"Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, Hearing the holy priest that to her speaks, And blesses her with his two happy hands, How the red roses flush up in her cheeks! And the pure snow, with goodly vermil stain, Like crimson dyed in grain, That even the angels, which continually About the sacred altar do remain, Forget their service, and about her fly, _Oft peeping in her face, that seems more fair, The more they on it stare;_ But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, Are governèd with goodly modesty, That suffers not one look to glance awry, Which may let in a little thought unsound." That night he took away with him the first volume of the "Faery Queen," and went through it, as I told his biographer, Mr. Monckton Milnes, "as a young horse would through a spring meadow,--ramping!" Like a true poet, too,--a poet "born, not manufactured,"--a poet in grain,--he especially singled out the epithets, for that felicity and power in which Spenser is so eminent. He hoisted himself up, and looked burly and dominant, as he said,--"What an image that is,--_'Sea-shouldering whales'!_" It was a treat to see as well as hear him read a pathetic passage. Once, when reading the "Cymbeline" aloud', I saw his eyes fill with tears, and for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him "till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle; Nay, followed him till he had _melted from The smallness of a gnat to air_; and then Have _turned mine eye and wept_." I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his career,--which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the way to Edmonton. At the last field-gate, when taking leave, he gave me the sonnet entitled, "Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison." Unless I am utterly mistaken, this was the first proof I had received of his having committed himself in verse; and how clearly can I recall the conscious look with which he hesitatingly offered it! There are some momentary glances of beloved friends that fade only with life. I am not in a position to contradict the statement of his biographer, that "the lines in imitation of Spenser, "'Now Morning from her orient charger came, And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill,' etc., "are the earliest known verses of his composition"; from the subject being the inspiration of his first love--and such a love!--in poetry, it is most probable; but certainly his first published poem was the sonnet commencing, 'O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell';