Even the Edinburgh reviewers forgot, for a while, their malicious work, and conceded that he had in him "a native relish for poetry," confirming the truthfulness of Keats's own statement that he would write poetry "from the mere yearning and fondness he had for the beautiful." One of the clearest evidences of this poetic spirit is seen in the rich variety of meters that we find in his verse, as if he must run up and down the entire gamut of verse-forms in order to express in fitting manner the wealth of poetic life that was in him. Hence we have the couplet, as in "Endymion" and "Lamia;” blank verse, as in "Hyperion;" the eight-line stanza, as in "Isabella;" the Spenserian stanza, as in "The Eve of Saint Agnes;" the ten-line stanza, as in the "Ode to a Nightingale;" the eleven-line stanza, as "To Autumn"-in fact, all varieties of stanza and line in rich and ever-changing form, so as to suit the structure to the sense, catch the eye and ear and taste of the reader, break the monotony of the lines, and, in fact, fill the poetry with the charm and potency of the imagination in active exercise.

A still more satisfactory evidence of this poetic spirit is in the subject-matter of the poetry itself, especially in the lyric forms, and in those short and exquisite snatches of song for which he is so justly noted. Here, as in Spenser and Milton, it is the brief idyllic passages of the shorter poems that most interest us, and on which we are willing to rest the reputation of the poet. Nothing more essentially poetic can be found in English verse than some of these outbursts, as in "The Eve of Saint Agnes," "Fancy," "The Eve of Saint Mark," and "Walking in Scotland." Those passages already adduced to show his passionate love of nature confirm this view, so that this poetic sentiment or sense permeates and governs the verse. Thus in the opening of "Endymion" we see it:

So, again:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever;

Its loveliness increases.

The earth is glad: the merry lark has poured

His early song against yon breezy sky,

That spreads so clear o'er our solemnity.

And, again, he writes of the poet, who

Sang (his) story up into the air,

Giving it universal freedom.

So, in "Isabella," he describes the love of Isabella and Lo

renzo:

...

With every morn their love grew tenderer,
With every eve deeper and tenderer still.
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes.

So, in the "Ode on a Grecian Urn:"

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter.

In his exquisite "Faery Song," as in "Fancy," we have an example of the lightness and delicacy of Keats's poetic touch:

Shed no tear-O shed no tear!

The flower will bloom another year.
Weep no more-O weep no more!

Young buds sleep in the root's white core.
Dry your eyes-O dry your eyes,

For I was taught in paradise

To ease my breast of melodies-
Shed no tear.

So, opens "The Eve of Saint Mark:"

Upon a Sabbath day it fell;

Twice holy was the Sabbath bell,

That called the folk to evening prayer.

Twice holy was the Sabbath bell:

The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies,
Warm from their fireside orat❜ries;
And moving, with demurest air,
To evensong, and vesper prayer.
Each arched porch, and entry low,
Was filled with patient folk and slow,
With whispers hush, and shuffling feet,
While played the organ loud and sweet.
The bells had ceased, the prayer begun,
And Bertha had not yet half done

A curious volume, patched and torn,

That all day long, from earliest morn,
Had taken captive her two eyes,
Among its golden broideries.

This is poetry in form and essence. Taste, feeling, imagination, and inspiration are all combined to make up a poetic product as impressive as it is beautiful, entitling its author to high rank among our native English lyrists. To this extent, at least, the poetry of Keats is possessed of the inner principle of life and rhythmic movement; free and natural, sympathetic with its diversified themes, and thus definitely aiding that great romantic revival which aimed to break away from old restrictions into a larger literary freedom.

This is, perhaps, Keats's greatest feature as a poet, the explanation of his best work and the ground of his claim to permanent poetic repute, that he had a spirit responsive to beauty, quickly perceiving and acknowledging it and diffusing its influence and charm wherever he went. As has been said, poetry was with him "a philosophy and a religion." His theory of life was based upon it, and he never disconnected it, as Byron and others did, from truth and goodness and love. "Beauty is Truth, and Truth is Beauty" was his creed, as he insisted that it was through beauty and love that the two worlds of sense and spirit were united and together worked in perfect harmony for the realization of the highest ends of

man.

It was because he saw this artistic principle in Greek art and letters that he was so attracted to Homer and the classical mythology, even though he knew but little of the Greek language as a study of the schools. When we are told that Ruskin so appreciated his poetic work as to regard it a model the explanation is found in the fact that Ruskin found in Keats's verse the satisfaction of his sense of form and love of the beautiful. It is this, also, that explains the avowed indebtedness of Tennyson and the later Victorian poetry to Keats in that he, most of all, embodied in his verse this central æsthetic principle and inspired others to attempt to secure and express it, this inspiration definitely marking the "new

poetry" of life from the older verse of formalism and correctness. Hence Saintsbury, in his latest work on Victorian authors, speaks of Keats as a "germinal" poet, and adds that "he is the father directly or at short stages of descent of every worthy English poet born within the present century. He begat Tennyson, and Tennyson begat all the rest." In this respect he accomplished more after his death than in his life, or rather lived again and to greater purpose in the work of the poetic disciples whom he influenced.

Keats's relation to other English poets, antecedent and contemporary, is a subject of interest to every student of his verse. First of all is Spenser, partly because he was Spenser, and partly because of his place as one of the great Elizabethan poets, and thus exponential of a genuine poetic life and work. As we have seen, one of his earliest poems was entitled "Imitation of Spenser," referring to the stanza and spirit of the epic poet. One of his sonnets is written in honor of him. In some of his choicest poems, as in "The Eve of Saint Agnes," he uses the Spenserian stanza. In his "Specimen of an Induction to a Poem," he calls him "the great bard," and invokes his "gentle spirit to hover nigh (his) daring steps" as a poet. So, as to Milton, whom he reverently calls "Chief of organic numbers, Old Scholar of the Spheres," while all critics have noticed the marked influence of the Miltonic diction, especially that of "Paradise Lost," on the poetry of Keats, and chiefly as seen in "Endymion" and "Hyperion." So, as to Chaucer, back to whom all later genuine English poets were wont to look. He introduces his beautiful poem on "Sleep and Poetry" by a quotation from Chaucer, while here and there are evident traces in diction of the early study of "The Canterbury Tales" and other poems of the great Middle English bard. That he loved the poetry of Shakespeare goes without saying. "Thank God," he writes, "I can read and, perhaps, understand Shakespeare to his depths;" while the motto or poetic heading of "Endymion," "The stretched meter of an antique song," is taken from the seventeenth of Shakespeare's sonnets. He calls

him "that warm-hearted Shakespeare." So, as to Chapman, the translator of Homer; Browne, the author of the "Pastorals;" Chatterton, the "marvelous boy;" Landor, the classical English writer; Leigh Hunt, and, also, Shelley, who rests with Keats in the same God's acre outside the city of Rome, "united," as Devey says, "in the same belief in human perfectibility and drawing their inspiration from the same fountain, the undying beauty of the world's youth as imaged in the creations of antique Greece," and yet so unlike in their poetic relationship, aims, and work. Shelley's elegy, "Adonais," is a sufficient proof of their devoted personal attachment, and

till the Future dares

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be

An echo and a light unto Eternity.

In the light of this long list of English authors to whom Keats stands related, and often indebted, it is to be noted that there was on his part nothing in the line of slavish imitation. No English poet has been less servilely dependent on others than he. To everything he read and heard he gave the free impress of his own spirit, while he is ever glad to acknowledge the fact that there had lived such poets as Spenser and Milton to whom, as to superior and puissant spirits, he gladly and safely resorted for needed poetic stimulus.

All gifts and excellencies conceded, however, Keats had his personal and poetic limitations. He was in no sense a great thinker in verse; in no sense a bold and successful reorganizer of important literary movements, despite the fact that he was a valuable agent with others in the poetic revival of the century. "The faults of Keats's poetry," writes Lowell, “are obvious enough, but it should be remembered that he died at twenty-five and that he offends by superabundance and not poverty. That he was overlanguaged at first there can be no doubt." "Whether Keats was original or not," he adds, "I do not think it useful to discuss until it has been settled what originality is. Enough that we recognize in him that indefinable manner and unexpectedness which we call genius.