ling long hair; it is a profile, and extremely like
Haydon's profile, except for the greater straightness of the forehead,
and the decided smallness of the chin, points on which the mask shows
conclusively that Haydon was in the right. Most touching of all as a
reminiscence is the Indian-ink drawing which Severn made of his dying
friend on "28 Jan^y. 1821, 3 o'clock morn^g.," as he lay asleep, with
the death-damp on his dark hair. It exhibits the attenuation of disease,
but without absolute painfulness, and produces, fully as much as any of
the other portraits, the impression of a fine and distinguished mould of
face. Severn left yet other likenesses of Keats--posthumous, and of
inferior interest. There is moreover a chalk drawing by the painter
Hilton, who used to meet Keats at the house of the publisher Mr. Taylor.
It has an artificial air, and conveys a notion of the general character
of the face different from the other records, but may assist us towards
estimating what Keats was like about, or very soon before, the
commencement of his fatal illness. Lastly, though the list of extant
portraits is not even thus exhausted, I mention the medallion by
Girometti, which is to all appearance a posthumous performance. Its
lines correspond pretty well with the profile sketch by Haydon, while in
character it assimilates more to Hilton's drawing. To me it seems of
very little importance as a document, but Hamilton Reynolds thought it
the best likeness of all. Mrs. Llanos was in favour of the mask; Mr.
Cowden Clarke, of the crayon drawing by Severn--which, indeed, conveys a
bright impression of eager, youthful impulsiveness.

The character of Keats appears to me not a very easy one to expound. To
begin with, it stands to reason that a man who died at the age of
twenty-five can only have half evolved and evinced himself; there must
have been a great deal which time and trial, had these been granted,
would have developed, but which untimely fate left to conjecture. We are
thus compelled to judge of an apprentice in the severe school of life as
if he had gone through its full course; many things about him may, in
their real nature, have been fleeting and tentative, which to us pass
for final and established. This difficulty has to be allowed for, but
cannot be got over; the only Keats with whom we have to deal is the
Keats who had not completed his twenty-sixth year. For him, as for other
youths, the tree of the knowledge of good a