are, it seems,
in the same condition; and, as two and two make four, and as that
is the whole number of books, we have a clear, and we believe a
very just, estimate of the entire work.

"Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and
feverish work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently
feverish; and we confess that we should have abstained from
inflicting upon him any of the tortures of the 'fierce hell' of
criticism[14] which terrify his imagination if he had not begged
to be spared in order that he might write more; if we had not
observed in him a certain degree of talent which deserves to be
put in the right way, or which at least ought to be warned of the
wrong; and if finally he had not told us that he is of an age and
temper which imperiously require mental discipline.

"Of the story we have been able to make out but little. It seems
to be mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana
and Endymion; but of this, as the scope of the work has
altogether escaped us, we cannot speak with any degree of
certainty, and must therefore content ourselves with giving some
instances of its diction and 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 rimes_; 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 enclosing 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 cle