tAutobiographical elements in Charles Lambs essays

Charles Lamb's attitude in his essays is autobiographical-for his essays convey

such elements from where we get to know his personality, nature, character,
relatives, work places and people around him. Thus the subjective note in his
essays is vital. As he belongs to the romantic age, the personal I is prominent is
his essays. In almost all the essays, we find and we learn something about his life.
Thus he speaks about his life, likings, whims and feelings. Lamb talks to the reader
as if he were his friend and confesses and confider in him. Lamb's own personality
is the basis for most of his essays. His own memories are reflected in them.
Actually autobiography is that kind of writing in which the writer's states, life and
conditions are delineated. His personal experiences are revealed in
autobiography. Moreover, the facts of personal life of the writer and the
activities, relatives, friends, likings, dislikings, character etc. are written by the
writer himself. In Charles Lamb's essays, we find the autobiographical touch.
However, the autobiographical elements that we can get from his essays are
written below:-

The reason for why his essays appeal autobiographical is his subjective note which
is predominant in all his essays. The subject of the Essays of Elia is Lamb himself.
In all of them, he makes some reference to himself. And the personal "I" is so
abound in his essays that readers ere sometimes fretted, although some critics
consider that use as an extra charm of Lamb's essays. In almost all the essays, he
talks about himself, his family, relatives, and friends. From these essays, we come
to know about his personality, nature and character which are revealed by
himself. After reading his essays, we know all about his stammer, his work al India
House and his companions there. It is this quality of self-revelation and
confidential tone that entitles Lamb to be called the "Prince of English essayists".
We also come to know about his relatives and friends. In the essay "The South Sea
House, he writes about his colleagues and gives the readers a very clear view
about them. Similarly, In "Christ's Hospital", he tells about his relatives and
friends. Some of his relatives and friends lived in London and who were, no doubt,
very caring to him. They used to bring delicious foods for him in Christ's Hospital
and used to look after him very cordially. He says in Christs Hospital, in the
guise of Coleridge, "He had his hot plate of roast veal, or the more tempting
griskin...., cooked in the paternal kitchen...., and bought him daily by his maid or
aunt". In the same essay, we have collections about a number of other friends
who studied with him. We know his friends lived in town. In Christs Hospital Five
And Thirty Years Ago, he says, "His friends lived in town, and were near at hand".

From the essays like The South Sea House, Christs Hospital Five And Thirty
Years Ago, A Bachelors Complaint, we got to know about his activities and the
jobs that he used to do in his student and professional life. In the essay Christs
Hospital Five And Thirty Years Ago, we see that he was not like his other school
fellows and enjoyed much concessions than other's. We also come to know that
"he was a home-seeking lad" and did not enjoy him much with other boys. Other
essays tell his feelings, ideas, dreams and unfulfilled longings. But through all the
essays shine the personality of a man who was alive to the absurdities of the
world, sympathetic towards others' sufferings and tolerant towards shortcomings.

As we know that Charles Lamb was a bachelor and worked at The South Sea
House and India House, he had experiences some bitter and humorous
experiences from there. These experiences sometimes seem humorous and
sometimes seem pathetic. In the essay A Bachelors Complaint, he tells about
some of the bitter experiences and expresses his agony for the behaviour of the
married people whom he thinks pretend lovers. Here he says, " What oftenest
offends of at the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a
description:- it is that they are too loving". He thinks that the married people
generally show that they are "too loving" and they show these things to the
unmarried people "so shamelessly". This type of behaviour of the married people
is painful to him.

Charles Lamb is a true lover of the past. He loves past people, books, buildings
and fashions, and does not care much about future. Memories of the past haunt
him; recollections of events of the past are more important than the present; old
familiar faces hold more attraction for him. In the essay, The South Sea House
and Christs Hospital Five And Thirty Years Ago, Lamb is seen as a visualizer of
the past memories. In The South Sea House, he says about the building as "it
was forty years ago, when I knew it- a magnificent relic". Here he recollects the
memory of the old building, its damp and dark rooms, the inner rooms which
were even more sparsely peopled and the gloomy cellar which saw no light of the
sun.

Although Charles Lamb loved the past things, he loved his life and was loath to
die. Like all other man, he loved the sun, the breeze, solitary walks, the very green
earth. He declares his love for good food and drink. He also loves the theatre,
books, good company, gossip and scandal. And again from many of his essays, we
come to know that he likes irony, jokes, pun and paradox. He never wanted to
hide his likings, dislikings, whims and oddities. He frankly confesses all these
things to the readers. He desires the friendship of his readers, and not merely
their respect. He confider in them all about his own weakness, follies and foibles.

As Charles Lamb loved fun, he sometimes used to mystify the readers by declaring
something true to be false, or by mischievously changing names and speaking
under assumed personality. In the essay, Christs Hospital Five And Thirty Years
Ago , he writer in the guise of Coleridge. And it is the last three or two
paragraphs when he unveils the curtain and writes as Charles Lamb.

Lamb speaks of his personal reactions to various aspects of life in all his essays.
Even in the essays like Christs Hospital Five And Thirty Years Ago, The South
Sea House , where he is primarily concerned with other people, he is talking
about them from his personal point of view. In The South Sea House, he
delineates the characters of Evans, Thomas Tame and John Tipp by his thoughts
and feelings. And the comments about them are his own. He comments about
John Tipp, "He sang, certainly, with other notes than to the orphan lyre". Them
again he comments about the clerks of The South Sea House, they formed a sort
of Noah's ark .

In most of the essays, he reveals the incidents, people and glories of the past. As a
result he picturizes not only other people's conditions and states, but also his own
conditions, feelings and character. In fact, his own life is revealed by his essays.
So, considering the subject matter of his essays, it can be said that a large portion
of Lamb's biography can be written from his essays

His Self-revelation:

What strikes one particularly about Lamb as an essayist is his persistent readiness
to reveal his everything to the reader. The evolution of the essay from Bacon to
Lamb lies primarily in its shift from

(i) objectivity to subjectivity, and

(ii) (ii) from formality to familiarity.

Of all the essayists it is perhaps Lamb who is the most autobiographic. His own life
is for him "such stuff as essays are made on." He could easily say what Montaigne
had said before him-"I myself am the subject of my book." The change from
objectivity to subjectivity in the English essay was, by and large, initiated by
Abraham Cowley who wrote such essays as the one entitled. "Of Myself." Lamb
with other romantic essayists completed this change. Walter Pater observes in
Appreciations; "With him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is
below all mere superficial tendencies, the real motive in 'writing at all, desire
closely connected with intimacy, that modern subjectivity which may be called
the Montaignesque element in literature. In his each and every essay we feel the
vein of his subjectivity." His essays are, as it were, so many bits of autobiography
by piecing which together we can arrive at a pretty authentic picture of his life,
both external and internal. It is really impossible to think of an essayist who is
more personal than Lamb. His essays reveal him fully-in all his whims, prejudices,
past associations, and experiences. "Night Fears" shows us Lamb as a timid,
superstitious boy. "Christ's Hospital" reveals his unpalatable experiences as a
schoolboy. We are introduced to the various members of his family in numerous
essays like "My Relations' "The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple," and "Poor
Relations." We read of the days of his adolescence in "Mackery End in
Hertfordshire." His tenderness towards his sister Mary is revealed by "Mrs.
Battle's Opinions on Whist." His professional life is recalled in "The South-Sea
House" and "The, Superannuated Man." His sentimental memories full of pathos
find expression in "Dream Children." His prejudices come to the fore in "Imperfect
Sympathies" and "The Confessions of a Drunkard." His gourmandise finds a
humoursutterence in "A Dissertation upon Roast Pig," "Grace before Meat," and
elsewhere. What else is left then? Very little, except an indulgence in self-pity at
the stark tragedy of his life. Nowhere does he seem to be shedding tears at the
fits of madness to which his siter Mary Bridget of the essays) was often subject
and in one of which she knifed his mother to death. The frustration of his erotic
career (Lamb remained in a state of lifelong bachelorhood imposed by himself.to
enable him to nurse his demented sister), however, is touched upon here and
there. In "Dream Children," for instance, his unfruitful attachment with Ann
Simmons is referred to. She got married and her children had to "call Bartrum
father." Lamb is engaged in a reverie about "his children" who would have
possibly been born had he been married to Alice W-n (Ann Simmons). When the
reverie is gone this is what he finds: "...and immediately awaking, I found myself
quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair where I had fallen asleep, with the
faithful Bridget [his sister Mary] unchanged by my side...but John L (his brother
John Lamb) was gone for ever." How touching!

Lamb's excessive occupation with himself may lead one to assume that he is too
selfish or. egocentric, or that he is vulgar or inartistic. Far from that, Egotism with
Lamb sheds its usual offensive accoutrements. The following specific points may
be noted in this connexion:

(i) His egotism is free from vulgarity. Well does Compton-Rickett observe:
"There is no touch of vulgarity in these intimacies; for all their frank unreserve we
feel the delicate refinement of the man's spiritual nature. Lamb omits no
essential, he does not sentimentalise, and does not brutalise his memories. He
poetises them, preserving them for us in art that can differentiate between
genuine reality and crude realism."

(ii) His artistic sense of discrimination-selection and rejection-has also to be

taken into account.DavidDaiches maintains: "The writer's own character is always
there, flaunted before the reader, but it is carefully prepared and controlled
before it is exhibited."

(iii) Though Lamb is an egotist yet he is not self-assertive. He talks about

himself not because he thinks himself to be important but because he
thinks himself to be the only object he knows intimately. Thus his egotism is born
of a sense of humility rather than hauteur. Samuel C. Chew observes: "Like all the
romantics he is self-revelatory, but there is nothing in him of the 'egotistical-
sublime.' Experience had made him too clear-sighted to take any individual, least
of all himself, too seriously. The admissions of his own weaknesses, follies, and
prejudices are so many humorous warnings to his readers."

Lamb's Humour, Pathos, and Humanity:

To appreciate the essays like Dream Children it is worthwhile to bear in mind certain incidents,
connected with the not happy life of the essayist. Charles Lamb fell in love with Alice w-n-, who did not
reciprocate his love. Secondly, Lambs sister Mary suffered a mental collapse and in a fit stabbed her
mother to death and in the melee the father too was wounded. Owing to the broken-love-affair and the
insanity of his sister, Lamb and his sister, old bachelor and the maid lived in a sort of double singleness
and such was the life the cruel fate destined Lamb to lead.

In Dream Children, Lamb the bachelor imagines that he is married and has children who came
to him, to hear stories about their elders. There is poignancy of pathos in this essay towards the end of
the essay. Lamb is unable to say whether it is the little Alice or Alice w-n- that stands before him, the
supposed children disappear, saying they are dreams. It might be that Lamb should have brooded over
the past, especially with regard to his love affair. The presence of many a happy pair, with their smiling
children must have had its own impact on Lamb. It would not be doing injustice to imagine Elia shedding
tears thinking of his Alice and that is why the children grow fainter to his view. On opening his eyes,
Lamb finds himself in the bachelors arm-chair.

It brings to the notice of the readers the perpetual mental agony the celibate Lamb had felt time
and again.

Similarly A New Years Eve is considered to be beautiful and melancholy and profoundly
human (Hugh Walker: The English Essay and Essayists). Lamb is in a sort of introspection and contrasts
the religious and hopeful child Elia, with the stupid changeling of five-and-forty. Such a thought may be
Owing to another cause; simply that being without wife or family and having no offspring of my own to
dally with, I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early idea, as my heir and favourite. Thus the
recurring theme of Lambs bachelorhood is again noticed here. In the essay entitled Wedding, Lamb
refers to his acceptance to be present at the wedding of a friends daughter because the occasion would
help him to forget his bachelorhood at least for a while.

Lamb makes the readers laugh while narrating the way in which the art of cooking meat was
invented, rather accidentally, for the first time in the world. The father and son become partners in
burning the poor mansion and even his lordships town is observed to be on fire. But towards the
conclusion, the author makes the reader feel pity for the tender innocent pig. He requests the cook,
while preparing the sauce, to banish the whole onion tribe or the guilty garlic. The pig is a weaklinga
flower. Here too, pathos is tinged with humour.

In spite of the various shocks he received in life Lamb neither curses those responsible for his
disappointments, nor does he wish to paint the world black and ugly. He wants the events of his past life
to be retained as they were.

Old Dorrell cheated Lambs family to the tune of two thousand pounds, but Lamb thinks but for
this, he would not have understood the nature of that specious old rogue. Similar is the case with
regard to Alice w-n-. Had it not been for this broken love-affair, so passionate a love-
adventure should have been lost. Thus Lamb could swallow all the bitter experiences in life and
write funnily about them. Though the world failed to give joy or solace to Lamb he does not take
shelter in cynicism. Curiously enough he is in love with his life on earth. He is in love with the
green earth, the face of the town and the country and delicious juices of the green earth, the face
of the town and the country and the delicious juices of meats and fishes. The thought of death
haunts Lamb. He shudders and asks if all these things so dearly loved by him go out with life.
Lambs mental make-up seems to be akin to that of the Duke Senior who proclaimed Sweet are
the uses of adversity (As You Like It) or it is due to the spirit of his mother which seems to
descend and smile upon me, and bid me to live to enjoy the life and reason which the Almighty
has given me. (Letter of Charles Lamb, 17th October 1796) We can conclude with the critic
who aptly remarked that Lamb laughed to save himself from weeping.

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Lamb's humour, humanity, and the sense of pathos are all his own; and it is
mainly these qualities which differentiate his essays from those of his
contemporaries. His essays are rich alike in wit, humour, and fun. Hallward and
Hill observe in the Introduction to their edition of the Essavs of Elia :"The terms
Wit. Humour and Fun are often confused but they are really different in meaning.
The first is based on intellect, the second on insight and sympathy, the third on
vigour and freshness of mind and body. Lamb's writings show all the three
qualities, but what most distinguishes him is Humour, for his sympathy is ever
strong and active." Humour in Lamb's essays constitutes very like an atmosphere
"with linked sweetness long drawn out." Its Protean shapes range from frivolous
puns, impish attempts at mystification, grotesque buffoonery, and Rabelaisian
verbosity (see, for example, the description of a "poor relation") to the subtlest
ironical stroke which pierces down to the very heart of life. J. B. Priestley observes
in English Humour: "English humour at its deepest and tenderest seems in him
[Lamb] incarnate. He did not merely create it, he lived in it. His humour is not an
idle thing, but the white flower, plucked from a most dangerous nettle." What
particularly distinguishes Lamb's humour is its close alliance with pathos. While
laughing he is always aware of the tragedy of life-not only his life, but life in
general. That is why he often laughs through his tears. Witness his treatment of
the hard life of chimney sweepers and Christ's Hospital boys. The descriptions are
touching enough, but Lamb's treatment provides us with a humorous medium of
perception rich in prismatic effects, which bathes the tragedy of actual life in the
iridescence of mellow comedy. The total effect is very complex, and strikes our
sensibility in a bizarre way, puzzling us as to what is comic and what is tragic
Autobiographical elements in Charles Lambs essays

Charles Lamb's attitude in his essays is autobiographical-for his essays convey

such elements from where we get to know his personality, nature, character,
relatives, activities, likings, disliking, work places and people around him. Thus
the subjective note in his essays is vital. As he belongs to the romantic age, the
personal I is prominent is his essays. In almost all the essays, we find and we
learn something about his life. Thus he speaks about his life, likings, whims and
feelings. Lamb talks to the reader as if he were his friend and confesses and
confider in him. Lamb's own personality is the basis for most of his essays. His
own memories are reflected in them.

Actually autobiography is that kind of writing in which the writer's states, life and
conditions are delineated. His personal experiences are revealed in autobiography.
Moreover, the facts of personal life of the writer and the activities, relatives,
friends, likings, dislikings, character etc. are written by the writer himself. In
Charles .Lamb's essays, we find the autobiographical touch. However, the
autobiographical elements that we can get from his essays are written below:-

From his essays, we, the readers, come to know about Charles Lamb's life and we
learn certain facts of his life- he was born at the Inner Temple and he was schooled
at Christ's Hospital and he worked at South Sea House and India House as a clerk.
We know that he was a bachelor; we also know that he apparently loved but was
refused by his early beloved. We get to know a great deal about his school life in
the essay "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago". We know that he had
some privileges in his school. He says about himself in the guise of Coleridge, "I
remember L. at school, and can well recollect that he had some peculiar
advantages, which I and others of his school fellows had not". Again he says "His
friends lived in town, and were near at hand; and he had the privilege of going to
see them, almost as often as he wished". Moreover, he got his "extraordinary bread
and butter" "from the hot-loaf of the Temple".
The subject of the Essays of Elia is Lamb himself After reading his essays, we
know all about his stammer, his work al India House and his companions there. It
is this quality of self-revelation and confidential tone that entitles Lamb to be
called the "Prince of English essayists".

As we know that Charles Lamb was a bachelor and worked at The South Sea
House and India House, he had experiences some bitter and humorous experiences
from there. These experiences sometimes seem humorous and sometimes seem
pathetic. In the essay A Bachelors Complaint, he tells about some of the bitter
experiences and expresses his agony for the behaviour of the married people whom
he thinks pretend lovers. Here he says, " What oftenest offends of at the houses of
married persons where I visit, is an error of quite a description:- it is that they are
too loving". He thinks that the married people generally show that they are "too
loving" and they show these things to the unmarried people "so shamelessly". This
type of behaviour of the married people is painful to him.

Charles Lamb is a true lover of the past. He loves past people, books, buildings and
fashions, and does not care much about future. Memories of the past haunt him;
recollections of events of the past are more important than the present; old familiar
faces hold more attraction for him.

Although Charles Lamb loved the past things, he loved his life and was loath to
die. Like all other man, he loved the sun, the breeze, solitary walks, the very green
earth. He declares his love for good food and drink. He also loves the theatre,
books, good company, gossip and scandal. And again from many of his essays, we
come to know that he likes irony, jokes, pun and paradox. He never wanted to hide
his likings, dislikings, whims and oddities. He frankly confesses all these things to
the readers. He desires the friendship of his readers, and not merely their respect.
He confider in them all about his own weakness, follies and foibles.

As Charles Lamb loved fun, he sometimes used to mystify the readers by declaring
something true to be false, or by mischievously changing names and speaking
under assumed personality. In the essay, Christs Hospital Five And Thirty Years
Ago , he writer in the guise of Coleridge. And it is the last three or two paragraphs
when he unveils the curtain and writes as Charles Lamb.

Lamb speaks of his personal reactions to various aspects of life in all his essays.
Even in the essays like Christs Hospital Five And Thirty Years Ago, The
In most of the essays, he reveals the incidents, people and glories of the past. As a
result he picturizes not only other people's conditions and states, but also his own
conditions, feelings and character. In fact, his own life is revealed by his essays.
So, considering the subject matter of his essays, it can be said that a large portion
of Lamb's biography can be written from his essays.

Charles Lamb as an Essayist

Introduction:
Montaigne, a French writer, was the father of the essay, and it was
Francis Bacon who naturalised the new form in English. However, there is
much difference between his essays and the essays of his model.
Montaignes essays are marked by his tendency towards self-revelation, a
light-hearted sense of humour, and tolerance. But Bacon in his essay is
more an adviser than a companion: he is serious, objective, and didactic.

It has well been said that the essay took a wrong turn in the hands of Bacon.
For two centuries after Bacon the essay in England went on gravitating
towards the original conception held by Montaigne, but it was only in the
hands of the romantic essayists of the early nineteenth century that it
became wholly personal, light, and lyrical in nature. From then onwards it
has seen no essential change. The position of Lamb among these romantic
essayists is the most eminent. In fact, he has often been called the prince of
all the essayists England has so far produced. Hugh Walker calls him the
essayist par excellence who should be taken as a model. It is from the
essays of Lamb that we often derive our very definition of the essay, and it
is with reference to his essays as a criterion of excellence that we evaluate
the achievement and merit of a given essayist. Familiarity with Lamb as a
man enhances for a reader the charm of his essays. And he is certainly the
most charming of all English essay. We may not find in him the massive
genius of Bacon, or the ethereal flights (O altitude) of Thomas Browne, or
the brilliant lucidity of Addison, or the ponderous energy of Dr. Johnson,
but none excels him in the ability to charm the reader or to catch him in the
plexus of his own personality.

His Self-revelation:
 What strikes one particularly about Lamb as an essayist is his
persistent readiness to reveal his everything to the reader. The evolution of
the essay from Bacon to Lamb lies primarily in its shift from
(i) objectivity to subjectivity, and (ii) from formality to familiarity.
Of all the essayists it is perhaps Lamb who is the most
autobiographic. His own life is for him such stuff as essays are made on.
He could easily say what Montaigne had said before him-I myself am the
subject of my book. The change from objectivity to subjectivity in the
English essay was, by and large, initiated by Abraham Cowley who wrote
such essays as the one entitled. Of Myself. Lamb with other romantic
essayists completed this change. Walter Pater observes in Appreciations;
With him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is below all
mere superficial tendencies, the real motive in writing at all, desire closely
connected with intimacy, that modern subjectivity which may be called the
Montaignesque element in literature. In his each and every essay we feel
the vein of his subjectivity. His essays are, as it were, so many bits of
autobiography by piecing which together we can arrive at a pretty authentic
picture of his life, both external and internal. It is really impossible to think
of an essayist who is more personal than Lamb. His essays reveal him fully-
in all his whims, prejudices, past associations, and experiences. Night
Fears shows us Lamb as a timid, superstitious boy. Christs Hospital
reveals his unpalatable experiences as a schoolboy. We are introduced to
the various members of his family in numerous essays like My Relations
The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, and Poor Relations. We read of
the days of his adolescence in Mackery End in Hertfordshire. His
tenderness towards his sister Mary is revealed by Mrs. Battles Opinions
on Whist. His professional life is recalled in The South-Sea House and
The, Superannuated Man. His sentimental memories full of pathos find
expression in Dream Children. His prejudices come to the fore in
Imperfect Sympathies and The Confessions of a Drunkard. His
gourmandise finds a humours utterence in A Dissertation upon Roast Pig,
Grace before Meat, and elsewhere. What else is left then? Very little,
except an indulgence in self-pity at the stark tragedy of his life. Nowhere
does he seem to be shedding tears at the fits of madness to which his siter
Mary Bridget of the essays) was often subject and in one of which she
knifed his mother to death. The frustration of his erotic career (Lamb
remained in a state of lifelong bachelorhood imposed by himself.to enable
him to nurse his demented sister), however, is touched upon here and
there. In Dream Children, for instance, his unfruitful attachment with
 Ann Simmons is referred to. She got married and her children had to call
Bartrum father. Lamb is engaged in a reverie about his children who
would have possibly been born had he been married to Alice W-n (Ann
Simmons). When the reverie is gone this is what he finds: and
immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-
chair where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget [his sister Mary]
unchanged by my sidebut John L (his brother John Lamb) was gone for
ever. How touching!
Lambs excessive occupation with himself may lead one to assume
that he is too selfish or. egocentric, or that he is vulgar or inartistic. Far
from that, Egotism with Lamb sheds its usual offensive accoutrements. The
following specific points may be noted in this connexion:
(i) His egotism is free from vulgarity. Well does Compton-Rickett observe:
There is no touch of vulgarity in these intimacies; for all their frank
unreserve we feel the delicate refinement of the mans spiritual nature.
Lamb omits no essential, he does not sentimentalise, and does not brutalise
his memories. He poetises them, preserving them for us in art that can
differentiate between genuine reality and crude realism.
(ii) His artistic sense of discrimination-selection and rejection-has also to be
taken into account.David Daiches maintains: The writers own character is
always there, flaunted before the reader, but it is carefully prepared and
controlled before it is exhibited.
(iii) Though Lamb is an egotist yet he is not self-assertive. He talks about
himself not because he thinks himself to be important but because he
thinks himself to be the only object he knows intimately. Thus his egotism
is born of a sense of humility rather than hauteur. Samuel C. Chew
observes: Like all the romantics he is self-revelatory, but there is nothing
in him of the egotistical-sublime. Experience had made him too clear-
sighted to take any individual, least of all himself, too seriously. The
admissions of his own weaknesses, follies, and prejudices are so many
humorous warnings to his readers.
The Note of Familiarity:
Lambs contribution to the English essay also lies in his changing the
general tone from formality to familiarity. This change was to be accepted
by all the essayists to follow. Never, says Compton-Rickett, was any man
more intimate in print than he. He has made of chatter a fine art. Lamb
disarms the reader at once with his buttonholding familiarity. He plays with
him in a puckish manner, no doubt, but he is always ready to take him into
confidence and to exchange heart-beats with him. In the essays of the
writers before him we are aware of a well-marked distance between the
writer and ourselves. Bacon and Addison perch themselves, as it were, on a
pedestal, and cast pearls before the readers standing below. In Cowley, the
distance between the reader and writer narrows down-but it is there still. It
was left for Lamb to abolish this distance altogether. He often addresses the
reader (dear reader) as if he were addressing a bosom friend. He makes
nonsense of the proverbial English insularity and talks to the readers as
a friend and man (as Thackeray said he did in his novels). This note of
intimacy is quite pleasing, for Lamb is the best of friends.
No Didacticism:
He is a friend, and not a teacher. Lamb shed once and for all the
didactic approach which characterises the work of most essayists before
him. Bacon called his essays counsels civil and moral. His didacticism is
too palpable to need a comment. Cowley was somewhat less didactic, but
early in the eighteenth century Steele and Addison-the founders of the
periodical essay-set in their papers the moralistic, mentor-like tone for all
the periodical essayists to come. Even such a rake among scholars and a
scholar among rakes as Steele arrogated to himself the air of a teacher and
reformer. This didactic tendency reached almost its culmination in Dr.
Johnson who in the Idler and Rambler papers gave ponderous sermons
rather than what may be called essays. Lamb is too modest to pretend to
proffer moral counsels. He never argues, dictates, or coerces. We do not
find any philosophy of life in his essays, though there are some personal
views and opinions flung about here and there not for examination and
adoption, but just to serve as so many ventilators to let us have a peep into
his mind. Lamb, says Cazamian, is not a moralist nor a psychologist, his
object is not research, analysis, or confession; he is, above all, an artist. He
has no aim save the readers pleasure, and his own. But though Lamb is
not a downright pedagogue, he is yet full of sound wisdom which he hides
under a cloak of frivolity and tolerant good nature. He sometimes looks like
the Fool in King Lear whose weird and funny words are impregnated with a
hard core of surprising sanity. As a critic avers, though Lamb frequently
donned the cap and bells, he was more than ajester; even his jokes had
kernels of wisdom. In his Character of the Late Elia in which he himself
gives a character-sketch of the supposedly dead Elia, he truly observes : He
would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest; and yet,
perhaps not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it.
The Rambling Nature of His Essays and His Lightness of Touch:
The rambling nature of his essays and his lightness of touch are some
other distinguishing features of Lamb as an essayist. He never bothers
about keeping to the point. Too often do we find him flying off at a tangent
and ending at a point which we could never have foreseen. Every road with
him seems to lead to the worlds end. We often reproach Bacon for the
dispersed nature of his meditations, but Lamb beats everybody in his
monstrous discursiveness. To consider some examples, first take up his
essay The Old and the New School-master. In this essay which apparently
is written for comparing the old and new schoolmaster, the first two pages
or thereabouts contain a very humorous and exaggerated description of the
authors own ignorance. Now, we may ask, what has Lambs ignorance to
do with the subject in hand? Then, the greater part of the essay Oxford in
the Vacation is devoted to the description of his friend Dyer. Lambs essays
are seldom artistic, well-patterned wholes. They have no beginning, middle
and end. Lamb himself described his essays as a sort of unlicked incondite
things. However, what these essays lose in artistic design they gain in the
touch of spontaneity. This is what lends them what is called the lyrical
quality.
Lambs Humour, Pathos, and Humanity:
Lambs humour, humanity, and the sense of pathos are all his own;
and it is mainly these qualities which differentiate his essays from those of
his contemporaries. His essays are rich alike in wit, humour, and fun.
Hallward and Hill observe in the Introduction to their edition of the Essavs
of Elia : The terms Wit. Humour and Fun are often confused but they are
really different in meaning. The first is based on intellect, the second on
insight and sympathy, the third on vigour and freshness of mind and body.
Lambs writings show all the three qualities, but what most distinguishes
him is Humour, for his sympathy is ever strong and active. Humour in
Lambs essays constitutes very like an atmosphere with linked sweetness
long drawn out. Its Protean shapes range from frivolous puns, impish
attempts at mystification, grotesque buffoonery, and Rabelaisian verbosity
(see, for example, the description of a poor relation) to the subtlest
ironical stroke which pierces down to the very heart of life. J. B. Priestley
observes in English Humour: English humour at its deepest and tenderest
seems in him [Lamb] incarnate. He did not merely create it, he lived in it.
His humour is not an idle thing, but the white flower, plucked from a most
dangerous nettle. What particularly distinguishes Lambs humour is its
close alliance with pathos. While laughing he is always aware of the tragedy
of life-not only his life, but life in general. That is why he often laughs
through his tears. Witness his treatment of the hard life of chimney
sweepers and Christs Hospital boys. The descriptions are touching enough,
but Lambs treatment provides us with a humorous medium of perception
rich in prismatic effects, which bathes the tragedy of actual life in the
iridescence of mellow comedy. The total effect is very complex, and strikes
our sensibility in a bizarre way, puzzling us as to what is comic and what is
tragic.

Some things are of that nature as to make Ones fancy

chuckle while his heart doth ache Wrote Bunyan.

The nature of things mostly appeared to Charles Lamb in this

way. Lamb does not frolic out of lightness of heart, but to escape
from gloom that might otherwise crush. He laughed to save
himself from weeping. In fact, Lambs personal life was of
disappointments and frustrations. But instead of complaining, he
looked at the tragedies of life, its miseries and worries as a
humorist. Thus his essays become an admixture of humour and
pathos. Examples of his keen sense of humour and pathetic
touches are scattered in all of his essays. Lets focus our
discussion on Dream Children: A Reverie.

Charles Lamb
In Lambs writing wit, humour and fun are interwoven and it is
humour which is most notable for its extreme sensitiveness to the
true proportion of things. Lamb often brings out the two sides of
a fact and causes laughter at our own previous misconceptions.
Therefore it borders on the painful realization. Thus his humour is
very nearly allied to pathos. They are different facts of the same
gem.
In his essay Dream Children: A Reverie Lamb talks of
personal sorrows and joys. He gives expressions to his unfulfilled
longings and desires. He readily enters into the world of fantasy
and pops up stories in front of his dream children. He relates his
childhood days, of Mrs. Field, his grandmother and John Lamb,
his brother. He describes how fun he had at the great house and
orchard in Norfolk. Of his relations he gives us full and living
pictures his brother John is James Elia of My Relations, but here
is John L-, so handsome and spirited youth, and a king. John
was brave, handsome and won admiration from everybody
Charles grandmother Mrs. Field is the other living picture. She
was a good natured and religions minded lady of respectable
personality. Narrators sweet heart Alice Winterton is the other
shadowed reality. The Dream Children, Alice and John are mere
bubbles of fancy. Thus Lambs nostalgic memory transports us
back to those good old days of great grandmother Field. But even
in those romantic nostalgia the hard realities of life does not miss
our eyes. Death, separation and suffering inject us deep-rooted
pathos in our heart. Whereas Mrs. Field died of cancer, John
Lamb died in early age. Ann Simmons has been a tale of
unrequited love story of Charles Lamb. Notably the children are
millions of ages distant of oblivion and Charles is not a married
man but a bachelor having a reverie.

In his actual life Lamb courted Ann Simmons but could not
marry her, he wanted to have children but could not have any.
Thus he strikes a very pathetic note towards the end of his essay
when he puts the following word into the months of his imaginary
children, we are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at
all We are nothing, less than nothing, dreams. We are only
what might have been. Alice is here no other that Ann Simmons
the girl Lamb wanted to marry, but failed to marry her. In fact,
the subtitle of the essay A Reverie which literally means a
daydream or a fantasy prepares us for the pathos of the return
to reality although the essay begins on a deceptively realistic
note.

Although Dream Children begins on a merry note, the dark side of

life soon forces itself upon Lambs attention and the comic
attitude gives way to melancholy at the end of the essay.
Throughout the essay Lamb presents his children in such a way
that we never guess that they are merely figments of his
imagination their movements, their reactions, their expressions
are all realistic. It is only at the end of the essay that we realize
that the entire episode with his children is a daydream. We are
awakening by a painful realization of the facts.

Lambs humour was no surface play, but the flower

plucked from the nettle of peril and awe. In fact, Lambs humour
and pathos take different shapes in different essays. Sometimes
it is due to his own unfulfilled desires, sometimes it is due to the
ill-fortunes of his relatives and friends and on some other
occasions it is due to his frustration in love etc. If his Poor
Relations begin humorously of a male and female poor relation,
he later gives us a few pathetic examples of poor relations that
had to suffer on account of poverty. Again in his The Praise of
Chimney Sweepers Lamb sways between humour and pathos
while describing the chimney sweepers. Similarly the essay
Dream Children is a beautiful projection of Lambs feelings and
desire to have a wife and children of his own. It is humorous that
in his dream he is married and has two children of his own while
he had a disheartening frustration in love. Thus Lamb has painted
both the lights and shades of life in full circle. His is the criticism
of life in pathos and humours.
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used-by-charles.html#sthash.5ZcyHOUo.dpuf

Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb, an English writer is best known for his essays. Although he wrote
poems and books, he is mainly known as an essayist. E.V.Lucas, his principal
biographer, has called him the most loved figure in English Literature.

Charles Lamb in his Essays of Elia, uses the pseudonym of Elia. Dream Children:
A Reverie, is an essay from this collection which was published in the form of a
book, this was later followed by the second volume titled Last Essays to Elia.
Lambs writing style by nature is very romantic.
The Essays are very personal, as they are somewhat fictionalized stories of
himself. It tells us of what his life would have been had he made different
decisions in his life. In his essays, he mentions his family members often with
different names. In Dream Children: A Reverie, he fanatisizes his life, had he
married his beloved Ann Simmons, who he calls Alice W. in the Elia essays.

Lamb is chiefly remembered for his Elia essays, which are celebrated for their
witty and ironic treatment of everyday subjects. The Elia essays are
characterized by Lambs personal tone, narrative ease, and wealth of literary
allusions. Never didactic, the essays treat ordinary subjects in a nostalgic, fanciful
way by combining humor, pathos, and a sophisticated irony ranging from gentle to
scathing.

Lamb conjures up humour and pathos in his Elian essays. Although Dream
Children begins on a merry note, the dark side of life soon forces itself upon
Lambs attention and the comic attitude gives way to melancholy at the end of the
essay. Throughout the essay Lamb presents his children in such a way that we
never guess that they are merely fragments of his imagination their movements,
their reactions, and their expressions are all realistic. It is only at the end of the
essay that we realize that the entire episode with his children is a merely a
daydream. We are awakened by a painful realization of the facts.

His essays are allusive, which is peculiar to romantic essays. Lamb, rambles
throughout the narratives with ease and is able to return to the point. He often does
it in his writings. This allusive quality is seen in Dream Children when he begins
talking of his grandmother Field ,he then rambles to talk of the house she worked
in, and later to talk about the mantel piece carving of the Babes in the Wood. He
also makes use of parentheses, which gives us an insight to the characters stream of
consciousness. The parentheses in, Dream Children, mostly show us the
observations of the father, which tell us more about the childrens expressions for
dramatic emphasis.

the most loved writer in English literature

- E.V.Lucas on Lamb in his biography

His essays have a reflective quality; he talks about his schooling days in Christs
Hospital in the essay, Christs Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago wherein he
speaks of himself in the third person as L. Rosemund Gray is another essay in
which he reflects upon his feelings for Ann Simmons as the titular character and
how their relationship doesnt go too far due to Miss Gray passing away.

To conclude we can see that Lambs essays are very personal. They possess humour
and pathos like most romantic works of literature. Lamb is also praised for his
allusive quality which is noted by many literary critics. And above all he is highly
evocative, a quality possessed by all Romantic writers.

Adonais by Percy Bysshe Shelley: Pastoral Elegy on the Death of John Keats.

A Pastoral Elegy is a song of grief in which the poet in the guise of a Shepherd
mourns the death of some dear and near ones who are also presented as a
Shepherd. As it is already stated, pastoral elegists mourn a subject by
representing the mourner and the subject as shepherds in a pastoral setting.
Representing all these conventions, Adonais is a Pastoral Elegy. It has been
criticized on the ground that the expression of grief in it is not sincere, for one
who sincerely mourns expresses his grief directly and does not run after
metaphors or figurative expression (the dreams and fancies of Adonais as his
mourners, to bring in the mountain shepherds, and to personify the power of
nature may be good poetry but it is urbanely artificial) But as a matter of fact,
Adonais is not an expression of personal sorrow. Shelley never claimed it to be so.
It is a lament on the loss of a valuable life as Lycidas. Also, Keats and Shelley had
never been intimate friend, and Shelley did not think highly of any of his of .
than, Hyperior.

Percy Bysshe Shelley was attracted by Keats because he founded in him a poet of
promise, and because his sympathy was aroused of by the story, though wrong,
that he had been killed by the brutal attack on his Endymion in the Quarterly
Review. That is why we are not told so much of Keats as about the Reviewers who
are supposed to have caused the death of a great poet.

However, it will have to be admitted that expression of grief has a greater ring of
sincerity that that of Milton in Lycidas, who is more concerned with his friend.
Shelley is more sincere than Arnold in Thyrsis, which was written five years after
the death of his friend Clough, because Shelley has himself suffered at the hands
of the same reviewers. As he himself tells us, he is a partial mean.

Shelley chose the Pastoral convention for his elegy, for he had such noble
examples as his precedents as Miltons Lycidas and Spensers Astrephel. He
used the classical form , so that he may connect his theme with the great poetic
tradition of the world, and so that the may represent Keats as one of a long series
of poets, all native of the same enchanted country and all children of the same
mother, uranir.

Though Adonais has lose resemblances with lycidas, which can not be accidental,
yet lycidas was not Shelleys model. He went directly to Greek Masters. Shelleys
elegy is closely modeled upon Bions lament of Aphrodite for Adonais. But Shelley
has changed the spirit and made the work entirely his own by the touch of his
genius.

As a pastoral elegy, adonais closely follows the classical machinery, of pastoral. It

may bed divided into two parts. The first running up to the 38 th stanza, is cast in
the pastoral mould ; there is the traditional of invocation to weep, sympathetic
mourning in nature, procession of mourner consisting of the flocks of dead
Shepherd, and his follow shepherd , personal digression and invective,. In the
second part (17 stanza), Shelley strikes a modern note. There us change if mood,
and final consolation.

In the first part the poet closely follows the Pastoral convention. There is the
traditional invocation to weep; the procession of mourners consisting of the
Dreams of Keats represented as him flock, nature objects, and contemporary
poets, including Shelley. The portrait that Shelley gives of himself is unique in
many ways. The quick succession of abstract images imparts an element of
vagueness to the description of Shelley. The inactive (angry or abusive language)
is a weak spot in the poem.

It may also be noted that while the general atmosphere is Pastoral, the Pastoral
note itself is weaker and thinner, and lee consistent in Adonais than is the case
with Lycidas and Thyrsis. In Adonais the pastoral note is entirely absent from
the first eight stangas , it is shuck for the first time in the ninth stanza, continues
till the seventieth stanza, and then ceases for the nest twelve stanzas . It ageing
begins in the twentieth stanza, continuer in the magnificent vein for six stanzas,
and then dies out altogether.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

In the Second the note of sorrow changes to one of hope and joy. But the change
is the not abrupt. It is gradual and the two parts have been artistically blended
into a single whole. The transition takes place in the 38th stanza. The readers are
asked not to mourn the death of Adonais who wakes a sleep with the part of the
eternal. This thought reminds us of, naught we known of death, of the 20th
stanza. In this way the two parts run into each other and the artistic unity of the
whole is maintained.

The greatness Adonais are due primarily to that part of it, which steers clear of
Pastoral convention. It is so because in the first part Shelleys fancy was chained
down by the shackles of convention and in the second part he, Soars aloft mighty
wings.

Thus the following point proves that Adonais is a Pastoral elegy. Not only that,
the in-depth use of the Spenserian stanza contributes much to the artistic
perfection of this elegy

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bysshe-shelley.html#sthash.g0aGgHq4.dpuf

Adonais : Percy Bysshe Shelley - Summary and Critical Analysis

'Adonais' is a pastoral elegy which Shelley wrote on the death of his

contemporary poet John Keats. Like Miltons 'Lycidas', it is an English adaptation
of the classical form of elegy perfected by poets as early as the classical Greek
times of Homer and Virgil. 'Adonais' is written mainly in the classical pattern,
though Shelley has adapted and added some of the elements. The setting is
dramatic, and the reader feels as if someone just struck by sorrow is frantically
running around calling everyone to mourning; but the actions and shifts in time
and place are to be guessed form the subtle clues in the poem. This pastoral elegy
is written in the pattern of the classical pastoral elegy.

It begins with an invocation and mournful tone; then it describes the natures
participation in the bereaved shepherds/poets mourning for the deceased one;
there follows a procession of mourners (among them are Shelley himself and Lord
Byron); then the speaker attacks on the bad literary critics who damaged the self-
esteem and honor of the growing artist Keats, before moving to the consolation
as conclusion. But Shelley has invented his own type of coda: he has expressed his
transcendental concept of death and his own foreboding of death at the end of
the poem.

The mood gradually shifts form grief to comfort as the poem approaches its
end. Shelley makes Keats spirit one with the Eternal; after viewing the Protestant
Cemetery in Rome, Shelley presents his philosophic concept related to Platos
doctrine of the ideal: Life, like a dome of many colored glass. Shelley claims, with
reference to his Neo-Platonic ideals, that Keats death in glory is far better than
the inglorious and shameful life of his murderer, the savage critic. He also feels
that he is being called by the spirit of John Keats in the immortal world: in fact,
Shelley died after about two years of Keats death!

The name Adonais comes from two sources (Adonis and Adonai) one classical
and the other Christian. Adonis in Greek mythology is a beautiful mortal youth
beloved by the two goddesses Aphrodite and Proserpine. After being slain by a
wild boar while hunting, he was restored by god Zeus for Aphrodite, but since he
was kept for so long by Proserpine, Zeus decreed that Adonis should spend the
winter months with Persephone in Hades and the summer months with
Aphrodite. The story of his death and resurrection is symbolic of the natural cycle
of death and rebirth. On the other hand, the name Adonai is etymologically
related to adon, a Semitic word meaning lord that occurs in the Old
Testament. In Shelleys poem, the word, while representing Keats literally, also
suggests the natural rebirth of the immortal poet, as also the divinely creative
(lords) power of the poet. Besides, Uriana is in Shelleys conception, both
Aphrodite, the earth-mother of Adonis myth, and the spiritual influence which
Milton invoked as heavenly muse.

Indeed, it may seem strange that Shelley should choose to lament Keats death
in such an artificial and constrained format as the pastoral requires. If his feelings
of grief were genuine, one might ask, why not have expressed them in plain, or at
least far less contrived terms. The pastoral allows the poet to exercise,
nevertheless, the option of poeticizing the event. From that perspective, Shelley,
who was quite capable of using a wide range of poetic styles and expression, was
first of all doing his fellow poet a high honor by eulogizing him in a structure
unique to poetic discourse.

Shelley adheres to all the traditional formal pastoral constraints -and more- in
producing his elegy. In keeping with the tradition, he does not identify the
characters by their actual names, but by their shepherd names or by
characteristics typical of natural rather than social environs. Since the tradition is
Greek, he harks back to classical myth and imagery. Keats poetic efforts, as noted
previously, are his flocks. The procession of mourners is appropriately arrayed in
flowers and other vestiges of spring; even in the depths of his grief, the poet
never fails to remind the reader that it is in fact the springtime of the year.

The elegiac pastoral is compelled to render the experience positive by the end
of the poem, for while no poet can deny the undeniable reality of bodily death,
the pastorals very idealizations require one to imagine a transcendent reality as
the true locus of all human hopes and aspirations. In its spirited exultation that
light shall triumph over darkness, that the true shall endure the violence done
them through hatred and spite, resurrections that can take the breath away,
Adonais reaffirms life in the very act of lamenting an individuals death.

Analysis
The Greek in the subtitle is: Thou wert the morning star among the living, / Ere
thy fair light had fled; / Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving / New
splendor to the dead. This is taken from the Epigram on Aster, often attributed
to Plato, which Shelley had been translating at the time of John Keats death.

Shelley is mourning the death of his good friend, the young English poet John
Keats. The persona has entered a state of dejection, calling everyone to mourn
with him, and announcing that Keats should be remembered forever. To do so,
Shelley assigns to Keats identity Adonis, a Greek god who was loved by Venus
and died at a very young age, being torn apart by wild boars.

The overarching form of the poem is a pastoral elegy, meaning that a shepherd of
sorts is mourning the death of another. Literarily speaking, the function of
pastoral poetry is reflexive in that it uses older traditions to make complex
emotions seem simpler. The Greek legend of Adonis is a tale about a handsome
youth who was equally admired by Aphrodite (Urania), Queen of Love, and by
Persephone, Queen of Death. (Shelley makes Urania into Adonis mother in this
elegy.) Unable to agree on which Goddess shall have him, Zeus decided he would
spend half the year on Earth with Aphrodite (the spring and summer) and half the
year in the underworld with Persephone (autumn and winter). During a summer
hunt, Adonis pierced a boar with his spear, wounding but not killing the beast. In
retaliation, the boar charged Adonis and stabbed him with his tusk, causing a
lesion that would eventually kill the young and beautiful prince. It was said that
every year the Greek women would mourn for Adonis when he died, then rejoice
when he was resurrected (in the form of the windflower). Using this myth as the
central theme in the elegy, Shelley is hoping, or suggesting, that Keats shall be as
immortal as the young Adonis. Beyond the obvious parallel that both were taken
at a young age, Shelley uses this poem to exhort readers to mourn him in his
death, but hold onto him in memory and rejoice in his virtual resurrection by
reading his words.

Shelley blames Keats death on literary criticism that was recently published (see
lines 150-53; he was unaware that Keats was suffering from tuberculosis). He
scorns the weakness and cowardice of the critic compared with the poet, echoing
his famous essay providing A Defense of Poetry. The poet wonders why Adonis
mother (Urania) was not able to do more to save her beloved son, and he
summons all spirits, living and dead, to join him in his mourning. Shelley argues
that Keats had great potential as a poet and is perhaps the loveliest and the
last great spirit of the Romantic period (an argument that might be true).

Stanzas eight and nine continue with Shelleys beckoning of mourners. Stanza ten
changes to dialogue: his mother, Urania, holds the corpse of her young poet son
and realizes that some dream has loosened from his brain. That is, something
about his mind is not dead although his body may be dead. The body is visited by
a series of Greek Goddesses, who take three or four stanzas to prepare the corpse
for the afterlife; Keats deserves it.

Even nature is mourning the loss, where things like the ocean, winds, and echoes
are stopping to pay their respects. As the seasons come and go, the persona is
feeling no better. By stanza twenty, the persona finally perceives a separation
between the corpse and the spirit, one going to fertilize new life in nature, the
other persisting to inspire aesthetic beauty. This is when Urania awakens from her
own dejected sleep and takes flight across the land, taunting death to meet her
but realizing she is chained to time and cannot be with her beloved son, so she
is again left feeling hopeless and dejected. She acknowledges her sons
defenselessness against the herded wolves of mankind but then compares
him to Apollo, suggesting he will have more inspiration in death than he would
have in life.

The persona then describes the death of Keats with scorn for those he thinks is
responsible. Keats visits his mother as a ghost whom she does not recognize. The
persona calls for Keats to be remembered for his work and not the age of his
death, and Shelley takes an unusual religious tone as he places Keats as a soul in
the heavens, looking down upon earth. Shelley contends that Keats, in death, is
more alive than the common man will ever be, and he can now exist peacefully,
safe from the evils of men and their criticisms.

In stanza forty-one, the poem takes a major shift. The narrator begins to rejoice,
becoming aware that the young Adonis is alive (in spirit) and will live on forever.
We see the Romantic notion that he is now one with nature, and just as other
young poets who have died (Shelley lists them), their spirits all live on in the
inspiration we draw from their work and short lives. Even so, Keats is a head
above the rest. Completely turning on his original position, the speaker now calls
upon anyone who mourns for Adonis as a wretch, arguing that his spirit is
immortal, making him as permanent as the great city of Rome. Shelley ends the
poem wondering about his own fate, when he will die, and if he will be mourned
and remembered with such respect as he is giving Keats.

Taken as a whole, then, Adonais expresses the many stages of grieving. John
Keats died in Rome on February 23, 1821. Not long afterward, Shelley wrote the
poem. Did he really go through the whole process described above? Such a
recovery through poetry is somewhat surprising given its speed, but we do not
have to see this poem as more than aspirational, a hope that this is somehow the
way Keats has ended up and the way that those left behind will reconcile
themselves to his loss. Instead of taking up these issues directly, Shelley chooses
allusion and allegory going back to ancient myth in order to express his sorrow for
the loss of his friend and to implore the rest of the world to never forget the work
of the young bard. The use of ancient mythology suggests that Shelley sees Keats
as a truly majestic figure, as the rest of the poem demonstrates.

While Urania is in mourning for the loss of her son, he visits her in spirit form (see
lines 296-311). This makes Keats Christlike (with ensanguined brow) and makes
Urania a kind of grieving Virgin Mary. After Urania does not recognize him, the
speaker begins to realize that his beloved Adonis is not dead (line 343). This is
not just a Christian metaphor of resurrection; it also employs a Platonic idea that
all forms of the good emanate from the absolute good. As an example of the good
and the beautiful, Keats partakes in the eternal and therefore never dies (see line
340). This is the realization that causes the speaker to rejoice and change his view
from sadness to optimism, and the speaker now begins to immortalize Keats in
many different forms. He is made one with Nature, and he bursts in beauty
from trees to beasts to men to Heaven.
Finally, the poet almost dares the reader, if he is still mourning, to join him in his
newfound vision of immortality in mutated form (lines 415-23). He alludes to the
city of Rome as the grave, the city, and the wilderness, where mourning is dull
time. That is, if you do not quit this mourning, you risk finding yourself in your
own tomb (lines 455-59).

Ultimately, Shelley concedes the passing of his friend because he accepts the idea
that Keats light will continue to kindle the inspiration of the universe. So long
as we never forget the power of Adonis spiritual resurrection, he will forever
remain. The poets breath, in the light that shall guide Shelley throughout the
rest of his life (Shelley died not long afterward, in 1822).