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forces in the struggle for self-realization. "In 'Endymion,' he said, "I plunged headlong into the sea and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands and the rocks." With "Isabella" he emerged with a clear sense of his bearings and found a firm footing on the territory over which he was to rule. He has begun to be a great poet by any

test.

XIV

THE SCOTCH TOUR

THE radius of Keats' movements has been extremely short. He made frequent changes of place, yet always within the limits of cultivated nature. He lived practically in a garden with occasional glimpses of the sea. He had never beheld nature beyond the dominion of man, austere, sublime in solitude. It was Wordsworth's poetry, doubtless, that awoke his desire for the mountains and the mystery of the wilds. By the northern tour he hoped to get new strength and a wider range of poetic imagination.

Charles Armitage Brown, now his chief friend and housemate, went with him. Brown was nine years older, bald, bearded, corpulent, with conspicuous spectacles. He had lived in Russia, possessed a small income and dabbled in literature. Keats declared that his muse was the devil. He was a man of the world, something of a sybarite and a ribald. Though he could not

touch the genius of the poet, he loved the man loyally and aided him, like Bailey, in acquiring poise and common-sense.

At Liverpool Keats bade farewell to his brother George and his wife, who were about to emigrate to Kentucky. The two travelers then started for a tramp of the Lake country. They called at Rydal Mount, but found Wordsworth absent, electioneering for the Conservatives. Bad weather prevented the ascent of Helvellyn. They climbed Skiddaw, visited Derwentwater and the cataract of Lodore. At the cataract Keats saw the rocks 'fledged" with trees which gave the suggestion for the lines in the "Ode to Psyche," so enthusiastically praised by Ruskin. At Penrith he found the Druid stones, afterward a powerful figure for the defeated Titans in "Hyperion." The tourists crossed to Ireland. There Keats' most vivid memory was a squalid beldame, smoking a pipe, in a "dog-kennel" sedan chair. They soon returned to Scotland and the Burns country. Ailsa Rock, beheld offshore in a drizzle, brought a dramatic, almost alarming impression of the deluge. Ayrshire filled Keats with delight. "The bonny Doon is the sweetest river I ever saw," he wrote Tom. The mountains of Arran caused him to wonder why they did not incite