on the part of the critic, it is only an amiable subserviency to the will of his betters, like that of a menial who is ordered to deny his master, a sense of propriety, a knowledge of the world, a poetical and moral license.  Such fellows (such is his cue from his employers) should at any rate be kept out of privileged places:  persons who have been convicted of prose-libels ought not to be suffered to write poetry—­if the fact was not exactly as it was stated, it was something of the kind, or it ought to have been so, the assertion was a pious fraud,—­the public, the court, the prince himself might read the work, but for this mark of opprobrium set upon it—­it was not to be endured that an insolent plebeian should aspire to elegance, taste, fancy—­it was throwing down the barriers which ought to separate the higher and the lower classes, the loyal and the disloyal—­the paraphrase of the story of Dante was therefore to perform quarantine, it was to seem not yet recovered from the gaol infection, there was to be a taint upon it, as there was none in it—­and all this was performed by a single slip of Mr. Gifford’s pen!  We would willingly believe (if we could) that in this case there was as much weakness and prejudice as there was malice and cunning.—­Again, we do not think it possible that under any circumstances the writer of the Verses to Anna could enter into the spirit or delicacy of Mr. Keats’s poetry.  The fate of the latter somewhat resembled that of

 —­“a bud bit by an envious worm,
  Ere it could spread its sweet leaves to the air,
  Or dedicate its beauty to the sun.”

Mr. Keats’s ostensible crime was that he had been praised in the Examiner Newspaper:  a greater and more unpardonable offence probably was, that he was a true poet, with all the errors and beauties of youthful genius to answer for.  Mr. Gifford was as insensible to the one as he was inexorable to the other.  Let the reader judge from the two subjoined specimens how far the one writer could ever, without a presumption equalled only by a want of self-knowledge, set himself in judgment on the other.

  “Out went the taper as she hurried in;
  Its little smoke in pallid moonshine died: 
  She closed the door, she panted, all akin
  To spirits of the air and visions wide: 
  No utter’d syllable, or woe betide! 
  But to her heart, her heart was voluble,
  Paining with eloquence her balmy side;
  As though a tongueless nightingale should swell
  Her heart in vain, and die, heart-stifled, in her dell.

  “A casement high and triple-arch’d there was,
  All garlanded with carven imag’ries
  Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass,
  And diamonded with panes of quaint device,
  Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes,
  As are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings;
  And in the midst, ’mong thousand heraldries,
  And twilight saints and dim emblazonings,
  A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.