"Endymion" was actually begun in the spring of 1817, much about the same time when the volume "Poems" was published. The first draft was completed (as we have said) on the 28th of November 1817, and by the end of the winter which opened the year 1818 no more probably remained to be done to it. The MS. was subjected to much revision and excision, so that it cannot be alleged that Keats worked in a reckless temper, or without such self-criticism as he could at that date bring to bear. It would even appear, moreover, from the terms of a letter which he addressed to Mr. Taylor, on April 27, 1818, that he allowed that gentleman to make some volunteer corrections of his own. Haydon had spurred him on to the ambitious attempt, which Hunt on the contrary deprecated. Shelley--so the story goes--agreed with Keats that each of them should write an epic within a space of six months. Shelley produced "The Revolt of Islam," Keats the "Endymion." Shelley proved to be the more rapid writer of the two; for his poem of 4815 lines was finished by the early autumn of 1817, while Keats's, numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter which opened 1818. A good deal of it had been done during Keats's sojourn with Mr. Bailey, in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Afterwards, on 8th October 1817, he wrote to Bailey--"I refused to visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfettered scope;" an expression which one might be inclined to understand as showing that Shelley, having now completed "The Revolt of Islam," had invited Keats to visit him at Marlow, and there to proceed with "Endymion,"--not without the advantage it may well be supposed, of Shelley's sympathizing but none the less stringent counsel. Bailey's account of the facts may be given here. "He wrote and I read--sometimes at the same table, sometimes at separate desks--from breakfast till two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task, which was about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his letters. Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, 'That, if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a tree, it had better not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself. When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually read it over to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." The first book of the poem was delivered into the hands of the publisher, Mr. Taylor, in the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a finished chalk-sketch of the author's head, to be prefixed to the volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the volume, an octavo, appeared in April without any portrait. We all know the now proverbial first line in "Endymion," "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."