“The boisterous midnight festive clarion, The kettle-drum and far-heard clarionet, Affray his ears, though but in dying tone:  The hall-door shuts again, and all the noise is gone,”—­

“That line,” said he, “came into my head when I remembered how I used to listen, in bed, to your music at school.”  Interesting would be a record of the germs and first causes of all the greatest poets’ conceptions!  The elder Brunei’s first hint for his “shield,” in constructing the tunnel under the Thames, was taken from watching the labor of a sea-insect, which, having a projecting hood, could bore into the ship’s timber, unmolested by the waves.

I fancy it was about this time that Keats gave that signal example of his courage and stamina, in the recorded instance of his pugilistic contest with a butcher-boy.  He told me—­and in his characteristic manner—­of their “passage of arms.”  The brute, he said, was tormenting a kitten, and he interfered, when a threat offered was enough for his mettle, and they set to.  He thought he, should be beaten; for the fellow was the taller and stronger; but, like an authentic pugilist, my young poet found that he had planted a blow which “told” upon his antagonist.  In every succeeding round, therefore, (for they fought nearly an hour,) he never failed of returning to the weak point; and the contest ended in the hulk being led or carried home.  In all my knowledge of my fellow-beings, I never knew one who so thoroughly combined the sweetness with the power of gentleness and the irresistible sway of anger as Keats.  His indignation would have made the boldest grave; and those who have seen him under the influence of tyranny, injustice, and meanness of soul will never forget the expression of his features,—­“the form of his visage was changed.”

He had a strong sense of humor; yet, so to speak, he was not, in the strict sense of the term, a humorist.  His comic fancy lurked in the outermost and most unlooked-for images of association,—­which, indeed, maybe said to be the components of humor; nevertheless, I think they did not extend beyond the quaint, in fulfilment and success.  But his perception of humor, with the power of transmitting it by imitation, was both vivid and irresistibly amusing.  He once described to me his having gone to see a bear-baiting,—­the animal, the property of a Mr. Tom Oliver.  The performance not having began, Keats was near to and watched a young aspirant, who had brought a younger under his wing to witness the solemnity, and whom he oppressively patronized, instructing him in the names and qualities of all the magnates present.  Now and then, in his zeal to manifest and impart his knowledge, he would forget himself, and stray beyond the prescribed bounds, into the ring,—­to the lashing resentment of its comptroller, Mr. William Soames; who, after some hints of a practical nature, to “keep back,” began laying about him with indiscriminate and unmitigable vivacity,—­the