I asked him if he often read here.

"Yes; things of this kind I read here," he answered, indicating the
title of his book--"The Poems of Shelley."

"Anything that you really"--and I was going to say "admire?" But I
cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done so,
for he said with unwonted emphasis, "Anything second-rate."

I had read little of Shelley, but, "Of course," I murmured, "he's very
uneven."

"I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with
him. A deadly evenness. That's why I read him here. The noise of this
place breaks the rhythm. He's tolerable here." Soames took up the book
and glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames's laugh was a short,
single, and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any
movement of the face or brightening of the eyes. "What a period!"
he uttered, laying the book down. And, "What a country!" he added.

I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or less
held his own against the drawbacks of time and place. He admitted that
there were "passages in Keats," but did not specify them. Of "the older
men," as he called them, he seemed to like only Milton. "Milton," he
said, "wasn't sentimental." Also, "Milton had a dark insight." And again,
"I can always read Milton in the reading-room."

"The reading-room?"