nd himself. But after a few bitter
words, he permits himself to be reassured--or is it cajoled?--and tells
her, "I must confess that I love you the more, in that I believe you
have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else." The poor boy, from
a worldly point of view, has "nothing else" to offer.

The lovers' quarrel is over for the nonce. Visitors begin to drop in for
the evening; there is music and singing in Brown's little drawing room.
Keats is very fond of music, and can himself, though possessing hardly
any voice, "produce a pleasing musical effect." He will sit and listen
for hours to a sympathetic performer: but his ear, like all his faculties,
is abnormally sensitive: and a wrong note will drive him into a frenzy.
As the room grows fuller, he becomes restive. "The poetical character,"
he has observed, "is not itself--it has no character. When I am in a
room with people, the identity of everyone in the room begins to press
upon me so that I am in a little time annihilated."

In the light chit-chat of small talk and badinage he has no part: it
bewilders and annoys him. Those about him--especially the women--seem
to show up in their worst colours. Fanny herself appears, as he has
described her at their first meeting, an absolute _minx_. And presently
he contrives to slip stealthily away, and seats himself in some quiet
chamber, alone with the darkness and the May-scents of leaf and blossom.
"I hope I shall never marry," he groans once more; "the roaring wind is
my wife, and the stars through the window-panes are my children: the
mighty abstract idea of Beauty I have in all things, stifles the more
divided and minute domestic happiness. I do not live in this world alone,
but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alone, than shapes of epic
greatness are stationed round me, and serve my spirit the office which
is equivalent to a King's Bodyguard."

The young man now lights his candles, and takes up a familiar and
favourite occupation;--the writing of a long letter to his brother
George in America. This epistle is, as one might expect, almost
entirely concerned with the art of poetry--what else has Keats to write
about?--whether from the side of technique, or inspiration. He dwells on
the adroit management of open and close vowels--he shows how "the poetry
of earth is never dead;" he discusses the need of constant application
to work, and how "the genius of poetry must work out its own salvation
in a man." And me