In line 8, Lord Houghton's copy reads lulling for dewy which is found in a manuscript of Sir Charles Dilke. In another draft of twelve lines by Keats which was copied in The Athenæum, October 26, 1872, the first three lines are the same as printed; the next nine are as follows: 'As wearisome as darkness is divine O soothest sleep, if so it please thee close Its sweet death dews o'er every pulse and limb Then shut the hushed Casket of my soul And turn the key round in the oiled wards And let it rest until the morn has stole, Bright tressed from the grey east's shuddering PART I. line 48. Cerulean spotted, golden-green, and blue. I had a silver dream of thee last night. And, swiftly as a mission'd phœbean dart. Warm, tremulous, devout, bright-ton'd, psalterian. Ravish'd, she lifted up her Circean head. To the swoon'd serpent, and with langrous arm. A deep volcanian yellow took the place. And her new voice, softluting in the air Cried Lycius! gentle Lycius, where, ah where! Line 185. Ah! never heard of, delight never known 'Too fond was I believing, fancy fed In high deliriums, and blossoms never shed!' Lines 82-84. Became herself a flame -'t was worth an age She was persuaded, and she fixt the hour mour. After the hottest day comes languidest That almost silence is, hath ever found most, Which had the weakest, strongest heart so lost, Line 174. Fill'd with light, music, jewels, gold, perfume. Line 231. In Tom Taylor's Autobiography of Haydon, vol. i. p. 354, is a passage which is a slight comment on these lines. He then, in a strain of humor beyond description, abused me for putting Newton's head into my picture. "A fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the beauty of the rainbow, by reducing it to the prismatic colors. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank Newton's health and confusion to mathematics.' That youth might suffer have I shielded thee At the close of the poem, Keats appended the passage from Burton which had given him his theme: 'Philostratos, in his fourth book, de Vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind, which may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age that, going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she, being fair and lovely, would die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance, but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant; many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece." Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III., Sect. 2, Memb. I. Subs. I. Page 199. HYPERION. Since the introductory note to this poem was printed, a letter from Canon Ainger has appeared in The Athenæum (26 August, 1899), in which he states that he has seen a copy of the 1820 volume, given by Keats to a Hampstead friend and neighbor, and bearing on the title page 'with J. Keats's compliments.' He adds, 'Keats has with his own hand scored out, in strong ink lines, the publisher's preface. . . . At the head of this preface Keats has written, "I had no part in this; I was ill at the time." And after the concluding sentence about Endymion, which he has carefully bracketed off, he has written, "This is a lie!" This is interesting testimony, especially if Canon Ainger's opinion as to this being in Keats's handwriting is correct. Page 232. THE LAST SONNET. A manuscript reading of the last line is: 'Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.' II. LETTERS 1. Page 255. 'God 'ield you.' Mr. Colvin calls attention to the frequency with which Keats, in his early letters, falls into Shakespearian phrases. 2. Page 255. 'Endymion.' The reference is not to the poem of that name, but to the verses beginning 'I stood tiptoe upon a little hill.' See p. 14. 3. Page 255. 'Your kindness.' Reynolds had addressed Keats in a sonnet as follows: 'Thy thoughts, dear Keats, are like fresh gathered leaves, Or white flowers pluck'd from some sweet lily bed; They set the heart a-breathing, and they shed The glow of meadows, mornings, and spring eves O'er the excited soul. - Thy genius weaves Songs that shall make the age be nature-led, Roaming the fields and older woods among : 4. Page 257. 'Aunt Dinah's counterpane.' The letter was crossed, after a fashion more common in days of heavy postage than now. 5. Page 259. Hazlitt had reviewed in The Examiner for May 4, 1817, Southey's Letter to William Smith Esq., M. P., and had been excessively severe. 6. Page 259. The Nymphs.' A mythologi cal poem, on which Hunt was at this time engaged. 7. Page 259. 'Does Shelley go on telling strange stories of the death of kings?' Gilfillan, in his Gallery of Literary Portraits, tells the story of Shelley amusing himself and Hunt, when they were travelling in a stage coach, and startling an old lady travelling with them, b suddenly crying out to Hunt, For God's sak let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stor of the death of kings.' King Richard II., i 8. Page 261. 'I long to see Wordsworth well as to have mine in.' Haydon was pa his Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and ▾ troducing likenesses of his friends into ture. 9. Page 262. 'Bertrand,' i. e., Ge trand, who was one of Bonaparte's at St. Helena. 10. Page 263. Jane Reynold married Thomas Hood. The Re lived in Little Britain, so quain Washington Irving. 11. Page 263. 'Hampton,' i ton, a quiet watering place a' Arun, on the south coast more than halfway betwee mouth. 12. Page 265. 'Miss Rhyme.' Fanny Keats at this time, and the Nor.. Jane Taylor, were in the height larity with young readers. 13. Page 266. 'Tell Dilke.' The D were friends living in Hampstead whom Reynolds had introduced to Keats. Charles Wentworth Dilke was at the time a clerk in the Navy Pay-Office, and a disciple of Godwin and warm friend of Hunt. Later he became a man of great consequence in the literary world as editor and chief owner of The Atheneum. The W. D. mentioned below is William Dilke, a younger brother, who had served in the Commissariat department. He was at this time about forty-two years old. 14. Page 268. 'Northern Poet.' See Wordsworth's Personal Talk, beginning 'I am not one who much or oft delight 15. Page 269. Hazlitt had just collected and published his The Round Table, which he first printed in The Examiner. 16. Page 271. 'You and Gleig.' Mr. Colvin makes this note: 'G. R. Gleig, son of the Bishop of Stirling: born 1796, died 1888: served G. F. Lyon, a Farewell to Englan 6 Christie.' Jonathan H. of Lockhart, who took hn Scott, fought 11s, a d th 9, I. , supr. Colstarted Septemfollowing edition was on, Captain te a poetical printed by A. A. Watts in his Poetical_ 25. Page 278. 'Medal of the Princess,' i. e., Princess Charlotte, who died November 6, 1817. 26. Page 278. 'Bob Harris,' the manager of Covent Garden Theatre. 27. Page 279. 'Miss Kent's.' Mr. Forman notes that the article was not by Miss Bessy Kent, Hunt's sister-in-law, but by Shelley, who used the initials E. K. for 'Elfin Knight.' 28. Page 279. 'Mr. Abbey.' Mr. Richard Abbey, a tea-merchant, one of the guardians of the Keats family. See above, p. xv. 29. Page 283. See a lively refutation of this conjecture of Hunt's, and a general statement of the relations of the 'Cockney school' with the Edinburgh critics in Lang's The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, I. 150-155. 30. Page 285. As the old song says.' Mr. Forman here quotes the 'old song,' which is 'Sharing Eve's Apple,' given in the Appendix, p. 248, on Mr. Forman's authority as by Keats. Mr. Colvin merely indicates a break. It is quite possible that Keats in the jesting mood with which his letter opens, wrote these nonsense lines and, in Scott's fashion, palmed them off as an 'old song.' 31. Page 285. For the sum of twopence.' See the head-note to 'Robin Hood,' p. 41. 32. Page 287. Mr. Robinson.' Henry Crabbe Robinson. This delightful diarist does not record this visit, nor in the two or three references to Keats speak as if he knew him. In an entry for December 8, 1820, he records reading some of Keats's poems, and adds: There are a force, wildness, and originality in the works of this young poet which, if his perilous journey to Italy does not destroy him, promise to place him at the head of the next generation of poets.' 33. Page 293. Haydon had written with enthusiasm about a seal with a true lover's knot and the initials W. S., found in a field at Stratford-on-Avon. 34. Page 293. 'Dentatus' was the subject of a picture by Haydon. 35. Page 295. Claude's Enchanted Castle.' Mr. Colvin has this interesting note: "The famous picture now belonging to Lady Wantage, and exhibited at Burlington House in 1888. Whether Keats ever saw the original is doubtful (it was not shown at the British Institution in his time), but he must have been familiar with the subject as engraved by Vivarès and Woollett, and its suggestive power worked in his mind until it yielded at last the distilled poetic essence of the "magic casement" passage in the "Ode to a Nightingale." It is interesting to note the theme of the Grecian Urn ode coming in also amidst the unconnected subject and careless verse of this rhymed epistle.' 36. Page 296. 'Posthumous works.' Haydon had written Keats: 'When I die I'll have Shakespeare placed on my heart, with Homer in my right hand and Ariosto in the other, Dante at my head, Tasso at my feet, and Corneille under my 37. Page 300. 'Worsted stockings.' Keats hints at the neighborhood of the children of the Postman Bentley, at whose house in Wellwalk he lodged. 38. Page 306. The opposite,' i. e., a leaf with the name and from the Author.' 39. Page 315. A scrap of paper.' The book was a copy of 'Endymion,' and Keats had left in London a scrap of paper bearing from the Author,' to be pasted in. 40. Page 316. The Swan and two necks' was the name of the coach office in Lad Lane, London. 41. Page 320. 3 little volumes.' The several references to these books indicate Cary's Translation of Dante, which was so published by Taylor and Hessey and advertised on the fly-leaf of 'Endymion.' 42. Page 328. 'A Woman.' Mr. Colvin notes: Miss Charlotte Cox, an East Indian cousin of the Reynoldses-the Charmian described more fully' in Letter 74. 66 43. Page 328. 'Slip-shod Endymion.' John Scott wrote of the poem in The Morning Chronicle, October 3, 1818: That there are also many, very many passages indicating both haste and carelessness I will not deny; nay, I will go further, and assert that a real friend of the author would have dissuaded him from immediate publication.' 44. Page 338. 'I have scarce any hopes of him.' Thomas Keats died a few hours later, on the same day this letter was written. As noted in the biographical sketch, Keats now removed to Wentworth Place. 45. Page 339. "This thin paper.' Mr. Colvin notes: A paper of the largest folio size, used by Keats in this letter only, and containing some eight hundred words a page of his writing.' 46. Page 340. 'Her daughter senior.' Fanny Brawne, of whom this is the first mention in the letters. 47. Page 354. 'Henrietta Street,' the residence of Mrs. Wylie. 48. Page 355. 'The silk tassels,' Mr. Colvin explains, were the gift of Georgiana Keats. 49. Page 366. 'Am I all wound with Browns.' Mr. Colvin reminds the reader of the origin of the phrase in Caliban's mouth : 'Sometimes am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness.' The little Brown boys, brothers of Charles Armitage Brown, are the 'Boys' referred to above, p. 364. 50. Page 368. This discreet notice of Reynolds's parody appeared with some alteration in The Examiner, April 26, 1819. 51. Page 378. James Elmes was the editor of Annals of the Fine Arts, in which first appeared the 'Ode to a Nightingale.' See p. 144. 52. Page 383. 'An oriental tale of a very beautiful color.' Mr. Forman, on the authority of Dr. Reinhold Köhler, Librarian of the Grand ducal Library of Weimar, identifies the story, which is a variant of the Third Calender's story in The Arabian Nights, as the 'Histoire de la Corbeille,' in the Nouveaux Contes Orientaux of the Comte de Caylus. 66 53. Page 399. 'Hunt's triumphal entry into London.' Mr. Forman makes the following note on this passage: 'Henry Hunt, of Manchester Massacre fame, ended an imprisonment of two years and a half on the 30th of October, 1822, and made an entry into London" on the 11th of November, 1822; but the trial of which his imprisonment was the issue had not taken place till the spring of 1820; and the entry alluded to by Keats was one which took place between the massacre and the trial.' 54. Page 413. 'From Sr. G. B.'s, Lord Ms.' Sir George Beaumonts and Lord Musgraves. 55. Page 416. The Cave of despair.' Spenser's Cave of Despair was the subject of the picture (see Letter 141) with which Severn won the Royal Academy premium. 56. Page 438. 'Lucy Vaughan Lloyd.' The name under which Keats proposed to publish 'The Cap and Bells.' See p. 216. 57. Page 446. Without making any way.' Mr. Colvin appends this note: The Maria Crowther had in fact sailed from London, September 18: contrary winds holding her in the Channel, Keats had landed at Portsmouth for a night's visit to the Snooks of Bedhampton.' |
