if Dryden made hasty tryst now and then at her hidden shrine, and although Herrick and Waller and one and another lyricist now and again caught glimpses of her bright robe gleaming through the dry and barren thickets, it was not until Shelley and Keats brought her back in triumph that she came again to her long vacant throne. Burns had thrilled with the joy of her approach; Wordsworth had made clear the way of her coming; Coleridge had gone out into the desert to see and to hail her nearing; but it was with Keats and Shelley that she came again to bless the haunts of living men.

The influence of Keats upon later poetry is a theme which might be considered at much length without exhausting the subject. Both in verse forms and in poetic diction has his work affected all that has come after. "Keats rediscovered the delight and wonder that lay enchanted in the dictionary," Lowell says happily. His rich and imaginative diction, his felicity of epithet, his fine fitness of phrase, have left their unmistakable trace on almost every page of Tennyson and, indeed, quickened almost all genuine poetry which has been written since his time. His influence is especially apparent in the work of the pre-Raphaelite school, which almost seems to presuppose him as a necessary antecedent. It is curious to note, it may be remarked in passing, how strongly his posthumous poem, “ Hush, hush! tread softly!" suggests the manner of Rossetti and Swinburne. It is hardly possible to read this passionate lyric without wondering whether Keats, if he had lived, might not have developed in a line which would at once have anticipated and outdone the triumphs of these later singers in the vein which is peculiarly their own. Poetry is the expression of a civilization of a people rather than of an individual, and the emotional developments which Rossetti and Swinburne have phrased in our own day were already

in progress when Keats wrote. He was of a genius so acutely sensitive and receptive as to respond to the faintest quiverings in the spiritual and emotional atmosphere, so that he might well have been sufficiently in advance of his time to feel those thrills of which the majority of his countrymen were unconscious until almost half a century later.

Speculations of this sort, however, are rather fascinating than profitable, and deserve mention here only as having some bearing upon the question of the influence of Keats. It is enough in a study so brief as this must be, to point out the place which our poet held as a connecting link between the Elizabethans and the brilliant writers of the Nineteenth century. Less philosophical than Wordsworth, less lyric than Shelley, less spiritual than either; originating little in form or in treatment, Keats has yet been an influence no less vital than they. He has handed on the torch which lighted the greatest epoch of English poetry, and the sympathetic student of his poetry is hardly likely to wonder at the conclusion to which Sidney Colvin comes in saying that it seems to him "probable that by power, as well as by temperament and aim, he was the most Shakespearian spirit that has lived since Shakespeare."

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

A complete bibliography of the literature relating to Keats would occupy too much space and would hardly be in place in a volume of the nature of the present. The student may, however, be glad of some guide to the best editions and criticisms.

Poetical Works and Other Writings of John Keats; with notes and appendices, by H. B. Forman. 4 vols. (Exhaustive edition, containing, with small supplementary volume, all of the writings of Keats which have been printed, including letters.)

Poems of Keats; with notes, by Francis T. Palgrave. (Contains almost all of the poems which are of importance, with sympathetic and scholarly notes.)

Poetical Works of John Keats; edited by William T. Arnold. (The introduction contains an analysis of the elements of the poet's style.) Life, by Sidney Colvin. (English Men of Letters Series. On the whole the best biography.)

Life and Letters, by R. Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton. (Second edition, 1867. This was the first authoritative life, and is of much value, although later documents have shown that it is incorrect in a number of particulars. It has served as the basis of all subsequent studies upon the life of the poet.)

Life, by William M. Rossetti. (Great Writers Series. but also less sympathetic than Colvin.)

Letters of John Keats, edited by Sidney Colvin.

More critical,

Among the most important essays are those by J. R. Lowell (Among My Books, 2d series), Matthew Arnold (Essays in Criticism, 2d series), and A. C. Swinburne (Miscellanies).

POEMS.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.

I.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk :
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot

Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

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ΙΟ

2.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,

Tasting of Flora and the country green,

Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!

O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;

That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

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