Something may here be said of the love-letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne. They begin (as already stated) on the 1st of July 1819, and end at some date between his leaving Hampstead, early in May 1820, and quitting Hunt's house in August. We may assume the 10th July 1820, or thereabouts, as the date of the last letter. I cannot say that the character of Keats gains to my eyes from the perusal of this correspondence. Love-letters are not expected to be models of self-regulation and "the philosophic mind"; they would be bad love-letters, or letters of a bad specimen of a lover, if they were so. Still, one wants a man to show himself, _qua_ lover, at his highest in letters of this stamp; one wants to find in them his noblest self, his steadiest as his most ardent aspirations, in one direction. Keats seems to me, throughout his love-letters, unbalanced, wayward, and profuse; he exhibits great fervour of temperament, and abundant caressingness, without the inner depth of tenderness and regard. He lives in his mistress, for himself. As the letters pass further and further into the harsh black shadows of disease, he abandons all self-restraint, and lashes out right and left; he wills that his friends should have been disloyal to him, as the motive for his being disloyal to them. To make allowance for all this is possible, and even necessary; but to treat it as not needing that any allowance should be made would seem to me futile. In the earlier letters of the series we have to note a few points of biographic interest. He says that he believes Miss Brawne liked him for himself, not for his writings, and he loves her the more for it; that, on first falling in love with her, he had written to declare himself, but he burned the letter, fancying that she had shown some dislike to him; that he had all his life been indifferent to money matters, but must be chary of the resources of his friends; that he was afraid of her "being a little inclined to the Cressid"--one of the various passages which show that he chafed at her girlish liking for general society and diversions. On the 10th of October 1819 he had had "a thousand kisses" from her, and was resolved not to dispense with the thousand and first. Early in June 1820 he speaks of her having "been in the habit of flirting with Brown," who "did not know he was doing me to death by inches."--It may be well to give three of the letters as specimens:-- (I.) "25 College Street. "[Postmark] _13 October 1819._