and tell him that he would destroy himself.... Poor dear Keats! had nature given you firmness as well as fineness of nerve, you would have been glorious in your maturity as great in your promise. May your kind and gentle spirit be now mingling with those of Shakespeare and Milton, before whose minds you have so often bowed! May you be considered worthy of admission to share their musings in heaven, as you were fit to comprehend their imaginations on earth! Dear Keats, hail and adieu for some six or seven years, and I shall meet you. I have enjoyed Shakespeare more with Keats than with any other human creature." In writing to Miss Mitford, Haydon added: "His ruin was owing to _his want of decision of character, and power of will_, without which genius is a curse." It will be seen that Haydon's character of Keats is in some respects very highly laudatory: he speaks of the poet's unselfishness and generosity in terms which may possibly run into excess, but cannot assuredly have fallen short. What he remarks as to "irregularities" seems to show that these had (at least in Haydon's opinion) taken somewhat firm root with Keats, and had not merely come and gone with a spurt, as a relief from feelings of depression or mortification; nor can we altogether forget the statement that, on the night of February 3, 1820, which closed with the first attack of blood-spitting, Keats "returned home in a state of strange physical excitement--it might have appeared to those who did not know him one of fierce intoxication." Physical excitement which looks like fierce intoxication, without being really anything of the sort, can be but a comparatively rare phaenomenon; nor do I suppose that an impending attack of blood-spitting would account for such an appearance. Brown, however, was still more positive than Lord Houghton in excluding the idea of intoxication on that occasion; he even says, "Such a state in him, I knew, was impossible"--an assertion which we have to balance against the general averments of Haydon. Keats's irritation at the remonstrances which Haydon addressed to him upon irregularities, real or assumed, is mentioned by the painter without any seeming knowledge of the fact that Keats had (as shown by his letter of September 20, 1819, already cited, to his brother George) cooled down very greatly in his cordiality to his monitor; and he may perhaps have received the remonstrances in a spirit of stubbornness, or of apparent irritation, more because he was out of humour with Haydon than because he could not confute the allegations, had he been so minded. As to the charge of want of decision of character, want of power of will, we must try to understand what is the exact sense in which Haydon applies these terms. He appears from the context to refer more to indefiniteness of literary aim, combined with sensitiveness to critical detraction and ridicule, than to anything