f the recipient as well as of the writer. In the long journal-letters
which he wrote to his brother and sister-in-law in America he is
probably most fully himself, for there he is with the people who knew
him best and on whose understanding and sympathy he could rely. But in
none is the beauty of his character more fully revealed than in those to
his little sister Fanny, now seventeen years old, and living with their
guardian, Mr. Abbey. He had always been very anxious that they should
'become intimately acquainted, in order', as he says, 'that I may not
only, as you grow up, love you as my only Sister, but confide in you as
my dearest friend.' In his most harassing times he continued to write to
her, directing her reading, sympathizing in her childish troubles, and
constantly thinking of little presents to please her. Her health was to
him a matter of paramount concern, and in his last letters to her we
find him reiterating warnings to take care of herself--'You must be
careful always to wear warm clothing not only in Frost but in a
Thaw.'--'Be careful to let no fretting injure your health as I have
suffered it--health is the greatest of blessings--with _health_ and
_hope_ we should be content to live, and so you will find as you grow
older.' The constant recurrence of this thought becomes, in the light of
his own sufferings, almost unbearably pathetic.

During the first months of his illness Keats saw through the press his
last volume of poetry, of which this is a reprint. The praise which it
received from reviewers and public was in marked contrast to the
scornful reception of his earlier works, and would have augured well for
the future. But Keats was past caring much for poetic fame. He dragged
on through the summer, with rallies and relapses, tormented above all by
the thought that death would separate him from the woman he loved. Only
Brown, of all his friends, knew what he was suffering, and it seems that
he only knew fully after they were parted.

The doctors warned Keats that a winter in England would kill him, so in
September, 1820, he left London for Naples, accompanied by a young
artist, Joseph Severn, one of his many devoted friends. Shelley, who
knew him slightly, invited him to stay at Pisa, but Keats refused. He
had never cared for Shelley, though Shelley seems to have liked him,
and, in his invalid state, he naturally shrank from being a burden to a
mere acquaintance.

It was as they left England, of