"Could all this be forgotten? Yes, a schism Nurtured by foppery and barbarism Made great Apollo blush for this his land. Men were thought wise who could not understand His glories: with a puling infant's force They swayed about upon a rocking-horse, And thought it Pegasus. Ah dismal-souled! The winds of heaven blew, the ocean rolled Its gathering waves--ye felt it not; the blue Bared its eternal bosom, and the dew Of summer-night collected still to make The morning precious. Beauty was awake-- Why were ye not awake? But ye were dead To things ye knew not of--were closely wed To musty laws lined out with wretched rule And compass vile; so that ye taught a school Of dolts to smoothe, inlay, and chip, and fit, Till--like the certain wands of Jacob's wit-- Their verses tallied. Easy was the task; A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask Of Poesy. Ill-fated impious race, That blasphemed the bright lyrist to his face, And did not know it! No, they went about Holding a poor decrepit standard out Marked with most flimsy mottoes, and in large The name of one Boileau." Zeal is generally pardonable. Keats's was manifestly honest zeal, and flaming forth in the right direction. Yet it would have been well for him to remember and indicate that amid his "school of dolts," bearing the flag of Boileau, there had been some very strong and capable men, notably Dryden and Pope, who could do several things besides inlaying and clipping; nor could it be said that the beauty of the world had been wholly blinked by so pre-eminently descriptive a poet as Thomson; and, if we were to read Boileau--which few of us do now-a-days, and I daresay Keats was not one of the few--we should probably find that his "mottoes" were much less concerned with inlaying and clipping than with solid meaning and studious congruity--qualities not totally contemptible, but (be it acknowledged) very largely contemned by Keats in that first slender performance of his adolescence named "Poems, 1817." It has been said that this volume hardly went beyond the circle of Keats's personal friends; nor do I think this statement can be far wrong, although one inquirer avers that the book was "constantly alluded to in the prominent periodicals." The dictum of Keats himself stands thus: "It was read by some dozen of my friends, who liked it; and some dozen whom I was unacquainted with, who did not." Shelley cannot have been among the friends who liked the volume, for he had recommended Keats not to give it to the press. At any rate the publishers, Messrs. Ollier, would after a very short while sell it no more. Their letter to George Keats--who seems to have been acting for John during the absence of the latter in the Isle of Wight or at Margate--is too amusing to be omitted:--