The Complete Works of John Keats. Edited by H. Buxton
Forman. Vol. IV., Letters, 1814-1819. (Gowan and Gray, Glasgow. 1s. net.)—These letters, it will be understood, do not include those to Fanny Brawne. These are to follow in a fifth volume. On the propriety of publishing these latter, opinions were divided. Any expression of an adverse view was, according to Mr. Forman, "vituperation." It did not trouble him, indeed; then why use a word which seems to indicate annoyance? The letters in this volume were addressed to many corre- spondents, of whom we have a convenient Index Historicus, which it must have cost the editor much labour to put together. There are between twenty and thirty of them. Keats had two brothers (George, who died in 1842, aged forty-five, and Thomas, who died in 1818) and a sister (Senora Llanos, who died in 1889, at the age of eighty-six). Among the other correspondents are C. C. Clarke, R. B. Haydon, Joseph Severn, and Horace Smith. A family of the name of Jeffreys at Teignmouth is mentioned, and Mr. Forman quotas some stanzas of a poem which, according to tradi- tion, was addressed to Keats. One of these we may quote; it is not undeserving of a reflected immortality :— "Yet, dearest, go ; the pang will be Soon o'er ; I shall not live to see Thy look of love, which is my heaven, My happiness—to others given ; 'I'm best we part ; I could not bear Thy coldness, nor the sick despair Of love decaying ; go, then, go, Si deseris, ahl pereo "
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