The end of a century naturally brings review and retrospection, and this is true in a peculiar sense in this generation. The Victorian era, which has extended over so long a period, has seemed to signify in a marked degree progress and development. Yet in review

one is apt to look at the mighty changes, the great reformations, and the powerful men who have been identified with these revolutions, and not to consider the undercurrents which have led thither, the ebb and flow of many lives which have had their influence in moulding the age.

In literature we see this clearly exemplified, for in viewing literary growth, one points to Carlyle, to Macaulay, to Wordsworth, to Tennyson, to Browning, as the product of our time. In doing this one is undoubtedly justified, but is sufficient importance given to those writers who have broken through the thralls of the past and have so cleared away its difficulties and besetments that those coming later have been enabled to press on to higher achievements.

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these writers who have thus been but stepping-stones much praise is due. To them has been given the more difficult task of preparing the way. Might one not almost call them ambassadors heralding their masters. It is in looking back to the beginning of this century that we see examples of this, when Hunt, Shelley, and Keats form, as it were, an interregnum between the Georgian and the Victorian

eras.

Of these Keats may be termed the greatest. In a short, uneventhe gives us some of the f English literature: and s a worthy herald to the

et-laureate, Tennyson.

John Keats was born October, 1795, at Moorfields, London. His father had been employed in a livery stable, and having married his employer's daughter, ultimately gained possession of the business. But this humble position did_not signify lack of ability, and in John Keats we find many of the intellectual traits of father and mother. Keats received a classical education under Mr. Clarke, at Enfield. Having lost both his parents, he was, in 1810, apprenticed by his guardian to a surgeon. He con

tinued his medical studies for some time, but finally abandoned the profession as unsuited to his tastes.

In the boy we find but little trace of the poet, for although fond of reading, he was very pugnacious and high-spirited, and his schoolfellows predicted for him an active life in army or navy.

As a boy and as a man Keats had a wonderful way of winning friends, and friends once won he never lost. He himself, in a letter to his friend Bailey, said: "Men should bear with each other; there lives not the man who may not be cut up, aye, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best way, Bailey, is to know a man's faults, and then be passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no power to break the link." No wonder a man who thus could judge his fellowmen would draw others unto him. For this illustrates a purity and strength of character which would insensibly appeal to the higher instincts of man.

Soon after coming to London, Keats was introduced to a number of the leading literary men. They all looked on him as one to be loved and cared for; they saw his genius, and they also saw the

delicacy of his frame, and his need for encouragement and love. These they showered on him in abundance, and made his sad life brighter and happier.

But there was one characteristic of Keats, wherein lay at once his strength and weakness. In the pale face, the large brown eyes, the delicate veining, the sensitive contour, the prominent features, one could easily discern the passion and intensity of his nature.

And if to

such natures is given the greatest capacity for enjoyment, so in like degree is their capacity for suffering. If they are keenly awake to pleasure, so are they peculiarly sensitive to pain.

Keats is a striking example of this. His every nerve tingled with intensity of feeling, and his every sense was keenly alert to impressions of pleasure or pain.

In the pride of his manhood he sought to control this sensitive temperament, but if he succeeded in presenting to the world a calm. indifference, the very effort increased the inner turmoil and passion. When added to this overwrought sensitive nature we find a body permeated with germs of an inherited disease, we can well understand how Keats, at the early age of twenty-five years, was glad to gain rest and peace in death. This passionate intensity shook his frame until, worn out, the body could no longer contain the spirit.

Perhaps one may be inclined to belittle this characteristic, but is it not a spark of the divine which has been kindled in the soul to raise man nearer his Creator? The world is better for these intense natures, for thus it is inspired with more of the divine fire. But the one chosen to animate the world is wounded in the battle with the carnal flesh.

As before noted, Keats, in his early years, showed little sign of his future career. His genius was

awakened by reading Spenser's

Faery Queene," and this so aroused and thrilled him that in 1813 he wrote his first poem, "Imitation of Spenser."

Keats' work may be divided into three periods: First, that represented by the book of poems published in 1817; second, by the book published in 1818; and, third, by that published in 1820.

These three publications mark the growth of his power. The first book gave little promise of anything great. The style was a poor imitation of Spenserian verse. as Swinburne has said, "frequently detestable, a mixture of sham Spenserian and mock Wordsworthian, alternately florid and arid." The only redeeming point in the whole book was the sonnet, written in 1815, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer." This poem stands out in contrast to the others, and its excellence is thrown into bolder relief by the very shallowness of its surroundings.

It

In the second book, Keats attempts a long poem, "Endymion," based on classical mythology. was a stupendous undertaking for one so young and inexperienced, and it did not meet with success. The whole poem shows the undeveloped character of its writer. Harsh criticism poured in from all sides. Keats himself saw but too plainly the faults in his work, and in his preface to the poem notes, Knowing within myself the manner in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret I make it public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished."

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It is by his third work that Keats is raised to a foremost place in English literature. The rapidity of the growth from a third-rate

poet to one of the highest rank is marvellous. In 1818 he published "Endymion," which met with so harsh a reception, and but two years later appeared some of the finest poetry in the English language. Here were published, "Hyperion," "Lana," "Eve of St. Agnes," "Isabella," and the quintette of famous odes, "To Autumn,' "On a Grecian Urn," "To a Nightingale," "To Psyche," "On Melancholy."

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Again Swinburne says, "Of these odes perhaps the two nearest absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that, To Autumn,' and that, 'On a Grecian Urn'; the most radiant, fervent, and musical is that, 'To a Nightingale'; the most pictorial and perhaps the tenderest in its ardour of passionate fancy is that 'To Psyche'; the subtlest in sweetness of thought and feeling is that, 'On Melancholy.' Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen than any that is in these, lovelier it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see." "Hyperion was as great a success as "Endymion" had been a failure. It is more like Paradise Lost" in style than any other poem in the English language, and it was this very Miltonic artificiality that decided Keats to abandon and leave unfinished what he originally purposed to be ten books.

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The

fragment of another incomplete poem, "Eve of St. Mark," is very full of promise. Exquisite in its perfect simplicity, it predicted a great future for its author.

Of all Keats' poems, however, perhaps no two deserve more notice than "Eve of St. Agnes," and the ode, "To a Nightingale.'

The "Eve of St. Agnes" is illustrative of a story much the same as "Romeo and Juliet," how two young people became deeply

attached, notwithstanding that enmity has long separated their ancestral homes. The narrative runs through the poem like a gleaming thread binding together pictures most vividly most vividly beautiful. One cannot but feel its mesmeric charm, and one leaves it with the sensation that for a time the earth and its materialism has been dissolved into an imaginary dream, permeated with the incense of sense and enjoyment. Rossetti has said, "The power of the poem lies in the delicate transfusion of sight and emotion into sound; of making pictures out of words, of turning words into pictures; of giving a visionary beauty to the closest items of description; of holding all the materials of the poem in a long-drawn suspense of music and reverie.. It means next to nothing; but means that little so exquisitely, and in so rapt a mood of musing, or of trance, that it tells as an intellectual no less than a sensuous restorative. Perhaps no reader has ever risen from 'The Eve of St. Agnes' dissatisfied." This, one feels, is undoubtedly true, for the magnetic power of the pictures pervades the whole being, and fills one with a vague, dreamy delight.

The introductory stanza, descriptive of nature in its most forbidding mood, serves as a vivid and fitting background:

"St. Agnes' Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl for all his feathers was a-cold: The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,

And silent were the flock in wooly fold."

There the old priest gives a touch of life, and how pathetic is his glimpse of the gaiety around him:

"Northward he turned thro' a little door And scarce three steps, ere Music's golden tongue

Flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor; But no—already had his deathbell rung,

The joys of all his life were said and sung, His was harsh penance on St. Agnes' Eve."

From the old priest, doomed to see but the sterner side of life, we turn to view Madeline, the child of luxury and beauty:

"Full on the casement shone the wintry moon,

And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,

and

As down she knelt for Heaven's grace
boon,
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together
prest,

And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest,
Save wings, for heaven.
Her vespers done,

Of all the wreathed pearls her hair she frees;

Unclasps her warmed jewels one by one; Loosens her fragrant boddice; by degrees Her rich attire creeps rustling to her knees;

Half hidden, like a mermaid in sea-weed. Pensive awhile she dreams awake."

Could aught bring more exquisite enjoyment than these soft rhythmic verse. The very cadence seems to lull and soothe into a state of dreamy rest, and the reader comes back to the material world with a start and a sigh.

Turning to the ode, To a Nightingale," one has a further example of Keats' pictorial power. This poem is perhaps less rich in soft, full melody than "The Eve of St. Agnes," but it possesses more strength. The poet has seemed to put more of himself into it, and although here, too, one misses profundity of thought, it vibrates with more intense feeling, and thus thrills while it charms.

It was while in the garden listening to a nightingale that Keats wrote this ode. On scraps of paper he noted the impressions. made by this bird's song, and it was only on the suggestion and by the help of a friend that the fragments were pieced together and given to us as one of the masterpieces of human work. A few

stanzas will give some idea of the beauty of this poem:

"That I might drink, and leave the world

unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim :

Fade; far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou amongst the leaves hast never known

The weariness, the fever and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs ;

Where youth grows pale and spectre thin and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new Love pine at them beyond to

morrow.

Thou wast not born for death, Immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;

The voice I hear this passing night was heard

In ancient days by Emperor and clown: Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path

Through the sad heart of Ruth, when,
sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the
foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole
self!

Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music :-Do I wake or sleep?"

Speaking of this ode and especially of the two couplets:

ance-by any mind of whatsoever pitch of greatness.

From these two poems, examples of Keats' power over language, one can judge somewhat of the place. he holds in English literature.

His work certainly has not the simplicity and realism of Wordsworth's, nor the strong individuality of thought of Browning's, nor the perfect finish and culture of Tennyson's; but it has a charm peculiarly its own, a power over imaginative beautiful pictures which the work of all these lack. And when one remembers that all Keats' work was done before he had attained his twenty-seventh year one can appreciate as never before his genius. The poetry

Tennyson gave to the world in his youth is infinitely inferior, and yet what power of expression and beauty of thought age brought to him. Then, too, this poet-laureate had the advantage of reaping where Keats and Wordsworth had sown; they prepared the way, and it was to a great extent by profiting by their example and following in their footsteps that Tennyson attained the height of fame. In an especial way is Tennyson the child of Keats; power of description, beauty of language, perfection of detail are true of both. But if Tennyson's work is more highly polished, it lacks the spontaneity of Keats', and the profound

Miltonic grandeur apparent here and there in his later works.

Of Keats' dramatic power little need be said. In his poems we see but little trace of any such talent, and his attempted dramas are those of a boy, inexperienced and unformed; therefore one can only surmise what his development here might have been.

But why need one turn thither! Keats himself said, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever," and surely the depth of beauty in his work will never lose its charm, nor his name the place it has won in the hearts of the English race; or, as Lowell has truly and beautifully said of him:

"The few words which like great thunder drops

Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully,

Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might,

Serene and pure, like gushing joy of light, Shall track the eternal chords of Destiny, After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops.'

Lindsay, Ont.

NOTE. It was with deep emotion that we stood beside the ivy-covered grave of the gentle poet Keats, in the Protestant Cemetery on the Appian Way, without the walls of Rome, with its touching inscription, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." Near by, overshadowed by a melancholy cypress, that of the erring genius Shelley. On his tombstone are the simple words, "Core cordium,"-only his heart is buried there; his body was burned on the Bay of Spezzia, where it was washed ashore.-ĚD.