MODERN POETS. KEATS. THE saying of the old Greek—“Those whom the gods love die young"was probably never more strikingly exemplified, in a certain sense at least, than in the life and death of John Keats. Few, and indeed, if we except Chatterton, may we not say none, have ever been more wonderfully endowed with that divine gift of genius than Keats in none of whom we know had Nature done more than for him, unassisted by the discipline of life, to form a great poet, and does not this correspond in a great degree with the idea of "those whom the gods love." A few short years of a fevered life of genius, and at the age of less than five-and-twenty years, the wonderful self-taught -should we not say rather nature-taught-lad was laid to rest under the calm shade of the old Honorian wall, his grave buried in flowers, and leaving behind him a name and an influence in English poetry such as has been left by only one or two of the greatest masters. Keats did not live to taste that fame himself, nor to wield and extend that influence which, to his nature, would have been so sweet; and thus in him the second part of the maxim was fulfilled, for in every sense, in the youth, vigour, and freshness of the imagination, as well as in the mere age as we count it by years, John Keats died young. Some poets may be characterised by certain qualities which may seem to have given the whole bent and tinge to their minds and genius, if not to the exclusion, at least to the casting into the shade the other great qualities of mind which, in their combination, form the poet. If called upon to assign some such characteristic title to Keats, we should at once call him the poet of the imagination. His whole mind seemed to flow towards and strengthen the imaginative qualities, so that if we except Shakspeare and Spenser, to the latter of whom Keats' imagination bore a striking resemblance, we shall hardly find any English poet who, in this particular, approached the wonderful boy under consideration. The consideration of Keats' circumstances may heighten this conviction, but is by no means necessary to implant it; every image, and we might say every line, of his poetry is replete with treasures of the imagination such as are hardly to be found elsewhere in English poetry. But, as we have said, the consideration of the circumstances of the poet's life may wel heighten that wondering admiration which we conceive every candid reader of imagination must accord to his works. A most imperfect education, an apprenticeship to a country surgeon, a feverish passion, a painful illness, and an early death, may be said to comprise the history of John Keats; and few circumstances can be supposed, we should imagine, less favourable to the rapid development of such a genius as that which he possessed. We have mentioned the name of Chatterton in connexion with that of Keats, and it must be confessed that the points of similarity and of divergence between their genius was very remarkable. Both almost equally young; both starting at once into a position of eminence as poets of a high and original order of mind; both almost equally indebted to nature, and equally unindebted to training for the remarkable powers exhibited, and both dying so young, and leaving behind them so painful a history and so remarkable an influence. Both, it is worthy of remark, turned naturally to antiquity for the themes of their songs. It was in the poems of the supposititions Rowley that Chatterton's strength was apparent it was in the still more ancient and more imaginatively beautiful realms of the Greek mythology that the genius of Keats revelled in a way to which no other modern poet has approached. This peculiarity is a rather remarkable one, and might afford food for not a little curious speculation as to the reasons why a genius almost premature in its development should naturally have turned to ages either long gone by, or entirely obscured by the dim haze of distance, and the wild fables which form their only records. Be the reasons, however, of these things what they may, the fact of this natural bent in the case of Keats is one of the most salient points with which we meet in an attempt at forming a just estimate of his poetical character. He was the classical poet of the modern world; and it is to this perhaps, as much as to any great superiority of his poetry itself, that it has gained and continues to gain so great a hold upon a certain class of minds in the community, and that class usually the most influential from its culture and talent. In saying this, it must not be understood that we would depreciate in the smallest degree the great beauty and excellence of the poetry, wonderful in itself, and yet more wonderful when we consider its author's circumstances; but we yet believe that the surpassing charm which Keats possesses for many minds even over such poets as Byron and Shelley, he owes to that wonderful power of reproducing all, and more than all, the majesty and beauty of the old classical fables, joined with a spirit which none of the old classical writers knew or possessed. In Keats' poems there are, as might be expected, a large number of minor imperfections and crudities which nothing but time, a thing not granted him, can enable any young poet of original mind to free himself from. The great improvement in these respects visible in Keats in the later works of his genius, show that his mind, almost prematurely perfect, was not less so in its efforts at self-discipline than in any other respect. At an age when even our greatest poets have usually been content with fugitive pieces or a University poem, shadowing forth in the dimmest way their future greatness, Keats had written his longest poem of "Endymion," abounding in wonderful beauties though not devoid of faults. He had endured without sinking under the bitter and unjust criticisms of the reviewers, and instead of a bitter reply and a feeling of general misanthropy, had set to work upon other poems which, with the beauties heightened, showed many of the faults removed that had marked his earliest poem. Of such a youth as this it required no prophet to foretell his future fame, that was certain; but few even of those who most admired Keats could have hoped to see his name occupy the place which it does in the temple of fame, and the greatest poet of the age confess himself in very much the disciple of the young surgeon. We might go on to say much of the peculiarity of his verse, which it requires some little effort in most persons fully to enjoy from its very peculiar character, but perhaps we shall best attain our object by allowing the poet to speak for himself, and trusting to his powers of making himself understood and fully appreciated. No better example of his peculiar manner can be found than is exhibited in the opening of "Endymion :"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways Pouring into us from the heaven's brink. With these strangely and subtly musical lines was the first poem of Keats ushered into the world; it met a very poor reception, or rather we may say a very unmerited and unjust reception, at the hands of the critics. Some, indeed, of the public had enough of penetration to see that a new star of the very first magnitude had arisen on the poetical horizon; but for a time the critics prevailed, and, with the unusual form of the verse, with its remarkable richness and strangeness of rhymes and even of rhythm for allies, a few critics, either incompetent or thoroughly prejudiced, succeeded for a short time in ignoring the beauties and exaggerating the defects of "Endymion" to a remarkable extent. Had Keats been but half a poet; had he been even a less original and remarkable poet than he was, he might have succumbed, and his poetry certainly would have done so to the storm. There was, however, far too much of life and vigour in the poet for this. In "Endymion" itself there were too many passages of surpassing beauty, and it possessed too general a spirit of poetic power, to be at their mercy for more than a short time. Such a strain as the following had in itself the germs of an immortality of fame by no means at the mercy of a critic :— But at the setting I must bid adieu To her for the last time. Night will strew Of flowers, garlands, love knots, silly posies, We miscall grief, bale, sorrow, heartbreak, woe, In the short poem of "Isabella," Keats showed a depth of power in the imagining and delineation of love which must ever remain a marvel to all, but which can scarcely fail to give the poem an ever new charm for the young. In it, however, as in "Zamia," there is less of that marvellous sympathy with everything sweet or beautiful in nature, which amounts to a voluptuous sensuousness not easily understood by most temperaments. In some of its manifestations, however, it is understandable enough, as in the beautiful poem "The Eve of St. Agnes," held by many of the best judges to be the most perfect of small poems in our own or any language. The reader is carried along with the poet's feelings so as almost to feel the cold of nature and the warmth of affection, so wonderfully vivid in their description : St. Agnes' Eve-Ah, bitter cold it was! The owl for all his feathers was a-cold; The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold; Numb were the beadsman's fingers while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seemed taking flight for heaven, without a death. Past the sweet virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. The picture must be confessed to be perfect as a cameo, and yet with all the colour and life of a great painting; nor is the following less wonderful : She hurried at his words, beset with fears, A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. And they are gone: ay, ages long ago For age unsonght-for slept among his ashes cold. To us it seems, however, that in the fragment of " Hyperion," Keats rose to the highest pitch of which his genius was capable, in the short time. allowed it by death. Nowhere can we find in English poetry anything like it, in its calm and noble beauty so like what we sometimes see in our happiest dreams. The imagination of Keats led one long and beautiful dream, forming a strange contrast to his work-a-day life. Keats' gods are his own creation; no such deities are met with in the works of the ancients. There, indeed, we may find the vigour, the beauty, the eternal atmosphere of youth and gladness, or-as in Eschylus-of sublime despair; but it is only in Keats that we meet with the sublime calm, the moveless majesty of feeling which commends itself at once to us as something loftier, and more truly god-like than all those other ideas of their nature, which could but think of them in beauty and in strength. The address of "Oceanus," the dethroned god of sea, to the assembled Titans, as it is perhaps the noblest passage in the poem, is certainly the best fitted to exhibit its remarkable peculiarity in the respect referred to : Great Saturn, thou Hast sifted well the atom-universe; But for this reason that thou art the King, The heavens and the earth were manifest: Then thou first-born, and we the giant-race, Found ourselves ruling new and beauteous realms. Now comes the pain of truth, to whom 'tis pain; O folly for to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm That is the top of sovereignty. Mark well! As heaven and earth are fairer, fairer far Than chaos and blank darkness, though once chiefs, And as we show beyond that heaven and earth In form and shape compact and beautiful, In will, in action free, companionship, |