man who thinks much of his fellows can never be in spirits. You must forgive, although I have only written three hundred lines; they would have been five, but I have been obliged to go to town. Yesterday I called at Lamb's. St. Jane looked very flush when I first went in, but was much better before I left.

"Endymion" was finished at Burford Bridge, on the 28th of November, 1817; so records the still existing manuscript, written fairly in a book, with many corrections of phrases and some of lines, but with few of sentences or of arrangement. It betrays the leading fault of the composition, namely, the dependence of the matter on the rhyme, but shows the confidence of the Poet in his own profusion of diction, the strongest and most emphatic words being generally taken as those to which the continuing verse was to be adapted. There was no doubt a pleasure to him in this very victory over the limited harmonies of our language, and the result, when fortunate, is very impressive; yet the following criticism of his friend Mr. Leigh Hunt is also just :—

"He had a just contempt for the monotonous termination of every-day couplets; he broke up his lines in order to distribute the rhyme properly; but, going only upon the ground of his contempt, and not having yet settled with himself any principle of versification, the very exuberance of his ideas. led him to make use of the first rhymes that offered; so that, by a new meeting of extremes, the effect was as artificial and much more obtrusive than one under the old system. Dryden modestly confessed that a rhyme had often helped him to a thought. Mr. Keats, in the tyranny of his wealth, forced

his rhymes to help him, whether they would or not, and they obeyed him, in the most singular manner, with equal promptitude and ingeniousness; though occasionally in the MS., when the second line of the couplet could not be made to rhyme, the sense of the first is arbitrarily altered, and its sense cramped into a new and less appropriate form."

Keats passed the winter of 1817-18 at Hampstead, gaily enough among his friends; his society was much sought after, from the delightful combination of earnestness and pleasantry which distinguished his intercourse with all men. There was no effort about him to say fine things, but he did say them most effectively, and they gained considerably by his happy transition of manner. He joked well or ill, as it happened, and with a laugh which still echoes sweetly in many ears; but at the mention of oppression or wrong, or at any calumny against those he loved, he rose into grave manliness at once, and seemed like a tall man. His habitual gentleness made his occasional looks of indignation almost terrible: on one occasion, when a gross falsehood respecting the young artist Severn was repeated and dwelt upon, he left the room, declaring "he should be ashamed to sit with men who could utter and believe such things." On another occasion, hearing of some unworthy conduct, he burst out "Is there no human dusthole into which we can sweep such fellows?"

Display of all kinds was especially disagreeable to him, and he complains, in a note to Haydon, that "conversation is not a search after knowledge, but an endeavour at effectif Lord Bacon were alive, and to make a remark in the present day in company, the conversation would stop on a sudden. I am convinced of this."

masc health

His health does not seem to have prevented him. dulging somewhat in that dissipation which is the outlet for the young energies of ardent temperaments scious how scanty a portion of vital strength had, lotted him; but a strictly regulated and abstinent 1 have appeared to him pedantic and sentimental. H however, to any serious extent, allow wine to usurp on his intellect, or games of chance to impair his means, for, in his letters to his brothers, he speaks of having drunk too much as a rare piece of jovialty, and of having won 10l. at cards as a great hit. His bodily vigour too must, at this time, have been considerable, as he signalised himself, at Hampstead, by giving a severe drubbing to a butcher, whom he saw beating a little boy, to the enthusiastic admiration of a crowd of bystanders. Plain, manly, practical life on the one hand, and a free exercise of his rich imagination on the other, were the ideal of his existence: his poetry never weakened his action, and his simple every-day habits never coarsened the beauty of the world within him. It must have been about this date that Coleridge mentions ("Table Talk,” vol. ii., p. 89) meeting him, a loose, slack, not well-dressed youth,” in a lane near Highgate, and when they had shaken hands, remarking aside to Leigh Hunt, "There is death in that hand."

The following letters of this time are preserved :

MY DEAR TAYLOR,

Jan. 23, 1818.

I have spoken to Haydon about the drawing. He would do it with all his Art and Heart too, if so I will it ;

however, he has written this to me; but I must tell you, first, he intends painting a finished Picture from the Poem. Thus he writes "When I do anything for your Poem it must be effectual-an honour to both of us to hurry up a sketch for the season won't do. I think an engraving from your head, from a chalk drawing of mine, done with all my might, to which I would put my name, would answer Taylor's idea better than the other. Indeed, I am sure of it.”

What think you of this? Let me hear. I shall have my second Book in readiness forthwith.

MY DEAR BAILEY,

Yours most sincerely,

JOHN KEATS.

Jan. 23, 1818.

Twelve days have pass'd since your last reached me.-What has gone through the myriads of human minds since the 12th? We talk of the immense number of books, the volumes ranged thousands by thousands—but perhaps more goes through the human intelligence in twelve days than ever was written. How has that unfortunate family lived through the twelve? One saying of yours I shall never forget: you may not recollect it, it being, perhaps, said when you were looking on the surface and seeming of Humanity alone, without a thought of the past or the future, or the deeps of good and evil. You were at that moment estranged from speculation, and I think you have arguments ready for the man who would utter it to you. This is a formidable preface for a simple thing-merely you said, "Why should woman suffer?" Aye, why should she?

"By heavens, I'd coin my very soul, and drop my blood for drachmas!" These things are, and he, who feels how incompetent the most skyey knight-errantry is to heal this bruised fairness, is like a sensitive leaf on the hot hand of thought.

Your tearing, my dear friend, a spiritless and gloomy letter up, to re-write to me, is what I shall never forget-it was to me a real thing.

Things have happened lately of great perplexity; you must have heard of them; Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating, and parting for ever. The same thing has happened between Haydon and Hunt. It is unfortunate: men should bear with each other: there lives not the man who may not be cut up, aye, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best of men have but a portion of good in them-a kind of spiritual yeast in their frames, which creates the ferment of existence-by which a man is propelled to act, and strive, and buffet with circumstance. The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man's faults, and then be passive. If, after that, he insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Haydon, I was well read in their faults; yet, knowing them, I have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for them both, for reasons almost opposite; and to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the hope, that when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together. The time must come, because they have both hearts; and they will recollect the best parts of each other, when this gust is overblown.