Moore has recorded his admiration of Psyche in a lyric, of which these stanzas are not the least expressive:

Mrs. Hemans had always been much struck with the poetry of Mrs. Tighe. She imagined a similarity between the destiny of this pensive poetess and her own. She had her in her imagination when she wrote The Grave of a Poetess; and the concluding stanzas are particularly descriptive of Mrs. Tighe's spirit.

It was certainly among earth's glorious bowers that Mrs. Tighe passed her days. Rosanna, in Wicklow, is said to have been her principal residence after her marriage. The whole country round is extremely beautiful, and calculated to call forth the poetic faculty where it exists. All the way from Dublin to Rosanna is through a rich and lovely district. As you approach Rosanna the hills become higher, and your way lies through the most beautifully wooded valleys. At the inn at Ashford Bridge you have the celebrated Devil's Glen on one hand, and Rosanna on the other. This glen lies a mile or more from the inn, and is about a mile and a half through. It is narrow, the hills on either hand are lofty, bold, craggy, and finely wooded; and along the bottom runs, deep and dark over its rocky bed, the River Vartree. This river runs down and crosses the road near the inn, and then takes its way by Rosanna. Rosanna is perhaps a mile down the valley from the inn. The house is a plain old brick house, fit for a country squire. It lies low in the meadow near the river, and around it, on both sides of the water, the slopes are dotted with the most beautiful and luxuriant trees. The park at Rosanna is indeed eminently beautiful with its wood. The trees are thickly scattered, and a great proportion of them are lime, the soft, delicate foliage of which gives a peculiar character to the scenery. The highway, for the whole length of the park as you proceed toward Rathdrum, is completely arched over with magnificent beeches, presenting a fine natural arcade. On the right the ground ascends for a mile or more, covered with rich masses of wood. In fact, whichever way you turn, toward the distant hill, or pursuing your way down the valley, all is one fairy land of beauty and richness. It is a region worthy of the author of Psyche, worthy to inspire her beautiful mind; and we rejoice that so fair, and gentle, and good a spirit had there her lot cast. In her poems she addresses one to the Vartree:

In her sonnets, too, she alludes to her favorite Rosanna, and to her "chestnut bower," which, I believe, still remains. Indeed, Rosanna will always be interesting to the lovers of gentle female virtue and pure genius, because here Psyche was written; here the author of Psyche lived, loved, and suffered.

Woodstock, where she died, lies, I suppose, forty or fifty miles distant, in Kilkenny. It is equally beautiful, though in a different style. It lies on a high, round, swelling hill—a good modern mansion. You see it afar off as you drive over a country less beautiful than that about Rosanna. There is a fine valley, along which the River Nore runs, amid splendid masses of wood, two miles in length, and meadows of the deepest green; and beyond swells up the steep round hill, covered also with fine timber to the top, eight hundred feet in elevation. The whole is bold, ample, and impressive. To reach the house you pass through the village of Innerstiogue, at the foot of the hill, and then begin the long and steep ascent. A considerable way up you are arrested by smart lodge gates, and there enter a fine and well-kept park, in which the neatness of the carriage roads, which are daily swept, and the skillfully dispersed masses of fine trees, speak of wealth, and a pride in it. On the top of the hill stands the house, commanding noble views down into the superb vale below, and over a wide extent of country.

In traveling between these two estates, a mind like that of Mrs. Tighe would find scenery not inferior to that immediately lying around both of them. In one direction she might traverse the celebrated district of Glendalough, or the Vale of the Seven Churches; in another, she might descend the Vale of Avoca, and cross some of the finest parts of Carlow to Kilkenny. I took this latter route. No part of England is more beautiful or more richly cultivated than much of this: thick woods, fertile fields, well-to-do villages, and gentlemen's houses abounded. From the little town of Rathdrum we began to descend rapidly into the Vale of Avoca, and passed the Meeting of the Waters just before dark. The vale, so far, had a very different character to what I expected. I expected it to be a mile or two long, or so, soft, flowing, and verdant. On the contrary, it is eight miles in length, and has to me a character of greatness and extensiveness about it. It is what the Germans call "grossartig"—we want the word. You descend down and down, and feel that a deeper country is still below you. To me it had a feeling as if descending from the Alps into a champaign country. Long ranges of hills on either hand ever and anon terminated, as if to admit of a way into the country beyond, and then began again, with the river wandering on still far below us; and here and there stupendous masses of lofty rock, open meadows, and bold, high woods. These were the features of this striking and great valley.

At the bridge, where the first meeting of the waters takes place, that is, the meeting of the two streams, Avonbeg and Avonmore, which thence become the Avoca, the driver of the car said, "Perhaps your honor knows that this is the Meeting of the Waters. It was here that Moore made his speech!"

But the most striking meeting to us was a meeting with a great number of one-horse carts, those of miners, with whom this vale abounds. They were coming up from a market at Avoca, just below, and they took no more notice of being just all in our way than if we were not there. The driver shouted, but in vain; and it was only by using his whip over them till he broke off the lash that he could get a passage. When they did draw out of the way, it was always purposely to the wrong side. The fact is, they were all drunk, and seemed to have a very animal doggedness of disposition about them. The Wooden Bridge Inn, at the bottom of the vale, and at the commencement of the Vale of Arklow, and the place of the second meeting of the waters, is the great resort of travelers. The scene here has great softness. A bend of the valley, an opening of rich meadow, surrounded by hills thickly clothed with foliage, and the rivers running on to their meeting, give a feeling of great and quiet seclusion. Here I posted, as I have said, across Carlow to Kilkenny, and to Woodstock.

But at Rosanna and at Woodstock, my hope of obtaining some information regarding Mrs. Tighe—of seeing some painting or other object connected with her, was, with one exception, thoroughly frustrated. Mrs. Tighe was an angel; of her successors I have somewhat more to say. In all my visits to remarkable places in England, I have received the utmost courtesy from the proprietors of those houses and scenes which it was my object to see. In those where I was anxious to obtain sight of relics of celebrated persons of antiquity not ordinarily shown to the public, I have written to the owner to request opportunity of examining them. In such cases, noblemen of the highest rank have not, in a single instance, shown the slightest reluctance to contribute to that information which was for the public. In some cases, they have themselves gone down into the country to give me the meeting, and thrown open private cabinets, and the like depositories of rare objects, with the most active liberality. In every other case, so invariably have I found the most obliging facilities given for the prosecution of my inquiries, that I have long ceased to carry a letter of introduction; my name, of twenty-three years' standing before the public, being considered warranty enough. I found it equally so in Ireland, except with the Tighes.

At Rosanna, Mr. Dan Tighe, as the people familiarly call him, certainly not Dante, was pointed out to me by a workman, walking in the meadow before his house, handling his bullocks which grazed there. On asking the servant who came to the door whether Mr. Tighe was at home, he first, as a perfect tactician, requested my name, and he would see. I gave him my card; and though he could see his master as well as I could in the meadow, to whom I directed his attention, he very solemnly marched into the house, and returned, saying he was not in. A self-evident truth. I inquired if Mrs. Tighe was at home, explaining that I had come from England, and for what object. He said "yes, but she was lying in, and could see no one." I then inquired when Mr. Tighe might be expected in, as I should much regret losing the opportunity of learning from him any particulars connected with my present inquiry. "He could not say; most likely at six o'clock, his dinner hour." I promised to call on my way toward Avoca, about half an hour before that time, that I might not interfere with Mr. Tighe's dinner hour. I did so. Mr. Tighe was now standing in his field, not a hundred yards from his house. As soon as the servant appeared, he assured me Mr. Tighe was not at home; he could not tell where he was. I immediately directed his attention to where he stood looking at some men at work. The man did not choose to see him; and, under the circumstances, it was not for me to advance and address him. It was evident that the man had his cue; the master did not choose to be seen. I therefore mounted my car, and ordered the driver to drive off. The spirit of the place was palpable. A willing master makes a willing man; but on this man's nose sat perched that solemn lie that is unmistakable. Well, as Mr. Tighe was walking out, and Mrs. Tighe was lying in, I bade adieu to Rosanna not much wiser for my visit; but then there was Woodstock.

I drove fifty miles across the country, and found myself at the door of Woodstock. Woodstock is a show-house; and here, therefore, I anticipated no difficulty of at least obtaining a sight of portrait or statue of the late charming poetess. But, unfortunately—what in England would have been most fortunate—Mr. Tighe was at home, and the servant, on opening the door, at once informed me that the house was never shown when the family was there. Having written on my card what was my object, that I had made the journey from England for it, and added the name of a gentleman well known to Mr. Tighe, who had wished me to do so, I requested the servant to present that to Mr. Tighe. He did so; and returned, saying, "Mr. Tighe said I was at liberty to see the grounds, but not the house; and he had nothing further to say!"

My astonishment may be imagined. The servant seemed a very decent, modest sort of fellow, and I said, "Good heavens! does Mr. Tighe think I am come all the way from England to see his grounds, when ten thousand country squires could show much finer? Was there no picture of Mrs. Tighe, the poetess, that I might be allowed to see?" "He thought not; he did not know." "Was there no statue?" "He thought not; he never heard of any." "How long had he been there?" "Five years." "And never heard of a statue or a monument to Mrs. Tighe, the poetess?" "No, never! He had never heard Mrs. Tighe, the poetess, spoken of in the family! But if there were any monument, it must be at the church at Innerstiogue!" I thanked him for his intelligence, the only glimpse of information I had got at Rosanna or Woodstock, and drove off.

The matter was now clear. The very servants who had lived years in the family had never heard the name of Mrs. Tighe, the poetess, mentioned! These present Tighes had been marrying the daughters of lords—this a daughter of the Duke of Richmond, and Dan Tighe, a daughter of Lord Crofton. They were ashamed, probably, that any of their name should have degraded herself by writing poetry, which a man or woman without an acre may do. When I reached the church at Innerstiogue, the matter received a most striking confirmation. There, sure enough, was the monument, in a small mausoleum in the church-yard. It is a recumbent figure, laid on a granite altar-shaped basement. The figure is of a freestone resembling Portland stone, and is lying on its side, as on a sofa, being said, by the person who showed it, to be the position in which she died, on coming in from a walk. The execution of the whole is very ordinary, and if really by Flaxman, displays none of his genius. I have seen much better things by a common stone-mason. There is a little angel sitting at the head, but this has never been fastened down by cement. The monument was, no doubt, erected by the widower of the poetess, who was a man of classical taste, and, I believe, much attached to her. There is no inscription yet put upon the tomb, though one, said to be written by her husband, has long been cut in stone for the purpose. In the wall at the back of the monument, aloft, there is an oblong-square hole left for this inscription, which I understood was lying about at the house, but no single effort had been made to put it up, though it would not require an hour's work, and though Mrs. Tighe has been dead six-and-thirty years!

This was decisive! If these two gentlemen, nephews of the poetess, who are enjoying the two splendid estates of the family, Woodstock and Rosanna, show thus little respect to the only one of their name that ever lifted it above the mob, it is not to be expected that they will show much courtesy to strangers. Well is it that Mrs. Tighe raised her own monument, that of immortal verse, and wrote her own epitaph in the hearts of all the pure and loving, not on a stone which sordid relatives, still fonder of earth than stone, may consign to the oblivion of a lumber-room.

That these nephews of the poetess do look after the earth which her husband left behind him, though not after the stone, I learned while waiting in the village for the sexton. I fell into conversation with the woman at the cottage by which I stood. It was as follows:

Self. "Well, your landlord has a fine estate here. I hope he is good to you."

Woman. "Well, your honor, very good, very good."

Self. "Very good? What do you call very good? I find English and Irish notions of goodness don't always agree."

Woman. "Well, your honor, we may say he is mixed; mixed, your honor."

Self. "How mixed?"

Woman. "Why, your honor, you see I can't say that he was very good to me."

Self. "How was that?"

Woman. "Why, your honor, we were backward in our rent, and the squire sent for my husband, and told him that if he did not pay all next quarter, he would sell us up. My husband begged he would give him a little more time, as a neighbor said he had some money left him, and would take part of our land at a good rent, and then we should be able to pay; but now we got little, and the children were many, and it was hard to meet and tie. 'Oh!' said the squire, 'if you are going to get all that money, you will be able to pay more rent. I must have two pounds a year more.'"

Self. "Gracious Heaven! But, surely, he did not do such a thing?"

Woman. "But he did it, your honor. The neighbor had no money: it was a hum; he never took the field of us at all; we never were able to get a penny more from any one than we gave; but when my husband went to pay the rent at the next rent-day, the steward would not take it. He said he had orders to have two pounds a year more; and from that day we have had it regularly to pay."

What a fall out of the poetry of Psyche to the iron realities of Ireland! This screwing system on the poor, which you find almost every where, soon makes us cease to wonder at the wretchedness and the wild outrages of the people there. At one splendid place where I was, the lord of the estate and the gentry were all bowling away on the Sunday morning to a church three miles distant. When I asked why they did not stay at their own, this was the reply: "The clergyman had given great offense by saying in one of his sermons that their dogs were better lodged and fed than their neighbors!" Poor Ireland! where such is the distortion of circumstances that the poor are too poor to have the truth told about them to ears polite even from the pulpit, and where the squirearchy live in splendid houses, and in state emulating the peerage, surrounded by hovels and wretchedness, such as the world besides can not parallel. The condition of Ireland is fatal in its effects on all classes. The poor are reduced to a misery that is the amazement of the whole world; and the squirearchy, who live in daily contemplation of this misery, are rendered utterly callous to it. They go on putting on the screw of high rental to the utmost limit, and surrounded, as it were, only by serfs, naturally grow selfish beyond our conceptions in England, haughty, and ungracious. I believe that no country, except Russia, can furnish such revolting examples of ignorant and churlish insolence as Ireland can from the ranks of its solitary squirearchy—so utterly opposed to the generally generous, courteous, and hospitable character of its people.

JOHN KEATS.

We come now to one whose home and haunts on the earth were brief;

John Keats was one of those sweet and glorious spirits who descend, like the angel messengers of old, to discharge some divine command, not to dwell here. Pure, ethereal, glowing with the fervency of inward life, the bodily vehicle appears but assumed for the occasion, and as a mist, as a shadow, is ready to dissolve the instant that occasion is served. They speak and pass away into the higher light from whence they came; but their words remain—themselves life, and spirit, and power—like the electric element in the veins of the earth, quickening and vitalizing the souls of men to the end of time. They become part and parcel of our nature; they are as essential to the aliment and the progress of our intellectual being, as the light, the morning dew of summer, the morning and the evening star, or any of those great components of nature, the sky, the sea, or the mountain, from which we draw the daily spirit of beauty; and live!—live, not as mere material machines; not as animal existences—as brutes,

not mere men of the world, money-getting, house-building, land-purchasing creatures, but souls of God and of eternity. "Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word which proceeds out of the mouth of God," and which descends to earth by his prophets, whether of prose or of poetry. It is by the mediation of such pure and seraphic intelligences that our true psychological frame and constitution are built up. For, created to take our places in the great future of the universe, amid the spiritual revelation of all things spiritual, we must be raised substantially from the mere germ of immortality within us into "spirits of just men made perfect." We must be composed of the spiritual elements of beauty, thought, sensation, and seizure of all intellectual things, growing by the daily absorption of divine essences into spiritual bodies, incorporate of love, of light, of lofty aspirations and tenderest desires; of thoughts that comprehend the world, and hearts that embrace it with a divine capacity of affection. As we walk on our daily way, and along the muddiest paths of life, amid our own cares and loneliness, we do not and can not walk unblessed. The shower of God's benedictions falls on us; the sunshine of his ceaseless gifts surrounds us. From his own appointed men, whether living or dead, "the refreshments from his presence" reach us, melt into us, and sustain us. Words spoken thousands of years ago steal, like the whisper of a breeze, into our bosoms, and become bright guests there; music, full of deep movings, heard but yesterday from the lips of the inspired, touches the spring of happiness within us. The thoughts and sentiments of poets and philosophers, "beautiful exceedingly," stand around us like the trees and the flowers of our wayside; and from every point of heaven and earth are reflected upon us the flowing waters, the cool forest shades, the bright and glittering stars of that mind, which has been poured through a myriad of vehicles and a host of ages down upon us here. The light, and color, and warmth which mature our very corn and fruits, come from the sun. They are no more inherent in this nether earth than our own life is. All that we have and enjoy must come from other worlds to us. Our material aliments are sustained by the strength and life issuing from the infinite heavens; and thence too descend, in still more ethereal actuality, all that our souls are made of.

Of the class of swift but resplendent messengers by whom these ministrations are performed, neither ours nor any other history can furnish a specimen more beautiful than John Keats. He was of feeling and "imagination all compact." His nature was one pure mass of the living light of poetry. On this world and its concerns he could take no hold, and they could take none on him. The worldly and the worldly wise could not comprehend him, could not sympathize with. To them his vivid orgasm of the intellect was madness; his exuberance of celestial gifts was extravagance; his unworldliness was effeminacy; his love of the universal man, and not of gross distinctions of pride and party, was treason. As of the highest and divinest of God's messengers to earth, they cried, "Away with him; he is not fit to live;" and the body, that mere mist-like, that mere shadow-like body, already failing before the fervency of his spiritual functions, fell, "faded away, dissolved," and disappeared before the bitter frost-wind of base criticism.

It was a dark and wretched time when Keats made his appearance among us. War, and party, and peculation on the one side, and resentment and discontent on the other; the necessity for the gainer maintaining his craft at all costs, and the equal necessity for the loser dragging this ruinous craft to the ground, had infused into literature an atrocious spirit. From this foul spirit, genius, in every fresh incarnation, suffered the most ruthless and inhuman assaults. The stronger possessor of it stood; the weaker or more sensitive fell. Keats was one of the latter. He had soul enough for any thing, but his physique was feeble, and sunk. It will be one of the "damned spots" which will forever cling, not to the country, but to the age. But it is to the everlasting honor of Leigh Hunt, that, himself a critic as well as a poet, he never dipped his hand in the blood of the innocents. He never slew one of those martyrs whose glorious tombs we now build with adamantine stones of admiration, tempering the cement with the tears of our love. Himself assailed, and shot at, and cruelly wounded by the archers, he not only turned and manfully defended himself, but spread the shield of his heart to protect those who were rising up to become formidable rivals in the public regard. Will the country ever show to this generous man, and in time, that warm-heartedness which he always showed to its sons of genius in their unfolding hours? It is a glory that is peculiar, and peculiarly beautiful, that amid that iron age of a murderous criticism, he was forever found in close union and communion with the morning stars of poetry. They truly "sang together." They seemed by an instinct of life to flock to him, and by an instinct equally sure and unselfish, he felt at once their claims, and with open hand and heart maintained them. It was in the pages of the Examiner that, amid specimens of young poets, I first made acquaintance with the magnificent sonnet of Keats on reading Chapman's Homer, and with Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. From that hour there could be no moment's question but that great men were come among us; those men who, in fact, "turn the world upside down," and by which turning upside down, the only process, the asps and scorpions of malice are shook out of it, and all its strong-rooted fabrics of prejudice and pride are toppled into the dust. Till death, the souls of these men, who

never ceased to maintain that brave union thus begun, but amid abuse, misrepresentation, and the vilest onslaughts from the army of the aliens, went on blessing the world with those emanations of splendid and unshackled thought, which are now recognized as among the most precious of the national property. Who in future days will not pray that he might have been as one of these?

It is to the account by Leigh Hunt, in his "Byron and some of his Cotemporaries," that we owe almost all that we know of the life and haunts of Keats. From this we learn that "Mr. Keats's origin was of the humblest description. He was born October 29, 1796, at a livery-stable in Moorfields, of which his grandfather was proprietor. He never spoke of it, perhaps out of a personal soreness which the world had exasperated. After receiving the rudiments of a classical education at Mr. Clarke's school at Enfield, he was bound apprentice to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon, in Church-street, Edmonton; and his enemies having made a jest even of this, he did not like to be reminded of it; at once disdaining them for their meanness, and himself for being weak enough to be moved by them. Mr. Clarke, Jun., his schoolmaster's son, a reader of genuine discernment, had encouraged with great warmth the genius that he saw in the young poet; and it was to Mr. Clarke I was indebted for my acquaintance with him."

Mr. Hunt, in his warm-hearted way, lost no time in introducing his poetry to the best judges of poetry, among them to Godwin, Hazlitt, Basil Montagu, Charles Lamb, and others. He read to them, among others, that fine sonnet already mentioned, which, as it is printed in a volume now not much seen, can not too often be quoted:

"ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER.

The two poets became speedily familiar and almost inseparable. They read, walked, and talked together continually; and Mr. Hunt gives us various particulars of Keats's haunts at this period which are nowhere else to be obtained. "The volume containing the above sonnet," he says, "was published in 1817, when the author was in his twenty-first year. The poem with which it begins was suggested to him by a delightful summer day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the battery on Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood; and the last poem, the one on Sleep and Poetry, was occasioned by his sleeping in one of the cottages in the Vale of Health, the first one that fronts to the valley, beginning from the same quarter. I mention these things, which now look trivial, because his readers will not think them so twenty years hence. It was in the beautiful lane running from the road between Hampstead and Highgate to the foot of Highgate Hill, that, meeting me one day, he first gave me the volume. If the admirer of Mr. Keats's poetry does not know the lane in question, he ought to become acquainted with it, both on his author's account and its own. It has been also paced by Mr. Lamb and Mr. Hazlitt, and frequently, like the rest of the beautiful neighborhood, by Mr. Coleridge; so that instead of Millfield Lane, which is the name it is known by 'on earth,' it has sometimes been called Poet's Lane, which is an appellation it richly deserves. It divides the grounds of Lords Mansfield and Southampton, running through trees and sloping meadows, and being rich in the botany for which this part of the neighborhood of London has always been celebrated." Mr. Hunt was at this time living at Hampstead, in the Vale of Health, and the house at which it is said Keats wrote the beautiful poem on Sleep and Poetry was his. There is another fact in this account that deserves attention, and that is, the date of the publication of Keats's first small volume. This was 1817; in 1818 he published his Endymion; on the 26th of June, 1820, his third volume, Lamia, and other Poems, was published; and on the 27th of December of the same year he died at Rome. Thus the whole of his poetical life, from the issue of his first small volume to his death, was but about three years. During the greater part of that period he felt his disease, consumption, was mortal. Yet what progress in the development of his powers, and the maturing of his judgment and feeling of art, was manifested in that short space and under those circumstances! The first volume was a volume of immature fancies and unsettled style, but with things which denoted the glorious dawn of a short but illustrious day. The Endymion had much extravagance. It was a poetical effervescence. The mind of the writer was haunted by crowds of imaginations, and scenes of wonder, and dreams of beauty, chiefly from the old mythological world, but mingled with the passion for living nature, and the warmest feelings of youth. It brought forward the deities of Greece, and invested them with the passions and tenderness of men, and all the youthful glow which then reigned in the poet's heart. The mind was boiling over from intense heat; but amid the luscious foam rose streams of the richest wine of poetry which ever came from the vintage of this world. The next volume, Lamia, Isabella, &c., showed how the heady liquor had cleared itself, and become spirit bright and strong. There was an aim, a settled plan and purpose in each composition, and a steady power of judgment growing up amid all the vivid impulses of the brain that still remained vivid as ever. The style was wonderfully condensed, and the descriptive as well as conceptive faculty had assumed a vigor and acumen which was not, and is not, and probably never will be, surpassed by any other poet. For proofs to justify these high terms, it is only necessary to open the little volume, and open it almost any where. How powerful and tender is the narrative of Isabella; how rich, and gorgeous, and chaste, and well-weighed is the whole of St. Agnes's Eve; how full of the soul of poetry is The Ode to the Nightingale. Perhaps there is no poet, living or dead, except Shakspeare, who can pretend to any thing like the felicity of epithet which characterizes Keats. One word or phrase is the essence of a whole description or sentiment. It is like the dull substance of the earth struck through by electric fires, and converted into veins of gold and diamonds. For a piece of perfect and inventive description, that passage from Lamia, where, Lycius gone to bid the guests to his wedding, Lamia, in her uneasy excitement, employs herself and her demon powers in adorning her palace, is unrivaled:

The description of Lamia undergoing the metamorphosis by which she escaped from the form of a serpent to that of a beautiful woman, is marvelous for its power and precision of language.

The most magnificent trophy of his genius, however, is the fragment of Hyperion. On this poem, which has something vast, colossal, and dreamy about it, giving you a conception of the unfoldings of an almost infinite scope of "the vision and the faculty divine" in this extraordinary youth, he was employed when the progress of his complaint, and the savage treatment of the critics, sunk his heart, and he abandoned the task, and went forth to die. How touching, under the circumstances, is the short preface affixed to this volume by the publishers. "If any apology be thought necessary for the appearance of the unfinished poem of Hyperion, the publishers beg to state that they alone are responsible, as it was printed at their particular request, and contrary to the wish of the author. The poem was intended to have been of equal length with the Endymion, but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding." Can a critic even read the passage without some compunction? and who shall again repeat the stale sophism that unkind criticism never extinguished genuine poetry?

Mr. Hunt says of Keats, that "he enjoyed the usual privileges of greatness with all whom he knew, rendering it delightful to be obliged by him, and an equal, but not a greater, to oblige. It was a pleasure to his friends to have him in their houses, and he did not grudge it."

He was sometimes a regular inmate with Mr. Hunt at Kentish town, and used to ramble about the sweet walks of Hampstead and Highgate to his heart's content. "When Endymion was published, he was living at Hampstead with his friend Charles Brown, who attended him most affectionately through a long and severe illness, and with whom, to their great mutual enjoyment, he had taken a journey into Scotland. The lakes and mountains of the North delighted him exceedingly. He beheld them with an epic eye. Afterward he went into the South, and luxuriated in the Isle of Wight." He was, too, down in Devonshire. The preface to his Endymion is dated from Teignmouth.

On Mr. Brown's leaving England a second time, "Mr. Keats," says Leigh Hunt, "was too ill to accompany him, and came to reside with me, when his last and best volume of poems appeared, containing Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and the noble fragment of Hyperion. I remember Charles Lamb's delight and admiration on reading this work; how pleased he was with the designation of Mercury as 'the star of Lethe,' rising, as it were, and glittering when he came upon that pale region; with the fine, daring anticipation in that passage of the second poem,

and with the description, at once delicate and gorgeous, of Agnes praying beneath the painted window."

This must have been immediately before the young poet quitted England in the vain quest of health. There is a very affecting passage in Mr. Hunt's brief memoir of him, which shows what was the state of mind of this fine young poet at this crisis. The hunter had stricken him, death was dealing with him, and the pain of affections unassured of a return was helping his other enemies to pull him down. "Seeing him once," says Mr. Hunt, "change countenance in a manner more alarming than usual, as he stood silently eyeing the country out of the window, I pressed him to let me know how he felt, in order that he might enable me to do what I could for him; upon which he said that his feelings were almost more than he could bear, and he feared for his senses. I proposed that we should take a coach and ride about the country together, to vary, if possible, the immediate impression, which was sometimes all that was formidable, and would come to nothing. He acquiesced, and was restored to himself. It was, nevertheless, on the same day, sitting on the bench in Well Walk, at Hampstead, nearest the heath, that he told me, with unaccustomed tears in his eyes, that 'his heart was breaking.' A doubt, however, was upon him at that time, which he afterward had reason to know was groundless; and during his residence at the last house that he occupied before he went abroad, he was at times more than tranquil."

His house, it appears, was in Wentworth Place, Downshire Hill, Hampstead, by Pond-street, and at the next door lived the young lady to whom he was engaged. Mr. Hunt accompanied Keats and this young lady to the place of embarkation in a coach, and saw them part. It was a most trying moment. Neither of them entertained a hope to see each other again in life, yet each endeavored to subdue the feelings of such a moment to the retention of outward composure. Keats was accompanied on his voyage by that excellent artist, Mr. Severn, and who, to quote again the same competent authority, possessed all that could recommend him for a companion: old acquaintanceship, great animal spirits, active tenderness, and a mind capable of appreciating that of a poet. They first went to Naples, and afterward to Rome, where they occupied the same house, at the corner of the Piazza di Spagna. Mr. Severn made several sketches of Keats, both on the voyage and at Rome, and, while there, finished a portrait of him for Mr., now Lord Jeffery, who had spoken handsomely of him in the Edinburgh Review. At Rome, on the 27th of December, 1820, as already stated, John Keats died in the arms of his friend, completely worn out and longing for release. How the circumstance of this life-weariness reminds us of his longing for death in his inimitable Ode to the Nightingale!