'Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former number,
aspires to be the hierophant.... This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt,
but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and
ten times more tiresome and absurd, than his prototype, who, though he
impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to
measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning.
But Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by
examples. His nonsense, therefore, is quite gratuitous; he writes it for
its own sake, and, being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism,
more than rivals the insanity of his poetry.

'Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
circumstances. "Knowing within myself." he says, "the manner in which
this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that
I make it public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader,
who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error
denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished." We humbly
beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be "quite so clear";
we really do not know what he means. But the next passage is more
intelligible. "The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel
sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
press." Thus "the two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit
to appear, and "the two last" are, it seems, in the same condition; and,
as two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we
have a clear, and we believe a very just, estimate of the entire work.

'Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this "immature and feverish
work" in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we
confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of
the tortures of the "fierce hell" of criticism[15] which terrify his