LEIGH HUNT. 1784-1859. TO MY WIFE-ON MODELLING MY BUST. Aн, Marian mine, the face you look on now JENNY kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in: Say I'm weary, say I'm sad, Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I'm growing old, but add, Jenny kissed me. THE last two or three years of the life of Keats were embittered by a hopeless passion. Not that it was not returned, for we are assured it was, but that his circumstances at first, and afterwards his fatal illness, forbade him to think of marriage. The lady of his love is still living, or was in 1848, when Monckton Milnes edited his "REMAINS," but her name is withheld from the world. Nothing is known of her, here in America, at least, beyond what Keats himself tells us. He met her in the autumn of 1818, shortly after his return from a tour in the Highlands, and probably at Hampstead, whither he retired with his brother Tom, who was dying with consumption. The earliest mention of her in his correspondence is in a letter to his brother George, in America, dated on the 29th of October, 1818. "The Misses," he wrote, are very kind to me, but they have lately displeased me very much, and in this way now I am coming the Richardson! On my return, the first day I called, they were in a sort of taking or bustle about a cousin of theirs, who, having fallen out with her grandpapa in a serious manner, was invited by Mrs. to take asylum in her house. She is an 66 was East Indian, and ought to be her grandfather's heir. At the time I called, Mrs. in conference with her upstairs, and the young ladies were warm in her praise downstairs, calling her genteel, interesting, and a thousand pretty things, to which I gave no heed, not being partial to nine days' wonders. Now all is completely changed: they hate her, and, from what I hear, she is not without faults of a real kind; but she has others, which are more apt to make women of inferior claims hate her. She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian: she has a rich Eastern look; she has fine eyes, and fine manners. When she comes into the room, she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too fine, and too conscious of herself, to repulse any man who may address her: from habit she thinks that nothing particular. I always find myself at ease with such a woman: the picture before me always gives me a life and animation which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am, at such times, too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: I forget myself entirely, because I live in her. You will, by this time, think I am in love with her, so, before I go any further, I will tell you I am not. She kept me awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of the thing as a pastime and an amusement, than which I can feel none deeper than a conversation with an imperial woman, the very 'Yes' and 'No' of whose life is to me a banquet. I don't cry to take the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind me. I like her, and her like, because one has no sensation: what we both are is taken for granted. You will suppose I have, by this, had much talk with her-no such thing; there are the Misses on the lookout. They think I don't admire her because I don't stare at her; they call her a flirt to me-what a want of knowledge! She walks across a room in such a manner, that a man is drawn towards her with magnetic power; this they call flirting! They do not know things; they do not know what a woman is. I believe, though, she has faults, the same as Charmian and Cleopatra might have had." If Keats was not in love when he drew this magnificent portrait, he was certainly on the highway to it, as any person of penetration could have seen. Perhaps he saw it himself, and was struggling to overcome it, knowing it could not lead to his happiness. Be this as it may, the time soon came when he knew that he loved, and a terrible knowledge it was-to a dying man! "Seeing him once change countenance," says Hunt, "in a manner more alarming than usual, as he stood silently eying the country out of window, I pressed him to let me know how he felt, in order that he might enable me to do what I could for him; upon which he said, that his feelings were almost more than he could bear, and that he feared for his senses. I proposed that we should take a coach, and ride about the country together, to vary, if possible, the immediate impression, which was sometimes all that was formidable, and would come to nothing. He acquiesced, and was restored to himself. It was, nevertheless, on the same day, that sitting on the bench in Well Walk, at Hampstead, nearest the Heath, that he told me, with unaccustomed tears in his eyes, that his heart was breaking.' A doubt, however, was upon him at that time, which he afterwards had reason to know was groundless; and during his residence at the last house which he occupied before he went abroad, he was at times more than tranquil. At length, he was persuaded by his friends to try the milder climate of Italy." He started from England in September, 1820, in company with Severn, the artist, and arrived at Naples in the latter part of October. On the 1st of November he wrote thus to his friend, Charles Armitage Brown: "The persuasion that I shall see her no more will kill me. My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well. I can bear to die—I cannot bear to leave her. Oh, God! God! God! Everything I have in my trunks that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear. The silk lining she put in my travelling cap scalds my head. My imagination is horribly vivid about her-I see herI hear her. There is nothing in the world of sufficient interest to divert me from her a moment. This was the case when I was in England; I cannot recollect, without shuddering, the time that I was a prisoner at Hunt's, and used to keep my eyes fixed on Hampstead all day. Then there was a good hope of seeing her again. Now-O that I could be buried near where she lives! I am afraid to write to her-to receive a letter from her; to see her handwriting would break my heart-even to hear of her anyhow, to see her name written, would be more than I could bear. My dear Brown, what am I to do? Where can I look for consolation or ease? If I had any chance of recovery, this passion would kill me. Indeed, through the whole of my illness, both at your house and at Kentish Town, this fever has never ceased wearing me out. When you write to me, which you will do immediately, write to Rome (poste restante)—if she is well and happy, put a mark thus +; if.” He reached Rome in a terrible state of exhaustion, worn out in body and soul. "When he first came here," his friend Severn wrote to England, on the 14th of February, 1821, "he purchased a copy of 'Alfieri,' but put it down at the second page, being much affected at the lines, "Misera me! sollievo a me non resta, Altro che il pianto ed il pianto è delitto l' Now that I know so much of his grief, I do not wonder at it. "Such a letter has come! I gave it to Keats, supposing it to be one of yours, but it proved sadly otherwise. The glance at that letter tore him to pieces; the effects were on him for many days. He did not read it-he could not-but requested me to place it in his coffin, together with a purse and a letter (unopened) of his sister's; since then he has told me not to place that letter in his coffin, only his sister's purse and letter and some hair. I however, persuaded him to think otherwise on this point." "Feb. 27th.—He is gone; he died with the most perfect ease—he seemed to go to sleep. On the twenty-third, about four, the approaches of death came on. 'Severn1-lift me up-I am dying-I shall die easy; don't be frightened-be firm, and thank God it has come.' I lifted him up in my arms. The phlegm seemed boiling in his throat, and increased until eleven, when he gradually sunk into death, so quiet, that I still thought he slept. I cannot say more now. I am broken down by four nights' watching, no sleep since, and my poor Keats gone. Three days since the body was opened; the lungs were completely gone. The doctors could not imagine how he had lived these two months. I followed his dear body to the grave on Monday, with many English." "O Love, what is it in this world of ours Which makes it fatal to be loved? Ah why With cypress branches hast thou wreathed thy bowers, As Hermes once took to his feathers light, So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright, So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft And seeing it asleep, so fled away, Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day, 1819. But to that second circle of sad Hell, Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw Their sorrows,-pale were the sweet lips I saw, 1819. 1820. The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone! Sweet voice, sweet lips, soft hand, and softer breast, Warm breath, light whisper, tender semi-tone, Bright eyes, accomplished shape, and langourous waist! Faded the sight of beauty from my eyes, When the dusk holiday, or holinight, Of fragrant-curtained love begins to weave The woof of darkness thick, for hid delight; I cry you mercy, pity, love, aye love! Unmasked, and, being seen, without a blot! O let me have thee whole, all, all be mine! That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest Withhold no atom's atom, or I die, Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall, |