versification and here again we are perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an immeasurable game at bouts-rimés; but, if we recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the rhyme with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet inclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of ideas but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on which they turn.

We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem.

'Such the sun, the moon,

Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

With the green world they live in ; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms :

And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

We have imagined for the mighty dead; &c. &c.'-pp. 3, 4.

Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, moon produces the simple sheep and their shady boon, and that 'the dooms of the mighty dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the 'fair musk-rose blooms.'

Again.

'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire

Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre

Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine

Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.'-p. 8.

Here Apollo's fire produces a pyre, a silvery pyre of clouds, wherein a spirit might win oblivion and melt his essence fine, and scented eglantine gives sweets to the sun, and cold springs had run into the grass, and then the pulse of the mass pulsed tenfold to feel the glories old of the new-born day, &c.

One example more.

"Be still the unimaginable lodge

For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,

Then leave the naked brain be still the leaven,
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
Gives it a touch ethereal-a new birth.'-p. 17.

Lodge, dodge-heaven, leaven-earth, birth; such, in six words, is the sum and substance of six lines.

We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see. The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English heroic

metre.

'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite.'—p. 4.
'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.'-p. 6.
'Of some strange history, potent to send.'—p. 18.
'Before the deep intoxication.'-p. 27.

'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.'-p. 33.

'The stubborn canvass for my voyage prepared

""Endymion! the cave is secreter

Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir

-.'—p. 39.

No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair.”—p. 48.

By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines we now present them with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt, he adorns our language.

We are told that 'turtles passion their voices,' (p. 15); that 'an arbour was nested,' (p. 23); and a lady's locks 'gordian'd up,' (p. 32); and to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as 'men-slugs and human serpentry,' (p. 41); the 'honey-feel of bliss,' (p. 45); 'wives prepare needments,' (p. 13)—and so forth.

Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus, the wine out-sparkled,' (p. 10); the 'multitude up-followed,' (p. 11); and'night up-took,' (p. 29). The wind up-blows,' (p. 32); and the 'hours are down-sunken,' (p. 36.)

But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs he compensates the language with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock. Thus, a lady 'whispers pantingly and close,' makes 'hushing signs,' and steers her skiff into a' ripply cove,' (p. 23); a shower falls 'refreshfully,' (45); and a vulture has a 'spreaded tail,' (p. 44.)

But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If any one should be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so much more patient, than

ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our readers.

VI.

REVIEW OF ENDYMION AND LAMIA &c.

WE

PUBLISHED IN THE EDINBURGH REVIEW.

E had never happened to see either of these volumes till very lately-and have been exceedingly struck with the genius they display, and the spirit of poetry which breathes through all their extravagance. That imitation of our older writers, and especially of our older dramatists, to which we cannot help flattering ourselves that we have somewhat contributed, has brought on, as it were, a second spring in our poetry ;-and few of its blossoms are either more profuse of sweetness or richer in promise, than this which is now before us. Mr Keats, we understand, is still a very young man ; and his whole works, indeed, bear evidence enough of the fact. They are full of extravagance and irregularity, rash attempts at originality, interminable wanderings, and excessive obscurity. They manifestly require, therefore, all the indulgence that can be claimed for a first attempt :-but we think it no less plain that they deserve it; for they are flushed all over with the rich lights of fancy, and so coloured and bestrewn with the flowers of poetry, that

This review appeared in No. LXVII of The Edinburgh Review, that for August 1820, and was reprinted in Jeffrey's collected essays. As it is almost entirely about Endymion, I give it all here, instead of reserving some portion of it for the Appendix to Volume II, which contains the poems published in the Lamia volume.