nd the still more facetious instances of his
harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect
above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and
pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh
Hunt's self-complacent approbation of

--'all the things itself had wrote,
Of special merit though of little note.'

This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible,
almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat
himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has advanced no
dogmas which he was bound to support by examples; his nonsense therefore
is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten by
Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his
poetry.

Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
circumstances.

'Knowing within myself (he says) the manner in which this Poem has
been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
public.--What manner I mean, will be _quite clear_ to the reader,
who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
accomplished.'--_Preface_, p. vii.

We humbly beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be _quite so
clear_--we really do not know what he means--but the next passage is
more intelligible.

'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are
not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
press.'--_Preface_, p. vii.

Thus 'the 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, 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
wh