ll the gorgeousness of obscure phraseology. His taste
for simplicity is evinced, by sprinkling up and down his interminable
declamations, a few descriptions of baby-houses, and of old hats with
wet brims; and his amiable partiality for humble life, by assuring us,
that a wordy rhetorician, who talks about Thebes, and allegorizes all
the heathen mythology, was once a pedlar--and making him break in upon
his magnificent orations with two or three awkward notices of something
that he had seen when selling winter raiment about the country--or of
the changes in the state of society, which had almost annihilated his
former calling.

ON KEATS

[From _The Edinburgh Review_, August, 1820]

1. _Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By JOHN KEATS. 8vo. pp. 207. London,
1818.

2. _Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other Poems._ By JOHN
KEATS, Author of _Endymion_. 12mo. pp. 200. London, 1820.

We 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
even while perplexed and bewildered in their labyrinths, it is
impossible to resist the intoxication of their sweetness, or to shut our
hearts to the enchantments they so lavishly present. The models upon
which he has formed himself, in the Endymion, the earliest and by much
the most considerable of his poems, are obviously the Faithful
Shepherdess of Fletcher, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben Jonson;--the
exquisite metres and inspired diction of which he has copied with great
boldness and fidelity