ending in mental collapse and suicide is one of the saddest in the annals of English art. But at the time when Keats was introduced to him under Leigh Hunt's roof, he was only thirty years of age, and seemed to his friends no less than to himself to be standing on the threshold of a great and glorious career. He was endowed with just those personal qualities which are most potent to draw out the enthusiasm of generous youth, and Keats instantly fell under his spell. "We saw through each other at once," wrote Haydon in his private journal, "and I hope are friends for ever." Painter and poet were soon intimate companions, and Keats became a regular visitor at Haydon's studio in Great Marlborough Street, where, with other friends of the artist-among whom special mention must be made of Charles Lamb-he watched the slow progress of his vast picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. After one of these meetings, which, as Keats said, "wrought me up," he sent to Haydon the following sonnet. The other "great spirits "referred to in this will be readily identified as Wordsworth and Leigh Hunt. ADDRESSED TO HAYDON

Great spirits now on earth are sojourning :
He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake
Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
He of the rose, the violet, the spring,

The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake : And lo whose steadfastness would never take A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.

And other spirits there are standing apart
Upon the forehead of the age to come;
These, these will give the world another heart,
And other pulses, Hear ye not the hum
Of mighty workings ?-

Listen awhile, ye nations, and be dumb.

This sonnet Haydon sent on to Wordsworth with a letter in which he said: "I should wish very much to know what you think of it. He [Keats] promises a great deal. . . . He is quite a youth, full of eagerness and enthusiasm ; and what greatly recommended him to me, he has a very fine head.”

It was at one of the "immortal dinners'' (as Haydon himself called them) which took place in his painting-room, and “where the food was simple, the wine good, and the poetry first-rate," that Keats made the personal acquaintance of Wordsworth. The talk that night was memorable. "Wordsworth's fine intonation as he quoted Milton and Virgil, Keats's eager inspired look, Lamb's quaint sparkle of lambent humour, so speeded the conversation that," said Haydon, "I never passed a more delightful time.”

A third acquaintance of these Hampstead days must also be mentioned. This is Shelley. According to Leigh Hunt, who had brought the two young men together, "Keats did not take to Shelley as kindly as Shelley did to him," and he explains this in part by reference to Keats's sense of the disparity in their social positions, for Shelley came of an aristocratic family, and

Keats, "being a little too sensitive on the score of his origin, felt inclined to see in every man of birth a sort of natural enemy." This may indeed be one reason why in their brief intercourse all the advances came from Shelley's side, while Keats held himself aloof. But we must not forget that in their temperaments and their ideals of art, Shelley and Keats had little in common. Keats knew nothing of Shelley's enthusiasm for humanity and "passion for reforming the world," and held fast to his simple creed that poetry should be the incarnation of beauty, and not the vehicle of social or political ideas. "You will, I am sure, forgive me," he once wrote to Shelley, "for sincerely remarking that you might curb your magnanimity, and be more of an artist, and load every rift of your subject with ore." Shelley's admiration of the genius of Keats was splendidly proved after Keats's death by the magnificent elegy, "Adonais." Adonais." But intimate friends the

two never became.

Let us pause now a moment in our story that we may try to picture Keats as his companions knew him in the days just preceding the collapse of his health. Leigh Hunt will sketch his portrait for us: "He was under the middle height; and his lower limbs were small in comparison with the upper, but neat and well turned. His shoulders were very broad for his size; he had a face in which energy and sensibility were remarkably mixed up; an eager power, checked and made patient by ill-health. Every feature

was at once strongly cut, and delicately alive. If there was any faulty expression, it was in the mouth, which was not without something of a character of pugnacity. His face was rather long than otherwise; the upper lip projected a little over the under; the chin was bold; the cheeks sunken; the eyes mellow and glowing; large, dark, and sensitive. At the recital of a noble action, or a beautiful thought, they would suffuse with tears, and his mouth trembled. In this there was ill-health as well as imagination, for he did not like these betrayals of emotion; and he had great personal as well as moral courage. He once chastised a butcher, who had been insolent, by a regular stand-up fight. His hair, of a brown colour, was fine, and hung in natural ringlets. The head was a puzzle for phrenologists, being remarkably small in the skull-a singularity which he had in common with Byron and Shelley, whose hats I could not get on." In this pen-portrait Keats stands before us as a small, handsome youth, whose features bore the stamp of genius and power. Other people who knew him well speak in particular of his wonderful eyes. "He was," says Haydon emphatically, "the only man I ever met who seemed and looked conscious of a high calling, except Wordsworth."

E

III

NCOURAGED by the praises which his friends bestowed upon his poems when they were passed round in manuscript, Keats now determined to publish, and in March 1817 he put forth his first little volume of verse. The matter for this was already completed and in the press when one evening, while (as Lord Houghton relates the incident) he was making merry "with a lively circle of friends," the last proof-sheet was brought to him together with a message from the printer that he must "send the Dedication directly, if he intended to have one." Upon this he went to a side table, and while all around were noisily conversing, he sat down and wrote the sonnet" which follows, and in which he inscribed his book to Leigh Hunt :

Glory and Loveliness have pass'd away ;
For if we wander out in early morn,
No wreathed incense do we see upborne
Into the east, to meet the smiling day :
No crowd of nymphs soft-voiced and young and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,
Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
But there are left delights as high as these.
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time, when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free,

A leafy luxury, seeing I could please,
With these poor offerings, a man like thee.