القرن التاسع عشر ، رقم ١٨٢، أبريل ١٨٩٢ [و‎‎٥‎٥] (٢٤٤/١١٤)

1892 THE STORY OF GIF FORD 599"
1819, and kept him much within doors through the subsequent
winter-months. There were indeed, as was the nature of his disease,,
flickerings of hope and of revived energy, when he would go about
again a little, resume his letter-writing, or even set himself to new
poetic tasks. To this time belong an attempted recast of his
Hyperion into a new form and the beginning of a satirical fairy-poem
under the title of Ca-p and Bells. In these attempts themselves^
however, there seemed to be evidence of decaying powers.
In January, 1820, Keats's brother Greorge was over from America
on a brief visit of business; and he had hardly taken his departure
again when, late at night on the 3rd of February, Keats, who had been
chilled that day by unusual exposure out of doors, was seized, in Brown's,
presence, by his first attack of haemorrhage from the lungs. ' That is
my death-warrant,' he said to Brown, after having examined the tell
tale blood-stain from his mouth. And so it proved, though not
immediately. After a week or two of prostration and extreme
weakness, he rallied so far as to be able to go out again pretty freely,
and even let himself be half persuaded by his medical attendant that
he had augured too hastily from the alarming symptom, and that his-
malady might not be consumption after all. So things went on for
a month or two, his doctor still misconstruing the case so confidently
as even to advise his accompanying Brown in another walking-tour in
Scotland, to begin in May. Feeling that to be beyond his strength,
he contented himself, when the time came, with seeing Brown off by
going down the river some way with him in the sailing-vessel
that was to take him to Scotland,—Brown, who would have thrown
his projected walking-tour or anything else to the winds rather than
part with Keats had he seen the necessity of remaining, little
imagining that this was their final farewell. Meanwhile, the negotia
tions of Brown with the theatre-managers for the production of
Keats's tragedy of Otho the Great, though promising at first, had come
to nothing, and the occupation in which he had left Keats in his
apparently convalescent state was the comparatively light one of
revising and seeing through the press such of his poems, written
during the last two years, as appeared suitable for publication. For
the completion of this task he had judged it best to remove from
Brown's house at Hampstead and the too close vicinity of Fanny
Brawne to a lodging in Kentish Town, conveniently near to Leigh
Hunt, who was then residing with his family in Mortimer Terrace-
in that suburb. Here, through part of May and June, he was
engaged with his proof sheets, still very recluse and weak, but
with the recreation of a drive to Hampstead, or even into town,
when the weather permitted. In the last week of June there were two
more attacks of haemorrhage, reducing him so greatly that the Hunts
insisted on taking him into their own house to be nursed. He was
here, wretched and utterly broken down by his relapse, but trying to