K

EATS, like Shakespere and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek "suckled in that creed outworn."

ANON.

Who kill'd John Keats?
"I" said the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly,
""Twas one of my feats."

Who shot the arrow?
The poet-priest Milman,
[So ready to kill man]

Or Southey, or Barrow."

BYRON.

Yes, the few words which like great thunder-drops
Thy large heart down to earth shook doubtfully,
Thrilled by the inward lightning of its might,
Shall track the eternal chords of destiny;

After the moon-led pulse of ocean stops.

J. R. LOWELL.

When we think of the amount of recognition Keats has received, one may well bless God that poetry is in itself strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind or left alone in its own magic hermitage. JOHN STERLING.

ALEXANDER POPE.

EAVEN from all creatures hides the book of fate,

All but the page prescribed, their present state;

From brutes what men, from men what spirits

know:

Or who could suffer being here below!

The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,

Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleased to the last, he crops the flow'ry food,
And licks the hand just raised to shed his blood.
O blindness to the future! kindly given,
That each may fill the circle marked by Heaven;
Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled.

And now a bubble burst, and now a world.

Hope humbly, then; with trembling pinions soar;
Wait the great teacher Death, and God adore.
What future bliss he gives not thee to know,
But gives that hope to be thy blessing now.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be, blest;
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.

R

EAD Pope-most of you don't-but do... and the inevitable consequence would be, that you would burn all that I have ever written, and all your other wretched Claudians of the day (except Scott and Crabbe) into the bargain. P. B. SHELLEY.

I admire Pope in the very highest degree; but I admire him as a pyrotechnic artist for producing brilliant and evanescent effects out of elements that have hardly a moment's life within them. There is a flash and a startling explosion, then there is a dazzling coruscation all purple and gold; and in a moment all is over. DE QUINCEY.

I think of the works of young Pope as I do of the actions of young Bonaparte or young Nelson. In their common life you will find frailties and meannesses, but in the presence of the great occasion, the great soul flashes out and conquers transcendent. In thinking of the splendour of Pope's young victories, I hail the achieving genius and do homage to the pen of a hero.

W. M. THACKERAY.

I never in my life knew a man that had so tender a heart for his particular friends, or more general friendship for mankind.

BOLINGBROKE.

He never tires his readers, has a thousand beauties, is ingenious, full of strength of a peculiar kind, witty, learned, and observant.

J. H. FRISWELL.

BYRON.

STOOD within the Coliseum's wall,
Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome;
The watch dog bayed beyond the Tiber;
and

More near from out the Cæsars' palace came
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly,
Of distant sentinels the fitful song

Begun and died upon the gentle wind.
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach
Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood
Within a bowshot,—where the Cæsars dwelt
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst
A grove which springs through levelled battlements,
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths,
Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth :—
But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands,
A noble wreck in ruinous perfection!

While Cæsar's chambers and the Augustan halls
Grovel on earth in indistinct decay.-

And thou didst shine, thou rolling moon, upon

All this, and cast a wide and tender light,
Which softened down the hoar austerity
Of rugged desolation, and filled up,
As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries;
Leaving that beautiful which still was so,
And making that which was not; till the place
Became religion, and the heart ran o'er

With silent worship of the great of old!

The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule Our spirits from their urns.

B

YRON never set to work to consecrate his own sin into a religion, as Shelley did, and proclaim the worship of uncleanness

as the last and highest ethical development of "pure" humanity. For Byron has the most intense and awful sense of moral law; while Shelley has little or none. If Byron finds himself in hell he never turns round to the world and melodiously informs them that it is heaven if they could but see it in its true light.

CHARLES KINGSLEY.

God wanting fire to give a million birth
Took Byron's soul to animate their earth.
D. JERROLD.

At the end of a page of imagery you look for the teaching, the wisdom [for poetry ought to be wisdom], but there he fails. He misses the climax -the connection of nature with the spiritual in man. You climb a mountain but you have no prospect, you are led to a door but it is closed. G. STEWARD.

He is already bedimmed and vanishing, solely from deficiency in moral qualities.

J. H. NEWMAN.

His sarcasm blasts alike the weeds of hypocrisy and cant, and the flowers of faith and of holiest affections.

SHAW.