5. Is the skylark a native of America? (See encyclopedia.) 6. Compare this with Wordsworth's "To a Skylark," XII, 340, in language and style, and in spirit. 7. "The Ode to the West Wind" and "The Cloud" are especially characteristic of Shelley in his loftier flights of imaginative beauty. Compare them with Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn," VII, 381, 383. Which of these is most vivid; which most musical? 8. "Arethusa" and "The Invitation," are among his more vigorous light verse. 9. Compare the powerful sonnet, "England in 1819," with Milton's sonnet "On His Blindness," IX, 119; and with Wordsworth's sonnets, XII, 353, 354. 10. In his day Shelley was regarded by many as an atheist; an opinion which is no longer generally held. Does his work indicate atheism to your mind? 11. Much of his work is impalpable, has insufficient strength to grip any but a mind with delicate powers of perception. Find examples of this characteristic. FOR REFERENCE "Famous English Authors."--BOLTON. "Shelley, the Man and the Poet."--CLUTTON-BROCK. "Romantic life of Shelley."--GRIBBLE. "Literary Studies."--BAGEHOT. "Studies in Poetry."--BROOKE. "Essays on the Poets."--DE QUINCEY. "Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley, and Keats."--MILLER. JOHN KEATS (1795-1821) The son of an hostler in a livery-stable, with only a partial education, John Keats certainly would not be chosen as a possible equal of Shelley, Byron, Wordsworth, or Coleridge. Yet such was his genius that he attained this position with no other training than came from his love of reading, especially in the fields of mythology and poetry. After a few years at school he was apprenticed to a surgeon, and studied at the hospitals for a time, but disliking the profession he gave himself up to reading and then to authorship. Shakespeare, Wordsworth, the Italian poets, and later, Milton, were among his favorites. He was well built and strong, yet exposure brought on consumption in 1818, shortly after the publication of "Endymion." Whether the decline in his health was due to the violent attacks upon his poem by the reviewers or to the fact that he nursed a consumptive brother for the three months preceding the latter's death is still considered an open question by many. Shelley and Byron were bitter against the reviews and attributed his steady decline to that source alone. Meanwhile he worked on his last and greatest poems, while his health went to pieces. When it was too late for hope he sailed to Italy with his friend Severn, in whose arms he died a few months later. Not quite two years afterward Shelley's remains were laid beside him in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome, and in 1881 Severn, too, found his last resting-place there. The epitaph which Keats had inscribed on his tomb, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water,"