rial of him as a relic never to be parted with; that she buried the head in a pot of earth, and planting basil over it, watered the leaves. with her continual tears till they grew into wonderful beauty and Juxuriance; that her brothers, prying into her fondness for the Pot of Basil, which she carried with her from place to place, contrived to steal it away; that she made such lamentations for it, as induced them ̧ to wonder what could be its value, upon which they dug into it, and discovered the head; that the amazement of that discovery struck back upon their hearts, so that after burying the head secretly, they left their native place, and went to live in another city; and that Isabella continued to cry and moan for her Pot of Basil, which she had not the power to cease wishing for; till, under the pressure of that weeping want, she died. Our author can pass to the most striking imaginations from the most delicate and airy fancy. He says of the lovers in their happiness, Parting they seemed to tread upon the air, The inward fragrance of each other's heart. These pictures of their intercourse terribly aggravate the gloom of what follows. Lorrenzo, when lured away to be killed, is taken unknowingly out of his joys, like a lamb out of the pasture. The following masterly anticipation of his end, conveyed in a single word, has been justly admired : So the two brothers and their murder'd man Rode past fair Florence, to where Arno's stream They passed the water Into a forest quiet for the slaughter. When Mr. Keats errs in his poetry, it is from the ill management of a good thing, exuberance of ideas. Once or twice, he does so in a taste positively bad, like Marino or Cowley, as in a line in his Ode to Psyche At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love; but it is once or twice only, in his present volume. Nor has he erred much in it in a nobler way. What we allude to is one or two passages in which he over-informs the occasion or the speaker; as where the brothers, for instance, whom he describes as a couple of mere moneybags," are gifted with the power of uttering the following exquisite metaphor: "To day we purpose, ay, this hour we mount 66 But to return to the core of the story.-Observe the fervid misery of the following.. She gaz'd into the fresh-thrown mould, as though Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know Upon the murderons spot she seem'd to grow, Those dainties made to still an infant's cries: At sight of such a dismal labouring, And so she kneeled, with her locks all hoar, And put her lean hands to the horrid thing; Three hours they labour'd at this travail sore; At last they felt the kernel of the grave, It is curious to see how the simple pathos of Boccaccio, or (which is the same thing) the simple intensity of the heroine's feelings, suffices our author more and more, as he gets to the end of his story. And he has related it as happily, as if he had never written any poetry but that of the heart. The passage about the tone of her voice,-the poor lost-witted coaxing, the "chuckle," in which she asks after her Pilgrim and her Basil,-is as true and touching an instance of the effect of a happy familiar word, as any in all poetry. The poet bids his imagination depart, For Isabel, sweet Isabel, will die; Will die a death too lone and incomplete, And with melodious chuckle in the strings After the Pilgrim in his wanderings, To ask him where her Basil was; and why And so she pined, and so she died forlorn, No heart was there in Florence but did mourn In pity of her love, so overcast. And a sad ditty of this story born From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd: Still is the burthen sung-" O cruelty, "To steal my Basil-pot away from me!" The Eve of St. Agnes, which is rather a picture than a story, may be analysed in a few words. It is an account of a young beauty, who going to bed on the eve in question to dream of her lover, while her rich kinsmen, the opposers of his love, are keeping holday in the rest of the house, finds herself waked by him in the night, and in the hurry of the moment agrees to elope with him. The portrait of the heroine, preparing to go to bed, is remarkable for its union of extreme richness and good taste; not that those two properties of description are natu rally distinct; but that they are too often separated by very good poets, and that the passage affords a striking specimen of the sudden and strong maturity of the author's genius. When he wrote Endymion he could not have resisted doing too much. To the description before us, it would be a great injury either to add or diminish. It falls at once gorgeously and delicately upon us, like the colours of the painted glass. Nor is Madeline hurt by all her encrusting jewelry and rustling silks. Her gentle, unsophisticated heart is in the midst, and turns them into so many ministrants to her loveliness. A casement high and triple-arch'd there was, All garlanded with carven imag'ries Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings. Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, Is not this perfectly beautiful? We cannot leave the [Want of room compels us to break off here. reader at a better place. The remainder of the criticism must occupy the beginning of our next number.] Printed and published by JOSEPH APPLEYARD, No. 19, Catherine-street, Strand. Price 2d. And sold also by A. GLIDDON, Importer of Snuffs, No. 31, Tavistockstreet, Covent-garden. Orders received at the above places, and by all Booksellers and Newsmeu. THE INDICATOR. There he arriving round about doth flie, SPENSER. No. XLIV.-WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9th, 1820. THE STORIES OF LAMIA, THE POT OF BASIL, THE EVE OF ST. AGNES, &c. AS TOLD BY MR. KEATS. (CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK.) As a specimen of the Poems, which are all lyrical, we must indulge ourselves in quoting entire the Ode to a Nightingale. There is that mixture in it of real melancholy and imaginative relief, which poetry alone presents us in her "charmed cup," and which some over-rational critics have undertaken to find wrong because it is not true. It does not follow that what is not true to them, is not true to others. If the relief is real, the mixture is good and sufficing. A poet finds refreshment in his imaginary wine, as other men do in their real; nor have we the least doubt, that Milton found his grief for the loss of his friend King, more solaced by the allegorical recollections of Lycidas, (which were exercises of his mind, and recollections of a friend who would have admired them) than if he could have anticipated Dr. Johnson's objections, and mourned in nothing but broadcloth and matter of fact. He yearned after the poetical as well as social part of his friend's nature; and had as much right to fancy it straying in the wilds and oceans of romance, where it had strayed, as in the avenues of Christ's College where his body had walked. In the same spirit the imagination of Mr. Keats betakes itself, like the wind," where it listeth," and is as truly there, as if his feet could follow it. The poem will be the more striking to the reader, when he understands what we take a friend's liberty in telling him, that the author's powerful mind has for some time past been inhabiting a sickened and shaken body, and that in the mean while it has had to contend with feelings that make a fine nature ache for its species, even when it would disdain to do so for itself;-we mean, critical malignity,-that unhappy envy, which would wreak its own tortures upon others, especially upon those that really feel for it already. My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth? That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Away! away! for I will By to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft inceuse hangs upon the boughs, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain- Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam |