The critical world,—­by which term I mean the censorious portion of it; for many have no other idea of criticism than, that of censure and objection,—­the critical world have so gloated over the feebler, or, if they will, the defective side of Keats’s genius, and his friends, his gloryingly partial friends, have so amply justified him, that I feel inclined to add no more to the category of opinions than to say, that the only fault in his poetry I could discover was a redundancy of imagery,—­that exuberance, by-the-by, being a quality of the greatest promise, seeing that it is the constant accompaniment of a young and teeming genius.  But his steady friend, Leigh Hunt, has rendered the amplest and truest record of his mental accomplishment in the Preface to the “Foliage,” quoted at page 150 of the first volume of the “Life of Keats”; and his biographer has so zealously, and, I would say, so amiably, summed up his character and intellectual qualities, that I can add no more than my assent.

Keats’s whole course of life, to the very last act of it, was one routine of unselfishness and of consideration for others’ feelings.  The approaches of death having come on, he said to his untiring nurse—­friend,—­“Severn,—­I,—­lift me up,—­I am dying:—­I shall die easy; don’t be frightened;—­be firm, and thank God it has come.”

There are constant indications through the memoirs, and in the letters of Keats, of his profound reverence for Shakspeare.  His own intensity of thought and expression visibly strengthened with the study of his idol; and he knew but little of him till he himself had become an author.  A marginal note by him in a folio copy of the Plays is an example of the complete absorption his mind had undergone during the process of his matriculation;—­and, through life, however long with any of us, we are all in progress of matriculation, as we study the “myriad-minded’s” system of philosophy.  The note that Keats made was this;—­“The genius of Shakspeare was an innate universality; wherefore he laid the achievements of human intellect prostrate beneath his indolent and kingly gaze:  he could do easily men’s utmost; his plan of tasks to come was not of this world.  If what he proposed to do hereafter would not in the idea answer the aim, how tremendous must have been his conception of ultimates!”

THE EUROPEAN CRISIS.

It is not long since we listened to an interesting discussion of this question:—­Which was the more important year to Europe,—­1859 or 1860?  The question is one that may be commended to the attention of those ingenuous young gentlemen, in debating-societies assembled, who have not yet settled whether Brutus, Cassius, & Co. were right in assassinating “the mighty Julius,” or whether Mary Stuart was a martyred saint or a martyred sinner, or whether the cold chop to which Cromwell treated Charles I. on a memorable winter-day was either