BOOKS.

KEATS AND HIS EDITOR.* IT is twelve years since Mr. Forman printed the love-letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne, which it would have been kinder to suppress. The editor of a great poet's works is, however, by no means independent ; and Mr. Forman, following the custom of the day, not only laid bare the " overmastering passion" of Keats's life, but has reproduced every ill-con- sidered trifle which he may have jotted down without a thought beyond the amusement of the moment. When such scavenger-like work is thus forced upon a man of letters, it is fortunate if he can console himself with the conviction that he has done well what another man would have certainly attempted to do, and might have done badly.

We readily accept Mr. Forman's statement that it was with the "profoundest feeling of the sacredness as well as the great importance of the record " entrusted to him, that he approached Keats's love-letters ; and when he also alludes regretfully, in the volume of Poetry and Prose, to the necessity in the present inquisitive age "of bringing into the tale of a great poet's works many trivialities and crudities that one would fain leave to oblivion," we may well pity the lot of an editor who is thus forced to act against his better judgment. It is surely time to ask how far it is his duty to encourage this contemptible inquisitiveness. Is the personality of a "Society paper" to be imitated in litera- ture, and an editor to act as though he were his hero's valet P Readers are apt to mistake the accumulation of trivial details for the acquisition of knowledge ; but the taste for what is worthy in literature probably diminishes in proportion to the craving after gossip. This craving was never stronger than in our day. The most insignificant incidents in a poet's life are mistaken for characteristics, and his idlest doggerel is garnered up for posterity. If during his lifetime he has deliberately buried some of his mental offspring, which is pretty sure to be a sensible act, the literary resurrectionist digs them up again, and an author's worst work is brought into almost as much prominence as his best. Every great writer makes efforts which are failures ; and if these attempts have had the ill-fortune to be preserved, they swell the bulk of his works and the comments of his editor. There is no greater delight to a book-lover than the purchase of a fine edition of a great poet or imaginative prose-writer. He likes to possess the authors whom he loves in a noble form ; but he does not care to have them overweighted with the minute learning and curious investigations of commentators who dwell on every peddling error of grammar and syntax, and waste a page upon a hyphen. Common-sense is as much needed in litera- ture as in life; but, unfortunately, it is a quality in which some enthusiastic critics of our day are eminently deficient.

Although Mr. Forman's exhaustive labours upon Keats have suggested these remarks, it must not be supposed that we regard him as a conspicuous offender, since the fault we have mentioned is common nowadays to the race of editors. He does but sin after his kind. Keats, while he has written some of the loveliest verse of the century, is a poet who gives us "infinite riches in a little room." His gold can be held in a small casket, and the editor's four volumes, to which he has now added a fifth, necessarily contain a good deal that the general reader will not care for, and that the student does not need ; yet Mr. Forman's edition, which was published seven years ago, has in it so much of prime interest and of fresh and valuable material, that it must be regarded as the chief authority upon all matters relating to Keats. For those who possess copies of the original edition, the editor has printed Poetry and Prose as a supplement. It contains several * it.) Letters of John Keats to FannyBratene: With Introduction and Notes by R. Buxton Forman. Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.--(2.) Poetry and Prose. By John Keats. Edited by H. Buxton Furman. London : Reeves and Turner. IWO.

original readings and alterations taken from the commonplace- book of Keats's friend Woodhouse, who copied out many of the poet's verses before they were published; and also a num- ber of fresh letters, as well as additions .to letters already printed. The Houghton MSS., to which in his biography of the poet, Professor Colvin has expressed himself so much indebted, have also proved of service to Mr. Forman. The "Fresh Versions and New Readings" occupy about forty pages. but some.of them are not new to readers familiar with Lord Houghton's text of the poems. In Woodhouse's transcript,

for example, of " The Human Seasons," Mr. Forman observes that there is scarcely a line 'after the first identical with the published text ; but if compared with Lord Houghton's text, it will be found that there are seven lines alike in both. It is remarkable, by-the-way, that the selection from Keats by Matthew Arnold, in Mr. Ward's English Poets, does not in- clude " La Belle Dame sans Merci," a wonderful lyric, although

we cannot agree with Mr. Colvin in regarding it as the poet's masterpiece.

In the volume of letters edited by Mr. Speed, a grandson of

George Keats, who had access to papers hitherto unprinted, the poet alludes jocosely to the weakest couplet in that lyric, which may still be read in Lord Houghton's edition:— "And then I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four."

" I was obliged," he says, " to choose an even number, that

both eyes might have fair play, and, to speak truly, I think two apiece quite sufficient. Suppose I had said seven, there would have been three and a half apiece—a very awkward affair, and well got out of on my side." Keats's biographer and editor are both greatly struck by this passage : Mr. For-

man writes of it as charming, and Mr. Colvin regards it as " a

proof the more of the spirit of humour, modesty, and plain sense, which neither inspiration, nor the pride of inspiration could conquer in him, or long displace." The " spirit of humour, modesty, and plain sense " are charming qualities, whether found in a poet or in any author ; but the reader who is neither an editor nor a critic, will probably regard this grave comment on the poet's bit of pleasantry as too serious for the occasion.

Among the new material preserved by Woodhouse is a pleasant sonnet, with a Leigh Hunt flavour, written by that good

friend of Keats, John. Hamilton Reynolds. Mr. Colvin copied it from the Houghton MSS., and it is reprinted by Mr. Forman with the remark : " I shall be surprised if this sonnet does not find its way into future anthologies." We will quote the poem,

which, if it does not folly justify this high praise, is assuredly not without merit, apart from its interest and association with Keats. It was written upon reading the poet's Chaucer sonnet

" Thy thoughts, dear Keats, are like fresh-gathered leaves Or white flowers plucked from some sweet lily bed ; They set the heart a-breathing, and they shed The glow of meadows, mornings and spring eves, Over the excited soul. Thy genius weaves Songs that shall make the age be nature-led, And win that coronal for thy young head Which Time's strange hand of freshness ne'er bereaves.

Go on ! and keep thee to thine own green way, Singing in that same key which Chaucer sung ;— Be thou companion of the Summer day, Roaming the fields and olden woods among ;— So shall thy Muse be ever in her May; And thy luxuriant Spirit ever young."

Of the fresh prose matter brought together here as a supple- ment to the first edition of Mr. Forman's Keats, there is not much to say. Many blanks in letters are filled up which are solely of interest as making them complete, and several of the new letters are of no intrinsic value. Now and then the reader is a little astonished at the poet's criticisms, as, for instance, when he says that " the grand parts of Scott are

within the reach of more minds than the finest humours in Humphrey Clinker; and then quoting the amusing passage in Tom Jones, in which the serjeant objects to be called a non sequitur, and exclaims, " You are another ; an' you come to that, no more a sequitur than yourself," Keats says it gives him more pleasure than the whole volume of The Antiquary.

After expressing the opinion that reviews have had their day, and observing that there " will soon be some new folly to keep the parlours in talk," he adds : " We have seen three literary kings in our time,—Scott, Byron, and then the Scotch novels,"—a proof, as Mr. Forman points out, that Keats, like Hazlitt, had not fathomed Sir Walter's secret. Then there is a characteristic account of a walk of two miles "in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's park," with Coleridge and "Mr. Green, our demonstrator at Guy's." The poet, after his wont, broached a thousand things, and Keats adds : "I heard his voice as be came towards me—I heard it as he moved away—I had heard it all the interval, if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask me to call on him at Highgate." Of Hunt, who was a good friend to Keats, although not always a sound adviser in matters poetical, he writes as " a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him," and adds : " But in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and in morals • Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful." He mentions that he has seen Wordsworth frequently, and sneers at his egotism and bigotry, remembering, perhaps; at the moment that poet's cold praise of the " Hymn to Pan " as a " pretty piece of paganism," a comment, says Mr. Rossetti, which annoyed Keats not a little.

Some of the fresh paragraphs inserted here are not creditable to Keats, and others come near to twaddle, if we may dare to use the word in connection with such a poet. Mr. Forman points out that Keats's letters have been subjected to many unwarrantable interferences, including " impertinent and meaningless verbal changes ;" and he evidently regards Lord Houghton's excisions as unduly large, if not altogether as unjustifiable. No doubt, if every line of a letter is to be inserted by an editor, Lord Houghton has sinned considerably ; if, on the other hand, he is at liberty to exercise his judgment, his discretion can, we think, frequently be justified. Now and then, but very rarely, we find a passage in the " Supplement " of biographical interest, as, for instance, when, on his first acquaintance with Miss Brawne, Keats writes of her a " uti- ful and elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable, and st ge." - - Keats appears to have disliked his Christian name, for in writing to his brother's wife, he says :—" If you should hafe a boy, do not christen him John, and persuade George not tolet his partiality for me come across. 'Tis a bad name, and goes against a man. If my name had been Edmund, I should have been more fortunate." The poet must have been in an ill mood when he wrote in the same letter :—" If the American ladies are worse than the English, they must be very bad.

You know a good number of English ladies ; what -encomium could you give of half-a-dozen of them ? "

On another page he alludes to the opinion that the Christian scheme has been borrowed from the Persian and Greek philosophers, and suggests a method of " soul-making " which he thinks a grander system than the Christian religion. This, together with some commonplace objections to the Gospel narrative, may be of interest as showing that the intellect of Keats had been exercised, however vaguely, on religious matters, and that his aspirations were not, as a reader might judge from his poetry, wholly satisfied by a worship of beauty.

The youthfulness of Keats must be always remembered in an attempt to estimate his character and genius. His poetical growth as a poet was, we think, marvellous. Taste, judgment, and the finest perception of verbal felicities distinguish the latest poems. As his life drew near its close, his imagination became elevated and chastened, his voice gained in voluitie and dignity, and all this change from the somewhat effeminate luxuriance of Endymion to the perfection of the Odes, was effected in two years. Much of Keats's prose writing, even to the end, was immature and boyish, but at four-and-twenty his verse was that of a great poet.