"I will say nothing about our friendship, or rather yours to me,
more than that, as you deserve to escape, you will never be so
unhappy as I am. I should think of--you[11] in my last moments. I
shall endeavour to write to Miss Brawne if possible to-day.[12] A
sudden stop to my life in the middle of one of these letters
would be no bad thing, for it keeps one in a sort of fever
awhile.

"Though fatigued with a letter longer than any I have written for
a long while, it would be better to go on for ever than awake to
a sense of contrary winds. We expect to put into Portland Roads
to-night. The captain, the crew, and the passengers are all
ill-tempered and weary. I shall write to Dilke. I feel as if I
was closing my last letter to you."

The ship at last proceeded on her voyage, and in the Bay of Biscay
encountered a severe squall. Keats soon afterwards read the storm-scene
in Byron's "Don Juan": he threw the book away in indignation, denouncing
the author's perversity of mind which could "make solemn things gay, and
gay things solemn." Late in October he reached the harbour of Naples,
and had to perform a tedious quarantine of ten days. After landing on
the 31st,[13] he received a second letter from Shelley, then at Pisa,
urging him to come to that city. The first letter on this subject,
dated in July, had invited Keats to the hospitality of Shelley's own
house; but in November this project had been given up, as "we are not
rich enough for that sort of thing"--although Shelley still intended (so
he wrote to Leigh Hunt) "to be the physician both of his body and his
soul,--to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish."
Keats, however, had brought with him a letter of introduction to Dr.
(afterwards Sir James) Clark, in Rome,--or indeed he may have met him
before leaving England--and he decided to proceed to Rome rather than
Pisa. Dr. Clark engaged for him a lodging opposite his own: it was in
the first house on the right as you ascend the steps of the Trinita del
Monte. The precise date when Keats reached Rome, his last place of
torture and of rest, does not appear to be recorded: it was towards the
middle of November. He was at first able to walk out a little, and
occasionally to ride. Dr. Clark attended his sick bed with the most
exemplary assiduity and kindness. He pronounced (so Keats wrote to Brown
in a letter of November 30th, which is perhaps the last he ever pen