ght to know I deal at
Clementi's.' And in the letter which he wrote to Mrs. Brawne from
Naples is a touch of the old bantering Keats when he says that 'it's
misery to have an intellect in splints.' He was never strong enough to
write again to Fanny, or even to read her letters.

I should like to close this reading with a few sentences from a letter
written to Reynolds in February, 1818. Keats says: 'I had an idea that
a man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner--let him on a
certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and
let him wander with it, and muse upon it, ... and prophesy upon it,
and dream upon it, until it becomes stale--but when will it do so?
Never! When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one
grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all
the "two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of
conception, what delicious diligent Indolence!... Nor will this
sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers--for
perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the
Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their
mere passive existence.'

May we not say that the final test of great literature is that it be
able to be read in the manner here indicated? As Keats read, so did he
write. His own work was

'accomplished in repose
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.'

AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST

The fathers in English literature were not a little given to writing
books which they called 'anatomies.' Thomas Nash, for example, wrote
an _Anatomy of Absurdities_, and Stubbes an _Anatomy of Abuses_.
Greene, the novelist, entitled one of his romances _Arbasto, the
Anatomy of Fortune_. The most famous book which bears a title of this
kind is the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, by Robert Burton. It is notable,
first, for its inordinate length; second, for its readableness,
considering the length and the depth of it; third, for its prodigal
and barbaric display of learning; and last, because it is said to have
had the effect of making the most indolent man of letters of the
eighteenth century get up betimes in the morning. Why Dr. Johnson
needed to get up in order to read the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ will
always be an enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up. Perhaps he
merely sat up and reached for the book, which would have been placed
conveniently near the bed. For