I asked rather nervously if he didn't think Keats had more or less held his own against the drawbacks of time and place. 🔊 He admitted that there were "passages in Keats," but did not specify them. 🔊 Of "the older men," as he called them, he seemed to like only Milton. 🔊 "Milton," he said, "wasn't sentimental." 🔊 Also, "Milton had a dark insight." 🔊 And again, "I can always read Milton in the reading-room." 🔊

"The reading-room?" 🔊

"Of the British Museum. I go there every day." 🔊

"You do? I've only been there once. 🔊 I'm afraid I found it rather a depressing place. 🔊 It—it seemed to sap one's vitality." 🔊

"It does. 🔊 That's why I go there. 🔊 The lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art. 🔊 I live near the museum. 🔊 I have rooms in Dyott Street." 🔊

"And you go round to the reading-room to read Milton?" 🔊

"Usually Milton." He looked at me. 🔊 "It was Milton," he certificatively added, "who converted me to diabolism." 🔊

"Diabolism? Oh, yes? Really?" said I, with that vague discomfort and that intense desire to be polite which one feels when a man speaks of his own religion. 🔊 "You—worship the devil?" 🔊