The marble-covered volume closely written in a scholarly hand is once more placed on the shelf. The ink has grown pale with age, and the question arises—‘Who to-day would find time to write down an evening’s conversation, however interesting?’ But another question is more insistent, as we compare the popular opinion expressed then about Keats, and other persons and subjects with the verdict of time:
Can a contemporary judgment be as good as a judgment formed when the person or matter is further from us? And this consideration brings the consoling thought that not all that may appear failure at the time is really failure. The age in which they live may be unworthy of its poets and prophets, yet none the less is their message Divine, and their voice will be heard at last.
But Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Frere have retired to rest, and we shall not again disturb them.
E. M. Green.
FOOTNOTES
[1] John Frere was the eldest son of George Frere of Lincoln’s Inn and Twyford, Herts, who was third son of John Frere of Roydon, Norfolk. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge; B.A. 1830, M.A. 1833, 2nd class Classical Tripos, 1st Sen. Op.; Curate of Hadleigh, Suffolk, under Archdeacon Lyall; Chaplain to Blomfield, Bishop of London; Rector of Cottenham, Cambe, 1839. Married Jane B. Dalton, 1839. Died May 21, 1851. He was first curate of Wakes Colne, Essex, at that time held with Messing Vicarage.
[2] Possibly Sir Nathaniel Tooke, a celebrated politician of those times.
[3] Possibly Rev. George Rowney Green, Fellow of Eton and grandfather to the finder of this paper.
[4] These lines were written by Byron in July 1821:
Who kill’d John Keats?