Milnes, with his genial and placable nature, has made an amiable defence
for the apparent coldness of Wordsworth's appreciation,--"That it was
probably intended for some slight rebuke to his youthful compeer,
whom he saw absorbed in an order of ideas that to him appeared merely
sensuous, and would have desired that the bright traits of Greek
mythology should be sobered down by a graver faith." Keats, like
Shakspeare, and every other true poet, put his whole soul into what he
imagined, portrayed, or embodied; and hence he appeared the young Greek,
"suckled in that creed outworn." The wonder is, that Mr. Wordsworth
forgot to quote himself. From Keats's description of his Mentor's
manner, as well as behavior, that evening, I cannot but believe it to
have been one of the usual ebullitions of the egoism, not to say of the
uneasiness, known to those who were accustomed to hear the great moral
philosopher discourse upon his own productions and descant upon those
of a contemporary. During this same visit, he was dilating upon some
question in poetry, when, upon Keats's insinuating a confirmatory
suggestion to his argument, Mrs.
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