Mr. Copeland's Lecture.

Mr. Copeland spoke very briefly last evening on Keats' life and poetical work. He took up especially three points: first, the statement so often made, with Shelley for authority, that Keats was "a Greek"; second, the popular impression that Keats was unmanly and effeminate; and third, the doubt expressed by some critics as to whether Keats would have advanced greatly in his art. Keats was in certain ways a Greek in spirit but undoubtedly a romantic in form. As to his weakness, Blackwood's "Johnny Keats," the stanza in Don Juan, and even Shelley's Adonais have after their varying fashions given the world a false impression; and George Keats's saying that his brother was about as much like "Johnny Keats" as he was like the Holy Ghost is needed-with the ample testimony that supports it-to strike a truthful balance. What Keats's development would have been no man can hope to know. Matthew Arnold has said, "He is with Shakespeare." We can only say that Keats in his later work showed a sympathy with the moral and intellectual life of the world which was wanting to his earlier verse; and that the preface to "Endymion," certain other critical work, and many of the letters show an intellectual quality which critics have so often denied to Keats.

Mr. Copeland read the opening of "Hyperion," the sonnets "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," and "On the Grasshopper and Cricket"; the odes "To a Nightingale," "To Autumn," "On Melancholy," and "On a Grecian Urn"; "Fancy," "Lines on the Mermaid Tavern," "Robin Hood," and "Bright Star Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art."