II. LEIGH HUNT'S FAREWELL WORDS TO KEATS published in The Indicator for the 20th of September 1820, on Keats's departure for Italy. AH, dear friend, as valued a one as thou art a poet,John Keats, we cannot, after all, find it in our hearts to be glad, now thou art gone away with the swallows to seek a kindlier clime. The rains began to fall heavily, the moment thou wast to go;—we do not say, poet-like, for thy departure. One tear in an honest eye is more precious to thy sight, than all the metaphorical weepings in the universe; and thou didst leave many starting to think how many months it would be till they saw thee again. And yet thou didst love metaphorical tears too, in their way; and couldst always liken every thing in This tender little address is another of the many refutations of that ignorant and heartless accusation made against Leigh Hunt, that he was not staunch in his friendship to Keats. Hunt might have satisfied the calls of friendship by sending these farewell words direct to Keats in manuscript; but he chose that friends and enemies alike should know how dear to "the Indicator" was the much-maligned author of Endymion; and so he printed his farewell in bold type conspicuously at the end of his number. Compare the expression a mighty soul in a little body" with Keats's own words at page 164 of this volume-"My Mind has been the most discontented and restless one that ever was put into a body too small for it." 66 nature to something great or small; and the rains that beat against thy cabin-window will set, we fear, thy overworking wits upon many comparisons that ought to be much more painful to others than thyself;-Heaven mend their envious and ignorant numskulls. But thou hast "a mighty soul in a little body;" and the kind cares of the former for all about thee shall no longer subject the latter to the chance of impressions which it scorns; and the soft skies of Italy shall breathe balm upon it; and thou shalt return with thy friend the nightingale, and make all thy other friends as happy with thy voice as they are sorrowful to miss it. The little cage thou didst sometime share with us, looks as deficient without thee, as thy present one may do without us; but-farewell for awhile: thy heart is in our fields: and thou wilt soon be back to rejoin it. III. JOSEPH SEVERN'S ACCOUNT OF THE LAST DAYS OF KEATS. LORD HOUGHTON has given us a most interesting series of extracts from letters written by Severn while tending at the death bed of Keats, and immediately after the poet's death. These extracts are here reprinted with some additions from manuscript sources. In the Life and Letters, immediately after the letter from Keats to Brown which is numbered CLVII in this edition (pages 113-15 of the present volume), is the following paragraph :— "After such words as these, the comments or the description of any mere biographer must indeed jar upon every mind duly impressed with the reality of this sad history. The voice, which we have followed so long in all its varying, yet ever-true, modulations of mirth and melancholy, of wonder and of wit, of activity and anguish, and which has conferred on these volumes whatever value they may possess, is now silent, and will not be heard on earth again. The earnest utterances of the devoted friend, who transmitted to other listening affections the details of those weary hours and who followed to the very last the ebb and flow of that wave of fickle life, remain the fittest substitute for those sincere revelations which can come to us no more. It is left to passages from the letters of Mr. Severn to express in their energetic sim plicity the final accidents of the hard catastrophe of so much that only asked for healthy life to be fruitful, useful, powerful, and happy." We are not informed to whom Severn addressed the December letters from which the following extracts are given by his Lordship: "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 till 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 this 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 obliged to do everything for him. I wish you were here. "I have just looked at him. This will be a good night." The next letter is given in full from the manuscript : My dear Madam Rome Jany 11th. 1821 I said that "the first good news I had should be for the kind Mrs. Brawn[e] "—I am thankful and delighted to make good my promise-to be able at all to do it |