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This introspection or self-consciousness is a very important element of the discipline which every great artist has probably at some time or other undergone, and it is a feature which deserves attentive consideration here, inasmuch as with the peculiar order of poets to which Keats must be said to have belonged, at least up to the time of the composition of "Hyperion," such selfconsciousness becomes an integral portion of the effect, instead of remaining in the background as a subordinated mean of obtaining it. Concerning this characteristic of Keats' poetry we shall presently speak more at large. As a trait of the young poet's personal character, this habitual selfcontemplation accounts for the apparent want of heart which sometimes repels us in his letters, and which seems to have rendered precarious such of his friendships as were not founded upon one side or the other, in hero-worship. Lastly, of this fragment of a hasty letter it is to be observed, that while for novelty of isolated thoughts and picturesqueness of expression it has scarcely an equal among the brilliant and labored products of the modern negative and transcendental Socinian school, it is also distinguished from these products by a degree of consecutiveness and integrity which, two or three years later, must have proved fatal to the maintenance of the philosophy wherewith those qualities are here associated. The following are few interesting glimpses of his feelings with regard to his own productions, of his profound sense of the importance of his vocation, and the magnitude of his task, and of his ordinary habits of composition and preparation for composition :-

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"I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on a man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic of 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 perception and ratification of what is fine. T. S. is perfectly right in regard to the slip-shod Endymion. That it is so is no fault of mine. No! though it may seem a little paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it-by myself. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect poem, 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 inde

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pendently 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 creative 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 strayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I than not be among the greatest." was never afraid of failure, for I would rather fail

and shall write the preface soon; I wish it was "I have copied my fourth book of Endymion, all done, for I want to forget it and be free for something new."

"The little dramatic skill I may as yet have, however badly it might show in a drama, would, I think, be sufficient for a poem. I want to diffuse the coloring of St. Agnes' Eve, throughout a poem in which character and sentiment would be the figures to such drapery. Two or three such poems, if God should spare me, written in the course of the next six years, would be a famous gradus ad Parnassum altissimum; I mean they would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays-my greatest ambition when I do feel ambitious, which, I am sorry to say, is very seldom."

"I was proposing to travel over the north this summer; there is but one thing to prevent me. I know nothing, I have read nothing, and I mean to follow Solomon's directions of Get learning and get understanding.' I find earlier days are gone by; I find I can have no enjoyment in the world but continual drinking of knowledge; I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good for the world; some do it with their society-some with their wit-some with their benevolence-some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good humor on all they meet, and in a thousand ways all dutiful to the command of great Nature. There is but one way for me: the road lies through application, study, and thought; I will pursue it, and for that end purpose retiring for some years."

"I should not have consented to these four months' tramping in the Highlands, but that I thought it would give me more experience, rub off more prejudice, use me to more hardship, identify finer scenes, load me with grander mountains, and strengthen more my reach in poetry, than would stopping at home among books, even though I should reach Homer."

"In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their centre. 1st, I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and no by singularity; it should strike the reader as the wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance. 2d, Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what poetry should be than to write it," &c.

It would have been difficult to hope too much of a man who had done so much as Keats, and who thought so little of it. We must distinguish between a man's confidence in his powers and his valuation of their products. A confidence in his own power is the half of power; whereas an overweening admiration of its results is the surest check upon its further development and exercise. "Extol not thy deeds in the counsel of thine own heart, (for thus) thou shalt eat up thy leaves and lose thy fruit, and leave thyself as a dry tree," is a precept no less important to the artist than to the moralist-if, indeed, in courtesy to an established error, we still speak of them as two. Keats' confidence in his capacity seems to have had no limit; but we would not hazard the opinion that the first was disproportioned to the last. The severe and subtle critic Coleridge is known to have regarded the promise exhibited by Keats as something exorbitant, unprecedented, and amazing; although it must be admitted that, judging from what remains to us of his opinions, he seems to have looked upon that promise as being rather gigantic to sense than spiritually great.

| pugilistic amusements. John's "indifference to be thought well of as a good boy," was as remarkable as his facility in getting through the daily tasks of the school, which never seemed to occupy his attention, but in which he was never behind the others. His skill in all manly exercises, and the perfect generosity of his disposition, made him extremely popular. "After remaining some time at school, his intellectual ambition suddenly developed itself; he determined to carry off all the first prizes in literature, and he succeeded." He left school, however, with "little Latin and less Greek." The twelve books of the Eneid seem to have constituted the bulk of his Latin reading. His acquaintance with the Greek Mythology, of which he afterwards made such abundant use, was derived chiefly from "Lempiière's Dictionary." His parents both died while he was young, and his share of the property left by them amounted to about two thousand pounds; enough to have kept any one but a poet out of pressing pecuniary difficulty for some time; but we hear of Keats being obliged to borrow money soon after he had attained his majority.

From the above passages we also gather On leaving school, John, without having that Keats was not likely to have failed for his wishes consulted, was apprenticed by his lack of diligence or ambition. "The sci-guardian to a surgeon at Edmonton, where ences," writes Lord Bacon, "have been Mr. Cowden Clark became his neighbor and much hurt by pusillanimity, and the slender- friend. Mr. Clark introduced him to the ness of the tasks men have proposed them-poet Spenser, whose writings at once exerted selves." This is equally true of the arts, the most powerful, and as the readers of although the truth may not be equally ap- Keats know, the most lasting effect upon the parent. Artists, indeed, have often pro- mind of the embryo poet. Chaucer was his posed to themselves great subjects, but they next passion, and for a short period he seems have too often neglected to make great tasks to have been pleased with the writings of of them. This would not have been the Lord Byron. In 1817, Keats, being just case with Keats, who, we see, looked upon then come of age, published his first volume six years' practice of expression, after he had of poems, which exhibited much of unmisalready spent several years at it, and had takeable promise, and some performance. attained therein to astonishing excellence, as His most palpable acquisition in consequence a moderate apprenticeship to the Muses, and of this publication was the acquaintance of a necessary completion of his poetical mi-Leigh Hunt. Shelley, Haydon, Godwin, Banority.

"His life is in his writings, and his poems are his works indeed," says Mr. Milnes of the poet; and with especial truth, of Keats. The external events of his history were not remarkable, and may be given in few words. His father was a person in the employ of Mr. Jennings, "the proprietor of large livery stables on the Pavement in Moorfields." His mother was the daughter of Mr. Jennings; he had two brothers and a sister. The three brothers seem, in their boyhood, which was spent at a good second class school, to have been chiefly notable for their attachment to

zil Montague, Hazlitt, and some others of distinguished literary standing. This first volume attracted little or no attention from the Reviewers. The nature of the reception of his second publication, "Endymion," is well known, although happily for the credit of poets, it turns out that the reading public has been grossly mistaken in the effect which, somehow or other, has been stupidly supposed to have been produced upon Keats by that reception. John Keats died of inevitable consumption; and the book before us proves past doubt that Blackwood and the Quarterly Review have not the dishonor of

having hastened the poet's death by one day. Visits to Scotland, Devonshire, and the Isle of Wight, were made by Keats during the years 1817 and 1818. In 1819, the great "event" of his life began to transpire: we mean the love-affair, of which something has already been said. Concerning this matter we have very few details, and from what we can gather it seems that the emotion did not arrive at its height until Keats was removed from its cause, by his journey to Italy in the autumn of 1820. We quote the following letter, less for its own deep and almost terribly painful interest, than because it shows that Keats, contrary to what might be supposed by his writings, was capable of an intense passion, and that he had, therefore, within him, what must subsequently have given his poetry a significance and substance that are not to be found in the works which he lived to produce :

"NAPLES, Nov. 1, 1820. "MY DEAR BROWN:-Yesterday we were let out of quarantine, during which my health suf

fered more from bad air and the stifled cabin than it had done the whole voyage. The fresh air revived me a little, and I hope I am well enough this morning to write you a short calm letter-if that may be 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 that presses upon me. The persuasion that I shall see her no more, will kill me. My dear

Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to die-I cannot bear to leave her. Oh God! God! everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk-lining she put in my travelling cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her: I see her-I hear her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her for a moment. This was the case when I was in England. I cannot recollect, without shuddering, the time I was a prisoner at Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampsted all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her again. Now! I am afraid to write to her-to receive a letter from her; to see her hand-writing would break my heart--even to hear of her any how, to see her name written, would be more than I can bear. My dear Brown, what am I to do? where can I look for consolation or case? If I had any chance of recovery, this passion 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, which you will do immediately, write to Rome, (poste restante,) if she is well and happy, put a mark thus+; if

Oh that I could be buried near where she lives!

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'My dear Brown, for my sake, be her advocate for ever. I cannot say a word about Naples; I do not feel at all concerned in the thousand novelshould 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 bearing and containing so much misery. Was I born for this end? God bless her, and her mother, and my sister, and George and his wife, and all!"

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The "Remains," which occupy the greater part of Mr. Milnes' second volume, are of great interest, as illustrating the growth, and suggesting the limits of the poet's power; but they are, for the most part, of Before we little permanent literary value. speak of them in detail, we shall make a few remarks upon some unexamined peculiarities of that school of modern poetry which is best represented by Keats; namely, the sensual and self-conscious. This school has been the offspring of that extraordinary cul

tivation of the critical faculties which is the grand distinguishing characteristic of our times.

It would be manifest upon reflection, if we did not know the fact from history, that the best periods of art and criticism are never coincident. The critical period is as necessarily subsequent to the best period of the art or arts criticised, as the artistical age is necessarily subsequent to, and not coincident with the age of the emotion, which is by art depicted and embalmed. Great results of art have always been the product of the general movement of a nation or a time; and such a movement could not possibly co-exist in its integrity with that advanced stage of the development of consciousness, which is the first requisite of a profound criticism. An analytical spirit, fatal to the production, though conducive, under certain circumstances, to the enjoyment of the highest art, is the life of criticism. Criticism, in modern times, has attained to an unprecedented excellence; and this has been the result of an unprecedented development

of consciousness. Into the question of the general absence of faith, which is the cause, and too often the consequence of such consciousness, we must not enter, although it is closely allied to our subject. The habit of consciousness exists, and we should make the best of it. We are fully aware of its many evils, and of the desirableness of a revolution in the spirit of the time; and we are persuaded that the spirit is essentially self-destructive; but it must become more conscious before it can become less so; let us not, then, endeavor to stifle the critical spirit, which now everywhere prevails; that would not be the way to amend: on ne retrogade point vers le bien : the work which is on hand, though, for the time, we should be happier and better had it never commenced, must now be finished: Nature, man and his works and his history are undergoing an examination, which is being prosecuted with amazing diligence and insight; the heat of the investigation will not cease while the fuel lasts; but that cannot be for ever; the critical spirit must turn at length to selfexamination; the necessity of doing something more than contemplating that which has been done will be seen and felt; and it is confidently to be hoped that the world will then advance anew, and with steadier and straighter steps, for the long pause which will have been taken by it, in order to view and understand the direction and validity of all its former ways.

Although the same period cannot be at once critical and artistical in the highest degree, criticism and true art are, nevertheless, by no means incompatible with each other, up to a certain point. Wordsworth, Goethe, and Coleridge, have been the offspring of our intensely critical era; and there are few, we imagine, who would at present venture to deny the claim of these poets to a high place among the poets who are for all time. Nor have these writers, by any accident of retirement or peculiar studies, been with drawn from the influence of the prevailing spirit; they themselves have performed the part generally taken by the first poets of the age; they themselves have been the leading instruments of the age's tendency; and, as such, they have acquired a peculiarity which is worthy of our notice: they seem to have attained to the limits of the critical region of the mind, to have beheld. the promised land beyond, and to have become inspired by the prospect; so that it is true generally of the best poets of later years, that their Muse has been the daughter

of Hope, and not of Memory. The published works of Keats seem indeed to constitute an exception to this remark: we have, however, read an interesting fragment of his which enables us to deny the exceptional nature of this case. The fragment, which we regret that Mr. Milnes has not printed, consists of a kind of introduction to Hyperion, in which Keats, in the name of the world, bids farewell to the Grecian Mythology, and to its spirit. There is no document to inform us, and it is difficult to judge from the fragment itself, whether it was written before or after the publication of that part of Hyperion which is in possession of the public. The question of time, however, does not affect the interest of this production as showing that Keats had begun to feel the necessity of looking to the future for his subject and inspiration.

To take up the thread of our subject where we dropped it, to run our eye over the life of Keats,-By the word sensual, when we apply it to an entire school of poetry, we wish to be understood as speaking of a separate activity of sense, whatever may be the sphere in which it acts. The effect of sensuousness is produced when a strong passion of the mind finds its adequate expression in strong imagery of the senses. Deduct the passion, and you destroy the sensuous, and leave the sensual. Sensuousness, in an entire poem, is rhythm, or harmony; according as the poem is narrative and continuous, or picturesque and dramatic. Take away the passion, and the separate images, constituting with their connection, the general rhythmus or harmony, drop as beads from a string, into an inorganic heap, or lie, as beads when the string is more carefully withdrawn, in an order which seems vital only so long as when it is unexamined.

Šuch a piece of inorganism is the following "Ode to Apollo," which we extract from the "Remains," not because it is the best of them, but because it will best serve our purpose :

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But what creates the most intense surprise, His soul looks out through renovated eyes.

"Then through thy temple wide, melodious swells

The sweet majestic tone of Maro's lyre; The soul delighted on each accent dwells

Enraptured dwells-not daring to respire, The while he tells of grief around a funeral pyre.

""Tis awful silence then again,

Expectant stand the spheres; Breathless the laurell'd peers, Nor move, till ends the lofty strain,

Nor move till Milton's tuneful thunders cease,

And leave, once more, the ravished heavens in peace.

"Thou biddest Shakspeare wave his hand,

And quickly forward spring

The passions-a terrific band

And each vibrates the string

That with its tyrant temper best accords,

While from their master's lips pour forth the inspiring words.

"A silver trumpet Spenser blows,

And as its martial notes to silence fly, From a virgin chorus flows

A hymn in praise of spotless chastity. 'Tis still wild warblings from the Æolian lyre Enchantments softly breathe, and tremblingly expire.

"Next thy Tasso's ardent numbers Float along the pleased air, Calling youth from idle slumbers,

Rousing them from pleasure's lair:

Then o'er the strings his fingers gently move,
And melts the soul to pity and to love.

"But when thou joinest with the nine,
And all the powers of song combine,
We listen here on earth;
The dying tones that fill the air

And charm the ear of evening fair,

From thee, great god of bards, receive their heavenly birth.

We have chosen the above collocation of images for our first illustration, chiefly because it pairs well, as far as subject and mere command of language go, with another poem, which we give from an unpublished manuscript of Thomas Taylor, the translator of Plato, and which, besides being a fine example of passionate impetus and admirable harmony of thought, is very characteristic of the feelings and opinions of its eccentric author:

"See how with thundering fiery feet Sol's ardent steeds the barriers beat, That bar their radiant way;

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"See! as he comes, with general voice
All Nature's living tribes rejoice,

And own him as their king.
Ev'n rugged rocks their heads advance,
And forests on the mountains dance,
And hills and valleys sing.

"See! while his beauteous glittering feet
In mystic measures ether beat,

Enchanting to the sight,
Pæan, whose genial locks diffuse
Life-bearing health, ambrosial dews,
Exulting springs to light.

"Lo! as he comes, in Heaven's array,
And scattering wide the blaze of day,

Lifts high his scourge of fire,
Fierce demons that in darkness dwell,
Foes of our race, and dogs of Hell,
Dread its avenging ire.

"Hail! crowned with light, creation's king!
Be mine the task thy praise to sing,
And vindicate thy might;

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