The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn #229865

Memoirs in great part a record, in the first place of Severn's youthful life, and his early intimacy with Keats; in the second, of the whole episode of Keats and Severn in Italy, with, to repeat a useful titular phrase, all interesting new correspondence and often matter concerning 'keats and his Circle;' and, finally, of the last five-and-fifty years of his long life, a life coloured and even directed from the outset to the close by the abiding influence of the poet. Naturally, again, with this biographical scheme, it was thought best, at the expense of any arbitrary considerations of proportion, to educe from the available new material as much as possible relative to Severn's early years, friendship with, and subsequent correspondence concerning Keats; to deal much more succinctly with the doings, experiences, and correspondence of Severn and his wide circle of dis tinguished friends, during the middle period of his life (1830 till and to concentrate, within the extreme practical limits, the record of what he justly viewed as the eventful and interesting period of close upon twenty years posterior to his return to Rome in 1861. Indeed, necessity as well as judgment demanded the condensation of the correspondence, and above all the minutely detailed and uninterrupted diaries from 1860 onward; for the alternative was a record so ample that the fundamental scheme of the Memoirs would be destroyed.