The Sun.
London, England, 1848-11-14 00:00:00

" Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of Nature rolled,
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,
The canticles of love and woe."
Of the capacity of Keats for appreciating the ludi
crous, the letters here edited by Mr. Milnes present
us with abundant evidence. Hear him, for instance,
in one epistle complaining of a fit of laziness then
upon him, saying, in proof of it (I. 142), " I am in
that temper that if I was under water I would
scarcely kick to come up to the top !" Or, talking in
another place (I. 170) of the " mahogany-faced old
jackass who knew Burns, and who ought to have been
kicked for having spoken to him !" Or, complaining to
a friend at Oxford against duns thus—" So you are de-
termined to be my mortal foe—draw a sword at me,
and I will forgive—put a bullet in my brain, and I
will shake it out as a dew-drop from the lion's mane
—put me on a gridiron, and I will fry with great
complacency—but—oh, horror ! to come upon me in
the shape of a dun !"—(I. 54.) Or hear him again
depicting the miserable weather, as Judge Haliburton
would call them, " the juicy days" of Devonshire—
" As the drops beat against my window," says he in
one part (I. 122), " they give me the same sensation as
a quart of cold water offered to revive a half- drowned
devil—no feel of the clouds dropping fatness; but as
if the roots of the earth were rotten, cold, and
drenched." And, in another letter (I. 127), " I lay
awake last night listening to the rain, with a sense of
being drowned and rotted like a grain of wheat !"
And, in another (I. 217), " By the bye, you may say
what you will of Devonshire; the truth is, it is a
splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody,
muddy, slipshod county. The hills are very beauti-
ful, when you can get a sight of 'ern ; the primroses
are out—but you are in." Hear him again,
interrupting himself in the course of an-
other epistle in this wise—(11. 18)
" Talking of pleasure, this moment I was writing
with one hand, and with the other holding
to my mouth a nectarine. Good God, how fine ! It
went down soft, pulpy, slushy, oozy—all its delicious
embonpoint melted down my throat like a large beati-
fied strawberry !" Other and longer quotations we
must be allowed to give in proof of the comic powers
of Keats ; and we are satisfied that after their perusal
no one will expect us to speak of these quotations
apologetically. During the course of a delightful
pedestrian excursion through the lake-scenery in
Cumberland, otir poet describes a country-dance seen
by him in the village tavern of Treby—" It was,
indeed, no new cotillion fresh from France," says he
(I. 155) ; "no, they kickit and jumpit with mettle
extraordinary, and whiskit, and friskit, and toed it,
and go'd it, and twirl d it, and whirl'd it, and stamp'd
it, and sweated it, tattooing the floor like mad." On
another trip of a similar character he writes thus in
a spirit of amiable banter to a sick friend whose ill-
ness renders him incapable of participating in such
robust enjoyments :—" Buy a girdle," he exclaims
(I. 110), "put a pebble in your mouth, loosen
your braces for I am going among scenery
whence I intend to tip you the Damosel Rad-
cliffe. I'll cavern you, and grotto you, and water-
fall you, and wood you, and water you, and
immense-rock you, and tremendous-sound you, and
solitude you. 11l make a lodgement on your glacis
by a row of pines, and storm your covered way with
bramble-bushes. I'll have at you with hip-and-haw
small shot, and cannonade you with shingles. I'll be
witty upon salt fish, and impede your cavalry with
clotted cream." Here, however, as conclusive evi-
dence of the drollery stored in the bosom of this child
of love and susceptibility, are three humorous pas-
sages worthy of Swift in his finest moods :
" Whether he chose Cervantes' serious air.
Or laugh'd and shook in Rabelais' easy chair."
The first passage is conceived in the wildest spirit of
gaiety, and may be called