sustaining titles to be ranked above the works that have been mentioned, and among the highest that could be mentioned, as works pre-eminently of imagination. There are no Poets with whom the imaginative is so completely the staple support, the one uniquely-developed quality of the mind, as with these. They place this tendency under no restraint whatever; they assign no limits to themselves; they have no limits. Of Keats, it is especially true that the most simply and exclusively imaginative topics are most in favour with him, topics on which we can have the least possible knowledge, and the utmost conceivable liberty of speculation. His favourite scenes are the super-mundane, his favourite themes the abstract. To endow these with that dreamy reality at which alone he aims, all the bright and recondite wealth of Nature is culled,-the most refined reality, to lead to the subtlest fancy. He pours out the Poesy of Nature's keen observer and admirer, and imagination's most unresisting slave. To continue the separation which we have thus incidentally made between the two Poets, let us begin with more especially describing the poetry of Keats; that, as the younger, less copious, and less noble writer, he may have our first and briefest review. John Keats was born of humble extraction in the year 1796. He received a classical education, or at least the rudiments of one, at Mr. Clarke's school at Enfield; he was then bound apprentice to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon in Church Street, Edmonton; he was not happy in the profession to which he was thus externally devoted, and the strong literary tastes which he had manifested at school pursued him closely now. In 1817, when he was twenty-one, he published a volume of Poems, which we have never seen, as it is with some difficulty that his entire works can be obtained; but, though by no means destitute of merit, the volume does not seem to have been one on which his poetical character at all rests, whatever his poetical promise may have done. There were political opinions however in it, which, had its claims upon public notice been much greater, would it appears have been likely to condemn it with the party which was then in the ascendant. In 1818, he published his strange wild Poem of Endymion.* The story is entirely mythological, as its title imports, and the sole fact on which the poem turns is, that Diana or the Moon falls in love with Endymion, a beautiful shepherd of Caria, who *The above particulars are drawn from Leigh Hunt's Lord Byron and his Contemporaries.' was fond of spending his nights upon Mount Latmos, gazing on the heavens. That around such a scanty and unrealizeable fable, a young man of twenty-two should be able to weave such a web of fairy fancies as the four books of 'Endymion,' each of a thousand lines or upwards, present, we think is, at least, surprising. But when we come to examine the copiousness of diction, and the richness of imagery; the marvellous ease with which he keeps his hero, through full three Books, wandering in air, sky, Hades, anywhere but on earth, as though that alone were the element he was not familiar with, our surprize rises immediately into a conviction that there is no common amount of genius squandered and lavished on this uncommon theme. His wings seem only to be weary while he is resting them upon earth. If for a moment he lets his reader down to breathe this mundane atmosphere, he is evidently so anxious to be off again, that you are obliged to prepare for another flight, that he may feel at home. He is the very Endymion of his Tale; he is the Moon's Lover; so wayward, dreamy, melancholy, mad a being, that truly it would seem to be the very Poesy of Lunacy that inspires him. And yet, though the dreamy part of the Poem, the flights, and the regions, are ethereal-and, for ourselves, we never travelled on so strange a tour under a more sustained or sustaining guide—the action and persons, such as there are, are human. The moon is forced to become a woman; and the heavens derive their imagery from the realities, though they be the fairest and the subtlest of earth. In the opening book he gives us a firm and steady footing on terra cognita, we suppose that we may be able to take from it a better spring into æther. Yet listen to the argument, as it were, of his description. It is the morn of Pan's festival in Latmos-the rustic altar rises in the midst of the secluded, hill-protected plain-the glad and garland-crowned children of the vale gather near it-the shepherds come on in their gay costumes-the Priest, and the solemn, sacred chorus-the sacrifice is offered-the Pæan raised. Endymion, the young and melancholy Lord, appears among them. The games begin. In the intervals the tale of ancient days is told to the observers who loiter on the sunny banks, or to the athletes ceasing from their toil, and joining the more quiet group. Some few, the old and the sad, the village sages, the Priest, and the young Endymion, retiring to greater seclusion, speak of Life, and the Valley of the Shadow of Elysium and its strange imaginings. Peona, Endymion's sister, perceives the sorrow that darkens her brother's brow, and, in her sisterly affection, wiles him away to a lone isle, in order to fathom, and, were it possible, to remove his grief. She beguiles him to the unfolding of his sadness. It is the well-known tale of Dian's love that he rehearses; though who his fair but mystic visitor may be, or what the strange throbbings of his own bosom mean, he knows not. Peona kindly, yet spiritedly, rebukes his morbid and melancholy abstraction; but Endymion is convinced that there is something too deep, unearthly, absorbing, in his Love, to have its trancing tyranny thus spirited away. With this the first book ends. Endymion's defence of his Love, and the hymn to Pan, are finished and beautiful pieces of Poetry, that may hold up their heads in any company, and do honour to any bard. And here, with this book, terminates all the earth, so to speak, of the Poem. To follow the Poet through the other three books is beyond our power. The only language in which a continuation of the analysis would be tolerated, would be that of the Poem itself. Divested of this, there is nothing to be presented before us, but hurryings through sky, and earth, and sea-waking dreams, and dreamy wakings-miserable solitude, caused by the human becoming divine (the fair Lady of the bower vanishing away into the pale crescent of the heavens)—or strange and unexpected bliss, caused by the horns of Cynthia moulding themselves into human form. The whole is of the subtlest and most fanciful imagination; and though it might in many moods weary one by its airy and baseless treadings, yet no one not enchained to Earth, will gainsay the assertion that there is Poetry in every page, in every line. "A thing of Beauty is a joy forever : A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways He calls it, in his preface, "A feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished;" and so it is. He says: "It is not of such completion as to warrant its passing the press; nor should it, if I thought a year's castigation would do it any good: it will not, the foundations are too sandy. It is just that this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that, while it is dwindling, I may be plotting and fitting myself for verses fit to live." "The imagination of a boy," he continues, "is healthy; the mature imagination of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following pages. I hope I have not, in too late a day, touched the beautiful mythology of Greece, and dulled its brightness: for I wish to try once more before I bid it farewell." 6 The reader of this Preface and Poem will wonder where Gifford's humanity or mind was when he wrote that abominable article in the Quarterly,' mildewing and crushing a fair bud of early promise; and seeing no poetry, only because, on this occasion, he had no poetry to see with. Afterwards appeared the volume containing "The Eve of St. Agnes,' and Hyperion.' Lamia,' 'Isabella,' There are also some minor Poems in it, of which that on the Grecian Urn is a perfect gem, and the rest in general pretty and average. ODE ON A GRECIAN URN. 1. Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What pipes and timbrels? 2. What wild ecstacy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Though winning near the goal-yet, do not grieve; VOL. I. No. 3.-New Series. U 3. Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed For ever piping songs for ever new; 4. Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? To what green altar, O, mysterious priest, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? 5. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. The argument of the first of the chief Poems, Lamia, is this:-Hermes steals from Olympus, in the olden time thus prettily described,— Upon a time, before the faery broods Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, Before King Oberon's bright diadem, Sceptre and mantle, clasp'd with dewy gem, Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns From rushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd lawns, His golden throne, bent warm on amorous theft :" and makes retreat into a forest on the shores of Crete. |