ich 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 the
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 covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead; &c. &c.'--pp. 3, 4.

Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_ produces the
simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the _dooms_ of the mighty
dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the '_fair musk-rose
blooms_.'

Again.

'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine