with other men, as in Shelley, Wordsworth, and America's great poet, Emerson. As a soul dwells in one or the other of these elements will its conceptions of beauty be more or less refined, from the man that recognizes it only in combinations of wit, fancy, and prettiness, to him who is alive to the visible shows of nature, and yet further, to him whose finer sense is only excited by these outward splendors to discern a spiritual Beauty streaming from the heavens and the earth, from life and his own soul. Such an one, recognizing its heavenly mar riage with Truth and Love, can say with Wordsworth,— "Beauty a living presence of the earth, Which craft of delicate spirits hath composed An hourly neighbour." The highest Beauty, then, is seen only to him who sees more than it, who knows its eternal companions. There is, also, a desire in all men, more or less developed, for an outward perfection of expression in the poet. His words should be musical, and clothe his conceptions in beautiful forms. His universal desire for harmonious expression-what is it in its last analysis but a recognition of the harmony of the spiritual universe? Music is not a thing of " pitch-pipes" and fiddle-strings; it is the answer given by the material world to a spiritual longing. So with beauty of form. It is a hint of a deeper beauty. Could we stand in space and look upon God's great poem, the created universe, we should doubtless discover it to be perfect in form and harmonious; a work in which all colors, sights, and sounds combine in a grand unity. The mind of man feels this, and seeks, in its lower sphere, in this respect, to "be perfect as its Father in Heaven is perfect." And herein is a great difference in the power of men; in their capacity to receive or their skill in the use of language, forms, and sounds. This difference does not correspond to the difference in spiritual insight. On the contrary, men possessing a smaller degree of the latter are often more gifted in the use of the former. Also, "Many are the Poets that are sown By Nature; Men endowed with highest gifts, Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse." It would be interesting to investigate the cause of this separation of things which we would suppose should be united; but our remarks have already been too much extended upon this division of our subject. Let us now, by the light of our views of the Poetic, endeavour to indicate the position of the author we propose to review. Few persons qualified to pronounce judgment will now, we suspect, deny to Keats a high rank among modern English poets. He belongs to that class of writers who have been condemned without a hearing. It is now generally understood that sarcasm directed against the poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson, is but the expiring echo of a departed criticism. Those who indulge in it are supposed, either to be too indolent to give to these great masters the study required for their appreciation, or so obstinately wedded to old models that they are incapable of understanding the That the works of these writers constitute an era in our literary history we cannot doubt; that they are the prophecy and in part the realization of a higher species of poetry than has yet been written, we have as little doubt. Therefore it would now be superfluous in a critic to waste paper and ink in arguing about the merit of these bards, as a class. Their empire is secure. They have passed into that empyreal region to which the shafts of criticism do not fly. All that can now be done is to settle precedence between their conflicting claims to excellence. new. His task is relieved from much of its difficulty by the great dissimilarity in the genius of these writers. We now only laugh at the stupidity of the reviewers who placed Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey in one "school." Now and then we encounter a genuine descendant of this sagacious band who includes Shelley, Keats, and Tennyson in the same category. But there can be little comparison between these great poets. The genius of each is as accurately defined as that of Shakspeare from his contemporary dramatists or from Milton. It is true, in most of them we discover a spiritual insight into nature and life, which forms a bond of union; yet even in this particular, their different points of observation and their differ ent degrees of artistic merit and maturity of power widely separate them. Of this illustrious company we can ascribe to Wordsworth alone that full development and culture necessary to the employment of all the poetic energy upon all the materials within conse its reach. His life has been truly a consecrated one; crated to the discipline of his lofty powers and the high walk of poesy. His productions are mature. The hand of the artist has brushed away the last speck of dust and left them perfected and arrayed, like a gallery of calm majestic statues, awaiting the reverence of the world. Or, to use the Poet's own noble figure when speaking of "The Excursion" and the yet unpublished work "The Recluse' "The two works have the same kind of relation to each other, if he may so express himself, as the Ante-chapel has to the body of a Gothic Church. Continuing this allusion, he may be permitted to add, that his minor Pieces, which have been long before the Public, when they shall be properly arranged, will be found by the attentive Reader to have such connection with the main work as may give them claim to be likened to the little cells, oratories, and sepulchral Recesses, ordinarily included in those Edifices." This high encomium we can bestow upon no other of those writers we have named. Coleridge with a capricious hand scattered the riches of his wonderful intellect and imagination over a surface too extended to ensure his complete success in any department. He has left a few poems which will be read as long as Englishmen read any thing. We know not how the "Ancient Mariner," "Genevieve," the fragment of "Christabel," or "Mont Blanc," could be improved. These specimens we think will authorize us to claim for him a higher rank as an artist than for any modern English author. Indeed, to find their rivals in this respect we must look to a few portions of our old dramatists, the best poems of Goethe, and the choicest products of Grecian art. Could he have embodied all the conceptions of that gifted soul of his in such exquisite and harmonious forms! but we know not that we should desire it. We sometimes think his influence upon English Literature will be more enduring, though less apparent to the superficial observer, than if he had been merely a poet. His conversation was manna from heaven to a little band of noble men in their journey through the desert, and gave them strength to contend against the hordes of literary savages that surrounded them. His eloquent and often mystical books were among the first to awaken the attention of England to the exhaustless riches of the German mind. He brought to the criticism of Shakspeare a spirit as superior as it was incomprehensible to the dwarfed rules of his time. Would we understand his true influence we must seek for it in the better portions of Hazlitt, of Lamb, Hood, and Hunt, even in Wordsworth, Shelley, and Southey, and thence, like the imperceptible effects of a broad river, branching out into innumerable rills and creeks, until a whole region is fertilized. That Shelley was gifted with depth of spiritual insight, and power to describe the most profound emotions of the soul, and the links binding it to the material universe, beyond all other English poets, we had almost said beyond Shakspeare himself, we cannot doubt. His plumb and line sound those awful depths of consciousness, the secret places where joy and terror and love are born, which to some men are unknown. But alas! he did not live to give complete utterance; his brain was crazed by the woes of humanity, his short life embittered by a persecution, of which we have no parallel in the history of Modern Literature ! Yet what might not that Genius, in the maturity of its power, have accomplished, that amid the chaos of a life like his could shape such forms of awful grandeur as rise before us in " Prometheus Unbound"; that could sway the passions as in "The Cenci"; that could glide into the realm of the spiritual world, as in " Adonais" and "Alastor," or revel in the pure sunshine of beauty, as in "The Sensitive Plant" and "The Skylark"? It has been truly said of Shelley, "He was a broken mirror, whose fragments reflected the forms of all things. He was a poet for poets." His writings are to the bard what the Belshazzar's Feast of Allston is to the artist more precious that their creator left them with all their imperfections, to work their way into the souls of men. The genius of Southey was oriental. He was a man out of his longitude by half the breadth of the globe. His "Thalaba" and "Curse of Kehama" are as truly wonderful and excellent in their way, as his "Madoc" and "Roderic" are truly the reverse. He reasoned upon politics and religion, he looked upon society like a Brahmin: he did all manner of foolish things, and wrote poems that should be hung up as "scarecrows," yet twice he found his true element, and left those specimens of Eastern allegory and loftiest poetry unrivalled in our language. Each of these great writers, no less than Byron and Scott, has been imitated more or less successfully. The peculiarities of master and disciples have thus divided the poetic band into groups. Among these the latest is that composed of Keats and his followers. Though so early taken from the earth, he lived long enough to express his thought in a few productions inferior to no others of the age in originality of design and execution. We say Keats was an original poet. Of course we do not employ the term in the usual foolish mode, as indicating an entire dissimilarity from all others. Men of true genius are not monsters. Although possessing a temperament and occupying a position which makes it impossible that they should ever be other than themselves, yet influences from lofty minds steal in to direct them, and underneath all their peculiarities flows the tide of a common humanity, as the same ocean ripples around the flower-decked islands of the tropics, and lashes the icy banks that frown over the polar seas. Of course there are men whose productions are widely separated; who stand back to back; yet the majority of writers are distinguished by characteristics not easily described. A slight peculiarity of temperament, or the slight predominance of a single faculty; a little difference of mental culture; a year's additional spiritual experience, either of these things slightly colors the medium through which that strange assemblage of shows and mysteries we call nature and life are viewed, and constitutes the seer an original author. These peculiarities are probably his own. Temperament, depth of being, and capacity of spiritual vision, mental and moral experience,-these came from Him who willed that each of his creatures shall differ from every other. But the same materials surround all. Incitements, and hints, and suggestions must come from others. In fact, only by contact on every side with differing minds, can one acquire its proper development. By the attraction and repulsion of every individual in the great mass of humanity, is each soul driven to its own place. We must, then, look for much that is common to us all in the most original mind, and not deny its claim to genuineness, even if we can discover all the sources of its inspiration, and all the media of communication between itself and other spirits. Therefore we shall not hesitate to bestow upon Keats the title of a great original poet. His peculiarity, as we have before observed, is the love of the Beautiful. He is the apostle of sensuous beauty, the Spenser of modern poets. Heaven and earth, air and sea, and the forms of human and mythological beings are constantly filling his soul with the materials of his poetic creation. He revels, he exults, he is oppressed and faints, amid the luxury around him. He cannot drive away |