beautiful, or greater powers of fancy, than Keats; but the bitterness of the criticism referred to was too much for his delicate health and sensitive nature, hastening, if it did not actually develop, the seeds of consumption, of which he died. Keats's father was a livery-stable keeper, and it is said that the future poet was born in the most humble quarters; but the irresistible fire of genius lighted his path, and had he lived past the noon of life, he would have carved his way to the highest fame. He finally went to Rome, in the hope of recuperating his failing health; but that was not to be. In the last day of his illness a companion who had called in, asked him how he was. "Better, my friend," he answered in a low voice. "I feel the daisies growing over me!" He died at Rome in his twenty-sixth year, Feb. 23, 1821. His body lies in the English burial-ground outside the gates of the ancient city, by the Appian Way, and near to the pyramid of Cestius. The simple slab that marks the spot interests one quite as much as many of the grand historical monuments of the Via Appia.[133] We all remember the touching epitaph from his own pen:-- "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." As to the effect of criticism in general, we are told that Pope was observed to writhe in his chair on hearing the letter of Cibber mentioned, with other severe criticism on the product of his hand and brain. The strictures, deserved and undeserved, which were publicly made on Montesquieu are said to have hastened his death. Ritson's extreme sensitiveness to criticism ended in lunacy, and Racine is thought by many to have died from the same cause. Surely disappointment tracks the path of genius. Thus Collins, the eminent lyric poet, whose "Ode to the Passions" has made his name famous and familiar in our day, did not live to enjoy his literary success; indeed, his death is known to have been hastened by long neglect. The last half of his brief life was darkened by melancholy,[134] and his home was a lunatic asylum. The money received from his publishers as copyright on his poems he voluntarily refunded, also paying the entire expense of the edition, after which he made a bonfire of the sheets. As we have seen in so many other instances, it was left for posterity to do Collins justice. In the course of a single generation, without any adventitious aid to bring them into notice, his poems have come to rank among the best of their kind in the language. Poor Collins! unfortunate in love, threatened with blindness, and harassed by bailiffs half his life, his career was one of unrest, unhappiness, and despair; death, the comforter of him whom time cannot console, gave the poet an early grave.[135]