nd evil had budded apace; the
fruit remained for ever unmatured. Another gravely deflecting force in
our estimation of the character of Keats consists in the fact that what
we really care for in him is his poetry. We admire his poetry, and
condole his inequitable treatment, and his hard and premature fate, and
are disposed to see his life in the light of his verse and his
sufferings. Hence arises a facile and perhaps vapid enthusiasm, with an
inclination to praise through thick and thin, or to ignore such points
as may not be susceptible of praise. The sympathetic biographer is a
very pleasant fellow; but the truthful biographer also has something to
say for himself in the long run. I aspire to the part of the truthful
biographer, duly sympathetic.

We have already seen that Keats in early childhood was vehement and
ungovernable. His sensibility displayed itself in the strongest
contrasts, and he would be convulsed with laughter or with tears,
rapidly interchanged. At school his skill in bodily exercises, and his
marked generosity of spirit, made him very popular--his comrades
surmising that he would turn out superior in some active career, such as
soldiering. To be rated as a good boy was not his ambition; but, as
previously stated, he settled down into a very attentive scholar. Later
on, his friend Bailey liked "the simplicity of his character," and his
winning affectionate manner. "Simplicity" means, I suppose, frankness or
straightforwardness; for I cannot see that Keats's character was at any
time particularly simple--I should rather say that it was complex and
many-sided.

The one great craving of Keats, before the love for Miss Brawne
engrossed him, was the desire to become an excellent poet; to do great
things in poesy, and leave a name among the immortals. At times he was
conscious of some presumption in this craving; but mostly it seems to
have held such plenary possession of him that the question of
presumption or otherwise hardly arose. Whether he felt very strongly
upon any matters of intellectual or general concern other than poetic
ones may admit of some doubt. In Book II. of "Endymion" he openly
proclaims that poetic love-making is the one thing needful to the
susceptible mind; the Athenian admiral and his auspicious owl, the
Indian expeditions of Alexander, Ulysses and the Cyclops, the death-day
of empires, are as nothing to Juliet's passion, Hero's tears, Imogen's
swoon, and Pastorella in the bandits