Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/36

 26 K E C K E E In the late autumn of the latter year, Keble left Hursley for the sake of his wife s health, and sought the milder climate of Bournemouth. There he had an attack of para lysis, from which he died on the 29th March I860. He was buried in his own churchyard at Hursley ; and in little more than a month his wife was laid by her husband s side. It is as a poet that Keble was best known during his life, and it is as a poet that he will be remembered. His poetical works are the Christian Year (1827), A Metrical Version of the Psalter (1839), Lyra Innocentium (1846), and a volume of poems published posthumously. Keble, though himself childless, was a special lover of children ; and the Lyra Innocentium expresses this characteristic. It is a book &quot; about children, their ways, and privileges.&quot; It begins with their baptism, follows them through their cradle life and infancy, their childhood sports, troubles, encouragements, warnings, the lessons taught them by nature, those taught them by grace, dwells on their sicknesses, and their deaths. It is a book for parents, especially for mothers. The range of subjects is too limited, and the turn of thought often too subtle, to allow it to be widely popular. But Judge Coleridge pronounced it, if not equal to the Christian Year as a whole, yet more than equal to it in parts ; and Dean Stanley thinks that &quot;it has more of the true fire of genius, more of the true rush of poetic diction. &quot; However this may be, it is by the Christian Year that Keble won the ear of the religious world, and will retain it. It was a happy thought that dictated the plan of the book, to furnish a meditative religious lyric for each Sunday of the year, and for each saint s day and festival of the English Church. The sub ject of each poem is generally suggested by some part of the lessons or the gospel or the epistle for the day. One thing which gives these poems their strangely unique power is the sentiment to which they appeal, and the saintly character of the poet who makes the appeal, illumining more or less every poem. That to which the Christian Year appeals is the religious and devotional sentiment which, however hidden, exists more or less in most men. In the words of Sir J. T. Coleridge, &quot; to this feeling it makes its unceasing appeal, with a voice so earnest, so sincere, so sad in its hopefulness, so unpretending as to the speaker, yet so authoritative and confident as to the cause it pleads, that for the time it seems irresistible.&quot; The preface begins with observing how important is &quot;a sober standard of feeling in matters of practical religion,&quot; and indicates that the object of the book is to calm excitement, and to exhibit the soothing tendency which pervades the Book of Common Prayer. The motto on the title page, &quot; In quietness and confidence shall be your strength,&quot; is the keynote to which the whole book is set. The main characteristics which go to make up the charm of this small volume are these : 1. The peculiar tone of religious feeling that pervades it, at once deep, pure, and tender, sober and severely self-denying. The undertone of the book comes out in verses like this &quot; The eye in smiles may wander round, Caught by earth s shadows us they fleet, But for the soul no help is found, Save Him who made it, meet.&quot; Closely connected with this there is a more personal feeling towards our Lord, in His whole nature at once human and divine, than had ever before appeared in English poetry, even in that of Charles Wesley or Cowper. This runs through all the poems ; it comes out especially in such verses as these &quot; Our Saviour s face benign, Bent on us with transforming power, Till we, too, faintly shine;&quot; &quot; Who loves the Lord aright No soul of man can worthless find; All will be precious in his sight, Since Christ on all hath shined : But chiefly Christian souls ; for they, Though worn and soiled with sinful clny, Are yet, to eyes that read them true, All glistening with baptismal clew.&quot; 2. A second note of the Christian Year is reverence for the church, and for the pastoral office within it, a solemn sense of its dignity and its awful responsibility. 3. A third note is the strong and tender affection for home and friends, the filial and fraternal piety, which everywhere pervades it. This appears notably in the poem for St Andrew s Day, in the two opening stanzas of the poem on Whit Monday, in some verses of the poem for the 4th Sunday in Advent, and in many more. 4. A prevailing spirit of modesty and of delicate reserve, very unlike^the vanity with which poets are often credited. Combined with this is a special tenderness for those persons and things which the world thinks least of for those who pine forgotten in hidden nooks, for the downtrodden and the despised. These sympathies appear at every turn of the book, especially, perhaps, in such and again, poems as that for the 4th Sunday in Lent, that for Visitation of the Sick, and in two well-known stanzas in the poem for St Matthew s Day, not to mention many other like passages. 5. Besides these qualities of Keble s heart as a man, there are others which belong to him especially as a poet. Prominent among these is his love of nature, particularly for the more ordinary and unnoticed features of English landscape. In these he seemed most to delight, as interwoven with home thoughts and sentiments, and because, as he expresses it, &quot; Homely scenes and simple views Lowly thoughts may best infuse.&quot; Many a scene from the neighbourhood of Fairford and Oxford, many a fleeting image caught there in casual walks, has been inwrought, naturally and beautifully, into the web of his devout meditations. 6. The intimacy with the Bible which is manifest in the pages of the Christian Year, and the unobtrusive felicity with which Biblical sentiments and language are introduced, have done much to endear these poems to all Bible readers ; nor this only, but the fidelity with which Biblical scenery is rendered. &quot;The exactness of the descriptions of Palestine, which Keble had never visited, have been noted, and verified on the spot,&quot; by Dean Stanley. He points to features of the lake of Gennesareth, which were first touched in the Christian Year ; and he observes that throughout the book the Biblical scenery is treated graphically as real scenery, and the Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry.&quot; As to its style, the Christian Year is calm and grave in tone, and subdued in colour, as beseems its subjects and sentiments. The contemporary poets whom Keble most admired were Scott, Wordsworth, and, we may add, Southey ; and of their influence traces are visible in his diction. Yet he has a style of language and a cadence of his own, which steal into the heart with strangely soothing power. Some of the poems are faultless, after their kind, flowing from the first verse to the last, lucid in thought, vivid in diction, harmonious in their pensive melody. In others there are imperfections in rhythm, conventionalities of language, obscurities or over-subtleties of thought, which mar the reader s enjoyment. Yet even the most defective poems commonly have, at least, a single verse, expressing some profound thought or tender shade of feeling, for which the sympathetic reader willingly pardons artistic imper fections in the rest. The real power of the Christian Year lies in this, that it brings home to the readers, as few poetic works have ever done, a heart of rare and saintly beauty. We may well believe that ages must elapse ere another such character shall again concur with a poetic gift and power of expression, which, if not of the highest, are still of a high order. Keble s life was written by his life-long friend the late Mr Justice Coleridge. The following is a complete list of his writings : (1) Works published in Keble s lifetime -.Christian Year, 1827 ; Psalter, 1839 ; I nelectiones Acudemicx, 1844 ; Lyra Innocentium, 1846; Sermons Academical, 1848; Argument against Ri-peal of Marriage Law, and Sequel, 1857; Eucharistical Adoration, 1807; Life of liifhop Wilson, 1863 ; Sermons Occasional and Parochial, 18(17. (2) IVsthumous publica tions: Village Sermons on the Baptismal Service, 18G8 ; Miscellaneous Poernf, 1869; Letters of Spiritual Counsel, 1870; Sermons for the Christian Year, &c., 11 vols., 1875-80; Occasional Papers and, Reviews, 19,11 ; Studia Sacra, 1S77 ; Outlines of Instruction or Meditation, 1880. (J. C. S.) KECSKEMET (Lat. Egopolis), a royal free town in the county of Pest-Pilis-Solt-Kis-Kun, Hungary, is situated in an extensive plain, on the railway between Szeged (Szegedin) and Budapest, 52 miles south-east of the latter, in 46 54 N. lat., 19 44 E. long. Kecskemet is a poorly built and straggling town. It contains Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist churches, as also a synagogue, Among the educational and other establishments are a Calvinist upper gymnasium (since 1860) and juridical lyceum (1862), possessing a library and collection of pictures, a Roman Catholic (Piarist) upper gymnasium, founded in 1714, a Government technical school dating from 1874, monasteries belonging to the Piarist and Franciscan orders, a royal court of law, a hospital, orphan asylum, and theatre. The soil of the surrounding district, known as the Kecskemet heath, though generally arenaceous, is rendered productive by careful tillage. Soap is manufactured ; and trade, pro moted by the periodical fairs, is generally thriving. Joseph Katona, the author of the famous historical drama Bank 13dn, was born at Kecskeme t in 1792. The population iu 1880 was 46,505, chiefly Magyars by nationality. KEELING ISLANDS, or Cocos ISLANDS, also called by Horsburgh the Borneo Coral Islands, a group in the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles south of the coast of Sumatra, in 12 5 S. lat. and 90 55 E. long., well known