love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place." Ten weeks after the close of his holy work of friendship and charity, Mr. Severn wrote to Mr. Haslam :-" Poor Keats has now his wish-his humble wish; he is at peace in the quiet grave. I walked there a few days ago, and found the daisies had grown all over it. It is in one of the most lovely retired spots in Rome. You cannot have such a place in England. I visit it with a delicious melancholy which relieves my sadness. When I recollect for how long Keats had never been one day free from ferment and torture of mind and body, and that now he lies at rest with the flowers he so desired above him, with no sound in the air but the tinkling bells of a few simple sheep and goats, I feel indeed grateful that he is here, and remember how earnestly I prayed that his sufferings might end, and that he might be removed from a world where no one grain of comfort remained for him." Thus too in the "Adonäis," that most successful imitation of the spirit of the Grecian elegy, devoted to the memory of one who had restored Grecian mythology to its domain of song, this place is consecrated. "Go thou to Rome,-at once the Paradise, The grave, the city, and the wilderness: And where its wrecks like shattered mountains rise, And flowering weeds, and fragrant copses dress The bones of Desolation's nakedness; Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead Thy footsteps to a slope of green access, Where, like an infant's smile, over the dead A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread, "And grey walls moulder round, on which dull Time Have pitched in Heaven's smile their camp of death, "Here pause: these graves are all too young as yet Of tears and gall. From the world's bitter wind What Adonäis is, why fear we to become?" And a few years after this was written, in the extended burying-ground, a little above the grave of Keats, was placed another tomb-stone, recording that below rested the passionate and world-worn heart of Shelley himself—“ Cor Cordium."* Immediately on hearing of Keats's death, Shelley expressed the profoundest sympathy and a fierce indignation against those whom he believed to have hastened it in a few months he produced the incomparable tribute of genius to genius, which is of itself the complement of, and the apology for, this work. The Inscription. The first copy of the "Adonäis" (printed at Pisa) was sent with the following letter to Mr. Severn, then enjoying the travelling pension of the Royal Academy, which had not been granted to any student for a considerable period. He resided for many years at Rome, illustrating the City and Campagna by his artistic fancy, and delighting all travellers who had the pleasure of his acquaintance by his talents and his worth. Nor was the self-devotion of his youth without its fruits in the estimation and respect of those who learned the circumstances of his visit to Italy, and above all, of those who loved the genius, revered the memory, and mourned the destiny of Keats. He returned, however, to England, and, after some years, found himself once more an inhabitant of the "Eternal City" in the responsible office of British Consul,—a post of honour and usefulness which he still occupies. The "Adonais" was first reprinted in England in 1829, at the University of Cambridge, by a society of young and enthusiastic admirers of Keats and Shelley, not without some demur and difficulty on the part of the publisher, who thought he was treading on dangerous, if not forbidden, ground. DEAR SIR, PISA, I send you the elegy on poor Keats-and I wish it were better worth your acceptance. You will see, by the preface, that it was written before I could obtain any particular account of his last moments; all that I still know, was communicated to me by a friend who had derived his information from Colonel Finch; I have ventured to express, as I felt, the respect and admiration which your conduct towards him demands. In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor ever will be, a popular poet; and the total neglect and obscurity in which the astonishing remnants of his mind still lie, was hardly to be dissipated by a writer, who, however he may differ from Keats in more important qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental one, a want of popularity. I have little hope, therefore, that the poem I send you will excite any attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice of his writings would find a single reader. But for these considerations, it had been my intention to have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to have published them with a Life and Criticism. Has he left any poems or writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they? Perhaps you would oblige me by information on this point. Many thanks for the picture you promise me: I shall consider it among the most sacred relics of the past. For my part, I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should survive him. Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into something pleasant, begun under such melancholy auspices. Accept, my dear sir, the assurance of my highest esteem, and believe me, Your most sincere and faithful servant, The last few pages have attempted to awaken a personal interest in the story of Keats almost apart from his literary character a personal interest founded on events that might easily have occurred to a man of inferior ability, and rather affecting from their moral than intellectual bearing. But now "He has outsoared the shadow of our night; A heart grown cold, a head grown grey in vain; and, ere we close altogether these memorials of his short earthly being, let us revert to the great distinctive peculiarities which singled him out from his fellow-men and gave him his rightful place among "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown." Let any man of literary accomplishment, though without the habit of writing poetry, or even much taste for reading it, open "Endymion" at random, (to say nothing of the later and more perfect poems,) and examine the characteristics of the page before him, and I shall be surprised if he does not feel that the whole range of literature hardly supplies a parellel phenomenon. As a psychological curiosity, perhaps Chatterton is more wonderful; but in him the immediate ability displayed is rather the full comprehension of and identification with the old model, than the effluence of crea |