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Thy honors spread through barb'rous climes, Ages unborn, and impious times,

And realms involved in night."

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In its phraseology and its separate images, this fine poem is about on a level with the foregoing Ode:" but there is a charm in Taylor's effusion which is wholly wanting in the verses of Keats. Taylor believed what he was writing; he was, as most of our readers are aware, a light-worshipper, and was in this poem pouring forth real idolatry to the sun. His feeling taught him secrets of the poet's art, which were not revealed to the lazy labor of Keats, in his lines about Apollo. The frequently repeated and splendidly effective "See!" was the true and inimitable suggestion of sincere emotion, as is proved by the otherwise inartificial character of the poem; the alliteration with which the poem abounds is evidently the unconscious effect of passion; the music is occasionally exquisite; there are no more beautiful eight syllables in this respect in English poetry than those which constitute the second line of the eighth stanza; and these are all of them excellencies which have rarely been arrived at by a poet of the sensual school, however highly cultivated may have been his peculiar faculties.

The characteristic beauties of the sensual school are now so very generally appreciated, that we shall be doing the cause of English poetry the best service in our power by dwelling here almost exclusively upon its less obvious, though still more characteristic faults. Among the principal of these are, imperfect artistical construction, extreme literalness of expression, defective perception of true harmony, and, as a consequence of the last, unskilfulness in the choice and management of metres, and incapacity for the invention of them.

We know not of a single fine measure that is to be attributed to the poets of this order; on the other hand, they have produced a multiplicity of metres which are wholly wanting in law and meaning, and of which the existence can be accounted for only by supposing that the arrangement of rhymes, and of the varying numbers of feet in the lines, arising in the composition of the first few verses, became negligently fixed upon as the form of stanza for the whole poem. The only striking proof of the existence of true metrical power in Keats, seems to us to occur in the measure of a little, and almost unknown poem, called "La belle Dame sans merci," which appeared first in

one of Mr. Leigh Hunt's weekly publications, and is reprinted now in the "Remains." This poem is, indeed, among the most mark-worthy of the productions of Keats; besides being good and original in metre, it is simple, passionate, sensuous, and, above all, truly musical.

Concerning the extreme self-consciousness which characterized Keats, and showed itself in his poems, we have only space to remark, that this quality was the chief cause of the excess of sense over sentiment, of which we have complained, and to adduce the following additio nal documentary proof of the existence of this self-consciousness in Keats' habits of thought:-"I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately. I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed; I, who for a long time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great productions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of this, observe, I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again. The thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet; I wrote it, and began to read."

We have already stated our belief that this consciousness is a stage through which the modern mind must pass on its road to excellence; it is not, therefore, the less a defect while it exists. Keats died before he had outgrown this stage, as he certainly must have done, had he lived a few years more. As it was, the best of Keats' poetry, by reason of the quality in question, falls considerably short of the highest beauty, which, whether it be sweet or severe, is always the spontaneous, or unconscious obedience of spirit to law when the obedience is unopposed, sweetness results, when it meets with opposition, severity is expressed: witness, for example, the "Venus de Medicis," and the "Niobe." The highest, the only true beauty, is thus the beauty of holiness; and since obedience is essential humility, beauty, by becoming proud and selfconscious, reverses its own nature, and is not the less essential deformity for its assumption of the shape of an angel of light.

It remains for us formally to introduce to our readers the "Remains," which occupy the bulk of the second of the two little volumes before us. Altogether they will not add to the very high reputation of Keats. The tragedy called "Otho the Great" is the most important of these productions. It contains extremely little that is truly dramatic; and that little wants originality, be

ing evidently imitated, even to the rhythms |
of the separate lines, from Shakspeare, and
more often from that bad, but very tempting
model, Fletcher. There is, however, one
passage that strikes us as being finer, in its
peculiar way, than anything in the hitherto
published writings of Keats. We quote it
the more readily, because it stands almost
alone, and constitutes the chief right possess-
ed by the tragedy to the time and attention
of our readers; for highly interesting as the
work must be to students of poetry, and of
the poetical character, we are bound to con-
fess that, on the whole, it exhibits a strange
dearth even of the author's common excel-
lencies.

The Prince Ludolph, driven mad by the sudden discovery of the guilt of his bride, enters the banquet-room in which the bridal party is assembled:

LUDOLPH.

"A splendid company. Rare beauties here;
I should have Orphean lips and Plato's fancy,
Amphion's utterance toned with his lyre,
Or the deep key of Jove's sonorous mouth,
To give fit salutation. Methought I heard,
As I came in, some whispers-what of that!
'Tis natural men should whisper;-at the kiss
Of Psyche given by Love, there was a buzz
Among the gods !--and silence as is natural.
These draperies are fine, and being mortal,
I should desire no better; yet, in truth,
There must be some superior costliness,
Some wider-domed high magnificence!
I would have, as a mortal I may not,
Hangings of heaven's clouds, purple and gold,
Slung from the spheres; gauzes of silver mist,
Looped up with cords of twisted wreathed light,
And tasselled round with weeping meteors!
These pendant lamps and chandeliers are bright
As earthly fires from dull dross can be cleansed;
Yet could my eyes drink up intenser beams
Undazzled-this is darkness; when I close
These lids, I see far fiercer brilliancies,
And spouting exhalations, diamond fires,
Skies full of splendid moons and shooting stars,
And panting fountains quivering with deep glows.
Yes this is dark-is it not dark?

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And wonder that 'tis so-the magic chance"!
Her nostrils small, fragrant, fairy, delicate,
Her lips-I swear no human bones e'er wore
So taking a disguise.”

Great," stands an attempt in the comic style, Next in consideration to "Otho the called "The Cap and Bells." The humor is of a very indifferent vein, depending chiefly upon the introduction of slang, or extremely colloquial phrases, in immediate connection with more serious expressions. There are, however, frequent touches of charming poetry; for example

""Good! good!' cried Hum, 'I have known her
from a child!

She is a changeling of my management;
She was born at midnight in an Indian wild;
Her mother's screams with the striped tiger's blent,
While the torch-bearing slaves a halloo sent
Into the jungles; and her palanquin
Rested amid the desert's dreariment,
Shook with her agony, till fair were seen
The little Bertha's eyes ope on the stars serene.'

Of the two following stanzas, the first is as good an illustration of the mistakes of the poem as the second is of its beauties:—

"Why, Hum, you're getting quite poetical;
Those nows you managed in a special style!'
'If ever you have leisure, sire, you shall
See scraps of mine will make it worth your while;
Tit-bits for Phoebus !-yes, you well may smile.'
Hark! hark! the bells-a little further yet,
Good Hum, and let me view this mighty coil.'
Then the great emperor full graceful set
His elbow for a prop, and snuffed his mignonette.
"The morn is full of holiday; loud bells
With rival clamors ring from every spire;
Cunningly stationed music dies and swells
In echoing places, when the winds respire,
Light flags stream out like gauzy tongues of fire;
A metropolitan murmur, lifeful, warm,
Comes from the northern suburbs, rich attire
Freckles with red and gold the moving swarm;
While here and there clear trumpets blow a keen
alarm."

Of the lesser poems "The Song of Four Fairies," and the fragment called "The Eve of St. Mark," deserve especial attention, but they are too long to quote. We must close our extracts with a grand and subtle sonnet

ON THE SEA.

"It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found,

That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. Oh, ye who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the sea; Oh, ye whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody, Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired!"

Ere we conclude, we must again entreat that we may not be misunderstood in what has been put forth by us concerning the shortcomings of Keats in his character as a poet. Were we to speak at full all the praise which we believe his writings merit, we should satisfy the blindest of his admirers; but we have dwelt rather upon the faults of Keats, because while they have been very much less generally perceived than his excellencies, the perception of them is by no means of less importance to the health of English literature. When we remember that poets are unconsciously received in the world as the highest authorities upon matters of feeling, and therefore of morals, we cannot think that we have dwelt even fully enough upon the deficiences of the last phase which our poetry has assumed. We console ourselves with the assurance that it is a phase which cannot be an enduring one. Poetry in Eng

land has passed through three great epochs, and is now in the early youth of the fourth, and let us hope the noblest. Natural and religious, almost by compulsion, nearly till the time of Milton, the muse at last endeavored to be something other and more than these; with Cowley and his train, she affected elaborate, artificial, and meretricious ornament; but the re-action appeared in that school of sensible poets, of which Dryden and Pope were the chief doctors; we are now returning to the right path; nothing can be more laudable than have been the aims of most of our modern poets, and we found our extraordinary hopes of the final success of the school, less upon any earnest we have received of the harvest than upon the incontrovertible truth that "Whatsoever we desire in youth, in age we shall plentifully obtain."

It remains for us to assure our readers that Mr. Milnes, whose prose style is the completest, in its happy way, that we are acquainted with, has executed his task with accomplished taste. For a poet to have conducted the autobiography of a brother poet, as Mr. Milnes has done, without having once overstepped the modest office of an 'editor," is an exhibition of self-denial which is now as rare as it is worthy of imitation.

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From the North British Review.

AUTHORSHIP OF JUNIUS ELUCIDATED.

The Authorship of the Letters of Junius Elucidated, including a Biographical Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barré, M.P. BY JOHN BRITTON, F.S.A. London 1848.

STAT NOMINIS UMBRA must still be the inscription upon the intellectual mausoleum of Junius. Eighty suns have revolved since this political Meteor burst upon our horizon. Under the censure of Junius the sovereign trembled on his throne;-the corrupt statesman crouched beneath his rod ;-the pliant judge smarted under his rebuke;-the fawning courtier writhed under the agony of his lash; and the Lords and Commons of England were at once the sport of his wit, and the victims of his wrath. Regarding as inseparable the private character and the political acts of public men, and viewing the immorality of the Court as the fountain of social corruption, he dragged into public view the licentiousness of public men, and thus subjected himself to the imputation of writing under the excitement of personal feeling, and of assuming the mask of a political moralist, in order to aim a shaft at the heart of an enemy, or strike a blow at the character of a friend. It is easy to understand how Junius has been charged with "falsehood and malice' by those whose private character he unveiled, or who were stung with the sharpness of his wit, or smarted under the asperity of his satire; but these charges have never been substantiated; and when we study the disclosures which time is continually drawing forth from the epistolary stores of the past, we have no hesitation in hazarding the opinion, that Junius may yet be proved to have neither magnified the corruptions of the Government which he denounced, nor malignantly calumniated the officials who composed it.

It may be, and has been, a question how far, in the discussion of public measures, we are entitled to pry into the character, and

*The shadow of his name survives.

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emblazon the vices of public men. sons of national emergency, the State may require for its service the talent and practical wisdom of men who may not be distinguished for their religious or moral qualities; but in the settled and normal condition of a Christian land, where the rights of the reigning family rest upon a religious qualification, and where adhesion to a Creed is demanded from the functionaries of the State, it would be an insult to the feelings and to the faith of a nation, to place either a skeptic or a profligate in power; and were such a character intrusted with high and responsible functions, we should hold it to be a public duty to expose his profanity, or his licentiousness. There are infirmities, however, there are even vices, which shrink from the public gaze, and which neither invite our imitation nor demand our rebuke. Charity throws her veil over insulated immoralities, into which great and good men may be occasionally betrayed, and which accident or malignity may have placed before the public eye. When remorse or shame pursue the offender, public censure may well be spared. Vice has no attractive phase, when the culprit is seen in sackcloth or in tears. But when licentiousness casts its glare from a throne, or sparkles in the coronet of rank,-or stains the ermine of justice,-or skulks in the cleft of the mitre,or is wrapped up in the senatorial robe,-or cankers the green wreath of genius,-when acts of political corruption, or public immorality are mingled with individual, domestic, or social vices, courting imitation or applause, and offering violence to the feelings and principles of the community, it becomes the duty of the patriot and the moralist to hold up to public shame the enemies of public virtue.

Such a patriot and moralist was Junius. The flash of his mental eye scathed as with a lightning-stroke the minions of corruption, and men paused in their career of political mischief in order to avoid the fate of his victims. Envenomed with wit and winged with sarcasm, his shafts carried dismay into the ranks of his adversaries, and they struck deeper into their prey in proportion to the polish with which they had been elaborated. And when he failed to annoy and dislodge his antagonist by the light troops of his wit and ridicule, he brought up in reserve the heavy artillery of a powerful and commanding eloquence. In thus discharging the duties of a public censor and in defending, at the risk of his life, the laws and constitution of his country, we may admire the courage of Junius, and even proffer to him our gratitude, though we disown his political principles and disapprove of his conduct. As the enemy of public corruption and the assertor of public rights, every succeeding age will do homage to his intrepidity and success; and if during the prosecution of a lofty purpose he occasionally forgot in the heat of controversy the courtesies of polished life, the patriot will but shed a tear over human frailty, and fix his eye on the great truths which may have been established, or the important victory which has been achieved. In the moral and in the physical world the forces which are called into action must obey the laws from which they originate. The solar ray may occasionally consume when its purpose is but to illuminate, and the tornado which is sent to purify our atmosphere bears in its bosom the elements of death and desolation. In social life the intellectual powers must often perform their functions under the high pressure of the passions and affections; and even when most nobly and generously exercised, they may display the temperature of the one and the taint of the other. The good done by Junius has lived after him, let the evil be interred with his bones.

Although the scenes in which Junius played so conspicuous a part have been, to a certain extent, cast into the shade by the wars and revolutions of modern times, yet the public anxiety to give life to his shade has not abated; and were we to judge by the number of the works which have been published for the purpose of identifying him with some eminent statesman,* we should

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draw the inference that the political changes which convulse the age in which we live have but created a more ardent desire to discover the name of a writer who in "thoughts that breathed and words that burned" defended the inalienable rights of Englishmen, while he warned them against any revolutionary inroads upon the constitution by which these rights were secured.

In attempting to substantiate the charges of malignity and personality which have been brought against Junius, his accusers have availed themselves of most unjust and unpardonable assumptions. He is supposed to have written a number of other letters bearing various signatures, and containing virulent attacks upon public men to whom, in his acknowledged compositions, he had avowed the deepest attachment. He is thus arraigned as the warm friend and the bitter enemy of Lord Chatham, and he is made to occupy the odious position of the worshipper and the slanderer of Lord Shelburne. The accusers of Junius, too, presuming that they have identified him with some contemporary statesman, charge him-and justly charge him, if their hypothesis be true-with attacking those with whom he lived on the most intimate terms, and to whom he was under the greatest obligations.* If Sir Philip Francis was the author of these letters, as some of Junius' accusers believe, we admit at once the truth of the charge. He who assails with intemperate abuse the Government of his country while he is eating its bread and doing its work-who exposes the immoralities and sullies the honor of a noble family while he shares their confidence and enjoys their hospitality-and he who slanders his benefactor and aims his deadliest shaft at the patron who placed him in office-deserves to be made an outlaw from social life, and stigmatized as the basest of mankind. But Sir Philip Francis was not guilty of being Junius, and Junius was not Sir Philip Francis--not a clerk in the War Office, and the slanderer of Lord Barrington, not the protégé and the calumniator of Mr. Welbore Ellis, (Lord Mendip,) not the guest and the spy at the Duke of Bedford's table. Junius was neither ATTICUS, nor LUCIUS, nor BRUTUS, nor DOMITIAN. These personages must occupy their own niche in the temple of fame; the reputation of Junius requires no supplement from theirs, and the name of Junius shall not be sullied either by their errors or their crimes.

* Lord Brougham's Historical Sketches, &c., pp. 115, 116.

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