e his last
year a despairing struggle between a passionate love and an inexorable
disease, preclude our forming a very distinct opinion of what his power
of will might naturally have become. If I may venture a surmise, I would
say that he had within him the stuff of ample determination and
high-heartedness in any matters upon which he was in earnest, mingled
however with deficient self-control, and with a perilous facility for
seeing the seamy side of life.

Lord Houghton gives an attractive picture of Keats at what was probably
his happiest time, the winter of 1817-18, when "Endymion" was preparing
for the press. I cannot condense it to any purpose, and certainly cannot
improve it, so I reproduce the passage as it stands:

"Keats passed the winter of 1817-18 at Hampstead, gaily enough
among his friends. His society was much sought after, from the
delightful combination of earnestness and pleasantry which
distinguished his intercourse with all men. There was no effort
about him to say fine things, but he _did_ say them most
effectively, and they gained considerably by his happy transition
of manner. He joked well or ill as it happened, and with a laugh
which still echoes sweetly in many ears; but at the mention of
oppression or wrong, or at any calumny against those he loved, he
rose into grave manliness at once, and seemed like a tall man.
His habitual gentleness made his occasional looks of indignation
almost terrible. On one occasion, when a gross falsehood
respecting the young artist, Severn, was repeated and dwelt upon,
he left the room, declaring 'he should be ashamed to sit with men
who could utter and believe such things.'"

Severn himself avers that Keats never spoke of any one unless by way of
saying something in his favour.

Cowden Clarke's anecdote tells in the same direction, that once, when
some local tyranny was being discussed, Keats amused the party by
shouting: "Why is there not a human dust-hole into which to tumble such
fellows?" His own Carlylean phrase seems to have tickled Keats as well
as others, for he repeated it in a field walk with Haydon: "Haydon, what
a pity it is there is not a human dust-hole!"

To this may be added a few words from a letter addressed from Teignmouth
by Keats to Mr. Taylor in April 1818:--

"I know nothing, I have read nothing: and I mean to follow
Solomon's directions, 'Get learning, get understanding.' I find