lives, and is married"! It is ever thus!

Peter's published works contain an American tragedy. Peter says he got
it from a friend, who was sending him an American copy of "Guy Mannering"
"to present to a young lady who, strange to say, read books and wore
pockets," virtues unusual in the sex. One of the songs (on the delights
of bull-baiting) contains the most vigorous lines I have ever met, but
they are _too_ vigorous for our lax age. The tragedy ends most
tragically, and the moral comes in "better late," says the author, "than
never." The other poems are all very lively, and very much out of date.
Poor Peter!

Reynolds was married by 1818, and it is impossible to guess whether the
poems of Peter Corcoran did or did not contain allusions to his own more
lucky love affair. "Upon my soul," writes Keats, "I have been getting
more and more close to you every day, ever since I knew you, and now one
of the first pleasures I look to is your happy marriage." Reynolds was
urging Keats to publish the "Pot of Basil" "as an answer to the attack
made on me in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and the _Quarterly Review_."

Next Keats writes that he himself "never was in love, yet the voice and
shape of a woman has haunted me these two days." On September 22, 1819,
Keats sent Reynolds the "Ode to Autumn," than which there is no more
perfect poem in the language of Shakespeare. This was the last of his
published letters to Reynolds. He was dying, haunted eternally by that
woman's shape and voice.

Reynolds's best-known book, if any of them can be said to be known at
all, was published under the name of John Hamilton. It is "The Garden of
Florence, and Other Poems" (Warren, London, 1821). There is a