[38] It may be that consideration for his correspondent induced this moderation of speech: presumably the scene here referred to is that so graphically given in Lord Houghton’s _Life_ (Vol. II, pp. 53-4), where we read, not that he merely “felt it possible” he “might not survive,” but that he said to his friend, “I know the colour of that blood,—it is arterial blood—I cannot be deceived in that colour; that drop is my death-warrant. I must die.” [39] This sentence indicates the lapse of perhaps about a week from the 3rd of February, 1820. [40] This coupling of Brown’s name with ideas of Fanny’s absence or presence seems to be a curiously faint indication of a painful phase of feeling more fully developed in the sequel. See Letters XXI, XXIV, XXVI, XXXV, and XXXVII. [41] If we are to take these words literally, this letter brings us to the 24th of February, 1820, adopting the 3rd of February as the day on which Keats broke a blood-vessel. [42] George Keats’s Mother-in-law. The significant _but_ indicates that the absence of Brown was still, as was natural, more or less a condition of the presence of Miss Brawne. That Keats had, however, or thought he had, some reason for this condition, beyond the mere delicacy of lovers, is dimly shadowed by the cold _My dear Fanny_ with which in Letter XXI the condition was first expressly prescribed, and more than shadowed by the agonized expression of a morbid sensibility in Letters XXXV and XXXVII. Probably a man in sound health would have found the cause trivial enough. [43] The MS. of _Lamia, Isabella, &c._ (the volume containing _Hyperion_, and most of Keats’s finest work). [44] I presume the reference is to Mr. Dilke. [45] This statement and a general similarity of tone induce the belief that this letter and the preceding one were written about the same time as one to Mr. Dilke, given by Lord Houghton (in the _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. II, p. 57), as bearing the postmark, “Hampstead, March 4, 1820.” In that letter Keats cites his friend Brown as having said that he had “picked up a little flesh,” and he refers to his “being under an interdict with respect to animal food, living upon pseudo-victuals,”—just as in Letter XXV he speaks to Miss Brawne of his “feeding upon sham victuals.” In the letter to Dilke he says: “If I can keep off inflammation for the next six weeks, I trust I shall do very well.” In Letter XXV he expresses to Miss Brawne the hope that he may go out for a walk with her on the 1st of May. If these correspondences may be trusted, we are now dealing with letters of the first week in March, of which period there are still indications in Letter XXVIII.