The _Epistles_ are strikingly like Hunt's epistles in spirit, diction and metre. Mr. Colvin has pointed out that the one addressed _To George Felton Mathew_ was written in November, 1815, before Keats had met Hunt and before the publication of the latter's epistles;[181] but Keats may have known them at the time in manuscript through Clarke. The resemblances may also have been due, in part, as in other points of comparison, to an innate similarity of thought and feeling. That Hunt's habit of sonneteering and his preference for the Petrarcan form influenced Keats, is attested by the similarity of the latter's sonnets to Hunt's in form, subjects, and allusions, and by the direct references[182] to Hunt. _On the Grasshopper and the Cricket_[183] and _To the Nile_[184] were written in contest with Hunt. _To Spenser_ is a refusal to comply with Hunt's request that he should write a sonnet on Spenser.[185] The title of _On Leigh Hunt's Poem, The Story of Rimini_[186] speaks for itself.[187] To put it briefly, the _Poems_ of 1817 show Hunt's influence in more ways than any equal number of the young poet's later verses. It is seen in Keats's subject matter[188] and allusions; in his adoption of a colloquial style and diction; in his absorption of Hunt's spirit in the treatment of nature and in his attitude toward women; and in his imitation and exaggerated use of the free heroic couplet in _Sleep and Poetry_, _I stood tiptoe_, _Specimen of an Induction_ and other poems. Of the poem _Lines on seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair_, written in January, 1818, Keats wrote in a letter to Bailey: "I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of _Milton's hair_. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is--as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery Book.... This I did at Hunt's, at his request--perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home."[189] Leigh Hunt's three sonnets on the same subject, published in _Foliage_, have been already spoken of in the preceding chapter. _Endymion_ shows a decided decrease in the ascendancy of Hunt's mind over Keats, for the sway of his intellectual supremacy had been shaken before suspicions arose in Keats's mind as to the disinterestedness of his motives. What influence lingers is seen in the general theory of versification and in the diction, with some trace in matters of taste. A marvellous luxury of imagery, glimpses into the heights and depths of nature, an absorbing love of Greek fable, a deeper infusion of the ideal have superseded what Mr. Colvin has called the "sentimental chirp" of Hunt.[190] Specific passages in _Endymion_ reminiscent of Hunt are rare, but Book III, ll. 23-30 recalls the general descriptive style in the _Descent of Liberty_ and summarizes in a few lines pages of Hunt's diffuse, spectacular imagery. Once or twice Keats seems to have fallen into the colloquial manner in dialogue: