al hours, and resolved,
notwithstanding Hunt's entreaties, to leave the house. He went to
Hampstead that same evening." In Hampstead he had at least the solace of
being received into the dwelling occupied by the Brawne family, being
the same dwelling (next door to that of Brown and Keats) which had been
recently tenanted by the Dilkes; yet the excitement of feeling,
consequent on the continual presence of Miss Brawne, was perhaps harmful
to him. Here he remained until the time for journeying to Italy arrived.
He was still, it seems, left in some uncertainty as to the precise
nature and gravity of his disease, for on the 14th of August he wrote to
his sister: "'Tis not yet consumption, I believe; but it would be, were
I to remain in this climate all the winter." Anyhow, his expectations of
recovery, or of marked benefit from the Italian sojourn, were but faint.

Something may here be said of the love-letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne.
They begin (as already stated) on the 1st of July 1819, and end at some
date between his leaving Hampstead, early in May 1820, and quitting
Hunt's house in August. We may assume the 10th July 1820, or
thereabouts, as the date of the last letter. I cannot say that the
character of Keats gains to my eyes from the perusal of this
correspondence. Love-letters are not expected to be models of
self-regulation and "the philosophic mind"; they would be bad
love-letters, or letters of a bad specimen of a lover, if they were so.
Still, one wants a man to show himself, _qua_ lover, at his highest in
letters of this stamp; one wants to find in them his noblest self, his
steadiest as his most ardent aspirations, in one direction. Keats seems
to me, throughout his love-letters, unbalanced, wayward, and profuse; he
exhibits great fervour of temperament, and abundant caressingness,
without the inner depth of tenderness and regard. He lives in his
mistress, for himself. As the letters pass further and further into the
harsh black shadows of disease, he abandons all self-restraint, and
lashes out right and left; he wills that his friends should have been
disloyal to him, as the motive for his being disloyal to them. To make
allowance for all this is possible, and even necessary; but to treat it
as not needing that any allowance should be made would seem to me
futile. In the earlier letters of the series we have to note a few
points of biographic interest. He says that he believes Miss Brawne
liked him for him