"This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment; but no feeling man will be forward to inflict it; he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is not a fiercer hell than the failure. in a great object. This is not written with the least atom of purpose to forestall criticisms, of course, but from the desire I have to conciliate men who are competent to look, and who do look, with a jealous eye, to the honour of English literature. 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; thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. I hope I have not, in too late a day, touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brigthness, for I wish to try once more before I bid it farewell."

Such was the honest declaration, and such the simple and masculine strength of a mere youth in his earliest adventure; but it did not save him from the wrath he anticipated and deprecated. Even at this distance of time, it is not without a smarting sense of pain that the lover of Keats takes up Endymion and becomes conscious of the many opportunities for ridicule which the poem presents, but which tenderness and a simple desire for the honour of the national literature would have known how to appreciate. The intoxication of an imagination that scorned, in its joyous delirium, the promptings of reason and judgment, is visible throughout; but the luxuriance of the highest poetic faculty was

HIS UNFORTUNATE CHOICE OF A SUBJECT. 249

in itself a pledge sufficient of the poet's future eminence. For the reasons already given, the essential beauty of the structure was overlooked by the arbiters of the day in their eagerness to expose the grotesqueness, and, it may be, the absurdity of the ornament. It was a huge mistake, but time alone was required to correct it. To attempt the annihilation of genius because of its exaggerations and imperfections, is the most fruitless of all efforts. The exuberant tree must not be upbraided with sterility because it needs pruning. In his choice of a subject we believe Keats to have been unfortunate. Against the opinion of his present biographer we are disposed to assert that his first steps would have been safer had they been not on classic ground. Unacquainted with Greek, and deriving his inspiration and knowledge not directly from the primitive sources, a tone and stamp were given to characters and subjects that startled by their novelty, and provoked irresistible mirth from the associations which they suggested. Scholars were offended, and the uninitiated were puzzled. Whilst Lemprière's Dictionary lent blocks, John Keats furnished the clothing. The skeleton of Pagan mythology looked strange enough in its modern garb, and the kindly disposed might be pardoned for their smile of wonder as they watched the august visitor of antiquity taking his splendid airing in the Hampstead fields. The minor faults of the composition were certainly not few. It was evident to the lightest reader that the author of Endymion, instead of adapting rhymes to his subject, very frequently indeed compelled his subject to bend obsequiously to his rhymes. The effect of this high dereliction of the poet's sacred duty is too visible.

But sum up all the vices of style, and all the faults inseparable from the nature of the subject, and there remains behind a poem that will live, because it bears the impress of undoubted originality and power, and is redolent of the stuff which makes Milton and Johnson, Fletcher and Shakspeare, the household gods they have become.

The affecting modesty of the preface to Endymion was not crushed by the fate to which the poem itself was immediately doomed. The Quarterly and Blackwood fell upon Keats as an infuriated bulldog might fasten upon the neck of some lone child. A letter, signed "J. S." appeared in the Morning Chronicle of October 3, 1818, remonstrating against the tyranny of the reviewers, and an eager friend sent the newspaper to Keats to console the stricken poet in his misfortune. Hear the poet's answer :—

66

"9th Oct., 1818.

My dear Hessey.-You are very good in sending me the letter from the Chronicle, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a kindness sooner. Pray, forgive me. It has so chanced that I have had that paper every day. I have seen to-day's. I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. 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 inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as

HIS OPINION OF HIS OWN POWERS.

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my own solitary re-perception and ratification of what is fine. J. S.' is perfectly right in regard to the 'slipshod Endymion.' That it is no fault of mine. No; though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about it being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently, without judgment; I may write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creation must create itself. In Endymion I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be amongst the greatest.”

Hear this sagacious detector of personal weakness, this proudly humble man again! He is writing to his brother in America :

In

My poem has not at all succeeded. the course of a year or so I think I shall try the public again. In a selfish point of view I should suffer my pride and my contempt of public opinion to hold me silent, but for your and Fanny's sake I will pluck up my spirit and try it again. I have no doubt of success in a course of years if I persevere; but I must be patient."

And yet again!—

"I have proceeded pretty well with Lamia, finishing the first part, which consists of about 400 lines. I have great hopes of success, because I make use of my judgment more deliberately than I have yet done; but in case of my failure with the world, I shall find my content."

In the year 1820, less than two years after the publication of Endymion, the poem of Hyperion appeared with other compositions. The journey was all but accomplished. The earlier poems of Keats had exhibited striking vigour shrouded in obscurity, and the sinews of thought, though sadly encumbered with fervid mystification. A leap of years had been made in the interval. For simplicity, beauty, grandeur, and the deepest pathos, Hyperion is scarcely to be surpassed in the language. With one spring the rejected, but inspired boy, had placed himself where he had long hoped and prayed to be. "I think," he says in one of his letters, "I shall be among the English poets after my death."

Keats wrote no more! On the 23rd of February, 1821, he died at Rome-not "snuffed out by an article," as the tradition goes, but the victim of a disease which had already destroyed his mother and his younger brother. It may be seen from the glimpses we have given above that the effect of malignity was not to depress the poet, but rather to rouse him, as a criticism had already roused Byron, to the vindication of his genius, and to the putting forth his strength. There was nothing of death in the arrows that came from the reviewer's quiver. Had no "article" ever been