Evening star., 1925-02-28
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY THE BOOKLOVER

Keats by Amy Lowell has at last ap-
peared. 1t is in two volumes, Illus
trated, and bears the simple title,
John Keats" In addition to old
sources, Miss Lowell has used her
own valuable Keats collection and
the Morgan collection, so that many
new facts are presented in the BIZ
ography. Critics are saying that 1t is
likely to replace the hitherto stand
ard biography of Keats by Sir Sidney
Colvin. In addition to introducing
new material, Miss Lowell has cor
rected much of the old. She has
shown an almost legal mind in her
sitting of evidence and offering of
proof for statements different from
those in former biographies. The
general reader may sometimes not be
greatly interested in a discussion
concerning the exact time of some
occurrence, whether it happened on
a Friday or a Saturday, for example
but the serious and ardent Keats stu
dent will be grateful for all these
fine points.
4 J; = I;
Miss Lowells point of view toward
her subject is as sympathetic as that
Of good biographer should be; it is
even more than sympathetic, for it is
one of defense She defends Keats
against the charges often made of
drunkenness and disease caused by
mis- own conduct. She excuses him
for his unbounded and almost unbe-
lievable egotism toward Fanny
Brawnc, on the ground that the tu-
berculosis, from which he had suffer
ed for years, had produced psychoses,
which made him emotionally ire
sponsible. She excuses him for much,
also, on the old and simple ground of
. ha 10
deed geniuses of all types, may not be
judged by the rules applied to ordi-
nary human beings. II Is a common
place that they are often also difficult
20 live with. Miss Lowell is liberal
with her sympathy for Fanny
Brawne. rs we'll as with her excuses
for Keats. She realizes, as all read
ers of Keats letters must, that the
young girl made famous by the love
amy which would be endured by few
women. The fact that Keats was
probably not responsible for all that
he said and did may arouse pity for
him, but did not make Fanny's asso-
citation with him any easier.
x y =
Miss Lowell says in commenting on
some of Keats letters to Fanny
Brawne: What she bore in these
pity must have been extreme to toll
crate such selfshness and cruelty.
But Fanny Brawne realized, as have
too few of Keats critics. that this
was illness, illness so fevered and
Transforming that the man who suf-
fered IL was not responsible for what
he said" The following brief ex-
tracts from one or two of the letters
Illustrate Miss LowelTs comment:
You must be mine TO die upon the
rack IL want you" For Gods sake
save me-or tell me my passion is OF
too awful a nature for you" Il ap-
peal to you by the blood of that
Christ you believe in, do not write
to me IL you have done anything this
month 1t would have panied me to
have seen"
In Somerset Maugham's autobiogra-
phical novel "Of Human Bondage" he
writes of the reading habit: He could
think OF nothing else. He forgot the
life about him. He had to be called
two or three times before he would
come to his dinner Insensibly he
formed the most delightful habit in
the world, the habit or reading; he
did not know that thus he was pro-
viding himself with a refuge from all
the distress Of life; he did not know
either that he was creating for him
self an unreal world which would
make the real world of everyday life
a source of bitter disappointment"
x <
A second series of These United
States: Symposium" edited by
Ernest Gruening, has recently been
published This volume, like the first,
is made up of articles for the most
part by writers living in the States
treated, the various Common
wealths of the Union. Most of the
chapters originally appeared in the
Nation during the last two or three
years. The second series covers, be-
sides 81 States, Alaska, Porto Rico,
Hawaii and the District of Columbia,
the latter by John w. owens of the
Washington staff of the Baltimore
Sun This chapter on the District is
not a very hattering one. He says
that the District has neither pride
of ancestry nor hope of posterity.
The man of the District is a
wayfarer and sojourner in a tavern.
He lives in social and economic
suspension" The author explains this
state of being as resulting
from the creation by the Federal Gov
ernment of "a community wholly de-
pendent upon it and wholly subservi-
ent to it Capital City and
nothing else, at once the tool and the
jewel OF the ambitious new Nation.
The normal life of an aspiring.
variegated American community was
taboo" The author says that the en-
tire population, whether Congressman,
officials and employees or
the paid courtiers of myriad indus
tries interests, groups and classes"
are all Washing gton hired men" and
that the prevailing philosophy here is
"get next" He says that Washington
is elusive unreal and barren, both
materially and culturally, though un-
deniably educated, Travelled, Sophistt-
Gated and cultured. Having properly
lambasted us, Mr.. owens confesses
that he would rather live in Wash
ington than in any other place in this
country, and then proceeds to give
many excellent reasons for this pref
erence-its beauty, its many-sided in
terests, its agreeableness. He con-
cludes: so Washington, lacking its
own epic, without its own vision, per
haps wanting its own soul. is becom-
ing a concrete expression of the soul
of America.
x x y =
Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, so John
A. Steuart tells us in his new biography
of Stevenson, antagonized many OF
Stevenson ola lrleiiuS pS Hei hidI-
ageriaI ways and her scant patience with
their long and sometimes hilarious visits
to her invalid husband. She established
the rule that no one who had the slight
est suspicion of a cold should be ad-
mitted to his presence--a very sensible
rule and one in force today in many
sanitariums where perhaps the lives of
tubercular patients depend on their
being kept free from further infection.
To be treated as il they were poisonous
did not, however, please Stevenson's
friends, who perhaps remembered that
they themselves always ran serious risks