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

the first time, and although in no degree comparable
to the more perfected effusions of this great poet's
genius, they nevertheless abound with new illustra-
trions of the depth of his nature, and of the fruit-
fulness of his exuberant and precocious imagination.
Although " The Cap and Bells " is a mere unfinished
eccentricity—as curious in its way as the " Peter
Bell " of Shelley, both being humorous and both
posthumous--it is nevertheless so vivid and surpris-
ing, that the fairy dramatis personce become at once
enshrined as household recollections—Bellanaine, the
beautiful Princess ; Corallina, her nurse and confi-
dant; Elfinan, the mannikin Emperor; Eban, his
ebony page; Hum, the soothsayer; Bertha Pearl,
the toast of Canterbury; and, best of all, old Crafti-
cant, a pigmy compound of Pollonius and Fadla
deen. To our thinking, however, the most exquisite
among all these " Literary Remains," is the love
song at page 259, Vol. 11. beginning—
" Hush, hush! tread softly! hush, hush, my dear!"

and ending with this impassioned couplet—
" The stock-dove shall hatch his soft twin•eggs and coo
Which I kiss to the melody, aching all through!" ,

To return to the memorials of Keats contained in
the two volumes now under criticism, we may ob-
serve that the principal interest of the work consists
in its demonstration that Keats was not killed by
adverse criticisms, but that he was the victim of con-
cumption ; that terrible disease icing, in his instance,
rendered doubly deathful by the intensity of one
absorbing passion—his love for ***", a young lady
living at Hampstead. As affording indisputable evi-
dence of this, the book is altogether triumphant. So far
was thelyoung poet from being destroyed by the article
in the Quarterly, that he was about the very last being
in existence who could be affected by the condemna-
tion of a reviewer. Writing to Mr. Hessey, in 1818,
he says himself very beautifully (Vol. I. p. 214) :
"My own domestic criticism has given me pain,
without comparison, beyond what Blackwood or the
Quarterly could inflict; and also when I feel I am
right, no external praise can give me such a glow as
my own solitary reperception and ratification of
what is fine." He understood himself, although,
with the exception of a few private friends, he was
not in the smallest degree comprehended by his con-
temporaries. From the petulant sneer of Words-
worth, when alluding to "Endymion" as a " pretty
piece of Paganism," up to the ferocious attack of the
Quarterly Review, which provoked Shelley's noble
elegy of " Adonais," poor Keats encountered in al-
most every direction, rebuffs, depreciation, and
contumelies. Still, if these brutal assaults fell harm-
lessly upon the masculine nature of Keats, it was from
no lack of virulence on the part of the assailants. As
Mr. Milnes well expresses it (I. 213), " the malice
was weak only because the genius was strong ; the
arrows were poisoned, though the armour they struck
was proof, and able to save the life within." Thank
God it was so ; that the young poet who exclaimed ,
(I. 215) " I would sooner fail than not be amongst
the greatest !" and who declared at another period
(I. 203), that he should write " from the mere yearn-
ing and fondness he had for the beautiful, even if his
night's labours should be burnt every morning, and
no eye ever shine upon them"—could believe in his
heart and write with confidence to one of his
bosom companions these words :—" I think
I shall be among the English poets after
my death !` (I. 227.) We exult at this simple
acknowledgment as we have exulted over those ego-
tistical odes of Horace in which he foresees his re-
nown with posterity, or as we have exulted over those
superb sonnets of Shakspere (Nos. xviii. and lx.),
in which he expresses his credence in his own poetical
immortality. Knowing its defects, Keats also knew
the truth and vitality of his genius; and his prescience
of his future celebrity was an ample breastplate
against the shafts of his antagonists. No : he died
not from anguish at a criticism, as it has been so long
erroneously imagined ; the simple record of the origin
of his decease runs as follows :