much on the state of temper and imagination, appear
gloomy or bright, near or afar off, just as it happens.... You
may say I want tact; that is easily acquired.... I should, a year
or two ago, have spoken my mind on every subject with the utmost
simplicity. I hope I have learned a little better, and am
confident I shall be able to cheat as well as any literary Jew of
the market, and shine up an article on anything without much
knowledge of the subject--aye, like an orange. I would willingly
have recourse to other means. I cannot; I am fit for nothing but
literature.... Notwithstanding my 'aristocratic' temper, I cannot
help being very much pleased with the present public proceedings.
I hope sincerely I shall be able to put a mite of help to the
liberal side of the question before I die."

On the following day Keats wrote to Brown on the same subject--

"I will write on the liberal side of the question for whoever
will pay me. I have not known yet what it is to be diligent. I
purpose living in town in a cheap lodging, and endeavouring, for
a beginning, to get the theatricals of some paper.... I shall
apply to Hazlitt, who knows the market as well as any one, for
something to bring me in a few pounds as soon as possible. I
shall not suffer my pride to hinder me. The whisper may go
round--I shall not hear it. If I can get an article in _The
Edinburgh_, I will. One must not be delicate."

In pursuance of this plan, Keats did, for a few days in October, take a
lodging in Westminster. He then reverted to Hampstead, and finally the
scheme came to nothing, principally perhaps because his fatal illness
began, and everything had to be given up which was not directly
controlled by considerations of health.

CHAPTER VII.

Having now gone through the narrative of Keats's life and death, and
also the narrative of his literary work, we have before us the more
delicate and exacting task of forming some judgment of both,--to
estimate his character, and appraise his writings. But first I pause a
brief while for the purpose of relating a little that took place after
his decease, and mentioning a few particulars regarding his surviving
relatives and friends.

Keats was buried in the Protestant Cemetery at Rome amid the overgrown
ruins of the Honorian walls, surmounted by the pyramid-tomb of Caius
Cestius, a Tribune of the People whose monument has long survived h