“How many bards gild the lapses of time!”

marking with particular emphasis and approbation the last six lines:—­

“So the unnumbered sounds that evening store,—­ The songs of birds, the whispering of the leaves, The voice of waters, the great bell that heaves With solemn sound, and thousand others more, That distance of recognizance bereaves,—­ Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.”

Smith repeated, with applause, the line in Italics, saying, “What a well-condensed expression!” After making numerous and eager inquiries about him, personally, and with reference to any peculiarities of mind and manner, the visit ended in my being requested to bring him over to the Vale of Health.  That was a red-letter day in the young poet’s life,—­and one which will never fade with me, as long as memory lasts.  The character and expression of Keats’s features would unfailingly arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with intense interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to receive and encounter.  When we reached the Heath, I have present the rising and accelerated step, with the gradual subsidence of all talk, as we drew towards the cottage.  The interview, which stretched into three “morning calls,” was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household, and was always welcomed.

It was in the library at Hunt’s cottage, where an extemporary bed had been made up for him on the sofa, that he composed the framework and many lines of the poem on “Sleep and Poetry,”—­the last sixty or seventy being an inventory of the art-garniture of the room.  The sonnet,

  “Keen, fitful gusts are whispering here and there,”

he gave me the day after one of our visits, and very shortly after his installation at the cottage.

  “Give me a golden pen, and let me lean,”

was another, upon being compelled to leave “at an early hour.”  But the occasion that recurs to me with the liveliest interest was the evening when, some observations having been made upon the character, habits, and pleasant associations of that reverenced denizen of the hearth, the cheerful little fireside grasshopper, Hunt proposed to Keats the challenge of writing, then, there, and to time, a sonnet “On the Grasshopper and the Cricket.”  No one was present but myself, and they accordingly set to.  I, absent with a book at the end of the sofa, could not avoid furtive glances, every now and then, at the emulants.  I cannot say how long the trial lasted; I was not proposed umpire, and had no stop-watch for the occasion:  the time, however, was short, for such a performance; and Keats won, as to time.  But the event of the after-scrutiny was one of many such occurrences which have riveted the memory of Leigh Hunt in my affectionate regard and admiration, for unaffected generosity and perfectly unpretentious encouragement:  his sincere look of pleasure at the first line,—­