prophet." Following the Centenary, came a "Post-Centenary View" from America devoted to proof of the overmastering influence of philosophy in Keats's later life. And a year later there was published an English volume whose theme is the development of Keats's philosophy from "naturalism" to "idealism"-a book which, though it only imperfectly covers its ground, yet contains many fertile suggestions as to the growth of Keats in mental and artistic power.

But the essays and lectures appearing in the Memorial Volume were not by any means the first indications of a perception of the fact that Keats was a thinker. The truth began to be apparent when Monckton Milnes, afterwards Lord Houghton, published, in 1848, The Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats. Here was given to the world, along with some fine discriminating critical comment by Mr. Milnes, the first installment of Keats's letters, which, it should be said, form an indispensable clue to an insight into the real Keats. They were not all here; some of the most important ones were not to appear for over half a century,-in Forman's and Colvin's later editions, and now in Amy Lowell's new biography, but there were enough, together with other testimony from the manuscripts of the poet's contemporaries, to open up an entirely new world to students of Keats.

The first important critical work to pay attention to Keats's ideas was F. M. Owen's Keats, a Study, published in 1880. Mrs. Owen's criticism is particularly sympathetic throughout, but is of interest to us in this study chiefly because of hints dropped here and there as to Keats's thought and of a first attempt to trace the allegorical meaning of Endymion. She suggests the possibility of an interpretation of Endymion as

Imagination in all time searching for the spirit of Beauty," with Cynthia as the beauty of a bygone age when the world was young, and with the Indian Princess as the representation

4 John Keats.

5 G. R. Elliott: The Real Tragedy of Keats, Publications of The Modern Language Association, 1921, p. 315.

6 H. I'A. Fausset: Keats, A Study in Development.

of the "new phases on which Imagination has entered"Imagination having at last discovered "the eternal unity of all Beauty," and become "one with it forever." But she thinks there is a larger meaning, and this she develops. Endymion, she suggests, is the story of the Spirit of man, which becomes awakened by a higher spiritual power, and thence begins a quest for the higher spiritual state. This he eventually reaches, after a series of trials through earth, fire, and water, by means of which his soul is so schooled as to learn the one deepest lesson: "that no love is true which does not realize itself as part of a larger whole—that all that is beautiful is One." This he discovers when his beloved and Cynthia are revealed to him as identical, " and he knows that all love and beauty is one, that the fitful and dimly realized beauty in 'common life and the beauty gained through suffering is one with the beauty of light and joy and that it was necessary that some change should spiritualize him into that belief." The interpretation is not satisfying, but it is evidence of what one perceives throughout the study — that the author has caught fleeting glimpses of thought, usually aesthetic in nature, in Keats's poems. Lamia is the time of "yeasting youth," when "philosophy is at strife with the enthralment of the passions"; in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, we are told that the "Past is made alive in these words, its beauty has never died, and the very material in which the Attic shape is wrought is infused with life": all in all, Keats shows us in this poem that to love Beauty is to love Truth, and that when we are spiritualized enough to recognize them, both shall appear to us as one." And so we find, sketched lightly through or merely suggested, many ideas that have since been built upon in more detail. There is something original and stimulating in the author's perspective. It was a pioneer work in exploring the mind of Keats.

In his Cobwebs of Criticism, Hall Caine, a little later, points out that it is evident "that Keats at one period turned all his soul to the love of philosophy" and that, though down to

the last, perhaps, "he over-rated the Paradise of Sensation in contrast with the Paradise of the Mind," he was yet "far from indifferent to the problems of human life and destiny." Moreover, there was a moral core in Keats, which might have resulted in his becoming a "great teacher of men," but he lacked the necessary sobriety of temper to realize this. Keats came to understand, too, Mr. Caine says, the truth about dreamers, that it is well for a mere dreamer to learn early that his dreams are useless; but the knowledge came too late. However, Caine does not go on with his leads; he only suggests.

Then in Matthew Arnold's essay, which, in spite of the misleading first two or three pages, is really a great encomium on Keats, we find some advance. Arnold had new evidence to work on, - the new four-volume edition of Keats's letters and poems, by Forman, published 1883,- and he made good use of it. For the most part, the essayist is concerned with a vindication of the character of Keats; but he goes further than that, and comments upon his genius and his central ideas. It is often said that Arnold gives Keats a place beside Shakespeare; and so, in a limited field, he does. "In one of the two great modes by which poetry interprets, in the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare," Arnold declares. And then he adds, more emphatically, making use of a quotation from Keats: "I think,' he said humbly, 'I shall be among the English poets after my death.' He is; he is with Shakespeare." As to Keats's idea of beauty, Arnold remarks: "The truth is that the 'yearning passion for the Beautiful,' which was with Keats, as he himself truly says, the master passion, is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental poet. It is an intellectual and spiritual passion. It is connected and made one,' as Keats declares that in his case it was, 'with the ambition of the intellect.'" With this good start, the master critic leaves us.

A notable criticism in which Keats's ideas and intellect are

given some prominence is the well known introduction written by Robert Bridges for the G. Thorn Drury edition of Keats's poems in 1894. Mr. Bridges' judgments are, to say the least, conservative, his praise all nicely balanced by judicial reservations. Yet he recognizes that Keats's mind had a philosophic bent, though he felt it to be more instinctive than reasoned. He is not quite sure, but Endymion, Lamia, and Hyperion appear to be capable of allegoric interpretation, so he gives his ideas of their meaning for what they are worth, and, especially in the case of Endymion, shows some spirit in doing it. The power to understand or to delineate human passion is a part of Keats's nature. As for his doctrine of beauty, Keats fails to "spiritualize" it; hence it cannot be defended.

I give here a bare suggestion of the interpretation of the Endymion that Mr. Bridges offers. "The Moon represents 'Poetry' or the Ideality of desired objects, The principle of Beauty in all things: it is the supersensuous quality which makes all desired objects ideal; and Cynthia, as moongoddess, crowns and personifies this, representing the ideal beauty or love of woman: and in so far as she is also actually the Moon as well as the Indian lady, who clearly represents real or sensuous passion,-it follows that the love of woman is in its essence the same with all love of beauty." Man begins with some ambition, say, fame, and connecting "Moon with his passion," he sees "Ideality in his desire." "This Ideality, assuming the form of the goddess, that is, of woman, which it is, makes him renounce ambition and pursue poetic love." He must now humanize this passion by contact with tragedy and pain. This sympathy leads him to sensuous passion, which seems in direct conflict with his ideal passion until he discovers they are the same. I should add that the four regions in which the action takes place are " Earth, Fire, Water, and Air."

Mr. Bridges is interestingly suggestive, and though he approaches Keats with his fingers crossed, in general inclining to

the traditional side of the question, his essay is one of the most fruitful studies of Keats yet made.

In 1905, Mr. Ernest de Selincourt put out his splendid edition of Keats's poems, with its rare introduction and its sumptuous notes, all breathing of ripe scholarship and patient, devoted care. Mr. de Selincourt has from the first, it seems, been deeply concerned in the intellectual Keats, and has jealously sought to shield his loved poet from possible adverse criticism. Mr. de Selincourt, too, offers an allegorical interpretation of Endymion and Hyperion, and points out the conflict between reason and emotion in Lamia; he contends, and establishes his contention, that the expression "O for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts," should not be read literally, but that "Sensations" as used here should be interpreted as imagination or intuitive feeling. He traces certain evidences of the influence of Wordsworth on Keats's thought, successfully, I think, and in that light interprets various passages from both his poems and his letters. Altogether, in the introduction and notes in this volume, we have the clearest approach to the mind of Keats up to this time. But, although we find many acute remarks on some of Keats's characteristic utterances on poetic theory and his philosophy in general, these are not followed up; they usually remain but intimations only. Moreover, Mr. de Selincourt's understanding of Keats's idea of Beauty at this time is close to the traditional one, and is at best merely sketched out.

In Mr. Hancock's agreeable biography of Keats, which appeared in 1908, there are two chapters to which the student looking for comment on Keats's thought turns with anticipation, but reads with disappointment. One is called "Philosophy of His Art," the other, "The Principle of Beauty." But Mr. Hancock only cursorily treats these subjects. The first chapter becomes largely a discussion of the idea that "first in beauty should be first in might," in its implication as to moral conduct, and in the section entitled The Principle of Beauty, we are told that Keats's artistic life was parallel