which Hunt said he did "in a grand and earnest tone." Some one in a company quoting the passage from "Henry V.,"-- "So work the honey-bees," and each "picking out his pet plum" from that perfect piece of natural history, Wordsworth objected to the line, "The singing masons building roofs of gold," because, he said, of the unpleasant repetition of the "_ing_" in it! Where were his ears and judgment on that occasion? But I have more than once heard it said that Wordsworth had not a genuine love of Shakspeare,--that, when he could, he always accompanied a "_pro_" with his "_con_," and, Atticus-like, would "just hint a fault and hesitate dislike." Truly, indeed, we are all of "a mingled yarn, good and ill together." I can scarcely conceive of anything more unjust than the account which that ill-ordered being, Haydon, left behind him in his "Diary," respecting the idolized object of his former intimacy, John Keats. At his own eager request, after reading the manuscript specimens I had left with Leigh Hunt, I had introduced their author to him; and for some time subsequently I had frequent opportunities of seeing them together, and can testify to the laudations that Haydon trowelled on to the young poet. Before I left London, however, it had been said that things and opinions had changed,--and, in short, that Haydon had abjured all acquaintance with, and had even ignored, such a person as the author of the sonnet to him, and those "On the Elgin Marbles." I say nothing of the grounds of their separation; but, knowing the two men, and knowing, I believe, to the core, the humane principle of the poet, I have such faith in his steadfastness of friendship, that I am sure he would never have left behind him an unfavorable _truth_, while nothing could have induced him to utter a _calumny_ of one who had received pledges of his former regard and esteem. Haydon's detraction was the more odious because its object could not contradict the charge, and because it supplied his old critical antagonists (if any remained) with an authority for their charge against him of Cockney ostentation and display. The most mean-spirited and trumpery twaddle in the paragraph was, that Keats was so far gone in sensual excitement as to put Cayenne pepper upon his tongue, when taking his claret! Poor fellow! he never purchased a bottle of claret, within my knowledge of him; and, from such observation as could not escape me, I am bound to assert that his domestic expenses never could have occasioned him a regret or a self-reproof.