It was with the profoundest feeling of the sacredness as well as the great importance of the record entrusted to me that I approached the letters now at length laid before the public: after reading them through, it seemed to me that I knew Keats to some extent as a different being from the Keats I had known; the features of his mind took clearer form; and certain mental and moral characteristics not before evident made their appearance. It remained to consider whether this enhanced knowledge of so noble a soul should be confined to two or three persons, or should not rather be given to the world at large; and the decision arrived at was that the world’s claim to participate in the gift of these letters was good. The office of editor was not an arduous one so far as the text is concerned, for the letters are wholly free from anything which it seems desirable to omit; they are legibly and, except in some minute and trivial details, correctly written, leaving little to do beyond the correction of a few obvious clerical errors, and such amendment of punctuation as is invariably required by letters not written for the press. The arrangement of the series in proper sequence, however, was not nearly so simple a matter; for, except as regards the first nine, the evidence in this behalf is almost wholly inferential and collateral; and I have had to be content with strong probability in many cases in which it is impossible to arrive at any absolute certainty. Of the whole thirty-seven letters, not one bears the date of the year, except as furnished in the postmarks of numbers I to IX; two only go so far as to specify in writing the day of the month, or even the month itself; and one of these two Keats has dated a day later than the date shewn by the postmark. Those which passed through the post, numbers I to IX, are fully addressed to “Miss Brawne, Wentworth Place, Hampstead,” the word “Middx.” being added in the case of the six from the country, but not in that of the three from London. Numbers X to XVII and XIX to XXXII are addressed simply to “Miss Brawne”; while numbers XVIII, XXXIII, XXXIV, and XXXVI are addressed to “Mrs. Brawne,” and numbers XXXV and XXXVII bear no address whatever. These material details are not without a psychological significance: the total absence of interest in the progress of time (the sordid current time) tallies with the profound worship of things so remote as perfect beauty; and the addressing of four of the letters to Mrs. Brawne instead of Miss Brawne indicates, to my mind, not mere accident, but a sensitiveness to observation from any unaccustomed quarter: three of the letters so addressed were certainly written at Kentish Town, and would not be likely to be sent by the same hand usually employed to take those written while the poet was next door to his betrothed; the other one was, I have no doubt, sent only from one house to the other; but perhaps the usual messenger may have chanced to be out of the way.