'Endymion' is not a record or sublimation of
experience; it is itself an experience. It was the liberation of a
verbal inhibition, and the magic word of freedom was Beauty. The story
of Endymion was to Keats a road to the unknown, in her course along
which his imagination might 'paw up against the sky.'
A refusal to admit that Keats built 'Endymion' upon any structure of
argument, however obscure--even Sir Sidney would acknowledge that the
argument he discovers is _very_ obscure--is so far from being a
derogation from his genius that it is in our opinion necessary to a full
appreciation of his idiosyncrasy. It is customary to regard the Odes as
the pinnacle of his achievement and to trace a poetical progression to
that point and a subsequent decline: we are shown the evidence of this
decline in the revised Induction to 'Hyperion.' As far as an absolute
poetical perfection is concerned there can be no serious objection to
the view. But the case of Keats is eminently one to be considered in
itself as well as objectively.
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