The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1878-02-23
Recent Publications.

From Egypt to Japan, by Henry M. Field,
d. D., ia the second part of Journey Round
the World, of which the first part, From the
Lakes Of Killarney to the Golden Horn,' was
noticed last year, by this paper with much COM
mendatiop. The author, who is brother of
Cyrus W. and of David Dudley Field, has a
charming appreciation of what he sees, and
tells of familiar things in way which gives
them new interest. His route is familiar until
he comes to week in the Himalayas His
description of the comparatively new ground 10
graphic and interesting. The gentle Hindoo
seems to him more debased than the Moham
medan or the Buddhist, but he has strong hopes
that he will finally be converted, and, unlike
Macaulay, he thinks that Christianity, and not
Science, will do it. He was much pleased with
the rule Of the Dutch iu Java, and thinks they
manage better than the English. His stay in
China was brief, but he makes one significant
suggestion about the introduction of railroads
and machinery there, that millions of people
barely keep their heads above water now; so
that If the system os lahoc is changed suddenly
they must perish before they can adapt them
selves to new order of things. He closes
with three weeks in Japan, but our readers
have mostly heard Prof. Morss's graphic lecture
this week which has treated the subject mora
at length. Like the professor, he is warm ia
his praises of their gentleness, and says that
in all his Otiental wanderings he met with un-
varying courtesy. But it is discouraging to find
that journey around the earth is getting to be
considered commonplace and those who make
it are called "Worli-Trotters. New York
Scrbner, Armstrong s. Co.; Por,l and Loring
Short s. Harmon.
The Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne
with introduction and notes by HAIRY Buxton
Forman (New York; Scribner & Armstrong
Portland: Loring, Short & Harmony is vol
ume of much literary interest as throwing
light upon the painful latter days of the poet.
These letters also show US Fanny Brawne, not as
the baleful CHAIRMAN that she has been painted
bat as woman of at least average rightnind.
edness and sincerity, and who must have been
sorey perplexed aud tried by the morbid vagarles
of her poet-lover. The letter of Keats, so often
quoted, that strikingly delneatsd the "beauty
of leopardess" is convincingly proyen not to
have referred to Miss, Brawne, bat to another
lady presumably Miss Rsynoldsl whom
Keats met several months previous to his &C.
quaintance with the former. Miss Reynolds
seems to have impressed his imagination DOW
erfully, but emporarily-while his affection
until the end of his short, sad Life, belonged to
Fanny Brswne. Even the int rest that
the admirers of Keats cannot but feel in his
personal history, even the justice, tardy though
it be, that these letters do to the wo-
man to whom they were addressed, scarcely
can justify the making public Of writings so eu
trely personal, so sacredly the property of one
only. Even the implied willingness of Miss
Brawne herself that they should bs publ she'd
is hardly enough to prevent the readers
sense of uuwarrsntable intrusion upon conf
dental speech and consequent discomfort. Ii
is painfu to see these dead forms that we're
once filed with living feeling, galvanized into
sem5lance of life, raised up to go through their
pathetic show to satisfy the curiosity that at
taches to everything done or written by a IA.
nous mao Literary history should have a
conscience; this conscience should teach it re-
serve and limit its desires of knowledge. The
idea gained of Ksats'5 nature through the
means Of these lettrrs, written in tina NOR
bdIy tense feeling of a dying man to whose
sensitive nature life ever seemed IN
kidd and paintal-is nos 80 pleasant aud ia
is to be hoped not so trua as that formed from
the reading of his poems. Keats the man
must be BEST known to us through Keats the
poet. 1t is there, in his verse, that the genius
OF him rose above the sad limitations of dis
ease and dependency aod made for him his
apotheosis during life. His mortality seemed
in long nrOcasS of Iicinp daath-iu com Densa.
tion his i'm mmortality visited him on earth. The
piteous sketch OF Keats in his last hours drawn
by his friend Joseph Severn, forms the frontis.