Such is in fact the quality of "Endymion" throughout. Everything is done for the sake of variegation and embroidery of the original fabric; or we might compare it to a richly-shot silk which, at every rustling movement, catches the eye with a change of colour. Constant as they are, the changes soon become fatiguing, and in effect monotonous; one colour, varied with its natural light and shade, would be more restful to the sight, and would even, in the long run, leave a sense of greater, because more congruous and harmonized, variety. Luscious and luxuriant in intention--for I cannot suppose that Keats aimed at being exalted or ideal--the poem becomes mawkish in result: he said so himself, and we need not hesitate to repeat it. Affectations, conceits, and puerilities, abound, both in thought and in diction: however willing to be pleased, the reader is often disconcerted and provoked. The number of clever things said cleverly, of rich things richly, and of fine things finely, is however abundant and superabundant; and no one who peruses "Endymion" with a true sense for poetic endowment and handling can fail to see that it is peculiarly the work of a poet. The versification, though far from faultless, is free, surging, and melodious--one of the devices which the author most constantly employs with a view to avoiding jogtrot uniformity being that of beginning a new sentence with the second line of a couplet. On every page the poet has enjoyed himself, and on most of them the reader can joy as well. The lyrical interludes, especially the hymn to Pan, and the chaunt of the Bacchante (which comprises a sort of verse-transcript of Titian's "Bacchus and Ariadne"), are singularly wealthy in that fancy which hovers between description and emotion. The hymn to Pan was pronounced by Wordsworth, _viva voce_, to be "a pretty piece of paganism"--a comment which annoyed Keats not a little. Shelley (in his undispatched letter to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_) pointed out, as particularly worthy of attention, the passages--"And then the forest told it in a dream" (book ii.); "The rosy veils mantling the East" (book iii.); and "Upon a weeded rock this old man sat" (book iii.) The last--relating to Glaucus and his pictured cloak--is certainly remarkable; the other two, I should say, not more remarkable than scores of others--as indeed Shelley himself implied.