Keats

Of all the famous English poets, he bad most of the spirit of April in hiin. Ui-; si'iiscs were keen: his temperament was feverisu, now jealous aud irritable, tml straightway hutnble nul indulgent; liis imaginary joys and sorrowt were spiritual po8scssions, subjecting him; his iniiiiiir was scampering, his fancy teemIng, hia taste erratic, his critical faculty "xposed to balkiag eiithusiasms; liis 1 i ii i o 1 1 - of men and affairs were hasty, circuinscribed, frequently adopted unieöectingly at secoud-hand; and , witli all these boyish traits, he was extremelj self-aisorbed. At ttie centre of his individuality, nevertheless, was the elemental spark.the saviiijr power of genius, ihe temperance, sanity, and self-reverence of a fine nature gradually coming to the knovvledge of its faculties and unriding the secret of its own moral beauty. Henee Lord Houjthton, with more essential justice to Keats tlian any of bi.louder eulogists have done, describes hi works as rather the exereises of his poetical education tlian the character of his original and free power; and Matthew Arnold, even when placinff him with Shakespeare, excuses him as a 'pretitiee hand in the wisest art. Too many of his admirers, seizinff upon the external, accidental, and temporal In his biography and the fragmentan' and paraeitical in his poetry, have really wronged KeaU more than did the now Infamous review; they have rescued him from amoiijf the cockneys only to eonfoiind him with the neo-pagans. It will, consequeatly, be well to inquire more carefully than has heretofore been done wherein the charm and worth and promise of Keata lay. The tiret step toward the sohition is the recoj{iiltion of liis immatuilty, - the ackiiowledjfineot that his memorials must be 8earohed tor the seeds of time rather than the