complains most; we are getting ripe for diversity; the immediate topic of the poem opens with a grand perspective of all concerned. "Book IV. A friend of mine says this book has the finest opening of any; the point of time is gigantically critical, the wax is melted, the seal about to be applied, and Milton breaks out, 'O for that warning voice,' &c. There is, moreover, an opportunity for a grandeur of tenderness. The opportunity is not lost. Nothing can be higher, nothing so more than Delphic. "There are two specimens of a very extraordinary beauty in the Paradise Lost;' they are of a nature, so far as I have read, unexampled elsewhere; they are entirely distinct from the brief pathos of Dante, and they are not to be found even in Shakspeare. These are, according to the great prerogative of poetry, better described in themselves than by a volume. The one is in line 268, Book IV. 'Not that fair field Of Enna, where Proserpine gathering flowers, Was gathered, which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world.' 'But drive far off the barbarous dissonance Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears "These appear exclusively Miltonic, without the shadow of another mind ancient or modern. “Book VI., line 58. Reluctant, with its original and modern meaning combined and woven together, with all its shades of signification, has a powerful effect. "Milton in many instances pursues his imagination to the utmost, he is sagacious of his quarry,' he sees beauty on the wing, pounces upon it, and gorges it to the producing his essential verse. 'So from the root springs lither the green stalk.' "But in no instance is this sort of perseverance more exemplified, than in what may be called his stationing or statuary. He is not content with simple description, he must station; thus here we not only see how the birds with clang despised the ground,' 6 but we see them under a cloud in prospect.' So we see Adam fair indeed, and tall,' under a plantain,' and so we see Satan'disfigured' 'on the Assyrian mount.'" The copy of "Spenser " which Keats had in daily use, contains the following stanza, inserted at the close of Canto II. Book v. His sympathies were very much on the side of the revolutionary "Gyant," who "undertook for to repair" the "realms and nations run awry," and to suppress tyrants that make men subject to their law," "and lordings curbe that commons over-aw," while he grudged the legitimate victory, as he rejected the conservative philosophy, of the " righteous Artegall " and his comrade, the fierce defender of privilege and order. And he expressed, in this ex post facto prophecy, his conviction of the ultimate triumph of freedom and equality by the power of transmitted knowledge. "In after-time, a sage of mickle lore When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim, The one he struck stone-blind, the other's eyes wox dim." The "Literary Remains will contain many sonnets and songs, written during these months, in the intervals of more complete compositions; but the following pieces are so fragmentary as more becomingly to take their place in the narrative of the author's life, than to show as substantive productions. Yet it is, perhaps, just in verses like these that the individual character pronounces itself most distinctly, and confers a general interest which more care of art at once elevates and diminishes. The occasional verses of a great poet are records, as it were, of his poetical tabletalk, remembrances of his daily self and its intellectual companionship, more delightful from what they recall, than for what they are more interesting for what they suggest, than for what they were ever meant to be. FRAGMENT. Where's the Poet? show him! show him! Muses nine! that I may know him! 'Tis the man who with a man Is an equal, be he King, Or poorest of the beggar-clan, A man may be 'twixt ape and Plato ; All its instincts; he hath heard Comes articulate and presseth On his ear like mother-tongue. MODERN LOVE. And what is love? It is a doll dress'd up And Anthony resides in Brunswick Square. Fools! if some passions high have warm'd the world, Should be more common than the growth of weeds. That ye may love in spite of beaver hats. FRAGMENT OF THE "CASTLE BUILDER." * * * * To-night I'll have my friar,-let me think * |