When Wordsworth alludes to the
foolish criticisms on his writings, he speaks serenely and generously of
Wordsworth the poet, as if he were an unbiassed third person, who takes
up the argument merely in the interest of literature. He towers into a
bald egotism which is quite above and beyond selfishness. Poesy was his
employment; it was Keats's very existence, and he felt the rough
treatment of his verses as if it had been the wounding of a limb. To
Wordsworth, composing was a healthy exercise, his slow pulse and
imperturbable self trust gave him assurance of a life so long that he
could wait, and when we read his poems we should never suspect the
existence in him of any sense but that of observation, as if Wordsworth
the poet were a half-mad land-surveyor, accompanied by Mr. Wordsworth the
distributor of stamps, as a kind of keeper. But every one of Keats's
poems was a sacrifice of vitality, a virtue went away from him into every
one of them; even yet, as we turn the leaves, they seem to warm and
thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses, and the flutter of
his electrical nerves, and we do not wonder he felt that what he did was
to be done swiftly.
In the mean time his younger brother languished and died, his elder seems
to have been in some way unfortunate and had gone to America, and Keats
himself showed symptoms of the hereditary disease which caused his death
at last.
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