KEATS, JOHN (1795-1821).--One of the chief examples, among the greater English poets, of sedulous and successful study of prosody; in this contrasting remarkably with his contemporary, and in some sort analogue, Shelley. Began by much reading of Spenser and of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century poets, in following whose enjambed couplet he was also, to some extent, a disciple of Leigh Hunt. Exemplified the dangers as well as the beauties of this in _Endymion_, and corrected it by stanza-practice in _Isabella_, the _Eve of St. Agnes_, and his great Odes, as well as by a study of Dryden which produced the stricter but more splendid couplet of _Lamia_. Strongly Miltonic, but with much originality also, in the blank verse of _Hyperion_; and a great master of the freer sonnet, which he had studied in the Elizabethans. Modified the ballad measure in _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ with astonishing effect, and in the _Eve of St. Mark_ recovered (perhaps from Gower) a handling of the octosyllable which remained undeveloped till Mr. William Morris took it up.
KINGSLEY, CHARLES (1819-1875).--A poet very notable, in proportion to the quantity of his work, for variety and freshness of metrical command in lyric. But chiefly so for the verse of _Andromeda_, which, aiming at accentual dactylic hexameter, converts itself into a five-foot anapæstic line with anacrusis and hypercatalexis, and in so doing entirely shakes off the ungainly and slovenly shamble of the _Evangeline_ type.
LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE (1775-1864).--A great master of form in all metres, but, in his longer poems and more regular measures, a little formal in the less favourable sense. In his smaller lyrics (epigrammatic in the Greek rather than the modern use) hardly second to Ben Jonson, whom he resembles not a little. His phrase of singular majesty and grace.
LANGLAND, WILLIAM (fourteenth century).--The probable name of the pretty certainly single author of the remarkable alliterative poem called _The Vision of Piers Plowman_. Develops the alliterative metre itself in a masterly fashion through the successive versions of his poem, but also exhibits most notably the tendency of the line to fall into definitely metrical shapes--decasyllabic, Alexandrine, and fourteener,--with not infrequent anapæstic correspondences.