the Gods as had spoken English up to this time had done so in formal and courtly language, and the familiarity of poetic diction which in any case was novel, here appeared extravagant. Now that Endymion has taken its place as a great English Poem, and is in truth become a region of delight in which the youth of every generation finds "a week's stroll in the summer," we can hardly feel the force of those objections, which, if they had been temperately urged by critics who in other matters recognized the genius of Keats, would have had due weight not only with the public but with the Poet himself. But while he owed nothing to the sledge-hammer censure he had endured, his own refined judgment and enlarged knowledge induced him to throw off, as puerilities and conceits, much that had before presented itself to his fancy as invention and simplicity, and to send out his noble thoughts and images so worthily arrayed, that if he had lived to maturity, he would probably have had less of peculiarity and mannerism than any other Poet of his time.

An experiment of double authorship between Keats and his friend Brown was not equally successful: the tragedy of "Otho the Great" was thus written-Brown supplying the fable, characters, and dramatic conduct; Keats the diction and the verse. The two composers sat opposite, Brown sketching all the incidents of each scene, and Keats translating them into his rich and ready language. As a literary diversion the process may have been instructive and amusing, but a work of art thus created could be hardly worth the name. As the play

advanced, Keats thought the events too melodramatic, and concluded the fifth act alone. The tragedy was offered to, and accepted by, Elliston, Kean having expressed a desire to act the principal part; but it is unlikely that even his representation would have carried through a performance so unsuited for the stage. As a literary curiosity it remains interesting, and abounds with fine phrases and passages marred by the poverty of the construction. It is doubtful whether at this time Keats alone could have produced a much better play: he might have written a Midsummer Night's Dream, as Coleridge might have written a Hamlet, but in both the great human element would have been wanting, which Shakspeare combines with high philosophy or with fairy-land.

George Keats paid a short visit to England in the early part of this year, and received his share of the property of the youngest brother. He probably repaid himself for moneys advanced for John's education or liabilities, and thus the share which John received was not above 2007. By this time little, if anything, remained of John's original fortune, and it is deeply to be regretted that the more enterprising brother did not come to some direct understanding with the other, before he finally quitted England, as to John's future means of support. Keats's friends believed that George took with him some remnants of John's fortune to speculate with, but no proof of this remains on any of the letters on either side; and, after John's death, when the legal ad

ministration of his effects showed that no debts were owing to the estate, George offered, without any obligation, to do his utmost to discharge his brother's engage

ments.

At the time when these embarrassments began to press most heavily on Keats, he returned one night late to Hampstead in a state of strange physical excitement, like violent intoxication: he told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach and received a severe chill, but added, "I don't feel it now." Getting into bed, he slightly coughed, and said, “That is blood-bring me the candle," and after gazing on the pillow, turning round with an expression of sudden and solemn calm, said, “I know the color of that blood, it is arterial blood-I cannot be deceived in that color; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die." He was bled, fell asleep, and, after some weeks, apparently recovered. During his illness he told Mr. Brown, "If you would have me recover, flatter me with a hope of happiness when I shall be well; for I am now so weak that I can be flattered into hope." When he said one day, "Look at my hand, it is that of a man of fifty," it was remembered that years before, Coleridge meeting Keats in a lane near Highgate, and shaking hands with him, had turned round to Mr. Hunt, and whispered, 'There is death in that hand.'"

This illness seemed at the time not to be without its compensations: he wrote to Mr. Rice in Feb. (1820):— "For six months before I was taken ill, I had not passed a tranquil day. Either that gloom overspread me or I

was suffering under some passionate feeling, or, if I turned to versify, that acerbated the poison of either sensation. The beauties of nature had lost their power over me. How astonishingly (here I must premise that illness, as far as I can judge in so short a time, has relieved my mind of a load of deceptive thoughts and images, and makes me perceive things in a truer light), how astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties upon us! Like poor Falstaff, though I do not 'babble,' I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy; their shapes and colors are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers in hothouses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a straw for them. The simple flowers of our Spring are what I want to see again."

And he saw them-for towards the end of the spring his health was apparently so much better that the physician recommended another tour in Scotland. Mr. Brown, however thought him unfit for the exertion and went alone: the two friends parted in May and never met again. In the previous autumn Keats had removed to a lodging in Westminster, when he was trying to make some money by contributing to periodical works, but soon found he had miscalculated his own powers of endurance. She, whose name

"Was ever on his lip

But never on his tongue,"

exercised too mighty a restraint over his being for him to remain at a distance which was neither absence nor presence, and he soon returned to where at least he could rest his eyes on her habitation, and enjoy each chance opportunity of her society. After Mr. Brown's departure he seems to have been all but domesticated with her family for a short time, but with the sad consciousness of the absolute necessity of some great change of life to ward off absolute destitution. "My mind," he writes, "has been at work all over the world to find out what to do. I have my choice of three things, or, at least, two— South America, or surgeon to an Indiaman, which last,. I think, will be my fate. I shall resolve in a few days."

It was probably this pressure which forced him against his will to publish the volume of Tales and Poems, which seemed at last to move even the literary world to some consciousness of his merits. It had no great sale, but it was received respectfully, and, even without the catastrophe that soon invested it with so solemn an interest, it would have gone far to establish him as a poet even in vulgar fame. During its completion he had spent much time on an Ariosto-like Poem, which he called the "Cap and Bells," exhibiting his play of fancy to great advantage, and getting away as it were, as far as possible, from the gross realities that occupied and tormented his existence. His main passion finds no place in his verse; a few, and not eminent fragments betray the haunting thought, but