the pillow, he slightly coughed and said, "That is blood from my mouth; bring me the candle; let me see this blood." He gazed steadfastly for some moments at the ruddy stain, and then looking in his friend's face with an expression of sudden calmness never to be forgotten, said, "I know the colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood-I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die."

A surgeon was immediately called in, and, after being bled, Keats fell into a quiet sleep. The medical man declared his lungs to be uninjured, and the rupture not important, but he himself was of a different opinion, and with the frequent self-prescience of disease, added to his scientific knowledge, he was not to be persuaded out of his forebodings. At times, however, the love of life, inherent in active natures, got the better of his gloom. "If you would have me recover," he said to his devoted friend and constant attendant, Mr. Brown, "flatter me with a hope of happiness when I shall be well, for I am now so weak that I can be flattered into hope." "Look at my hand," he said, another day, "it is that of a man of fifty."

The advancing year brought with it such an improvement in his health and strength, as in the estimation of many almost amounted to recovery. Gleams of

his old cheerfulness returned, as the following letters evince. His own handwriting was always so clear and good as to be almost clerkly, and thus he can afford to joke at the exhibitions of his friends in that unimportant particular. In the case of Mr. Dilke, the long and useful career of that able and independent critic has been most intelligible in print to a generation of his fellow countrymen, and his cordial appreciation and care of Keats will only add to his reputation for generosity and benevolence.

MY DEAR RICE,

WENTWORTH PLACE,

Feb. 16, 1820.

I have not been well enough to make any tolerable rejoinder to your kind letter. I will, as you advise, be very chary of my health and spirits. I am sorry to hear of your relapse and hypochondriac symptoms attending it. Let us hope for the best, as you say. I shall follow your example in looking to the future good rather than brooding upon the present ill. I have not been so worn with lengthened illnesses as you have, therefore cannot answer you on your own ground with respect to those haunting and deformed thoughts and feelings you speak of. When I have been, or supposed myself in health, I have had my share of them, especially within the last year.

my

I may say, that for six months before I was taken ill I had not passed a tranquil day. Either that gloom overspread me, or I was suffering under some passionate feeling, or if I turned to versify, that acerbated the poison of either sensation. The beauties of nature had lost their power over me. How astonishingly (here I must premise that illness, as far as I can judge in so short a time, has relieved mind of a load of deceptive thoughts and images, and makes me perceive things in a truer light),how astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties upon us! Like poor Falstaff, though I do not "babble," I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy-their shapes and colours are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and the happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers in hothouses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a straw for them. The simple flowers of our Spring are what I want to see again.

Brown has left the inventive and taken to the imitative art. He is doing his forte, which is copying Hogarth's heads. He has just made a purchase of the Methodist Meeting picture, which gave me a horrid dream a few nights ago. I hope I shall sit

under the trees with you again in some such place as the Isle of Wight. I do not mind a game of cards in a saw-pit or waggon, but if ever you catch me on a stage-coach in the winter full against the wind, bring me down with a brace of bullets, and I promise not to 'peach. Remember me to Reynolds, and say how much I should like to hear from him; that Brown returned immediately after he went on Sunday, and that I was vexed at forgetting to ask him to lunch; for as he went towards the gate, I saw he was fatigued and hungry.

I am, my dear Rice,

Ever most sincerely yours,

JOHN KEATS.

I have broken this open to let you know I was surprised at seeing it on the table this morning, thinking it had gone long ago.

[Postmark, HAMPSTEAD, March 4, 1820.]

MY DEAR DILKE,

Since I saw you I have been gradually, too gradually perhaps, improving; and, though under an interdict with respect to animal food, living upon pseudo-victuals, Brown says I have picked up a little flesh lately. If I can keep off inflammation for the next six weeks, I trust I shall do very well. Reynolds

is going to sail on the salt seas.

Brown has been

mightily progressing with his Hogarth. A damn'd melancholy picture it is, and during the first week of my illness it gave me a psalm-singing nightmare that made me almost faint away in my sleep. I know I am better, for I can bear the picture. I have experienced a specimen of great politeness from Mr. Barry Cornwall. He has sent me his books. Some time ago he had given his first published book to Hunt, for me; Hunt forgot to give it, and Barry Cornwall, thinking I had received it, must have thought me a very neglectful fellow. Notwithstanding, he sent me his second book, and on my explaining that I had not received his first, he sent me that also. I shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the weather changes for the warmer. It is better to run no chance of a supernumerary cold in March. As for you, you must come. You must improve in your penmanship; your writing is like the speaking of a child of three years old-very understandable to its father, but to no one else. The worst is, it looks well-no, that is not the worst-the worst is, it is worse than Bailey's. Bailey's looks illegible and may perchance be read; your's looks very legible, and may perchance not be read. I would endeavour to give you a fac-simile of your word "Thistlewood" if I were not minded on the