leaves of a tree, it had better
not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not
often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself.
When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over
to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." The
first book of the poem was delivered into the hands of the publisher,
Mr. Taylor, in the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a
finished chalk-sketch of the author's head, to be prefixed to the
volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the volume, an octavo,
appeared in April without any portrait. We all know the now proverbial
first line in "Endymion,"

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

This seems to have been an inspiration of long anterior date; for Mr.
Stephens, the surgical fellow-student and fellow-lodger of Keats, says
that in one twilight when they were together the youthful poet produced
the line--

"A thing of beauty is a constant joy;"

which, failing wholly to satisfy its author's ear, was immediately
afterwards improved into its present form. Even before handing over any
part of his MS. to the printer, Keats, at the "immortal dinner" which
came off in Haydon's painting-room, on the 28th of December 1817, and at
which Wordsworth, Lamb, and others, were present, had bespoken a strange
and heroic fate for one copy of his book; for he made Mr. Ritchie, who
was about to set forth on an African exploration, promise that he would
carry the volume "to the great desert of Sahara, and fling it in the
midst."

"Invention" was the quality which Keats most sought for in his
"Endymion," as shown in his letter to Mr. Bailey, already cited. He
said--"It ['Endymion'] will be a test of my powers of imagination, and
chiefly of my invention--which is a rare thing indeed--by which I must
make 4000 lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry....
A long poem is a test of Invention, which I take to be the polar star of
poetry, as Fancy is the sails, and Imagination the rudder.... This same
Invention seems indeed of late years to have been forgotten as a
poetical excellence." The term "invention" might be used in various
senses. Keats seems to have meant the power of producing a great number
of minor incidents, illustrative images, and other particulars, all
tending to reinforce and fill out the main conception and
subject-matter.

Keats wrote a preface to "Endymion" on March