How astonished he would have been sixty years later if he had taken up Mr. Sidney Colvin’s _Life of Keats_, in the “English Men of Letters Series,” and read in the concluding chapter the deliberate and remarkable judgment that “by power, as well as by temperament and aim, he was the most Shakespearean spirit that has lived since Shakespeare”! In truth, from the beginning the poetry of Keats has been visited too much by thunder-storms of praise. It was the indiscriminate enthusiasm of his friends that drew out the equally indiscriminate ridicule of his enemies. It was the premature salutation offered to him as a supreme master of the most difficult of all arts that gave point and sting to the criticism of evident defects in his work. _The Examiner_ hailed him, before his first volume had been printed, as one who was destined to revive the early vigour of English poetry. _Blackwood’s Magazine_ retorted by quoting his feeblest lines and calling him “Johnny Keats.” The suspicion of log-rolling led to its usual result in a volley of stone-throwing. Happily, the ultimate fame and influence of a true poet are not determined by the partizan conflicts which are waged about his name. He may suffer some personal loss by having to breathe, at times, a perturbed atmosphere of mingled flattery and abuse instead of the still air of delightful studies. He may be robbed of some days of a life already far too short, by the pestilent noise and confusion arising from that scramble for notoriety which is often unduly honoured with the name of “literary activity.” And there are some men whose days of real inspiration are so few, and whose poetic gift is so slender, that this loss proves fatal to them. They are completely carried away and absorbed by the speculations and strifes of the market-place. They spend their time in the intrigues of rival poetic enterprises, and learn to regard current quotations in the trade journals as the only standard of value. Minor poets at the outset, they are tempted to risk their little all on the stock exchange of literature, and, losing their last title to the noun, retire to bankruptcy on the adjective. But Keats did not belong to this frail and foolish race. His lot was cast in a world of petty conflict and ungenerous rivalry, but he was not of that world. It hurt him a little, but it did not ruin him. His spiritual capital was too large, and he regarded it as too sacred to be imperilled by vain speculations. He had in Chaucer and Spenser, Shakespeare and Chapman, Milton and Petrarch, older and wiser friends than Leigh Hunt. For him “The blue Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew Of summer nights collected still to make The morning precious: beauty was awake!” He perceived, by that light which comes only to high-souled and noble-hearted poets, “The great end Of poesy, that it should be a friend To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.”