The following occurs in Hazlitt’s essay “On Dryden and Pope” (_ib._, pp. 137-38):—The poet of nature is one who, from the elements of beauty, of power, and of passion in his own breast, sympathises with whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts and hearts of all men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the very soul of nature; to be identified with and to foreknow and to record the feelings of all men at all times and places, as they are liable to the same impressions; and to exert the same power over the minds of his readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for he sees them as they are; he feels them in their universal interest, for he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our common nature. Such was Homer, such was Shakespeare, whose works will last as long as nature, because they are a copy of the indestructible forms and everlasting impulses of nature, welling out from the bosom as from a perennial spring, or stamped upon the senses by the hand of their maker. The power of the imagination in them, is the representative power of all nature. It has its centre in the human soul, and makes the circuit of the universe. See also _The Round Table_, 1817—“On Posthumous Fame—whether Shakespeare was influenced by a love of it.” JOHN KEATS, _c._ 1818 (1795-1821) The genius of Shakespeare was an innate universality—wherefore he had the utmost achievement of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze. He could do easily Man’s utmost. His plans of tasks to come were not of this world—if what he purposed to do hereafter would not in his own Idea “answer the aim,” how tremendous must have been his Conception of Ultimates! _Note on Troilus and Cressida_, I. iii. Marginalia from the Shakespeare Folio of 1808. (_Works_, ed. H. Buxton Forman. 1901, iii. p. 254.) _c._ 1818 “_Sonnet on sitting down to read KING LEAR once again._” O golden-tongued Romance, with serene lute! Fair-plumed Syren, Queen of far-away! Leave melodising on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for, once again, the fierce dispute Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit: Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme! When through the old oak Forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream, But, when I am consumed in the fire, Give me new Phœnix wings to fly at my desire.