most common, seems to be no other than the _Metromanie_. The just
celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect
of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried
ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a
superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of
lyrics behind her in her band-box. To witness the disease of any human
understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an
able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more
afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the
case of Mr John Keats. This young man appears to have received from
nature talents of an excellent, perhaps even of a superior
order--talents which, devoted to the purposes of any useful profession,
must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen. His
friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and he
was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But
all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we have
alluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing
draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not
heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and that
thoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a
violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy
of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half
so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of
"Endymion." We hope, however, that in so young a person, and with a
constitution originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly
incurable. Time, firm treatment, and rational restraint, do much for
many apparently hopeless invalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at
some interval of reason, to cast his eye upon our pages, he may perhaps
be convinced of the existence of his malady, which, in such cases, is
often all that is necessary to put the patient in a fair way of being
cured.
The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, by a
solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new
stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the
land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other
than Mr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering
apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time
excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character
and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of
our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet,
"_written on the day when Mr Leigh Hunt left prison_." It will be
recollected, that the cause of Hunt's confinement was a series of libels
against his sovereign, and that its fruit was the odious and incestuous
"Story of Rimini."
"What though, for shewing truth to flattered state,
_Kind Hunt_ was shut in prison, yet has he,
In his immortal spirit been as free
As the sky-searching lark and as elate.
Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?
Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
_In Spenser's halls!_ he strayed, and bowers fair,
Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
_With daring Milton!_ through the fields of air;
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"
The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,
surpassed in another, "_addressed to Haydon_" the painter, that clever,
but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as
he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled
over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece
it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT,
and HAYDON, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he
alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as
likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth
and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do
not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined
together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the
most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty
of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer
[_sic_].
"Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
_He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_:
And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?----
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"
The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats?
because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the
judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city
sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future
Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to
its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matula_ with a vengeance. At
the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation
in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of
the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of
coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it.
The following we think is very pretty raving.
"Why so sad a moan?
Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;
The reading of an ever-changing tale;
The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;
A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,
Riding the springing branches of an elm.
"O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
That my own soul has to itself decreed.
Then will I pass the countries that I see
In long perspective, and continually
Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass
Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
Feed on apples red, and strawberries,
And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.
Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,
To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,--
Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white
Into a pretty shrinking with a bite
As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
A lovely tale of human life we'll read.
And one will teach a tame dove how it best
May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;
Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,
Will set a green robe floating round her head,
And still will dance with ever varied ease,
Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:
Another will entice me on, and on
Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;
Till in the bosom of a leafy world
We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd
In the recesses of a pearly shell."
Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet
passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a
certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is
much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present
time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was
not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to
deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of
Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most
pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have
reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are
not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other
_men of power_--fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic
enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one
original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written
language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to
talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever
produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in
laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or
cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits,
philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney
school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its
time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr
Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more
promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the
poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English
poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of
the existence of "him of the Rose," &c.
"From a thick brake,
Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."
From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when
we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of
what follows.
"Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
A silent space with ever sprouting green.
All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,
Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,
Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.
Then let us clear away the choaking _thorns_
From round its gentle stem; let the young _fawns_,
Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,
Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown
With simple flowers: let there nothing be
More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;
Nought more ungentle than the placid look
Of one who leans upon a closed book;
Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes
Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!
As she was wont, th' imagination
Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
And they shall be accounted poet kings
Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
O may these joys be ripe before I die.
Will not some say that I presumptuously
Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace
'Twere better far to hide my foolish face?
That whining boyhood should with reverence bow
Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How!
If I do hide myself, it sure shall be
In the very fane, the light of poesy."
From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other
sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's
affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take,
by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently
meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.
"Add too, the sweetness
Of thy honied voice; the neatness
Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:
With those beauties, scarce discern'd,
Kept with such sweet privacy,
That they seldom meet the eye
Of the little loves that fly
Round about with eager pry.
Saving when, with freshening lave,
Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
Like twin water lilies, born
In the coolness of the morn
O, if thou hadst breathed then,
Now the Muses had been ten.
Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_
Than twin sister of _Thalia_?
At last for ever, evermore,
Will I call the Graces four."
Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),
"Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_
Of Lady _Cytherea_."
So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to
pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a
Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a
shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely
enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has
been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good
unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid
or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated
to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr
John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth,
we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very
anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic
Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the
name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess;
he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at
the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a
trifle, is violated in every page of this goodly octavo. From his
prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the
Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so
finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to
see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one
confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows
Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan,
Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their
education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject,
as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and
attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just
as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no
man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or
feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to
profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been
adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must
inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English
heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint
might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless
versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in
fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system
are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr
Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still
smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has
done everything in his power to spoil.
[Quotes almost two hundred lines of _Endymion_ with brief interpolated
comment.]
And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats
he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my
native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of
_pauca verba_. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his
bookseller will not a second time venture L50 upon any thing he can
write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than
a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills,
and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a
little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than
you have been in your poetry.
Z.
--_Blackwood's Magazine_.
ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
_Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the
Cambridge Commencement_, _by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College,
Cambridge._
We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason,
that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period
after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age
seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner,
for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should
least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often
been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them
which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have
done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to
affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have
felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its
author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we
believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our
admiration.
[Quotes fifty lines beginning:--
"A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]
How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?--_The
Athenaeum_.
_Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.
This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second
appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first
publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must
be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem
idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing
an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our
more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius--another and a brighter
star of that galaxy or _milky way_ of poetry of which the lamented Keats
was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on
the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem
the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic
admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has
carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on
every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in
every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the
sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we
request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's
works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and
Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion
in his prolegomena.
Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we
hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled
approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers,
that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their
delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the
venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of
the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.
A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young
author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern,
he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be
something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow;
the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the
supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lure chale genoimen] to
Alcaeus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more
modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as
flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor
conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too,
would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an
earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and
solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes
to be--_a river_!
SONNET.
'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--
rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--
'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--
a beautiful and harmonious line--
'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:--
Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--
Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human
ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have
been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have
_increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to
accomplish his object of _fleeing forward_, that is, going backwards and
forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word _flee_ for _flow_;
which latter he could not well employ in _this_ place, it being, as we
shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to _Mexico_ towards the end of
the sonnet--as an equivalent to _flow_ he has, therefore, with great
taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of _forward flee_--
------------'doth forward flee
By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
And in the middle of the green _salt_ sea
Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'
A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with
the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny
ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at
ease on this point--he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have
but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if
a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should
unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of
_salt_. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the
insatiability of human ambition:--we have seen him just now content to
be a river, but as he _flees forward_, his desires expand into
sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.
'Mine be the power which ever to its sway
Will win _the wise at once_--
We, for once, are wise, and he has won _us_--
'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees
May into uncongenial spirits flow,
Even as the great gulphstream of Flori_da_
Floats far away into the Northern seas
The lavish growths of southern Mexi_co_!'--p. 1.
And so concludes the sonnet.
The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ----,' a
friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should
do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead--not, as we shall see, that
he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.
'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
Of that deep grave to which I go.
Shake hands once more; I cannot sink
So far--far down, but I shall know
Thy voice, and answer from below!'
Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should
survive--Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non _omnino_
moriar,'--'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my
verse, and however _low I may go_, I warrant you I shall keep all my
wits about me,--therefore'
'When, in the darkness over me,
The four-handed mole shall scrape,
Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,
Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,
But pledge me in the flowing grape.'
Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and
admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical
antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.
He proceeds:--
'And when the sappy field and wood
Grow green beneath the _showery gray_,
And rugged barks begin to bud,
And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'
Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but
as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true
poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with
human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further
on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction
between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh
upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr.
Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human
laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the
woodpeckers and the jays.
'Then let wise Nature work her will,
And on my clay her darnels grow,
Come only when the days are still,
And at my head-stone whisper low,
And tell me'--
Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such
circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or
his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
of his poems had been sold--_papae_! our genuine poet's first wish is
'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'
When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_,
(of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel
pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to
his mother--
'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile
Undimmed'--