Not St. John, in Patmos' isle, When he saw the churches seven, 'What is this? and what art thou?' Come to pay devotion due.'—Ib. p. 186. The gloom arising from the sceptical thoughts in which unhappily he indulged, is again and again evident in his letters and his poetry. On the summit of Mount Nevis, while a cloud enveloped him, which, as it slowly wafted away, showed the tremendous precipice at his feet, he wrote a fine sonnet complaining that Just so much I wist, Mankind do know of hell; I look o'er head, Alas! that, unlike his worshipped Milton, he did not seek to the only oracle that could give the true answer! From a letter noticing Blackwood's' attack upon Hunt and himself, it certainly does not appear, that Keats sunk into hopeless despondency under the critic's lash, as has generally been supposed; on the contrary, he remarks, If he should go such lengths with me, as he has done with Hunt, I must infallibly call him to account, if he be a human being, and appears in squares and theatres.' In another letter, addressed to Mr. Hessey, after the appearance of the contemptuous critique in the 'Quarterly,' he thus spiritedly expresses himself: : 4 'As for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood' or the Quarterly' could inflict and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own sclitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. I will write independently. I have written independently, without judgment. I may write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In Endymion' I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.'—Ib. p. 214. Soon after, the death of his youngest brother, of the same complaint that ere long proved fatal to himself, increased his melancholy, which probably had its original from over excitement. His letters, now, are full of the praises of solitude, of his unwillingness to go into company; 'where I am a child, where they do not know me, even my most intimate acquaintance.' As we read these remarks, Keats - with his large forehead, and light hair parted on either side, gazing so abstractedly, but so mournfully, on the gaily dressed companycame before our eyes, vividly, as though it had been but yesterday, when we saw him in the midst of a large party, 'sitting,' as the lady of the house remarked, 'just as if he were a hundred miles off,' to her great vexation; and, though she probably thought poets ought never to open their mouths save in rhyme, and, like singing birds, keep them open almost incessantlysaying nothing! Well do we recollect looking at him as a sort of wonder, a real live poet; little expecting that in after years we should be acquainted with so many of his friends, and with writers to whom he looked up with homage. Still the sorrowful expression of the poet's countenance dwelt mournfully on our young memory, for the poet, to the child's mind, is a bright and a joyous being. And ought he not to be so? For the yes, we must turn to our religious poets-Spenser, Milton, and George Withers beguiling his harsh imprisonment with songs, sweet as those of the caged lark; for the no, alas! to Byron and Shelley, and poor Keats. During the winter of 1818-19, the importance of study, of close and continued study, was greatly felt by Keats; and happily for his already failing health, he passed his time in comparative retirement. Hitherto, unlike the generality of young poets, he had been strangely unsusceptible of female attractions. The time, however, now arrived, when with all the vehemence of his character he formed an attachment to a lady, which, although reciprocal, gave him, perhaps, as much sorrow as if it been unreturned. He possessed some private property, yet it was too small to allow him to depend merely on it, and the precarious rewards of a poet; he therefore, sought earnestly for farther literary occupation, and seems to have hoped both fame and emolument as a dramatist; at the same time, turning it in my head,' he says. whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a physician.' In the summer, Keats, in company with his friend Brown, went to the Isle of Wight, to compose a joint tragedy, Mr. Brown sketching the incidents, and Keats translating them into his rich and ready language.' The reader need scarcely be told that the plan was a complete failure; the drama is appended to the Life and Remains,' and its inferiority to the most hasty of Keats's unassisted productions is striking. His unfitness for dramatic composition was, probably, now evident, and he turned his attention to writing for periodicals; not without much unwillingness, and a feeling similar to that of his friend, poor Haydon, when asked to paint portraits. 'I am determined to spin homespun anything for sale. Yea, I will traffic anything but mortgage my brain for Blackwood,' he says in a letter to his kind and most judicious friend, Mr. Dilke. We think that able critic must have smiled at the following:-'I am confident I shall be able to cheat as well as any literary Jew, and shine up an article on anything without much knowledge of the subject; aye, like an orange.' The future editor of the Athenæum,' however, well knew that such superficial knowledge as poor Keats possessed would not be long available, even if he 'settled down quietly to fag as others do.' It is amusing, although melancholy, to observe in this correspondence, how, again and again, Keats apologizes for the mere thought of writing in periodicals. 'I shall not suffer my pride to hinder me'-'one must not be delicate; and yet, was it so great degradation for John Keats to do what Jeffrey, and Southey, and Sydney Smith, had long done? what his own friends, Hunt, Dilke, and Hazlitt, were at that moment doing? But the time was at hand when all his plans were to be overthrown. During the winter of 1820: 'One night, about eleven o'clock, Keats returned home in a state of strange physical excitement-it might have appeared to those who did not know him, one of fierce intoxication. He told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach, had received a severe chill, was a little fevered, but added, 'I don't feel it now.' He was easily persuaded to go to bed, and as he leapt into the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed and said, 'That is blood from my mouth; bring me the candle; let me see this blood.' He gazed steadfastly for some moments at the ruddy stain, and then looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, said, ‘I know the colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood-I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.'-Vol. ii. p. 53. The immediate symptoms soon yielded to medical skill, and the kind attentions of his friends, especially of Mr. and Mrs. Dilke, aided greatly his recovery. The acceptance by Messrs. Taylor and Hessey of another volume of poems, farther cheered the mind of poor Keats, and as spring advanced, he again turned to his future prospects. 'My mind has been at work all over the world, to find out what to do. I have my choice of three things, or at least of two-South America, or surgeon to an Indiaman; which last I think will be my fate,' he says, in one of his letters to Mr. Dilke. Soon afterwards, a relapse prevented farther prosecution of his plan, and it was determined, as the only chance of life, that he should pass the winter in Italy. During the whole summer his excitement was so great as seriously to retard his recovery. He speaks of the mere effort of writing a note as suffocating, and that his journey to Italy' wakes me at daylight every morning, and haunts me horribly.' The publication of his little book seems to have afforded him scarcely any gratification, although Lamia,' and 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' received much praise, even from critics who had severely censured Endymion.' Lamia,' although distinguished by careful versification, and much beauty of description, is a tale which, to be told effectively, requires much pathos; and of this, as we have before remarked, Keats possessed little. The human being condemned to the serpent form; the woman's heart beating beneath the scaly covering, and asking so importunately for release; the dis-enchantment; the joyful meeting with her lover; the marriage-day; and, then, the fatal encounter with the stern philosopher; his deadly glance, and his whispered word, that thrusts her back again to her hateful prison, and causes all the gay preparations to vanish away; what a tale would this have been for Elizabeth Barrett Browning! In St. Agnes Eve' Keats is more on his own ground,—description. Here is the opening : St. Agnes Eve-ah bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers was a cold; The hare limped trembling through the frosted grass, His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seemed taking flight for heaven.' And then the description of the maiden, and her silent anxieties: : As though a tongueless nightingale should swell Her throat in vain, and die, heart stifled in her dell.' And the gorgeous 'casement high and triple arched,' that forms the back ground of the picture, with its splendid dyes and twilight saints, and dim emblazonings : Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, The splendid fragment, Hyperion,' was among the last of Keats's compositions; the time now drew near when he was for ever to lay down his pen. In the autumn, in company with his kind young friend, Mr. Severn, the well-known artist, who most disinterestedly offered to accompany him, sick in body, but more sick in mind, Keats set sail for Naples. On his arrival there, he addressed a most painful letter to his old friend, Mr. Brown, with this heart-broken conclusion : : I fear there is no one can give me any comfort. Is there any news of George? O, that something fortunate had ever happened to me or my brothers !-then I might hope,-but despair is forced upon me as a habit. 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. Was I born for this end? God bless her, and her mother, and my sister, and George, and his wife, and you, and all! '-Ib. p. 78. |