been pronounced "one of the most glorious jewels in the crown of English poetry," the luxurious emotions of the senses, the fascination of the Circe,

"Lamia."

are idealized and elevated into a superiority to thought and to truth. We are called upon to sympathize with Lamia, the serpent-temptress transformed into a beautiful woman; a fair illusion, destroyed by the eye of truth. Lamia beseeches her lover not to think, knowing that "a moment's thought is passion's passing bell." We cannot but recognize in this the spirit of Keats when he wrote, “Oh, for a life of Sensations, rather than of Thoughts!" Lamia dies, but Truth, the philosopher who has wrought her destruction, ought, says the poet, to have his temples bound with "speargrass" and the "spiteful thistle." Contrary to his theory, Keats has here given us a poem with a teaching; but the teaching, while characteristic, is neither elevated nor true. It is possible that the shortcomings of Keats are the result of immaturity, and that, had he lived, his genius would have declared itself in other ways.

*A. C. Swinburne, "Keats," in Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition.

+ Letters, p. 53, Forman's edition.

Matthew Arnold contends that, from what we know of Keats, it is probable that his genius would have developed in "moral interpretation." He quotes from Keats' letter to show that he had a growing desire for study, and gives this as a proof of his intellectual possibilities. He omits, however, a later passage in which Keats' declares that he prefers pleasure to study (Letters, p. 432). Probably Keats often expressed a passing mood, and too much weight should not be given to his often impulsive utterances.

What he might have done is matter for conjecture; but we know that his later poems are not immature but highly finished, and it is clear that his advance toward a poetry of moral power and philosophic thought would only have been gained by a radical change in his views of poetry, and by not so much a growth as a total making over of the man Keats' himself. Judging him by what he has poetic limitations. done, we are constrained, unless we adopt his views of poetry, to admire with certain reservations. His poetry is the song of the Sirens. It is weakened by a strain of effeminacy, and its atmosphere, often heavy as with sweet and cloying odors, is deliciously enervating. We miss in it the manly vigor of those mountain heights where, as in Wordsworth or Shelley, the air is pure and clear. We should lose much were we unable to yield ourselves to that spell of warm and abundant loveliness of which Keats is master, but if we rejoice in the life-giving air that blows on the high altitudes of poetry, we will not drift into that unthinking or wholesale adulation in which lovers of Keats are apt to indulge. The motto from his master Spenser which Keats prefixed to Endymion is the index to the spirit of all his work; it expresses Keats' ideal, but we may question whether that ideal is the highest :

'What more felicity can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with liberty ?”

STUDY LIST

JOHN KEATS

1. ROMANTIC AND MEDIEVAL. (a) The Eve of St. Agnes. This is a good example of Keats' mediævalism. The poem is given, with admirable notes, in Hales' Longer English Poems. Hales refers to Chambers' Book of Days and Ellis' Brand's Popular Antiquities for an account of the popular superstition on which the poem is founded. He suggests that some of the incidents of the poem may have been taken from Romeo and Juliet, Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida, and the story of the elopement of Dorothy Vernon from Haddon Hall. What great English poet has influenced Keats in this poem, and in what respects? Do you think that stanzas xxx. and xxxi. detract from the artistic perfection of the poem as a whole? Contrast Keats' treatment of the Middle Ages in this poem with that of Coleridge in The Ancient Mariner and Christabel.

(b) The Eve of St. Mark. Cf. with the foregoing, and see Rossetti's life of Keats, p. 184, and Colvin's Keats, p. 162. The latter critic alludes to the Pre Raphaelite tone of this poem.

(c) La Belle Dame Sans Merci. V. Colvin's Keats, pp. 163-164.

This little poem Mr. Colvin thinks the "masterpiece (if any single masterpiece must be chosen)" of Keats. Apart from its beauty, it is important as one of the few romantic poems in which Keats deals with the supernatural, an important element in compositions of a romantic character. In this poem Keats is very close to Rossetti and, to a less degree, to Coleridge. One of Rossetti's early pictures is on this subject. (V., on this point, Theodore Watts' article on "Rossetti " in Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition.) Cf. Rossetti's Lilith and Coleridge's Christabel for "the idea of the evil forces of nature assailing man through his sense of beauty.” Theodore Watts, supra.

2. CLASSIC POEMS. (a) Lamia. This poem substantially follows the story of Lycius, and the Lamia as told in Burton's

Anatomy of Melancholy (part 3, section 2). While Keats adheres closely to the main points of Burton's narrative, he completely reverses the moral. In Burton the young philosopher, "otherwise staid and discreet," is nearly ruined by yielding to the spell of beauty. The original idea of the story is thus the same as that of many others (Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, etc., etc.); see supra section 1, c.

(b) Look up the meaning of a Lamia (Century Dictionary of Names, Anthon's Classical Dictionary, v., also, “Empusa,” in Smith's Classical Dictionary). Cf. other stories similar to that of Lamia, e. g., Thomas the Rymer, Goethe's Bride of Corinth, Duessa, etc., in the Faerie Queene. What is Keats' attitude toward modern science in this poem? Cf. Campbell's To the Rainbow and the passage in Pleasures of Hope, part 2, beginning, "Oh! lives there, Heaven! beneath thy dread expanse," etc. Cf., also, Wordsworth's The Poet's Epitaph. Do you agree with Swinburne that Lamia is " one of the finest jewels in the crown of English poetry?" If not, give reasons for your view. Cf. Holmes' Elsie Venner and Coleridge's Christabel. (c) Ode on a Grecian Urn. Cf. with stanza iv., Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables, chap. xi.; Ode to Psyche.

(d) Hyperion. One of the most successful of Keats' poems on a classical subject. Woodhouse, a friend of Keats, writes: 'The poem, if complete, would have treated of the dethronement of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by Apollo; and, incidentally, of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter, etc.; and of the war of the giants for Saturn's reestablishment; with other events of which we have but very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome.

3. PERSONAL POEMS, ODES, SONNETS, ETC. (a) Ode to a Nightingale. Cf. Shelley's Skylark. Which of these two poems shows the loftier and more unselfish spirit? Cf. also other poems to the skylark, including those of Wordsworth, Hogg, and William Watson. Ode To Autumn, Ode on Melancholy. V. Swinburne's remarks on these odes in article above quoted; Robin Hood.

(b) Sonnets. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer; Keen Fitful Gusts are Whispering Here and There; To One who

has been Long in City Pent; On the Sea; On Seeing the Elgin Marbles; Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art— (Keats' last sonnet).

4. BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. The standard edition of Keats is that edited by H. Buxton Forman, including both poetry and prose, 4 vols., 1883, and, with additions, 1889. The Poetical Works of John Keats, with notes, by F. T. Palgrave (Golden Treasury Series) 1884. The Poetical Works edited by J. T. Arnold contains preface on the sources of Keats' vocabulary and diction. Keats' letters have been reedited by H. B. Forman, and published separately, 1895. Colvin's Keats, English Men of Letters Series ; Rossetti's Keats, Great Writers Series (contains a bibliography); Matthew Arnold's essay in Ward's English Poets, vol. iv. (published also in Essays in Criticism, Second Series), while admitting Keats' deficiencies, assigns him an exalted place. It should be carefully and critically read. Lowell's essay on "Keats," in Among my Books; Swinburne's 'Keats," in Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition; "Poetry, Music, and Painting : Coleridge and Keats," W. J. Courthope, National Review, vol. v. p. 504; "The Centenary of John Keats," The Forum, November, 1895. For the relation of Keats to the PreRaphaelite movement, v. Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the PreRaphaelite Movement, by Esther Wood, chap. iii. For bibliography, v., also, “Keats," in Stephen's Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxx.

[Keats' poetry inevitably suggests inquiry into the nature of the highest beauty in poetry, the poetic value of the ethical and philosophic elements, and the correctness of Keats' theories on these points. The student may compare Spenser's views in his Fowre Hymnes," especially the one of the series In Honour of Beautie," and Tennyson's "Palace of Art" (for the latter v. pp. 466 and 467, and Tennyson Study List, p. 500, 2) post.]