ing the flesh; Keats, however, according to Mr. Stephens, did
not indulge in any vice during his term of studentship. He was eminently
open, as his writings evidence, to impressions of enjoyment; and one may
not unnaturally suppose that the joys of sense numbered him, no less
than the average of young men, among their votaries--not indeed among
their slaves. He had not, I think, any taste for those "manly
recreations" which consist chiefly in making the lower animals
uncomfortable, or in putting a quietus to their comforts and discomforts
along with their lives. I only observe one occasion on which he went
out with a gun. He then (towards the close of 1818) accompanied Mr.
Dilke in shooting on Hampstead Heath, and his trophy was a solitary
tomtit.

As to strength or stability of character, it is rather amusing to find
Keats picking a hole in Haydon, while Haydon could probe a joint in the
armour of Keats. In November 1817 Haydon had been playing rather fast
and loose (so at least it seemed to Keats and to his friend Bailey) with
a pictorial aspirant named Cripps, and Keats wrote to Bailey in the
following terms:

"To a man of your nature such a letter as Haydon's must have been
extremely cutting.... As soon as I had known Haydon three days, I
had got enough of his character not to have been surprised at
such a letter as he has hurt you with. Nor, when I knew it, was
it a principle with me to drop his acquaintance, although with
you it would have been an imperious feeling.... I must say one
thing that has pressed upon me lately, and increased my humility
and capability of submission, and that is this truth: _Men of
genius_ are great as certain ethereal chemicals operating on a
mass of neutral intellect; but they _have not any individuality,
any determined character_."

The following also, from a letter of January 1818 to the same
correspondent, relates partly to Haydon:

"The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man's faults, and then
be passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him,
then you have no power to break the link."

Haydon's verdict upon Keats is no doubt extremely important. I give here
the whole entry in his diary, 29th of March 1821, omitting only two
passages which have been already extracted in their more essential
context:--

"Keats, too, is gone! He died at Rome, the 23rd February, aged
twenty-five. A genius more purely poetical never