sessions. He is often compared with "the marvelous
boy" Chatterton, whom he greatly admired, and to whose memory he dedicated
his _Endymion_; but though both died young, Chatterton was but a child,
while Keats was in all respects a man. It is idle to prophesy what he might
have done, had he been granted a Tennyson's long life and scholarly
training. At twenty five his work was as mature as was Tennyson's at fifty,
though the maturity suggests the too rapid growth of a tropical plant which
under the warm rains and the flood of sunlight leaps into life, grows,
blooms in a day, and dies.

As we have stated, Keats's work was bitterly and unjustly condemned by the
critics of his day. He belonged to what was derisively called the cockney
school of poetry, of which Leigh Hunt was chief, and Proctor and Beddoes
were fellow-workmen. Not even from Wordsworth and Byron, who were ready
enough to recommend far less gifted writers, did Keats receive the
slightest encouragement. Like young Lochinvar, "he rode all unarmed and he
rode all alone." Shelley, with his sincerity and generosity, was the first
to recognize the young genius, and in his noble _Adonais_--written, alas,
like most of our tributes, when the subject of our praise is dead--he spoke
the first true word of appreciation, and placed Keats, where he
unquestionably belongs, among our greatest poets. The fame denied him in
his sad life was granted freely after his death. Most fitly does he close
the list of poets of the romantic revival, because in many respects he was
the best workman of them all. He seems to have studied words more carefully
than did his contemporaries, and so his poetic expression, or the harmony
of word and thought, is generally more perfect than theirs. More than any
other he lived for poetry, as the noblest of the arts. More than any other
he emphasized beauty, because to him, as shown by his "Grecian Urn," beauty
and truth were one and inseparable. And he enriched the whole romantic
movement by adding to its interest in common life the spirit, rather than
the letter, of the classics and of Elizabethan poetry. For these reasons
Keats is, like Spenser, a poet's poet; his work profoundly influenced
Tennyson and, indeed, most of the poets of the present era.

II. PROSE WRITERS OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

Aside from the splendid work of the novel writers--Walter Scott, whom we
have considered, and Jane Austen, to whom we shall presently return--the
early ni