and more concentrated in you; everything else tastes like chaff in my mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy- the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute's content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. But I will not go on at this rate. A person in health, as you are, can have no conception of the horrors that nerves and a temper like mine go through. What island do' your friends propose retiring to? I should be happy to go with you there alone, but in company I should object to it; the backbitings and jealousies of new colonists who have nothing else to amuse themselves, is unbearable. Mr. Dilke came to see me yesterday, and gave me a very great deal more pain than pleasure. I shall never be able any more to endure the society of any of those who used to meet at Elm Cottage and Wentworth Place. The last two years taste like brass upon my palate. If I cannot live with you I will live alone. I do not think my health will improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you—I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my gloom again. I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibility! it requires a luckier star than mine! it will never be. I enclose a passage from one of your letters, which I want you to alter a little — I want (if you will have it so) the matter express'd less coldly to me. If my health would bear it, I could write a poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a situation as mine. I would show

some one in love as I am, with a person living in such liberty as you do. Shakespeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign manner. Hamlet's heart was full of such misery as mine is when he said to Ophelia, "Go to a nunnery, go, go!" Indeed, I should like to give up the matter at once I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with. I hate men, and women more. I see nothing but thorns for the future. Wherever I may be next winter, in Italy or nowhere, Brown will be living near you with his indecencies. I see no prospect of any rest. Suppose me in Rome - well, I should there see you as in a magic glass going to and from town at all hours, — I wish you could infuse a little confidence of human nature into my heart. I cannot muster any- the world is too brutal for I am glad there is such a thing as the grave - I am sure I shall never have any rest till I get there. At any rate, I will indulge myself by never seeing any more Dilke or Brown or any of their friends. I wish I was either in your arms, full of faith, or that a thunder bolt would strike me.

God bless you.

J. K.

IN

N September, 1820, Keats's health was so much broken that his physicians advised that he go to Italy, hoping that a gentler climate might lengthen his life. He accordingly started on his journey, accompanied by his faithful friend Joseph Severn, the painter. The journey was delayed by storms and a quarantine of ten days at Naples. His health, when he arrived in Naples, was in no way mended. At Naples he received a pressing invitation from Shelley to visit him at Pisa. The travelers pressed on to Rome, however, where Keats was taken in charge by Dr. (afterward Sir James) Clark, who was all kindness and attention to the sufferer. The last letter written by Keats was that to Mr. Brown, from Rome, and dated November 30, 1820. That letter gives some VOL. I.

40

account of his health. In describing the last few days I can do no better than transcribe from Lord Houghton's book the extracts taken from the letters of Mr. Severn, who wrote, on the 14th of December:

"Dec. 14th.-I fear poor Keats is at his worst. A most unlooked-for relapse has confined him to his bed, with every chance against him. It has been so sudden upon what I thought convalescence, and without any seeming cause, that I cannot calculate on the next change. I dread it, for his suffering is so great, so continued, and his fortitude so completely gone, that any further change must make him delirious. This is the fifth day, and I see him get worse.

"Dec. 17th, 4 A. M.- Not a moment can I be from him. I sit by his bed and read all day, and at night I humour him in all his wanderings. He has just fallen asleep, the first sleep for eight nights, and now from mere exhaustion. I hope he will not wake til I have written, for I am anxious you should know the truth; yet I dare not let him see I think his state dangerous. On the morning of his attack he was going on in good spirits, quite merrily, when, in an instant, a cough seized him, and he vomited two cupfulls of blood. In a moment I got Dr. Clark, who took eight ounces of blood from his arm-it was black and thick. Keats was much alarmed and dejected. What a sorrowful day I had with him! He rushed out of bed and said, 'This day shall be my last'; and

but for me most certainly it would. The blood broke forth in similar quantity the next morning, and he was bled again. I was afterwards so fortunate as to talk him into a little calmness, and he soon became quite patient. Now the blood has come up in coughing, five times. Not a single thing will he digest, yet he keeps on craving for food. Every day he raves he will die from hunger, and I've been obliged to give him more than was allowed. His imagination and memory present every thought to him in horror; the recollection of 'his good friend Brown,' of his four happy weeks spent under her care,' of his sister and brother. O! he will mourn over all to me whilst I cool his burning forehead, till I tremble for his intellects. How can he be 'Keats' again after all this? Yet I may see it too gloomily, since each coming night I sit up adds its dismal contents to my mind.

"Dr. Clark will not say much; although there are no bounds to his attention, yet he can with little success 'administer to a mind diseased.' All that can be done he does most kindly, while his lady, like himself in refined feeling, prepares all that poor Keats takes, for in this wilderness of a place, for an invalid, there was no alternative. Yesterday, Dr. Clark went all over Rome for a certain kind of fish, and just as I received it carefully dressed, Keats was taken with spitting of blood. We have the best opinion of Dr. Clark's skill: he comes over four or five times a day, and he has left word for us to call him up, at any moment, in case of danger. My spirits have been quite pulled down. These wretched Romans have no idea of comfort. I am