Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/96

 IV

KEATS

N the slope of a "peak in Darien," in the shadow of the very ridge where stood the Spaniard,

my fellow-traveller captured a superb blue moth, of a species so rare and so difficult to secure that the natives sell one at the price of a day's labor. We took the beautiful creature with us on our transit, and delicately leashed it that night to the jalousies of our veranda on the plaza of the city of Panama. There, far within the old town, a mate was fluttering around it at sunrise,—to me a miracle, yet one predicted by my friend the naturalist. It is just as safe to predict that young poets will chance upon one another, among millions; "there's a special providence" in their conjunction and forgathering, instinct and circumstance join hands to bring this about. The name of Keats is set within a circlet of other names,—those of Clarke, Reynolds, Hunt, Charles Brown, the artists Haydon [82]