Book VIII

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[33] Charles Wells, a schoolmate of Tom Keats; afterwards author of _Stories after Nature_ and _Joseph and his Brethren_. For Keats's subsequent cause of quarrel with him see below, Letter XCII.

[34] An admirable phrase!--if only _penetralium_ were Latin.

[35] _Laon and Cythna_, presently changed to _The Revolt of Islam_.

[36] The family of Charles Wells lived at this address.

[37] Both in fact appeared in the number for Sunday, January 4: see postscript below.

[38] The Hampstead doctor who attended the Keats brothers.

[39] The text of this letter is described by its American editor (who seems to have mistaken the order of one or two passages) as written in an evident hurry and almost illegible.

[40] Mr. Kingston was a Commissioner of Stamps, an acquaintance and tiresome hanger-on of Wordsworth.

[41] For a more glowing account of this supper party of December 28, 1817, compare Haydon, _Autobiography_, i. p. 384. The Mr. Ritchie referred to started on a Government mission to Fezzan in September 1818, and died at Morzouk the following November. An account of the expedition was published by his travelling companion, Captain G. F. Lyon, R.N.

[42] The manager: of whom Macready in his _Reminiscences_ has so much that is pleasant to say.

[43] Tea-merchant, of Pancras Lane and Walthamstow: guardian to the Keats brothers and their sister.

[44] Of course a mere delusion; but Hunt and those of his circle retained for years afterwards an impression that Scott had in some way inspired or encouraged the _Cockney School_ articles.

[45] Alluding to two sonnets of Reynolds _On Robin Hood_, copies of which Keats had just received from him by post. They were printed in the _Yellow Dwarf_ (edited by John Hunt) for February 21, 1818, and again in the collection of poems published by Reynolds in 1821 under the title _A Garden of Florence_.

[46] Both the _Robin Hood_ and the _Mermaid_ lines as afterwards printed vary in several places from these first drafts.

[47] Henry Crabb Robinson, author of the _Diaries_.

[48] The Olliers (Shelley's publishers) had brought out Keats's _Poems_ the previous spring, and the ill success of the volume had led to a sharp quarrel between them and the Keats brothers.

[49] Georgiana Wylie, to whom George Keats was engaged.

[50] This letter has been hitherto erroneously printed under date September 1818.

[51] Reading doubtful.

[52] The five lines ending here Keats afterwards re-cast, doubtless in order to get rid of the cockney rhyme "ports" and "thoughts."

[53] "And, sweetheart, lie thou there":--Pistol (to his sword) in _Henry IV._,