appreciate the poet, but the unearthly strangeness of it all, the
delicate contradiction of laws and behaviours known to freshmen,
tickled his keen wits and emotions until they brimmed into puzzled
laughter. "Away! Away!" he would cry--

For I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards--

and he would shout with merriment. Beaded bubbles winking at the
brim; Throbbing throats' long, long melodious moan; Curious
conscience burrowing like a mole; Emprison her soft hand and let her
rave; Men slugs and human serpentry; Bade her steep her hair in
weird syrops; Poor weak palsy-stricken churchyard thing; Shut her
pure sorrow-drops with glad exclaim--such lines were to him a
constant and exhilarating excitement. In the very simplicity and
unsophistication of his approach to the poet was a virgin naïveté of
discernment that an Edinburgh Reviewer would rarely attain. Here, he
dimly felt, was the great key

To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy,
... aye, to all the mazy world
Of silvery enchantment.

And in line after line of Endymion, as we pored over them together,
he found the clear happiness of a magic that dissolved everything
into lightness and freedom. It is agreeable to remember this man,
preparing to be a building contractor, who loved Keats because he
made him laugh. I wonder if the critics have not too insistently