might be that the women in the three poems, though "dominant," are
"classed with roses and sweetmeats." I do not see, however, that this
can fairly be said of Madeline in the "Eve of St. Agnes"; she is made a
very charming and loveable figure, although she does nothing very
particular except to undress without looking behind her, and to elope.
Again, Isabella, amenable as she may be to the censure of the severely
virtuous, plays a part which takes her very considerably out of affinity
to roses and sweetmeats. To Lamia the objection applies clearly enough;
but then she is not exactly a woman, and Keats resents so fiercely the
far from indefensible line of conduct which Apollonius adopts in
relation to her that it seems hard if the ladies owed the poet a grudge.
On the whole I incline to think that they must have been misreported;
but the statement in Keats's letter remains not the less significant as
a symptom of his real underlying feeling about women.

It has often been pointed out that Keats's lovers have a habit of
"swooning," and the fact has sometimes been remarked upon as evidencing
a certain want of virility in himself. I cannot affect to be, so far, of
a different opinion. The incident and the phrase do manifestly tend to
the namby-pamby. This may have been more a matter of affected or
self-willed diction on his part--and diction of that kind appears
constantly in his earlier poems, and not seldom in his later ones--than
of actual character chargeable against himself; yet I would not entirely
disregard it in the latter relation either. Keats was a very young man,
with a limited experience of life. He had to picture to himself how his
lovers would be likely to behave under given conditions; and, if he
thought they would be likely to swoon, the probability is that he also,
under parallel conditions, would have been likely to swoon--or at least
supposed he would be likely. Because he thrashed a butcher-boy, or was
indignant at backbiting and meanness, we are not to credit him with an
unmingled fund of that toughness which distinguishes the English middle
class. The English middle-class man is not habitually addicted to
writing an "Endymion," an "Eve of St. Agnes," or an "Ode on
Melancholy."

Sensuousness has been frequently defined as the paramount bias of
Keats's poetic genius. This is, in large measure, unassailably true. He
was a man of perception rather than of contemplation or speculation.
Perception has to