1 MEMOIR OF JOHN KEATS. 33 books be any irreverence to these writers; for, perhaps, the honors paid by man to man are trifles in comparison to the benefit done by great works to the 'spirit and pulse of good' by their mere passive existence. Memory should not be called knowledge. Many have original minds who do not think it: they are led away by custom. Now it appears to me that almost any man may, like the spider, spin from his own inwards, his own airy citadel. The points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine web of his soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean-full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wandering, of distinctness for his luxury. But the minds of mortals are so different and bent on such diverse journeys, that it may at first appear impossible. for any common taste and fellowship to exist between two or three, under those suppositions. It is however quite the contrary. Minds would lead each other in contrary directions, traverse each other in numberless points, and at last greet each other at the journey's end. An old man and a child would talk together, and the old man be led on his path, and the child left thinking. Man should not dispute or assert, but whisper results to his neighbor, and thus by every germ of spirit sucking the sap from mould ethereal, every human being might become great, and humanity, instead of being a wide heath of furze and briers, with here and there a remote oak or pine, would become a grand democracy of foresttrees." His A lady whose feminine acuteness of perception is only equalled by the vigor of her understanding, thus describes Keats as he appeared about this time at Hazlitt's lectures :-"His eyes were large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and it fell in rich masses on each side of his face; his mouth was full and less intellectual than his other features. countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and brightness; it had the expression as if he had been looking on some glorious sight. The shape of his face had not the squareness of a man's, but more like some women's faces I have seen-it was so wide over the forehead and so small at the chin. He seemed in perfect health, and with life offering all things that were precious to him." The increased ill-health of his brother Tom, and the determination of George to emigrate to America, cast much gloom over the completion of "Endymion," which was, however, dispersed by a pedestrian tour through Scotland, in the company of Mr. Brown, a retired merchant, who had been Keats's neighbor during the preceding summer, and whose sympathetic and congenial disposition he had much enjoyed. Mr. Reynolds' objection to a projected Preface provoked the following spirited remonstrance:— "I have not the slightest feeling of humility towards the public or to anything in existence but the Eternal Being, the Principle of Beauty, and the Memory of great Men. When I am writing for myself, for the mere sake of the moment's enjoyment, perhaps nature has its course with me; but a Preface is written to the public -a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility. If I write a Preface in a supple or subdued style, it will not be in character with me as a public speaker. I would be subdued before my friends, and thank them for subduing me, but among multitudes of men I have no feel of stooping: I hate the idea of humility to them. I never wrote one single line of poetry with the least shadow of public thought. Forgive me for vexing you, and making a Trojan horse of such a trifle, both with respect to the matter in question, and myself; but it eases me to tell you: I could not live without the love of my friends; I would jump down Etna for any great public good, but I hate a mawkish popularity." In a fine fragment too, written about this time, he spoke of "Bards who died content on pleasant sward, Leaving great verse unto a little clan. O give me their old vigor, and unheard, Rounded by thee, my song should die away Content as theirs, Rich in the simple worship of a day." And yet, after all, the Preface which did appear was in the main deprecatory and with no "undersong of disre spect for the public;" and when the Poet looked back on his labor he found it "a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished." He said: "the imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy, but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted." Surely, there was much in this to disarm the violence of the criticism which was levelled at the Poem at its first birth into literary existence. The articles themselves, both in the "Quarterly" and in "Blackwood," were so superficial and coarse, so thoroughly uncritical, that, whatever sensations of disgust and anger they may have aroused at the time, there could hardly have been a question of their permanent influence on the mind. and destiny of Keats, but for the belief of many of his friends that they inflicted on his susceptible nature a shock which he never recovered. This notion was confirmed in public estimation by the well-known stanza of the eleventh canto of Don Juan; concluding "Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article." It is perhaps bold to say in opposition to the testimony of many near and dear friends of Keats, that these effects had no existence, but it is certain they have been greatly exaggerated. The sublime curse hurled at the brutal critic in the "Adonais" of Shelley has its due place in that lofty elegy, but with such means as we have to judge MEMOIR OF JOHN KEATS. 87 from, with the letters and acts of Keats, immediately after the reviews appeared, before us, his feelings seem to have had much more of indignation and contempt in them than of wounded pride and mortified vanity. I should incline to believe that the little public interest which "Endymion" excited, and the growing sense of his own deficiencies, weighed far more on his mind than those shallow ribaldries, which Jeffrey's article in the Edinburgh Review, if it had appeared somewhat sooner, would have so completely counterbalanced. When told "to go back to his gallipots," just as Simon Peter might have been told to go back to his nets, and when reminded that "a starved apothecary was better than a starved poet," his inclination certainly was rather to call the satirist to account, "if he appears in squares and theatres where we might possibly meet," than to let the scoffing visibly affect his health and spirits. Indeed in a letter to his publisher, after thanking some writer who had vindicated him, he says: "As for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what 'Blackwood' or the' Quarterly' could possibly inflict; and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. * * I will write independently. I have |