Letters of John Keats to His Family and Friends
[105] Keats's quotation from his first draft of Lamia continued, says
Woodhouse, for thirty lines more: but as the text varied much from that
subsequently printed, and as Woodhouse's notes of these variations are
lost, I can only give thus much, from an autograph first draft of the
passage in the possession of Lord Houghton.
[106] Keats here copies, with slight changes and abridgments, his letter
to Tom of July 23, 1818 (see above, p. 147), ending with the lines written
after visiting Staffa: as to which he adds, "I find I must keep
memorandums of the verses I send you, for I do not remember whether I have
sent the following lines upon Staffa. I hope not; 'twould be a horrid bore
to you, especially after reading this dull specimen of description. For
myself I hate descriptions. I would not send it if it were not mine."
[107] The beautiful _Ode to Autumn_, the draft of which Keats had copied
in a letter (unluckily not preserved) written earlier in the same day to
Woodhouse.
[108] Sir George Beaumonts and Lord Mulgraves: compare Haydon's _Life_ and
_Correspondence_.
[109] In the interval between the last letter and this, Keats had tried
the experiment of living alone in Westminster lodgings, and failed. After
a visit to his beloved at Hampstead, he could keep none of his wise
resolutions, but wrote to her, "I can think of nothing else ... I cannot
exist without you ... you have absorb'd me ... I shall be able to do
nothing--I should like to cast the die for Love or Death--I have no
patience with anything else" ... and at the end of a week he had gone back
to live next door to her with Brown at Wentworth Place. Here he quickly
fell into that state of feverish despondency and recklessness to which his
friends, especially Brown, have borne witness, and the signs of which are
perceptible in his letters of the time, and still more in his verse, viz.
the remodelled _Hyperion_ and the _Cap and Bells_: see _Keats_ (Men of
Letters Series), pp. 180-190.
[110] Referring to the fairy poem of _The Cap and Bells_, the writing of
which, says Brown, was Keats's morning occupation during these weeks.
[111] Spenser's Cave of Despair was the subject of the picture (already
referred to in Letter CXXIV.) with which Severn won the Royal Academy
premium, awarded December 10 of this year.
[112] George Keats had come over for a hurried visit to England on
business.
[113] Hemorrhage from the lungs; in which Keats recognised his
death-warrant, and after which the remainder of his life was but that of a
doomed invalid. The particulars of the attack, as related by Charles
Brown, are given by Lord Houghton, and in _Keats_ (Men of Letters Series),
p. 193.
[114] Brown having let his house (Wentworth Place) when he started for a
fresh Scotch tour on May 7, Keats moved to lodgings at the above address
in order to be near Leigh Hunt, who was then living in Mortimer Terrace,
Kentish Town.
[115] The _Cap and Bells_ was to have appeared under this pseudonym. By
"begin" Keats means begin again (compare above, CXXXVIII.): he did not,
however, do so, and the eighty-eight stanzas of the poem which are left
all belong to the previous year (end of October--beginning of December
1819).
[116] The volume containing _Lamia_, _Isabella_, _The Eve of St. Agnes_,
_Hyperion_, and the _Odes_.
[117] After the attack last mentioned, Keats went to be taken care of in
Hunt's house, and stayed there till August 12.
[118] Chapman's _Homer_.
[119] The _Maria Crowther_ had in fact sailed from London September 18:
contrary winds holding her in the Channel, Keats had landed at Portsmouth
for a night's visit to the Snooks of Bedhampton.
[120] On the 10th of December following came a renewal of fever and
hemorrhage, extinguishing the last hope of recovery: and after eleven more
weeks of suffering, only alleviated by the devoted care of Severn, the
poet died in his friend's arms on the 23d of February 1821.