p. 47, note 1. Mrs Procter's memory, however, betrayed her when she informed Lord Houghton that the colour of Keats's eyes was blue. That they were pure hazel-brown is certain, from the evidence alike of C. C. Clarke, of George Keats and his wife (as transmitted by their daughter Mrs Speed to her son), and from the various portraits painted from life and posthumously by Severn and Hilton. Mrs Procter calls his hair auburn: Mrs Speed had heard from her father and mother that it was 'golden red,' which may mean nearly the same thing: I have seen a lock in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke, and should rather call it a warm brown, likely to have looked gold in the lights. Bailey in Houghton MSS. speaks of it as extraordinarily thick and curly, and says that to lay your hand on his head was like laying it 'on the rich plumage of a bird.' An evidently misleading description of Keats's general aspect is that of Coleridge when he describes him as a 'loose, slack, not well-dressed youth.' The sage must have been drawing from his inward eye: those intimate with Keats being of one accord as to his appearance of trim strength and 'fine compactness of person.' Coleridge's further mention of his hand as shrunken and old-looking seems exact. p. 78, note 1. The isolated expressions of Keats on this subject, which alone have been hitherto published, have exposed him somewhat unjustly to the charge of petulance and morbid suspicion. Fairness seems to require that the whole passage in which he deals with it should be given. The passage occurs in a letter to Bailey written from Hampstead and dated Oct. 8, 1817, of which only a fragment was printed by Lord Houghton, and after him by Mr Buxton Forman (_Works_, vol. III. p. 82, no. xvi.). "I went to Hunt's and Haydon's who live now neighbours.--Shelley was there--I know nothing about anything in this part of the world--every Body seems at Loggerheads. There's Hunt infatuated--there's Haydon's picture in statu quo--There's Hunt walks up and down his painting-room criticizing every head most unmercifully--There's Horace Smith tired of Hunt--'The Web of our life is of mingled yarn.'... I am quite disgusted with literary men, and will never know another except Wordsworth--no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years--now they live, pour ainsi dire, jealous neighbours. Haydon says to me, Keats, don't show your lines to Hunt on any account, or he will have done half for you--so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds in the Theatre, John told him I was getting on to the completion of 4000 lines--Ah! says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been 7000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people? Haydon received a Letter a little while back on the subject from some Lady, which contains a caution to me, thro' him, on this subject. Now is not all this a most paultry thing to think about?"