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met him on the sea-shore-or beneath a natural arch of forest trees-or the Gothic arch of an old cathedral-or among Grecian ruins-or at a glimmering fireside on the verge of eveningor at the twilight entrance of a cave, into the dreamy depths of which he would have led me by the hand; anywhere, in short, save at Temple Bar, where his presence was blotted out by the porter-swollen bulks of these gross Englishmen. I stood and watched him, fading away, fading away, along the pavement, and could hardly tell whether he were an actual man, or a thought that had slipped out of my own mind, and clothed itself in human form and habiliments, merely to beguile me. At one moment he put his handkerchief to his lips, and withdrew it, I am almost certain, stained with blood. You never saw anything so fragile as his person. The truth is, Keats has all his life felt the effects of that terrible bleeding at the lungs, caused by the article on his Endymion, in the Quarterly Review, and which so nearly brought him to the grave. Ever since, he has glided about the world like a ghost, sighing a melancholy tone in the ear of here and there a friend, but never sending forth his voice to greet the multitude. I can hardly think him a great poet. The burthen of a mighty genius would not have been imposed upon shoulders so physically frail, and a spirit so infirmly sensitive. Great poets should have iron sinews.

Yet Keats, though for so many years he has given nothing to the world, is understood to have devoted himself to the composition of an epic poem. Some passages of it have been communicated to the inner circle of his admirers, and impressed them as the loftiest strains that have been audible on earth since Milton's days. If I can obtain copies of these specimens, I will ask you to present them to James Russell Lowell, who seems to be one of the poet's most fervent and worthiest worshippers. The information took me by surprise. I had supposed that all Keats's poetic incense, without being embodied in human language, floated up to heaven, and mingled with the songs of the immortal choristers, who perhaps were conscious of an unknown voice among them, and thought their melody the sweeter for it, But it is not so; he has positively written a poem on the subject of Paradise

Regained, though in another sense than that which presented itself to the mind of Milton. In compliance, it may be imagined, with the dogma of those who pretend that all epic possibilities, in the past history of the world, are exhausted, Keats has thrown his poem forward into an indefinitely remote futurity. He pictures mankind amid the closing circumstances of the time-long warfare between Good and Evil. Our race is on the eve of its final triumph. Man is within the last stride of perfection; Woman, redeemed from the thraldom against which our Sybil uplifts so powerful and so sad a remonstrance, stands equal by his side, or communes for herself with angels; the Earth, sympathizing with her children's happier state, has clothed herself in such luxuriant and loving beauty as no eye ever witnessed since our first parents saw the sunrise over dewy Eden. Nor then, indeed; for this is the fulfilment of what was then but a golden promise. But the picture has its shadows. There remains to mankind another peril; a last encounter with the Evil Principle. Should the battle go against us, we sink back into the slime and misery of ages. If we triumph!-but it demands a poet's eye to contemplate the splendor of such a consummation, and not to be dazzled.

To this great work Keats is said to have brought so deep and tender a spirit of humanity, that the poem has all the sweet and warm interest of a village tale, no less than the grandeur which befits so high a theme. Such, at least, is the perhaps partial representation of his friends; for I have not read or heard even a single line of the performance in question. Keats, I am told, withholds it from the press, under an idea the age has not enough of spiritual insight to receive it worthily. I do not like this distrust; it makes me distrust the poet. The Universe is waiting to respond to the highest word that the best child of time and immortality can utter. If it refuse to listen, it is because he mumbles and stammers, or discourses things unseasonable and foreign to the purpose.

I visited the House of Lords, the other day, to hear Canning, who, you know, is now a peer, with I forget what title. He disappointed me. Time blunts both point and edge, and does great mischief to men of his order of intellect. Then I stept into the Lower House, and listened to a few words from Cobbett,

who looked as earthy as a real clodhop- time. Some other players of the past per, or, rather, as if he had lain a dozen generation were present, but none that years beneath the clods. The men, greatly interested me. It behoves actwhom I meet now-a-days, often impress ors, more than all other men of publicime thus; probably because my spirits ty, to vanish from the scene betimes. are not very good, and lead me to think Being, at best, but painted shadows much about graves, with the long grass flickering on the wall, and empty sounds upon them, and weather-worn epitaphs, that echo another's thought, it is a sad and dry bones of people who made noise disenchantment when the colors begin enough in their day, but now can only to fade, and the voices to croak with age. clatter, clatter, clatter, when the sexton's spade disturbs them. Were it only possible to find out who are alive, and who dead, it would contribute infinitely to my peace of mind. Every day of my life, somebody comes and stares me in the face, whom I had quietly blotted out of the tablet of living men, and trusted never more to be pestered with the sight or sound of him. For instance, going to Drury-Lane Theatre, a few evenings since, up rose before me, in the ghost of Hamlet's father, the bodily presence of the elder Kean, who did die, or ought to have died, in some drunken fit or other, so long ago that his fame is scarcely traditionary now. His powers are quite gone; he was rather the ghost of himself than the ghost of the Danish king. In the stage-box sat several elderly and decrepit people, and among them a stately ruin of a woman, on a very large scale, with a profile-for I did not see her front face that stamped itself into my brain, as a seal impresses hot wax. By the tragic gesture with which she took a pinch of snuff, I was sure it must be Mrs. Siddons. Her brother, John Kemble, sat behind, a broken-down figure, but still with a kingly majesty about him. In lieu of all former achievements, nature enables him to look the part of Lear far better than in the meridian of his genius. Charles Matthews was likewise there; but a paralytic affection has distorted his once mobile countenance into a most disagreeable one-sidedness, from which he could no more wrench it into proper form than he could re-arrange the face of the great globe itself. It looks as if, for the joke's sake, the poor man had twisted his features into an expression at once the most ludicrous and horrible that he could contrive; and, at that very moment, as a judgment for making himself so hideous, an avenging providence had seen fit to petrify him. Since it is out of his own power, I would gladly assist him to change countenance; for his ugly visage haunts me both at noontide and night

What is there new, in the literary way, on your side of the water? Nothing of the kind has come under my inspection, except a volume of poems, published above a year ago, by Dr. Channing. I did not before know that this eminent writer is a poet; nor does the volume alluded to exhibit any of the characteristics of the author's mind, as displayed in his prose works; although some of the poems have a richness that is not merely of the surface, but glows still the brighter, the deeper and more faithfully you look into them. They seem carelessly wrought, however, like those rings and ornaments of the very purest gold, but of rude, native manufacture, which are found among the gold dust from Africa. I doubt whether the American public will accept them; it looks less to the assay of metal than to the neat and cunning manufacture. How slowly our literature grows up! Most of our writers of promise have come to untimely ends. There was that wild fellow, John Neal, who almost turned my boyish brain with his romances; he surely has long been dead, else he never could keep himself so quiet. Bryant has gone to his last sleep, with the Thanatopsis gleaming over him, like a sculptured marble sepulchre by moonlight. Halleck, who used to write queer verses in the newspapers, and published a Don Juanic poem called Fanny, is defunct as a poet, though averred to be exemplifying the metempsychosis, as a man of business. Somewhat later there was Whittier, a fiery Quaker youth, to whom the muse had perversely assigned a battle-trumpet, and who got himself lynched, ten years agone, in South Carolina. I remember, too, a lad just from college, Longfellow by name, who scattered some delicate verses to the winds, and went to Germany, and perished, I think, of intense application, at the University of Gottingen. Willis-what a pity!-was lost, if I recollect rightly, in 1833, on his voyage to Europe, whither he was

going, to give us sketches of the world's sunny face. If these had lived, they might, one or all of them, have grown to be famous men.

And yet there is no telling-it may be as well that they have died. I was myself a young man of promise. Oh, shattered brain!--oh, broken spirit! where is the fulfilment of that promise? The sad truth is, that when fate would gently disappoint the world, it takes away the hopefullest mortals in their youth; when it would laugh the world's hopes to scorn, it lets them live. Let me die upon this apophthegm, for I shall never make a truer one!

What a strange substance is the human brain! Or rather-for there is no need of generalizing the remark-what an odd brain is mine! Would you be lieve it? Daily and nightly there come scraps of poetry humming in my intellectual ear-some as airy as bird-notes, and some as delicately neat as parlor music, and a few as grand as organpeals that seem just such verses as those departed poets would have written, had not an inexorable destiny snatched them from their inkstands. They visit me in spirit, perhaps desiring to engage my services as the amanuensis of their posthumous productions, and thus secure the endless renown that they have forfeited by going hence too early. But I have my own business to attend to; and, besides, a medical gentleman, who interests himself in some little ailments of mine, advises me not to make too free use of pen and ink. There are clerks enough out of employment who would be glad of such a job.

Good bye! Are you alive or dead?

And what are you about? Still scribbling for the Democratic ? And do those infernal compositors and proofreaders misprint your unfortunate productions, as vilely as ever? It is too bad. Let every man manufacture his own nonsense, say I! Expect me home soon, and-to whisper you a secret-in company with the poet Campbell, who purposes to visit Wyoming, and enjoy the shadow of the laurels that he planted there. Campbell is now an old man. He calls himself well, better than ever in his life, but looks strangely pale, and so shadow-like, that one might almost poke a finger through his densest material. I tell him, by way of joke, that he is as dim and forlorn as Memory, though as unsubstantial as Hope.

Your true friend,

P.

P. S. Pray present my most respectful regards to our venerable and revered friend, Mr. Brockden Brown. It gratifies me to learn that a complete edition of his works, in a double-columned octavo volume, is shortly to issue from the press, at Philadelphia. Tell him that no American writer enjoys a more classic reputation on this side of the water. Is old Joel Barlow yet alive? Unconscionable man! Why, he must have nearly fulfilled his century! And does he meditate an epic on the war between Mexico and Texas, with machinery contrived on the principle of the steam-engine, as being the nearest to celestial agency that our epoch can boast? How can he expect ever to rise again, if, while just sinking into his grave, he persists in burthening himself with such a ponderosity of leaden verses?

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THE OLD BEGGAR.

BY R. S. S. ANDROS.

HE sitteth in the open street,
Day after day he sitteth there,
Unmindful of the Summer's heat,
Or Autumn's chilling air;
His faithful dog between his feet,
And his crutch beside his chair.

He sitteth there from morn till night,
That man of many years;

His few thin locks are scarce less white
Than a silver thread appears,

And his meek old face is channeled deep,
As it were worn with tears.

He holdeth out his shrivelled hand

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To every passer by,

And the idle boys that all day stand
To laugh at his bleared old eye;
And if a penny is dropped therein,
He smiles, and looks on high.

He smiles and looks on high, for well
He knows how good a sight,

To Him, who once on earth did dwell,
Has the poor widow's mite;
And he feeleth grateful for everything,
And to all who give aright.

He smiles, but seldom speaketh he,
Save when some winsome child
Climbs carelessly up his tottering knee,
And utters its prattle wild;

Or a grey-beard friend tells o'er the tales-
The tales that their youth beguiled.

And then the blood mounts to his cheek,
And his eye looks bright again,
While he talks of many a merry freak,

Of the days ere they were men;
Of the glad, glad hours of other years,
And the tryst-tree in the glen.

But his cheek grows pale, and his old eye dim,
When the name of one is spoke,
And his very sight doth seem to swim,
And the thought his breath to choke;
For the fearful hour comes back again,
The hour that his brave heart broke.

Then suddenly he looks on high,

Up where the blue sky sleeps,

And the light comes back to his dim old eye,
Though yet he sobs and weeps;

For there he meeteth a gentle glance,
That still its vigil keeps.

But when the heaven is overcast,
Clouds gather round his heart,
And the low wail of the northern blast
Maketh his nerves to start;

For he feareth that she is sorrowful,
Till the clouds above depart.

And when the daylight fadeth out,
He taketh his crutch and cane;
And casting his eye on all about,
For he may not come again;
With his old grey dog close by his side,
He limpeth down the lane.

And there in a hovel, old and torn
By the showers of many a year,
He lifts his heart, and a prayer is borne
To Him who loveth to hear;
And then he closeth his eyes in sleep,
And fears no danger near.

And thus he liveth, day by day,
That beggar, old and lame,
And thus he waiteth by the way,
Till death shall speak his name,
And call him up to dwell with Him
Who loveth all the same.

Who loveth all the same, and gives
As bright a crown of gold
To him who begs, as him who lives
'Mid mines of wealth untold;
And careth not for Power or Fame,
More than a Beggar Old.

SONNET.

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN.

"My mind's the same

It ever was to you. Where I find worth
I love the Keeper, till he let it go,

And then I follow it."-Old Play.

LIKE the fair sea that laves Italia's strand,
Affection's flood is tideless in my breast;
No ebb withdraws it from the chosen land,
Havened too richly for enamored quest :
Thus am I faithful to the vanished grace
Embodied once in thy sweet form and name,
And though love's charm no more illumes thy face,
In memory's realm her olden pledge I claim.
It is not constancy to haunt a shrine

From which devotion's lingering spark has fled;
Insensate homage only wreaths can twine
Around the pulseless temples of the dead:
Thou from thy better self hast madly flown,
While to that self allegiance still I own.

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