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tion I received, was from the gentleman who has married the widow of George Keats, and who placed at my disposal, with the consent of the family, the letters George received from his brother after he emigrated to America. I have taken the liberty of omitting some few unimportant passages which referred exclusively to individuals or transitory circumstances, regarding this part of the correspondence as of a more private character than any other that has fallen into my hands.

I am not indeed unprepared for the charge, that I have published in this volume much that might well have been omitted, both for its own irrelevancy, and from the decent reverence that should always veil, more or less, the intimate family concerns and the deep internal life of those that are no more. Never has such remonstrance been more ably expressed than in the following passage from Mr. Wordsworth's "Letter to a friend of Robert Burns,"* and which, on account of the rarity of the pamphlet, I here transcribe :

66

Biography, though differing in some essentials from works of fiction, is nevertheless like them an art-an art, the laws of which are determined by the imperfections of our nature and the constitution of society. Truth is not here, as in the sciences and in natural philosophy, to be sought without scruple, and promulgated for its own sake upon the mere chance of its being serviceable, but only for obviously justifying purposes, moral or intellectual. Silence is a privilege of the grave, a right of the departed; let him, therefore, who infringes that right by speaking publicly of, for, or against those who cannot speak for themselves, take heed that he open not his mouth without a sufficient sanction. * * * * The general obligation upon which I have insisted is especially binding upon those who undertake the biography of authors. Assuredly there is no cause why the lives of that class of men should be pried into with diligent curiosity, and laid open with the same disregard of reserve which may sometimes be expedient in composing the history of men who have borne an active part in the world. Such thorough knowledge of the good and bad qualities of

*Published 1816.

these latter, as can only be obtained by a scrutiny of their private bias, conduces to explain, not only their own public conduct, but that of those with whom they have acted. Nothing of this applies to authors, considered merely as authors. Our business is with their books, to understand and to enjoy them. And of poets more especially it is true, that if their works be good, they contain within themselves all that is necessary to their being comprehended and relished. It should seem that the ancients thought in this manner, for of the eminent Greek and Roman poets, few and scanty memorials were, I believe, ever prepared, and fewer still are preserved. It is delightful to read what, in the happy exercise of his own genius, Horace chooses to communicate of himself and of his friends; but I confess I am not so much a lover of knowledge independent of its quality, as to make it likely that it would much rejoice me were I to hear that records of the Sabine poet and his contemporaries, composed upon the Boswellian plan, had been unearthed among the ruins of Hercula

neum.

With this earnest warning before me, I hesitated some time as to the application of my materials. It was easy for me to construct out of them a signal monument of the worth and genius of Keats: by selecting the circumstances and the passages that illustrated the extent of his abilities, the purity of his objects and the nobleness of his nature, I might have presented to the world a monography, apparently perfect, and at least as real as those which the affection or pride of the relatives or dependents of remarkable personages generally prefix to their works. But I could not be unconscious that, if I were able to present to the public view the true personality of a man of genius, without either wounding the feelings of mourning friends or detracting from his existing reputation, I should be doing a much better thing in itself, and one much more becoming that office of biographer, which I, a personal stranger to the individual, had consented to undertake. For, if I left the memorials of Keats to tell their own tale, they would in truth be the book, and my business would be almost limited to their collection and arrangement; whereas, if I only regarded them as the materials of my own work, the general effect would

chiefly depend on my ability of construction, and the temptation to render the facts of the story subservient to the excellence of the work of art would never have been absent.

I had else to consider which procedure was most likely to raise the character of Keats in the estimation of those most capable of judging it. I saw how grievously he was misapprehended even by many who wished to see in him only what was best. I perceived that many, who heartily admired his poetry, looked on it as the production of a wayward, erratic genius, self-indulgent in conceits, disrespectful of the rules and limitations of Art, not only unlearned but careless of knowledge, not only exaggerated but despising proportion. I knew that his moral disposition was assumed to be weak, gluttonous of sensual excitement, querulous of severe judgment, fantastical in its tastes, and lackadaisical in its sentiments. He was all but universally believed to have been killed by a stupid, savage article in a review, and to the compassion generated by his untoward fate he was held to owe a certain personal interest, which his poetic reputation hardly justified.

When, then, I found, from the undeniable documentary evidence of his inmost life, that nothing could be further from the truth than this opinion, it seemed to me, that a portrait, so dissimilar from the general assumption, would hardly obtain credit, and might rather look like the production of a paradoxical partiality than the result of conscientious inquiry. I had to show that Keats, in his intellectual character, reverenced simplicity and truth above all things, and abhorred whatever was merely strange and strong that he was ever learning and ever growing more conscious of his own ignorance,—that his models were always the highest and the purest, and that his earnestness in aiming at their excellence, was only equal to the humble estimation of his own efforts that his poetical course was one of distinct and positive progress, exhibiting a self-command and self-direction which enabled him to understand and avoid the faults even of the writers he was most naturally inclined to esteem, and to liberate himself at once, not only from the fetters of literary partisanship, but even from the subtler influences and associations of the

accidental literary spirit of his own time. I had also to exhibit the moral peculiarities of Keats as the effects of a strong will, passionate temperament, indomitable courage, and a somewhat contemptuous disregard of other men to represent him as unflinchingly meeting all criticism of his writings, and caring for the Article, which was supposed to have had such homicidal success, just so far as it was an evidence of the little power he had as yet acquired over the sympathies of mankind, and no more. I had to make prominent the brave front he opposed to poverty and pain-to show, how love of pleasure was in him continually subordinate to higher aspirations, notwithstanding the sharp zest of enjoyment which his mercurial nature conferred on him; and above all, I had to illustrate how little he abused his full possession of that imaginative faculty, which enables the poet to vivify the phantoms of the hour, and to purify the objects of sense, beyond what the moralist may sanction, or the mere practical man can understand,

I thus came to the conclusion, that it was best to act simply as editor of the Life which was, as it were, already written. I had not the right, which many men yet living might claim from personal knowledge, of analyzing motives of action and explaining courses of conduct; I could tell no more than was told to me, and that I have done as faithfully as I was able and I now leave the result in the hands of the few whose habits of thought incline them to such subjects, not, indeed, in the hope that their task will be as agreeable as mine has been, but in the belief, that they will find in it much that is not mine to appreciate and enjoy: a previous admiration of the works of Keats which have been already published is the test of their authority to approve or condemn these supplementary memorials, and I admit no other.

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