Leigh Hunt discovered Keats, by no means a small thing, for as he himself has said: "To admire and comment upon the genius that two or three hundred years have applauded, and to discover what will partake of applause two or three hundred years hence, are processes of a very different description."[94] With the same power of prophetic discernment, writing in 1828, he realized to the full the greatness of Keats and predicted that growth of his fame in the future which has since taken place.[95] Keats's account of his reception is given in the sonnet _Keen fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there_:
"For I am brimfull of the friendliness That in a little cottage I have found; Of fair hair'd Milton's eloquent distress, And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd; Of lovely Laura in her light green dress, And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned."
The date of the introduction of Keats to Hunt has been placed variously from November, 1815, to the end of the year 1816. He says:
"It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the _Indicator_--and he resided with me while in Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I am one."[96]
If this statement were correct, it would make the meeting about two or three years later than has generally been supposed, for Leigh Hunt did not move to York Buildings until 1818, and he did not begin work on the _Indicator_ until October, 1819. Clarke states positively that the meeting took place at Hampstead. From this evidence Mr. Colvin has suggested the early spring of 1816 as the most probable date.[97] What seems better evidence than any that has yet been brought forward is a passage in _The Examiner_ of June 1, 1817, in Hunt's review of Keats's _Poems_ of 1817, where he says that the poet is a personal friend whom he announced to the public a short time ago (this allusion can only be to an article in _The Examiner_ of December 1, 1816) and that the friendship dates from "no greater distance of time than the announcement above mentioned. We had published one of his sonnets in our paper,[98] without knowing more of him than of any other anonymous correspondent; but at the period in question a friend brought us one morning some copies in verse, which he said were from the pen of a youth.... We had not read more than a dozen lines when we recognized a young poet indeed." This seems conclusive evidence that the meeting did not take place until the winter of 1816, for Hunt's testimony written in 1817, when the circumstance was fresh in his mind is certainly more trustworthy than his impression of it at the time that he revised his _Autobiography_ in 1859 at the age of seventy-five years.