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poet, and the contrast between the glory of the diction and the poverty of invention is very striking.

Keats now began to find himself in somewhat straightened circumstances, from various causes. His volumes of poems had not sold so well as he had hoped they would. Then it is possible he possessed no overplus of prudence and economy in money matters-a quality which is not usually found to exist in excess in men of high literary talent. Certainly their is no reason why common practical sense should not be combined with intellectual superiority, though it rarely is. To meet his present wants, he determined to write for the periodicals, although he formerly entertained strong objections to magazine writing; he subdued his proud feelings, and there are several letters which relate to this subject, but it does not appear that he

delightful work on Imagination and Fancy:"- The Eve of St. Agnes' is young, but full-grown poetry of the rarest description; graceful as the beardless Apollo; glowing and gorgeous with the colours of romance-in addition to felicity of treatment, its subject is in every respect a happy one, and helps to paint' this our bower of 'poetry with delight.' In all the luxury of the poem there is nothing of the conventional craft of artificial writers; no heaping up of words or similes for their own sakes or the rhyme's sake; no gaudy common places; no borrowed airs of earnest ness; no tricks of inversion; no substitution of reading or of ingenious thoughts for feeling or spontaneity, no irrelevancy or unfitness of any sort. All flows out of sincerity and passion. The writer is as much in love with his heroine as his hero is; his description of the painted window, however gor-ever carried out his intentions, for it geous, has not an untrue or superfluous word; and the only speck of a fault in the whole poem arises from an excess of emotion."

Keats spent the greater part of the summer at Shanklin in company with his friend Brown. Here they attempted a combination of intellectual power as was hardly likely to prove successful, they were to write a drama between them. Brown was to supply the characters, incident and dramatic plot, while Keats translated them into rich and glowing verse-this was no doubt an amusing diversion, but it requires no profound æsthetic knowledge to understand that this singular mode of composition was not likely to be successful for the unity of form and emotion must receive an injury hard to be compensated by any apparent improvement in the several parts, and a certain inferiority is often more agreeable than an attempt at entire completeness, at the sacrifice of that unity of feeling and character, which in the drama most especially should be preserved-" the story is confused and unreal, and the personages are mere imbodied passions, the heroine and her brother walk through the whole piece like the demons of an old romance, and the historical character which gives his name to the play (Otho the Great) is almost excluded and made a part of the pageantry-passages, however, of great beauty and power are continually recurring-there is scarce a page without some touch of the great

was in the early part of 1820, that symptoms first appeared of that disease which was soon to close his bright, though not unclouded, career.

One night, about eleven o'clock he returned home in a state of great physical excitement-to those who did not know him, it might appear in a state of fierce intoxication. He told his friend that he had been outside a coach, had received a severe chill and was a little fevered, but added, "I don't feel it now." He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and as he leaped into the cold sheets, he slightly coughed, and said, "That is blood from my month, bring me the candle, let me see this blood." He gazed stedfastly, for some moments, at the crimson stain, and then, looking into his friend's face with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, remarked, "I know the colour of that blood-it is arterial blood-I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death warrant. I must die."

A surgeon was immediately called in, and after being bled, Keats fell into a quiet sleep. The medical man declared the lungs to be sound and the rupture unimportant; but Keats was of a different opinion, and with the frequent self-prescience of disease, added to his scientific knowledge, he was not to be persuaded out of his forebodings; his love of life did at times, however, get the better of his gloom.

The advancing year brought with it

such an improvement in health and
strength, as amounted almost in the
estimation of many of his most san-
guine friends, to recovery. Gleams of
his old cheerfulness returned. In a letter
(February, 1820) he remarks, with ex-
quisite delicacy and feeling, "how asto-
nishingly does the chance of leaving
the world impress a sense of its natural
beauties upon us.
I think of green
fields; I muse with the greatest affection
on every flower I have known since my
infancy, their shapes and colours are as
new to me as if I had just created them
with a superhuman fancy. It is be-
cause they are connected with the most
thoughtless and the happiest moments
of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers,
in hot-houses, of the most beautiful
natures, but I do not care a straw for
them. The simple flowers of spring are
what I want to see again."

In May, Keats went to Kentish Town to be near his friend, Leigh Hunt, but soon returned to Hampstead, and remained with the family of the lady to whom he was attached. But as the summer and autumn advanced all the delusive hopes which his apparent recovery had fostered died away, for the disease was making visible progress, and in September, as a last forlorn hope, he was recommended to try the genial climate of Italy. His friend Severn, nobly regardless of his fair prospects for the future, (the gold medal for the best historical painting had just been awarded to him) at once offered to accompany Keats into Italy. Such a companionship was everything to him, and though he reproached himself on his deathbed with permitting Severn to make the sacrifice, it no doubt afforded all the alleviation of which his sad condition was capable.

The voyage was begun on the 20th of September, for a fortnight they were delayed in the Channel by contrary winds. He landed once more on the Dorchester coast; the bright beauty of the day and the scene revived the poet's drooping heart, it was then that he composed that sonnet of solemn tenderness,

Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art-
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching with eternal lips apart,

Like Nature's patient sleepless eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-
No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Still, still to hear her tender taken breath,
And so live ever-or else swoon to death.
which was the last he ever wrote.
A violent storm in the Bay of Biscay
lasted thirty hours. After the tempest
had subsided, Keats was reading the
description of the storm in Don Juan,
and cast the book on the floor in a
transport of indignation—“ How horri-
ble an example of human nature," he
cried, "is this man, who has no pleasure
left him, but to gloat over and jeer at
the most awful incidents of life. Oh!
this is a paltry originality, which con-
sists in making solemn things gay, and
gay things solemn, and yet it will
fascinate thousands, by the very diaboli-
cal outrage of their sympathies. Byron's
perverted education makes him assume
to feel, and try to impart to others,
those depraved sensation's which the
want of any education excites in many."

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

The invalid's sufferings increased during the latter part of the voyage, and a miserable ten days quarantine at Naples. But when once fairly settled in comfortable quarters, his spirits appeared somewhat to revive, and the glorious scenery to bring back at moments his old sense of delight; these transitory gleams of hope were only remarkable as contrasting painfully with the gloom of melancholy and despair, which overcame all his feelings, even those of love.

Little things which might have passed at other times unobserved, now struck his exquisitely susceptible feelings with intense disgust. He could not bear to go to the Opera, on account of the sentinels who were stationed continually on the stage. "We will go

at once to Rome," he said, "I know my end approaches, and the continual visible tyranny of this government prevents me from having any peace of mind-I could not lie quietly here-I will not leave even my bones in the midst of this despotism."

He had received at Naples a most kind letter from Shelley, anxiously enquiring after his health, and concluding with a pressing invitation to Pisa, where he could ensure him every comfort and attention. It is unfortunate this invitation was not accepted, as it might have spared the sufferer much annoyance, and relieved the mind of his friend from much painful responsi

bility and distress. On arriving at Rome he delivered the letter of introduction to Dr. (now Sir James) Clarke, from whom he received all the attention which skill and knowledge can confer, and all that sympathy and delicate thoughtfulness which could lighten the dark passages of mortal sickness, and soothe the pillow of the forlorn stranger. Dr. Clarke procured Keats a lodging in the Piazza di Spagna, opposite to his own dwelling; it was in the first house on your right hand as you ascend the steps of the "Trinita del Monte." The desolation and gloom of Keats's state were alone alleviated by the love and care of his faithful friend Severn and Dr. Clarke. Once during his illness he requested that on his grave stone might be this inscription:

Here lies one whose name was writ in water;

a

he also wished that a purse of his sister's together with an unopened letter, which he was unable to read, and some hair should be placed in his coffin. This request Severn fulfilled with his own hand. He continued to linger in state of extreme suffering and weakness. The lowering clouds of gloom and foreboding which, during the first part of his illness, hung so heavily and thickly around him, happily passed away, and left a beautiful calm of quietness and peace. On the 27th February, 1821, Mr. Severn wrote a letter to a friend,-“He is gone; he died with the most perfect ease-he seemed to go to sleep. On the 23rd, about four, the approaches of death came on. Severn ——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 say more now. I am broken down by four nights watching, no sleep

since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days since the body was opened, the lungs were completely gone. The doctors could not imagine how he had lived these two months. I followed his dear body to the grave on Monday, with many English. The letters I placed in the collin with my own hand."

Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, one of the most beautiful spots on which the eye or heart of man can rest. It is a grassy slope, amid the verdurous ruins of the Honorian walls of the diminished city, and surrounded by the pyramidal tomb which Petarch attributed to Remas, but which antiquarian truth has ascribed to the humbler man of Caius Cestius, a tribune of the people only remembered by his sepulchre. In one of those mental voyages into the past, which often precede death, Keats had told Severn that "he thought the intensest pleasure he had received in life was in watching the growth of flowers;" and another time, after lying awhile still and peaceful, he said, “I feel the flowers growing over me." And there they do grow, even all the winter long-violets, and daisies, mingling with the fresh herbage, and in the words of Shelley, "making one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."

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To the memory of John Keats, Shelley inscribed his exquisitely beautiful poem, Adonäis-truly one of the fairest monuments ever raised, and the sweetest tribute of love that has ever been offered on the altar of departed genius.' And a few years after this was written, in the extended burying-ground, a little above the grave of Keats, was placed another tombstone, recording that below rested the passionate and world-worn heart of Shelley himself "Cor Cordium."

P. B. S.

ANDREW MARVELL.

THERE are times in the histories of all | well as upon the earth. The sun of nations which are strangely productive knowledge and the dews of faith soften of great minds. After a long dark win- the clods and warm them into life, and ter of sluggish inactivity, a spring time then the seeds which have been dropped comes upon the mind of the world as on the soil of humanity begin to ger

minate and prepare to put forth their providential government of the world,
harvest. Such a period in the history
of England was that which preceeded
the Commonwealth. Up to the reign
of the eighth Henry, superstition had
dominated over art, set limits to science,
confined intellect within a narrow cir-
cle, and banned free thought. The
world's heart and brain were as though
they were dead, so faint was the action
of one, under the shadow of the hood
of the monk-so faint the pulsation of
the other beneath its ecclesiastical
shroud. Philosophers were fain to
hide their lore within the recesses of
their studies, for fear that it might
offend the dogmas of the Church-and
men spake of the thoughts which began
to beam in upon their souls as though
truth were a crime. But there were
men who, like Galileo, spake with the
voices which echoed to them out of the
recesses of nature, and braved the dun-
geon-there were martyrs who like the
Lollards, proclaimed the faith which
was in thein, and dared the stake and
the flame. The first blow at a system
thoroughly rotten, seals its fate. Its
end may be delayed or put off-but
from that moment it is written on the
page of the future, for

note its workings in this, that a crisis
brings the men fitted to meet it; close
upon the heels of the danger ever
follows the means of safety. If it were
our task to trace the progress of
humanity, we might show how, with
the spirit of enquiry which marked the
era of the Reformation, came intel-
lectual power from which rose Shakes-
pere and his contemporaries, and how
the two blended to produce the pure,
earnest, unwavering, stern faith of the
puritans. But that is not our purpose.
We may only so far touch history as to
observe the general circumstances which
precceded and accompanied a parti-
cular life-only so far indulge in specu-
lation as to trace the connection of the
wide-spread cause with the one effect
which forms our subject.
That we
have attempted to do as briefly as may
be; and now to the matter in hand.

Freedom's battle once begun,
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son,
Though balled oft, is ever won.

Human thought often errs, but it has this godlike quality, that in the end it always tends to the right. Keep it still, silent, immovable-shut it in an exhausted receiver from which the air of knowledge is thoroughly excluded, it will remain latent-let but a breath enter its prison-house, and it begins to wake-it ceases to be compressible-it grows, and puts a firm grasp on power. It is a beautiful story, that in the Arabian Nights' Tales where the fisherman draws up in his net the vessel sealed with the magic signet of Solomon. When he opened it there arose from it a cloud-that cloud became a giant threatening him with destruction. That is how thought was imprisoned; but when once the seal was off its prisonhouse, it grew so rapidly that it was beyond the power of man to force it back into the narrow cell from which it had emerged.

It has been said that great men make great times. Invert the sentence and it is still true-great times make great men. Those who recognise the

At the town of Kingston-on-Hull, where the broad Humber floats between verdant banks to the sea, stands a monument bearing the following inscription: "Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell, Esq., a man SO endowed by nature, so improved by education, study, and travel, so consummated by experience, that joining the peculiar graces of wit and learning with a singular penetration and strength of judgment; and exercising all these in the whole course of his life with an unutterable steadiness in the ways of virtue, he became the ornament and example of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by all, though imitated by few, and scarce paralleled by any. But a tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is marble necessary to transmit it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this generation, and will always be legible in his inimitable writings, nevertheless. He having served twenty years in Parliament, and that with such wisdom, dexterity, and courage, as becomes a true patriot, the town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that assembly, lamenting in his death the public loss, have erected this monument of their grief and their gratitude, 1688."

It has been observed by a satirist, that if the testimony of tombstones is to be taken, the living have sadly degenerated from the virtues of the dead. Monuments are so infected with the vice of flattery, that monumental in

scriptions are not often to be depended into his mind before which his soul upon; but this tombstone is as much a trembled. They pointed to erring wisverity as the man whom it commemo- dom in order to elevate infallible authorates. Andrew Marvell was one of the rity. They worked on the modest sense worthiest of the old English worthies. The friend of Oliver Cromwell and of John Milton, he shared the firm adherence to a settled purpose of the one, and the stern truthfulness of the other, to which he added those lighter qualities which make men as lovable in private life as high virtue makes them estimable in public.

of his own weakness, to induce him to repose upon the bosom of the Church which had endured for ages. They painted the new form of worship as a dark cloud which would pass away from the sky of faith and leave it bright and serene as ever; and they appealed to the chivalrous feeling of which he was full, colouring the sacrifice which would It is worth while to try to look into attend a change of religion, with the the heart of such a man; to know what tinge of noble self-devotedness to right. he thought and how he lived-to dis- It was probably this last consideration tinguish from the broad stream of life which proved most effective. Not that the current of his existence, and to Andrew Marvell had not doubts as to trace in the great web of history the the paths in which he was treading. threads which he wove into it. To Every earnest, inquiring spirit has had begin at the beginning, then, ANDREW them. Few who have thought on such MARVELL was born at Kingston-upon- subjects, but have propounded quesHull, in the year 1620. His parents tions to their own hearts to which they were in good circumstances, and his could give no satisfactory answer. Few boyhood passed off without distinction. but have shrunk before the mysteries Quick, versatile, and playful, he passed hidden among Revelation, and longed through the earlier stages of education for some oracle which could not err, to with credit, but without exciting suspi-interpret their hidden meaning. But, in cion of coming greatness. The first his case, we refer the success of the folstage of learning passed, Andrew Mar- lowers of Loyola rather to that charm vell, at the age of eighteen, entered Tri- which self-sacrifice has for the impulsive nity College. At this time, the clergy and generous; for it was certain that of the Romish Church had somewhat Marvell's change was one resting upon revived from the stunning-blow they sentiment rather than upon reason. received at their overthrow. They The conversion of the young proselyte looked for brighter times, when kings was not made public. It was the policy should bow their heads beneath the pas- of the Jesuits to work in the dark, and toral crook, and princes walk bare- to keep the results of their efforts secret headed in their processions. With that till they had gathered power enough to startling vitality which has ever marked brave the Protestant spirit of England. the propagandists of that faith, abro-Young Marvell silently left the college, gated by our forefathers, they had risen abandoned his studies, and entered upon from their defeat like a cork, for a mo- the discipline of the order. Upon how ment submerged by the whelming fine a thread hang the destinies of indiwaves. With that persevering, self-de-viduals and of the world. When Cromvoting energy which has ever charac- well had embarked on board a ship in terized their efforts, they were seeking the Thames to join the pilgrim fathers to weave their meshes round the young minds of the age. Moving stealthily, under one disguise or another, the Jesuits were in the universities spreading their snares around. The agents of this society fastened upon Andrew Marvell; and, in youth, his was a nature fitted for them to act upon. Joined to a clear intellect he had a sensitive temperament and an impulsive nature. His devo tional feelings were strong, and his poetic instincts led him to love that which was venerable. Young, ardent, and inexperienced, they infused doubts

of America, if Charles had suffered that then obscure man to depart in peace, he might never have bared his neck to the axe at Whitehall. If Marvell's father had not sought him out and found him among the neophytes of Rome, instead of standing in the front of freedom's battle, he would have wasted his energies in the ineffectual attempt to rechain the liberated souls of men. Thus it is that small circumstances are to great events, what the rudder is to the shiul they serve to guide the bark his inover the ocean of progress. es he con

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