JOHN KEATS was born in Moorfields, London, October 29, 1796. The exact place of his birth is said to have been a livery-stable which belonged to the family. He was sent to school at Enfield, where the master's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, became his intimate friend.

In 1811 Keats was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary; but he had inherited a small property, and as his tastes did not lie in the direction of surgery and medicine, he soon left the business and devoted himself entirely to poetry, at which he had been dabbling for some time.

He published a volume of his early poems in 1817, which seems not to have attracted any special attention, though he had won the admiration and friendship of Leigh Hunt, in whose Eraminer some of his sonnets had appeared. In 1818 he published his longest poem, "Endymion," which opens with the oft-quoted line

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

It was dedicated to the memory of Chatterton. This poem was severely criticised by Blackwool's Magazine and the Quarterly Review. Keats was extremely sensitive to criticism, and when he died, three years later, a story somehow sprang up that these attacks were the cause of his death. The truth was, that he was naturally delicate, with a tendency to consumption, and had overtasked himself by attending on a dying brother. Hawthorne, in "P.'s Correspondence," purporting to be written from London by an insane man who strangely mingles the past with the present, and both with fancy, alludes to this and at the same time gives by implication a delicate estimate of the poet: "Keats? No; I have not seen him except across a crowded street, with coaches, drays, horsemen, cabs, omnibuses, footpassengers, and divers other sensual obstructions intervening betwixt his small and slender figure and my eager glance. I would fain have met him on the sea-shore, or beneath a natural arch of forest-trees, or the Gothic arch of an old cathedral, or among Grecian ruins, or at a glimmering fireside on the verge of evening, or at the twilight entrance of a cave, into the dreamy depths of which he would have led me by the hand; anywhere, in short, save at Temple Bar, where his presence was biotted out by the porter-swollen bulks of those gross Englishmen. I stood and watched him fading away, fading away along the pavement, and could hardly tell whether

VOL. III.-1

me.

he were an actual man or a thought that had slipped out of my mind and clothed itself in human form and habiliments merely to beguile At one moment he put his handkerchief to his lips, and withdrew it, I am almost certain, stained with blood. You never saw any thing so fragile as his person. The truth is, Keats has all his life felt the effects of that terrible bleeding at the lungs caused by the article on his 'Endymion' in the Quarterly Review, and which so nearly brought him to the grave. Ever since he has glided about the world like a ghost, sighing a melancholy tone in the ear of bere and there a friend, but never sending forth his voice to greet the multitude. I can hardly think him a great poet. The burden of a mighty genius would never have been imposed upon shoulders so physically frail and a spirit so infirmly sensi tive. Great poets should have iron sinews."

In 1820 Keats published a third volume of poems, containing "The Eve of St. Agnes," which is perhaps his best, "Lamia," the unfinished Hyperion," the "Ode to the Nightingale," and the much admired "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

66

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

Shelley, who admired him enthusiastically, made him the subject of his beautiful elegiac poem "Adonais." A year or two later the ashes of Shelley were laid beside those of the friend and poet whom he mourned.

The ridicule which was heaped upon Keats was largely due to political spite, rather than to calm judicial criticism. On the other hand, he was as violently admired by his friends as he had been abusively attacked by the reviewers. Yet, whatever the faults of his earlier works, his later unquestionably place him among the masterpoets of his school. Richard Monckton Milnes has written his life and edited his letters.

LAMIA.

PART I.

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 Tushes green, and brakes, and cowslip'd
lawns,

The ever smiten Herines empty left
His golden throne, Bent warm on amorous theft:
From high Olympus had he stolen light,
On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight
Of his great summoner, and made retreat
Into a forest on the shores of Crete.
For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt
A nymph, to whom all hoofed Satyrs knelt;
At whose white feet the languid Tritons pour'd
Pearls, while on land they wither'd and adored.
Fast by the springs where she to bathe was
wont,

And in those meads where sometimes she might haunt,

Were strewn rich gifts, unknown to any Muse,
Though Fancy's casket were unlock'd to choose.
Ah, what a world of love was at her feet!
So Hermes thought, and a celestial heat
Burnt from his winged heels to either ear,
That from a whiteness, as the lily clear,
Blush'd into roses 'mid his golden hair,
Fallen in jealous curls about his shoulders bare.
From vale to vale, from wood to wood, he flew,
Breathing upon the flowers his passion new,
And wound with many a river to its head,
To find where this sweet nymph prepared her
secret bed:

In vain; the sweet nymph might nowhere be found,

And so he rested, on the lonely ground,
Pensive, and full of painful jealousies

Of the Wood-Gods, and even the very trees.
There as he stood, he heard a mournful voice,
Such as once heard, in gentle heart, destroys
All pain but pity: thus the lone voice spake :
"When from this wreathed tomb shall I awake?
When move in a sweet body fit for life,
And love, and pleasure, and the ruddy strife
Of hearts and lips? Ah, miserable me!"
The God, dove-footed, glided silently
Round bush and tree, soft-brushing, in his speed,
The taller grasses and full-flowering weed,
Until he found a palpitating snake,
Bright, and cirque-couchant in a dusky brake.

She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson-barr'd; And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the gloomier tapestriesSo rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,

Thou smooth-lipp'd serpent, surely high inspired!

Thou beauteous wreath with melancholy eyes,
Possess whatever bliss thou canst devise,
Telling me only where my nymph is fled,-
Where she doth breathe!" 'Bright planet, thou

hast said," Return'd the snake, "but seal with oaths, fair God!"

"I swear," said Hermes, "by my serpent rod, And by thine eyes, and by thy starry crown!" Light flew his earnest words, among the blossoms blown.

Then thus again the brilliance feminine:
"Too frail of heart! for this lost nymph of thine,
Free as the air, invisibly, she strays
About these thornless wilds; her pleasant days
She tastes unseen; unseen her nimble feet
Leave traces in the grass and flowers sweet:
From weary tendrils, and bow'd branches green,
She plucks the fruit unseen, she bathes unseen:
And by my power is her beauty veil'd
To keep it unaffronted, unassail'd
By the love-glances of unlovely eyes,
Of Satyrs, Fauns, and blear'd Silenus' sighs.
Pale grew her immortality, for woe

Of all these lovers, and she grieved so
I took compassion on her, bade her steep
Her hair in weird syrops, that would keep
Her loveliness invisible, yet free

To wander as she loves, in liberty.
Thou shalt behold her, Hermes, thou alone,
If thou wilt, as thou swearest, grant my boon!"
Then, once again, the charmed God began