Nor is it just, although it may seem generous, to estimate his fame chiefly by the anticipation of what he might have accomplished if he had lived longer; to praise him for his promise at the expense of his performance; and to rest his claim to a place among the English poets upon an uncertain prophecy of rivalry with Shakespeare. I find a far sounder note in Lowell’s manly essay, when he says: “No doubt there is something tropical and of strange overgrowth in his sudden maturity, but it _was_ maturity nevertheless.” I hear the accent of a wiser and saner criticism in the sonnet of one of our American poets: “Touch not with dark regret his perfect fame, Sighing, ‘Had he but lived he had done so’; Or, ‘Were his heart not eaten out with woe John Keats had won a prouder, mightier name!’ Take him for what he was and did—nor blame Blind fate for all he suffered. Thou shouldst know Souls such as his escape no mortal blow— No agony of joy, or sorrow, or shame.” “Take him for what he was and did”—that should be the key-note of our thought of Keats as a poet. The exquisite harmony of his actual work with his actual character; the truth of what he wrote to what his young heart saw and felt and enjoyed; the simplicity of his very exuberance of ornament, and the naturalness of his artifice; the sincerity of his love of beauty and the beauty of his sincerity—these are the qualities which give an individual and lasting charm to his poetry, and make his gift to the world complete in itself and very precious, although,—or perhaps we should even say because,—it was unfinished. Youth itself is imperfect: it is impulsive, visionary, and unrestrained; full of tremulous delight in its sensations, but not yet thoroughly awake to the deeper meanings of the world; avid of novelty and mystery, but not yet fully capable of hearing or interpreting the still, small voice of divine significance which breathes from the simple and familiar elements of life. Yet youth has its own completeness as a season of man’s existence. It is justified and indispensable. Alfred de Musset’s “We old men born yesterday” are simply monstrous. The poetry which expresses and represents youth, the poetry of sensation and sentiment, has its own place in the literature of the world. This is the order to which the poetry of Keats belongs. He is not a feminine poet, as Mr. Coventry Patmore calls him, any more than Theocritus or Tennyson is feminine; for the quality of extreme sensitiveness to outward beauty is not a mark of femininity. It is found in men more often and more clearly than in women. But it is always most keen and joyous and overmastering in the morning of the soul.