When Lord Houghton’s inestimable volumes of 1848 were given to the world there might have been indelicacy in making too close a scrutiny into the bearings of these passages; but the time has now come when such cannot be the case; and I am enabled to give the grounds on which it is absolutely certain that the allusion here was not to Miss Brawne. As Lord Houghton has elsewhere recorded, Keats met Miss Brawne at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Dilke, who had no daughters, while the relationship of “the Misses ——” and “Mrs. ——” of the passage in question is clearly that of mother and daughters. Mrs. Brawne had already been settled with her children at Hampstead for several years at this time, whereas this cousin of “the Misses ——” had just arrived when Keats returned there from Teignmouth. The “Charmian” of this anecdote was an East-Indian, having a grandfather to quarrel with; while Miss Brawne never had a grandfather living during her life, and her family had not the remotest connexion with the East Indies. Moreover, Keats’s sister, who is still happily alive, assures me positively that the reference is not to Miss Brawne. In regard to the blank for a surname, I had judged from various considerations internal and external that it should be filled by that of Reynolds; and, on asking Mr. Severn (without expressing any view whatever) whether he knew to whom the story related, he wrote to me that he knew the story well from Keats, and that the reference is to the Misses Reynolds, the sisters of John Hamilton Reynolds. Mr. Severn does not know the name of the cousin of these ladies. It is clear then that the lady who had impressed Keats some little time before the 29th of October, 1818, and was still fresh in his mind, was not Fanny Brawne. That the impression was not lasting the event shewed; and we may safely assume that it was really limited in the way which Keats himself averred,—that he was not “in love with her.” But it is incredible, almost, that, in his affectionate frankness with his brother, he would ever have written thus of another woman, had he been already enamoured of Fanny Brawne. This view is strengthened by reading the letter to the end: in such a perusal we come upon the following passage: