elf'.--'I will write
independently' he says to his publisher--'I have written independently
_without judgment_. I may write independently and _with judgment_
hereafter. In _Endymion_ I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby
have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and
the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and piped a silly
pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice.' He published it with a
preface modestly explaining to the public his own sense of its
imperfection. Nevertheless a storm of abuse broke upon him from the
critics who fastened upon all the faults of the poem--the diffuseness of
the story, its occasional sentimentality and the sometimes fantastic
coinage of words,[xiii:1] and ignored the extraordinary beauties of
which it is full.

Directly after the publication of _Endymion_, and before the appearance
of these reviews, Keats started with a friend, Charles Brown, for a
walking tour in Scotland. They first visited the English lakes and
thence walked to Dumfries, where they saw the house of Burns and his
grave. They entered next the country of Meg Merrilies, and from
Kirkcudbrightshire crossed over to Ireland for a few days. On their
return they went north as far as Argyleshire, whence they sailed to
Staffa and saw Fingal's cave, which, Keats wrote, 'for solemnity and
grandeur far surpasses the finest Cathedral.' They then crossed Scotland
through Inverness, and Keats returned home by boat from Cromarty.

His letters home are at first full of interest and enjoyment, but a
'slight sore throat', contracted in 'a most wretched walk of
thirty-seven miles across the Isle of Mull', proved very troublesome and
finally cut short his holiday. This was the beginning of the end. There
was consumption in the family: Tom was dying of it; and the cold, wet,
and over-exertion of his Scotch tour seems to have developed the fatal
tendency in Keats himself.

From this time forward he was never well, and no good was done to either
his health or spirits by the task which now awaited him of tending on
his dying brother. For the last two or three months of 1818, until
Tom's death in December, he scarcely left the bedside, and it was well
for him that his friend, Charles Armitage Brown, was at hand to help and
comfort him after the long strain. Brown persuaded Keats at once to
leave the house, with its sad associations, and to come and live with
him.

Before long poetry absorbed Keats a