Miss Fanny Brawne was eighteen, five years younger than Keats, when he made her acquaintance in 1818. He and his friend, Brown, had settled at Hampstead, in a semidetached house, the other half of which was occupied by Miss Brawne and her mother. The first six months after he fell in love were to Keats months of real happiness. In December 1818 he began _Hyperion_. In February 1819, the most fruitful month in his life, he wrote the _Ode to Psyche, The Eve of St Agnes_, and great part of _Hyperion_. And early in the spring, sitting under a plum-tree in the Brawnes' garden, he wrote his _Ode to the Nightingale_. In other words--his most beautiful poetry was written in the half year during which he took long walks with Fanny, and was still a healthy man. Unfortunately, it being possible for him to see his beloved every day, we have not a single love-letter dating from this, his short period of happiness. In July 1819 he wrote to her for the first time; and all the letters which he sent her from that date until the time of his death were published in 1878. They are not melancholy to begin with. In one of the earliest he writes: "I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair;" and to some objection made by her he answers: "Why may I not speak of your Beauty, since without that I could never have lov'd you?--I cannot conceive any beginning of such love as I have for you but Beauty. There may be a sort of love for which, without the least sneer at it, I have the highest respect and can admire it in others; but it has not the richness, the bloom, the full form, the enchantment of love after my own heart." Very soon, however, the jealousy which was to have such a wearing effect upon the lover appears in his letters. Again and again he exacts promises of eternal devotion. Though not yet ill, he has a vague presentiment that his end is not far off. "I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks," he writes; "your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute!"