perversity to my being disappointed since my boyhood."

But now his time had come. At a house where he was very intimate, he met a cousin of the family, a lady of East Indian connections, who had there found an asylum from some domestic discomfort. He first heard much in her praise, which did not interest him, then something in her dispraise which took his fancy. He wrote: "She is not a Cleopatra, but is, at least, a Charmian she has a rich Eastern look: she has fine eyes, and fine manners. When she comes into the room, she makes the same impression as the beauty of a leopardess. She is too fine and too conscious of herself to repulse any man who may address her: from habit she thinks that nothing particular. I always find myself more at ease with such a woman : the picture before me always gives me a life and animation, which I cannot possibly feel with anything inferior. I am, at such times, too much occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble: I forget myself entirely, because I live in her." He then protests that he is not in love with her, but that she kept him awake one night, as a tune of Mozart's might do." He "won't cry to take the moon home with him in his pocket, nor fret to leave her behind him." And then reverting to his love to his brothers and sisters: "As a man of the world, I love the rich talk of a Charmian; as an eternal being, I love the thought of you. I should like her to ruin me, and I should like you to save me."

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Residing in the house of his friend Mr. Brown, and in daily intercourse with this lady, the path of life

would have lain out before him brightly indeed, had it not soon appeared that his circumstances were such as to render their union very difficult if not impossible. The radiant imagination and the redundant heart now came into fierce conflict with poverty and disease. Hope was there, with Genius his everlasting sustainer, and Fear never approached but as the companion of Necessity: but the intensity of passion helped to wear away a physical frame originally feeble, and he might have lived longer if he had loved less.

Several of the Tales and Odes, which are contained in the volume of miscellaneous poetry, had been written by this time: the "Pot of Basil" before his highland tour, and the "Eve of St. Agnes," and the Odes "to Psyche" and "on Melancholy," in the winter; "Lamia" and the "Ode to Autumn" in the advancing year. In most of these the Spenserian influence is still strongly predominant, augmented no doubt by the study of the Italian Poets, to which, during these months, Keats sedulously applied himself. The fragment of " Hyperion which Lord Byron, with an exaggeration akin to his former depreciation, declared to "seem actually inspired by the Titans and as sublime as Eschylus," was written so sensibly under another inspiration as to be distasteful to its author. "I have given up Hyperion," he writes; "there were too many Miltonic inversions in it. Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or rather, artist's humour." In all these Poems, in their different styles, the progress in purity and grace of diction was manifest. The simplicity of language which had been inaugurated by Goldsmith

and Cowper, formalised into a theory by Wordsworth, and by him and other writers both of the Lake and the London schools carried to extravagance, had been adapted by Keats to a class of subjects to which, according to literary taste and habit, it was especially inappropriate, and where it produced on many minds almost the sensation of a classical burlesque. Such of the Gods as had spoken English up to this time had done so in formal and courtly language, and the familiarity of poetic diction which in any case was novel, here appeared extravagant. Now that Endy. mion has taken its place as a great English Poem, and is in truth become a region of delight in which the youth of every generation finds "a week's stroll in the summer," we can hardly feel the force of those objections, which, if they had been temperately urged by critics who in other matters recognised the genius of Keats, would have had due weight not only with the public but with the Poet himself. But while he owed nothing to the sledge-hammer censure he had endured, his own refined judgment and enlarged knowledge induced him to throw off, as puerilities and conceits, much that had before presented itself to his fancy as invention and simplicity, and to send out his noble thoughts and images so worthily arrayed, that if he had lived to maturity, he would probably have had less of peculiarity and mannerism than any other Poet of his time.

An experiment of double authorship between Keats and his friend Brown was not equally successful: the tragedy of "Otho the Great" was thus writtenBrown supplying the fable, characters, and dramatic

The two

conduct; Keats, the diction and the verse. composers sat opposite, Brown sketching all the incidents of each scene, and Keats translating them into his rich and ready language. As a literary diversion the process may have been instructive and amusing, but a work of art thus created could be hardly worthy of the name. As the play advanced, Keats thought the events too melodramatic, and concluded the fifth act alone. The tragedy was offered to, and accepted by, Elliston, Kean having expressed a desire to act the principal part; but it is unlikely that even his representation would have carried through a performance so unsuited for the stage. As a literary curiosity it remains interesting, and abounds with fine phrases and passages marred by the poverty of the construction. It is doubtful whether at this time Keats alone could have produced a much better play he might have written a Midsummer Night's Dream, as Coleridge might have written a Hamlet, but in both the great human element would have been wanting, which Shakspeare combines with high philosophy or with fairy-land.

George Keats paid a short visit to England in the early part of this year and received his share of the property of the youngest brother. He probably repaid himself for moneys advanced for John's education or liabilities, and, thus the share which John received was not above 2001. By this time little, if anything, remained of John's original fortune, and it is deeply to be regretted that the more enterprising brother did not come to some distinct understanding with the other, before he finally

quitted England, as to John's future means of support. Keats's friends believed that George took with him some remnants of John's fortune to speculate with, but no proof of this remains in any of the letters on either side; and, after John's death, when the legal administration of his effects showed that no debts were owing to the estate, George offered, without any obligation, to do his utmost to discharge his brother's engagements.

At the time when these embarrassments began to press most heavily on Keats, he returned one night late to Hampstead in a state of strange physical excitement, like violent intoxication: he told his friend he had been outside the stage-coach and received a severe chill, but added, "I don't feel it now." Getting into bed, he slightly coughed, and said, "That is blood-bring me the candle," and after gazing on the pillow, turning round with an expression of sudden and solemn calm, said, "I know the colour of that blood, it is arterial blood,-I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die." He was bled, fell asleep, and, after some weeks, apparently recovered. During his illness, he told Mr. Brown, “If you would have me recover, flatter me with a hope of happiness when I shall be well; for I am now so weak that I can be flattered into hope." When he said one day, "Look at my hand, it is that of a man of fifty," it was remembered that years before, Coleridge meeting Keats in a lane near Highgate, and shaking hands with him, had turned round to Mr. Hunt, and whispered, "There is death in that hand."