henceforth to be a man of letters.
John Keats, apprenticed to an apothe-
cary, read Spenser's "Epithalamium"
one golden afternoon in company
with his friend, Cowden Clarke, and
from that hour was a poet by the
grace of God. In both cases the
readers read with the imagination,
or their own natures would not have
kindled with so sudden a flash. The
torch is passed on to those only
whose hands are outstretched to re-
ceive it. To read with the imagina-
tion, one must take time to let the
figures reform in his own mind;
he must see them with great distinct-
ness and realise them with great
definiteness. Benjamin Franklin
tells us, in that Autobiography
which was one of our earliest and
remains one of our most genuine
pieces of writing, that when he dis-

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v?