It is now pretty clear that the intention to return to Winchester on the 14th of September, 1819, was not carried out quite literally, and that Keats really returned to that city on the 15th. In regard to the foot-note at [page 33], it should now be stated that, in a letter post-marked the 16th of October, 1819, he speaks of having returned to Hampstead after lodging two or three days in the neighbourhood of Mrs. Dilke.
Having mentioned in the foot-note at [page 101] that Keats had elsewhere recorded himself and Tom as firm believers in immortality, I must now state that the record cited was a garbled one. Lord Houghton, working from transcripts furnished to him by the late Mr. Jeffrey, the second husband of George Keats’s widow, printed the words “I have a firm belief in immortality, and so had Tom.” The corresponding sentence in the autograph letter is “I have scarce a doubt of an immortality of some kind or another, neither had Tom.”
Finally, it remains to supply an omission which I find it hard to account for. In Medwin’s Life of Shelley occur some important extracts about Keats, seeming to emanate from Fanny Brawne. In 1877 I learnt from the lady’s family that Medwin’s mysteriously introduced correspondent was no other than she. Indeed I had actually cut the relative portion of Medwin’s book out for use in this Introduction; but by some inexplicable oversight I omitted even to refer to it; and it remained for Professor Colvin to call attention to it. I now gladly follow his lead in citing words which have a direct bearing upon the vexed question of the appreciation of Keats by her whom he loved; and, in the appendix to the present edition, the passage in question will be found.
H. BUXTON FORMAN.
46 Marlborough Hill, St. John’s Wood,
November, 1888.
CORRECTIONS.
[Page xxxi], line 6 from foot, for does read did.
[Page 16], end of foot-note 3, add or perhaps a dog.
[Page 18], there should be a foot-note to the effect that Meleager in line 6 is written Maleager in the original.