Book: Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861




To say that these disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the
consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the
sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice
of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one
night, when I slept in his brother's bed. They had injured him in the
most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment
supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he
had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article,"
indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense,
than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,--and I have
authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private
transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes's
life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship.
"Johnny Keats" had, indeed, "a little body with a mighty heart," and
he showed it in the best way: not by fighting the ruffians,--though
he could have done that,--but by the resolve that he would produce
brain-work which not one of their party could approach; and he did.

In the year 1820 appeared the "Lamia," "Isabella," "Eve of St. Agnes,"
and "Hyperion," etc. But, alas! the insidious disease which carried him
off had made its approach, and he was going to, or had already departed
for, Italy, attended by his constant and self-sacrificing friend,
Severn. Keats's mother died of consumption; and he nursed his younger
brother in the same disease, to the last,--and, by so doing, in all
probability, hastened his own summons. Upon the publication of the last
volume of poems, Charles Lamb wrote one of his own finely appreciative
and cordial critiques in the "Morning Chronicle." This was sent to me in
the country, where I had for some time resided. I had not heard of the
dangerous state of Keats's health,--only that he and Severn were going
to Italy; it was, therefore, an unprepared shock which brought me the
news that he had died in Rome.

Mr. Monckton Milnes has related the anecdote of Keats's introduction to
Wordsworth, with the latter's appreciation of the "Hymn to Pan," which
its author had been desired to repeat, and the Rydal Mount poet's
snow-capped comment upon it,--"Uhm! a pretty piece of Paganism!" Mr.
Milnes, with his genial and placable nature, has made an amiable defence
for the apparent coldness of Wordsworth's appreciation,--"That it was
probably intended for some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer,
whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas that to him appeared merely
sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek
mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith." Keats, like
Shakspeare, and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he
imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek,
"suckled in that creed outworn." The wonder is, that Mr. Wordsworth
forgot to quote himself. From Keats's description of his Mentor's
manner, as well as behavior, that evening, I cannot but believe it to
have been one of the usual ebullitions of the egoism, not to say of the
uneasiness, known to those who were accustomed to hear the great moral
philosopher discourse upon his own productions and descant upon those
of a contemporary. During this same visit, he was dilating upon some
question in poetry, when, upon Keats's insinuating a confirmatory
suggestion to his argument, Mrs. Wordsworth put her hand upon his arm,
saying,--"Mr. Wordsworth is never interrupted." Again, during the same
interview, some one had said that the next Waverley novel was to be "Rob
Roy"; when Mr. Wordsworth took down his volume of Ballads, and read
to the company "Rob Roy's Grave,"--then, returning it to the shelf,
observed, "I do not know what more Mr. Scott can have to say upon the
subject." When Leigh Hunt had his first interview with Wordsworth, the
latter lectured to him--finely, indeed--upon his own writings; and
repeated the entire sonnet,

"Great men have been among us,"--

which Hunt said he did "in a grand and earnest tone." Some one in a
company quoting the passage from "Henry V.,"--

"So work the honey-bees,"

and each "picking out his pet plum" from that perfect piece of natural
history, Wordsworth objected to the line,

"The singing masons building roofs of gold,"

because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the "_ing_" in it!
Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more
than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of
Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a "_pro_" with
his "_con_," and, Atticus-like, would "just hint a fault and hesitate
dislike." Truly, indeed, we are all of "a mingled yarn, good and ill
together."

I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account
which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his "Diary,"
respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At
his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left
with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time
subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and
can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young
poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and
opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all
acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of
the sonnet to him, and those "On the Elgin Marbles." I say nothing of
the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing,
I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such
faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never
have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have
induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of
his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious
because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it
supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an
authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and
display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph
was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put Cayenne
pepper upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never
purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from
such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that
his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a
self-reproof.

When Shelley left England for Italy, Keats told me that he had received
from him an invitation to become his guest,--and, in short, to make one
of his household. It was upon the purest principle that Keats declined
the noble proffer; for he entertained an exalted opinion of Shelley's
genius, in itself an inducement; he also knew of his deeds of bounty;
and lastly, from their frequent intercourse, he had full faith in the
sincerity of his proposal; for a more crystalline heart than Shelley's
never beat in human bosom. He was incapable of an untruth or of a deceit
in any ill form. Keats told me, that, in declining the invitation, his
sole motive was the consciousness, which would be ever prevalent with
him, of his not being, in its utter extent, a free agent,--even
within such a circle as Shelley's,--himself, nevertheless, the most
unrestricted of beings. Mr. Trelawney, a familiar of the family, has
confirmed the unwavering testimony to Shelley's bounty of nature, where
he says, "Shelley was a being absolutely without selfishness." The
poorest cottagers knew and benefited by the thoroughly _practical_ and
unselfish character of his Christianity, during his residence at Marlow,
when he would visit them, and, having gone through a course of study
in medicine, in order that he might assist them with his advice, would
commonly administer the tonic which such systems usually require,--a
good basin of broth, or pea-soup. And I believe I am infringing on no
private domestic delicacy, when I repeat, that he has been known, upon a
sudden and immediate emergency, to purloin ("_convey_ the wise it call")
a portion of the warmest of Mrs. Shelley's wardrobe, to protect some
poor starving sister. One of the richer residents of Marlow told me that
"_they all_ considered him a madman." I wish he had bitten the whole
squad.

"No settled senses of the world can match
The 'wisdom' of that madness."

Shelley's figure was a little above the middle height, slender, and of
delicate construction, which appeared the rather from a lounging or
waving manner in his gait, as though his frame was compounded merely of
muscle and tendon, and that the power of walking was an achievement with
him, and not a natural habit. Yet I should suppose that he was not a
valetudinarian, although that has been said of him, on account of his
spare and vegetable diet: for I have the remembrance of his scampering
and bounding over the gorse-bushes on Hampstead Heath, late one
night,--now close upon us, and now shouting from the height, like a wild
school-boy. He was both an active and an enduring walker,--feats which
do not accompany an ailing and feeble constitution. His face was round,
flat, pale, with small features; mouth beautifully shaped; hair,
bright-brown and wavy; and such a pair of eyes as are rarely seen in
the human or any other head,--intensely blue, with a gentle and lambent
expression, yet wonderfully alert and engrossing: nothing appeared to
escape his knowledge.

Whatever peculiarity there might have been in Shelley's religious faith,
I have the best authority for believing that it was confined to the
early period of his life. The _practical_ result of its course of
_action_, I am sure, had its source from the "Sermon on the Mount."
There is not one clause in that divine code which his conduct towards
his fellow-mortals did not confirm, and substantiate him to be a
follower of Christ. Yet, when the news arrived in London of the death of
Shelley and Captain Williams by drowning, the "Courier" newspaper--an
evening journal of that day--capped the intelligence with the following
remark:--"He will now know whether there is a hell or not!"--I believe
that there are still one or two public fanatics who would _think_ that
surmise, but not one would dare to utter it in his journal. So much for
the progress of liberality, and the power of opinion.

At page 100 of the "Life of Keats," Vol. I., Mr. Monckton Milnes has
quoted a literary portrait of him, which he received from a lady who
used to see him at Hazlitt's lectures at the Surrey Institution. The
building was on the south or right-hand side, and close to Blackfriars'
Bridge. I believe that the whole of Hazlitt's lectures, on the British
Poets, the Writers of the Time of Elizabeth, and the Comic Writers, were
delivered in that Institution, during the years 1817 and 1818; shortly
after which time the establishment appears to have been broken up. The
lady's remark upon the character and expression of Keats's features is
both happy and true. She says,--"His countenance lives in my mind as one
of singular beauty and brightness; it had an expression _as if he had
been looking on some glorious sight_." That's excellent.--"His mouth was
full, and less intellectual than his other features." True again. But
when our artist pronounces that "his eyes were large and _blue_" and
that "his hair was _auburn_," I am naturally reminded of the fable of
the "Chameleon":--"They're _brown_, Ma'am,--_brown_, I assure you!" The
fact is, the lady was enchanted--and I cannot wonder at it--with the
whole character of that beaming face; and "blue" and "auburn" being the
favorite tints of the human front divine, in the lords of the creation,
the poet's eyes consequently became "blue," and his hair "auburn."
Colors, however, vary with the prejudice or partiality of the spectator;
and, moreover, people do not agree even upon the most palpable prismatic
tint. A writing-master whom we had at Enfield was an artist of more than
ordinary merit; but he had one dominant defect: he could not distinguish
between true blue and true green. So that, upon one occasion, when he
was exhibiting to us a landscape he had just completed, I hazarded
the critical question, why he painted his trees so _blue_? "Blue!" he
replied,--"what do you call green?"--Reader, alter in your copy of
Monckton Milnes's "Life of Keats," Vol. I., page 103, "eyes" _light
hazel_, "hair" _lightish-brown and wavy_.

The most perfect, and withal the favorite portrait of him, was the
one by Severn, published in Leigh Hunt's "Lord Byron and his
Contemporaries," and which I remember the artist's sketching in a few
minutes, one evening, when several of Keats's friends were at his
apartments in the Poultry. The portrait prefixed to the "Life," also
by Severn, is a most excellent one-look-and-expression likeness,--an
every-day, and of "the earth, earthy" one;--and the last, which the same
artist painted, and which is now in the possession of Mr. John Hunter,
of Craig Crook, Edinburgh, may be an equally felicitous rendering of one
look and manner; but I do not intimately recognize it. There is another,
and a _curiously unconscious_ likeness of him, in the charming Dulwich
Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt.
It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the
poet,--though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have
made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy
expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do not associate with him.

There is one of his attitudes, during familiar conversation, which, at
times, (with the whole earnest manner and sweet expression of the man)
presents itself to me, as though I had seen him only last week. The
attitude I speak of was that of cherishing one leg over the knee of the
other, smoothing the instep with the palm of his hand. In this action I
mostly associate him in an eager parley with Leigh Hunt, in his little
cottage in the "Vale of Health." This position, if I mistake not, is in
the last portrait of him at Craig Crook; if not, it is in a reminiscent
one, painted after his death.

His stature could have been very little more than five feet; but he was,
withal, compactly made and--well-proportioned; and before the hereditary
disorder which carried him off began to show itself, he was active,
athletic, and enduringly strong,--as the fight with the butcher gave
full attestation.

The critical world,--by which term I mean the censorious portion of
it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and
objection,--the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if
they will, the defective side of Keats's genius, and his friends, his
gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel
inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that
the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of
imagery,--that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest
promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and
teeming genius. But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the
amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to
the "Foliage," quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the "Life
of Keats"; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so
amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can
add no more than my assent.

Keats's whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one
routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others' feelings.
The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring
nurse--friend,--"Severn,--I,--lift me up,--I am dying:--_I shall die
easy; don't be frightened;_--be firm, and thank God it has come."

There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters
of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare. His own intensity of
thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol;
and he knew but little of him till he himself had become an author. A
marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the
complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his
matriculation;--and, through life, however long with any of us, we are
all in progress of matriculation, as we study the "myriad-minded's"
system of philosophy. The note that Keats made was this;--"The genius
of Shakspeare was an _innate universality;_ wherefore he laid the
achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and
kingly gaze: _he could do easily men's utmost;_ his plan of tasks to
come was not of this world. If what he proposed to do hereafter would
not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his
conception of ultimates!"




THE EUROPEAN CRISIS.


It is not long since we listened to an interesting discussion of this
question:--Which was the more important year to Europe,--1859 or 1860?
The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those
ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating-societies assembled, who have not
yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating
"the mighty Julius," or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a
martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell treated
Charles I. on a memorable winter-day was either a just or a politic
mode of touching for the king's evil. It would have the merit of
novelty,--and Americans are as fond of new things in their day of power
as ever were the Athenians in the day of their decline. A yet rarer
merit it would have, in the fact that a great deal could justly be said
on both sides of the question. An umpire would probably decide in favor
of 1859,--because, he might say, had the events of that year been
different, those of 1860 must have undergone a complete change.

The romantic conquest of Sicily by Garibaldi, and his successes in
Naples, whereby a junior branch of the Bourbon family has been sent
to "enjoy" that exile which has so long been the lot of the senior
branch,--and the destruction of the _Papalini_ by the Italian army of
Victor Emanuel II., which asserted the superiority of the children of
the soil over the bands of foreign ruffians assembled by De Merode and
Lamoriciere for the oppression of the Peninsula in the name of the
venerable head of the Church of Rome,--these are events even more
striking than those by which the iron sceptre of Austria was cut through
in the earlier year, because they have been accomplished by Italian
genius and courage, the few foreigners in the army of Garibaldi not
counting for much in the contest. They prove the regeneration of Italy.
But it is evident that nothing of the kind could have been done in 1860,
if 1859 had been as quiet a year for Italy as its immediate predecessor.
Before the leaders and the soldiers of Italy could obtain the
indispensable place whereon to stand, it was imperatively necessary
that the power of Austria should be broken down, through the defeat and
consequent demoralization of her army. For a period of forty-four
years, Austria had had her own way in the Peninsula. From the fall
of Napoleon's Italian dominion, in 1814, to the day when the third
Napoleon's army entered Sardinia, there was, virtually, no other rule in
Italy but that which Austria approved. The events of 1848, which at one
time promised to remove "the barbarians," had for their conclusion the
re-establishment of her ascendency in greater force than ever; and the
last ten years of that ascendency will always be remembered as the
period when its tyrannical character was most fully developed. The hoary
proconsul of the Lorraines, Radetzky, if not personally cruel, was
determined to do for his masters what Castilian lieutenants had done
for the Austro-Burgundian monarchs of Spain and her dependencies,
the fairest portions of Italy being among those dependencies, in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,--to destroy the public spirit of
Italy. Could he have completed a century of life, or had there been no
European nation ready to prevent the success of the Germanic policy
under which Italy was to wither to provincial worthlessness, he might
have been successful. But Austria lost her best man, the only one of
her soldiers who had shown himself capable of upholding her Italian
position, when he had reached to more than ninety years; and it pleased
Providence to raise up a friend to Italy in a quarter to which most men
had ceased to look for anything good.

Well has it been said, that "it is not the best tools that shape out
the best ends; if so, Martin Luther would not have been selected as the
master-spirit of the Reformation." Napoleon III. may deserve all that is
said against him by men of the extreme right and by men of the extreme
left,--by Catholics and infidels,--by _Whites_, and _Reds_, and
_Blues_,--but it cannot be denied that he gave to the Italians that
assistance without which they never could have obtained even partial
deliverance from the Austrian yoke, and which they could have procured
from no other potentate or power. Bankrupt though she was, Austria's
force was so superior to anything that Italy could present in the shape
of an army, that Sardinia must have been conquered, if she had contended
alone with her enemy; and a war between Austria and Sardinia was
inevitable, and would probably have broken out long before 1859, had the
former country been assured of the neutrality of France.

There has been a great inkshed, and a large expenditure of oratory, on
the question of the origin of the Italian war of 1859; and, as usual,
much nonsense has been written and said of and concerning the ambition
of France and the encroachments of Sardinia. But that war was brought
about neither by French ambition nor by Sardinian desire for territorial
aggrandizement. That it occurred in 1859 was undoubtedly owing to the
action of France, which country merely chose its own time to drub its
old foe; but the point at issue was, whether Austrian or Sardinian ideas
should predominate in the government of Italy. Austria's purpose never
could be accomplished so long as a constitutional polity existed in
the best, because the best governed and the best organized, of all the
Italian States; and Sardinia's purpose never could be accomplished so
long as Austria was in a condition to dictate to the Italians the manner
in which they should be ruled. A war between the two nations was, as we
have said, inevitable. The only point about which there could be any
dispute was, whether Sardinia would have to fight the battle of Italy
unaided, or be backed by some power beyond the mountains.

It shows how much men respect a military monarchy, how deferential they
are to the sword, that even those persons who assumed that France must
espouse the Sardinian cause were far from feeling confident that Austria
would be overmatched by an alliance of the two most liberal of the
Catholic nations of Europe. That monarchy is the type of force to all
minds; and though she has seldom won any splendid successes in the field
over the armies of enlightened nations, and has been repeatedly beaten
by Prussia and France, men cling to old ideas, and give her great
advantages at the beginning of every war in which she engages. The
common opinion, in the spring of 1859, was, that Austria would crush
Sardinia before the French could reach the field in force, and that her
soldiers, flushed by successes over the Italians, would hurl their new
foes out of the country, or leave them in its soil. As before, Italy was
to be the grave of the French,--only that their grave was to be dug at
the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days,
at its close. But it was otherwise ordered. The Austrians lost the
advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest,
and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the
"crowning mercy" of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not
entirely banish them from her land. That Solferino was not so great
a victory to the Allies as it was claimed to be at the time, that it
resembled less Austerlitz than Wagram, may be admitted, and yet its
importance remain unquestioned; for its decision gained for Italy the
only thing that it was necessary she should have in order to work out
her own salvation. Henceforth, she was not to tremble at the mere touch
of the hilt of the sword worn by the Viceroy at Milan, but was to have
the chance, at least, of ordering her own destinies. If not thoroughly
free, she was no longer utterly enslaved.

The peace of Villafranca surprised every one, from the Czar on the
Neva to the gold-gatherers on the Sacramento. Strange as had been the
doings--the world called them tricks--of Napoleon III., no man was
prepared for that; and even now, though seventeen eventful months have
rolled away since the first shock of it was experienced, the summer-day
it was received seems more like one of those days we see in dreams than
like a day of real life. Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust
followed each other through the minds of millions of men. If curses
could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets
of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed
the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him. In
America,--where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of
freedom, and for the deliverance of "oppressed nationalities" of the
proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the
free man is the better customer,--in America the reaction of opinion was
overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who
would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that
the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France.
Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it
has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned
the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble
opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria. There may be--most
probably there are--facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which
would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished,
in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any
monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty
of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce
upon Francis Joseph.

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