first observe the power of his
imagination; it was so strong and all-absorbing, that it shut out the real
and the true. He was a man of extreme sensibility; and that sensibility,
hurt by common contact with things and persons around him, made him morbid
in morality and metaphysics. He was a polemic of the fiercest type; and
while he had an honest desire for reform of the evils that he saw about
him, it is manifest that he attacked existing institutions for the very
love of controversy. Bold, retired, and proud, without a spice of vanity,
if he has received harsh judgment from one half the critical world, who
had at least the claim that they were supporting pure morals and true
religion, his character has been unduly exalted by the other half, who
have mistaken reckless dogmatism for true nobility of soul. The most
charitable judgment is that of Moir, who says: "It is needless to disguise
the fact--and it accounts for all--his mind was diseased; he never knew,
even from boyhood, what it was to breathe the atmosphere of healthy
life--to have the _mens sana in corpore sano_."

But of his poetical powers we must speak in a different manner. What he
has left, gives token that, had he lived, he would have been one of the
greatest modern poets. Thoroughly imbued with the Greek poetry, his
verse-power was wonderful, his language stately and learned without
pedantry, his inspiration was that of nature in her grandest moods, his
fancy always exalted; and he presents the air of one who produces what is
within him from an intense love of his art, without regard to the opinion
of the world around him,--which, indeed, he seems to have despised more
thoroughly than any other poet has ever done. Byron affected to despise
it; Shelley really did.

We cannot help thinking that, had he lived after passing through the fiery
trial of youthful passions and disordered imagination, he might have
astonished the world with the grand spectacle of a convert to the good and
true, and an apostle in the cause of both. Of him an honest thinker has
said,--and there is much truth in the apparent paradox,--"No man who was
not a fanatic, had ever more natural piety than he; and his supposed
atheism is a mere metaphysical crotchet in which he was kept by the
affected scorn and malignity of dunces."[37]

JOHN KEATS.--Another singular illustration of eccentricity and abnormal
power in verse is found in the brief career of John Keats, the son of the
keepe