I. THE STORIES OF LAMIA, THE POT OF BASIL, THE EVE OF ST. AGNES, &c., AS TOLD BY MR. KEATS. A REVIEW BY LEIGH HUNT published in The Indicator for the 2nd and 9th of August 1820. IN laying before our readers an account of another new publication, it is fortunate that the nature of the work again falls in with the character of our miscellany; part of the object of which is to relate the stories of old times. We shall therefore abridge into prose the stories which Mr. Keats has told in poetry, only making up for it, as we go, by cutting some of the richest passages out of his verse, and fitting them in to our plainer narrative. They are such as would leaven a much greater lump. Their drops are rich and vital, the essence of a heap of fertile thoughts. The first story, entitled Lamia, was suggested to our author by a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, which he has extracted at the end of it. We will extract it here, at the beginning, that the readers may see how he has enriched it. Burton's relation is itself an improvement on the account in Philostratus. The old After his second paragraph Hunt extracts the quotation from Burton given at page 40 of the present volume. book-fighter with melancholy thoughts is speaking of the seductions of phantasmata. According to our poet, Mercury had come down from heaven, one day, in order to make love to a nymph, famous for her beauty. He could not find her; and he was halting among the woods uneasily, when he heard a lonely voice, complaining. It was A mournful voice, Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys "And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife Mercury went looking about among the trees and grass, Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake. The admiration, pity, and horror, to be excited by humanity in a brute shape, were never perhaps called upon by a greater mixture of beauty and deformity than in the picture of this creature. Our pity and suspicions are begged by the first word: the profuse and vital beauties with which she is covered seem proportioned to her misery and natural rights; and lest we should lose sight of them in this gorgeousness, the "woman's mouth" fills us at once with shuddering and compassion. She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, The serpent tells Mercury that she knows upon what quest he is bound, and asks him if he has succeeded. The god, with the usual eagerness of his species to have 1 Hunt continues his quotation down to the end of line 63 (see page 13). his will, falls into the trap; and tells her that he will put her in possession of any wish she may have at heart, provided she can tell him where to find his nymph. As eagerly, she accepts his promise, making him ratify it by an oath, which he first pronounces with an earnest lightness, and afterwards with a deeper solemnity. Then once again the charmed God began An oath, and through the serpent's ears it ran The creature tells him that it was she who had rendered the nymph invisible, in order to preserve her from the importunities of the ruder wood gods. She adds, that she was a woman herself, that she loves a youth of Corinth and wishes to be a woman again, and that if he will let her breathe upon his eyes, he shall see his invisible beauty. The god sees, loves, and prevails. The serpent undergoes a fierce and convulsive change, and flies towards Corinth, A full-born beauty, new and exquisite. Lamia, whose liability to painful metamorphosis was relieved by a supernatural imagination, had been attracted by the beauty of Lycius, while pitching her mind among the enjoyments of Corinth. By the same process, she knew that he was to pass along, that evening, on the road from the sea-side to Corinth; and there accordingly she contrives to have an interview, which ends in his being smitten with love, and conducting her to her pretended home in that city. She represents herself as a rich orphan, living "but half-retired," and affects to wonder that he never saw her before. As they enter Corinth, they pass the philosopher Apollonius, who is Lycius's tutor, and from whom he instinctively conceals his face. Lamia's hand shudders in that of her lover; but she says she is only wearied; and at the same moment, they stop at the entrance of a magnificent house : A pillar'd porch, with lofty portal door, Where hung a silver lamp, whose phosphor glow Mild as a star in water. Here they lived for some time, undisturbed by the world, in all the delight of a mutual passion. The house remained invisible to all eyes, but those of Lycius. There were a few Persian mutes, "seen that year about the markets;" and nobody knew whence they came; but the most inquisitive were baffled in endeavouring to track them to some place of abode. But all this while, a god was every night in the house, taking offence. Every night With a terrific glare, Love, jealous grown of so complete a pair, Hovered and buzzed his wings with fearful roar Above the lintel of their chamber door, And down the passage cast a glow upon the floor. Lycius, to the great distress of his mistress, who saw in his vanity a great danger, persuaded her to have a public wedding-feast. She only begged him not to invite Apollonius; and then, resolving to dress up her bridals with a sort of despairing magnificence, equal to her apprehensions of danger, she worked a fairy architecture in secret, served only with the noise of wings and a restless sound of music A haunting music, sole perhaps and lone Throughout, as fearful the whole charm might fade. This is the very quintessence of the romantic. The walls of the long vaulted room were covered with palms and plantain-trees imitated in cedar-wood, and meeting over head in the middle of the ceiling; between the stems were jasper pannels, from which "there burst forth creeping imagery of slighter trees;" and before each of these "lucid pannels' Fuming stood A censer filled with myrrh and spiced wood, &c.' Twelve tables stood in this room, set round with circular couches, and on every table was a noble feast and the statue of a god. The guests came. They wondered and talked; but their gossiping would have ended well enough, when the wine prevailed, had not Apollonius, an unbidden guest, come with them. He sat right opposite the lovers, and -Fixed his eye, without a twinkle or stir Full on the alarmed beauty of the bride, Brow-beating her fair form, and troubling her sweet pride. Lycius felt her hand grow alternately hot and cold, and wondered more and more both at her agitation and the conduct of his old tutor. He looked into her eyes, but they looked nothing in return: he spoke to her, but she made no answer: by degrees the music ceased, the flowers faded away, the pleasure all darkened, and A deadly silence step by step increased, The bridegroom at last shrieked out her name; but it was only echoed back to him by the room. Lamia sat fixed, her face of a deadly white. He called in mixed 1 Hunt adds here lines 178 to 182 (see page 35); and, after the words statue of a god, he quotes lines 133 to 137 and 142 to 145. |