Towards the end of June 1819 Keats went to Shanklin; his first companion there being an invalid but witty and cheerful friend, James Rice, a solicitor, and his second, Brown, who co-operated at this time with the poet in producing the drama "Otho the Great." Next, the two friends went to Winchester, "chiefly," wrote Keats to his sister Fanny, "for the purpose of being near a tolerable library, which after all is not to be found in this place. However, we like it very much; it is the pleasantest town I ever was in, and has the most recommendations of any." One of his letters from here (September 21) speaks of his being now almost as well acquainted with Italian as with French, and he adds, "I shall set myself to get complete in Latin, and there my learning must stop. I do not think of venturing upon Greek." It is stated that he learned Italian with uncommon quickness.
Early in the winter which closed 1819 George Keats came over for a short while from America, his main object being to receive his share of the money accruing from the decease of his brother Tom, to the cost of whose illness he had largely contributed. He had been in Cincinnati, and had engaged in business, but as yet without any success. In some lines which John Keats addressed to Miss Brawne in October there is an energetic and no doubt consciously overloaded denunciation of "that most hateful land, dungeoner of my friends, that monstrous region," &c., &c. John, it appears, concealed from George, during his English visit, the fact that he himself was then much embarrassed in money-matters, and almost wholly dependent upon his friends for a subsistence meanwhile; and George left England again without doing anything for his brother's relief or convenience. He took with him £700, some substantial part of which appears to have been the property of John, absolutely or contingently; and he undertook to remit shortly to his brother £200, to be raised by the sale of a boat which he owned in America; but months passed, and the £200 never came, no purchaser for the boat being procurable. Out of the £1,100 which Tom Keats had left, George received £440, John hardly more than £200, George thus repaying himself some money which had been previously advanced for John's professional education. For all this he has been very severely censured, Mr. Brown being among his sternest and most persistent assailants. It must seemingly have been to George Keats, and yet not to him exclusively, that Colonel Finch referred in the letter which reached Shelley's eyes, saying that John had been "infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe;" and Shelley re-enforced this accusation in his preface to "Adonais"--"hooted from the stage of life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care." From these painful charges George Keats eventually vindicated himself with warmth of feeling, and with so much solidity of demonstration as availed to convince Mr. Dilke, and also Mr. Abbey. Who were the other offenders glanced at by Colonel Finch, as also in one of Severn's letters, I have no distinct idea.