The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1879-03-08 00:00:00

THE KEATS MEMORIAL IN ROME.

In Rome, on Friday in las; week, a stone with an inscrip-
tion commemorating the residence of the poet Keats in a
house at the foot of Trinita de Monti Steps was unveiled in
the presence of the English kmbassador and a large number
of Eugtish and American reddents and visitors. The stone,
with its inscription in English and Italian, has been placed
by the care of Major-General Sir Vincent Eyre, who made a
very effective speech on the 3ccasion —The Daily Telegraph,
In a leader noticing the evest, gives an interesting sketch of
the last days of the youthfil poet, from which we make the
folio wing extract
. • In the early spring time of 182 t young Mr.
Severn, a distinguished artist, who had just won the
gold medal given by the Royal Academy for historical
painting, devoted himself to toe labour of love in-
volved in daily attendance upon his dying friend.
John Keats was gradually fading away when he was
brought from England by slow stages to Rome,
and rested at No. 24 in the Piazza di Spagna. The
young poet's life had been one round of cease-
less anxiety and reverse, He lost his mother
when he was only four years old, the mother
at whose door he had stood as sentinel with
a child's sword lest she should be disturbed,
and at whose death he hid himself in a nook for days
under his master's desk, end was "passionately
inconsolable;" he was taken from school when
he had begun to acquire a passion for reading,
and was " bound' for five years to a surgeon
at Edmonton. At the end of his apprentice-
ship, however, he broke away, and preferred the
friendship of Leigh Hunt and the literary society of
that time to the uncongenial drudgery of walking the
hospitals. It is impossible to believe that so sensitive a
youth could have been a successful surgeon, and cer-
tain it is that he soon put aside his instrument-case
for ever. How he wrote, what he wrote, and the
manner in which the first flowers of his youth-
ful genius were treated, all the world knows. But
he had other cares to suffer. To failure in
ambition were added a hitter disappointment
of the heart and an almost intolerable poverty. It
has never yet been satisfactorily decided whether
worldly embarrassments or a sensitive writhing under
unjust and unmerited literary attack most hastened
the end of John Keats. " 'Tis strange the mind, that
very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by
an article," sang his friend Lord Byron; and both in
prose and verse Shelley denounced the savage
criticism passed upon the poems ef his friend. The
poet himself left behind him a record of a wiser and
manlier spirit, "My own domestic criticism," he says,
"has given me pain without comparison beyond what
'Blackwood' or the 'Quarterly ' could possibly inflict.
I will write independently. I have written inde-
pendently, but without judgment. I may write
independently and with judgment hereafter. I
think I shall be among the English poets after my
death, and even as a matter of present interest the
attempt to crush me in the Qaarterly ' has only
brought me more into notice. It does me not the least
harm in society to make me appear little and
ridiculous." Be all this as it may, the end was near.
" There is death in that hand," whispered Coleridge to
Leigh Hunt, as the three friends met in a lane near
Highgate; and in the midst of his embarrassments
one night at Hampstead he woke up after a fit of
coughing and called for a light. He pointed to a
deep stain OA the pillow. "That is blood; I cannot
be deceived in its colour- that drop is my death.
warrant. I must die!" He would have died
sooner had it not been for young Severn, who
affectionately led him to Rome, and in whose arms he
passed away, murmuring "Thank God it has come."
His last injunctions were few and very simple. He
earnestly desired that a letter from the woman he
loved—about wham in his last journey to the South he
had said, " T can bear to die. I cannot bear to leave
her. My imagination is horribly vivid about her. I
see her. I hear her "—should be placed on his coffin,
together with a purse and a letter from his sister. All
English visitors to Rome know where they buried John
Keats. His grave is on a grassy hill amid the massive
walla and towers' now broken, decayed, and desolate,
that once formed the circuit of the ancient Capitol,
under the pyramid whichis the tomb of Caius Ceetius,
but which Petrarch ascribed to Remus. No poet was
ever buried in a more romantic spot, for the cemetery
is in an open space among the ruins, covered in
winter with violets and daisies. Young Severn, who
knew his friend so well, and had been the close con-
fidant of his dying hours acted judiciously in selecting
this favoured resting-place. Almost the last words of
Keats had been about the Nature he so passionately
loved, and the spring days, that seemed to him a re-
surrection of life and almost faded hope. He told
his friends, in one of his last letters, that he did not
"babble o' green fields," but he thought of them that
he mused on ever flower he had known from infancy,
that their shapes and colours were as new to him as if
he had just created them, that ho did not "care a
straw" for foreign flowers m hothouses; as "the sim-
ple flowers of spring are what I want to see again."
And then, just before the end came, he whispered to
his friend, • I feel the flowers growing over me." Thus
they buried the dead poet among the violets and
daisies of the old Roman ruins, "making one in love
with death," as Shelley said, "to think one should be
buried in ao sweet a place,"
Doubtless many a pilgrimage has been made to the
grave of John Keats this year by the migratory visitors
who are passing from the South of France to attend
the Easter ceremonies in the ancient city of Rome;
and perchance many who are unaccustomed to this
4' hallowed ground" will leave during the next few
weeks the poet's corner decked with early flowere. But
within a few days of the anniversary cif t 4 poet's death
there occurred this year in 13.0410 an especaally interest-
ing and beautiful ceremonryal. There was a scene
of some moment on the Spanish stepe, although
the weather is reported to have been cheerless
and inclement. Here ',and gathered a group of
artistic and literary celebrities, and round it cluster ed
crowds of English and American visitors., The Queen's
Ambassador and her Consul, the familiar faces of Mr.
Plowden and of Mr. Story, aztist and uovelist, Mr.
T. A. Trollope, the romance writer, Dr. Steele, a
journalist, General Hamley, and many more, at the
windows or in the street, assembled to efsslat at a
simple and touching ceremony. The friends and
admirers of Keats had determined atilt further to
perpetuate his peemary by affixing to the house, 24,
Piaeea di apnea, in Which he died fifty-eight years
ago, a marble memorial slab containing this simple
record: "The young English poet John Keats died
in this house on the 24th of February, 1821, aged
26." It fell to the lot of Maior•Qeireral -Sir
Vincent Eyre, to eelpse kindly efforte the erection of
the tablet ie 4e, to, °Alois the sympathetic crowd in
a few well-ehasen words. We can readily believe how
touchingly the gallant officer recalled to those who
had gathered round him the sad and simple etoeY Qf
the life of Keats, to whom justice has at last been
done by time, and reminded hie heerere of the pro-
found bitteeneae and ilieappourtment that dietated
the familiar epitaph, "Here lies One whose name is
writ in water." We can well understand what a
tribute of thanks was accorded to the "Marchese
Santasilia" for her gracious permission to erect the
tablet on her property, and with what eatisfaction the
care of it was confided to the eman authorities and
the Roman people. It only remained for Dr. Nevin,
on behalf cf his Aneerica,n countrymen, to aact, with
characteristic generosity, that the name of Keats was
written en their hearts. But one sad circumstance
clouded the day's eezemonlil. There dwells yet in
Rome Peet yeting Academy student of nighteand-
fifty years ago who gave lip everything for the sake
of his friend, who led the tieecl poet gently from
the cold of Englaud te the warmth of pleasant
Italy, who tended him so affectionately at the last,
whoeiaw him die, and who chose his grave in the ceme-
tery, the "place of rest and sleep." Mr. Severn still
lives in Rome, and age andinfir;eritiee alone prevented
his attendance the ethn mitcOoon amid the crowd on
the Sepie4 skive' yet though unavoidably absent he
muee have been present in spirit at re scene which
proyes that Shelley's thought has come true, and that
the name of John Keats wee ever "writ in water."
Death, "the imreoitalleing winter," has crystallized
the record into imperishable fame.