which John made no attempt to unbosom himself to him as of old. "He was not the same being," wrote George, looking back on the time some years afterwards; "although his reception of me was as warm as heart could wish, he did not speak with his former openness and unreserve, he had lost the reviving custom of venting his griefs." In a letter which the poet wrote to his sister-in-law while her husband was in England, he attempts to keep up the old vein of lively affectionate fun and spirits, but soon falls involuntarily into one of depression and irritation against the world. Of his work he says nothing, and it is clear from Brown's narrative that both his morning and his evening task--the _Cap and Bells_ and the _Vision_--had been dropped some time before this[66], and left in the fragmentary state in which we possess them. George left for Liverpool on Friday Jan. 28. A few days later Keats was seized by the first overt attack of the fatal mischief which had been set up in his constitution by the exertions of his Scotch tour, and which recent agitations, and perhaps imprudences, had aggravated. "One night," writes Brown--it was on the Thursday Feb. 3--"at eleven o'clock, he came into the house in a state that looked like fierce intoxication. Such a state in him, I knew, was impossible[67]; it therefore was the more fearful. I asked hurriedly, 'What is the matter? you are fevered?' 'Yes, yes,' he answered, 'I was on the outside of the stage this bitter day till I was severely chilled,--but now I don't feel it. Fevered!--of course, a little.' He mildly and instantly yielded, a property in his nature towards any friend, to my request that he should go to bed. I followed with the best immediate remedy in my power. I entered his chamber as he leapt into bed. On entering the cold sheets, before his head was on the pillow, he slightly coughed, and I heard him say,--'That is blood from my mouth.' I went towards him; he was examining a single drop of blood upon the sheet. 'Bring me the candle, Brown, and let me see this blood.' After regarding it steadfastly, he looked up in my face, with a calmness of countenance that I can never forget, and said,--'I know the colour of that blood;--it is arterial blood;--I cannot be deceived in that colour;--that drop of blood is my death-warrant;--I must die.' I ran for a surgeon; my friend was bled; and, at five in the morning, I left him after he had been some time in a quiet sleep."