d be in October or
November, 1818. Keats's description of Fanny is hardly flattering, and
not even vivid. What is one to make of the colorless expression 'a
fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort'? But she was fair to
him, and any beauty beyond that would have been superfluous. We look
at the silhouette and sigh in vain for trace of the loveliness which
ensnared Keats. But if our daguerreotypes of forty years ago can so
entirely fail of giving one line of that which in its day passed for
dazzling beauty, let us not be unreasonable in our demands upon the
artistic capabilities of a silhouette. Not infrequently is it true
that the style of dress seems to disfigure. But we have learned, in
course of experience, that pretty women manage to be pretty, however
much fashion, with their cordial help, disguises them.

It is easy to see from the letters that Keats was a difficult lover.
Hard to please at the best, his two sicknesses, one of body and one of
heart, made him whimsical. Nothing less than a woman of genius could
possibly have managed him. He was jealous, perhaps quite unreasonably
so. Fanny Brawne was young, a bit coquettish, buoyant, and he
misinterpreted her vivacity. She liked what is commonly called 'the
world,' and so did he when he was well; but looking through the
discolored glass of ill health, all nature was out of harmony. For
these reasons it happens that the letters at times come very near to
being documents in love-madness. Many a line in them gives sharp pain,
as a record of heart-suffering must always do. You may read Richard
Steele's love letters for pleasure, and have it. The love letters of
Keats scorch and sting; and the worst of it is that you cannot avoid
reflecting upon the transitory character of such a passion. Withering
young love like this does not last. It may burn itself out, or, what
is quite as likely, it may become sober and rational. But in its
earlier maddened state it cannot possibly last; a man would die under
it. Men as a rule do not so die, for the race of the Azra is nearly
extinct.

These Brawne letters, however, are not without their bright side; and
it is wonderful to see how Keats's elastic nature would rebound the
instant that the pressure of the disease relaxed. He is at times
almost gay. The singing of a thrush prompts him to talk in his natural
epistolary voice: 'There's the Thrush again--I can't afford it--he'll
run me up a pretty Bill for Music--besides he ou