Expect not life from pain nor danger free, Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee." "You know my opinion of that secondhand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry, because it is of no school. I read Cenci-but, besides that I think the subject essentially undramatic, I am not an admirer of our old dramatists as models. I deny that the English have hitherto had a drama at all. Your Cenci, however, was a work of power, and poetry. As to my drama, pray revenge yourself upon it, by being as free as I have been with yours. "I have not yet got your Prometheus, which I long to see. I have heard nothing of mine, and do not know that it is yet published. I have published a pamphlet on the Pope controversy, which you will not like. Had I known that Keats was dead or that he was alive and so sensitive-I should have omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was provoked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his own style of writing. "You want me to undertake a great poem - I have not the inclination nor the power. As I grow older, the indifference not to life, for we love it by instinct - but to the stimuli of life, increases. Besides, this late failure of the Italians has latterly disappointed me for many reasons, some public, some personal. My respects to Mrs. S. 66 Yours ever. 1 [Keats died at Rome in February, 1821, whither he had gone for the benefit of his health. His complaint was a consumption, under which he had lingered for some time; but his death was accelerated by a cold caught in his voyage to Italy. At the time of his death he had just completed his twenty-fourth year." A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met me," says Coleridge, "in a lane "P. S.-Could not you and I contrive to meet this summer? Could not you take a run here alone?” LETTER 420. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, April 26. 1821. I sent you by last postis a large packet, which will not do for publication (I suspect), being, as the apprentices say, damned low.' I put off also for a week or two sending the Italian scrawl which will form a note to it. The reason is that, letters being opened, I wish to bide a wee.' "Well, have you published the Tragedy? and does the Letter take? "Is it true, what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats died at Rome of the Quarterly Review? I am very sorry for it, though I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying, and suburbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's Dictionary. I know, by experience, that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking author; and the one on me (which produced the English Bards, &c.) knocked me down-but I got up again. Instead of bursting a blood-vessel, I drank three bottles of claret, and began an answer, finding that there was nothing in the article for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an honourable way. However, I would not be the person who wrote the homicidal article for all the honour and glory in the world, though I by no means approve of that school of scribbling which it treats upon. "You see the Italians have made a sad business of it-all owing to treachery and disunion amongst themselves. It has given me great vexation. The execrations heaped upon the Neapolitans by the other Italians are quite in unison with those of the rest of Europe. ET. 33. JOHN KEATS.-CARBONARI. "Ravenna, April. 28. 1821. "You cannot have been more disappointed than myself, nor so much deceived. I have been so at some personal risk also, which is not yet done away with. However, no time nor circumstances shall alter my tone nor my feelings of indignation against tyranny triumphant. The present business has been as much a work of treachery as of cowardice, though both may have done their part. If ever you and I meet again, I will have a talk with you upon the subject. At present, for obvious reasons, I can write but little, as all letters are opened. In mine they shall always find my sentiments, but nothing that can lead to the oppression of others. "You will please to recollect that the Neapolitans are nowhere now more execrated than in Italy, and not blame a whole people for the vices of a province. That would be like condemning Great Britain because they plunder wrecks in Cornwall. "And now let us be literary;-a sad falling off, but it is always a consolation. If 'Othello's occupation be gone,' let us take to the next best; and, if we cannot contribute to make mankind more free and wise, we may amuse ourselves and those who like it. What are you writing? I have been scribbling at intervals, and Murray will be publishing about now. 66 Lady Noel has, as you say, been dangerously ill, but it may console you to learn that she is dangerously well again. "I have written a sheet or two more of Memoranda for you; and I kept a little Journal for about a month or two, till I had filled the paper-book. I then left it off, as 1 "Aye, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are," &c. &c. 2 I had not, when I wrote, seen this pamphlet, as he supposes, but had merely heard from some friends, that his pen had" run a-muck" in it, and that I myself had not escaped a slight graze in its career. 3 It may be sufficient to say of the use to which both Lord Byron and Mr. Bowles thought it worth their while to apply my name in this controversy, that, as far as my own knowledge of the subject extended, I was disposed to agree with neither of the extreme opinions into which, as 503 things grew busy, and, afterwards, too gloomy to set down without a painful feeling. This I should be glad to send you, if I had an opportunity; but a volume, however small, don't go well by such posts as exist in this Inquisition of a country. "I have no news. As a very pretty woman said to me a few nights ago, with the tears in her eyes, as she sat at the harpsichord, 'Alas! the Italians must now return to making operas.' I fear that and maccaroni are their forte, and 'motley their only wear.' However, there are some high spirits among them still. Pray write. "And believe me, &c." So, you have got the Letter on Bowles ?? I do not recollect to have said any thing of you that could offend, - certainly, nothing intentionally. As for **, I meant him a compliment. I wrote the whole off-hand, without copy or correction, and expecting then every day to be called into the field. What have I said of you? I am sure I forget. It must be something of regret for your approbation of Bowles. And did you not approve, as he says? Would I had known that before! I would have given him some more gruel. 3 My intention was to it appeared to me, my distinguished friends had diverged; -neither with Lord Byron in that spirit of partisanship which led him to place Pope above Shakspeare and Milton, nor with Mr. Bowles in such an application of the "principles" of poetry as could tend to sink Pope, on the scale of his art, to any rank below the very first. Such being the middle state of my opinion on the question, it will not be difficult to understand how one of my controversial friends should be as mistaken in supposing me to differ altogether from his views, as the other was in taking for granted that I had ranged myself wholly on his side. make fun of all these fellows; but how I succeeded, I don't know. "As to Pope, I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our poetry. Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek Temple, with a Gothic Cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish Mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodas and conventicles about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, if you please, but I prefer the Temple of Theseus or the Parthenon to a mountain of burnt brick-work. now wears, and will trample them to ashes with for their servility. I have risked myself with the others here, and how far I may or may not be compromised is a problem at this moment. Some of them, like Craigengelt, would tell all, and more than all, to save themselves.' But, come what may, the cause was a glorious one, though it reads at present as if the Greeks had run away from Xerxes. Happy the few who have only to reproach themselves with believing that these rascals were less' rascaille' than they proved! Here in Romagna, the efforts were necessarily limited to preparations and good intentions, until the Germans were fairly engaged "The Murray has written to me but once, the day of its publication, when it seemed prosperous. But I have heard of late from England but rarely. Of Murray's other pub-in equal warfare -as we are upon their very lications (of mine), I know nothing, nor whether he has published. He was to have done so a month ago. I wish you would do something, or that we were together. "Ever yours and affectionately, "B." It was at this time that he began, under the title of" Detached Thoughts," that Book of Notices or Memorandums, from which, in the course of these pages, I have extracted so many curious illustrations of his life and opinions, and of which the opening article is as follows: 66 Amongst various Journals, Memoranda, Diaries, &c. which I have kept in the course of my living, I began one about three months ago, and carried it on till I had filled one paper-book (thinnish), and two sheets or so of another. I then left off, partly because I thought we should have some business here, and I had furbished up my arms and got my apparatus ready for taking a turn with the patriots, having my drawers full of their proclamations, oaths, and resolutions, and my lower rooms of their hidden weapons, of most calibres, - and partly because I had filled my paper-book. "But the Neapolitans have betrayed themselves and all the worid; and those who would have given their blood for Italy can now only give her their tears. frontiers, without a single fort or hill nearer than San Marino. Whether hell will be paved with those 'good intentions,' I know not; but there will probably be good store of Neapolitans to walk upon the pavement, whatever may be its composition. Slabs of lava from their mountain, with the bodies of their own damned souls for cement, would be the fittest causeway for Satan's Corso."" I "Ravenna, May 10. 1821 "I HAVE just got your packet. I am obliged to Mr. Bowles, and Mr. Bowles is obliged to me, for having restored him to good hu"Some day or other, if dust holds toge-mour. He is to write, and you to publish, ther, I have been enough in the secret (at least in this part of the country) to cast perhaps some little light upon the atrocious treachery which has replunged Italy into barbarism: at present, I have neither the time nor the temper. However the real Italians are not to blame; merely the scoundrels at the heel of the boot, which the Hun ["No saint in the course of his religious warfare," says Boswell," was more sensible of the unhappy failure of pious resolves than Johnson. He said one day, talk what you please, motto and subject. desire nothing but fair play for all parties. Of course, after the new tone of Mr. Bowles, you will not publish my defence of Gilchrist : it would be brutal to do so after his urbanity, for it is rather too rough, like his own attack upon Gilchrist. You may tell him what I say there of his Missionary (it is praised, as ing to an acquaintance on this subject, • Sir, hell is paved with good intentions.'"- Life, vol. v. p. 305. ed. 1835.' it deserves). However, and if there are any passages not personal to Bowles, and yet bearing upon the question, you may add them to the reprint (if it is reprinted) of my first Letter to you. Upon this consult Gifford ; and, above all, don't let any thing be added which can personally affect Mr. Bowles. To the extract that follows I beg to call the particular attention of the reader. Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and violence with which the gentleman here commemorated assailed Lord Byron, at a crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, will, if I am not mistaken, "In the enclosed notes, of course what I feel a thrill of pleasurable admiration in readsay of the democracy of poetry cannot applying these sentences, such as alone can convey to Mr. Bowles, but to the Cockney and water any adequate notion of the proud, generous washing-tub schools. pleasure that must have been felt in writing them. "I hope and trust that Elliston won't be permitted to act the drama. Surely he might have the grace to wait for Kean's return before he attempted it; though, even then, I should be as much against the attempt as The controversy, in which Lord Byron, with so much grace and good-humour, thus allowed himself to be disarmed by the courtesy of his antagonist, it is not my intention to run the risk of reviving by any enquiry into its origin or merits. In all such discussions on matters of mere taste and opinion, where, on one side, it is the aim of the disputants to elevate the object of the contest, and on the other, to depreciate it, Truth will usually be found, like Shakspeare's gatherer of samphire on the cliff, "half way down.' Whatever judgment, however, may be formed respecting the controversy itself, of the urbanity and gentle feeling on both sides, which (notwithstanding some slight trials of this good understanding afterwards) led ultimately to the result anticipated in the foregoing letter, there can be but one opinion; and it is only to be wished that such honourable forbearance were as sure of imitators as it is, deservedly, of eulogists. In the lively pages thus suppressed, when ready fledged for flight, with a power of self-command rarely exercised by wit, there are some passages, of a general nature, too curious to be lost, which I shall accordingly proceed to extract for the reader. [The" Letter to Mr. Murray on Mr.Bowles's Strictures upon the Life and Writings of Pope" being printed entire at the end of this Volume, most of Mr. Moore's extracts are omitted.] "Poor Scott is now no more. In the exercise of his vocation, he contrived at last to make himself the subject of a coroner's inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an able one. I knew him personally, though slightly. Athough several years my senior, we had been schoolfellows together at the 'grammar-schule' (or, as the Aberdonians pronounce it, squeel') of New Aberdeen. He did not behave to me quite handsomely in his capacity of editor a few years ago, but he was under no obligation to behave otherwise. The moment was too tempting for many friends and for all enemies. At a time when all my relations (save one) fell from me like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and my few friends became still fewer-when the whole periodical press (I mean the daily and weekly, not the literary press) was let loose against me in every shape of reproach, with the two strange exceptions (from their usual opposition) of The Courier' and 'The Examiner,' the paper of which Scott had the direction was neither the last, nor the least vituperative. Two years ago I met him at Venice, when he was bowed in griefs by the loss of his son, and had known, by experience, the bitterness of domestic privation. He was then earnest with me to return to England; and on my telling him, with a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, he replied to me, ' that he and others had been greatly misled; and that some pains, and rather extraordinary means, had been taken to excite them.' Scott is no more, but there are more than one living who were present at this dialogue. He was a man of very considerable talents, and of great acquirements. He had made his way, as a literary character, with high success, and in a few years. Poor fellow! I recollect his joy at some appointment which he had obtained, or was to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which prevented the further extension (unless by a 1[" Memoirs by James Earl Waldegrave, K. G.”] 2 ["Memoirs of the Last Ten Years of George II., by Horace Walpole, Lord Orford."] rapid run to Rome) of his travels in Italy. I little thought to what it would conduct him. Peace be with him! and may all such other faults as are inevitable to humanity be as readily forgiven him, as the little injury which he had done to one who respected his talents and regrets his loss." In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of a charge of "hypochondriacism" which he supposed to have been brought against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus proceeds: "I cannot conceive a man in perfect health being much affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must amply refute it. But were it true, to what does it amount? to an impeachment of a liver complaint. ' 'I will tell it to the world,' exclaimed the learned Smelfungus; you had better (said I) tell it to your physician.' There is nothing dishonourable in such a disorder, which is more peculiarly the malady of students. It has been the complaint of the good and the wise and the witty, and even of the gay. Regnard, the author of the last French comedy after Molière, was atrabilarious, and Molière himself saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs. But even were it so, Pope of gross licentiousness,' and grounds the charge upon a poem. The licentiousness is a 'grand peut-être,' according to the turn of the times being the grossness I deny. On the contrary, I do believe that such a subject never was, nor ever could be, treated by any poet with so much delicacy mingled with, at the same time, such true and intense passion. Is the Atys' of Catullus licen tious? No, nor even gross; and yet Catullus is often a coarse writer. The subject is nearly the same, except that Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard the victim. "The licentiousness' of the story was not Pope's, it was a fact. All that it had of gross he has softened; all that it had of indelicate he has purified; all that it had of passionate he has beautified; and all that it had of holy he has hallowed. Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this in a few words (I quote from memory), in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting. 'I fear,' says he, 'that had the subject of Eloisa,' fallen into his (Dryden's) hands, that he would have given us but a coarse draft of her passion.' Never was the delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem. With the facts and the letters of Eloisa' he has done what no other mind but that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with such materials. Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers)—all that we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared with him in this production. "Let us hear no more of this trash about 'licentiousness.' Is not 'Anacreon' taught in our schools?-translated, praised, and edited? and are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this? When you have thrown the ancients into the fire, it will be time to denounce the moderns. 'Licentiousness!'-there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned or poured forth since the rhapsodies of Orpheus. The¦ sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. 2["Hail, awful Madness, hail ! Thy realm extends, thy powers prevail, These lines are from Penrose's poem, entitled Madness," -a composition which, in the opinion of Dr. Robert Anderson," challenges a comparison with the Music Ode of Dryden, the Passions of Collins, and the Bard of Gray." Penrose died, like Lord Byron, at the early age of thirtysix.] |