ny of
acquaintances, and even of friends, is a tedium to him. This was a month
before the beginning of his fatal illness. It is true, he was then in
love. He writes to Mrs. George Keats:--

"I dislike mankind in general.... The worst of men are those
whose self-interests are their passions; the next, those whose
passions are their self-interest. Upon the whole, I dislike
mankind. Whatever people on the other side of the question may
advance, they cannot deny that we are always surprised at hearing
of a good action, and never of a bad one.... If you were in
England, I dare say you would be able to pick out more amusement
from society than I am able to do. To me it is as dull as
Louisville is to you. [Then follow several remarks on Hunt,
Haydon, the Misses Reynolds, and Dilke.] 'Tis best to remain
aloof from people, and like their good parts, without being
eternally troubled with the dull processes of their everyday
lives. When once a person has smoked the vapidness of the routine
of society, he must have either some self-interest or the love of
some sort of distinction to keep him in good humour with it. All
I can say is that, standing at Charing Cross, and looking east,
west, north, and south, I see nothing but dulness."

"I carry all things to an extreme," he had written to Bailey in July
1818, "so that when I have any little vexation it grows in five minutes
into a theme fit for Sophocles. Then and in that temper if I write to
any friend, I have so little self-possession that I give him matter for
grieving, at the very time perhaps when I am laughing at a pun." A
phrase which Keats used in a letter of the 24th of October 1820,
addressed to Mrs. Brawne, may also be, in the main, a true item of
self-portraiture: "If ever there was a person born without the faculty
of hoping, I am he." Too much weight, however, should not be given to
this, as the poet's disease had then brought him far onward towards his
grave. Severn does not seem to have regarded such a tendency as innate
in Keats, for he wrote, at a far later date, "No mind was ever more
exultant in youthful feeling."

Keats's sentiment towards women appears to have been that of a shy youth
who was at the same time a critical man. Miss Brawne enslaved him, but
did not inspire him with that tender and boundless confidence which the
accepted and engaged lover of a virtuous girl naturally feels. With one
woman, Miss