القرن التاسع عشر ، رقم ١٨٢، أبريل ١٨٩٢ [و‎‎٥‎٤] (٢٤٤/١١٢)

1892 THE STORY OF GIF FORD 597
his Blackwood reviewer to return to his gallipots,—was now abandoned;
and, following the advice of Brown and other friends, Keats resolved
to keep to literature. But why not now take to a more paying form
of literature than he had found poetry to be, or at least such poetry
as he could produce ? The drama promised better results; Brown
had already some dramatic experience, and could give him instructions
in stage requirements; why not, in conjunction with Brown, write a
tragedy, to be acted at Drury Lane Theatre, with Edmund Kean
in the principal part? Through the three autumn months of 1819,
accordingly, Keats was away from London, first at Shanklin in the
Isle of Wight, and then at Winchester, busy over a tragedy on the
subject of Otho the Great, and beginning also an English historical
play, to be called King Stephen, —Brown with him for the greater
part of the time, and another friend or two occasionally. Not for a
long while had Keats's health been better, or his spirits higher, than
during the part of this busy absence which was spent in Winchester.
Another idea had then occurred to him, should his dramatic attempts
not succeed. Without absolutely giving up poetry, why should he
not, on his return to London, betake himself for a subsistence, as so
many others were doing, to journalism and contributorship to peri
odicals ? He was sufficiently known to obtain that kind of employ
ment on seeking for it ; and Hazlitt could help him to it at once !
With this resolution in his mind, and the further resolution that it
would be best for his purpose not to keep house any longer with
Brown at Hampstead, but to live in lodgings by himself near the
newspaper and magazine offices, he was back in London in October,
1819.
Alas! only to break down again most hopelessly ! He had not
been ten days in a lodging that had been taken for him near the
Dilkes at Westminster, when he gave up the experiment as un
endurable, and returned to the society of Brown at Hampstead.
The attraction thither, as we first learn definitely at this point in
his biography, was special and irresistible. In the next house to
Brown's at Hampstead lived Mrs. Brawne, a widowed lady of some
independent means, with her three children, the eldest of whom,
Fanny Brawne, nineteen years of age, and described by Mr. Colvin
as of the ' English hawk-blonde type' of beauty, had so fascinated
Keats, though at first her style and manners had rather repelled him,
that, without the knowledge of any of his friends hitherto, except
Brown, he had been engaged to her for the last ten months. The
biographers will have it that it was the renewed influence of this
love-engagement after his three or four months of absence, the
renewed vicinity and sight of Fanny Brawne day after day, acting
upon him with the kind of scorching allurement which keeps the
moth circling round the flame, that threw him now into the state of
wild excitement, alternating with fits of fretful dejection, in which he