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32X

JOHN KEATS

THE A.POTHECi^KY POET

WILLIAM OSLER

BALTIMORE

THE FHIKDENWALD COMPANY

1896

Johnt Hopkinn Ifoiipital Ifixlorieal Club,
October ">, isur,.

JOHN" KEATS

THE APOTHECARY POET

WILLIAM OSLER

BALTIMORE

THE FRIEDKNWALD COMPANY

1896

wr,<< i a iii i»» i "'» ii i ^ ■Tii <i 'w,..ii"'

.07

fFrom Tlif Johnt l/oiiklns J/ontilt'tl IJulletln, No. 5s, Jiinunry, iswi.l

JOHN KEATS-TIIE Al'OTIIECARY POET.

We have the very highest authority for the statement that
" the lunatic, the lover, luul the poet, are of imagination all
compact." In a more comprehensive division, with a keener
discernment, Plato recognizes a madness which is not an
evil, but a divine gift, and the source of the chief est blessings
granted to men. Of this divine madness poetry occupies one
of the fourfold partitions. Here is his definition : " The third
kind is the madness of those who are possessed by the Muses ;
which, taking hold of a delicate and virgin soul, and there
inspiring frenzy, aAvakeus lyrical and all other numbers ; with
these adorning the myriad actions of ancient heroes for the
instruction of posterity. But he who, having no touch of the
Pluses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks
that he will get into the temple by the help of art — he, I say.
and his poetry are not admitted ; the sane man disappears and
is nowhere Avhen he enters into rivalry with the madman."

Here, in a few words, we have expressed the very pith and
marrow of the natuie of poetry, and a clearer distinction than
is drawn by many modern writers of the relation of the art to
the spirit, of the form to the thought. By the help of art,
without the Muses' madness, no man enters the temple. The
poet is a " light and winged and holy thing," whose impira-
tijn, genius, faculty, whatever we may choose to call it, is
allied to madness — he is possessed or inspired. Oliver Wen-
del) Holmes has expressed this very charmingly in more
modern terms, speaking of his own condition when composing

the Chamboi'L'tl Nautilus. " In writing the jiocni I was filled
with a better iVcling, the liii,'hest state of mental exaltation
and the most crystalline clairvoyance that iiad ever been
granted to me — 1 mean that lucid vision of one's thought and
all forms of exjjression which will be at once precise and
musical, wliich is the poet's special gift, however large or
small in amount or value.''* To the base mechanical of the
working-day world, this lucid vision, this crystalline clair-
voyance and mental exaltation is indeed a nuidness working
in the brain, a state which he cannot understand, a Holy of
Holies into which he cannot enter.

When all the circumstances are taken into account, the
English Parnassus affords no parallel to the career of Keats —
Adonais, as we love to call him— whose birthday, one hundred
years ago, we celebrate to-day.

Born at the sign of the " Kwan and Hoop," :Moorgate Pave-
ment, the son of the head ostler, his parentage and the social
atmosphere of his early years conspired to produce an ordi-
nary beer-loving, pugnacious cockney ; but instead there was
fashioned one of the clearest, sweetest, and strongest singers
of the century, whose advent sets at naught all laws of heredity,
as his develojiment transcends all laws of environment.

Keats' father succeeded to "Mine Host of the Swan and
Hoop," but died Avhen the poet was only eight years old. IHs
grandmother was in comfortable circumstances, and Keats
was sent to a school at Enfield, ke])t by the father of Charles
Cowden Clarke, Here among other accomplishments he
developed his knuckles, and received a second-hand introduc-
tion to the Greek Pantheon, He is described by one of his
schoolfellows as " the pet prize-lighter with terrier courage,"
but in the last two years at school he studied hard and took

* In a private letter which is published in a notice of Dr. Holmes,
J, H. H. Bulletin, October, 1894.

nil tlic prizes. Tlio iiifliuMico of tho Clarlxt'S upon Kouts was
stroii-x mid foriimtivo, piirticiiliirly tliat of tlie youiigor one,
Clmrlcs ("owden, who was an uslier in tlie school. In the
jiocni addiesseil to him lie frankly acknowledges this great
delit, -you first tauglil me all the sweets of song."

In ISIU his mother died of consumption, and during a long
illness Kents nursed her with incessant devotion.

On the conii)letion of his fifteenth year he was removed
from scho(d and aporeiiticed to Mr. Hammond, a surgeon at
Edinonlon. 'I'lie terms of the old indenture as surgeon's
upprontice are (piaint enough. J have one of my uncle,
Edward Osier, dated ISll. 'I'he surgeon, for a consideration
of MO, without board, undertook the care and education for
live years of the apprentices, of whom there were often four or
live." The number of specific negatives in the ordinary inden-
ture indicates the rough and ready character of tl- Tom
Sawyers of that date. The young api)rentice ])romi8ed not
" to haunt taverns or playhouses, not to i)lay at dice or cards,
nor absent himself from his said master's service day or night
unlawfully, but in all things as a faithful apprentice he shall
behave himself towards his said master and all his during the

saiil term.'*

We know Init little of the days of Keats' apprenticeship. A
brother student said, "he was an idle, loafing fellow, always
writing poetry." In 1814, in the fourth year of his indenture,
the pupil and master had a serious quarrel, and the contract was
broken by mutual consent. It would appear from the follow-
ing sentence in a letter to his brother, that more than words
parsed between them: " I daresay you have altered also— every
man does— our bodies every seven years are completely fresh
material'd. Seven years ago it was not this hand that clinch'd
itself against Hammond."*

At the end of the apprenticeship the student "walked " one

•The extracts are taken from the new edition of the Letters by
Forman. Reeves »t Turner, London, 1895.

of tholiosi)it,iils for ii tiiiR'bcf'ire pivsoiitiiiji' himself attlioCol-
W"^v of Siirj,'coii.s or tin? A|)otlR'ciiry'.s Hall. Kcuts wfiil, to
the, lit that lime, I'liited lloHpitiils of (iiiy's uiul St.. 'J'iiomiis,
where he studied during tho sessions of 1814-15 iind 1H15-If5.
lie beoiime a dresser tit (luy's in the latter year under Mr.
liiu'a.s, and on .Inly VT), ISK!, he passed the Ajjothecary's ihiil.
The details of Keats' life as a nieilical student are very scanty.
In after years one or two of his fellow-students placed on
record their impressions of him. He doesn't seem to liave
been a very brilliant student. Poetry rather than snrf,n'ry
was followed as a vocation; one of liis fellow-students says,
"all other pursuits wore to his mind mean and tame." Yet
ho acipiired some degree of technical skill, and performed
with credit the miiu)r operations winch fell to the hand
of a dresser. lie must have been a fairly diligent student to
havf obtained even the minimum ((ualilications of the "Hall"
before the completion of his twenty-tirst year. In the Bio-
(jntphiral History of Guy's Hospital Dr. Wilks states that Sir
Astley Cooper took a special interest in Keats.

What attraction could the career of an apothecary offer to a
man already much "travelled in the realms of gold,'' and who
was capable at twenty of writing such a sonnet as that on
Chapman's Homer':' So far as wc know he never ])racticed or
made any etTort to get established; and in 1817 he abandoned
the profession, apparently not without ojjpositiou. In u letter
to his friend Brown, dated September 23d, 1819, he says, " In
uo period of my life have I acted with any self-will but in
throwing uj) the apothecary profession."

During the next four years he led, to use his own words, "a
fitful life, here and there, no anchor." While a student he
had made friends in a literary circle, of which Leigh Hunt
and Haydon, the artist, were members, and he had a number
of intimates — Brown, Taylor, Bailey, Dilke, and others —
among the coming men in art and science. From his letters
to them, to his brother George (who had emigrated with his
wife to America), and to his sister Fauuy, we glean glimpses

of his life at this i)i'ri(){l. His (•orrcsiionilciioo rt'vciils, too, so
far us it cuii, the luun us lie was, his us]>ii'ati(>iis, thoiightH,
uiul liopes.

If.

Tho sjjirit of nqiative capubilifi/ doniiuuted tliese yeura — the
cupubility, us lie exjircsses it, "of hein^' in uiicertuiiitics, mys-
teries, iloiiiits, without uiiy irritui)le seurciiing after fact uud
reason." 'i'he native hue of any resolution which he may
have entertained — and we shall learn that he had such — was
soon sicklied o'er, and he lapsetl into idleness so far as any
remunerative work was concerned. A practical woman like
Mrs. Ahey, the wife of the trustee of his mother's estate, con-
doned his conduct with the words " the Keatses were ever
indolent, that they would ever be so, and that it was born in
them." In a letter to his brother he uses the right word.
Here is his confession: "This morning I am in a sort of
temper, indolent and supremely cureless — I long after a
stanza or two of Thomson's 'Castle of Indolence' — my pas-
sions are uU asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven
and weakened the animal tibre all over ine to a delightful
Bensution ubout three degrees this side of faintness. If I had
teeth of pearl and the breath of lilies, f should call it languor;

but as I am* I must call it laziness This is the only hap-

jiiucss and is a rare instance of the advantage of the body
overpowtM'ing the mind."

The gospel of "living" as against that of "doing," which
Milton preached in the celebrated sonnet on his blindness,
found in Keats a warm advocate. " Let us not, therefore,"
he says, "go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like
buz/jng here and there for a knowledge of Avhat is not to be
arrived at, but let us ojien our leaves like a flower, and be
passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of
Ajiollo, and taking truths from every noble insect that favors

• Especially as I have a black-eye.

ns with 11 visit." Fatal to encourage in an acuv- man of
affairs, this dreamy state, this passive existence, favors in
"bards of passion and of mirth" the develoimient of a fruit-
ful mental attitude. The dreamer spins from his "own
inwards his own airy citadel "; and as the spider needs but
few points of leaves aiul twigs from which to begin his airy
circ at, so, Keats says, "man should l>e content with as few
points to tip with the flue web of his soul, and weave a tapestry
empyrean, full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for
his spiritual touch, of space for his wanderings, of distinct-
ness for his luxury." All the wliile Ker.,ts was "budding
patiently," feeling his powers expand, and with the "viewless
wings Poesy" taking ever larger flights. An absorption in
ideals, a yearning passion for the beautiful, was, he says, his
master-passion. Matthew Arnold remarks it was with him
"ail intellectual and spiritual passion. It is 'connected and
made one' as Keats declares that in his Cos- it was 'with the
fimbition of the intellect.' It is, as he again says, the mighty
abstract Idea of Beauty in all things.'^ Listen to one or two
striking passages from his letters: "This morning Poetry
has conquered ,— I nave relapsed i.ito those abstractions which
are my only life." " I feel more uud more every day, as my
imagination strengthens, that I do not live in this world
alone, but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone than
shapes oi epic greatness are stationed round me, and serve my
spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body-guai-d.
Then 'Tragedy with scepter'd pall comes sweeping by."
"What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth," the
expn -sion in prose of his ever memorable lines,

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty,— that is all
Ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know."

III.

Keats' flrst published work, a small volume of poems issued
in 1817, contamed the verses written while he was a student

aiul before ho ha 1 aijtindoned the profession. With tl.e excep-
tion of one or two small i)ieces it contained nothing of note.
The sonnet on Chapman's Homer, written while he was a
pupil at Guy's, was the most remarkable poem of the collec-
tion. In 1818 appeared Endi/mion, a poetic romance, an
ambitious work, which, in the autumn of the year, was merci-
lessly " cut up " in the Quarterly and in Blackwood. Popularly
the.:e reviews are believed to have caused Keats' early death —
a belief fostered by the jaunty rhyme of Byron :

" 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle.
Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.";

The truth is, no event in Keats' life so warmly commends
him to us, or shows more clearly the genuine robustness of his
mind than his attitude in this much discussed episode. In
the iirst place, he had a clear, for so young a man an extraor-
dinarily clear, perception of the limitation of his own powers
and the value of his work. The preface to Endymiou, one of
the most remarkable ever written, contains his own lucid
judgment. He felt that his foundations were "too sandy,"
that the poem was an immature, feverish attempt, in which
he had moved, as he says, from the leading-strings to the
go-cart. Did any critic ever sketch with firmer hand the
mental condition of a young man in transition? "The
imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination
of a man is healthy ; but there is a space of life between, in
which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided, the
way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted ; thence pro-
ceeds niawkishness, and all the thousand bitters which those
men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the follow-
ing pages." It cannot be denied that there are in Endymiou,
as the Quarterly Review puts it, " the most incongruous ideas
in the most uncouth language/" but the poem has lines of
splendid merit, some indeed which have passed into th^^ daily
life of the people.

Naturally the criticism of the Quarterly and of Blac/cwood
rankled deeply in his over-sensitive heart, but after the first

pangs he appears to have accepted the castigation in a truly
philosophic way. In a letter to his friend Hersey, dated Oct.
9th, 1818, he writes, " Praise or blame has but a momentary
effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes
him a severe critic in his own works. My own domestic
criticism has "•iven me pain without comparison beyond Avhat
Blachioood or the Quarterly could possibly 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 in 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." And he adds, "I ^ill
write independently,— I have written independently without
judgment. I may write independently, and with judgment
hereafter. The Genius of Poetry mu-^t work out its own
salvation in a man." A young man of twenty-three who could
write this, whatever else he possessed, had the mens sana, and
could not be killed by a dozen reviews.

In June 1820 appeared Keats' third work, "Lamia, Isabella,
The Eve of St. Agnes, and other poems," Avhioh placed him in
the first rank of English writers. I will quote briefly the
criticisms of two masters.

"No one else in English poetry save Shakespeare," says
Matthew Arnold, "has in expression quite the fascinating
facility of Keats, his perfection of loveliness. 'I think,' he said
humbly, * I shall be among the English poets after my death.'
He is ; he is with Shakespeare."

Lowell, speaking of his wonderful power in the choice of
words, says, "Men's though us and opinions are in a great
degree the vassals of him who invents a new phrase or reapplies
an old one. The thought or feeling a thousand times repeated
becomes his at last who utters it best. ... As soon as we
have discovered the word for our joy or our sorrow we are no
longer its serfs, but its lords. We reward the discoverer of an
ausesthetir Tvr the body and make him a member of all the

':>

societies, but him who finds a nepenthe for the soul we elect
into the small Academy of the Immortals."

And I will add a criticism on the letters by Edward Fitz-
gerald: "Talking of Keats, do not forget to read Lord
Houghton's Life and Letters of him ; in which you will find
what you may not have guessed from his poetry (though
almost unfauhomably deep in that also) the strong masculine
sense and humor, etc., of the man ; more aki'ia to Shakespeare,
I am tempted to think, in a perfect circle of poetic faculties,
than any poet since."

IV.

Very few indications of his professional training are to be
found in Keats' letters ; fewer still in the poems. Referring
to his studies, he says, in one of .he early poems (the epistle to
George Felton Mathew), " far different cares beckon me sternly
from soft Lvdian airs." During the four years from 1817 to
1820 he made fitful efforts to bestir himself into action, and
on several occasions his thoughts turned toward his calling.
In a letter to his brother, written in February, 1819, he says,
" I have been at different times turning it in my head whether
I should go to Edinburgh and study for a physician ; I am
afraid I should not take kindly to it; I am sure I could not
take fees— and yet I should like to do so; it is not worse t .an
writing poems and hanging them up to be fly-blown on the
Review shambles." In 1818 he wrote to his friend Reynolds,
" Were I to study physic, or rather medicine, again, I feel it
would not make the kast difference in my poetry ; when the
mind is in its infancy a bias is in reality a bias, but when we
acquire more strength, a bias becomes no bias," adding that
he is glad he had not given away his medical books, " which
I sh<ll again look over, to keep alive the little I know thither-
wards." In Mav, 1820, when convalescent from the first
attack of hemoptysis, he wrote to Dilke, " I have my choice
of three things— or at least two— South America or surgeon
to an Indiaman, which last will be my fate." A year before.

in a letter to ^liss Jeffreys, he spoke of voyaging to iiiul from
India for a few years, but in June, 1819, lie tells his sister
that he has givei; up the idea of an Indiaman, and that he
"was prei)aring to enquire for a situation with an apothecary."
Allusions to or analogies drawn from medical subjects are rare
in his letters. In one place, in writing from Devonshire, he
says, "When I think of Wordsworth's sonnet, ' Vanguard of
Liberty ! Ye men of Keats ! ' the degraded race about me are
puh'is ipecac simplex — a strong dose."

lie played a medical prank on his friend Brown, who had
let his house to a man named Nathan Benjamin. The water
which furnished the house was in a tank lined with lime,
which impregnated the water unpleasantly. Keats wrote the
following short note to Brown :

Sir .—By drinking your ilamn'd tank water I have got the gravel.
What reparation can you make to me and my family?

Nathan Benjamin.

Brown accordingly surprised his tenant with the following
answer:

Sir .-—I cannot olfer you any remuneration until your gravel shall
have formed itself into a stone, when I will cut you with pleasure.

C. Brown.

In a letter to James Eice he tells one of the best maternal
impression stories extant: "Would you like a true story?
There was a man and his wife who, being to go a long jour-
ney or foot, in the course of their travels came to a river
which rolled knee-deep over the pebbles. In these cases the
man generally pulls off his shoes and stockings and carries
the woman over on his back. This man did so. And his
wife being pregnant, and troubled, as in such cases is very
common, with strange longings, took the strangest that ever
was he.ard of. Seeing her husband's foot, a handsome one
enough, looked very clean and tempting in the clear water,
on their arrival at the other bank she earnestly demanded a
bit of it. He being an affectionate fellow, and fearing for

the coinoliiiess of his child, siivc her n bit which he cut oil'
with his chisp-kiiife. Not satislied, she asked for another
morsel. Supposing there might be twins, he gave her a slice
more. Not yet contented, she craved another piece. ' You
wretch,' cries the man, 'would you wish me to kill myself ^
Take that,' upon which he stabbed her with the knife, cut
her open, and found three children in her belly: two of them
very comfortable with their mouths shut, the third with its
eyes and mouth stark staring wide open. ' Who would iiave
thought it'.' cried the widower, and pursued his journey."

The estate of Keats' mother was greatly involved, and it
does not appear that he received much from the trustee, Mr.
Abbey. His books were not successful, and having no love
for the ordinary hack work in literature, he was largely
dependent upon the bounty of his friends, from whom in
several of the letters the receipt of money is acknowleilged.
Who could resist a charming borrower who could thus write:
"I am your debtor; 1 must ever remain so; nor do I wish to
be clear of my rational debt; there is a comfort in throwing
oneself on the charity of one's friends— 'tis like the albatross
sleeping on its wings. I will be to you wine in the cellar, and
the more modestly, or rather, indolently I retire into the
backward bin, the more Falerne will I be at the drinking."
W^e must remember, however, that Keats l;ad reasonal)le
expectations. He says to Haydon, December 2'M, 181S, "I
have a little money, which may eiuible me to study and to
travel for three or" four years." He had enough wisdom to
try to be "correct in money matters and to have in my desk,"
as he says, " the chronicles of them to refer to and to know
my worldly non-estate."

To the worries of uncertain health and greatly embarrassed
affairs there were added, in the summer of 1819, the pangs,
one can hardly say of disprized, but certainly of hopeless love.
Writing to his friend Reynolds, May 3d, 1818, in comparing
life to a large mansion of many apartments, he says pathetic-
ally that he could only describe two; the tirst, Infant or

Tlioiightless ("liamber, in Avhich we remain as long as we do
not think; and the second, the Chamber of Maiden-Thonght,
in which at llrst ^ve become intoxicated with the light and
atmosi)here, until it gradually darkens and Ave see not well
the exit and we feel the "burden of the mystery." For his
friends he hopes the third Chamber of Life may be filled with
the Avine of loA'e and the bread of friendship. Poor fellow!
Within a year the younger Aphrodite, in the shape of Fanny
liraAvne, beckoned to him from the door of this third cham-
ber. Through her came no peace to his soul, and the Muses'
inspiration Avas displaced by a passion Avhich rocked him as
the "winds rock the ravens on high" — by Plato's fourth
variety of madness, Avhich brought him sorroAV and "leaden-
eyed despair." The publication of Keats' letters to Fanny
Urawne can be justified; it must also be regretted. AVhile
there are some letters which Ave should be loth to miss, there
are others the publication of Avhich have Avro'^nl his memory.
Whether of a young poet as Keats, or of an old philosopher
as Swift, such maudlin cooings and despairing Avails should
be ruled out of court Avith the writings of parauoiacs.

Keats' mother died of consumption in 1810. In the winter
of 1817-18 he nursed his brother Tom with the same disease.
In the spring they spent several months together in Devon-
shire, which Keats compares to Lydia Languish, " very enter-
taining Avhen it smiles, but cursedly subject to sympathetic
moisture." In the summer he took a trip through Scotland,
and in the Island of Mull caught a cold, Avhich settled in his
throat. In a letter dated Inverness, August Gth, he speaks of
his throat as in "a fair Avay of getting quite well." On his
return to Hampstead we hear of it again ; and in September
he Avrites " I am confiued by Sawrey's mandate in the house
now, and have as yet only gone out in fear of the damp night."
During the last three months of the year he again nursed his
brother Tom, Avho died in December. From this time the

"■■'sp ^iwrr-iK^j-^/tfS^

contimiiil references to the sore throat are ominous. On
December 3 1st he comiilains to Funny Keiits that a sore
tliroat keeps him in the house, and lie s])eal<s of it again in
January letters. In a February letter to his sister he says
that the sore throat has haunte'l him at intervals for nearly a
twelvemonth. In June and July he speaks of it again, but
the summer spent in the Isle of Wight and at Winchester did
him good, and in September he writes to one of his frii'uds
that he had got rid of his "haunting sore throat." I have
laid stress upon this particular feature, as there can be but
little question that the tuberculosis of which he died began,
as is common enough, with this localization. For more than
a year there had been constant exposure while nursing his
brother, and under conditions, in Devonshire at least, most
favorable to infection. The depression of the lleview attacks
in the autumn of 1818 must also be taken into account-
Through the summer of 1818 there are occasional references
tc an irritable state of health apart from the throat trouble —
unfitting him for mental exertion. " I think if I had a free
and healthy and lasting organization of heart and lungs as
strong as an ox's, so as to bear unhurt the sho'k of an
extreme thought and sensation without weariness, I could
pass my life very nearly alone, though it should last eighty
years. But I feel my body too weak to support me to the
height, I am obliged continually to check myself and be
nothing." If we may judge by the absence of any references
in the letters, the autumn of the year was passed in good
health, but on December 20th he wrote that he was "fearful
lest the weather should affect my throat, which on exertion
or cold continually threatens me."

On February 3d the smouldering fires broke out, after he
had been exposed in a stage ride, in an attack of haemoptysis.
From this date Ave can trace in the letters the melancholy
progress of the disease. In April and ]\Iay the lung symptoms
became less pronounced, but in spite of much nervous irrita-
bility and weakness, he was able to direct the publication of

iimrarri i iii

liiH third little voliimo of poems. On June 23d he had a
return of the spitting of blood, which liisted several diivs.
Tiie serious nature of the disease was by this time evident to
both the patient and his physicians. He acknowledges that
it will be a long, tedious affair, and that a winter in Italy
may be necessary. "'Tis not yet consumption," he writes
Fanny Keats, "but it would be were I to remain in this
climate all the winter." This, too, was a time of terrible
mental distress, as he became madly jealous of his best friend,
C. A. Urown. The letters of this period to P'anny 15rawne
tell of the "damned moments" of one who "dotes yet doubts,
suspects, yet fondly loves."

J're])arations were made for his journey to Italy, which he
speaks of "as marching up to a battery." lie sailed for
Naples, which was reached after a tedious voyage about the
end of October. Severn, the artist, accompanied him, and has
given {Atlantic Monthli/, April, 1803) a touching account of
the last months of his friend's life. Kealizing fully the hope-
lessness of his condition, like many a brave man in a similar
plight, he wished to take his life. Severn states, " In a little
basket of medicines I had bought at (iravosend at his request
there was a bottle of laudanum, and this I afterwards found
was destined by him 'to close his mortal career,' when no
hope was left, and prevent a long, lingering death, for my
poor sake. When the dismal time came, and Sir James
Clark was unable to encounter Keats' penetrating look and
eager demand, he insisted on having the bottle, which I had
already put away. Then came the most touching scenes. He
now explained to me the exact procedure of his gradual dissolu-
tion, enumerated my deprivations and toils, and dwelt upon
the danger to my life, and certainly to my fortunes, from my
continued attendance upon him. One whole day was spent
in earnest representations of this sort, to which, at the same
time that they wrung my heart to hear and his to utter, I was
obliged to oppose a firm resistance. On the second day, his

teiuler appeal turned to despair, in all the power of his ardent
imagination and Imrsting lieart."*

In lionie, Keats was under the care of Dr. (afterwards Sir
James) Clark, who, with Severn, watched him with assiduous
care tlirouglumt the winter months. Unlike so many con-
sumptives, Keats had none of the spos ph//iinira, which carries
them hopefully to the very gates of the grave, ffe knew how
desperate was his state. " I feel," he said, " the .lowers grow-
ing over me." " When will this posthumous life come to an
end?" On February 14th he requested Severn to have in-
scribed on his grave-stone the words,

" Here Hew one wlioae name was writ in water."

On February 27th he passed away quietly in Severn's arms.

All lovers of poetry cherish Keats' memory for thes])lendor
of the verse with which he has enriched our literature. There
is also that deep pathos in a life cut off in the promise of such
rich fruit, lie is numbered among " the inheritors of unful-
filled renown," with Catullus and Marlowe, with Chatterton
and Shelley, whom Ave mourn as doubly dead in that they
died so young.

It was with true prophetic insight that he wrote in 1818 to
his brother George,

" What tfiougl) I leave this dull unci earthly mould,
Yet fihali my spirit lofty converse hold
Witli after times."

*Un<ler similar circumstances one of the gentlest and most
loving of men wliom it has been my lot to attend was more
successful, and when he realized fully that a slow, lingering death
awaited him, took the laudanum with which for mont'is he liad
been provided. In such a case, whose lieart will not echo the
kindly words with wliich Burton closes his celebrated section on
suicide? " Who knows how he may be temjjted? It is his case ;
it may be thine. Quae sua sort* hodie est, crm fore •vestra potest.
We ought not to be so rash and rigorous in our censures as some
are ; charity will judge and hope the best ; God be merciful unto
us all!"

IShellev, wlio was so soon to join this "gentle btiiul," and
find with Keuts " a gmve among the eternal," has expressed
the world's sorrow in his noble elegy. I <iuote in conclusion
his less well-known fragment:

" Here lieth one whose name was writ on water."

r.ut. ere tlio breath that could erase it blew,
Death, in remorse for that fell slauKhter,

Death, the immortalizing winter, flew

Athwart the stream,— ami time's printiess torrent grew
A scroll of crystal, blazoning the name

Of Adonais. . . .