The times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1897-1901, 1901-03-10

would recognize that there is. after all
something right in the Sixth Command
ment. but did not draw the inference that
CLEAN of reason might also be found in
most of the rest of the Decalogue. The
! state Of society then, as always, provoked
revolt but the state of society
was grievous, not because its moral
laws were bad, but because its
laws were not obeyed Shelley had no
turn for narrative, and. in such poems as
THE Revolt of Isam,' II is the splendid
meteoric genius, the uneXcelled music that
captivate. In lyrics he was probably the
most original force since the Elizabethan
age; his verse is a singing and soaring
tame. In ''Adonais' his righteous indig-
nation carries him forward like an angel
with a sword of fire: and The Witch of
Atlas is a triumph in a new fairy way
of writing" His is the Muse of clouds
and stars, of sea and tempest, of all the
aspects, and, in appearance, most capri
cious forces of the world, yet his is also
the Muse of flowers and peaceful woods,
| of detection and of delight. What the
born rebel Milton. might have been with
out the foundation and rrammels of Puri-
|
and tender lyric note was even more ex-
quiste than Millions. Neither was, in
the full sense, human, for both were with
| out humor as may be seen in their hu-
morous pieces.
Keats but three years younger than
! Shelley d795), was more a true child of
| the nineteenth century. His social ideas,
| though of course Liberal, were more in
| allegiance; he was more exclusively
artist: and his art was more controlled
| by the revived Eliza bethanism of Leigh
| Hunt Q7SD. That singular man, who had
so much taste, and so much of it bad;
| so intense a theory of social benevolence,
and so keen 4 belief that it was more
blessed TO receive than to give. owed lit
tie" Gn the way of literature) Ito any but
the old masters, and many contempora-
ries owed not a little to him." Few owed
more. for good and bad, than Keats-Vir-
gil he had found out for himself, and had
translated when a schoolboy. Spencer,
too, he found for himself and Greece he
discovered, afresh in Lemprieres Dictionv
airy and in Chapman's Homer. But this
superficial euphuism and elaborate verbal
! quaintness he partly derived at second
hand from Leigh Hunt
That something in Leigh Hunt which
his violent conception of THE Cockney
School to Lockhart vas not hidden from
Keats, and inspired him with some bitter
words. 1t was what he derived from Hunt
that gave occasion to Keats assailants,
who were more of political than of liter
airy partisans. Lockhart, or Wilson, or
both, with the Quarterly reviewer, in at
lacking "Endymion' were attacking, they
thought member of an affected, effemi-
nate and Radical coterie. Keats himself
maturing with the suddenness of genius,
looked on ''Endymion" as thoroughly i'm
mature. But killed, or even discouraged,
by his critics he was not and on a page
of COPY of LAMA where his pub
fishers spoke OF his encouragement he |
wrote, This is a lie (The copy is in the |
possession of Canon Ainger) Keats, like |
Burns, whom he so intensely admired and |
so unerrlngly judged as a man and poet. |
was his own best critic. Despite his boy |
lsh lusciousness OF taste and the fever |
of letters written when dying, there was !
no manlier or more chivalrous soul in |
England than that of the poet OF the odes
to the nightingale and to autumn. Keats !
at his best attained sheer perfection of
language. of emotion, and Of thought.
As he advised Shelley to be, he was not
content with less than filling all the riffs
with pure gold. "Untaught," like the
minstrel of Odysseus, he combined a
Greek clarity and largeness of manner
with that romance which Greece does not
lack, but which he possessed in a degree
more conspicuous, at least to readers who
are not Greeks. Though he has not been
and cannot be initiated, he has supplied
to Tennyson and the best moderns
and an ideal. That the Shakes
pearean copiousness of humanity and hu-
NOR and dramatic genius would ever have
been his nothing indicates; but what
writer of our century, except Scott, has
possessed a large share Of these quail
ties? In poetry, not one, and it was in
prose that Scott wore his fragment of
the cloak of Shakespeare. For the CEN
fury has not produced, in England or
a great dramatic poet. 1t is to
fiction, to Scott, Dickens, Thackeray,
Stevenson, Meredith. Hawthorne, George
Eliot, that we must look for the humor
and humanity and passion which, earlier,
found their vehicle in the drama.
Ours is a reading rather than seeing
though this does not explain the
reason which made the great novelists
incapable of writing for the stage. OF the
other poets of the early century, Camp |
bell, Rogers, Moore, Landor, Hogg. and
he ladies, Mrs. Hemans, and /. f. L.
md Beddoes, space does not permit us
o treat. I.andor's audience has not in {
,reased; Rogers has none; Campbell is ]
,est remembered for war songs, which !
ear are overrated; Hogg, despite some
exquisite passages in 'Kilmeny," and {
some admirable songs, suffers from his :
exclusive devotion to Rob i
lie Burns. When Scott turned to fiction t
1870 the current of popular taste at once l
hanged into that channel. Byron had t
till his vogue; Keats, Shelley, and Cole ]
dge then sang only to the few initi- /
ted; Wordsworth was past his prime, and l
With the general public nothing was real I
y popular but fiction, and that fiction r
vas SCOTS. Miss Austen is probably / il
much more widely appreciated today /!
han when she died, little noted by the | O
world, in 1877. a criticism of Scotts +
ovels. which first made fiction supreme I
nj far above poetry in the estimation
f the reading public cannot be at ,
empted in this place. The best estimate N
T Scott, If far from most favorable, is .
is own. in the introduction to The For !,
nnes of Nigel" His faults of prolixity, n
aste, indifference to deiicacy of style. n
nd even to grammar; his big bow-wow' n
Elm Gas he calls it,; the stilted theatrical q
lnguage of his Catherine Glovers and ie
Ielen Macgregors-all these defects, with a
is hasty den ,uements (as of Shakes | cl
care and Moliere) are patent are con- r,
sssed, and probably deter many readers =.
-om making profit of his humor, his rich | W
nowledge of and sympathy with all hui +,
IAN nature, his infrequent but exquisite "