Hall Caine

“ Shakespeare's own youth ran riot with a like wantonness. Before Marlowe's strong influence had shaped to artistic forms his abundant fancy, or yet the revelation of life's misery, pain, and oppression had come on him with a sad suddenness in the atmosphere of the Chamber of Thought, Shakespeare, like Keats, had revelled in mere love of poetic luxury. But signs are not wanting that even before the completion of ‘Endymion’ judgment was doing its work with Keats. The fulness of fantasy became greater, and yet the disposition unduly to yield to it became less. ”

“ We cannot see more clearly to what perfectness the artistic method of Keats had attained than by glancing at a poem which, though little known and less talked of, was one of the last and the loveliest he gave us. The ballad, 'La Belle Dame sans Merci,' is wholly simple and direct, and informed throughout by reposeful strength. In all the qualities that rule and shape poetry into unity of form, this little work strides, perhaps, leagues in advance of ‘Endymion.' That more ambitious work was in full sense poetic—soft and rich and sweetly linked. ”

“ I find there is no worthy pursuit but the idea of doing some good to the world. Some do it with their society; some with their art; some with their benevolence; some with a sort of power of conferring pleasure and good-humour on all they meet; and in a thousand ways, all dutiful to the command of Nature. There is but one way for me. The road lies through application, study, and thought. I will pursue it.' Indications are not wanting that Keats, at one period, did, indeed, turn all his heart to the love of philosophy. He was never a weakling ”