43-48. Byron's consecration to the cause of Greek independence proves how sincerely he felt these lines. They were written only three years before his death; five years after that event, by the aid of England, France and Russia, Greece regained her freedom. 49-72. Pyrrhic dance; said to be named from the inventor Pyrrhicus. It is accompanied by the flute and is intended to imitate the motions of a combatant. Pyrrhic phalanx; so called from Pyrrhus (= The Red-haired) King of Epirus. See the History of Rome under the years 281-275 B.C. Cadmus, is fabled to have brought the alphabet from Egypt to Greece. This story corresponds with the teachings of Comparative Alphabetics. Polycrates: Tyrant (Prince) of Samos, a generous patron of the Arts and of Letters. Miltiades: Commander of the Greek army at Marathon. 73-96. Suli; Parga; in Epirus. acleidan blood: = the heroic race descended from Herakles (Hercules). There may be an allusion here to the myth of the Heracleida. the Franks a king: Louis XVIII. the French. HEBREW MELODIES. With these two little lyrics, each indicative of a constantly recurring mood, we may appropriately close our study of Byron. Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the Gods! Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit, Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit; Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star.' (Andrew Lang.) JOHN KEATS. His JOHN KEATS, the son of a livery-stable keeper, was born in London in 1795. He was removed from school at fifteen and apprenticed to a surgeon. imaginative faculties were roused by reading the Faerie Queene, and when he came of age he resolved to devote himself to Literature. Cowden-Clarke and Leigh Hunt early discovered his genius; the latter published the Sonnet on Chapman's Homer in The Examiner, Dec. 1, 1816. Keats' first volume of poems (1817) attracted little attention - -which is not wonderful when we remember that Scott and Byron were publishing at this time. Endymion (1818) is Greek only in its central conception of Beauty as a thing to be worshipped. In execution it is Gothic: like Alph, the sacred river, it runs Through caverns measureless to man, Blackwood's and The Quarterly descended like mastodons on this poem, tearing up its luxuriant over-growth and trampling under foot the tender flowerets that gave promise of so glorious a summer. Financial troubles, his own delicate health, the death of a brother and a distracting love-affair tightened the strain upon Keats' sensitive nature, already overwrought. While struggling against these ills, he produced his most beautiful work, the Ode on a Grecian Urn, the Ode to a Nightingale and The Eve of St. Agnes. After many experiments, he had at length found subjects suited to the display of his peculiar genius. To what more aërial heights he might have soared, we can only in sorrow conjecture. Consumption laid upon him its cruel grasp; the unfinished Hyperion is his swan-song. A voyage to Italy gave no relief; in the twenty-sixth year of his age, in the Eternal City he closed his eyes in easeful death. He was buried 'in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of Cestius, and the massy walls and towers, now mouldering and desolate, which formed the circuit of ancient Rome. The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.' 1 LIFE AND TIMES. BIBLIOGRAPHY. The tendency of this generation to think over-highly of Keats and his work comes out plainly in Sidney Colvin's Keats (E. M. L.), which 1 Shelley: Preface to Adonais. ranks him by power, temperament and aim as 'the most Shakespearean spirit that has lived since Shakespeare.' Rossetti's Keats (Gt. Wr.) is more judicious in tone and contains a more critical examination of the quality of Keats' verse. Those who wish to make a study of Keats at first hand must consult The Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats, edited by H. Buxton Forman: 4 vols. and supplement; London, 1889-1890. CRITICISM. — Leigh Hunt's Principal Reviews of Keats are to be found as follows: (1) First Volume of Poems (1817) in Forman i.; (2) The Stories of Lamia, The Pot of Basil, The Eve of St. Agnes, etc., in Forman ii.; Memoir of Keats in Forman iv.; Selections from Keats, with Critical Notice in Hunt's Imagination and Fancy. Shelley: Adonais; An Elegy on the Death of John Keats. In reading this impassioned monody it must be remembered that Shelley was misinformed as to the immediate cause of Keats' death. Scattered through Shelley's Letters are many references to Keats. These are indexed in Forman iv. De Quincey: Notes on Gilfillan's Literary Portraits; John Keats. Ten pages devoted to Horace, Lucretius, Johnson, Addison and Homer; six pages to Keats. Condemns unsparingly the affectations and solecisms of Endymion, but speaks highly of Hyperion. The latter poem is also touched on in DeQuincey's Milton v. Southey and Landor. Matthew Arnold: Essays in Criticism, Second Series; John Keats. Brings out finely what is best in Keats as a man, and dwells upon his power of 'naturalistic interpretation.' Lowell: Among my Books, Second Series; Keats. Written in 1856 and chiefly biographical; a great deal of this essay has therefore been superseded by more recent works. In concluding, Lowell claims for Keats 'more of the penetrative and sympathetic imagination which belongs to the poet, of that imagination which identifies itself with the momentary object of its contemplation, than any man of these later days.' Courthope: The Liberal Movement in English Literature; Essay V. With his brilliant pictorial fancy [Keats] was able to conjure up before his mind's eye all those forms of the Pagan world which were, by his own confession, invisible to Wordsworth; but, on the other hand, to the actual strife of men, to the clash and conflict of opinion, to the moral meaning of the changes in social and political life, he was blind or indifferent.' See also Bibliography on Shelley and Wordsworth. THE EVE OF ST. AGNES. The legend of St. Agnes tells us that she was a Roman virgin of noble family who suffered martyrdom in the fourth century. The 21st of January was sacred to her, and it was believed that on the eve of that day, maidens, by fasting, might get sight of their future husbands. is a simile in admira ble keeping,' as the painters call it; that is to say, is thoroughly harmonious with itself and all that is going on. The breath of the pilgrim is visible, so is that of a censer; his object is religious, and so is the use of the censer; the censer, after its fashion, may be said to pray, and its breath, like the pilgrim's, ascends to heaven. Young students of poetry may, in this image alone, see what imagination is, under one of its most poetical forms, and how thoroughly it 'tells.' There is no part of it unfitting. It is not applicable in one point, and the reverse in another.' - Hunt. 10-18. purgatorial rails. . . . most felicitous [is] the introduction of the Catholic idea in the word 'purgatorial.' The very color of the rails is made to assume a meaning and to shadow forth the gloom of the punishment.' - Hunt. ache in icy hoods and .'- Hunt. mails. 'Most wintry as well as penitential. 19-45. flattered - softened, soothed. Hunt's rhapsody on this word seems a trifle far-fetched. their pride = their proud array. the brain, new-stuffed with triumphs gay. Compare Il Penseroso, 5-8. 46-72. couch cause to recline. The diction here and in the preceding stanza shows suggestions of Romeo and Juliet - Keats' favorite Shakespearean play. See Act ii. Sc. 3, lines 37-38 of that play: And where unbruiséd youth with unstuffed brain Indeed the Eve of St. Agnes thrills with the same high-wrought emotion that throbs and glows throughout the Balcony-Scene in Romeo and Juliet. train (58). I do not use train for 'concourse skirts' sweeping along the floor.' -- Keats; Hoodwinked: blinded. amort = deadened: a cor of passers by,' but for How fares my Kate? What, sweeting, all amort? Taming of the Shrew, iv. 3, 36. 6 her lambs unshorn (71). In the Catholic church formerly the nuns used to bring a couple of lambs to her altar during mass.' Hunt. 73-105. beldame (90). The prefix in this word, though etymologically cognate with the French beau,'' belle' (beautiful), was regularly used in Middle English to indicate secondary relationship: thus, beldame grandmother; belsire grandfather. This usage is also discernible in Modern French: 'beau-fils' son-in-law; 'beau-frère' brother-in-law. Gossip (105). On this word as text, Archbishop Trench preaches a delightful sermonette, in English Past and Present, Lecture iv. 106-135. a little moonlight room. The poet does not make his little moonlight room' comfortable, observe. The high taste of the exordium is kept up. All is still wintry. There is to be no comfort in the poem, but what is given by love. All else may be left to the cold walls.' - Hunt. St. Agnes' wool. See note on line 71. liege-lord of all the Elves and Fays: Oberon. brook, seems inaccurately used for 'restrain' or 'refrain from.' Keats' earlier poems abound with such inaccuracies, and they justly aroused DeQuincey's wrath. Tears. He almost shed tears of sympa thy to think how his treasure is exposed to the cold; and of delight and pride to think of her sleeping beauty and her love for himself. This passage asleep in lap of legends old' is in the highest imaginative taste, fusing together the imaginative and the spiritual, the remote and the near.' - Hunt. 136-171. Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose. Both the color and the perfectness of the full-blown rose enter into this comparison. passing-bell. The church-bell, tolled at the death of a parishioner, for the purpose of frightening away the evil spirits that would seize the departing soul. When the passing-bell doth toll And the furies in a shoal Come to fight a parting soul, Sweet Spirit, comfort me! Herrick Litanie to the Holy Spirit, 21-24. the monstrous debt, was his monstrous existence, which he owed to a demon and repaid when he died or disappeared through the working of one of his own spells by Viviane.'. - Forman, ii. 84. For the storm referred to in line 170, see Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien (near the end): ever overhead Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten branch Above them; and in change of glare and gloom 172-198. a missioned spirit: a spirit sent (mitto) to aid the aged woman. ring-dove fray'd and fled = a ring-dove which has been frightened and has fled. |