e two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit
to appear, and "the two last" 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[15] 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 clear rills
That for themselves a cooling cover