and with little wit, wisdom, or arrangement, a number of bright pictures are presented to the imagination, and a fine feeling expressed of those mysterious relations by which visible external things are assimilated with inward thoughts and emotions, and become the images and exponents of all passions and affections. To an unpoetical reader, such passages will generally appear mere raving and absurdity-and to this censure a very great part of the volumes before us will certainly be exposed, with this class of readers. Even in the judgement of a fitter audience, however, it must, we fear, be admitted, that, besides the riot and extravagance of his fancy, the scope and substance of Mr. Keats's poetry is rather too dreamy and abstracted to excite the strongest interest, or to sustain the attention through a work of any great compass or extent. He deals too much with shadowy and incomprehensible beings, and is too constantly rapt into an extramundane Elysium, to command a lasting interest with ordinary mortals-and must employ the agency of more varied and coarser emotions, if he wishes to take rank with the enduring poets of this or of former generations. There is something very curious, too, we think, in the way in which he, and Mr. Barry Cornwall also, have dealt with the Pagan mythology, of which they have made so much use in their poetry. Instead of presenting its imaginary persons under the trite and vulgar traits that belong to them in the ordinary systems, little more is borrowed from these than the general conception of their condition and relations; and an original character and distinct individuality is then bestowed upon them, which has all the merit of invention, and all the grace and attraction of the fictions on which it is engrafted. The ancients, though they probably did not stand in any great awe of their deities, have yet

abstained very much from any minute or dramatic representation of their feelings and affections. In Hesiod and Homer they are broadly delineated by some of their actions and adventures, and introduced to us merely as the agents in those particular transactions; while in the Hymns, from those ascribed to Orpheus and Homer, down to those of Callimachus, we have little but pompous epithets and invocations, with a flattering commemoration of their most famous exploits and are never allowed to enter into their bosoms, or follow out the train of their feelings, with the presumption of our human sympathy. Except the love-song of the Cyclops to his Sea Nymph in Theocritus-the Lamentation of Venus for Adonis in Moschus-and the more recent Legend of Apuleius, we scarcely recollect a passage in all the writings of antiquity in which the passions of an immortal are fairly disclosed to the scrutiny and observation of men. The author before us, however, and some of his contemporaries, have dealt differently with the subject; and, sheltering the violence of the fiction under the ancient traditionary fable, have in reality created and imagined an entire new set of characters; and brought closely and minutely before us the loves and sorrows and perplexities of beings, with whose names and supernatural attributes we had long been familiar, without any sense or feeling of their personal character. We have more than doubts of the fitness of such personages to maintain a permanent interest with the modern public;—but the way in which they are here managed certainly gives them the best chance that now remains for them; and, at all events, it cannot be denied that the effect is striking and graceful. But we must now proceed to our extracts.

The first of the volumes before us is occupied with the loves of Endymion and Diana-which it would

not be very easy, and which we do not at all intend to analyse in detail.1

There is a fragment of a projected Epic, entitled Hyperion, on the expulsion of Saturn and the Titanian deities by Jupiter and his younger adherents, of which we cannot advise the completion: for, though there are passages of some force and grandeur, it is sufficiently obvious, from the specimen before us, that the subject is too far removed from all the sources of human interest, to be successfully treated by any modern author. Mr. Keats has unquestionably a very beautiful imagination, a perfect ear for harmony, and a great familiarity with the finest diction of English poetry; but he must learn not to misuse or misapply these advantages; and neither to waste the good gifts of Nature and study on intractable themes, nor to luxuriate too recklessly on such as are more suitable.

[The account of Endymion left Jeffrey 'room to say but little of the second volume'. He deals at greatest length with The Eve of St. Agnes: 'the glory and charm of the poem is in the description of the fair maiden's antique chamber, and of all that passes in that sweet and angel-guarded sanctuary: every part of which is touched with colours at once rich and delicate and the whole chastened and harmonised, in the midst of its gorgeous distinctness, by a pervading grace and purity, that indicate not less clearly the exaltation than the refinement of the author's fancy'. Of the ode To Autumn he says, we know nothing at once so truly fresh, genuine, and English,—and at the same time so full of poetical feeling, and Greek elegance and simplicity.' These two passages, with the citations which accompany them, were added in the republication. He added also the words 'a perfect ear for harmony' in the last paragraph.

This was the first article in the Edinburgh on Keats, who had been disappointed by its silence. In his letter of September 18, 1819, to George Keats, he had said that 'the cowardliness of the Edinburgh is more than the abuse of the Quarterly.']

MADAME DE STAËL ON ENGLISH

LITERATURE

(FEBRUARY, 1813.)

De la Littérature considérée dans ses Rapports avec les Institutions Sociales. Par MAD. DE STAËL-HOLSTEIN. Avec un Précis de la Vie et les Écrits de l'Auteur. 2 tomes, 12mo, pp. 600. London, 1812.

...

THE great fault which the French impute to the writers of the North, is want of taste and politeness. They generally admit that they have genius; but contend that they do not know how to use it; while their partisans maintain that what is called want of taste is merely excess of genius, and independence of pedantic rules and authorities. Madame de Staël, though admitting the transcendent merits of some of the English writers, takes part, upon the whole, against them in this controversy; and, after professing her unqualified preference of a piece compounded of great blemishes and great beauties, compared with one free of faults, but distinguished by little excellence, proceeds very wisely to remark that it would be still better if the great faults were corrected -and that it is but a bad species of independence which manifests itself by being occasionally offensive : and then she attacks Shakespeare, as usual, for interspersing so many puerilities and absurdities and grossièretés with his sublime and pathetic passages.

Now, there is no denying that a poem would be better without faults; and that judicious painters use shades

only to set off their pictures, and not blots. But there are two little remarks to be made. In the first place, if it be true that an extreme horror at faults is usually found to exclude a variety of beauties, and that a poet can scarcely ever attain the higher excellencies of his art, without some degree of that rash and headlong confidence which naturally gives rise to blemishes and excesses, it may not be quite so absurd to hold that this temperament and disposition, with all its hazards, deserves encouragement, and to speak with indulgence of faults that are symptomatic of great beauties. There is a primitive fertility of soil that naturally throws out weeds along with the matchless crops which it alone can bear; and we might reasonably grudge to reduce its vigour for the sake of purifying its produce. There are certain savage virtues that can scarcely exist in perfection in a state of complete civilization; and, as specimens at least, we may wish to preserve, and be allowed to admire them, with all their exceptionable accompaniments. It is easy to say that there is no necessary connexion between the faults and the beauties of our great dramatist : but the fact is that since men have become afraid of falling into his faults, no one has approached to his beauties and we have already endeavoured, on more than one occasion, to explain the grounds of this connexion.

But our second remark is that it is not quite fair to represent the controversy as arising altogether from the excessive and undue indulgence of the English for the admitted faults of their favourite authors, and their persisting to idolize Shakespeare in spite of his buffooneries, extravagancies, and bombast. We admit that he has those faults; and, as they are faults, that he would be better without them: but there are many more things which the French