en found out to be a gross delusion by a large number
of people, and might just as well have been found out by his betrothed
bride in addition. I know of only one portrait of Miss Brawne; it is a
silhouette by Edouart, engraved in two of Mr. Forman's publications. A
silhouette is one of the least indicative forms of portraiture for
enabling one to judge whether the sitter was handsome or not. This
likeness shows a very profuse mass of hair, a tall, rather sloping,
forehead, a long and prominent aquiline nose, a mouth and chin of the
_petite_ kind, a very well-developed throat, and a figure somewhat small
in proportion to the head. The face is not of the sort which I should
suppose to have ever been beautiful in an artist's eyes, or in a poet's
either; and indeed Keats's description of Miss Brawne, which I have just
cited, is qualified, chilly, and critical, with regard to beauty.
Nevertheless, his love-letters to Miss Brawne, most of which have been
preserved and published, speak of her beauty very emphatically. "The
very first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal;" "I cannot
conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you, but beauty;" "all
I can bring you is a swooning admiration of your beauty." It seems
probable that Keats was the declared lover of Miss Brawne in April 1819
at the latest--more probably in February; and when his first published
letter to her was written, July 1819, he and she must certainly have
been already engaged, or all but engaged, to marry. This was contrary to
Mrs. Brawne's liking. They appear to have contemplated--anything but
willingly on the poet's part--a tolerably long engagement; for he was a
young man of twenty-three, with stinted means, no regular profession,
and no occupation save that of producing verse derided in the high
places of criticism. He spoke indeed of re-studying in Edinburgh for the
medical profession: this was a vague notion, with which no practical
beginning was made. An early marriage, followed by a year or so of
pleasuring and of intellectual advancement in some such place as Rome or
Zurich, was what Keats really longed for.

We must now go back a little--to December 1818. Haydon was then still
engaged upon his picture of Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and found his
progress impeded by want of funds, and by a bad attack, from which he
frequently suffered, of weakness of eyesight. On the 22nd of the month,
Keats, with conspicuous generosity--and although he