forget her. Oh! Brown, I have coals of fire in my breast. It surprises me that the human heart is capable of containing and bearing so much misery. Was I born for this end?"

He received at Naples a most affectionate letter from Mr. Shelley, urging him to come to Pisa, where he would receive every comfort and attention. After the many annoyances he encountered at Rome, one almost regrets that he did not accept this offer, except that at Pisa he could not have experienced the skilful solicitude of Dr. (now Sir James) Clark, which led him through the dark passages of mortal sickness with every alleviation that medical care and knowledge could bestow. It was thus alone that his life was preserved during December and January. On the last day of November he wrote his last letter, -in a tone of mind somewhat less painful. He spoke of his real life as something passed, and as if he were leading a posthumous existence. It ends with these words:" If I recover, I will do all in my power to correct the mistakes made during sickness, and if I should not, all my faults will be forgiven. Write to George as soon as you receive this, and tell him how I am, as far as you can guess; and also a note to my sister—who walks about my imagination like a ghost-she-is so like Tom. I can scarcely bid you good-bye, even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow. God bless you.

"JOHN KEATS."

After some weeks of acute physical suffering and of a fierce mental conflict with destiny, in which

MEMOIR OF JOHN KEATS.

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reason itself was, at times, overcome, he became calm and resigned; he talked easily and slept peace. fully. To Severn, who, to use his own phrase, “had been beating about so long in the tempest of his friend's mind," this change was most welcome, although conscious that it was rather owing to the increasing debility of his body, than to any real improvement of his condition. He desired a letter from his beloved, which he did not dare to read, together with a purse and letter of his sister's,* to be placed in his coffin, and that on his grave should be written these words:

HERE LIES ONE WHOSE NAME WAS WRIT IN WATER.

He died on the 27th of February, so quiet that Severn thought he still slept; his last words were "Thank God it has come."

Keats was buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome, one of the most beautiful spots on which the eye and heart of man can rest. It is a grassy slope, amid verdurous ruins of the Honorian walls of the diminished city, surmounted by the pyramidal tomb which Petrarch ascribed to Remus, but which antiquarian research has attributed to the humbler name of Caius Cestius, a Tribune of the people, only remembered by his sepulchre. In one of these mental voyages into the past, which precede death, Keats had told Severn that he thought "the intensest pleasure he had received in life was in watching the

* Miss Keats shortly afterwards married Señor Llaños, the author of "Don Esteban," "Sandoval the Freemason," and other works of considerable ability.

growth of flowers; " and another time, after lying a while quite still, he murmured, "I feel the flowers growing over me." And there they do grow, even all the winter long,-violets and daisies mingling with the fresh herbage, and in the words of Shelley 66 'making one in love with death, to think one should be buried in so sweet a place." Some years ago, when the writer of this memoir was at Rome, the thick grass had nearly overgrown the humble tomb-stone, which, however, few strangers of our race omit to visit; but whether this record of him escapes the wreck of years or not, there will remain, as long as the English language lasts, and be read, as far as it extends, the glorious monument, erected by the living genius of Shelley, the Elegy of Adonais. Nor will it be forgotten, how few years afterwards, in the extended burying-ground, a little above the grave of Keats, was placed another stone, recording that below rests the passionate and world-worn heart of Shelley himself-" Cor Cordium."

The thoughtful reader will hardly consider this biographical sketch, personal as it is, without its worth in estimating the due position of these Poems in the history of British literature. By common consent, the individuality of the Poet enters more directly into the consideration of his works than that of a writer in any other mental field. That these Poems should be the productions of a young surgeon's apprentice, with no more opportunities of study and reflection than belonged to the general middle class of his time and country, is in itself a

* The words on the stone.

psychological wonder, only to be paralleled by the phenomenon of Chatterton. While this reflection enhances the originality and palliates the defects of the earlier works of Keats, the picture of that sympathetic temper and genial disposition, which led his imagination to a novel and unscholastic treatment of classical tradition, and made him labour to realise a world of love and beauty in which his heart found itself most at home, would induce us to ascribe to the morose nature and lonely pride of Bristol's prodigy much of the misdirection of the rarest talents, and many otherwise undeserved calamities. And, when in pursuing the course of the later Poet, we find him too the victim of critical contempt, haunted by pressing poverty, struck with acute physical suffering, and blighted in his deepest affections, and yet, with a genius above fate, rectifying and purifying his powers to the very last, our personal interest identifies itself with our literary admiration, and we better appreciate the merit of the poet by understanding the nobility of the man. It is not indeed that he was notably one of those who "are cradled into poetry by wrong," and "learn in suffering what they teach in song," for his temperament demanded happiness for its atmosphere, and pleasure expanded without enervating his powers; but, it was perhaps required, for the vindication of his nature from the charge of sentimental sensuality and unmanly dependence, that he should be thus severely tried, and that the simple story of his life and death should be the refutation of those who knowingly calumniated, or unconsciously misapprehended him.

The works of Keats have now sustained in some

degree the test of time; his generation, fertile in poetical ability, has passed away, and a fair comparison may be instituted among its competitors for fame. Without entering on a question of so much intricacy, it cannot be denied that these Poems are read by every accurate student of English literature. It is natural that the young should find especial delight in productions which take so much of their inspiration from the exuberant vitality of the author and of the world. But the eternal youth of antique beauty does not confine its influences to any portion of the life of man. And thus the admiration of the writings of Keats survives the hot impulses of early years, and these pages often remain open, when the clamorous sublimities of Byron and Shelley come to be unwelcome intruders on the calm of maturer age. To these and such voices the poetic sense still listens, and will listen ever, in preference to more instructive harmonies; and the fancy recognises in the unaccomplished promise of this wonderful boy, a symbol of that old world, where the perfect physical organisation of man and the perfect type of ideal beauty may seem to have been crushed and obliterated by barbarian hands, but which perished, in truth, because these very aspirations could only be realised in another and still more glorious order of the universe.