of the Cockney poets.  As for Mr. Keats’s “Endymion,” it has just as much to do with Greece as it has with “old Tartary the fierce”; no man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been adopted by this “son of promise.”  Before giving any extracts, we must inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English heroic rhyme.  To those who have read any of Hunt’s poems, this hint might indeed be needless.  Mr. Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless versification, and Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciples’ work than in his own.  Mr. Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man.  Mr. Keats is a still smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has done every thing in his power to spoil....

After all this, however, the “modesty,” as Mr. Keats expresses it, of the Lady Diana prevented her from owning in Olympus her passion for Endymion.  Venus, as the most knowing in such matters, is the first to discover the change that has taken place in the temperament of the goddess.  “An idle tale,” says the laughter-loving dame,

  A humid eye, and steps luxurious,
  When these are new and strange, are ominous.

The inamorata, to vary the intrigue, carries on a romantic intercourse with Endymion, under the disguise of an Indian damsel.  At last, however, her scruples, for some reason or other, are all overcome, and the Queen of Heaven owns her attachment.

  She gave her fair hands to him, and behold,
  Before three swiftest kisses he had told,
  They vanish far away!—­Peona went
  Home through the gloomy wood in wonderment.

And so, like many other romances, terminates the “Poetic Romance” of Johnny Keats, in a patched-up wedding.

We had almost forgotten to mention, that Keats belongs to the Cockney School of Politics, as well as the Cockney School of Poetry.

It is fit that he who holds Rimini to be the first poem, should believe the Examiner to be the first politician of the day.  We admire consistency, even in folly.  Hear how their bantling has already learned to lisp sedition.

  There are who lord it o’er their fellow-men
  With most prevailing tinsel:  who unpen
  Their baaing vanities, to browse away
  The comfortable green and juicy hay
  From human pastures; or, O torturing fact! 
  Who, through an idiot blink, will see unpack’d
  Fire-branded foxes to sear up and singe
  Our gold and ripe-ear’d hopes.  With not one tinge
  Of sanctuary splendour, not a sight
  Able to face an owl’s, they still are dight
  By the blue-eyed nations in empurpled vests,
  And crowns, and turbans.  With unladen