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LXXII.

To JAMES RICE.

Well Walk,

My dear Rice,

24 November 1818.

Your amende honorable I must call "un surcroit d'amitié," for I am not at all sensible of any thing but that you were unfortunately engaged, and I was unfortunately in a hurry. I completely understand your feeling in this mistake, and find in it that balance of comfort which remains after regretting your uneasiness. I have long made up my mind to take for granted the genuineheartedness of my friends, notwithstanding any temporary ambiguousness in their behaviour or their tongues, -nothing of which, however, I had the least scent of this morning. I say, completely understand; for I am everlastingly getting my mind into such-like painful trammels-and am even at this moment suffering under them in the case of a friend of ours. I will tell you two most unfortunate and parallel slips-it seems down-right preintention: A friend says to me, "Keats, I shall go and see Severn this week."- "Ah! (says I) you want him to take your portrait." And again, "Keats," says a friend, "when will you come to town again?"-"I will," says I, "let you have the MS. next week." In both these cases I appeared to attribute an interested motive to each of my friends' questions-the first made him flush, the second made him look angry:—and yet I am innocent in both cases; my mind leapt over every interval, to what I saw was, per se, a pleasant subject with him. You see I have no allowances to make-you see how far I am

from supposing you could show me any neglect. I very much regret the long time I have been obliged to exile from you; for I have one or two rather pleasant occasions to confer upon with you. What I have heard from George is favourable. I expect a letter from the settlement itself.

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Poor Tom has been so bad that I have delayed your visit hither-as it would be so painful to you both. I cannot say he is any better this morning-he is in a very dangerous state-I have scarce any hopes of him. Keep up your spirits for me my dear Fanny-repose entirely in

Your affectionate Brother

John.

(LXXIII) Thomas Keats was buried at the Church of St. Stephen, Coleman Street, on the 7th of December 1818.

LXXIV.

To RICHARD WOODHOUSE.

Wentworth Place, Hampstead,

My dear Woodhouse,

18 December 1818.

I am greatly obliged to you. I must needs feel flattered by making an impression on a set of ladies. I should be content to do so by meretricious romance verse, if they alone, and not men, were to judge. I should like very much to know those ladies-though look here, Woodhouse-I have a new leaf to turn over: I must work; I must read; I must write. I am unable to afford time for new acquaintances. I am scarcely able to do my duty to those I have. Leave the matter to chance. But do not forget to give my remembrances to your cousin.

Yours most sincerely

John Keats

It seems not unlikely that the "set of ladies" here alluded to was the same that Keats mentions in the letter to George and Georgiana Keats dated "1818-19." If so, Miss Porter and Miss Fitzgerald would scarcely have reciprocated the feeling of being flattered.

LXXV.

To MRS. REYNOLDS.

Little Britain,

Christ's Hospital.

Wentworth Place, Tuesd[ay].

[Imperfect Postmark, De... 1818.]

My dear Mrs. Reynolds,

When I left you yesterday, 'twas with the conviction that you thought I had received no previous invitation for Christmas day: the truth is I had, and had accepted it under the conviction that I should be in Hampshire at the time: else believe me I should not have done so, but kept in Mind my old friends. I will not speak of the proportion of pleasure I may receive at different Houses-that never enters my head-you may take for a truth that I would have given up even what I

Miss Charlotte Reynolds tells me this letter was sent to her mother a few days before Christmas-day 1818. The choice is therefore between Tuesday the 15th of December and Tuesday the 22nd of December; and the later date seems the likelier. Miss Reynolds thinks the other invitation was from Mrs. Brawne. Mrs. Reynolds (Charlotte Reynolds, born Cox) was born on the 15th of November 1761, and died on the 13th of May 1848. Miss Charlotte, the heroine of Hood's charming poem Number One, points out to me that it was on their mother's birthday that her brother John Hamilton Reynolds died. It is worth observing in connexion with this letter the correspondence of thought between the final epigram and Shelley's noted saying (Shelley Memorials, pages 211-12), "If I die tomorrow, I have lived to be older than my father. I am ninety years of age." He did die tomorrow; and who shall say that his scant thirty years were not as ninety of ordinary life?

did see to be a greater pleasure, for the sake of old acquaintanceship-time is nothing-two years are as long

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Upon my Soul I never felt your going out of the room at all—and believe me I never rhodomontade anywhere but in your Company-my general Life in Society is silence. I feel in myself all the vices of a Poet, irrita

(LXXVI) The 23rd of December 1818 was a Wednesday. This letter belongs therefore to the 22nd. The following characteristic letter, from what may be a draft or rough copy, wafered into Haydon's journal, is evidently a reply to this of Keats's, and was probably written within a day or two of the 22nd of December 1818 :

Keats! Upon my Soul I could have wept at your letter; to find one of real heart and feeling is to me a blessed solace; I have met with such heartless treatment from those to whom without reserve I had given my friendship, that I expected no[t] what I wished in human Nature. There is only one besides yourself who ever offer[ed to] act and did act affection, he wa[s] of a different temperament from us; coo[ler] but not kinder, he did his best from moral feeling, and not from bursting impulse; but still he did it ; you have behaved to me as I would have behaved to you my dear fellow, and if I am constrained to come to you at last, your property shall only be a transfer for a limited time on such security as will ensure you repayment in case of my Death-that is whatever part

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