altissimum.  I mean they would nerve me up to the writing of a few fine plays—­my greatest ambition—­when I do feel ambitious....’

No letter could be saner, nor more indicative of calm resolve.  Yet the precise determination is that nothing that went to make the 1820 volume should be published, neither Odes, nor Tales, nor ‘Hyperion.’  This is that mood of Keats which Sir Sidney Colvin, in his comment upon a passage in the revised Induction, calls one of ’fierce injustice to his own achievements and their value.’  But a poet, if he is a real one, judges his own achievements not by those of his contemporaries, but by the standard of his own intention.

The evidence that Keats’s mind had passed beyond the stage at which it could be satisfied by the poems of the 1820 volume is overwhelming.  His letters to George of April, 1819, show that he was naturally evolving towards an attitude, a philosophy, more profound and comprehensive than could be expressed adequately in such records of momentary aspiration and emotion as the Odes; though the keen and sudden poignancy that had invaded them belongs to the new Keats.  They mark the transition to the new poetry which he vaguely discerned.  The problem was to find the method.  The letters we have quoted to show his reaction from the Miltonic influence display the more narrowly ‘artistic’ aspect of the same evolution.  A technique more responsive to the felt reality of experience must be found—­’English ought to be kept up’—­the apparatus of Romantic story must be abandoned—­’Wonders are no wonders to me’—­yet the Romantic colour must be kept to restore to a realistic psychology the vividness and richly various quality that are too often lost by analysis We do not believe that we have in any respect forced the interpretation of the letters; the terminology of that age needs to be translated to be understood ’Men and Women ...  Characters and Sentiments’ are called, for better or worse, ‘psychology’ nowadays.  And our translation has this merit, that some of our ultra-moderns will listen to the word ‘psychology,’ where they would be bat-blind to ‘Characters’ and stone-deaf to ‘Sentiments.’

Modern poetry is still faced with the same problem; but very few of its adepts have reached so far as to be able to formulate it even with the precision of Keats’s scattered allusions.  Keats himself was struck down at the moment when he was striving (against disease and against a devouring, hopeless love-passion) to face it squarely.  The revised Induction reveals him in the effort to shape the traditional (and perhaps still necessary) apparatus of myth to an instrument of his attitude.  The meaning of the Induction is not difficult to discover; but current criticism has the habit of regarding it dubiously.  Therefore we may be forgiven for attempting, with the brevity imposed upon us, to make its elements clear.  The first eighteen lines, which Sir Sidney Colvin on objective grounds regrets are, we think, vital.