Or gazing on the soft new-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors; Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest; Thus the troubled and anguished human creature, driven by the winds and tossed, like the never-resting water, he who had made so many songs in his little day of all lovely things, has fixed for us for ever the calm impartial shining of this star, last light of earth that penetrated the growing darkness. One more terrible letter came from Naples, as soon as the forlorn travellers landed, always about her, and the misery of being parted from her. "There is nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her for a moment," he says; "Oh, that I could be buried near where she lives. I am afraid to write to her, to receive a letter from her to see her handwriting would break my heart, even to hear of her anyhow; to see her name written would be more than I can bear. 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 novelties around me. I am afraid to write to her. I should 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 containing and bearing so much misery." He ends by imploring his friend, when he writes, "If she is well and happy put a mark thus x." A few weeks later another letter came from Rome, with an attempt at cheerfulness and a kind of pathetic ghostly banter. "If I recover, I will do all in my power to correct the mistakes made during sickness, and if I should not, all my faults will be forgiven." . . . Then he adds with the fleeting tearful smile of weakness, "I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you.-JOHN KEATS." Apparently these were the last words he ever wrote. This was in November 1820, and he lingered painfully till February 1821. At the very end of his days there came a letter from the too much beloved, a mere glance at which tore him to pieces; it was put unread into his coffin. And thus ended life and love together, so far as mortal eyes can see. This wonderful passion, so hectic and feverish, so devouring and unsatisfied, was the only human influence that helped to kill the young poet. Love, and not Mr. Gifford in the Quarterly. It was not even she that did forced from her, and the want But love is a more seemly if it were it, but the horror of being of faith in her faithfulness. and a more dignified slayer than a critic, possible to look thus lightly at a conclusion so full of anguish. He directed that the words "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," should be put on his grave. But he was more right in the earlier youthful confidence with which he pronounced that he should be among the poets of England after he died, than in this mournful sentence on himself, No poet who has done so little bears a higher fame. JOHN KEATS, born 1795; died 1821. Published Poems, 1817. Endymion, 1818. Hyperion, Isabella, etc., 1820. VOL. III. K CHAPTER V. MOORE MONK LEWIS-THE SMITHS, ETC. PEACOCK- WE have done perhaps some injustice, if not to the permanent position, at least to the contemporary fame of Moore by giving him so small a place in this record. Whether Byron and Shelley were perfectly sincere in their expressions of admiration it would be difficult to divine, for there is perhaps a certain exaggeration permissible and natural in one poet's expressed opinion of another poet who is his friend and admirer, especially when the younger man and newer songster is referring to a previously established reputation. "Lord Byron has read me one or two letters of Moore to him, in which Moore speaks with great kindness of me, and, of course, I cannot but feel flattered by the approbation of a man my inferiority to whom I am proud to acknowledge," says Shelley; and Byron throughout writes to his friend, the only one of all his literary contemporaries for whom he owns any warmth of affection, with perpetual expressions almost of enthusiasm for his poetical powers. These appear very strange to us now when Moore's reputation has dropped from the highest to a very subordinate place in literature, and when all his confectionery compositions, his Eastern tales, and even the contemporary satires which were effective in their day, have alike fallen into the limbo whence there is no redemption. His songs still retain, and will always retain, a certain place in the popular memory, but we dare not venture to say that this would have been the case had they not been linked to the beautiful national melodies with which he was so well inspired as to connect them. He belongs to the number of those writers who, like Dives in the parable, had their good things while they were living: and, no doubt, with his gay temper and gentle epicureanism, Moore himself would have much preferred this to the meagre living and posthumous praise of greater poets. Many of his melodies are touching and tender, many of them full of sparkling gaiety and life. There is scarcely any one who does not know the first line, probably the first verse, of scores of those facile and graceful compositions. It is scarcely needful to recall them to the reader; and though in this age of classical music, the simplicity of the ballad has fallen out of fashion, yet the taste for it is too widespread and too natural to be more than temporarily in abeyance. Even now, in the height of a musical renaissance, there are thousands of people who will be moved by one of Moore's songs, sung with feeling and expression, against the hundred connoisseurs who will think it beneath their notice. "She is far from the land where her "She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Ah little they think who delight in her strains, "He had lived for his love, for his country he died, "Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, When they promise a glorious morrow, They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the West, This is the perfection of verse for the poet's purpose -to be sung, not read. Its meaning needs no second thought, it is full of picturesque and tender suggestion, yet never overbalances the air by too much poetry. A pathetic story and a passionate national sentiment are concentrated in it with exquisite grace and smoothness. The Irish singer may be excused if he feels that he has done something for his country when he sings such a refined epitome of its woe. But beyond this there is little to say, and Moore had no revelation of his race to give, to bring it near to the general heart. He had enough nationality for this pathetic sentiment, and for a poetical appreciation of the hopeless wrongheaded heroism of those poor young Irish rebels who flung themselves against the strength of England like children against a locked and bolted door. But he had nothing to tell of his country, no insight into it or means of interpretation. Many have been the wrongs of Ireland, and her disabilities in the march of human progress; but none greater than this, for which Providence alone is responsible, that in the allotment of genius she got, instead of Burns and Scott, only Tom Moore and Miss Edgeworth, excellent artists both, but with the thinnest burden of prophecy, the most limited revelation. If Scotland had been endowed no better, it might not, perhaps, have affected her manufactories (but even for this we should not like to undertake to answer), but it certainly would have modified her position most strangely, and restricted her development. Burns made the face of his country luminous, and carried the songs of its peasantry, the loves of its cottages, into the sympathy and friendship of the world. But Moore's communications |