Few men

'I know of nothing comparable with them in English literature - know nothing that is so unselfish, so longing, so adoring - nothing that is so mad, so pitiful, so utterly weak and wretched. John Keats was a great genius, but he had not one particle of common-sense - for himself. Few men of genius ever do have.... Why, a boy might have told Keats that the way to woo and win a woman was not to bare his heart before her, as he did before Fanny Brawne, and not to let her know, as he did, that he was her captive. If he had had the least glimmer of common-sense, he never would have surrendered at discretion.'
(RH Stoddard on the publication of Keats's love letters to Fanny Brawne, April 1878)

(notitie na een weekend verdiepen in de biografie van John Keats)