[Footnote 132: Richter's remark that "some souls fall from heaven like flowers, but ere the pure fresh buds have had time to open, they are trodden in the dust of the earth, and lie soiled and crushed beneath the foul tread of some brutal hoof," has been aptly applied to Keats.] [Footnote 133: Keats modestly admitted the shortcomings of his early compositions. He said, "I have written independently, without judgment; I may write independently and with judgment hereafter. The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man."] [Footnote 134: Collins was deeply attached to a young lady, who did not return his passion, and there is little doubt that the consequent disappointment preyed upon his mind to such an extent as finally to dethrone his reason. Dr. Johnson says nothing of this, but tells us how "he loved fairies, genii, giants, and monsters," and how "he delighted to rove through the meanders of enchantment, to gaze on the magnificence of golden palaces, and to repose by waterfalls of Elysian gardens."] [Footnote 135: Johnson met Collins one day with a book under his arm, at which the former looked inquiringly. "I have but one book," said the melancholy poet; "it is the Bible." After his death, which occurred in his thirty-sixth year, there was found among his papers an ode on the "Superstitions of the Highlands." In his last days he committed many manuscript poems to the flames.] [Footnote 136: Shelley's favorite amusement had been boating and sailing. While returning one day--July 8, 1822--from Leghorn, whither he had been to welcome Leigh Hunt to Italy, his boat was struck by a squall and he was drowned. Thus he met the same fate as his deserted wife.] [Footnote 137: As to Shelley's mode of composition, he said: "When my brain gets heated with thought, it soon boils and throws off images and words faster than I can skim them off. In the morning, when cooled down, out of that rude sketch, as you justly call it, I shall attempt a drawing."] [Footnote 138: This production was circulated in manuscript only for the first three or four years after it was completed. Lockhart says that it was hearing it read from manuscript that led Scott to produce the "Lay of the Last Minstrel."] [Footnote 139: "Genius is rarely conscious of its power," says Hazlitt; "our own idea is that if Gray had had an eye to his posthumous fame, had cast a sidelong glance to the approbation of posterity, he would have failed in producing a work of lasting texture like this."]