Rome, attended him day and night through an illness whose symptoms were trying alike to the patience and the feelings, and that too while the anxieties of the artist's own position were pressing heavily upon him. One or two points of the biography are obscure. In addition to Keats' share of his It is thus no more than the beginning of a Life which can here be written; and nothing but a conviction of the singularity and greatness of the fragment would justify any one in attempting to draw general attention to its shape and substance. The interest indeed of the poems of Keats has already had much of a personal character; and his early end, like that of Chatterton, (of whom he ever speaks with a sort of prescient sympathy,) has in some degree stood him instead of a fulfilled poetical existence. Ever improving in his art, he gave no reason to believe that his marvellous faculty had anything in common with that lyrical facility which many men have manifested in boyhood or in youth, but which has grown torpid or disappeared altogether with the advance of mature life: in him no one doubts that a true genius was suddenly arrest-father's property, which amounted to 20007., he ed; and they who will not allow him to have won his place in the first ranks of English poets will not deny the promise of his candidature. received 4007. on the death of his brother Thomas; and this capital need only have been diminished by the expenses of his medical education; yet, The life of John Keats, as Mr. Milnes has in- though he lived, to appearance, on a frugal scale, dicated, was uneventful. The future poet was in lodgings, it vanished unaccountably, and he born in 1795; his father was in the employ of soon got into pecuniary difficulties. He lived but Mr. Jennings, a livery-stable-keeper of Moorfields, six years altogether after his apprenticeship; by and attained the romance of industry, by marrying 1819, he determined to resort to periodical writing, his master's daughter. At about the usual age, which he abhorred, as a means of subsistence; John was sent to a school at Enfield, kept by Mr. and but for the kindness of the present Sir James Clarke, the father of Charles Cowden Clarke. On Clark (then practising as a physician at Rome) leaving school, in 1810, he was apprenticed to Mr. and the devoted friendship of Mr. Severn, the Hammond, a surgeon of Edmonton. He remained author of Hyperion must have shared the fate with him for the usual period of five years; regu- of many other sons of genius, and died in a larly walked the hospitals in London; and, much hospital. It seems only to have been an oppor to the surprise of his medical-student friends, whe tune remittance (and not the only one) from Mr. knew his habits of verse-making and desultory Taylor the publisher, that relieved Keats, or rather reading, passed his examination at Apothecaries Severn, from the apprehensions expressed in the Hall with considerable credit. Keats' old friend, following extract. Cowden Clarke, with whom he used to read poetry Torlonia, the banker, has refused us any more at school and during his apprenticeship, had intro-money; the bill is returned unaccepted; and toduced him to several literary acquaintances, and in morrow I must pay my last crown for this cursed ness. The lodging-place; and what is more, if he dies, all the to him in composing these memoirs. The first beds and furniture will be burnt and the walls was to consider his materials as entirely at his scraped, and they will come on me for a hundred own disposal, and deal with them artistically, so pounds or more! But, above all, this noble fellow as principally to consider the literary result. lying on the bed and without the common spiritual [corporal?] comforts that many a rogue and fool has other was to look upon himself in the light of an in his last moments! If I do break down, it will editor-print the whole of the correspondence that be under this; but I pray that some angel of good-could properly appear, and merely contribute a ness may yet lead him through this dark wilder-narrative that should connect the letters and supply their omissions. The last is the course Mr. If I could leave Keats every day for a time, I Milnes has adopted, on the ground that it gives a could soon raise money by my painting; but he will not let me out of his sight-he will not bear fuller view of Keats. This is undoubtedly true; but at Keats' expense. Some of his letters are the face of a stranger. I would rather cut my tongue out than tell him I must get the money-trivial, and others tedious, from his habit of runthat would kill him at a word. You see my hopes ning everything down though not worth the trouble of being kept by the Royal Academy will be cut of the chase; others are distasteful from their off unless I send a picture by the spring. I have narrowness, not to say egotism. No doubt, they written to Sir T. Lawrence. I have got a volume of Jeremy Taylor's works, which Keats has heard present the weaknesses of Keats to the reader; me read to-night. This is a treasure indeed, and but Mr. Milnes could have impressed them much came when I should have thought it hopeless. more briefly. Hence, some of the most interWhy may not other good things come? I will esting parts of the book are supplied by the keep myself up with such hopes. Dr. Clark is biographer, except those letters of Keats which still the same, though he knows about the bill; he refer to his attachment, and the narrative of his is afraid the next change will be to diarrhoea. journey to Rome and his illness there. Keats sees all this-his knowledge of anatomy makes every change tenfold worse; every way he is unfortunate, yet every one offers me assistance on his account. He cannot read any letters; he has made me put them by him unopened. They tear him to pieces-he dare not look on the outside of any more; make this known. The passion of Keats was returned; the only obstacles appear to have been his circumstances and his health. Keats himself thought that if his means had permitted him to marry, his health would not have given way; but that was probably a delusion of sickness. Till Keats left England, lived in the lady's neighborhood. On his voyage the allusions to this subject are scanty, as he out, and in Italy, we can observe its absorbing nature. He writes as follows to his friend Mr. Mr. Milnes maintains that the attacks upon Keats had nothing to do with his death. His authority for this conclusion seems to be the letters of Keats; but in a person at once so selfopinioned and so proud as regarded his literature, Brown, from off the Isle of Wight, in 1820:— this is scarcely sufficient evidence. Nobody, we I wish to write on subjects that will not agitate suppose, meant that Keats was killed out and me much. There is one I must mention, and have out" by the Quarterly. A "mens sana in cor-done with it. Even if my body would recover of pore sano" is not struck down by paper pellets, I want to live most for, will be a great occasion of itself, this would prevent it. The very thing which especially when annoyance, not truth, is the evident aim. But a nervous temperament, with the germs of disorder strongly developed, might be so excited by mortification, disappointment, and inward anger, as to aggravate disease to a quicker termination. Little more than this, we suppose, was meant; and his brother George, with many of the poet's friends, believed that the attacks upon him produced as much as this. That such might be an exaggerated view we will not dispute; that it had some foundation we believe. His literary sensitiveness was greater than he would willingly own. It has been seen how he tried to put the failure of his first-born upon Mr. Ollier; he was angry that he should be considered a follower of Leigh Hunt in Endymion, though his more obvious faults and his outward style are distinctly stamped with that writer's school; he was dissatisfied with Mr. Hunt's private (and it strikes us very just and lenient) criticism on the first part of Endymion-attributing it to offended vanity in not having been consulted "officiously," [officially and on this ground ascribing to Hunt and Shelley a formed resolve to depreciate his poem. Mr. Milnes observes that two modes were open my death. I cannot help it. Who can help it? And again from Naples :- Naples, Nov. 1, [1820.] My dear Browne-Yesterday we were let out of from bad air and the stifled cabin than it had done quarantine; during which my health suffered more the whole voyage. The fresh air revived me a little; and I hope I am well enough this morning to write to you a short calm letter—if that can be "Misera me! sollievo a me non resta, Altro che il pianto, ed il pianto è ailetto!" Now that I know so much of his grief, I do not wonder at it. called one in which I am afraid to speak of what I would fainest dwell upon. As I have gone thus far into it, I must go on a little; perhaps it may relieve the load of wretchedness which presses upon me. The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have Such a letter has come! I gave it to Keats had her when I was in health, and I should have supposing it to be one of yours; but it proved sadly remained well. I can bear to die-I cannot bear to otherwise. The glance at that letter tore him to leave her. Oh, God, God, God! Everything I pieces; the effects were on him for many days. have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes He did not read it-he could not-but requested through me like a spear. The silk lining she put me to place it in his coffin, together with a purse in my travelling-cap scalds my head. My imagina- and a letter (unopened) of his sister's; since then tion is horribly vivid about her; I see her, I hear he has told me not to place that letter in his coffin, her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient only his sister's purse and letter, and some hair. interest to divert me from her a moment. This I, however, persuaded him to think otherwise on was the case when I was in England; I cannot this point. In his most irritable state he sees a recollect without shuddering the time that I was a friendless world about him, with everything that his prisoner at Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed life presents, and especially the kindness of others, on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good tending to his melancholy death. hope of seeing her again. No-O that I could be Feb. 22d.-Oh, how anxious I am to hear from buried near where she lives! I am afraid to write you! [Mr. Haslam.] I have nothing to break this to her to receive a letter from her, to see her dreadful solitude but letters. Day after day, night handwriting, would break my heart-even to hear after night, here I am by our poor dying friend. of her anyhow, to see her name written, would be My spirits, my intellect, and my health are breakmore than I can bear. My dear Brown, what aming down. I can get no one to change with meI to do? Where can I look for consolation or no one to relieve me. All run away; and even if ease? If I had any chance of recovery, this passion they did not, Keats would not do without me. would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of my illness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever has never ceased wearing me out. When you write to me, which you will do immediately, write to Rome (poste restante)-if she is well and happy, put a mark thus +; if Remember me to all. I will endeavor to bear my miseries patiently. A person in my state of health should not have such miseries to bear. My dear Brown, for my sake, be her advocate forever. I cannot say a word about Naples; I do not feel at all concerned in the thousand novelties around me. I am afraid to write to her. I should like her to know that I do not forget her. Oh, Brown, I have coals of fire in my breast. It surprises me that the human heart is capable of containing and bearing so much misery. Was I born for this end? God bless her, and her mother, and my sister, and George, and his wife, and you, and all! Your ever affectionate friend, JOHN KEATS. These feelings pursued him to the last. Nine days before his death, Mr. Severn writes thus : Feb. 14th.-Little or no change has taken place, except this beautiful one, that his mind is growing to great quietness and peace. I find this change has to do with the increasing weakness of his body; but to me it seems like a delightful sleep, I have been beating about in the tempest of his mind so long. To-night he has talked very much, but so easily, that he fell at last into a pleasant sleep. He seems to have happy dreams. This will bring on some change; it cannot be worse-it may be better. Among the many things he has requested of me to-night, this is the principal-that on his gravestone shall be this inscription, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." You will understand this so well that I need not say a word about it. When he first came here he purchased a copy of "Alfieri," but put it down at the second page, being much affected at the lines Last night I thought he was going—I could hear the phlegm in his throat; he bade me lift him up in the bed, or he would die with pain. I watched him all night, expecting him to be suffocated at every cough. This morning, by the pale daylight, the change in him frightened me; he had sunk in the last three days to a most ghastly look. Though Dr. Clark has prepared me for the worst, I shall be ill able to bear it. I cannot bear to be set free even from this my horrible situation by the loss of it. I am still quite precluded from painting; which may be of consequence to me. Poor Keats has me ever by him, and shadows out the form of one solitary friend; he opens his eyes in great doubt and horror; but when they fall upon me they close gently, open quietly, and close again, till he sinks to sleep. This thought alone would keep me by him till he dies; and why did I say I was losing my time? The advantages I have gained by knowing John Keats are double and treble any I could have won by any other occupation. Farewell. Feb. 27th. He is gone! He died with the most perfect ease; he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23d, about four, the approaches of death came on. "Severn-I-lift me up-I am dying-I shall die easy; don't be frightened-be firm, and thank God it has come." I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sunk into death: so quiet, that I still thought he slept. I cannot watching; no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. say more now. I am broken down by four nights' Three days since the body was opened; the lungs imagine how he had lived these two months. I were completely gone. The doctors could not followed his dear body to the grave on Monday, with many English. They take much care of me here I must else have gone into a fever. I am better now, but still quite disabled. The police have been. The furniture, the walls, the floor, must all be destroyed, and changed; but this is well looked to by Dr. Clark. The letters I placed in the coffin with my own hand. |