householder to stop out of astonishment, “I am sorry to say that your conduct is not extraordinary and if my own seems to amaze you, I may tell you something that may amaze you a little more, and I hope will frighten you. It is such people as you who madden the spirits and the patience of the poor and wretched; and if ever a convulsion comes in this country, (which is very probable,) recollect what I tell you ;-you will have your house, that you refuse to put the miserable woman into, burnt over your head."

"God bless me, sir! Dear me, sir!" exclaimed the frightened wretch, and fluttered into his mansion.

Shelley and the woman's son then carried her, as best they could, to the house of Leigh Hunt, where a doctor soon arrived to attend her.

"It appeared," says Leigh Hunt, in relating this anecdote, "that the poor woman had been attending her son in London, on some criminal charge made against him, the agitation of which had thrown her into fits on her return. The doctor said she would inevitably have perished had she lain there a short time longer."

The next day mother and son were sent comfortably home to Hendon, where they were well known, and the poet was overwhelmed with thanks, full of gratitude.*

Leigh Hunt's Autobiography.

CHAPTER VII.

Shelley meets John Keats-Sensitiveness of Keats-Shelley meets James and Horace Smith-Character of Horace Smith-Chancery suit against Shelley-He is deprived of his children.

AMONG the few congenial natures Shelley met under Leigh Hunt's roof, not the least conspicuous was the young poet to whose genius he has paid such a noble tribute in his "Adonais."

John Keats had been introduced to Leigh Hunt by Charles Cowden Clarke, soon after he came to reside at Hampstead, and though not then much more than nineteen, he held in his hand such things as "Sleep and Poetry," and the well-known sonnet "On first looking into

Chapman's Homer," as a title to his friendship. These things, coupled with the fine fervid countenance of their author, excited his admiration, and they became intimate on the spot; and Leigh Hunt tells us he soon found the young poet's heart as warm as his imagination.

An opportunity early offered of bringing the two poets together. Residing at this period with his friend Mr. Armitage Brown, in a little cottage on the Heath, John Keats was a near neighbour of Leigh Hunt's, at whose house Shelley and he frequently met, and many opportunities offered for their becoming intimate.

As might be expected, a mutual good feeling soon grew up, and a friendship, dignified a little later by a noble emulation in their art, was early established between them. The poetic halc which both had cast about themselves, drew each towards the other in a brotherhood of genius, which in many respects assimilated; nor wer their creeds altogether dissimilar; one worship ping the beautiful and the true through the divine medium of love, the other summing up his philosophy in the simple apothegm,

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty."

The understanding between the two poets was not, however, so perfect as might be desired; the overwrought sensibilities of Keats, which illhealth had rendered morbid, brought him to dwell too keenly on his humble origin, and to believe that there could be no true sympathy between him and one of Shelley's superior birth; he even at one period allowed this feeling so far to possess him, as to entertain the idea that his new friend desired to see him underrated.

A true insight into Shelley's character would have shewn poor Keats that the only aristocracy, the only nobility which he acknowledged, was the aristocracy of intellect, the nobility of nature.

It is more than probable Shelley never once thought on the subject of Keats's birth; he saw in the fine, fervid countenance, in the large, dark, sensitive eyes, mellow and glowing with excess of feeling, in the pale, sunken cheek, in the thin, attenuated hand, that the terrible malady was upon him, that the destroying angel was already doing its work, and his warmest and kindliest sympathies were enlisted in his behalf; moreover Shelley saw that in Keats dwelt the true spirit af poetry, a spirit that was too great