But though 'Autumn' (1) is best as a whole, the 'Nightingale' (2) altogether beats it in splendour and intensity of mood; and, after pointing out its defects, Mr. Bridges confesses, "I could not name any English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty as this ode." Still, it takes second place, and next comes 'Melancholy' (3). "The perception in this ode is profound, and no doubt experienced;" but in spite of its great beauty "it does not hit so hard as one would expect. I do not know whether this is due to a false note towards the end of the second stanza, or to a disagreement between the second and third stanzas." Next in order come 'Psyche' (4) and, disputing place with it, the 'Grecian Urn' (5). 'Indolence' (6) closes the procession; and I dare say few will dispute her title to the last place. But with these six odes we must rank (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' immortal on account of the famous passage of inimitable beauty descriptive of the Greek poets-- "'Leaving great verse unto a little clan.'"-- And (b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.' Of the latter Mr. Sidney Colvin has written:-- "His later and more famous lyrics, though they are free from the faults and immaturities which disfigure this, yet do not, to my mind at least, show a command over such various sources of imaginative and musical effect, or touch so thrillingly so many chords of the spirit. A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos like that of the best Elizabethan love-songs; a sense as keen as Heine's of the immemorial romance of India and the East; a power like that of Coleridge, and perhaps caught from him, of evoking the remotest weird and beautiful associations almost with a word; clear visions of Greek beauty and wild wood-notes of Celtic imagination; all these elements come here commingled, yet in a strain perfectly individual." With this Mr. Bridges entirely agrees; but adds:-- "It unfortunately halts in the opening, and the first and fourth stanzas especially are unequal to the rest, as is again the third from the end, 'Young Stranger,' which for its matter would with more propriety have been cast into the previous section; and these impoverish the effect, and contain expressions which might put some readers off. If they would begin at the fifth stanza and omit the third from the end, they would find little that is not admirable." Now, for my part, when in book or newspaper I come upon references to Isaiah lxi. 1-3, or Shakespeare, K. Henry IV., Pt. ii., Act 4, Sc. 5, l. 163, or the like, I have to drop my reading at once and hunt them up. So I hope that these references of Mr. Bridges will induce the reader to take his Keats down from the shelf. And I hope further that, having his Keats in hand, the reader will examine these odes again and make out an order for himself, as I propose to do.