ABSTRACT
It would be impracticable to follow any one of Severn’s reminiscences in the narrative; for not only does he indulge in much circumlocution, but is often contradictory, and even negligent in his statements; as when he says that, one evening, the Maria Crowther came in sight of Gibraltar, and next morning was in the Bay of Naples. While Severn was writing that “certainly there was hope of Keats’s recovery, and that he was somewhat better,” his friend was sitting in an adjoining room, overcome by physical weakness and sore distraught by bitter anguish of mind and heart. In burning words Severn wrote to Brown, not about his late pleasant experiences or the new and wonderful city in which he was for the first time, but about his ruining love and all the disastrous end of his brief dream of happiness. On Keats’s urgent request, Severn agreed to go on with his art-work in such leisure as he could command.
