high intellectual sympathy. This friend had introduced him to agreeable society, both of books and men, and those verses were written just at the time when Keats became fully aware that he had no real interest in the profession he was sedulously pursuing, and was already in the midst of that sad conflict between the outer and the inner worlds, which is too often, perhaps always in some degree, the Poet's heritage in life. That freedom from the bonds of conventional phraseology which so clearly designates true genius, but which, if unwatched and unchastened, will continually outrage the perfect form that can alone embalm the beautiful idea and preserve it for ever, is there already manifest, and the presence of Spenser shows itself not only by quaint expressions and curious adaptations of rhyme, but by the introduction of the words" and make a sun-shine in a shady place," applied to the power of the Muse. Mr. Mathew retains his impression that at that time "the eye of Keats was more critical than tender, and so was his mind: he admired more the external decorations than felt the deep emotions of the Muse. He delighted in leading you through the mazes of elaborate description, but was less conscious of the sublime and the pathetic. He used to spend many evenings in reading to me, but I never observed the tears in his eyes nor the broken voice which are indicative of extreme sensibility." The modification of a nature at first passionately susceptible and the growing preponderance of the imagination is a frequent phenomenon in poetical psychology. To his brother George, then a clerk in Mr. Abbey's house, his next Epistle is addressed, and Spenser is there too. But by this time the delightful complacency of conscious genius had already dawned upon his mind and gives the poem an especial interest. After a brilliant sketch of the present happiness of the poet, "his proud eye looks through the film of death;" he thinks of leaving behind him lays "of such a dear delight, That maids will sing them on their bridal night; he foresees that the patriot will thunder out his numbers, "To startle princes from their easy slumbers;" and while he checks himself in what he calls "this mad ambition," yet he owns he has felt "relief from pain, When some bright thought has darted through my brain- Than if I'd brought to light a hidden treasure." Although this foretaste of fame is in most cases a delusion, (as the fame itself may be a greater delusion still,) yet it is the best and purest drop in the cup of intellectual ambition. It is enjoyed, thank God, by thousands, who soon learn to estimate their own capacities aright and tranquilly submit to the obscure and transitory condition of their existence: it is felt by many, who look back on it in after years with a smiling pity to think they were so deceived, but who nevertheless recognize in that aspiration the spring of their future energies and usefulness in other and far different fields of action; and the few, in whom the prophecy is accomplished—who become what they have believed—will often turn away with uneasy satiety from present satisfaction to the memory of those happy hopes, to the thought of the dear delight they then derived from one single leaf of those laurels that now crowd in at the window, and which the hand is half inclined to push away to let in the fresh air of heaven. The lines "As to my Sonnets-though none else should heed them, I feel delighted still that you should read them," occur in this Epistle, and several of these have been preserved besides those published or already mentioned. Some, indeed, are mere experiments in this difficult but attractive form of composition, and others evidently refer to forgotten details of daily life and are unmeaning without them. A few of unequal power and illustrative of the progress of genius should not be forgotten, while those contained in the first volume of his Poems are perhaps the most remarkable pieces in it. They are as noble in thought, rich in expression, and harmonious in rhythm as any in the language, and among the best may be ranked that "On first looking into Chapman's Homer." Unable as he was to read the original Greek, Homer had as yet been to him a name of solemn significance, and nothing more. His friend and literary counselor, Mr. Clarke, happened to borrow Chapman's translation, and having invited Keats to read it with him one evening, they continued their study till daylight. He describes Keats's delight as intense, even to shouting aloud, as some passage of especial energy struck his imagination. It was fortunate that he was introduced to that heroic company through an interpretation which preserves so much of the ancient simplicity, and in a metre that, after all various attempts, including that of the hexameter, still appears the best adapted, from its pauses and its length, to represent in English the Greek epic verse. An accomplished scholar may perhaps be unwilling, or unable, to understand how thoroughly the imaginative reader can fill up the necessary defects of any translation which adheres, as far as it may, to the tone and spirit of the original, and does not introduce fresh clements of thought, incongruous ornaments, or cumbrous additions; be it bald and tame, he can clothe and color it—be it harsh and ill-jointed, he can perceive the smoothness and completeness that has been lost; only let it not be like Pope's Homer, a new work with an old name—a portrait, itself of considerable power and beauty, but in which the features of the individual are scarcely to be recognized. The Sonnet in which these his first impressions are concentrated, was left the following day on Mr. Clarke's table, realizing the idea of that form of verse expressed by Keats himself in his third Epistle, as This Epistle is written in a bolder and freer strain than the others; the Poet in excusing himself for not having addressed his Muse to Mr. Clarke before, on account of his inferiority to the great masters of song, implies that he is growing conscious of a possible brotherhood with them; and his terse and true descrip tion of the various orders of verse, with which his friend has familiarized his mind-the Sonnet, as above cited-the Ode, and last, Round, vast, and spanning all, like Saturn's ring," 66 The sharp, the rapier-pointed Epigram,-" betokens the justness of perception generally allied with redundant fancy. These notices have anticipated the period of the termination of Keats's apprenticeship and his removal to London, for the purpose of walking the hospitals. He lodged in the Poultry, and having been introduced by Mr. Clarke to some literary friends soon found himself in a circle of minds which appreciated his genius and stimulated him to exertion. One of his first acquaintance, at that time eminent for his poetical originality and his political persecutions, was Mr. Leigh Hunt, who was regarded by some with admiration, by others with ridicule, as the master of a school of poets, though in truth he was only their encourager, sympathizer, and friend; while the unpopularity of his liberal and cosmopolite politics was visited with indiscriminating injustice on all who had the happiness of his friendship or even the gratification of his society. In those days of hard opinion, which we of a freer and worthier time look upon with indignation and surprise, Mr. Hunt had been imprisoned for the publication of phrases which, at the most, were indecorous expressions of public feeling, and became a traitor or a martyr according to the temper of the spectator. The heart of Keats leaped towards him in human and poetic brotherhood, and the earnest Sonnet on the day he left his prison riveted the connection. They had read and walked together, and wrote verses in competition on a given subject. "No imaginative pleasure," characteristically observes Mr. Hunt, "was left unnoticed by us or unenjoyed, from the recollection of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer rain at our windows, or the clicking of the coal in winter time." Thus he became intimate with Hazlitt, Shelley, Haydon, and Godwin, with Mr. Basil Montague and his distinguished family, and with Mr. Ollier, a young publisher, himself a poet, who, out of sheer admiration, offered to publish a volume of his productions. The poem with which it commences was suggested to Keats by a delightful summer's-day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the Battery, on Hampstead Heath, into a field by Caen Wood; and the last, "Sleep and Poetry," was occasioned by his sleeping in Mr. Hunt's pretty cottage, in the vale of Health, in the same quarter. These two pieces, being of considerable length, tested the strength of the young poet's fancy, and it did not fail. For the masters of song will not only rise lark-like with quivering wings in the sunlight, but must train their powers to sustain a calm and protracted flight, and pass, as if poised in air, over the heads of mankind. Yet it was to be expected that the apparent faults of Keats's style would be here more manifest than in his shorter efforts; poetry to him was not yet an Art; the irregularities of his own and other verse were no more to him than the inequalities of that nature, of which he regarded himself as the interpreter: "For what has made the sage or poet write, But the fair paradise of Nature's light? In the calm grandeur of a sober line We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade." He had yet to learn that Art should purify and elevate the Nature that it comprehends, and that the ideal loses nothing of its truth by aiming at perfection of form as well as of idea. Neither did he like to regard poetry as a matter of study and anxiety, or as a representative of the struggles and troubles of the mind and heart of men. He said most exquisitely, that a drainless shower Of light is Poesy-'tis the supreme of power; 'Tis Might half-slumbering on its own right arm." |