"Things have happened lately of great perplexity; you must have heard of them; Reynolds and Haydon retorting and recriminating, and parting for ever. The same thing has happened between Haydon and Hunt. It is unfortunate: men should bear with each other; there lives not the man who may not be cut up, aye, lashed to pieces, on his weakest side. The best of men have but a portion of good in them--a kind of spiritual yeast in their frames, which creates the ferment of existence--by which a man is propelled to act, and strive, and buffet with circumstance. The sure way, Bailey, is first to know a man's faults, and then be passive. If after that he insensibly draws you towards him, then you have no power to break the link. Before I felt interested in either Reynolds or Haydon, I was well-read in their faults; yet knowing them both I have been cementing gradually with both. I have an affection for them both, for reasons almost opposite; and to both must I of necessity cling, supported always by the hope that when a little time, a few years, shall have tried me more fully in their esteem, I may be able to bring them together. This time must come, because they have both hearts; and they will recollect the best parts of each other when this gust is overblown." Keats had in the meantime been away on another autumn excursion into the country: this time to Burford Bridge near Dorking. Here he passed pleasantly the latter part of November, much absorbed in the study of Shakspere's minor poems and sonnets, and in the task of finishing _Endymion_. He had thus all but succeeded in carrying out the hope which he had expressed in the opening passage of the poem:-- "Many and many a verse I hope to write, Before the daisies, vermeil rimm'd and white, Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas, I must be near the middle of my story. O may no wintry season, bare and hoary, See it half finished; but let Autumn bold, With universal tinge of sober gold, Be all about me when I make an end."