nglishmen dazzled
by his intellectual brilliancy, and attracted rather than repelled by a
certain Satanic taint in his moral sentiments. But he also won the
admiration of Goethe, and the reaction against his fame in a later
generation is as exaggerated as the idolatry of which he was the object
under the regency. His morbid egotism, his stormy rhetoric, and his
meretricious exaltation of passion, have lost their magical effect, but
his poetical gifts would have commanded homage in any age. The message
which he professed to deliver was a false message, but few poets have
surpassed him in daring vigour of imagination, in descriptive force, in
wit, or in pathos. His style was eminently such as to invite imitation,
yet no one has successfully imitated him. Had he been a better man, and
had his life been prolonged, he might perhaps have towered above his
literary contemporaries as Napoleon did among the generals and rulers of
Europe.

[Pageheading: _KEATS, SHELLEY, TENNYSON._]

Yet among these contemporaries were Keats and Shelley, whom some critics
of a younger generation would place above him in poetical originality.
Their chief merit lay neither in thought nor in strength, but in an
exquisite sweetness of expression, which in the case of Shelley at least
was quite independent of the subject-matter. Keats, though junior to
Shelley, has been described as his poetical father, but his chief poem,
_Endymion_, did not appear until several years after Shelley had formed
his own distinctive style. He died in 1821 at the age of twenty-six,
leaving a poetical inheritance of the highest quality, which, though
limited in quantity and unequal in workmanship, has gained an enduring
reputation. Nevertheless his work lent itself readily to imitation, and
he exercised a marked influence on the style of later poets, not only in
this period, but in the Victorian age as well. The rebellious spirit of
Shelley had already shown itself at an early age in his poetry, and
especially in _Queen Mab_, printed in 1812. His ethereal fancy, his
dreamy obscurity, and his witchery of language, designated him from the
first as a master of lyrical poetry; though he wrote longer pieces, his
fame rests on the numerous short poems which continued to appear till
his death in 1822.

Perhaps the greatest master of melody was one who was only coming to the
front at the close of this period, Alfred Tennyson, born in 1809,
contributed with two of his brothers to