Coming back from the seaside about the end of September to take up his quarters with his brothers in their lodging in the Poultry, Keats was soon to be indebted to Clarke for another and invaluable literary stimulus: I mean his first knowledge of Chapman's translation of Homer. This experience, as every reader knows, was instantly celebrated by him in a sonnet, classical now almost to triteness, which is his first high achievement, and one of the masterpieces of our language in this form. The question of its exact date has been much discussed: needlessly, seeing that Keats himself signed and dated it in full, when it was printed in the _Examiner_ for the first of December following, 'Oct^r 1816, JOHN KEATS.' The doubts expressed have been due partly to the overlooking of this fact and partly to a mistake in Cowden Clarke's account of the matter written many years later. After quoting Keats's invitation of October 1815 to come and find him at his lodging in the Borough, Clarke goes on:-- This letter having no date but the week's day, and no postmark, preceded our first symposium; and a memorable night it was in my life's career. A beautiful copy of the folio edition of Chapman's translation of _Homer_ had been lent me. It was the property of Mr. Alsager, the gentleman who for years had contributed no small share of celebrity to the great reputation of the _Times_ newspaper by the masterly manner in which he conducted the money-market department of that journal.... Well then, we were put in possession of the _Homer_ of Chapman, and to work we went, turning to some of the 'famousest' passages, as we had scrappily known them in Pope's version. There was, for instance, that perfect scene of the conversation on Troy wall of the old Senators with Helen, who is pointing out to them the several Greek Captains; with the Senator Antenor's vivid portrait of an orator in Ulysses, beginning at the 237th line of the third book:-- But when the prudent Ithacus did to his counsels rise, He stood a little still, and fix'd upon the earth his eyes, His sceptre moving neither way, but held it formally, Like one that vainly doth affect. Of wrathful quality, And frantic (rashly judging), you would have said he was; But when out of his ample breast he gave his great voice pass, And words that flew about our ears like drifts of winter's snow, None thenceforth might contend with him, though naught admired for show. The shield and helmet of Diomed, with the accompanying simile, in the opening of the third book; and the prodigious description of Neptune's passage to the Achive ships, in the thirteenth book:-- The woods and all the great hills near trembled beneath the weight Of his immortal-moving feet. Three steps he only took, Before he far-off AEgas reach'd, but with the fourth, it shook With his dread entry.