rous and as good as
could fairly be expected under the circumstances.

The earliest in date, and certainly one of the best from an art point of
view, is a sketch in profile done by Haydon preparatory to introducing
Keats's head into the picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem. The
sketch dates in November 1816, just after Keats had come of age. The
picture is in Philadelphia, and I cannot speak of the head as it appears
there. In the sketch we see abundant wavy hair; a forehead and nose
sloping forward to the nasal tip in a nearly uniform curve; a dark,
set, speaking eye; a mouth tolerably well moulded, the upper lip being
fully long enough, and noticeably overhanging the lower lip, upon which
the chin--large, full, and rounded--closely impinges. The whole face
partakes of the Raphaelesque cast of physiognomy. At some time, which
may have been the autumn of 1817, some one, most probably Haydon, took a
mask of the face of Keats. In respect of actual form, this is
necessarily the final test of what the poet was like--but masks are
often only partially true to the _impression_ of a face. This mask
confirms Haydon's sketch markedly; allowing only for the points that
Haydon has rather emphasized the length of the nose, and attenuated (so
far as one can judge from a profile) its thickness, and has given very
much more of the overhanging of the upper lip--but this last would, by
the very conditions of mask-taking, be there reduced to a minimum. On
the whole we may say that, after considering reciprocally Haydon's
sketch and the mask, we know very adequately what Keats's face was--he
had ample reason for acquitting himself of being "a fright." We come
still closer to a firm conclusion upon taking into account, along with
these two records, two of the portraits left to us by Severn. One is a
miniature, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1819, and which
we may surmise to have been painted in that year, or late in 1818: the
well-known likeness which represents Keats in three-quarters face,
looking earnestly forwards, and resting his chin upon his left hand.
Here the eyes are larger than in Haydon's sketch, and the upper lip
shorter, while the forehead seems straighter; but, as to those matters
of lip and forehead, a profile tells the plainer tale. The whole aspect
of the face is not greatly unlike Byron's. There is also the earlier
charcoal drawing by Severn, the best of all for enabling us to judge of
the beautiful ripp