whole course of English poetry after Milton with here and there, as in Thomson and Dyer, a remarkable exception. There was then no faithfulness to fact in description or in imagery from nature, no natural speech in verse, nothing save more or less of intellectual vigour exhibited through an artificial form of diction, to which men had grown so accustomed that they had ceased to inspect it logically. Even men of real genius, such as Dryden himself and Pope, were in the bulk of their writings but splendid practitioners of a false style, which, when men had been educated to see its viciousness, would mar their fame as poets. I am not here discussing Wordsworth's theory; I am only stating it. Keats, I repeat, had adopted this theory, if not in all its particulars, at least in its essence. Thus, in one of his pieces, after speaking of the greatness of his favourite old Engish poets, he says "Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism His glories with a puling infant's force And did not know it! No, they went about, The name of one Boileau!" Keats, then, was a Pre-Drydenist in his notions of poetry, and in his own intentions as a poetic artist. But I will say more. Wordsworth had then which he had been struggling that a modified Pre-Drydenism was universally diffused through English literary society; and the so-called Cockney, or Hampstead-Heath, School, with which accident. had associated Keats, were largely tinged with it. They did not, indeed, go all the length with Wordsworth in depreciating Dryden and Pope (as who could?); but a superior relish for the older poets was one of their avowed characteristics. But in this, I believe, Keats went beyond the rest of them. It may be perceived, I think, that, with all his esteem for Hunt and Shelley, both as kind personal friends and as poets, he had notions respecting himself which led him, even while in their society and accounted one of them, to fix his gaze with steadier reverence than they did on the distant veteran of Rydal Mount. To Wordsworth alone does he seem to have looked as, all in all, a sublimity among contemporary poets. So far, however, as Keats had yet been publicly heard of, it was only as one fledgling more in the brood of poets whose verses were praised in the Examiner. What he had yet published were but little studies in language and versification preparatory to something that could be called a poem. Such a poem he now resolved to write. Always drawn by a kind of mental affinity to the sensuous Mythology of the Greeks, he had chosen for his subject the legend of Endymion, the youthful lover of the moon-goddess Artemis. "A long poem," he said, "is the test of invention; and it will be a test of my invention if I can make 4,000 lines out of this one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry." To accomplish his task, he left London in the spring of 1817, and took up his abode first in the Isle of Wight, then at Margate (at both of which places he revelled in the views of the sea as a newly-found pleasure), and then, successively, at Canterbury, Oxford, and other places inland. In the winter of 1817-18 he returned to Hampstead with the four books of his Endymion completed. The absence of this poem was written, was also the period during which many of those letters to his friends were written which have been edited by Mr. Monckton Milnes, in his Memoir of the poet. These letters have hardly received the attention they deserve. They are very remarkable letters. One can see, indeed, that they are the letters of an intellectual invalid, of a poor youth too conscious of "the endeavour of this present breath," watching incessantly his own morbid symptoms, and communicating them to his friends. There is also in them a somewhat unnatural straining after quaint and facetious conceits, as if he would not write common-place, but would force himself by the mere brief rumination of the moment into some minute originality or whim of fancy. On the whole, however, with the proper allowance, the letters may be read without any injury to the highest notion of him that may be formed from his compositions that were meant for publication; and there have not been many young poets of whose casual letters as much could be said. They abound in shrewd observations, in delicate and subtle criticisms, in fine touches of description, and in thoughts of a philosophical kind that are at once comprehensive and deep. "Endymion: A Poetic Romance," appeared in the beginning of 1818. Its reception was not wholly satisfactory. It made Keats's name more widely known; it procured him visits and invitations; and, when he attended Hazlitt's lectures, ladies to whom he was pointed out looked at him instead of listening to the lecturer. But Hunt, Shelley, and the rest, though they admired the poem, and thought some passages in it very wonderful, had many faults to find. The language in many parts was juvenile, not to say untasteful; such phrases as "honey-feel of bliss were too frequent; it was impossible for any understanding of a rational sort to reconcile itself to such a bewildering plenitude of luxuriant invention raised on such a mere nothing of a basis; and, waywardness in the sequence of the thoughts, arising from a passive dependence of the matter at every point on the mere suggestion of the rhyme! These and other such objections were heard on all hands. Worst of all, Wordsworth had no approbation to give. At Haydon's, one evening, when Wordsworth was present, Keats was induced to repeat to him the famous Hymn to Pan, which Shelley had praised as that in the whole poem which " gave "the surest sign of ultimate excellence." The iron-grey poet heard it to the end, and then only remarked that it was a pretty piece of paganism." And so, with no more encouragement than usually falls to the lot of a young man in such cases, Keats had to keep his own counsel, and look forward to other works, in which, choosing more solid subjects, he should exert his powers more compactly and impressively, and win, by better-disciplined strokes, the recognition which the world yields so slowly to forms of genius differing from those to which it has been accustomed. His was certainly a new faculty, which had to create and educate the taste by which it should itself be appreciated; and his hope, therefore, lay with the body of the growing youth of the land, whose perpetual privilege it is that they alone can receive and enjoy without criticising. No man was ever fully and heartily accepted, among his own sex, except by those younger than himself. Keats, there is no doubt, was prepared to wait and work on. The story of his having been killed by the savage article in the Quarterly is proved to have been wholly untrue. He had sense enough and pluck enough to get over that chagrin within the usual period of twenty-four hours, which, if there is any use for human spirits in the earth's rotation, ought to bring them as well as other things round again to the status quo. But other causes were at work, some of which are but dimly revealed by his biographer, but the chief of which was his hereditary malady of consumption. In the winter whole course of English poetry after Milton with here and there, as in Thomson and Dyer, a remarkable exception. There was then no faithfulness to fact in description or in imagery from nature, no natural speech in verse, nothing save more or less of intellectual vigour exhibited through an artificial form of diction, to which men had grown so accustomed that they had ceased to inspect it logically. Even men of real genius, such as Dryden himself and Pope, were in the bulk of their writings but splendid practitioners of a false style, which, when men had been educated to see its viciousness, would mar their fame as poets. I am not here discussing Wordsworth's theory; I am only stating it. Keats, I repeat, had adopted this theory, if not in all its particulars, at least in its essence. Thus, in one of his pieces, after speaking of the greatness of his favourite old Engish poets, he says— "Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism · Nurtured by foppery and barbarism Made great Apollo blush for this his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand : His glories with a puling infant's force And did not know it! No, they went about, The name of one Boileau!" Keats, then, was a Pre-Drydenist in his notions of poetry, and in his own intentions as a poetic artist. But I will say more. Wordsworth had then which he had been struggling that a modified Pre-Drydenism was universally diffused through English literary society; and the so-called Cockney, or Hampstead-Heath, School, with which accident had associated Keats, were largely tinged with it. They did not, indeed, go all the length with Wordsworth in depreciating Dryden and Pope (as who could?); but a superior relish for the older poets was one of their avowed characteristics. But in this, I believe, Keats went beyond the rest of them. It may be perceived, I think, that, with all his esteem for Hunt and Shelley, both as kind personal friends and as poets, he had notions respecting himself which led him, even while in their society and accounted one of them, to fix his gaze with steadier reverence than they did on the distant veteran of Rydal Mount. To Wordsworth alone does he seem to have looked as, all in all, a sublimity among contemporary poets. So far, however, as Keats had yet been publicly heard of, it was only as one fledgling more in the brood of poets whose verses were praised in the Examiner. What he had yet published were but little studies in language and versification preparatory to something that could be called a poem. Such a poem he now resolved to write. Always drawn by a kind of mental affinity to the sensuous Mythology of the Greeks, he had chosen for his subject the legend of Endymion, the youthful lover of the moon-goddess Artemis. "A long poem,' he said, "is the test of invention; and it will be a test of my invention if I can make 4,000 lines out of this one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry." To accomplish his task, he left London in the spring of 1817, and took up his abode first in the Isle of Wight, then at Margate (at both of which places he revelled in the views of the sea as a newly-found pleasure), and then, successively, at Canterbury, Oxford, and other places inland. In the winter of 1817-18 he returned to Hampstead with the four books of his Endymion completed. The absence of this poem was written, was also the period during which many of those letters to his friends were written which have been edited by Mr. Monckton Milnes, in his Memoir of the poet. These letters have hardly received the attention they deserve. They are very remarkable letters. One can see, indeed, that they are the letters of an intellectual invalid, of a poor youth too conscious of "the endeavour of this present breath," watching incessantly his own morbid symptoms, and communicating them to his friends. There is also in them a somewhat unnatural straining after quaint and facetious conceits, as if he would not write common-place, but would force himself by the mere brief rumination of the moment into some minute originality or whim of fancy. On the whole, however, with the proper allowance, the letters may be read with out any injury to the highest notion of him that may be formed from his compositions that were meant for publication; and there have not been many young poets of whose casual letters as much could be said. They abound in shrewd observations, in delicate and subtle criticisms, in fine touches of description, and in thoughts of a philosophical kind that are at once comprehensive and deep. "Endymion: A Poetic Romance," appeared in the beginning of 1818. Its reception was not wholly satisfactory. It made Keats's name more widely known; it procured him visits and invitations; and, when he attended Hazlitt's lectures, ladies to whom he was pointed out looked at him instead of listening to the lecturer. But Hunt, Shelley, and the rest, though they admired the poem, and thought some passages in it very wonderful, had many faults to find. The language in many parts was juvenile, not to say untasteful; such phrases as "honey-feel of bliss were too frequent; it was impossible for any understanding of a rational sort to reconcile itself to such a bewildering plenitude of luxuriant invention raised on such a mere nothing of a basis; and, waywardness in the sequence of the thoughts, arising from a passive dependence of the matter at every point on the mere suggestion of the rhyme! These and other such objections were heard on all hands. Worst of all, Wordsworth had no approbation to give. At Haydon's, one evening, when Wordsworth was present, Keats was induced to repeat to him the famous Hymn to Pan, which Shelley had praised as that in the whole poem which " gave "the surest sign of ultimate excellence." The iron-grey poet heard it to the end, and then only remarked that it was a pretty piece of paganism." And so, with no more encouragement than usually falls to the lot of a young man in such cases, Keats had to keep his own counsel, and look forward to other works, in which, choosing more solid. subjects, he should exert his powers more compactly and impressively, and win, by better-disciplined strokes, the recognition which the world yields so slowly to forms of genius differing from those to which it has been accustomed. His was certainly a new faculty, which had to create and educate the taste by which it should itself be appreciated; and his hope, therefore, lay with the body of the growing youth of the land, whose perpetual privilege it is that they alone can receive and enjoy without criticising. No man was ever fully and heartily accepted, among his own sex, except by those younger than himself. Keats, there is no doubt, was prepared to wait and work on. The story of his having been killed by the savage article in the Quarterly is proved to have been wholly untrue. He had sense enough and pluck enough to get over that chagrin within the usual period of twenty-four hours, which, if there is any use for human spirits in the earth's rotation, ought to bring them as well as other things round again to the status quo. But other causes were at work, some of which are but dimly revealed by his biographer, but the chief of which was his hereditary malady of consumption. In the winter blood-spitting, which he had long dreaded; after a few months of lingering, during which he seemed partly to fight with Death as one to whom life was precious, partly to long to die as one who had nothing to live for, he was removed to Italy; and there, having suffered much, he breathed his last at Rome on the 23d of February, 1821, at the age of twenty-five years and four months. He had wished for "ten years" of poetic life, but not half that term had been allowed him. The sole literary event of his life, after the publication of his Endymion in 1818, had been the publication of his Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems, in 1820; and the sole variation of his manner of life had consisted in his leaving Hampstead for a ramble or a residence in the country, and returning again from the country to Hampstead or London. After all, whether a man is a poet, a philosopher, or a man of action, there is a common standard by which he may be tried, so as to measure his relative intellectual importance. The determination of this standard is difficult; but ultimately, I believe, the truest measure of every man, in intellectual respects, is the measure of his speculative or purely philosophical faculty. So far as this may be demurred to, the objection will arise, I fancy, from the practical difficulty of applying the test. It is only certain poets that give us the opportunity of judging of the strength of their rational or purely noetic organthat faculty by which men speculate, or frame what are called "thoughts or "propositions." Whenever this is done, however, then, cateris paribus, the deeper thinker is the greater poet. Hence it is an excellent thing for the critic to catch his poet writing prose. He has him then at his mercy; he can keep him in the trap, and study him through the bars at his leisure. If he is a poor creature, he will be found out; if he has genuine vigour, then, with all allowance for any ungainliness arising ment, there will be evidences of it. Now, tried by any test of this kind, Keats will be found to have been no weakling. The following passages from his prose letters, for example, are, I believe, thoughts of some pith and substance, whether absolutely true or not : "Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on the mass of neutral intellect, but they have not any individuality, any determined character. I would call the top and head of those who have a proper self Men of Power." "Men should bear with each other; there is not the man who may not be cut up, ay, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best of men have but a portion of good in them-a kind of spiritual yeast in their frames which creates the ferment of existence-by which a man is propelled to act and strive and buffet with circumstance. The sure way is, first to know a man's faults, and then be passive. If, after that, he insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no power to break the link." "I had, not a dispute, but a disquisition, with Dilke upon various subjects. Several things dovetailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormouslyI mean negative capability; that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. . . . This, pursued through volumes, would perhaps take us no farther than this-that, with a great poet, the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather, obliterates every other consideration." "An extensive knowledge is necessary to thinking people: it takes away the heat and fever, and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the burden of the mystery." "Axioms in philosophy are not axioms till they have been proved upon our pulses." "I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments; two of which only I can describe the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me. The first we step into we call the Infant or Thoughtless Chamber; in which we remain as long as we do not think. We remain there a long while, and, notwithstanding the doors of the second chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it, but are imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle within us. We no sooner get into the second chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere. We see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight. However, among the effects this breathing is |