had the consolation of
finding him calm, trusting, and more prepared for his end than I was. He
tranquilly rehearsed to me what would be the process of his dying, what
I was to do, and how I was to _bear it_. He was even minute in his
details, evidently rejoicing that his death was at hand. In all he then
uttered he breathed a simple, Christian spirit; indeed, I always think
that he died a Christian, that "Mercy" was trembling on his dying lips,
and that his tortured soul was received by those Blessed Hands which
could alone welcome it.[A]

[Footnote A: Whilst this was passing at Rome, another scene of the
tragedy was enacting in London. The violence of the Tory party in
attacking Keats had increased after his leaving England, but he had
found able defenders, and amongst them Mr. John Scott, the editor of
the "Champion," who published a powerful vindication of Keats, with a
denunciation of the party-spirit of his critics. This led to a challenge
from Mr. Scott to Mr. Lockhart, who was then one of the editors of
"Blackwood." The challenge was shifted over to a Mr. Christie, and he
and Mr. Scott fought at Chalk Farm, with the tragic result of the death
of Keats's defender,--and this within a few days of the poet's death at
Rome. The deplorable catastrophe was not without its compensations, for
ever after there was a more chastened feeling in both parties.]

After the death of Keats, my countrymen in Rome seemed to vie with one
another in evincing the greatest kindness towards me. I found myself in
the midst of persons who admired and encouraged my beautiful pursuit of
painting, in which I was then indeed but a very poor student, but with
my eyes opening and my soul awakening to a new region of Art, and
beginning to feel the wings growing for artistic flights I had always
been dreaming about.

In all this, however, there was a solitary drawback: there were few
Englishmen at Rome who knew Keats's works, and I could scarcely persuade
any one to make the effort to read them, such was the prejudice against
him as a poet; but when his gravestone was placed, with his own
expressive line, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," then a
host started up, not of admirers, but of scoffers, and a silly jest was
often repeated in my hearing, "Here lies one whose name was writ in
water, and _his works in milk and water_"; and this I was condemned
to hear for years repeated, as though it had been a pasquinade; but I
should expla