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its very elevation casts around it. On the contrary, we would maintain that, in their capacity of public instructors, and in so far as their books are concerned, authors can only be considered in the light of public men; and if, as Wordsworth himself admits, a scrutiny of the private lives of public men conduces to explain their public conduct, we think it no less just or less necessary to apply the same test for the due explanation of the public conduct of authors, that is, of the works they have given to the world.

In the case of Keats, too, there appears to be a special reason why this delicacy should be regarded as uncalled for, and indeed misplaced. If a poet strictly confine himself to purely literary topics if his writings have no higher object than to amuse the fancy, or excite and interest the imagination; then, perhaps, (although the case may well be considered impossible), he is entitled to be looked upon as a private personage, and to claim the indulgence and reserve with which private character should always be discussed. But the case is very different if, as in almost every instance, the poet assumes, even indirectly, the character of an instructor; and especially, as too often has occurred, if he set himself against principles, whether in morals or in religion, which are held as undisputed by society at large. If the poet choose to himself such a part as this, he becomes, by the very fact, and independently of his poetic character altogether, a public man; and if his biography be submitted to the public at all, they are entitled to demand from his biographer so much of his private life -so much of what he has written and spoken-so much of his intercourse with known and trusted friends-so much even of his most hidden communings with himself, as may furnish a key to his character and habits of mind; may supply the necessary commentary upon the obnoxious opinions which he has expressed, and throw the necessary lights upon the motives by which he may have been impelled in adopting them, the consistency with which he may have maintained them, and the influence which they have exercised upon his conduct, his happiness, and his peace. Unhappily, it can hardly be denied, that the ill-fated subject of Mr. Milnes's biography, has made himself amenable to this just and equitable law. Even if we could abstract from the doubts and suspicions, to say the least, which hung over his orthodoxy during life, or the too notorious and ostentatious unbelief of many of his chosen friends and associates, there is a want about all his writings which, for the due understanding of his religious character, required some commentary from himself; there is a vagueness and dreaminess in his philosophy, which needs to be tested by his habits of every-day thought; there is a kind of mystic paganism in his poetic creeda lingering, reverential love

"Of old Olympus' faded hierarchy"

a fond regret for its long-past "happy pieties" -a melancholy repining over our own untrustful days

"Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire"-

which, though perfectly possible in a good Christian, is but a bad support for a suspected orthodoxy; -above all, there is everywhere throughout his works, a perpetual and allpervading worship of Nature in her various forms, which strongly resembles the pantheistical cant that had become fashionable about the latter years of his life, and which would be downright pantheism, if it were not otherwise proved to be mere sentimentalism.

Such, we believe, were the popular impressions regarding Keats and his opinions; and, although we feel deeply and bitterly everything that tends to depreciate genius, or to lower it in the eyes of common men; and though we especially lament such revelations as lend to vice, in any of its forms, the sanction and authority which genius is sure to impart; nevertheless, we have no hesitation in saying, that in such a case as his, it would have been wrong to suppress any portion of those records of his mind which tended, even remotely, to explain his religious belief, or to illustrate its practical influence upon his destinies.

For our own part, we will confess that this precise consideration formed the chief ingredient in the interest with which we looked forward to the publication of Mr. Milnes's long promised Memoir of Keats; and it is deeply painful to add, that, loving and cherishing the memory of this illfated youth with all the fervour which must ever belong to one's feelings for the favourite poet of his boyish days, we should have infinitely preferred our former doubts and suspicions, against which, though they could not be dis

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missed, it was still possible to hope, to the saddening and disheartening reality which these melancholy, though most interesting pages reveal. But we must not anticipate.

The materials of this Memoir were collected many years since, by Mr. Charles Brown, one of Keats's earliest and fastest friends, and his partner in some of his literary labours, especially the (hitherto unpublished) tragedy of "Otho the Great." Being prevented by circumstances, from publishing his intended Memoir, Mr. Brown transferred the collection to Mr. Milnes, who, when his intention was made public, received several valuable contributions of further records from the poet's surviving friends. His volumes contain nothing in the form of an autobiography, and hardly anything that can be called a diary, though Keats appears to have projected and actually undertaken one. Its chief interest lies in the collection of his letters to members of his family and other friends, and in the account of his death, supplied by his friend, Mr. Severn, the well-known artist, who was his companion and more than nurse on the last days of his afflicted life, all of which Mr. Milnes has woven together with great taste, feeling, and judgment.

The history of his childhood and early youth is entirely without interest, except in so far as it shows that his mind was entirely self-taught and self-trained. His father, though of low origin, rose to considerable affluence, and left his children-three sons, of whom John, the poet, was the eldest, and a daughter-in comparative independence. The boys were educated at the school of Mr. Clarke at Enfield; and during the first years, John was only remarkable for his "indifference to be thought 'a good boy;' his skill in all manly exercises, the perfect generosity of his disposition, and his fierce pugnacity." He was "always fighting," and chose his favourites among those who fought most readily, and "showed the greatest pluck" in the school. On the other hand, his disposition was tender and affectionate beyond description. His grief at his mother's death was long and uncontrollable, and his affection for his brothers, though he did not scruple to

* Mr. Milnes says the second; but a writer in the Athenæum evidently well informed, affirms the contrary. John was born October 29, 1795.

fight with them on occasion, was deep and sincere. Towards the close of his studies at school, however, his diligence became as remarkable as had hitherto been his idleness; but his reading seems to have been shallow and discursive, and he left school an ill-taught youth, with little Latin and no Greek, and unfamiliar with all the ordinary subjects of early education except the Greek Mythology, in which he seems to have been a perfect adept. His personal appearance was peculiar

"This impression was no doubt unconsciously aided by a rare vivacity of countenance and very beautiful features. His eyes, then, as ever, were large and sensitive, flashing with strong emotions or suffused with tender sympathies, and more distinctly reflected the varying impulses of his nature than when under the self-control of maturer years: his hair hung in thick brown ringlets round a head diminutive for the breadth of the shoulders below it, while the smallness of the lower limbs, which in later life marred the proportion of his person, was not then apparent, any more than the undue prominence of the lower lip, which afterwards gave his face too pugnacious a character to be entirely pleasing, but at that time only completed such an impression as the ancients had of Achilles, joyous and glorious youth, everlastingly striving."vol. i., p. 7.

"A lady, whose feminine acuteness of perception is only equalled by the vigour of her understanding, tells me she distinctly remembers Keats as he appeared at this time at Hazlitt's lectures. 'His eyes were large and blue, his hair auburn; he wore it divided down the centre, and it fell in rich masses on each side his face; his mouth was full, and less intellectual than his other features. His countenance lives in my mind as one of singular beauty and brightness-it had an expression as if he had been looking on some glorious sight. The shape of his face had not the squareness of a man's, but more like some womens' faces I have seen it was so wide over the forehead and so small at the chin. He seemed in perfect health, and with life offering all things that were precious to him.' "-vol. i. pp. 103, 104.

At the age of fifteen, (1810) he was apprenticed to a surgeon named Hammond; but although he appears to have latoured with considerable diligence at his profession, yet he eventually abandoned it for the more congenial pursuit of literature, and especially poetry. Never was there a soul with which poetry was more unmistakably an instinct. He "thought so much and so long together about poetry, that he could not sleep at night." (vol. i. p. 42.) He "could not exist without poetry-eternal poetry;" the best prayer that he could think of for his favourite sister's child is, that "he may be a great poet;" (p. 233), and even at the time of life when the heart is most susceptible of other impressions, he declared himself indifferent to all else beside. He writes to his brother and sister in America:

"Notwithstanding your happiness and your recommendations, I hope I shall never marry: though the most beautiful creature were waiting for me at the end of a journey or a walk; though the carpet were of silk, and the curtains of the morning clouds, the chairs and sofas stuffed with cygnet's down, the food manna, the wine beyond claret, the window opening on Winandermere, I should not feel, or rather my happiness should not be, so fine; my solitude is sublime -for, instead of what I have described, there is a sublimity to welcome me home; the roaring of the wind is my wife; and the stars through my window-panes are my children; the mighty abstract Idea of Beauty in all things I have, stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness. An amiable wife and sweet children I contemplate as part of that Beauty, but I must have a thousand of those beautiful particles to fill up my heart. I feel more and more every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone, than shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my spirit the office which is equivalent to a king's Bolyguard: then Tragedy with scepter'd pall comes sweeping by:' according to my state of mind, I am with Achilles shouting in the trenches, or with Theocritus in the vales of Sicily, or throw my whole being into Troilus, and, repeating those lines, 'I wander like a lost soul upon the Stygian bank, staying for waftage,' I melt into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate, that I am content to be alone."-vol. i. pp. 234, 235.

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This devotion to his art, too, was accompanied by the firmest confidence in his own powers. He felt (1819) every confidence that if he chose, he could be a popular writer." (v. ii. p. 12). The more he knew what at his diligence might effect, "the more his heart distended with pride and obstinacy" (p. 14); and although Mr. Milnes produces some of his letters, which profess an apparent indifference to the well-known coarse and stupid 'articles' in the 'Quarterly,' and in 'Blackwood's Magazine,' to which Keats's death has so long been popularly attributed, yet we are far from being satisfied that such a mind as his could have borne such a blow uninjured, however his pride mav have concealed the wound.

Keats's first publication was a small volume, (1816),

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