By this time the medical profession was renounced, and Keats had given himself up to poetry and to love, for he had met Fanny Brawne, and life was changed to him as only an absorbing passion could change it. Hitherto the women who had chiefly influenced him seem to have been his sister Fanny and his sister-in-law, the wife of George Keats. Of the latter he says, in a letter written to her and to his brother out in America: 'The moon is now shining full and 'brilliant she is the same to me in matter

that you are in spirit. If you were here, my dear sister, I could not pronounce the words 'which I can write to you from a distance. I 'have a tenderness for you, and an admira'tion, which I feel to be as great and more 'chaste than I can have for any woman in 'the world. You will mention Fanny.' Her 'character is not formed, her identity does not

press upon me as yours does. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, I may one day feel 'for her as much as I do for you. I know 'not how it is, my dear brother, I have never 'made any acquaintance of my own, nearly all

His sister.

'through your medium: through you I know not only a sister, but a glorious human being.'

There can be little doubt that this sister-inlaw was one of the pure and beautiful influences at work in his mind when he wrote 'Endymion.' It is as impossible not to feel the shadowy presence of a high ideal throughout its pages, as it is in 'Lamia' not to feel the presence of a woman loved with feverish passion and restless dissatisfaction. But in this same letter Keats goes on to mention having met a lady who had deeply impressed him. She is not a Cleopatra, 'but she is at least a Charmian; she has a rich 'Eastern look; she has fine eyes and fine man

ners. When she comes into the room, she 'makes the same impression as the beauty of a 'leopardess. . . . She kept me awake one night, ' as a tune of Mozart's might do. I speak of 'the thing as a pastime and amusement, than 'which I can feel none deeper than a conversa'tion with an imperial woman, the very "Yes" " and "No" of whose life is to me a banquet. 'She is a fine thing, speaking in a worldly way, 'for there are two distinct tempers of mind in 'which we judge of things-the worldly, theatrical,

' and pantomimical; and the uncarthly, spiritual,
' and ethereal. In the former, Buonaparte, Lord
'Byron, and this Charmian hold the first place
in our minds: in the latter, John Howard,
'Bishop Hooker rocking his child's cradle, and
'you, my dear sister, are the conquering feelings.
'As a man of the world, I love the rich talk of
'a Charmian; as an eternal being, I love the
'thought of you. I should like her to ruin me,
' and I should like you to save me.

I am free from men of pleasure's cares,

By dint of feelings far more deep than theirs.

This is Lord Byron's, and is one of the finest 'things he has said.'

In his Memoir of Keats, Lord Houghton quotes this passage as referring to Fanny Brawne, but Mr. Buxton Forman, in editing the letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne, brings some proof to show that it refers to some one else. The real value of the passage lies in the spiritual and refined appreciation which it shows Keats had for his sister-in-law, and the description of 'Charmian' is certainly very like that which is given of Miss Brawne in a letter written a month or two later. 'She is about my height, with a

'fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort: 'she wants sentiment in every feature; she 'manages to make her hair look well; her nostrils ' are very fine though a little painful; her mouth 'is bad and good; her profile is better than her 'full face, which indeed is not full, but pale and 'thin, without showing any bone; her shape is very ' graceful, and so are her movements; her arms ' are good, her hands bad-ish, her feet tolerable.'

His letters to her, which have lately been published, give an impression of passionate suffering love without rest or calm, claiming no sympathy with his higher life; for his poetry, which was his true life, is rarely mentioned, and he seems content with pouring out an elemental worship of beauty as embodied in her whom he loved. He became engaged to her, but he had not money enough to enable him to marry, and he loved and suffered with the intensity which belongs to such a nature as his :-a glimpse into such suffering sometimes startles an easy-going world into a momentary consciousness of a heaven and hell in the midst of its every-day life, of which it goes on its unheeding way in profoundest ignorance.

By this time the great fragment 'Hyperion was begun. It was probably the first version of it, which Keats says was given up because 'there were too many Miltonic inversions in it,' and he did not live to finish the second.

It was to this effort he makes allusion in the Preface to 'Endymion.' 'I hope I have not in 'too late a day touched the beautiful mythology ' of Greece, and dulled its brightness, for I wish 'to try once more before I bid it farewell.' And in the last book of 'Endymion' itself, the line,

Thy lute-voiced brother will I sing ere long, evidently refers to Apollo in the third book of 'Hyperion.'

It was of 'Hyperion' that Lord Byron, who was not disposed to do Keats full justice, wrote: 'It seems actually inspired by the Titans and 'sublime as Æschylus;' and Shelley said, 'I 'consider the fragment of "Hyperion" as second 'to nothing that was ever produced by a writer ' of the same years.'

The Eve of Saint Agnes,'' The Pot of Basil, some of the odes, and 'Lamia,' were written about this time; and a tragedy called Otho the 'Great' was composed in partnership with a