[From _The Edinburgh Review_, August, 1820]
1. _Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By JOHN KEATS. 8vo. pp. 207. London,
1818.
2. _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems._ By JOHN
KEATS, Author of _Endymion_. 12mo. pp. 200. London, 1820.
We had never happened to see either of these volumes till very lately--
and have been exceedingly struck with the genius they display, and the
spirit of poetry which breathes through all their extravagance. That
imitation of our older writers, and especially of our older dramatists,
to which we cannot help flattering ourselves that we have somewhat
contributed, has brought on, as it were, a second spring in our poetry;
--and few of its blossoms are either more profuse of sweetness or richer
in promise, than this which is now before us. Mr. Keats, we understand,
is still a very young man; and his whole works, indeed, bear evidence
enough of the fact. They are full of extravagance and irregularity, rash
attempts at originality, interminable wanderings, and excessive
obscurity. They manifestly require, therefore, all the indulgence that
can be claimed for a first attempt:--but we think it no less plain that
they deserve it; for they are flushed all over with the rich lights of
fancy, and so coloured and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry, that
even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is
impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our
hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present. The models upon
which he has formed himself, in the Endymion, the earliest and by much
the most considerable of his poems, are obviously the Faithful
Shepherdess of Fletcher, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson;--the
exquisite metres and inspired diction of which he has copied with great
boldness and fidelity--and, like his great originals, has also contrived
to impart to the whole piece that true rural and poetical air which
breathes only in them and in Theocritus--which is at once homely and
majestic, luxurious and rude, and sets before us the genuine sights and
sounds and smells of the country, with all the magic and grace of
Elysium. His subject has the disadvantage of being mythological; and in
this respect, as well as on account of the raised and rapturous tone it
consequently assumes, his poetry may be better compared perhaps to the
Comus and the Arcades of Milton, of which, also, there are many traces
of imitation. The great distinction, however, between him and these
divine authors, is, that imagination in them is subordinate to reason
and judgment, while, with him, it is paramount and supreme--that their
ornaments and images are employed to embellish and recommend just
sentiments, engaging incidents, and natural characters, while his are
poured out without measure or restraint, and with no apparent design but
to unburden the breast of the author, and give vent to the overflowing
vein of his fancy. The thin and scanty tissue of his story is merely the
light framework on which his florid wreaths are suspended; and while his
imaginations go rambling and entangling themselves everywhere, like wild
honeysuckles, all idea of sober reason, and plan, and consistency, is
utterly forgotten, and is "strangled in their waste fertility." A great
part of the work, indeed, is written in the strangest and most
fantastical manner that can be imagined. It seems as if the author had
ventured everything that occurred to him in the shape of a glittering
image or striking expression--taken the first word that presented itself
to make up a rhyme, and then made that word the germ of a new cluster of
images--a hint for a new excursion of the fancy--and so wandered on,
equally forgetful whence he came, and heedless whither he was going,
till he had covered his pages with an interminable arabesque of
connected and incongruous figures, that multiplied as they extended, and
were only harmonized by the brightness of their tints, and the graces of
their forms. In this rash and headlong career he has of course many
lapses and failures. There is no work, accordingly, from which a
malicious critic could cull more matter for ridicule, or select more
obscure, unnatural, or absurd passages. But we do not take _that_ to be
our office;--and just beg leave, on the contrary, to say, that any one
who, on this account, would represent the whole poem as despicable, must
either have no notion of poetry, or no regard to truth.
It is, in truth, at least as full of genius as of absurdity; and he who
does not find a great deal in it to admire and to give delight, cannot
in his heart see much beauty in the two exquisite dramas to which we
have already alluded, or find any great pleasure in some of the finest
creations of Milton and Shakespeare. There are very many such persons,
we verily believe, even among the reading and judicious part of the
community--correct scholars we have no doubt many of them, and, it may
be, very classical composers in prose and in verse--but utterly ignorant
of the true genius of English poetry, and incapable of estimating its
appropriate and most exquisite beauties. With that spirit we have no
hesitation in saying that Mr. K. is deeply imbued--and of those beauties
he has presented us with many striking examples. We are very much
inclined indeed to add, that we do not know any book which we would
sooner employ as a test to ascertain whether any one had in him a native
relish for poetry, and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm. The
greater and more distinguished poets of our country have so much else in
them to gratify other tastes and propensities, that they are pretty sure
to captivate and amuse those to whom their poetry is but an hindrance
and obstruction, as well as those to whom it constitutes their chief
attraction. The interest of the stories they tell--the vivacity of the
characters they delineate--the weight and force of the maxims and
sentiments in which they abound--the very pathos and wit and humour they
display, which may all and each of them exist apart from their poetry
and independent of it, are quite sufficient to account for their
popularity, without referring much to that still higher gift, by which
they subdue to their enchantments those whose souls are attuned to the
finer impulses of poetry. It is only where those other recommendations
are wanting, or exist in a weaker degree, that the true force of the
attraction, exercised by the pure poetry with which they are so often
combined, can be fairly appreciated--where, without much incident or
many characters, and with little wit, wisdom, or arrangement, a number
of bright pictures are presented to the imagination, and a fine feeling
expressed of those mysterious relations by which visible external things
are assimilated with inward thoughts and emotions, and become the images
and exponents of all passions and affections. To an unpoetical reader
such passages always appear mere raving and absurdity--and to this
censure a very great part of the volume before us will certainly be
exposed, with this class of readers. Even in the judgment of a fitter
audience, however, it must, we fear, be admitted, that, besides the riot
and extravagance of his fancy, the scope and substance of Mr. K.'s
poetry is rather too dreary and abstracted to excite the strongest
interest, or to sustain the attention through a work of any great
compass or extent. He deals too much with shadowy and incomprehensible
beings, and is too constantly rapt into an extramundane Elysium, to
command a lasting interest with ordinary mortals--and must employ the
agency of more varied and coarser emotions, if he wishes to take rank
with the seducing poets of this or of former generations. There is
something very curious too, we think, in the way in which he, and Mr.
Barry Cornwall also, have dealt with the Pagan mythology, of which they
have made so much use in their poetry. Instead of presenting its
imaginary persons under the trite and vulgar traits that belong to them
in the ordinary systems, little more is borrowed from these than the
general conception of their conditions and relations; and an original
character and distinct individuality is bestowed upon them, which has
all the merit of invention, and all the grace and attraction of the
fictions on which it is engrafted. The antients, though they probably
did not stand in any great awe of their deities, have yet abstained very
much from any minute or dramatic representation of their feelings and
affections. In Hesiod and Homer, they are coarsely delineated by some of
their actions and adventures, and introduced to us merely as the agents
in those particular transactions; while in the Hymns, from those
ascribed to Orpheus and Homer, down to those of Callimachus, we have
little but pompous epithets and invocations, with a flattering
commemoration of their most famous exploits--and are never allowed to
enter into their bosoms, or follow out the train of their feelings, with
the presumption of our human sympathy. Except the love-song of the
Cyclops to his Sea Nymph in Theocritus--the Lamentation of Venus for
Adonis in Moschus--and the more recent Legend of Apuleius, we scarcely
recollect a passage in all the writings of antiquity in which the
passions of an immortal are fairly disclosed to the scrutiny and
observation of men. The author before us, however, and some of his
contemporaries, have dealt differently with the subject;--and,
sheltering the violence of the fiction under the ancient traditionary
fable, have created and imagined an entire new set of characters, and
brought closely and minutely before us the loves and sorrows and
perplexities of beings, with whose names and supernatural attributes we
had long been familiar, without any sense or feeling of their personal
character. We have more than doubts of the fitness of such personages to
maintain a permanent interest with the modern public;--but the way in
which they are here managed, certainly gives them the best chance that
now remains for them; and, at all events, it cannot be denied that the
effect is striking and graceful.
* * * * *
There is a fragment of a projected Epic, entitled "Hyperion," on the
expulsion of Saturn and the Titanian deities by Jupiter and his younger
adherents, of which we cannot advise the completion: For, though there
are passages of some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious,
from the specimen before us, that the subject is too far removed from
all the sources of human interest, to be successfully treated by any
modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably a very beautiful
imagination, and a great familiarity with the finest diction of English
poetry; but he must learn not to misuse or misapply these advantages;
and neither to waste the good gifts of nature and study on intractable
themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly on such as are more suitable.