Shelley addressed to Keats in Naples another letter, ’anxiously enquiring about his health, offering him advice as to the adaptation of diet to the climate, and concluding with an urgent invitation to Pisa, where he could assure him every comfort and attention.’  Shelley did not, however, re-invite Keats to his own house on the present occasion; writing to Miss Clairmont, ’We are not rich enough for that sort of thing.’  The letter to Miss Clairmont is dated 18 February, 1821, and appears to have been almost simultaneous with the one sent to Keats.  In that case, Keats cannot be supposed to have received the invitation; for he had towards the middle of November quitted Naples for Rome, and by 18 February he was almost at his last gasp.

Shelley’s feeling as to Keats’s final volume of poems is further exhibited in the following extracts, (To Thomas Love Peacock, November, 1820.) ’Among the modern things which have reached me is a volume of poems by Keats; in other respects insignificant enough, but containing the fragment of a poem called Hyperion, I dare say you have not time to read it; but it is certainly an astonishing piece of writing, and gives me a conception of Keats which I confess I had not before.’ (To Mrs. Leigh Hunt, 11 November, 1820.) ’Keats’s new volume has arrived to us, and the fragment called Hyperion promises for him that he is destined to become one of the first writers of the age.  His other things are imperfect enough[9], and, what is worse, written in the bad sort of style which is becoming fashionable among those who fancy that they are imitating Hunt and Wordsworth....  Where is Keats now?  I am anxiously expecting him in Italy, when I shall take care to bestow every possible attention on him.  I consider his a most valuable life, and I am deeply interested in his safety.  I intend to be the physician both of his body and his soul,—­to keep the one warm, and to teach the other Greek and Spanish.  I am aware indeed, in part, that I am nourishing a rival who will far surpass me; and this is an additional motive, and will be an added pleasure.’ (To Peacock, 15 February, 1821.) ’Among your anathemas of the modern attempts in poetry do you include Keats’s Hyperion?  I think it very fine.  His other poems are worth little; but, if the Hyperion be not grand poetry, none has been produced by our contemporaries.’  There is also a phrase in a letter to Mr. Ollier, written on 14 May, 1820, before the actual publication of the Lamia volume:  ’Keats, I hope, is going to show himself a great poet; like the sun, to burst through the clouds which, though dyed in the finest colours of the air, obscured his rising.’