He hoisted himself up, and looked burly
and dominant, as he said,--"What an image that is,--_'Sea-shouldering
whales'!_"
It was a treat to see as well as hear him read a pathetic passage. Once,
when reading the "Cymbeline" aloud', I saw his eyes fill with tears, and
for some moments he was unable to proceed, when he came to the departure
of Posthumus, and Imogen's saying she would have watched him
"till the diminution
Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle;
Nay, followed him till he had _melted from
The smallness of a gnat to air_; and then
Have _turned mine eye and wept_."
I cannot quite reconcile the time of our separating at this stage of his
career,--which of us first went to London; but it was upon an occasion
when I was walking thither, and, I think, to see Leigh Hunt, who had
just fulfilled his penalty of confinement in Horsemonger-Lane Prison for
the trivial libel upon the Prince Regent, that Keats, who was coming
over to Enfield, met me, and, turning, accompanied me back part of the
way to Edmonton.
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