Poems of John Keats. ] 9 



before ever their minds have received any deep impression ; and 

 therefore how pure and primitive it must be ! But if the mental 

 world has, in its first existence, sufficient vitality to put forth so sweet 

 a flower of early promise, it must be recollected that year after year, 

 other impulses than those derived merely from the contemplation of 

 external objects, like fresh seeds, are dropped into it, the fruit of 

 which again given forth makes the parent soil an Eden or 

 a wilderness. Moreover, the imagination has to contend with 

 its own strength. So active an impulse requires controul; and 

 if judgment be not at hand or possess not a corresponding degree of 

 vigour, its efforts may have the downfall of Icarus, or its ambition 

 become " thick-sighted." But judgment, we have seen, matures ; 

 whatever the primitive poetic impulse, the judgment cannot equal it, 

 till after due experience ; whence it follows, that in the intervening 

 space spoken of by Keats, conception and execution do not go toge- 

 ther, and sublimity falls into extravagance or something worse. 



It was at this period, so dangerous to an imagination of surpassing 

 power, that the works of the above young poet, whose life and death 

 nave been so beautifully imaged by Shelley under the title of 

 Adonais, were written. It may here be necessary to state, that 

 John Keats, over whose early grave the Muse has planted her willow, 

 was of humble birth ; his knowledge was self-acquired ; his brief 

 career almost friendless ; his frame naturally weak and failing. Like 

 Chatterton, he possessed the most sanguine yearnings after future 

 renown; but, unlike him, he could not defy the malice of his enemies 

 with an appearance of pride, however deep and painful were his 

 secret emotions. Keats was a meek and sensitive being ; his spirit, 

 conscious of power, and struggling to develope it, was greater than 

 the body where it was placed ; the aspirings of the former were 

 continually fettered and clogged by the weakness of the latter; and 

 when evil days came upon it, overborne by difficulties, weary with 

 sadness, and crushed down by the weight of hostile criticism, con- 

 sumption finally completed what disappointment had fatally begun. 

 The "Endymion," of which so much has been said, is a poem, which 

 any candid reviewer must have spoken of in terms rather of admira- 

 tion than dispraise. As an imaginative production, it is of the highest 

 order. Every where it contains glimpses of great beauty peeping forth 

 amidst the extraneous matter with which it is overlaid, and vainly con- 

 trolled by an ill-selected cumbrous metre. If there were wanting 

 no other proof of Keats's genius, the "Endymion" would be enough. 

 The subject of this poem is allegorical, and purely abstractive ; the 

 mythological fable of the amour of Endymion with Diana, has fur- 

 nished its theme, and amidst the shade of groves, by the bank of 

 rippling rivers, near gushing fountains, and in sweet retreats 

 when the luxuriant wild flowers have closed their beautiful bells in 

 sleep, surrounded by the fabled creations of antiquity, Endymion pours 

 forth his lajs to the chaste empress of his love! Is there, we would 

 ask, no poetry in a theme like this? Strange it is that any reviewer 

 should have quite closed his ear to the freshness of its melodies, and 

 only sought for a harsh or jarring note, when he might have found 



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