, not only would his life and health have
been preserved, but his early fame would have been insured. He would
have lived independent of the London world, which was striving to drag
him down in his poetic career, and adding to the sufferings which I
consider the immediate cause of his early death.

In Italy he always shrank from speaking in direct terms of the actual
things which were killing him. Certainly the "Blackwood" attack was one
of the least of his miseries, for he never even mentioned it to me. The
greater trouble which was ingulfing him he signified in a hundred ways.
Was it to be wondered at, that at the time when the happiest life was
presented to his view, when it was arranged that he was to marry a young
person of beauty and fortune, when the little knot of friends who
valued him saw such a future for the beloved poet, and he himself, with
generous, unselfish feelings, looked forward to it more delighted on
their account,--was it to be wondered at, that, on the appearance of
consumption, his ardent mind should have sunk into despair? He seemed
struck down from the highest happiness to the lowest misery. He
felt crushed at the prospect of being cut off at the early age of
twenty-four, when the cup was at his lips, and he was beginning to drink
that draught of delight which was to last his mortal life through, which
would have insured to him the happiness of home, (happiness he had never
felt, for he was an orphan,) and which was to be a barrier for him
against a cold and (to him) a malignant world.

He kept continually in his hand a polished, oval, white carnelian, the
gift of his widowing love, and at times it seemed his only consolation,
the only thing left him in this world clearly tangible. Many letters
which he was unable to read came for him. Some he allowed me to read
to him; others were too worldly,--for, as he said, he had "already
journeyed far beyond them." There were two letters, I remember, for
which he had no words, but he made me understand that I was to place
them on his heart within his winding-sheet.

Those bright falcon eyes, which I had known only in joyous intercourse,
while revelling in books and Nature, or while he was reciting his
own poetry, now beamed an unearthly brightness and a penetrating
steadfastness that could not be looked at. It was not the fear of
death,--on the contrary, he earnestly wished to die,--but it was the
fear of lingering on and on, that now distressed him;