To Miss Brawne, Wentworth Place, Hampstead
My dearest Girl,
You will chide me that I have been so long without writing, & I will deserve it. I might plead my illness, & you will say, Shakespeare’s Heroes run through with swords still managed fifty lines to their beloveds—I call up the rigors of travel, & you will answer with every three-shilling guide on Fleet Street—somehow those Gents & Ladies, going between the Carriage & the Inn, managed to write their volumes about columns, & Colosseums, & the depravity of Pope Horribilus the Whatth, who yet was Patron to the genius Whozzini, &c., not to mention the modern manners of the Italians. Only your poor Keats cannot make two poor Sheets—well the reason is simple; I have not seen the manners of the Italians. I have been four months in an att
