New Britain herald., 1925-04-15
AT YOUR LIBRARY
Kcaths in a New Light

hthtilh III NNN hhS" JOHN KEATS by Amy Lowell,
 "The aspects from which Amy | Lowell's Life Of John Keats may be called great are so many that 1t Is difficult 10 select one and call 1t more important than another. As study of sensitive, unusual, bril- liant, and finally sick boy, 1t eXcels in tenderness and penetrating pow CT. As a description of the poetic temperament in general and or the progress of Keats genius In particu- lar, 1t seems to me unequalled among critical studies, as a book or scholarly biography 1t represents an array of new material, maShaIed with the zest usually employed by explorers to lands or detectives at work on baffIing mystery cases. Nor has Miss Lowell allowed any one phase of the book to run away with her sense of proportion. She weaves them. makes them whole through real love of her subject and a mag nflcent prose style which is always readable and shiningly clear, burst ing every now and then into pas sages of lyric or dramatic intensity and beauty
 ITO recrcate the life of man in all its happy, tragic, wearisome yet fascinating detail, is what Miss Lowell set out 10 do. And she has made his friends and his time real to us. The writing of phrase. the construction of great stanza, these are as dramatic to her-and to us as we read them-as the two gun duel of a western thriller. This is
 the story of poet by a poet, the
 analysis of a lover by woman who
 would have understood him, who
 would have enid him for his weak
 ncsses and depored his sclfishness and sentimentaity but who would
 have been awed by the genius of his
 phrases and the sweetness of his
 character at its best,
 Tn her first volume Miss Lowell
 has been her happiest; for here she
 las her hero in his moments of TO-
 bust development, before trouble
 and disease had exaggerated ten
 dencies toward melancholy
 The last part of Miss Lowell's mar
 rative is told with skill and ten
 derness. Fanny Brawne becomes nc
 less real than Keats. The wasting
 body and fevered mind of the young poet. the lessening vitality combined with his repining poetic gift make a tragic picture. Into the hopelessness of his health Miss Lowell brings the brilliant light oi his poetry into relief. Nor must we forget the clear, beautiful picture oi his love for his brother Tom. and his unreasoning loyalty to the coars- CT grained George. demanding
 money from his new found home
 in America ..
 Throughout the two volumes Mis: Lowell has used letters gracefully and with telling effect. Some ot them have hitherto been unpub lished; but all of them seem fresl E by their clever placement. Good let - ters they are, especially the poet'' , own: letters that are like diaries, O ' notes filled with zest and humanity = or blazing with strained and tor b mented love. silly jealousy, or over ] sweet emotion.
 , "A rich book this is in more way 8 than one, flashing with beautiful l sentences, profound in human emo e tion, always intelligent. Seldom ha t a story of literary man been s l, carefully planned, so brilliantly eX s ccuted. Having secured her facts a
 great pains, Miss Lowell made then
 part of herself and gave us Keat q as she sees him as we can scarcel e fail to see him, having read he book. Her publishers have nc !" failed in their part; binding. type
 illustration, are in accord with tn } text. In every way it is a grea 7, piece of work. one in which we ma take both pride and pleasure, ,"- , John Farrdr-The Bookman.