believing such nonsense these many years. And it will probably repeat the mistake on the very next opportunity. "Tant nous avons l'esprit bien fait !” In a preface, the style and substance of which must command universal approbation, Mr. Milnes speaks thus:

the falling curls of sunny brown, the straight nose, | poor dear public! To think that it has gone about the full dark blue eyes and soft childlike lips; and the simple white dress, relieved only by a knot of choice flowers which she had fastened in her bosom. A form slender and airy as that of Undine, and an expression which seemed to embody that familiar line "a spirit, yet a woman too," completed the picture. "They are all relations, you know," said Madeline soothingly, "and indeed, dearest, I could not come: I assure you it is impossible. Come quickly, and you may be in the room before they assemble." She led the shrinking girl down stairs, and did not part from her till she had opened the awful door; and Ida entered, much as she had entered the same room, to nearly the same party, fourteen years before, pausing on the threshold as if to see who would welcome her. Now, too, as then, the only feeling which gave her courage to advance might have been expressed by those little words-"Papa

sent me."

Reviews.

LIFE, LETTERS, AND LITERARY REMAINS
OF JOHN KEATS.1

FOR, if it be, as I affirm," writes Sir Philip Sidney, in his "Defence of Poesy,"-"that no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to virtue, and that none can both teach and move thereto so much as poesy, then is the conclusion manifest, that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed." And if, as we venture to affirm, the biography of a poet, (of any artist, indeed,) written wisely, honestly, and lovingly, will be itself a poem, "teaching and moving to virtue," in those minds capable of apprehending it, as a whole; then, also, is this conclusion manifest,--that if Mr. Milnes's book about Keats be biography of the right sort, his ink and paper have been very profitably employed. And that it is a biography of the right sort will, we think, be agreed on all hands. He has had a difficult task; a task which some of the poet's surviving personal friends might be supposed more competent to execute, but which circumstances imposed upon him who never saw the living or even the dying Keats; and this task he has achieved nobly and modestly in the two volumes before us. They are appropriately dedicated to Lord Jeffrey, who first taught the world at large that Keats was indeed a poet. The portrait by Joseph Severn, prefixed to the first volume, is more satisfactory than most "counterfeit presentments" of the departed great. It is a silent, but very strong support to the testimony of this book concerning the character of Keats. "Killed by a savage article in a review!" Look in the face of this man, and believe it if you can. Is that a weak, irritable, vanity-devoured boy? Are those the eyes likely to be filled with tears? or that the mouth to quiver with emotion because an ignorant reviewer said he was no poet? Heaven help the

(1) Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. Edited by Richard Moncton Milnes. 2 vols. Moxon.

"I hesitated some time as to the application of my materials. It was easy for me to construct out of them a signal monument of the worth and genius of Keats: by selecting the circumstances and the passages that illustrated the extent of his abilities, the purity of his objects, and the nobleness of his nature, I might have presented the world a monography, apparently perfect, of the relatives or dependents of remarkable personages and at least as real as those which the affection or pride generally prefix to their works. But I could not be unconscious that if I were able to present to public view the true personality of a man of genius, without detracting from his existing reputation, I should be either wounding the feelings of mourning friends, or doing a much better thing in itself, and one much more becoming that office of biographer which I, å personal stranger to the individual, had consented to undertake. For, if I left the memorials of Keats to tell their own tale, they would in truth be the book, and my business would be almost limited to their collection and arrangement; whereas, if I only regarded them as the materials of my own work, the general tion, and the temptation to render the facts of the story effect would chiefly depend on my ability of construcsubservient to the excellence of the work of art would never have been absent.

likely to raise the character of Keats in the estimation "I had also to consider which procedure was most of those most capable of judging it. I saw how griev ously he was misapprehended even by many who wished to see in him only what was best. I perceived that many who heartily admired his poetry, looked on it as the production of a wayward, erratic genius, self-indulgent in conccits, disrespectful of the rules and limitations of Art; not only unlearned, but careless of knowledge; not only exaggerated, but despising proportion. I knew that his moral disposition was querulous of severe judgment, fantastical in its tastes, assumed to be weak, gluttonous of sensual excitement, and lackadaisical in its sentiments. He was all but universally believed to have been killed by a stupid, savage article in a review, and to the compassion genepersonal interest, which his poetic reputation hardly rated by his untoward fate he was held to owe a certain justified.

'When, then, I found from the undeniable documentary evidence of his inmost life, that nothing could be further from the truth than this opinion, it seemed to me that a portrait so dissimilar from the general assumption, would hardly obtain credit, and might rather look like the production of a paradoxical partiality than the result of conscientious inquiry. I had enced simplicity and truth above all things, and to show that Keats in his intellectual character reverabhorred whatever was merely strange and strong; that he was ever learning, and ever growing more conscious of his own ignorance; that his models were always the highest and the purest, and that his earnestness in aiming at their excellence was only equal to the humble estimation of his own efforts; that his poetical course was one of distinct and positive progress, exhibiting a self-command and self-direction which enabled him to understand and avoid the faults esteem, and to liberate himself at once, not only from even of the writers he was most naturally inclined to the fetters of literary partizanship, but even from the subtler influences and associations of the accidental

literary spirit of his own times. I had also to exhibit the moral peculiarities of Keats as the effects of a strong will, passionate temperament, indomitable courage, and a somewhat contemptuous disregard of other men-to represent him as unflinchingly meeting all criticism of his writings, and caring for the Article which is supposed to have had such homicidal success, just so far as it was an evidence of the little power he had as yet acquired over the sympathies of mankind, and no more. I had to make prominent the brave front he opposed to poverty and pain-to show how love of pleasure was in him continually subordinate to higher aspiration, notwithstanding the sharp zest of enjoyment which his mercurial nature conferred on him; and, above all, I had to illustrate how little he abused his full possession of that imaginative faculty, which enables the poet to vivify the phantoms of the hour, and to purify the objects of sense, beyond what the moralist may sanction, or the mere practical man can understand."

We have not curtailed this ample recognition of the duty incumbent on the biographer of John Keats, for two reasons; first, because it is an eloquent and clear statement of the facts which had to be dealt with concerning the poet and his reputation; and, secondly, because it shows the spirit of earnestness and impartiality in which the biographer set about his task. We are aware that Mr. Milnes has given a long time and very careful consideration to it; and we have now to congratulate him on the result. "The thing he would do" that has he done. He has made Keats speak for himself, and prove to others the truth of what Mr. Milnes and all true admirers of his great genius could not help believing concerning him in despite of the prevalent opinion to the

contrary.

The external life of Keats, like that of many poets, presents nothing very remarkable to the eye of the careless observer. The poet's real existence is in his poetry; and Mr. Milnes says truly, in one sense, that Keats's "whole story may be summed up in the composition of three small volumes of verse, some earnest friendships, one passion, and a premature death." And yet it is not wholly so. The external

who loved him and who were proud of his genius,
who encouraged and enjoyed his earliest efforts, Keats
was spared the awful desolation and loneliness so fre-
quently the lot of youthful genius-he was a poet in
his own family-a "prophet in his own country;"
and he was fed on poet's best food-love and praise.
On his entrance into the business of life, troubles
came, it is true;-he disliked his profession (that of a
surgeon), and abandoned it and turned to literature.
He and his brothers were harassed by occasional
money difficulties; but these cares were trifles to
such a spirit as his, conscious of power to destroy
their sting in a few years of literary exertion. The
death of his brother Tom, by the painful lingering
disease to which he himself became a victim, was his
first great trial: apart from those unknown ones
which ever accompany the growth of poetic genius.
At this time he was known to and appreciated by
such men as Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt, Haydon, Reynolds,
Cowden Clarke, Dilke, and Brown. His letters show
the fine healthy tone of his moral being; it is only in
the agony of physical disease that there is any morbid
feeling perceptible in his mind. His letters are very
characteristic. They are always true to himself; un-
affected and natural either in their gaiety or gravity;
sometimes eloquent and poetic, at other times over-
flowing with drollery and humour (your true poet is
always a humourist); now about himself and his poems
(unrestrained by an ignoble fear that his friends will
laugh at his egotism), and anon, full of people and
things quite foreign to himself. Judging from the
generality of biographies, we should say that the poets
are the most charming letter-writers. Perhaps the
next best thing to a good conversation, is a good
letter. We have not room to transcribe a hundredth
part of the original reflections, liveliness, and pathos
scattered so profusely through these letters. A few
must suffice. He is visiting the birth-place of Burns
when he writes the following to his friend Mr.
Reynolds :-

life is indicative of the internal, and is seen distinctly "We went to Kirk Alloway. A prophet is no prophet in his own country.' We went to the cottage and influencing and evolving it. Three volumes of verse took some whisky. I wrote a sonnet for the mere sake are large worlds of thought and sensation; and what of writing some lines under the roof: they are so bad I is any life (above the vegetable or animal) composed cannot transcribe them. The man at the cottage was of, but of thought and sensation? They are pure a great bore with his anecdotes. I hate the rascal. spiritual existence, and all acts, words, moods of His life consists in fuzzy, fuzzier, fuzziest. He drinks glasses five for the quarter and twelve for the hour; he human beings apart from these are not entities at all. is a mahogany-faced old jackass who knew Burns: he Earnest friendships and a passionate love, these are ought to have been kicked for having spoken to him. in themselves rich, full life; and Keats at twenty-kick him. Oh! the flummery of a birth-place! Cant! . I should like to employ Caliph Vathek to five had truly lived more than men of twice his years with half his highly organized vitality. We, for our parts, find little or nothing to regret in the external or internal life of Keats, up to the moment when the mortal disease within him declared itself; then began the dreadful struggle; of strong eager passionate love of life battling with the inevitable death. Painful beyond most deaths is that of this young poet. It is impossible to read the account of the last few months of his life without heart-rending emotion. His childhood was healthy and happy, and so was his early youth. Surrounded by brothers and friends

Cant! Cant! Many a true word, they say, is spoken in
jest; this may be because his gab hindered my subli-
mity: the flat dog made me write a flat sonnet. My
dear Reynolds, I cannot write about scenery and visit-
reality, but it is greater than remembrance. You would
ings. Fancy is indeed less than present palpable
lift your eyes from Homer only to see close before you
the real island of Tenedos. You would rather read
Homer afterwards than remember yourself.
of Burns's is of more worth to you than all I could
misery is a dead weight upon the nimbleness of one's
think for a whole year in his native country. His
quill. I tried to forget it;-to drink toddy without
any care;- to write a merry sonnet: it wouldn't do;

One song

age,

-he talked, he drank with blackguards, he was mise- | dawning of that passion which has been supposed to rable. We can see horribly clear, in the works of such have hastened his end. To a nature like that of a man, his whole life, as if we were God's spies. What were his addresses to Jean in the after part of his life? Keats, love would be impossible for any mere commonI should not speak so to you. Yet why not? You are place beauty, and of this we may be sure, that the not in the same case. You are in the right path, woman beloved by such a man was no ordinary person. and you shall not be deceived. I have spoken to you Somewhat may perhaps be gathered concerning her against marriage, but it was general. The prospect in these matters has been to me so blank, that I have not by the impression produced on his mind at their first been unwilling to die. I would not now, for I have in- acquaintance, as indicated in the following extracts. ducements to life. I must see my little nephews in About the same time he talks eloquently against marAmerica, and I must see you marry your lovely wife." riage, in his own case; showing that Ideal Beauty is the only fit wife for a poet, and poetry the only child he ought to give to the world. These considerations, and the opinion he has formed of the generality of women, who are to him like children, to whom, he says, he would rather give a sugar-plum than his time, are barriers to matrimony for him. In all this, and a thousand other incidental remarks, do we see the strong yearning of a powerful soul for love-the painful besoin d'aimer struggling against that other instinct of his nature which forbade him to love an inferior being. At this time he is introduced to one, who had, at all events, a large nature.

Keats was at this time twenty-three years of and had not seen the woman who was to awaken all his immense capacity of loving. Earnestly engaged in study, attendance on his brother, and the composition of his works, he had hitherto lived a quiet and retired life, mostly in the country. To a friend who urged his going more into society, he gives his objections to doing so, and goes on thus :

:

"I am certain that I have not a right feeling towards women at this moment I am striving to be just to them, but I cannot. Is it because they fall so far beneath my boyish imagination? When I was a schoolboy, I thought a fair woman a pure goddess; my mind was a soft nest in which some one of them slept, though she knew it not. I have no right to expect more than their reality. I thought them ethereal, above men-I find them, perhaps, equal. Great, by comparison, is very small. Insult may be inflicted in more ways than by word and action. I do not like to think insults in a lady's company. When I am among women, I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be silent. I am full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing. I am in a hurry to be gone."

On the subject of the articles in the "Quarterly" and "Blackwood," let us hear what he says of their effect on himself:

"I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to be a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain, without comparison, beyond what 'Blackwood' or the 'Quarterly could inflict and also when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right with regard to the 'slip-shod Endymion.' That it is so, is no fault of mine. No! Though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently without judgment, I may write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In Endy mion' I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and taken tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure, for I would rather fail than not be among the greatest. But I am nigh getting into a rant.”

And now we would fain say a few words about the

"The Misses

to

are very kind to me, but they have
lately displeased me much, and in this way:-now I am
coming the Richardson! On my return, the first day I
cousin of theirs, who having fallen out with her grand-
called, they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a
papa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs.
take asylum in her house. She is an East Indian, and
ought to be her grandfather's heir. At the time I
was in conference with her up-stairs,
called, Mrs.
and the young ladies were warm in her praise down-
stairs, calling her genteel, interesting, and a thousand
other pretty things, to which I gave no heed, not being
partial to nine days' wonders. Now all is completely
changed: they hate her, and from what I hear, she is
not without faults of a real kind; but she has others,
which are more apt to make women of inferior claims
hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a
Charmian: she has a rich Eastern look; she has fine
eyes, and fine manners. When she comes into the room,
she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leo-
pardess. She is too fine and too conscious of herself to
repulse any man who may address her; from habit she
thinks that nothing particular. I always find myself
more at ease with such a woman: the picture before me
always gives me a life and animation which I cannot
possibly feel with anything inferior. I am, at such
times, too much occupied in admiring, to be awkward
or in a tremble; I forget myself entirely, because I live
in her. You will by this time think I am in love with

her, so, before I go any further, I will tell you I am not.
She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's
might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an
amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a
conversation with an imperial woman, the very 'yes'
and 'no' of whose life is to me a banquet. I don't cry
to take the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I
I like her, and her like,
fret to leave her behind me.
because one has no sensations: what we both are is
had much talk with her-no such thing; there are the
taken for granted. You will suppose I have, by this,

Misses

on the look out. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt to me what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a manner that a man is drawn

towards her with a magnetic power-this they call flirting! They do not know things; they do not know what a woman is. I believe, though she has faults, the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had, yet

she is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way; for there are two distinct tempers of mind in which we judge of things-the worldly, theatrical and pantomimical; and the unearthly, spiritual and ethereal. In the former, Buonaparte, Lord Byron, and this Charmian, hold the first place in our minds; in the latter, John Howard, Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, and you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings. As a man of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me.

'I am free from men of pleasure's cares,

By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs.'"

|

My imagination is horribly vivid about her. I see her
I hear her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient
interest to divert me from her for a moment.
This was
the case when I was in England; I cannot recollect
without shuddering the time that I was a prisoner at
Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampstead
all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her
again. Now! Oh, that I could be buried near where
she lives! I am afraid to write to her to receive a
letter from her. To see her handwriting would break my
heart. Even to hear of her anyhow-to see her name
written-would be more than I can bear.
My dear
Brown, what am I to do? Where can I look for consola-
tion or case? If I had any chance of recovery, this

Not long after writing the above, we find such pas- passion would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of sages as this in his letters :

:

my illness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever has never ceased wearing me out. When you write to me, which you will do immediately, write to Rome, (poste restante.) If she is well and happy, put a mark thus, +; if

66

"I never was in love, yet the voice and shape of a woman have haunted me these two days-at such a time, when the relief, the feverish relief of poetry, seems a much less crime. This morning, poetry has conquered -I have relapsed into those abstractions which are my only life-I feel escaped from a new, strange, and threat ening sorrow, and I am thankful for it. There is an awful warmth about my heart, like a load of immortality. Poor Tom, that woman and poetry were ringing changes in my senses.' Mr. Milnes's few words on this important and deli-Oh, that something fortunate had ever happened to me give me any comfort. Is there any news of George? cate subject, we now transcribe :

:

"It may be as well at once to state that the lady alluded to in the above pages inspired Keats with a passion that only ceased with his existence.

'Remember me to all. I will endeavour to bear my miseries patiently. A person in my state of health should not have such miseries to bear. Write a short note to my sister, saying you have heard from me. Severee is well. If I were in better health I would I fear there is no one can urge your coming to Rome.

or my brothers; that I might hope! But despair is forced
her advocate for ever.
upon me as a habit. My dear Brown, for my sake be
I cannot say a word about
Naples; I do not feel at all concerned in the thousand
novelties around me. I am afraid to write to her. I

"Your ever affectionate Friend,

"JOHN KEATS."

"However sincerely the devotion of Keats may have been requited, it will be seen that his outward circum-should like her to know that I do not forget her. Oh, It surprises stances soon became such as to render a union very diffi- Brown, I have coals of fire in my breast! cult, if not impossible. Thus, these years were passed bearing so much misery. Was I born for this end? me that the human heart is capable of containing and in a conflict in which plain poverty and mortal sickness God bless her and her mother, and my sister, and met a radiant imagination and a redundant heart. Hope George and his wife, and you, and all! was there, with Genius, his everlasting sustainer, and Fear never approached but as the companion of necessity. The strong power conquered the physical man, and made the very intensity of his passion, in a certain sense, accessory to his death: he might have lived longer if he had loved less. But this should be no matter of self-reproach to the object of his love, for the same may be said of the very exercise of his poetic faculty, and of all that made him what he was. It is enough that she has preserved his memory with a sacred honour, and it is no vain assumption that to have inspired and

sustained the one passion of this noble being has been a source of grave delight and earnest thankfulness through the changes and chances of her earthly pilgrimage."

We have neither space nor inclination to give our readers any details of the slow and agonizing death of Keats; although we would call attention to the noble and disinterested conduct of his friend, Joseph Severn, through all that awful struggle. "Verily, he will have his reward." We now quote one of the dying man's last letters almost entire. Is not its eloquent incoherence almost appalling?

"The fresh air revived me a little, and I hope I am well enough this morning to write you a short, calm letter; if that can be called one in which I am afraid to speak of what I would fainest dwell upon. As I have gone thus far into it, I must go on a little; perhaps it may relieve the load of wretchedness which presses upon The persuasion that I shall see her no more, will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have had her while I was in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to die-I cannot bear to leave her. Oh! God, God, God everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in my travelling cap scalds my head.

me.

"Oh, weep for Adonais!" His mortal remains lie buried in a lovely spot in Rome, and while we weep, the flowers are growing on his grave, and his glorious spirit is pursuing its allotted course in another world. God recalled his gift to earth at his appointed time, and who shall say that it was too soon? All our passions are presumptuous, and grief is not the least $0. We must learn to submit to God's will, even in such things as the early death of the Keatses and Chattertons of the world.

Of the literary remains we have this to say, that had they appeared as the only works of a poet who died at the age of twenty-five, they would probably have been considered as full of promise and of actual power and beauty, and they would have excited some curiosity about their author. They are by no means so good as Keats's previously published works, but they have enough of his peculiar genius to make them extremely interesting as specimens of the versatility of his poetic faculty.

In conclusion, let us hope that Mr. Milnes will find the reward of his labours in the increased popularity of this exquisite and original poet. To reflect upon what Keats did in poetry before his twenty-fifth year, is to see clearly how much greater he might have become than almost any poet of our day. Let us take the best thing he has left us, and that only a fragment,

Hyperion," and compare it with anything of a

similar length written before the age of five-and- | Lied," and "Reynard," despite their force and oddity,

twenty by his most celebrated contemporaries. Did
Scott or Byron, Moore or Campbell, Rogers or
Southey,―ay, even Shelley, or Coleridge, or Words-
worth,-produce anything before that age which can
be compared with Hyperion" for grandeur, beauty,
and power of conception ?-for solemn grace and un-
encumbered magnificence of diction? We appeal to
any impartial reader. Let him take up "Hyperion,"
and read it carefully, and he will, we think, agree
with us that it is unrivalled as the work of a youth.
It can fairly be compared with Milton, and (in another
department of art) with the Elgin Marbles. It is
like a realised dream of the primeval world and the
earliest gods. Some of his shorter poems, such as
the "Ode to a Nightingale," "On a Grecian Urn,"
and "
To Melancholy," may boldly challenge com
parison with anything of the same kind and compass
in our literature, and the world is beginning to be
aware of this. These volumes will do much towards
establishing other truths, and teaching some of those
grave lessons, which God wills that man should learn
in this world. To quote Mr. Milnes's eloquent last
words on the subject of the Life of Keats:-

are not sufficiently beautiful to be admitted as exceptions to the rule. Nevertheless, though the world always does, sooner or later, know something of its greatest men, yet true it is, that genius has certain primary difficulties to encounter and surmount, which do not beset the path of mediocrity. Genius frequently selects an unusual form for its development; or it expresses a phase of thought and feeling which is not familiar to the critics of the day, and which they consequently shrink for some time from acknowledging. Thus, Tennyson was long passed over by the majority of critics, from their ignorance and cowardice, whilst others were audacious enough to ridicule and condemn. None, at first, had sufficient courage to admire. Taylor, on the other hand, who walked according to the traditions of the past, who observed the wonted forms, and fell in with the conventional errors frequent in English poetry, and more especially characteristic of the English drama, (employing a false didactic style, essentially inimical to dramatic truth, but long naturalised among us ;)-—Taylor, we say, was at once hailed by Quarterly and Edinburgh, and, consequently, by all the smaller fry, as the dramatist of the age, and, indeed, as one of our greatest modern bards. The line quoted at the head of these remarks will be found (as nine-tenths of our readers may know) in this author's "Philip von Artevelde," and has "fuit les délices"-in plain English, charmed the souls-of all the small babblers and scribblers of the literary world. It was written, we may remark, be

"Let no man, who is in anything above his fellows, claim, as of right, to be valued or understood: the vulgar great are comprehended and adored, because they are in reality in the same moral plane with those who admire; but he who deserves the higher reverence must himself convert the worshipper. The pure and lofty life; the generous and tender use of the rare crcative faculty; the brave endurance of neglect and ridicule; the strange and cruel end of so much genius and so much virtue; these are the lessons by which the sym-fore its originator had been hailed as one of these pathies of mankind must be interested, and their faculties educated, up to the love of such a character and the comprehension of such an intelligence. Still the lovers and scholars will be few: still the rewards of fame will be scanty and ill-proportioned: no accumulation of knowledge or scries of experiences can teach the meaning of genius to those who look for it in additions and results, any more than the numbers studded round a planet's orbit could approach nearer infinity than a single unit. The world of thought must remain apart from the world of action, for if they once coincided, the problem of life would be solved, and the hope, which we call heaven, would be realized on

carth. And therefore men

Are cradled into poetry by wrong:

They learn in suffering what they teach in song.'"

said " greatest men;" but we may venture to assert that such a sentiment could only have proceeded from one who felt the spirit of mediocrity strong within him, and so protested beforehand against the final judgment of posterity.

But to our theme. Robert Browning, then, of whom we purpose to discourse, is certainly anything but unknown. Walter Savage Landor has recognised him in one of his fugitive pieces, as gifted with the freshest soul that ever bard possessed since Chaucer's days: (always excepting, we presume, that incomparable Swan of Avon, who soars above the condition of humanity). Sergeant Talfourd has celebrated him as the most rising dramatist of the age, in the preface to his own classic "Ion ;" and Charles Dickens (to complete a worthy triad) is known to consider and declare this poet's "Blot on the Scutcheon" the most poetic, pathetic, and generally beautiful of domestic tragedies. Some readers, perhaps, would not give Dickens credit for such elevated taste; yet, remembering the childPhilip von Artc-hood of little Dombey, they surely cannot wonder that he who conceived such exquisite prose-poetry should be able to appreciate the loftiest creations of art.

RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

Robert Browning's "Beils and Pomegranates."
"Pippa passes." Moxon.
“THE world knows nothing of its greatest men:"
so at least says an excessively mediocre poet in that
embodiment of mediocrity, yclept

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velde." As a general rule, nothing can be more opposed to truth. Genius of a high order always has obtained, and always must obtain, the world's recognition, "in the long run." Such talents are not communicated by Providence to serve no purpose. There is no instance on record of the discovery of an anonymous work which could pretend to merit of a lofty nature. The German middle-age poems, "Das Nicbelungen

Nevertheless, though Robert Browning is thus appreciated by the best and worthiest, he is not generally popular. We think he should be so; and, since we address a public of many thousands, through the medium of SHARPE'S MAGAZINE, we shall labour on the present occasion to bring the perception of his merits