In 1882, Swinburne wrote in the "Encyclopædia Britannica" that "the Ode to a Nightingale, one of the final masterpieces of human work in all time and for all ages". In the 20th century Keats remained the muse of poets such as Wilfred Owen, who kept his death date as a day of mourning, Yeats and T. S. Eliot. Critic Helen Vendler stated the odes "are a group of works in which the English language find ultimate embodiment." Bate declared of "To Autumn": "Each generation has found it one of the most nearly perfect poems in English" and M. R. Ridley claimed the ode "is the most serenely flawless poem in our language."