ing enchanted flowers; and he flew
_With daring Milton!_ through the fields of air;
To regions of his own his genius true
Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"

The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,
surpassed in another, "_addressed to Haydon_" the painter, that clever,
but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as
he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled
over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece
it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT,
and HAYDON, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he
alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as
likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth
and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do
not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined
together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the
most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty
of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer
[_sic_].

"Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
_He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_:
And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings?----
Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"

The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats?
because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the
judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city
sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future
Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to
its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matula_ with a vengeance. At
the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation
in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of
the wide heaven of poetry," bu