THIS WEEK'S BOOKS
THE tables are again crowded : it seems that the autumn publishing season has begun in earnest. Perhaps the most impOrtant book this week is Mr. Middleton Murry's Keats and Shakespeare (Oxford UniVersity Press). Mr. • Murry. sees in Keats a poet struggling nobly towards a - harmony of life, and he conceives that, if Keats had . lived loOey, his promise would have been fulfilled and . we should. have pos; sessed in him a poet to equal Shakespeare; a poet as deep and, universal as Shakespeare, and unique In poetic serious- ness and vivid philOsophidal insight: ' illustrates his thesis with continual quotations from the letters and, poe of Keats—which is well ; the substance, for judgnient g hand in hand with Mr. Murry's persuasions. IneidentaliSr we are gratefUl to Mr. Murry for giving us Keats's torment of love for Fanny Brawne, without the usual tinge of vulgarity or patronage. " Sick passion ! " he writes indignantly. " One • can only say to the comfortable persbns who use the phrase . concerning Keats 1what Keats himself said to Fanny YOu do not feel as rdo—you do not know what it is to love.' But there, in that heartrending letter, is the difference between-Brown and Keats : Nothing with
a. man of the world, but dreadful to me."-' • - • * * * *
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