quested, this is the principal, that on his grave

should be inscribed,

Here lies one whose name was writ in water.

"Such a letter has come-I gave it to Keats, supposing it to be one of yours--but it proved sadly otherwise. The glances of that letter tore him to pieces. The effects were on him for many days. He did not read it-he could not; but requested me to place it in the coffin, with a purse and a letter (unopened) of his sister.

"The doctor has been here. He thinks

Keats worse. He says the expectoration is the

most dreadful he ever saw-He never met with an instance where the patient was so quickly pulled down. Keats's inward grief must have been beyond all limits. He says he was fretted to death. From the first drops of blood, he knew he must die. No common chance of living was for him,—

"A few days after these melancholy and interesting details were penned, Keats breathed his last-slept sweetly "as a tired child." His dying moments were as tranquil as those of a child; he was resigned, more than resigned to die, he had longed ardently for death, and hailed it as his best friend-had hunted for it more than for hidden treasures. Almost his last words were,-"I feel the daisies growing over me-Shelley calls them the stars that never set.'" He had, on hearing of Keats's intention of proceeding to Italy, made him an offer through Leigh Hunt, of a home with him in Pisa; but Keats, with his love of independence, and knowledge of the trouble and anxiety which his state of health, bodily and mental, would cause, although he gratefully acknowledged, declined the invitation; nor was Shelley aware, on my going to Rome in February, that Keats was so near his end. I was the bearer, from Shelley, of a large packet of letters or MSS.

for his poet-friend, and which, ignorant of his death, that took place a few days after my arrival, on the 23d Feburary,-not on the 27th of December, as erroneously stated in the Preface to Adonais (the date of Mr. Gibson's letter must have been 13th June, not January, 1821,) I sent to his address. In the whirl and confusion consequent on a first sight of Rome, I did not, for some time, make inquiries about Keats,--and none of whom I did enquire, could give me any information respecting him; having no clue to any friend of his. Great cities are indeed great solitudes, and that this "child of grace and genius," "the brave, gentle, and the beautiful," should have fled like some "frail exhalation," and the heartless world should have neither known nor cared for his fate and sufferings, nor shed a tear over his remains, is but a sad and true comment on the words of his friend,"This is a lonely place." It was some time, also, before Shelley was acquainted with his death, for in his letters to me at Rome, he does

not make any allusion to the subject. It has been stated to me by the lady already mentioned, that his papers (those, doubtless, of which I was the bearer among the number,) fell into the hands of Mr. Browne, who had intended to write his memoirs, and who unhappily died in New Zealand, whither he had gone to settle, before his task was completed. It is a mystery to me, why Mr. Browne, or Brown (I am not certain how spelt,) a gentleman little famed in the world of letters, should have been selected as Keats's biographer, instead of Leigh Hunt, or John Hamilton Reynolds, better known by the assumed name of Hamilton, under which he published a volume, entitled, The Garden of Florence, and other poems of great merit, in 1821, and promised at one time a second, in conjunction with Keats, of whom he says," He who is gone, was one of the kindest friends I ever possessed, and yet he was not kinder, perhaps to me, than to others. His intense mind and powerful feeling would, I truly believe, have done

the world some service, had his life been spared. He was of too sensitive a nature, and thus he was destroyed."

Either of these would have been the most appropriate chronicler,-the last was his oldest and most intimate friend, and he was attracted to the first, like Byron, by sympathy for his unjust imprisonment, and a similarity of opinion on politics, for Keats's were most liberal, and

--

not merely confined to words, but actually shown, a record of which would not be devoid of interest.

Among Keats's MSS. was a tragedy, entitled "Otho the Great," a subject inspired by the pages of Tacitus, and on which it appears Shelley had formed an idea of writing a poem, of which Mrs. Shelley has given us two stanzas. The master-passion of Keats's drama was jealousy. It was offered to Drury Lane or Covent Garden, and rejected; but that rejection is no proof of its demerits, for after the review of his Endymion in the Quarterly, it is not likely, had it been a