'MY DEAR SIR,--Last evening wrought me up, and I cannot forbear
sending you the following.--Yours imperfectly,

JOHN KEATS.'

The 'following' was nothing less than the noble sonnet,
beginning--'Great spirits now on earth are sojourning,' with an
allusion to Haydon in the lines:

'And lo! whose steadfastness would never take
A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.'

Haydon wrote an enthusiastic letter of thanks, gave the young poet
some good advice, and promised to send his sonnet to Wordsworth.
'Keats,' he records, 'was the only man I ever met who seemed and
looked conscious of a high calling, except Wordsworth. Byron and
Shelley were always sophisticating about their verses; Keats
sophisticated about nothing. He had made up his mind to do great
things, and when he found that by his connection with the
_Examiner_ clique he had brought upon himself an overwhelming
outcry of unjust aversion, he shrank up into himself, his diseased
tendencies showed themselves, and he died a victim to mistakes, on the
part of friends and enemies alike.'

Haydon gives a curious account of his first meeting with Shelley,
which took place in the course of this year. The occasion was a
dinner-party at James Smith's house, when Keats and Horace Smith were
also among the guests. 'I seated myself,' writes Haydon,' right
opposite Shelley, as I was told afterwards, for I did not then know
what hectic, spare, weakly, yet intellectual-looking creature it was,