Such a letter as this admits one to the very penetralia of the supremely artistic mind—­but the wonder of Keats’ confession is that he saw himself as clearly and distinctly as he saw everyone else.  And further, I do not think that there is anything in literature that gives one a sharper feeling of the reality of genius than to find the immortal poems, such as La Belle Dame sans Merci, copied down in the middle of a letter, as an unconsidered trifle which may amuse his correspondent.

Now, in saying this, I do not for a moment say that Keats was an entirely admirable or even a wholly lovable character—­though his tenderness, his consideration, his affectionateness constantly emerge.  He had strongly marked faults:  his taste is often questionable; his humour is frequently deplorable.  He makes and repeats jokes which cause one to writhe and blush—­he was, and I say it boldly, occasionally vulgar; but it is not an innate vulgarity, only the superficial vulgarity which comes of living among second-rate suburban literary people.  One cannot help feeling every now and then that some of Keats’ friends were really impossible—­but I am glad that he did not feel them to be so, that he was loyal and generous about them.  There have been great critics, of whom Matthew Arnold was one, who have said frankly that the aroma of Keats’ letters is intolerable.  That does not seem to me a large judgment, but it is quite an intelligible one.  If one has been brought up in a certain instinctive kind of refinement, there are certain modes of life, certain ways of looking at things, which grate hopelessly upon one’s idea of what is refined; and perhaps life is not long enough to try and overcome it, to try and argue oneself out of it.  I think it is quite possible that if one had only known Keats slightly, one might have thought him a very underbred young man, as when he showed himself suspicious and ill at ease in the company of Shelley, because of his social standing.  “A loose, slack, ill-dressed youth,” was Coleridge’s impression of Keats, when he met him in a lane near Highgate.  But I honestly believe that this would have been only an external and superficial feeling.  Again, Keats as a lover is undeniably disconcerting.  His zealousness, his uncontrolled luxuriance of passion, though partly attributable to his fevered and despondent condition of health, are lacking in dignity.  But as a friend, Keats seems to me almost above praise; and I can imagine that if one had been of his circle, and had won his regard, it would have been difficult not to have idealised him.  He seems to me to have displayed that frank, affectionate brotherliness, untainted by sentimentality, which is the essence of equal friendship; and then, too, he gave his heart and his thoughts and his dreams to his friends so prodigally and lavishly—­not egotistically, as some have given—­with no self-absorption, no lack of sympathy, but in the spirit of the old fisherman in Theocritus, who says