had been indirectly made known to him by his favorite ward and
_protegee_, the late Lady Northampton, who, accustomed to write to him
monthly, often made mention of me; for I was on terms of friendship with
all her family, an intimacy which in great part arose from the delight
she always had in Keats's poetry, being herself a poetess, and a most
enlightened and liberal critic.

When Sir Walter arrived, he received me like an old and attached friend;
indeed, he involuntarily tried to make me fill up the terrible void
then recently created by the death of Lady Northampton at the age of
thirty-seven years. I went at his request to breakfast with him every
morning, when he invariably commenced talking of his lost friend, of her
beauty, her singularly varied accomplishments, of his growing delight in
watching her from a child in the Island of Mull, and of his making her
so often the model of his most successful female characters, the Lady
of the Lake and Flora MacIvor particularly. Then he would stop short to
lament her unlooked-for death with tears and groans of bitterness such
as I had never before witnessed in any one,--his head sinking down on
his heaving breast. When he revived, (and this agonizing scene took
place every morning,) he implored me to pity him, and not heed his
weakness,--that in his great misfortunes, in all their complications, he
had looked forward to Rome and his dear Lady Northampton as his last and
certain hope of repose; she was to be his comfort in the winding-up of
life's pilgrimage: now, on his arrival, his life and fortune almost
exhausted, she was gone! _gone!_ After these pathetic outpourings, he
would gradually recover his old cheerfulness, his expressive gray eye
would sparkle even in tears, and soon that wonderful power he had for
description would show itself, when he would often stand up to enact
the incident of which he spoke, so ardent was he, and so earnest in the
recital.

Each morning, at his request, I took for his examination some little
picture or sketch that might interest him, and amongst the rest a
picture of Keats, (now in the National Portrait Gallery of London,) but
this I was surprised to find was the only production of mine that seemed
not to interest him; he remained silent about it, but on all the others
he was ready with interesting comments and speculations. Observing this,
and wondering within myself at his apathy with regard to the young lost
poet, as I had reason