Our
intimate knowledge of nineteenth century poets has been of doubtful
benefit to us. Wordsworth has shaken into what promises to be his
permanent place among the English poets much more expeditiously than has
Byron. Is this not because in Wordsworth's case the reader is not
conscious of a magnetic personality drawing his judgment away from
purely aesthetic standards? Again, consider the case of Keats. For us
the facts of his life must color almost every line he wrote. How are we
to determine whether his sonnet, _When I Have Fears,_ is great poetry or
not, so long as it fills our minds insistently with the pity of his love
for Fanny Brawne, and his epitaph in the Roman graveyard?
Christopher North has been much upbraided by a hero-worshiping
generation, but one may go too far in condemning the Scotch sense in his
contention:
Mr. Keats we have often heard spoken of in terms of great kindness, and
we have no doubt that his manners and feelings are calculated to make
his friends love him. But what has all this to do with our opinion of
their poetry? What, in the name of wonder, does it concern us, whether
these men sit among themselves with mild or with sulky faces, eating
their mutton steaks, and drinking their porter? [Footnote: Sidney
Colvin, _John Keats,_ p.
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