?" Most certainly not. Such a find, or one ten times less
precious, would make one put up with accompaniments much more than ten
times worse than the worst of Keats's letters. But it may be observed
that the objection is only a fresh example of the unfortunate
tendency[30] of mankind to "ignore elenchs" as the logicians say, or, as
less pedantic phraseology has it, to talk beside the question. A man
might put a thousand pound note (and you might spend many thousand pound
notes without buying anything like the poem just mentioned) in a coarse,
vulgar, trivial or in other ways objectionable letter. The note would be
most welcome in itself, but it would not improve the quality of its
covering epistle. Not, of course, that Keats's letters are coarse or
vulgar, though they are sometimes rather trivial. But the point is that
their excellency, _as_ letters, does not depend on their enclosures (as
we may call them) or even directly on their importance as biography
which is certainly consummate. Are they good letters as such, and of how
much goodness? Have they been presented as letters should be presented
for reading? These are points on which, considering the title and range
of this Introduction, it may not be improper to offer a few
observations. We have already ventured to suggest that, if not the "be
all and end all," at any rate the quality to be first enquired into as
to its presence or its absence in letters, is "naturalness." And we have
said something as to the propriety or impropriety of different modes of
editing and publishing them. The present division of the subject seems
to afford a specially good text for adding something more on both these
matters.

As to the first point, the text is specially good because of the
position of Keats in the most remarkable group in which we have rather
found than placed him. To the present writer, as a reader, it seems, as
has been already said whether justly or unjustly, that the element of
"naturalness"--it is an ugly word, and French has no better, in fact
none at all: though German is a little luckier with _natuerlichkeit_ and
Spanish much with _naturaleza_--is rather conspicuously deficient in
Byron. In Shelley it is pre-eminent, and can only be missed by those who
have no kindred touch of the nature which it reflects. Shelley could be
vague, unpractical, mystical; he could sometimes be just a little silly;
but it was no more possible for him to be affected, or to make those