Of the author of this small volume we know nothing more than that he is said to be a very young man, and a particular friend of the Messrs Hunt, the editors of the Examiner, and of Mr Hazlitt. His youth accounts well enough for some injudicious luxuriancies and other faults in his poems; and his intimacy with two of the wittiest writers of their day, sufficiently vouches both for his intellect and his taste. Going altogether out of the road of high raised passion and romantic enterprise, into which many ordinary versifiers have been drawn after the example of the famous poets of our time, he has attached himself to a model more pure than some of these, we imagine; and, at the same time, as poetical as the best of them. ‘Sage, serious’ Spencer, the most melodious and mildly fanciful of our old English poets, is Mr Keats's favourite. He takes his motto from him,—puts his head on his titlepage,—and writes one of his most luxurious descriptions of nature in his measure. We find, indeed, Spencerianisms scattered through all his other verses, of whatsoever measure or character. But, though these things sufficiently point out where Mr K. has caught his inspiration, they by no means determine the general character of his manner, which partakes a great deal of that picturesqueness of fancy and licentious brilliancy of epithet which distinguish the early Italian novelists and amorous poets. For instance, those who know the careless, sketchy, capricious, and yet archly-thoughtful manner of Pulci and Ariosto, will understand what we mean from the following specimens, better than from any laboured or specific assertion of ours.