who is here "clustered around by all her starry Fays," spirits proper to a Northern mythology; but possibly Keats thought more of a Faery-queen than of Phœbe). Then comes the passage (already cited in these pages) about the poet's wish for a draught of wine, to help him towards spiritual commune with the nightingale. Some exquisite phrases in this passage have endeared it to all readers of Keats; yet I cannot but regard it as very foreign to the main subject-matter. Surely nobody wants wine as a preparation for enjoying a nightingale's music, whether in a literal or in a fanciful relation. Taken in detail, to call wine "the true, the blushful Hippocrene"-the veritable fount of poetic inspirationseems both stilted and repulsive, and the phrase "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim" is (though picturesque) trivial, in the same way as much of Keats's earlier work. Far worse is the succeeding image, "Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards"-i.e., not under the inspiration of wine the poet will fly to the nightingale, but not in a leopard-drawn chariot. Further on, as if we had not already had enough of wine and its associations, the coming musk-rose is described as "full of dewy wine"an expression of very dubious appositeness: and the like may be said of "become a sod," in the sense of "become a corpse-earth to earth." The renowned address "Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird! seems almost outside the region of criticism. Still, it is a palpaple fact that this address, according to its place in the context, is a logical solecism. While "Youth grows pale and spectre-thin and dies," while the poet would "become a sod" to the requiem sung by the nightingale, the nightingale itself is pronounced immortal. But this antithesis cannot stand the test of a moment's reflection. Man, as a race, is as deathless, as superior to the tramp of hungry generations, as is the nightingale as a race: while the nightingale as an individual bird has a life not less fleeting, still more fleeting, than a man as an individual. We have now arrived at the last stanza of the ode. Here the term "deceiving elf," applied to "the fancy," sounds rather petty, and in the nature of a makerhyme but this may possibly be a prejudice. : Having thus-in the interest of my reader as a critical appraiser of poetry-burned my fingers a little at the clear and perennial flame of the "Ode to a Nightingale," I shall quit that superb composition, and the whole quintett of odes, and shall proceed to other phases of my subject. The "Ode to Indolence," and the fragment of an "Ode to Maia," need not detain us; the former, however, is important as indicating a mood of mind-too vaguely open to the influences of the moment for either love, ambition, or poesy-to which we may well suppose that Keats was sufficiently prone. The few poems which remain to be mentioned were all printed posthumously. There are four addresses to Fanny Brawne, dating perhaps from early till late in 1819; two of them are irregular lyrics, and two sonnets. The best of the four is the sonnet, "The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone," which counts indeed among the better sonnets of Keats. Taken collectively, all four supply valuable evi dence as to the poet's love affair, confirmatory of what appears in his letters; they exhibit him quelled by the thought of his mistress and her charms, and jealous of her mixing in or enjoying the company of others. Keats wrote some half-hundred of sonnets altogether, some of them among his very earliest and most trifling performances, others up to his latest period, including the last of all his compositions. Notwithstanding his marked growth in love of form, and his ultimate surprising power of expression-both being qualities peculiarly germane to this form of verse-his sonnets appear to me to be seldom masterly. A certain freakishness of disposition, and liability to be led astray by some point of detail into side-issues, mar the symmetry and concentration of his work. Perhaps the sonnet on "Chapman's Homer," early though it was, remains the best which he produced; it is at any rate pre-eminent in singleness of thought, illustrated by a definite and grand image. It has a true opening and a true climax, and a clear link of inventive association between the thing mentally signified in chief, and the modes of its concrete presentment. In points of this kind Keats is seldom equally happy in his other sonnets; sometimes not happy at all, but distinctly at fault. There is a second Homeric sonnet, "Standing aloof in giant ignorance" (1818), which contains one line which has been very highly praised, "There is a budding morrow in midnight:" but, regarded as a whole, it is a weakling in comparison with the Chapman sonnet. The sonnets, "To Sleep" ("O soft embalmer of the still midnight"), "Why did I laugh to-night?" and "On a Dream" ("As Hermes once took to his feathers light ")—all of them dated in 1819-are remarkable; the third would indeed almost be excellent were it not for the inadmissible laxity of an alexandrine last line. This is the sonnet of which we have already spoken, the dream of Paolo and Francesca. The "Why did I laugh to-night?" is a strange personal utterance, in which the poet (not yet attacked by his mortal illness) exalts death above verse, fame, and beauty, in the same mood of mind as in the lovely passage of the "Ode to a Nightingale "; but the sonnet, considered as an example of its own form of art, is too exclamatory and uncombined. There are several minor poems by Keats of which— though some of them are extremely dear to his devotees -I have made no mention. Such are "Teignmouth," "Where be you going, you Devon maid?" "Meg Merrilies," "Walking in Scotland," "Staffa," "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," "Robin Hood," "To Fancy," "To the Poets," "In a drear-nighted December," "Hush, hush, tread softly," four "Faery Songs." Most of these pieces seem to me over-rated. As a rule they have lyrical impulse, along with the brightness or the tenderness which the subject bespeaks; but they are slight in significance and in structure, pleasurable but not memorable work. One enjoys them once and again, and then their office is over; they have not in them that stuff which can be laid to heart, nor that spherical unity and replenishment which can make of a mere snatch of verse an inscription for the adamantine portal of time. The feeling with which Keats regarded women in real life has been already spoken of. As to the tone of his poems respecting them we have his own evidence. A letter of his to Armitage Brown, dated towards the first days of September 1820, says, in reference to the "Lamia" volume: "One of the causes, I understand from different quarters, of the unpopularity of this new book, is the offence the ladies take at me. On thinking that matter over, I am certain that I have said nothing in a spirit to displease any woman I would care to please; but still there is a tendency to class women in my books with roses and sweetmeats; they never see themselves dominant." The long poems in the volume in question were "Isabella," "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Hyperion," and "Lamia." In "Hyperion" women are of course not dominant; but, as regards the other three poems, they are surely dominant enough in one sense. In "Isabella" the heroine is the sole figure of prime importance-so also in "Lamia"; and in the "Eve of St. Agnes" she counts for much more than Porphyro, though the number of stanzas about her may be fewer. Nevertheless it might be that the women in the three poems, though dominant," are "classed with roses and sweetmeats." I do not see, however, that this can fairly be said of Madeline in the "Eve of St. Agnes"; she is made a very charming and loveable figure, although she does nothing very particular except to undress without looking behind her, and to elope. Again, Isabella, amenable as she may be to the censure of the severely virtuous, plays a part which takes her very considerably out of affinity to roses and sweetmeats. To Lamia the objection applies |