own I ever was in, and has the most recommendations of
any." One of his letters from here (September 21) speaks of his being
now almost as well acquainted with Italian as with French, and he adds,
"I shall set myself to get complete in Latin, and there my learning must
stop. I do not think of venturing upon Greek." It is stated that he
learned Italian with uncommon quickness.

Early in the winter which closed 1819 George Keats came over for a short
while from America, his main object being to receive his share of the
money accruing from the decease of his brother Tom, to the cost of whose
illness he had largely contributed. He had been in Cincinnati, and had
engaged in business, but as yet without any success. In some lines which
John Keats addressed to Miss Brawne in October there is an energetic and
no doubt consciously overloaded denunciation of "that most hateful land,
dungeoner of my friends, that monstrous region," &c., &c. John, it
appears, concealed from George, during his English visit, the fact that
he himself was then much embarrassed in money-matters, and almost wholly
dependent upon his friends for a subsistence meanwhile; and George left
England again without doing anything for his brother's relief or
convenience. He took with him L700, some substantial part of which
appears to have been the property of John, absolutely or contingently;
and he undertook to remit shortly to his brother L200, to be raised by
the sale of a boat which he owned in America; but months passed, and the
L200 never came, no purchaser for the boat being procurable. Out of the
L1,100 which Tom Keats had left, George received L440, John hardly more
than L200, George thus repaying himself some money which had been
previously advanced for John's professional education. For all this he
has been very severely censured, Mr. Brown being among his sternest and
most persistent assailants. It must seemingly have been to George Keats,
and yet not to him exclusively, that Colonel Finch referred in the
letter which reached Shelley's eyes, saying that John had been
"infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued
from want and woe;" and Shelley re-enforced this accusation in his
preface to "Adonais"--"hooted from the stage of life, no less by those
on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he
had lavished his fortune and his care." From these painful charges
George Keats eventually vindicated himself w