The letters fall naturally into three groups, namely (1) those written during Keats’s sojourn with Charles Armitage Brown in the Isle of Wight, and his brief stay in lodgings in Westminster in the Summer and Autumn of 1819, (2) those written from Brown’s house in Wentworth Place during Keats’s illness in the early part of 1820 and sent by hand to Mrs. Brawne’s house, next door, and (3) those written after he was able to leave Wentworth Place to stay with Leigh Hunt at Kentish Town, and before his departure for Italy in September, 1820. Of the order of the first and last groups there is no reasonable doubt; and, although there can be no absolute certainty in regard to the whole series of the central group, I do not think any important error will have been made in the arrangement here adopted. The slight service to be done beside this of arranging the letters, involving a great deal of minute investigation, was simply to elucidate as far as possible by brief foot-notes references that were not self-explanatory, to give such attainable particulars of the principal persons and places concerned as are desirable by way of illustration, and to fix as nearly as may be the chronology of that part of Keats’s life at the time represented by these letters,—especially the two important dates involved. The first date is that of the passion which Keats conceived for Miss Brawne,—the second that of the rupture of a blood-vessel, marking distinctly the poet’s graveward tendency,—two events probably connected with some intimacy, and concerning which it is not unnoteworthy that we should have to be making guesses at all. If these and other conjectural conclusions turn out to be inaccurate (which I do not think will be the case), they can only be proved so by the production of more documents; and if documents be produced confuting my conclusions, my aim will have been attained by two steps instead of one.