When Sir Walter arrived, he received me like an old and attached friend; indeed, he involuntarily tried to make me fill up the terrible void then recently created by the death of Lady Northampton at the age of thirty-seven years. I went at his request to breakfast with him every morning, when he invariably commenced talking of his lost friend, of her beauty, her singularly varied accomplishments, of his growing delight in watching her from a child in the Island of Mull, and of his making her so often the model of his most successful female characters, the Lady of the Lake and Flora MacIvor particularly. Then he would stop short to lament her unlooked-for death with tears and groans of bitterness such as I had never before witnessed in any one,his head sinking down on his heaving breast. When he revived, (and this agonizing scene took place every morning,) he implored me to pity him, and not heed his weakness,that in his great misfortunes, in all their complications, he had looked forward to Rome and his dear Lady Northampton as his last and certain hope of repose; she was to be his comfort in the winding-up of life's pilgrimage: now, on his arrival, his life and fortune almost exhausted, she was gone! gone! After these pathetic outpourings, he would gradually recover his old cheerfulness, his expressive gray eye would sparkle even in tears, and soon that wonderful power he had for description would show itself, when he would often stand up to enact the incident of which he spoke, so ardent was he, and so earnest in the recital.
Each morning, at his request, I took for his examination some little picture or sketch that might interest him, and amongst the rest a picture of Keats, (now in the National Portrait Gallery of London,) but this I was surprised to find was the only production of mine that seemed not to interest him; he remained silent about it, but on all the others he was ready with interesting comments and speculations. Observing this, and wondering within myself at his apathy with regard to the young lost poet, as I had reason to be proud of Keats's growing fame, I ventured to talk about him, and of the extraordinary caprices of that fame, which at last had found its resting-place in the hearts of all real lovers of poetry.
I soon perceived that I was touching on an embarrassing theme, and I became quite bewildered on seeing Miss Scott turn away her face, already crimsoned with emotion. Sir Walter then falteringly remarked, "Yes, yes, the world finds out these things for itself at last," and taking my hand, closed the interview,our last, for the following night he was taken seriously ill, and I never saw him again, as his physician immediately hurried him away from Rome.
The incomprehensibleness of this scene induced me to mention it on the same day to Mr. Woodhouse, the active and discriminating friend of Keats, who had collected every written record of the poet, and to whom we owe the preservation of many of the finest of his productions. He was astonished at my recital, and at my being ignorant of the fact that Sir Walter Scott was a prominent contributor to the Review which through its false and malicious criticisms had always been considered to have caused the death of Keats.
My surprise was as great as his at my having lived all those seventeen years in Rome and been so removed from the great world, that this, a fact so interesting to me to know, had never reached me. I had been unconsciously the painful means of disturbing poor old Sir Walter with a subject so sore and unwelcome that I could only conclude it must have been the immediate cause of his sudden illness. Nothing could be farther from my nature than to have been guilty of such seemingly wanton inhumanity; but I had no opportunity afterwards of explaining the truth, or of justifying my conduct in any way.
This was the last striking incident connected with Keats's fame which fell within my own experience, and perhaps may have been the last, or one of the last, symptoms of that party-spirit which in the artificial times of George IV. was so common even among poets in their treatment of one another,they assuming to be mere politicians, and striving to be oblivious of their heart-ennobling pursuit.
It only remains for me to speak of my return to Rome in 1861, after an absence of twenty years, and of the favorable change and the enlargement during that time of Keats's fame,not as manifested by new editions of his works, or by the contests of publishers about him, or by the way in which most new works are illustrated with quotations from him, or by the fact that some favorite lines of his have passed into proverbs, but by the touching evidence of his silent grave. That grave, which I can remember as once the object of ridicule, has now become the poetic shrine of the world's pilgrims who care and strive to live in the happy and imaginative region of poetry. The head-stone, having twice sunk, owing to its faulty foundation, has been twice renewed by loving strangers, and each time, as I am informed, these strangers were Americans. Here they do not strew flowers, as was the wont of olden times, but they pluck everything that is green and living on the grave of the poet. The Custode tells me, that, notwithstanding all his pains in sowing and planting, he cannot "meet the great consumption." Latterly an English lady, alarmed at the rapid disappearance of the verdure on and around the grave, actually left an annual sum to renew it. When the Custode complained to me of the continued thefts, and asked what he was to do, I replied, "Sow and plant twice as much; extend the poet's domain; for, as it was so scanty during his short life, surely it ought to be afforded to him twofold in his grave."
Here on my return to Rome, all kinds of happy associations with the poet surround me, but none so touching as my recent meeting with his sister. I had known her in her childhood, during my first acquaintance with Keats, but had never seen her since. I knew of her marriage to a distinguished Spanish patriot, Señor Llanos, and of her permanent residence in Spain; but it was reserved for me to have the felicity of thus accidentally meeting her, like a new-found sister, in Rome. This city has an additional sacredness for both of us as the closing scene of her illustrious brother's life, and I am held by her and her charming family in loving regard as the last faithful friend of the poet. That I may indulge the pleasures of memory and unite them with the sympathy of present incidents, I am now engaged on a picture of the poet's grave, and am treating it with all the picturesque advantages which the antique locality gives me, as well as the elevated associations which this poetic shrine inspires. The classic story of Endymion being the subject of Keats's principal poem, I have introduced a young Roman shepherd sleeping against the head-stone with his flock about him, whilst the moon from behind the pyramid illuminates his figure and serves to realize the poet's favorite theme in the presence of his grave. This interesting incident is not fanciful, but is what I actually saw on an autumn evening at Monte Tertanio the year following the poet's death.
* * * * *A SPASM OF SENSE
The conjunction of amiability and sense in the same individual renders that individual's position in a world like this very disagreeable. Amiability without sense, or sense without amiability, runs along smoothly enough. The former takes things as they are. It receives all glitter as pure gold, and does not see that it is custom alone which varnishes wrong with a shiny coat of respectability, and glorifies selfishness with the aureole of sacrifice. It sets down all collisions as foreordained, and never observes that they occur because people will not smooth off their angles, but sharpen them, and not only sharpen them, but run them into you. It forgets that the Lord made man upright, but he hath sought out many inventions. It attributes all the confusion and inaptitude which it finds to the nature of things, and never suspects that the Devil goes around in the night, thrusting the square men into the round places, and the round men into the square places. It never notices that the reason why the rope does not unwind easily is because one strand is a world too large and another a world too small, and so it sticks where it ought to roll, and rolls where it ought to stick. It makes sweet, faint efforts with tender fingers and palpitating heart to oil the wheels and polish up the machine, and does not for a moment imagine that the hitch is owing to original incompatibility of parts and purposes, that the whole machine must be pulled to pieces and made over, and that nothing will be done by standing patiently by, trying to soothe away the creaking and wheezing and groaning of the laboring, lumbering thing, by laying on a little drop of sweet-oil with a pin-feather. As it does not see any of these things that are happening before its eyes, of course it is shallowly happy. And on the other hand, he who does see them and is not amiable is grimly and Grendally happy. He likes to say disagreeable things, and all this dismay and disaster scatter disagreeable things broadcast along his path, so that all he has to do is to pick them up and say them. Therefore this world is his paradise. He would not know what to do with himself in a world where matters were sorted and folded and laid away ready for you when you wanted them. He likes to see human affairs mixing themselves up in irretrievable confusion. If he detects a symptom of straightening, it shall go hard but he will thrust in his own fingers and snarl a thread or two. He is delighted to find dogged duty and eager desire butting each other. All the irresistible forces crashing against all the immovable bodies give him no shock, only a pleasant titillation. He is never so happy as when men are taking hold of things by the blade, and cutting their hands, and losing blood. He tells them of it, but not in order to relieve so much as to "aggravate" them; and he does aggravate them, and is satisfied. Oh, but he is an aggravating person!