assing thence beneath the sea, meeting Glaucus,
and restoring to life the myriads of drowned lovers, encountering the
Indian Bacchante, and taking with her an aerial voyage upon winged
coursers. These incidents--except indeed that of the Bacchante--are
passing strange, and could not be worked out in a long narrative poem
without a lavish command of fanciful and surprising touches. The tale
of the aerial voyage seems abortive; its natural _raison d'etre_ and
needful sequel would appear to be that Diana, having thus launched
Endymion along with herself into the heavenly regions, should bear him
straight onward to the high court of the gods; but, instead of that, the
horses and their riders return to earth, the air has been traversed to
no purpose and with no ostensible result, and Endymion is allowed again
to forswear Diana for the Bacchante before the consummation is reached.
Presumably Morpheus (Sleep) is responsible for this mishap. His untoward
presence in the sky sent the Bacchante, as well as Endymion, to sleep
for awhile: when they awoke, Diana had to leave the form of the
Bacchante, and, in her character of Phoebe, regulate the nascent moon;
though a goddess, she could not be in two places at once, and so the
winged horses descended _re infecta_. This is an ingenious point of
incident enough; but it is just one of those points which indicate that
the poet's mind moved in a region of scintillating details rather than
of large and majestic contours.

Such is in fact the quality of "Endymion" throughout. Everything is done
for the sake of variegation and embroidery of the original fabric; or we
might compare it to a richly-shot silk which, at every rustling
movement, catches the eye with a change of colour. Constant as they are,
the changes soon become fatiguing, and in effect monotonous; one colour,
varied with its natural light and shade, would be more restful to the
sight, and would even, in the long run, leave a sense of greater,
because more congruous and harmonized, variety. Luscious and luxuriant
in intention--for I cannot suppose that Keats aimed at being exalted or
ideal--the poem becomes mawkish in result: he said so himself, and we
need not hesitate to repeat it. Affectations, conceits, and puerilities,
abound, both in thought and in diction: however willing to be pleased,
the reader is often disconcerted and provoked. The number of clever
things said cleverly, of rich things richly, and of fine things fine