Chapman once took to sheep-farming, renting a large mountain for the purpose. Soon he had a herd of about five hundred sheep at pasture on it. After a time he began to suspect that local people were stealing the sheep and selling them at distant fairs. He then tried to brand the sheep so that they could be recognized but the sheep were wild and he failed to catch any save one, a lame and diseased specimen. This he let go again and went to Keats for advice, Keats advised that several scratching posts should be erected in various parts of the bare mountain and that the posts should be coated with a perpetually moist sort of paint which he himself promised to prepare. The sheep would thus brand themselves within a week.
Chapman was pleased with this ingenious scheme and adopted it immediately. Soon he had the posts erected and very shortly afterwards any of the sheep that came in view were observed to be generously marked with red paint The thieves were evidently foiled and Chapman was loud in his praise of the poet.
But one day the pair were at a local fair and Chapman was surprised to see the lame sheep he had once caught offered for sale by a very shifty-eyed character. The beast was unmarked.
‘I know for a fact that that beast is mine,’ Chapman, said to Keats, ‘but it’s hardly worth raising a row about it as it is diseased and deformed and out of place in my thoroughbred flock.’
‘It didn’t come up to scratch,’ Keats said.