On an October afternoon two hundred years ago the poet John Keats paid a visit to his friend and literary mentor, Leigh Hunt. They were so absorbed in their conversation that they forgot the time, and Keats was obliged to spend the night in Hunt’s cottage, where an extemporary bed was made up for him in the library. But he failed to drop off to sleep, so stimulated was he not only by the conversation with his friend but also by his literary surroundings. He therefore resorted to writing part of the poem later known as Sleep and Poetry, in which he describes the circumstances of the poem’s genesis, attacks the poets of a previous generation, and delivers a manifesto for the new poets such as Hunt himself.