My dear Dilke—As Brown is not to be a fixture at Hampstead, I have at last made up my mind to send home all lent books. I should have seen you before this, but my mind has been at work all over the world to find out what to do. I have my choice of three things, or at least two,—South America, or Surgeon to an Indiaman, which last, I think, will be my fate. I shall resolve in a few days. Remember me to Mrs. D. and Charles, and your father and mother.
Ever truly yours
John Keats.
CXLVIII.—TO JOHN TAYLOR.
[Wesleyan Place, Kentish Town][114]
June 11 [1820].
My dear Taylor—In reading over the proof of St. Agnes’s Eve since I left Fleet Street, I was struck with what appears to me an alteration in the seventh stanza very much for the worse. The passage I mean stands thus—
her maiden eyes incline
Still on the floor, while many a sweeping train
Pass by.
’Twas originally written—
her maiden eyes divine
Fix’d on the floor, saw many a sweeping train
Pass by.
My meaning is quite destroyed in the alteration. I do not use train for concourse of passers by, but for skirts sweeping along the floor.