Like travellers
who at the end of a long day's journey among an inhospitable peasantry
are, against their expectation received in a kindly farm, and find
themselves talking glibly to their host of matters which are unimportant
and unknown to them--the price of land, and the points of a pedigree
bull--so we follow with an intense and intelligent absorption a subtle
argument in 'Endymion' in which at no moment we really believe. On the
contrary, we are convinced (when we are free from our author's friendly
spell) that Keats wrote 'Endymion' at all adventure. The words of the
cancelled preface: 'Before I began I had no inward feel of being able to
finish; and as I proceeded my steps were all uncertain,' were, we are
sure, quite literally true, and if anything an under-statement of his
lack of argument and plan. Not that we believe that Keats was incapable
of or averse to 'fundamental brain-work'--he had an understanding more
robust, firmer in its hold of reality, more closely cast upon
experience, than any one of his great contemporaries, Wordsworth not
excepted--but at that phase in his evolution he was simply not concerned
with understanding.
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