[46] The reference to Barry Cornwall and the cold weather indicate that this letter was written about the 4th of March, 1820; for in the letter to Mr. Dilke, with the Hampstead postmark of that date, already referred to (see page 73), Keats recounts this same affair of the books evidently as a quite recent transaction, and says he “shall not expect Mrs. Dilke at Hampstead next week unless the weather changes for the warmer.” [47] Misspelt _Proctor_ in the original. [48] It is of no real consequence what had been said about “old Mr. Dilke,” the grandfather of the first baronet and the father of Keats’s acquaintance; but it is to be noted that this curious letter might have been a little more self-explanatory, had it not been mutilated. The lower half of the second leaf has been cut off,—by whom, the owners can only conjecture. [49] The piece cut off the original letter is in this instance so small that nothing can be wanting except the signature,—probably given to an autograph-collector. [50] This extreme bitterness of feeling must have supervened, one would think, in increased bodily disease; for the letter was clearly written after the parting of Keats and Brown at Gravesend, which took place on the 7th of May, 1819, and on which occasion there is every reason to think that the friends were undivided in attachment. I imagine Keats would gladly have seen Brown within a week of this time had there been any opportunity. [51] This question may perhaps be fairly taken to indicate the lapse of a month from the time when Keats left the house at Hampstead next door to Miss Brawne’s, at which he probably knew her employments well enough from day to day. If so, the time would be about the first week in June, 1819. [52] He was seemingly in a different phase of belief from that in which the death of his brother Tom found him. At that time he recorded that he and Tom both firmly believed in immortality. See _Life, Letters, &c._, Vol. I, p. 246. A further indication of his having shifted from the moorings of orthodoxy may be found in the expression in Letter XXXV, “I appeal to you by the blood of that Christ you believe in:”—not “_we_ believe in.” [53] This seems to mean that he wrote the letter to the end, and then filled in the words _My dearest Girl_, left out lest any one coming near him should chance to see them. These words are written more heavily than the beginning of the letter, and indicate a state of pen corresponding with that shown by the words _God bless you_ at the end.