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Poetry and prose by John Keats; a book of
POETRY AND PROSE.
 

piven pl
if OLE. £00)
fotn ool es Feds ct.by
POETRY AND PROSE

BY

JOHN KEATS

A Book of Fresh Verses and New Readings—Essays
and Letters lately found—and Passages

formerly suppressed

EDITED BY aN FORMAN

 

AND FORMING
A SUPPLEMENT TO THE LIBRARY EDITION
OF KEATS’S WORKS

LONDON
REEVES & TURNER 196 STRAND
1890
(BY
)
AB 33 EO

     
  

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/ CORNELL
UNIVERSITY,

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gern as S244

       

     

 

CINSWICK PRESS :—C. WHITTINGHAM AND €O., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.
°Tis writ among your childish feats,

My Guendolen,—when you were ‘‘ smallish,”
You ‘‘ helped your father edit Keats”

By copying those four lines on Dawlish.

*: Along the edge" we moved this year,
Of Devon where our poet stayed,

And wondered whether there or here
He met his dainty Devon maid.

From Dawlish “over hill and dale
And bourne” to Teignmouth did we ramble;
Saw Coomb-on-Teign and sweet Coomb Vale
And Babbicombe,—a rocky scramble !

And Newton Marsh, and close at hand
Kingsteignton, aye and all the rest,

And drank the beauty of the land
Wherein the poet wrote his best.

And here you helped me supplement
The four years’ work you saw me finish

Before your childhood's time was spent—
Before my hair was gray and thinnish.

No matter how you helped me, Guen ;
You ‘‘ builded better than you knew;
And now, before I drop the pen,
I dedicate this book to you.

”
CONTENTS.

Fresh Verses and New Readings :—
New Readings in “ Hadst thou liv’d in days of old” 4
New Readings in the EPISTLE TO GEORGE KEATS. ‘ 4
Cancelled Passages of LAMIA . : 7 j . 6
Rejected Stanza and Variations in ISABELLA . . - Io
Rejected Stanza and Variations in THE EVE oF ST.

AGNES . ‘ é : ‘ : . 4
Variations in the ODE TO A NiaitaNearE ‘i ‘ » I5¢
Variations in the ODE TO PSYCHE . ‘ i : » 15
Variations in FANCY F 2 3 - 16
Variations in LINES ON THE iit endeiee: Taveen - - 7
Variation in RoBIN Hoop ‘ . 5 Fs : 2 17
Cancelled Passages of HYPERION . : 18
WOMEN, WINE AND SNUFF, additional “ ON onsense

Verses” : “ : : s PR - 20
New Readings in the Hymn TO Rect : s 2F
Variation in the Sonnet “After dark vapors”. - 2
New Readings in “ Unfelt, unheard, unseen” . ; .  2r
Variation in the SONNET ON THE SEA . : j s: P22
Variations in “ Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow” D- 28
Variation in the Sonnet “ When I have fears ” , fe 2323,
Variations in the SONNETTO HOMER .  . wg 23
SONNET : THE HUMAN SEASONS, Fresh Version . wv 23
New Readings in LINES ON SEEING A LOCK OF MILTON’S

HAIR. ‘ ; 24
Variation in the Sania. ON SITTING DOWN TO READ

KING LEAR ONCE AGAIN. 7 : 4 a 28

New Readings in the SONNET TO THE Nie , : a: £25
viii CONTENTS.

Fresh Verses and New Readings—continued
New Readings in the Sonnet “Blue! ’Tis the life of
Heaven”
Variations in “I iad a dade
New Readings in LINES WRITTEN IN THE SiennaNDs
Cancelled Passage of STAFFA . :
Variations in the Sonnet “ Why did I en to-night? gs
Variation in the SONNET ON A DREAM AFTER READING
DANTE’s EPISODE OF PAULO AND FRANCESCA .
Variations in SPENSERIAN STANZAS ON CHARLES
ARMITAGE BROWN 3
New Readings in the SONG OF Four rAeRiEs
AN EXTEMPORE, Episode for a Comic Poem .
New Readings in SONNETS ON FAME
Variations in SONNET TO SLEEP
New Readings in La BELLE DAME SANS Merci
Cancelled Passages of KING STEPHEN :
Variations in “ Nonsense Verses ” on Oxford . 2 .
Variations in the SONNET TO Mrs. REYNOLDS’S CAT
SONNET TO KEATS ON READING HIS SONNET WRITTEN
IN CHAUCER, by John Hamilton Reynolds ,
Review of Reynolds’s PETER BELL . 3 é 5
Notice of RETRIBUTION, OR THE CHIEFTAIN’S Cagentins.
a Tragedy
Notice of DON GIOVANNI, a Padtomiine
Fresh Letters and Additional Passages .
Addenda .
Index

FRONTISPIECE.

Portrait of John Hamilton Reynolds : photo-intaglio from a
miniature by Joseph Severn, kindly lent by. Charles
Green, Esq.

Page

25
26
27
28
29

29

30
30
31
34
35
36
39
44
44

45
49

55
61

67
181
189
FRESH VERSES AND NEW
READINGS.
FRESH VERSES AND NEW
» READINGS.

THE Library Edition of Keats’s writings published in
1883 was the first serious attempt to bring together in
one collection the whole works of Keats in verse and
prose and all the most important collateral matter illus-
trating the works or throwing light upon the career of

.the man. Of that edition a reissue has been recently
called for. In the meantime, the materials for dealing
with Keats’s works have been considerably enlarged ;
and to those who possess copies of the original edition
it will be advantageous to have in the form of a supple-
ment all the new material, whether in verse or in prose,
and the details of all fresh collations of text which it has
been possible to make.

To begin, then, with the verse, it will be convenient to
give here, in the order in which the poems are arranged
in the Library Edition, the results obtained by examining
all the fresh material to which I have had access,

Mr. Colvin says in his Keats (“English Men of Letters”

series, page 223) that, according to an entry in Richard
B
6 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

rejected passages and readings of interest. One page of

these fragments begins with line 26,

When from the slope ‘side of a suburb hill,
i
and ends with line 49, °

Why will you plead yourself so sad-forlorn

(see Volume IT, pages 28 and 29). Between these lines.
there is a cancelled reading of line 29, namely,

But left a thought at work in Lycius’ head.
Of lines 30 to 33 there are the following readings:

For the first time since that had been his' «+
For the first time since he had harbourd in
s happy Palace . .

purple-lined Palace...
For the first time since he soft-harbour’d in
That purple-lined palace of sweet sin
Not...
His spirit pass’d beyond its golden bourne
Into the world . . . '

That

the’
Into { : . } busy world almost foresworn.

In line 34 Keats wrote Lamia instead of The Lady; and
line 37 originally began with the words Of joys devote to
him. Inline 39 we read a minute's thought instead of
a moment's thought; and line 40 stands

Why do you sigh, fair Lamia? said he.
LAMIA. 7

Line 42 has two cancellings, thus—

Tama...

You have deserted me ; {
you mould...

and line 47 appears thus—
Wherein he saw himself in Paradise— ..,

The passage beginning at

After the hottest day comes languidest
given in the foot-note at page 30 of Volume II, from the
finished manuscript, occurs on the verso of the leaf from
which the foregoing extracts are made, and shows some

variations, as

The colour’d eve, half-lidded in the west—

and again
for certes they
Scarcely could tell if this was misery.
In the next line there is a cancelled reading, said then
the youth for whisper'd the youth, and a little lower down
As now I do stands rejected in favour of As still I do.

There is also a further variation of line 89, namely
Of fit sound for this soft ethereal frame.

Lamia’s avowal that she had no friends is followed by

several cancellings :

“T have no friends” said Lamia as you list

Seeing it must be...

Do with your own... ,
Intreat your many guests. Then all was was [szc] wist
8 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.’

She fell asleep, and Lycius to the shade

aa } his fancy stray’d
dreaming

o

Of sleep sunk with her
Into a dream tee
Of sleep went...
Of deep sleep in a moment was betray’d.
The recto of Lord Houghton’s other leaf bears the
passage beginning with |
A haunting music sole perhaps and lone
which was first written
A haunting music lone perhaps and sole

There was some hesitation as to what line 125 should be.

The carved cedar...
Sweet cedar carv’d there...
spread a

Fresh Carved Ced {
ne ee mimicking a glade

appear successively. There is a rejected reading for line
129—
On either side a forest they...

and another of line 130—

All down the aisled-place—far as the eye could view.

In line 134 st/verly occurs in place of silently; line 135

is wanting ; and line 137 stands as follows—
The splendid finish of each nook and niche,

Line 140 reads thus—

Forth { oe

slighter
enderer } oS

imagery of {
ae smaller
LAMIA, 9

In line 141 smallest is cancelled in favour of 2” small,
and between that and line 142 occurs the following
passage :

And so till she was sated—then came down

her head
Soft ligh{t]ing { er ny

; } a brilliant crown
o’er her Brows

' Wreath’d turban- { oe } of tender wannish fire
ike
And sprinkled o’er with stars like Ariadne’s tiar.

The close of line 144 shows no fewer than four read-
ings rejected in favour of revels rude, namely woeful
time, woeful day, time of woe, and day of woe, each of
which, preferable in itself to the reading adopted, must
have had to give place on account of the exigencies of
rhyme. Of the next couplet, however, the received text

is a great improvement on the draft, which reads

The day came soon and all the gossip-rout
O senseless Lycius Dolt! Fool! Madman! Lout!

On the verso of the leaf occur lines 191 to 198 with
cancellings, thus—

When in an antichamber every guest
With fragrant oils his . . .

When in an antichamber every guest
Tended by ministering slaves nis...
When in an.antichamber every guest
felt

Had { had

} the cold full sponge to pleasure press’d.

In lines 195 and 196 occurs the rejected reading,

they all to banquet came
In white robes hymeneal.
10 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

In the Woodhouse book is a transcript from an auto-
graph manuscript of Zsabella, with notes and corrections,
some in the poet’s writing and some in other hand-
writings. It is almost safe to assume that any variation
of Woodhouse’s version from the printed text is a
genuine reading incidental to the stage of the composi-
tion which had been reached when the holograph was
transcribed. The first variation is in stanza I, the sixth

line of which reads thus—
It soothed each to be each other by,

and line 6 of stanza IV first stood

Lorenzo, if thy tongue speak not love’s tune. '

Afterwards dips breathe was substituted for tongue speak,
Opposite the close of stanza vi, Keats has written
in pencil “ Stop this as you please.”: Stanza VII origi-
nally closed with a different couplet from that of the
published text and was followed by a stanza which has
not, I believe, been printed. The change of couplet and
erasure of the stanza are among Keats’s master-strokes
of cunning craftsmanship: here are the ten cancelled
lines :—

“ Lorenzo, I would clip my ringlet hair

To make thee laugh again and debonnair.”

“Then should I be,” said he, “ full deified ;
And yet I would not have it, clip it not :
For, lady, I do love it where ’tis tied

About the neck I dote on, and that spot
ISABELLA. 3 II

That anxious dimple it doth take a pride
To play about.—Ay, lady, I have got
Its shadow in my heart, and every sweet
Its mistress owns there summed all complete.

It will be remembered that instead of all this we have

the admirable couplet,

“ Lorenzo”—here she ceas’d her timid quest,
But in her tone and look he read the rest.

The reading “many once proud-quiver’d loins” of the
text (stanza XIv, Volume II, page 49), with its intrusive-
looking hyphen, has no support from this manuscript ;
and I am disposed to think the hyphen should disappear,
so as to leave the sense many loins once proud, now
quivered (for quivering), which would be characteristic
though not. strictly defensible. The epithet proud-
quiverd, as an equivalent to bearing proud quivers (of
arrows), does not commend itself to me as what Keats
meant, though of course it may be. The first line of

stanza XIX was originally

O eloquent Boccace of green Arno!

\

and the final couplet was a rhymeless one—

For venturing one word unseemly mean,
In such a place, on such a daring theme.

For these three lines the published version stands sub-
stituted in Keats’s writing. The couplet of stanza xx
12 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS,

was originally written as published; but Keats substi-
tuted for the first line of it

1

Thy Muse’s Vicar in the english tongue ;

and_afterwards rejected that for the original reading.
In the fifth line of stanza XXIV Woodhouse has courteous
- in place of courteously, He had left a blank for the couplet
of stanza XXV, presumably finding the original unfinished |
in that particular. Keats inserted the couplet

When, looking up, he saw her features fair
Smile through an indoor lattice, debonair.

‘Someone, probably Taylor, took exception to this, and
suggested

When lo an indoor lattice met his view,
And her fair features smiling playful through,

Keats, ever modest with his friends, altered his own
couplet to that of the text—

When, looking up, he saw her features bright
Smile through an indoor lattice, all delight.

Apropos of the word debonair, he added the note—“ As
I have used this word before in the poem you may use
your judgement between your lines and mine.—I think
my last alteration will do.” This would seem to indicate
that, at that stage in the proceedings, he had not thought
of altering the couplet of stanza VII and striking out the
ISA.BELLA, 13

original stanza VIII. The eighth line of stanza XXXVIII
reads
And it shall turn a diamond in the tomb,

In the third line of stanza XL heaven of a kiss is cancelled
in favour of taste of earthly bliss. In stanza XLIV, line 3,
we read campaign for champaign. In stanza XLVII,

lines 5 and 6 were written as in the text—

‘And freezes utterly unto the bone
Those dainties made to still an infant’s cries ;

Keats struck out line 6 and substituted Love's sighful
throne for unto the bone, without completing the revision ;
but the original reading is marked by another hand for
restoration. Line 6 of stanza XLVIII originally stood
thus—

Three hoiirs were they at this travail sore ;
this is altered in Keats’s hand to
Three hours they labour’d at this travail sore ;

presumably because someone objected to ours being
made to do duty for two syllables, and failed to observe
that Jabourd and labouring both came into the stanza as

revised, Stanza L opened thus—

With duller sliver than the Persean sword
They cut away—no foul Medusa’s head
But one’s...
14 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

and the published reading was substituted in Keats’s
writing, save the elimination of the possessive s from the

last word. The sixth line of the stanza was originally
If ever any piece of love was dead,

and this is the last variation noticeable in the Woodhouse
copy. At the close are inscribed the words “ Written at
Teignmouth in the Spring of 1818 at the suggestion of
J. H.R”

_ Of The Eve of St. Agnes (Volume iI, pages 71 to 105)
we have now what is almost as good for critical uses as
the missing holograph of the first seven stanzas. Asa
result of examining the relative portion of Woodhouse’s
transcript of this:poem, Mr. Colvin gives (Keats, pages
229-30) “the following table of the changes in those
stanzas made by the poet in the course of composition :—

“Stanza 1.: line 1, for ‘chill’ stood ‘cold’: line 4,
for ‘was’ stood ‘were’: line 7, for ‘from’ stood ‘in’:
line 9 (and Stanza IL, line 1), for ‘prayer’ stood ‘ prayers’.
Stanza IIL: line 7, for ‘went’ stood ‘turn’d’: line 8, for
‘Rough’ stood ‘Black’. After Stanza III. stood the
following Stanza, suppressed in the poem as printed.

\

4-
But there are ears may hear sweet melodies,
And there are eyes to brighten festivals,
And there are feet for nimble minstrelsies,
And many a lip that for.the red wine calls—
Follow, then follow to the illumined halls,
Follow me youth—and leave the eremite—
Ul

ST. AGNES—-NIGHTINGALE—PSYCHE. 15

Give him a tear—then trophied bannerals
And many a brilliant tasseling of light
Shall droop from arched ways this high baronial night.
“Stanza v.: line 1, for ‘revelry’ stood ‘revellers’:
lines 3-5, for—
‘Numerous as shadows haunting fairily

The brain new-stuff’d in youth with triumphs gay
Of old romance. These let us wish away,—

stood the following :—
‘Ah what are they ? the idle pulse scarce stirs,
The muse should never make the spirit gay ;
Away, bright dulness, laughing fools away.’”
Woodhouse dates the Ode to a Nightingale “May
1819”, as in the Dilke manuscript. I find in stanza 5 of
his transcript, line 1, an unnoted variation—zel/ for see;

line 2 of stanza 8 reads
To toll me back from thee unto myself, .

and it should perhaps be mentioned that the word away
does not occur in the last line of stanza 2. See foot-note
2, pages 110-11, Volume II.

A consultation of the holograph of the journal-letter
of February-May 1819, in which a considerable mass of
poetry was transcribed by Keats for his brother and
sister-in-law, yields some fresh readings of the Ode to
Psyche (Volume II, pages 119 to 121): line 6 has
awaked in place of awaken’d line 10 whisp’ring fan for
_ whispring roof, which is a curious instance of a rhyme

deliberately lost; line 14 stands thus—

°
16 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

Blue, freckle-pink, and budded Syrian

and the word Syrian is quite unequivocally written in

lieu of Zyrian, Line 23 is a question—
His Psyche true?

instead of an emphatic answer—
His Psyche true !

In line 28 we read hadst for hast, and in line 36
O Bloomiest! for O brightest! Line 44 begins with O
instead of So; in line 57 charmed stands cancelled for
Zull’d, and in line 62 frame for feign. At the close of this
wonderful piece of work Keats has written in modest

playfulness
Here endethe ye Ode to Psyche.

The manuscript of the journal-letter to George Keats
and his wife, written in the winter of 1818-19, includes a
copy of the poem entitled Fancy (Volume II, pages 122
to 126). This copy corresponds generally with that from
which the variations are given in Volume II. The
principal variations which it remains to give from the.
letter are—vesper from the sky in line 24; then for there
in line 25; in place of lines 33 and 34

All the faery buds of May
On spring turf or scented spray ;

creep for peep in line 55 ; and zoo oft and oft for so very oft
in line 76.

In the same letter is a transcript of “ Bards of Passion
“BARDS OF PASSION "—MERMAID TAVERN. 17

and of Mirth” (Volume II, pages 127 to 129). This
Keats seems to have copied into his letter from the
original manuscript written in his Beaumont and Fletcher,
with but little variation. The line which stands next to
line 30 in the Beaumont and Fletcher, and is mutilated,

turns out to be
They must sojourn with their cares ;

so that he seems to have failed to discover the want of
a rhyme even while writing the poem a second time.

In the Lznes-on the Mermaid Tavern (Volume II,
page 130) Woodhouse reads booze for dowse in line It,
new old sign without any hyphen in line 19, and the last
four lines as in the Dilke manuscript. His transcript
of Robin Hood shows the following variation in line 25
(Volume II, page 134)—

Never any of the clan
and gives the date as 3 February. 1819, which is of
course a clerical error for 1818: Reynolds’s sonnets, to
which the poem is a reply, are recorded in the next
page of Woodhouse’s book as having appeared in the
Yellow Dwarf for the 21st of February 1818.

-Woodhouse appears to have had copied into his
Commonplace book the manuscript of Hyperion before it
was revised finally for the impression of 1820, and to
have marked in pencil the subsequent omissions and
alterations. The transcript is said by Mr. Colvin (Keats,

page 231) to show the following variations:
18 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.
“Book I. After line 21 stood the cancelled lines—

‘ Thus the old Eagle, drowsy with great grief,

Sat moulting his weak plumage, never more

To be restored or soar against the sun ;

While his three sons upon Olympus stood.’
In line 30, for ‘stay’d Ixion’s wheel’ stood ‘eased Ixion’s
toil’. In line 48, for ‘tone’ stood ‘tune’. In line 76,
for ‘gradual’ stood ‘sudden’. In line 102, after the

word ‘ Saturn,’ stood the cancelled words—

‘What dost think?
Am I that same? O Chaos!’ :

In line 156, for ‘yielded like the mist’ stood ‘gave to
them like mist’. In line 189, for ‘Savour of poisonous
brass’ stood ‘A poison-feel of brass’. In line 200 for
“When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers’
stood ‘When an earthquake hath shook their city
towers.’ After line 205 stood the cancelled line ‘Most
like a rose-bud to a fairy’s lute.’ In line 2009, for ‘And
like a rose’ stood ‘Yes, like a rose.’ In line 268, for
‘Suddenly’ stood ‘And, sudden.’

“Book II. In line 128, for ‘vibrating’ stood ‘vibrated’
In line 134 for ‘starry Uranus’ stood ‘starr’d Uranus’
(some friend doubtless called Keats’s attention to the
false quantity).

“Book III. After line 125 stood the cancelled lines :—
‘Into a hue more roseate than sweet pain

Gives to a ravish’d nymph, when her warm tears
Gush luscious with no sob; or more severe.
HYPERION. 19

In line 126, for ‘ most like’ stood ‘ more like.’”

The unfinished line and sentence with which the
fragment of Hyperion closes is filled up in pencil in the
Woodhouse transcript, wherein we read

At length

Apollo shriek’d—and lo from all his limbs

Celestial Glory brake dawn’d : he was a god!
The words may be confidently attributed to Keats; and
it must be assumed that he deliberately preferred to let
the fragment, as given to the public, end abruptly, as it
does at page 177 of Volume II, with the word Celestial.
Apart from the fineness of the recovered line, it is in-
teresting to learn that the fragment did not end, at all
events, with one of the “too many Miltonic inversions ”
which led Keats to abandon the undertaking. The con-

clusion which he published,—

Apollo shriek’d ;—and lo! from all his limbs

Celestial * * * * * *
* ¥ * * %F %& & &

was certain to leave the impression that the poet was
about to tell something concerning all the celestial limbs
of Apollo. As the adjective clearly belongs to the
suppressed noun glory, the only natural impression was
a false one.

Mr. Colvin (Keats, page 185) gives an extract from
Charles Armitage Brown’s manuscript memoir of Keats,
in Lord Houghton’s collection, showing that Hyperion, a

Vision, was not after all an early version. It is quite
Cc
20 “FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

positively and unmistakably recorded that, during
November and December 1819, Keats “was deeply
engaged in remodelling the fragment of Hyperion into
the form of a Vision.” The evidence of Brown is not to
be disputed ; but it is stated that Woodhouse, in a book
now destroyed by fire, left a similar record. Notwith-
standing the beauty of isolated passages in the Vision,
nothing could be much sadder than the distinct degra-
dation to which Keats, with his powers undermined by
disease, submitted the noble fragment Hyperion. Here
are textual changes so much the reverse of improve-
ments as to show decay of artistic faculty; but the saddest
evidence of such decay is in the impracticable scheme
whereby the simple grandeur of the narrative is trans-
muted into the hopeless complexity of a vision witnessed
by the poet with a quasi-classic conductress,

The following couplets, which were preserved by
Keats’s fellow medical student Henry Stephens, were
sent to me by Mr. W. H. Doeg, too late for insertion in

their proper place, among the early poems:

WOMEN, WINE AND SNUFF,

Give me women, wine and snuff
Until I cry out “hold, enough !”
You may do so sans objection

Till the day of resurrection ;

For bless my beard they aye shall be
My beloved Trinity.

The Hymn to Apollo (Volume II, pages 208-9) is |
ODE TO APOLLO—“ AFTER DARK VAPORS.” 21

headed Fragment of an Ode to Apollo in Woodhouse’s
book. In the sixth line of stanza 1 he reads Round for
Of, and in the eleventh line low-creeping for low crawling.

In stanza 2, line 8 reads

Oh! why didst 7oz pity, and beg for a worm?

In the eleventh line of that stanza, J zo¢t stands for ot
J. In stanza 3, line 3, zz earth stands for ix the Earth;

and line 8 reads thus—
To tie for a moment thy plant round his brow,— . ..

Woodhouse gives the 31st of January 1817 as the
date of the Sonnet “After dark vapors” (Volume IT,
page 216), reading the fifth line thus—

The anxious mouth relieving from its pains

and the word mouth is very plainly written instead of
month.

Of a manuscript draft of the Lines beginning “ Un-
felt, unheard, unseen,” (Volume II, pages 226-7) there is
a fac-simile in the American edition of 1883, showing

‘several revisions of text. The third line of Stanza 1
seems to have been intended to end with dying and
then with Azsseng; and there is a cancelled line 4 which
appears to have been

And stifling up { S } touch...

Stanza 2 shows a cancelled opening—
22 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.
How sleek those faery lids
How moist { } lip that bids
E’enin...
The fourth line in the stanza originally opened with
E’en in their quiet stillness
and the final line of the stanza was
That every Joy and Grief and Feeling drowns.
This is struck out in favour of

How Love doth know no fulness nor no bounds.

It is noteworthy here how the artist comes out even in
the elaboration of such a trifle as this. The quotation
substituted for the weak original line with its bad
rhyme made the poem beautiful. There are two can-

celled openings for Stanza 3—

So that my sight is dim
and
And so no faults nor flaws.

Woodhouse records that the Sonnet on the Sea
(Volume II, page 228) was published in The Champion
for the 17th of August 1817; and he reads where for
whence in line 7—no doubt correctly. In the Fragment
“Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow” (Volume II,
pages 234-5) he reads flames burn under in line 6,
storm-wreck'd for shipwreck'd in line 13, and aspics
for asfic in line 17. The date of the Sonnet “When
I have fears” (Volume II, page 236) he gives as
SONNET TO HOMER—HUMAN SEASONS. 23

February 1818; and he reads feel for think in line 7.
In the Sonnet to Homer (page 237) he gives the fifth

and sixth lines thus :—

So wast thou blind ; but then the veil was rent,
And Jove uncurtain’d heaven to let thee live, ...

He merely dates the sonnet 1818. In his copy of the
letter to Bailey written from Teignmouth in September
1818, the Sonnet entitled The Human Seasons (Volume
II, pages 247-8) appears with very interesting varia-
tions. Indeed there is scarcely a line, after the first,
identical with the published text ; and it will be best to

transcribe the version entire :

Four seasons fill the measure of the year ;
Four seasons are there in the mind of Man.
He hath his lusty Spring, when Fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span :
He hath his Summer, when luxuriously
He chews the honied cud of fair spring thoughts,
Till in his soul, dissolv’d, they come to be
Part of himself: He hath his Autumn Ports
And havens of repose, when his tired wings
Are folded up, and he content to look
On mists in idleness : to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshhold brook.
He hath his winter too of Pale misfeature,
Or else he would forget his mortal nature.

Concerning the Lines on seeing a Lock of Milton's
Hair, Keats has recorded that he wrote them “at Hunt’s,

at his request.” In the foot-note at pages 249-50 of
Volume II, mention is made of three manuscripts, neither
24 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

of which could be the original done at Hunt’s. On look-
ing over some manuscripts of Hunt’s, I have lately
found, in one of those commonplace-books wherein he
wrote and rewrote his poems piece-meal, what seems to
be the actual start made by Keats in pursuance of his’
friend’s request. Perhaps that request was accompanied
by an encouraging “Here’s a note-book, Keats; go
on!” At all events, here, between two pages of Hunt's
own poetry, are the first seventeen lines of Keats's
poem, commencing with a false start, Father of, rejected
for “Chief of organic numbers”. The sixth and seventh

lines are clearly meant to read

*

Ah what a mad endeavour
Maketh he...

but mad is badly written, and Waketh is written Macketh
(not Worketh). Of line 12 there is a cancelled reading—

O living fane of Sounds—
which is much better than
Live temple of sweet noise

but had to be rejected on account of the jingle created
by sounds and soundest. Line 17 is

Lend thine ear !

closed with a note of exclamation; so that the carrying
on the sense to what follows in the text was an after-
thought. With this line the fragment ends, though
MILTON’S HAIR—KING LEAR—BLUE. 25

Keats had but to turn over one leaf for another blank
page.

In the Sonnet Ox sitting down to read King Lear once
again (Volume II, pages 252-3), Woodhouse gives in his
transcript only one variation not previously recorded—
namely zhis for our in line 10, He records the 6th of
February 1818 as the date of the Sonnet to the Nile
(Volume ‘II, page 254), and is thus at variance by two
days with Keats’s own statement. Lines 6 to 8 he tran-

scribed thus :

Art thou so beautiful, or a wan smile
Pleasant but to those men who, sick with toil,
Rest them a space ’twixt Cairo and Dekan?

Line Io appears as

And ignorance doth make a barren waste . . .

A manuscript of the Sonnet on blue, written in answer
to one of Reynolds’s on dark eyes (Volume II, pages
257-8), found its way to America; and a so-called fac-
simile of it, now shorn of its first line, appeared in Zhe
Century Guild Hobby Horse for July 1886. Line 6 and
those following it seem to have exercised the ‘poet a
good deal. Mr. Horwood’s variation is not shown by
this copy; but, as far as the Hobby Horse reproduction
is legible, the intentions seem to have been as follows -—

Pools numberless

And all his vassal streams ; {ste Waterfalls
Lakes, Pools and Seas
26 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS,
And Waterfalls and Fountains never ran

’d
Or { . 4 } or slept but still...

Line 8 stands thus—
Subside but to a dark blue Nativeness.

Line 11 originally opened with Zhe Violet; line 12
shows the curious noun Hiddenness, struck out in favour
of Secrecy; in line 13 then how high is cancelled for
But how great; and line 14 originally began with the
word Trembling. Woodhouse’s transcript of the sonnet
corresponds verbally with the text of this edition: he
gives the date as the 8th of February 1818.

The journal-letter of 1818-19 to George and Georgiana
Keats contains a copy of the little Song “I had a dove”
(Volume II, page 281). In this copy the third line is

O what could it mourn for? it was tied ...

Line 5 reads dd for should, line 6 would for should and
dove for bird, line 7 on for in, and line 8 could for would.

Woodhouse gives the Sonnet Zo a Lady seen for a
few Moments at Vauxhall as at page 282 of Volume II,
supplying, however, the date, 4 February 1818.

Since 1883 I have found in The Examiner for the 14th
of July 1822 a complete text of the Lines written in the
Highlands, which occupy pages 299 to 302 of the second
volume of this edition. The Examiner gives them the
title Lines Written in the Scotch Highlands, mentions
that portions of the poem had appeared in “a late
LINES WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS, 27

Number of the Wew Monthly Magazine,’ and that it was
forwarded to the editor of that magazine entire. The
text corresponds throughout with that which I have
given, save in line 5, which contains the words “in days
of old” instead of “ by times of old,” and in the matter
of punctuation. The Examiner version is full of notes
of exclamation.

In Lord Houghton’s collection is a holograph manu-
script of the poem, at the end of which Keats has written
the title as given in this edition. The first line shows a

rejected reading, thus:

ilent plai
There is a charm in footing slow across a { Bee
grand camp...

I suppose the cancelled grand camp would have been
grand campaign if Keats had not thought better of it
before finishing the line. Line 2 ends with when glory
had the gain, not where. Lord Houghton’s readings in
lines 2, 4, and 5 (see foot-note, page 300) are not borne

out by the manuscript. Line 5 was originally written
In every spot there is a joy made known by times of old

but the words Jz every spot and there ts a goy are marked
for transposition. In line 10 Keats clearly wrote scurf,
not surf. Line 13 shows the cancelled reading Blue
hether bells for Light heather bells, and line 16 from
travels drear for on travels drear. In line 21 keeps is
rejected in favour of 7s. Line 23 shows no trace of the

reading World for Soul which I regarded as an error of
28 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

transcription in the Dilke manuscript. In line 25 @ is
substituted for the before Madman ; and in line 27 many
a Man is rejected for many a one. Line 29 originally
began with Short is the hour instead of Scanty the houn,
In line 35 oe is written by mistake for ov. The first
word of line 38 was originally Hazr, but was altered to
Locks; and line 44 originally opened with Ujon its
marble diadem,—its being struck out for rough, In line:
45 the anchor and our anchor are rejected in favour of
his anchor ; but the next line shows no trace of the pre-
position zz substituted for o# by Lord Houghton.

In 1883 I hazarded the conjecture that line 50 of
Staffa (Volume II, page 311) should end with grace in-
stead of glance, so as to rhyme with line 49, which ends
with place. In the Life, Letters &c., where the poem
first appeared, and in the current editions, the lines stand
without any indication of a hiatus to account for the
lack of rhyme. Mr. Colvin has found the explanation
of this defect in Woodhouse’s Commonplace book, con-
taining transcripts of the chief part of Keats’s poems
unpublished in 1819: “some contain gaps which Wood-
house has filled up in pencil from later drafts: to others
are added corrections, or suggestions for corrections,
some made in the hand of Mr. Taylor and some in that
of Keats himself.” In that book, Szaffa is continued
thus in pencil after line 49 :—

*Tis now free to stupid face,
To cutters, and to Fashion boats,
To cravats and to petticoats :—
STAFFA—“ WHY DID I LAUGH ?”—BROWN. 29

The great sea shall war it down,
For its fame shall not be blown
At each farthing Quadrille dance.
So saying with a spirit’s glance
He dived.

‘Perhaps Keats forgot when he wrote the six doggerel
lines that Lycidas was the spokesman; saw the incon-
gruity when he copied the verses; but did not think
them worth mending further than by excision. The holo-
graph letter contains the doggerel lines, but in line 45 the
epithet is stupid, not duliéd. The circumstances do not
warrant the restoration of the doggerel lines to the text.

The Sonnet “ Why did I laugh to-night ?” (Volume
II, page 333) being one of those transcribed by Keats in
his journal-letter of February-May 1819, I have been
able to consult the holograph, in which the sixth line
begins with “Say, wherefore did I laugh?” instead of
“TI say, why did I laugh?”—while the ‘eleventh line
reads could for would, Of the Sonnet on A Dream,
after reading Dante's Episode of Paulo and Francesca
(Volume II, pages 334-5) the manuscript which forms
part of the same journal-letter shows no new reading
beyond the inferior word zz for ’md in the tenth line.
Woodhouse’s record confirms my conjecture that that
sonnet was composed in April 1819.

The Spenserian Stanzas on Charles Armitage Brown
(Volume II, pages 337-8) as given in the holograph letter
of February-May 1819 show one or two variations from
the printed text. In lines 3 and 4 we find the reading
30 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

As hath the seeded thistle when in parle
It holds the zephyr,

which should probably take its place in the text; and
so no doubt should hoarse for bvave in line § of stanza 3.

The Sonnet “If by dull rhymes” (Volume II, page
339) also occurs in this journal-letter; but the holograph
is imperfect, ending abruptly with line 4, and showing
no variation from the printed text of the sonnet. The
Song of Four Faeries (Volume II, pages 340 to 344) is
all there, without any account being given of the com-
position. In line 9 is the cancelled reading Ever beat
for Faintless (not Faintly) fan; line 19 reads my skies
for their skies; lines 23, 29, and 30 read Spright for
Spirit; line 26 shows a cancelled reading, and studded
for all studded; \ine 32 has sedge shaded for sedge-
bury d ; of line 35 there is the cancelled reading

Where the flowers amid sweet troubles ;

line 40 appears to have begun originally with For in

sooth I’m instead of Soothly I am; line 46 stands as

Far beyond the search and quest ;

in line 53 brightness is cancelled in favour of brilliance;
in line 55 of is written by mistake instead of for; line

65 originally began with
Chillier than the water ;

lines 69 and 70 are
SONG OF FOUR FAERIES—EXTEMPORE, 31

Shall we leave them and go seek
Couches warm as their’s is cold ;

line 80 reads Spright for Sprite; there is a rejected

variation of line 82, namely
To the very torrid fountains—

and another which is too well obliterated to be read
securely ; the word ¢he is left out of line 89, probably by

accident ; after line 91 are the cancelled lines

Let us fly
Ah my love, my life ;
and in line 98 where stands in place of when,

The holograph of this same journal-letter of Feb-
ruary-May 1819 contains among its varieties and
novelties ninety-six lines of verse purporting to be an
extempore. Mr. Colvin (Wacmillan’s Magazine, August
1888) regards them as being connected in some sort with
the Song of Four Faeries to which I have just referred ;
and certainly they are trivial enough for such a con-
nexion. Here, at all events, they are,—with no parti-
cular reason for commencing, and only a little more for
ending, beyond the one stated in prose at the con-

clusion :—

When they were come into the Faery’s Court
They rang—no one at home—all gone to sport
And dance and kiss and love as faerys do

For Faries be as humans lovers true—

Amid the woods they were so lone and wild
Where even the Robin feels himself exil’d
And where the very brooks as if afraid
32

FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

Hurry along to some less magic shade.
*No one at home’! the fretful princess cry’d

-€ And all for nothing such a dre[a]ry ride

And all for nothing my new diamond cross

No one to see my persian feathers toss

No one to see my Ape, my Dwarf, my Fool

Or how I pace my Otaheitan mule.

Ape, Dwarf and Fool why stand you gaping there
Burst the door open, quick—or I declare

I'll switch you soundly and in pieces tear *.

The Dwarf began to tremble and the Ape
Star’d at the Fool, the Fool was all agape

The Princess grasp’d her switch but just in time
The dwarf with piteous face began to rhyme.
“O mighty Princess did you ne’er hear tell
What your poor servants know but too too well
Know you the three great crimes in faery land
The first alas! poor Dwarf I understand

I made a whipstock of a faery’s wand

The next is snoring in their company

The next the last the direst of the three

Is making free when they are not at home.

I was a Prince—a baby prince—my doom

You see, I made a whipstock of a wand

My top has henceforth slept in faery land.

He was a Prince the Fool, a grown up Prince
But he has never been a King’s son since

He fell a snoring at a faery Ball—

Your poor Ape was a Prince and he poor thing
Picklock’d a faery’s boudour—now no king

But ape—so pray your highness stay awhile
’Tis sooth indeed we know it to our sorrow—
Persist and you may be an ape tomorrow—
While the Dwarf spake the Princess all for spife
Peal’d the brown hazel twig to lilly. white
Clench’d her small teeth, and held her lips apart
AN EXTEMPORE. 33

Try’d to look unconcern’d with beating heart.
They saw her highness had made up her mind
And quaver’d like the reeds before the wind
And they had had it, but O happy chance
The Ape for very fear began to dance
And grin’d as all his ugliness did ache—
She staid her vixen fingers for his sake
He was so very ugly : then she took
Her pocket glass mirror and began to look
First at herself and [then] at him and then
She smil’d at her own beauteous face again.
Yet for all this—for all her pretty face
She took it in her head to see the place.
Women gain little from experience
Either in Lovers, husbands or expense.
The more the beauty the more fortune too
Beauty before the wide world never knew.
So each fair reasons—tho’ it oft miscarries.
She thought er pretty face would please the faries,
“My darling Ape I wont whip you today
Give me the Picklock sirrah and go play.”
They all three wept—but counsel was as vain
As crying cup biddy to drops of rain,
Yet lingeringly did the sad Ape forth draw
The Picklock from the Pocket in his Jaw.
The Princess took it and dismounting straight
Trip’d in blue silver'd slippers to the gate

full
And touch’d the wards, the Door epescou[r]teou[s]ly
Opened—she enter’d with her servants three.
Again it clos’d and there was nothing seen
But the Mule grasing on the herbage green.

End of Canto xii

Canto the xiii

The Mule no sooner saw himself alone
34 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS,

Than he prick’d up his Ears—and said ‘ well done
At least unhappy Prince I may be free—
No more a Princess shall side saddle me
O King of Othaieté—tho’ a Mule
‘ Aye every inch a King ’—tho ‘ Fortune’s fool’
Well done—for by what Mr Dwarfy said
I would not give a sixpence for her head’.
Even as he spake he trotted in high glee
To the knotty side of an old Pollard tree
And rub[’d] his sides against the mossed bark
Till his Girths burst and left him naked stark
Except his Bridle—how get rid of that
Buckled and tied with many a twist and plait.
At last it struck him to pretend to sleep
And then the thievish Monkies down would creep
And filch the unpleasant trammels quite away.
No sooner thought of than adown he lay
Sham’d a good snore—the Monkey-men descended
And whom they thought to injure they befriended.
They hung his Bridle on a topmost bough
And of[f] he went run, trot, or anyhow—
Brown is gone to bed—and I am tired of rhyming—...

For the proper context see later on, pages 146 and
147.

The two Sonnets on Fame (Volume II, pages 345-6)
occur in‘the same journal-letter, but reversed in order.
Of the one commencing with the words “Fame, like a
wayward girl,” the holograph shows scarcely any varia-
tion, though line 12 reads Ye lovelorn Artists for Ye
Artists lovelorn. The other Sonnet opens with How
ts that Man misled, altered to How feverd is that Man;
lines 7 and 8 are
SONNETS ON FAME AND SLEEP—LA BELLE DAME. 35

As if a clear Lake meddling with itself
Should cloud its pureness with a muddy gloom ;

and lines 13 and 14 show the cancelled reading

Why then should man his own bright name deface
And burn our pleasures in his selfish fire.

The fourteenth line is left standing thus—
Spoil his salvation dy a fierce miscreed ?

instead of for a fierce miscreed.

These sonnets are followed by that to Sleep (Volume
II, pages 347-8), of which the copy so sent to George
Keats corresponds almost exactly with the printed
text, reading, however, dewy Charities for lulling chari-
ties in line 8. In line 12 “ike the mole has been re-
jected in favour of “ke a mole.

Among all the new material which has come to light
since the first issue of this edition of Keats’s writings,
there is little if anything that exceeds in interest that
part of the journal-letter written in the spring of 1819
which includes a copy of La Belle Dame sans Merci.
This poem I had placed tentatively at the close of
Keats’s poetic career, adopting in the text the version
printed during his life-time in Zhe Indicator. The
holograph now brought to light has no bearing on the
text; but it leaves no doubt that this wonderful poem
was composed in the spring of 1819; and, had the
information come to light soon enough, I should of
course have placed La Belle Dame a few pages earlier in

the volume. This copy shows many corrections, and
D
36 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

is clearly a very early one, though not, I should say,
the first. It accounts for most of the readings which
distinguish Lord Houghton’s version of the poem
from the more authoritative one of The Indicator, and
confirms my supposition that his Lordship worked from
an earlier manuscript than was furnished to Leigh Hunt
for publication. Over and above the variations already
given in foot-notes from the Houghton text (see Volume
II, pages 357 to 360), the holograph shows the following.
Stanza 3 originally stood thus—

I see death’s lilly on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew
And on thy cheeks death’s fading rose
Withereth too.

| The word death's, however, is struck out in favour of a
both in line 1 and in line 3; and Fastis put in before
withereth in line 4. In Stanza 4, line 1 originally ended
with Wilds (not Wolds as given by Mr. Colvin) instead
of Meads. Line 2 of Stanza 7 originally stood thus—

And honey wild and honey dew.
The only change made in the manuscript in this stanza
is the substitution of manna dew for honey dew. There
is no trace of the word once given by Mr. Colvin in Mac-
millan’s Magazine in line 3. In the second line of Stanza 8

is the cancelled reading
And there she wept and there'she sigh'd . . .
and line 4 of Stanza Io is

Thee hath in thrall
LA BELLE DAME. 37

instead of

Hath thee in thrall!
Line 1 of Stanza 11 has the noun gloam which I felt
tempted to retain in the text, as characteristic, on the
suspicion that Hunt had substituted gloom in The
Indicator without authority. Line 2 of the stanza had

been begun with Ad tremble and had then-been written
With horrid warning wide agape

before the reading of the text was adopted ; and finally

there is a rejected opening of Stanza 12—
And this is why I wther.—

It would be hard to find a single manuscript poem by
Keats, of like extent, exceeding in interest that of Za
Belle Dame sans Merci; and the prose surroundings of
the poem are no less interesting than the revisions of text
shown in the draft of the poem itself. These sur-
roundings will be found at large later on in the
“present volume, namely at pages 150 and 151; but
I cannot refrain from a special reference in this place to
the playful dissertation of the poet upon the number of
kisses with which, in the early version, the “knight at
arms” closed the eyes of the lady. The circumstance
that Keats, fresh from the composition of this lovely
poem, could find it in him to joke with his brother and
sister-in-law about the lines

And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four
38 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

confirms me as to the train of thought which led to the
rejection of that reading when the poem was published,
If he could himself joke about the rejected version, he
would naturally consider it open to jocular treatment by
others; and that would be ample reason for finding
‘another reading. But the important point in Keats's
little joke against himself is that remarked on by Mr.
Colvin (Macmillan’s Magazine, August 1888), namely
that it is “a proof the more of the spirit of humour,
modesty, and plain sense which neither inspiration, nor
the pride of inspiration, could conquer in him or long
displace.”

The last collation of which I have here to give the
result is that of the noble Shakespearian fragment of
King Stephen (Volume II, pages 475 to 485) with the
manuscript in Lord Houghton’s Keats collection. This
manuscript consists of eight leaves—three quarto leaves
in the writing of Charles Armitage Brown and five folio
leaves in Keats’s writing. Brown’s first leaf has on the

recto the title—

King Stephen.
a fragment
of a tragedy,
by
John Keats
Nov’ 1819—

while the verso bears the following list of
- KING STEPHEN. 39

Dramatis Persone,

King Stephen.

Duke of Glocester.

Earl of Chester.

Earl Baldwin.

The Empress Maud, or Matilda.
In Keats’stext, however, Glocester is the Earl of Glocester.
So far as Scene I is concerned, Brown’s transcript cor-
responds with the published text save in line 35 (Volume
II, page 476), where he reads Wot twenty Earl of Chesters,
instead of Earls of Chester. Brown’s writing ends with
Now our dreaded Queen (line 36): Keats’s begins with

enter another Captain
Glocester. What new...
What is’t you would speak: say ?

all of which is struck out for Wow our dreaded Queen;
so that those words stand repeated in the composite
manuscript. The speech of the Second Captain (line
20) originally began with

This to thee
Most noble Gloster.

At the close of the speech, instead of Enter Second
Knight, Keats wrote Enter another Captain, but struck
the words out and substituted merely a knight; and for
the rest of the scene the dialogue is between Glocester
and Knight (not Second Knight). Line 36 originally
began with Maintains, which was struck out for Keeps
elbow room. Line 50 ends with fé/ts, not Ait; and I
40 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

think Keats meant to use the plural. In line 51 Glocester
says in the printed text, Come, lead me to this man:
Keats certainly wrote Lead me to this mars; and doubt-
less he intended Glocester to compliment the fallen
King by comparing him to the God of War, just as in
the same scene Maud was compared to Pallas looking
down from the walls of Ilion. It was nothing particular
for Keats to spell a god’s name with a small initial
letter. Scene II is followed in Keats’s manuscript by a
cancelled opening of Scene III, thus—
Scene 3742

The field of Battle—Enter Stephen unaru’d

Stephen Another Sword! for one short minute longer
That I may pepper that De Kaims and then A
Stephen say

Yield to { wollen 1 some twenty squadrons {
thic-asmy ysq Fhiste-gien!

Wouldst thou exchange this helmeted renown
To rule in qu[iJet Pylos Nestor-like ?
No !——

Enter De Kaims Knights and Soldters dropping in
De Kaims...

In rewriting the opening of the Scene, Keats at first put

Another Sword ! and what if I took one
From forth Bellona’s gleaming armoury

which stands altered to the far better reading of the
text. Line 4 of the rewritten opening originally stood
thus

Where is my Enemy? Aye, close at hand
Here comes the testy Brood

but this stands changed to the reading of the text, save |
KING STEPHEN. 4!

that comes is not altered to come. Line 15 stands thus—

Yield Stephen, or my Sword’s point explere dip in...
I scarcely think Keats meant this as an alternative
present-future,

or my sword’s point dips in

The gloomy current of a traitor’s heart,
as Lord Houghton gave it: more probably he used or
for ere or before. There is certainly no s either in explore
or in dip. In line 27 @ king alive is rejected for a breath-
ing king; and before lines 30 and 31 were got to the
poet’s satisfaction he had gone through the following
readings:

there’s the man who

To whi[s]per { \ took alive

there is he who
King ...
The stubborn Reb[el] . . .
In line 44, again, occurs the plural Ai/¢s, not Az/t, and
in line 46 Do ye hear !—not Do you hear ?
In line 10 of Scene IV wld J stands for 7 wi//, and

line 5 was written

To sage advisers will I ever bend
but w// J was struck out for Zz me. Line 13 was

And not trench on our actions personal
but ot trenching was substituted for And not trench. In
line 32 dreams sometimes is rejected for dreams too much ;
and in the next line out of date is substituted for weak
enough. Between lines 37 and 38 stands cancelled

And finds for everyone of all his...

The fragment ends with the words,
42 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.
A Queen’s nod
Can make eekd-chsistmas his June December—here he comes.
The juxtaposition of Lord Houghton’s Lamia and
King Stephen manuscript fragments has caused me to
observe the repetition of the notable phrase sole and
lone: in Lamia we have

A haunting music sole perhaps and lone
Supportress of the faiery roof

and in King Stephen
He sole and lone maintains
A hopeless bustle mid our swarming arms.
From the appearance of this manuscript it would seem
that, in November 1819, to throw off poetic utterances in
the finest and freest style was as easy to Keats as the
breathing of his native air.

The “Nonsense Verses” on Oxford which appear at
page 74 of Volume IV, preserved by Charles Brown, but
apart from any context, were also transcribed by Wood-
house, who connects them with an extract from a letter
which Keats wrote to Reynolds from Oxford, and thus
greatly increases their interest. It turns out that they
are meant for a parody of a poem by Wordsworth.
Keats seems to have written to Reynolds—

“Wordsworth sometimes, though in a fine way, gives us

sentences in the style of school exercises.—For instance,

The lake doth glitter,
Small birds twitter &c.

Now, I think this is an excellent method of giving a
ON OXFORD. 43

very clear description of an interesting place such as
Oxford is.”

The particular poem of Worgsworth’s thus alluded to
was first published in 1807 ; and in Volume II (pages 9
and 10) of the collected Poems in two volumes which

Wordsworth issued in 1815, it reappeared thus:

WRITTEN IN MARCH
While vesting on the Bridge at the Foot of Brothers Water.

The cock is crowing,
The stream is flowing,
The small birds twitter,
The lake doth glitter,
The green field sleeps in the sun ;
The oldest and youngest
Are at work with the strongest ;
The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising ;
There are forty feeding like one!

Like an army defeated
The Snow hath retreated,
And now doth fare ill
On the top of the bare hill ;
The Plough-boy is whooping—anon—anon 3
There’s joy in the mountains ;
There’s life in the fountains ;
Small clouds are sailing,
Blue sky prevailing ;
The rain is over and gone!

Keats’s criticism in this instance is better than his

parody,—though the rhyme common-hat and dominat,
44 FRESH VERSES AND NEW READINGS.

bad enough in itself, has a certain aptness under the
provocation of fave il/ and bare hill. Woodhouse gives:
Lives instead of Stands as the first word of line 6,

stanza 1; and he reads lines 2 and 3 of stanza 2 thus—

O’er pale visages mourns
The black tassel trencher, or common-hat.

The same authority gives the 16th of January 1818
as the date of the Sonnet to Mrs. Reynolds’s Cat
(Volume IV, pages 425-6), and does not credit Keats with
misspelling climacteric and writing has for fast in line 1,
or kas for have in line 12. On the other hand he ends
his transcript with glass bottle wall, while Hood gives
the preferable reading glass bottled wall. In line 9
there is a genuine variation of epithet, cexder for dainty.

The appreciation of Keats’s genius which led so many
of his intimates to preserve his most trifling effusions,
and to transcribe them for each other even while he was
yet alive, has thrown upon his editors of the present
inquisitive and minutely studious age the not altogether
grateful task of bringing into the tale of a great poet’s
works many trivialities and crudities that one would fain
leave to oblivion if there were any option. These trifles,
it is true, can never harm the poet’s reputation, and are
often in themselves amusing; but it is a pleasure to |
close the present sifting of new material with a sonnet *

preserved by Woodhouse, not of Keats’s, but by one

' Dated the 27th of February 1817, and already published by
Mr. Colvin.
SONNET BY REYNOLDS. 45

who was himself no mean poet, and who may fitly have

the last word on an occasion like the present :

SONNET—TO KEATS
On reading his Sonnet written in Chaucer.

Thy thoughts, dear Keats, are like fresh-gathered leaves,
Or white flowers pluck’d from some sweet lily bed ;
They set the heart d-breathing, and they shed

The glow of meadows, mornings, and spring eves,

Over the excited soul. Thy genius weaves
Songs that shall make the age be nature-led,

And win that coronal for thy young head
Which Time’s strange hand of freshness ne’er bereaves.
Go on! and keep thee to thine own green way,
Singing in that same key which Chaucer sung ;—
Be thou companion of the Summer day,
Roaming the fields, and olden woods among :—
So shall thy Muse be ever in her May ;
And thy luxuriant Spirit ever young.
J. H. Reynolds.

I shall be surprised if this sonnet does not find its way

into future anthologies,
REVIEW OF JOHN HAMILTON
REYNOLDS’'S “PETER BELL,
A LYRICAL BALLAD.”
[The story of John Hamilton Reynolds’s brilliant squib, Peter
Bell, a Lyrical Ballad, is agreeably told by Keats at pages 145
and 149 of this volume; and the draft of the following review
appears at pages 149 and 150. The review itself was published
in The Examiner for Sunday the 25th of April 1819, and re-
appeared in the issue of Monday the 26th. Some of the variations
from the draft seem to me to indicate that Keats himself made
changes in copying it; but it is probable that Hunt is responsible
for some of the alterations. Reynolds’s Peter Beli (“ the ante-natal
Peter,” as Shelley called it) is a scarce pamphlet, although there
were three editions of it in a very short time. It is no longer out
of currency ; for it was reprinted, ¢o/zdem verdzs, as an appendix to
the third volume of my library edition of Shelley’s Poetical Works,—
the volume containing Peter Bell the Third. In the genesis of
that poem, it now appears, Keats took part ; for it was this review,
with Hunt’s notice a week later of Wordsworth’s Peter Bell, that
so amused Shelley as to induce him to contribute to the Bel/
literature. The title-page of Reynolds’s jeu d’esprit reads thus—
“PETER BELL. a LYRICAL BALLAD. ‘I do affirm that I
am the REAL SIMON PuRE.’ Bold Stroke for a Wife. LONDON:
PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY, 93, FLEET STREET.
1819.” There is a page of advertisements at the end, wherein
Endymion is offered for sale at 9s. This page is.dated “ April,
1819,” in the first and second editions, and “ May, 1819,” in the
third.—H. B. F.]
REVIEW OF JOHN HAMILTON
REYNOLDS’S “PETER BELL,
A LYRICAL BALLAD.”

THERE have been lately advertised two books, both
Peter Bell by name: what stuff one of them was made
of may be seen by the motto,—“I am the real Simon
Pure.”—This false Florimel has hurried from the press,
and obtruded herself into public notice, while, for ought
we know, the real one may be still wandering about the
woods and wildernesses. Let us hope she may soon
appear, and make good her right to the Magic Girdle.
The pamphleteering Archimage, we can perceive, has
rather a splenetic love, than a downright hatred, to real
Florimels ; he has, it seems, a fixed aversion to those
three rising Graces, Alice Fell, Susan Gale, and Betty
Foy ; and now especially to Peter Bell, the fit Apollo.
It is plainly seen by one or two passages in this little
skit, that the writer of it has felt the finer parts of
Mr. WORDSWORTH’S poetry, and perhaps expatiated
with his more remote and sublimer Muse. This, as far
as it relates to Peter Bell, is unlucky: the more he may
love the sad embroidery of the Excursion, the more will
he hate the coarse sample[r]s of Betty Foy and Alice
Fell; and, as they come from the same hand, the better
will he be able to imitate that which we see can be
imitated, to wit, Peter Bell, as far as that hero can be
50 ESSAYS LATELY FOUND.

imagined from his obstinate name. We repeat, it is
very unlucky: this Simon Pure is in points the very
man: there is such a pernicious likeness in the scenery,
such a pestilent humour in the rhymes, and such an in-
veterate cadence in some of the stanzas. If we are one
part amused with this, we are three parts sorry that any
one who has any appearance of appreciating WORDs-
WORTH, should show so much temper at this really
provoking name of Peter Bell.

The following are specimens of the Preface and the
Poetry :—

It is now a period of one-and-twenty years since I first wrote
some of the most perfect compositions (except certain pieces I have
written in my later days) that ever dropped from poetical pen. My
heart hath been right and powerful ‘all its years. I never thought
an evil or a weak thought in my life. It has been my aim and my
achievement to deduce moral thunder from buttercups, daisies «,
celandines, and (as a poet, scarcely inferior to myself, hath it)
“such small deer.” Out of sparrows’ eggs I have hatched great
truths, and with sextons’ barrows have I wheeled into human
hearts, piles of the weightiest philosophy.

* * * * * * * * * *

My Ballads are the noblest pieces of verse in the whole range of
English poetry : and I take this opportunity of telling the world I
am a great man. Milton was also a great man. Ossian was a
blind old fool. Copies of my previous works may be had in any
numbers, by application at my publisher.

* * * * * *
He hath a noticeable look +,
This old man hath—this grey old man;
He gazes at the graves, and seems,

* A favourite flower of mine. It was a favourite with Chaucer,
but he did not understand its moral mystery as I do,

“Little Cyclops, with one eye.”
Poems by ME.

+ “A noticeable man with large grey eyes.”
Lyrical Ballads,
Dairy-maid to Mr. Gill.

REVIEW OF REYNOLDS’S “ PETER BELL.” 51

With over waiting, over wan,
Like Susan Harvey’s } pan of creams.

°Tis Peter Bell—'tis Peter Bell,
Who never stirreth in the day ;
His hand is wither’d—he is old !
On Sundays he is us’d to pray,
In winter he is very cold §.

I’ve seen him in the month of August,

At the wheat-field, hour by hour,

Picking ear,—by ear,—by ear,—

Through wind,—and rain,—and sun,—and shower,
From year,—to year,—to year,—to year.

You never saw a wiser man,

He knows his Numeration Table ;
He counts the sheep of Harry Gill ||,
Every night that he is able,

When the sheep are on the hill.

Betty Foy—My Betty Foy,

Is the aunt of Peter Bell ;

And credit me, as I would have you,
Simon Lee was once his nephew,
And his niece is Alice Fell |] ||.

He is rurally related ;

Peter Bell hath country cousins,
(He had once a worthy mother)
Bells and Peters by the dozens,
But Peter Bell he hath no brother.

Peter Bell resembleth Harry Gill in this particular:

“His teeth they chatter, chatter, chatter.”

I should have introduced this fact in the text, but that Harry Gill
would not rhyme. I reserve this for my blank verse.

|: Harry Gill was the original proprietor of Barbara Lewthwaite’s
pet-lamb; and he also bred Betty Foy’s celebrated poney, got
originally out of a Night-mare, by a descendant of the great Trojan

|| | Mr. Sheridan, in his sweet poem of the Critic, supplies one
of his heroes with as singularly clustering a relationship.

E
52 REVIEW OF REYNOLDS’S “PETER BELL.”

Not a brother owneth he,

Peter Bell he hath no brother ;

His mother hath no other son,

No other son e’er call’d her mother ;
Peter Bell hath brother none.

 

The foregoing extracts were almost certainly not transcribed by
Keats. They are so essentially accurate that they were in all pro-
bability set up from the pamphlet itself, or from portions of it cut out
for the purpose. It is only in some half-a-dozen instances that it:
has been necessary to restore the punctuation of the original. The
word a before Night-mare, four lines from the foot of the preceding
page, seems to have been dropped out accidentally in Ze Examiner,
ON “RETRIBUTION, OR THE CHIEF.
TAIN’S DAUGHTER,”

A TRAGEDY

ACTED AT COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.
[This notice appeared in Zhe Champion for Sunday the 4th of
January 1818, under the editorship of John Scott. It is not
nearly so good as the foregoing contribution to The Examiner,
and does not seem to indicate that Keats would have been very
successful if he had seriously attempted to trammel his genius by
undertaking periodical hack work. For the circumstances in which
this notice was written see page 76 of the present volume. The
printing is very inexact ; and I have not thought it requisite to re-
produce every trifling inaccuracy.—H. B. F.]

s
ON “RETRIBUTION, OR THE CHIEF-
TAIN’S DAUGHTER,”

A TRAGEDY

ACTED AT COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.

WHAT exquisite names did our old dramatists christen
their plays withal! The title of an old play gives us a
direct taste and surmise of its inwards, as the first lines
of the Paradise Lost smack of the great Poem. The
names of old plays are Dantean inscriptions over the
gates of hell, heaven, or purgatory. Some of such en-.
during pathos that in these days we may not for decency
utter them, ‘honor dishonorable ’—in these days we may
but think of passion’s seventh heaven, and but just men-
tion how crystalline the third is. The old dramatists
and their title pages are old Britain kings and their
provinces. The fore page of a love play was ever “to
Cupid’s service bowed,” as “The Mad Lover,” “The
Broken Heart ”—or spake its neighbourhood to the
“shores of old romance,” as “ The Winter’s Tale,” “The
Two Noble Kinsmen.”

The title of the play newly acted at Covent Garden
set us thinking of these affairs. It had been long an-
nounced, and is called “Retribution, or the Chieftain’s
Daughter.” Now this is most wretched; an unpardon-
able offence, so sans pareilly, so inferior to Mrs. Radcliffe,
so germane to a play-bill at a fair, that we will say no
56 ESSAYS: ON “RETRIBUTION, OR

more about it for fear prejudice and indignation should
carry us butt against the main body of the work, to try
whose skull is hardest. The scene lies in Persia among
“kingdoms of the sun.” Varanes, king of Persia (Mr.
Young), we learn, in conspiracy with his elder son
Chofroo (Mr. Macready), had some time ago murdered
his King and brother, for the sake of his Crown and
Sceptre. It appears that Varanes tutored his son into
the crime, and the son has the dreadful audacity to be
continually holding a rod over his parent on account of
the secret. This filial coercion as it touches upon Zimia
the Chieftain’s daughter (Miss O’Neill) begets the most
leading features, and the greater number of speeches in
the piece. WVaranes has a younger son Hamed (Mr. C.
Kemble), who is quite a contrast to Chofroo, being mild,
gentle, and compassionate ; and likewise most lionlike
in his just wrath. These two contra-distinguished
brothers are desperately in love with Zimia, whose
father, Suthes (Mr. Terry), the tyrannical Chofroo had
first driven into rebellion, by an improper behaviour to
his daughter, afterwards conquered, and, sticking to the
old proverb, talks of their being his slaves: he is op-
posed by Hamed—and thus one rut the carriage makes
may be explored with all expostulations pro and con
between the fathers, sons, and courtiers; moreover if
the imaginer thinks in certain commonplaces about
virtue and vice—virtue’s footstool, and vice’s ugly face,
he will not be much out of the way. This Chofroo also
has a great mind to displace his father by some means;
however he is saved that trouble, for unluckily for
Hamed during a perilous discourse between him and
the King concerning the murder, the King is so over-
come by “retribution” as to fall down in a fainting fit,
not before his raving had called towards the room some
THE CHIEFTAIN’S DAUGHTER.” 7

gentlemen of the Court, who immediately apprehend
Hamed for the murder of his father. In consequence
Chofroo becomes sovereign, goes on in a most bare-
faced manner, and even when it is supposed his dead
father is lying in state before him on his throne, he
condemns Hamed, Suthes, and Zimia to death; they
keep on moralizing and etiquetting upon who shall die,
until in rushes Varanes, and turns the tables completely
upon Chofroo who, instead of these innocents is led off
to execution. There was a scene about a nosegay be-
tween Zimia, Hamed, and Suthes. We thought this
most poetical part of the play, tedious, dull and bad.
Some few expressions we caught at as poetical, such as
in speaking of a waterfall, “cool enjoyment,” with others
of the like, could we recollect them. We have an idea
too that the simile about autumn is fine. On the whole,
however, it is full of improbabilities and common-place
language, so that to refer it to any standard of excel-
lence, it must be sear’d like—

A scribbled form, drawn with a pen
Upon a parchment.

In comparison with second rate, or rather no rate authors,
we may say it is ten folios from Otway, and one-third
as good as Rowe. If the author is young and has a
wide chasm to fill up with achievement, and at the
same time gives up writing such common-place as we
find in this his first trial, he need not care what is said
for or against in the public prints.

Miss O’Neill does a very fine thing about the third’
act, which cheers one up a little; we will not explain it,
that those who go may also have the pleasure of sur-
prise. Mr.'C. Kemble kept us in very good temper.
Mr. Young’s acting we do not like, and therefore will
eke” ESSAYS LATELY FOUND.

not offend his numerous admirers with any remarks,
Mr. Terry’s talents have never been appreciated. Fi-
nally, we think the average excellence of the verse. of
this play, and the average excellence of the Covent
Garden talent tragedian much upon a par, both for
sentiment and pronunciation: ‘more finally, that Miss
O'Neill, and Mr. Kean are your only people to give
music to the C. and S.
ON “DON GIOVANNI,” A PANTOMIME

ACTED AT DRURY LANE THEATRE.
‘

[The following notice, inferior, perhaps, even to that of Retri-
bution, appeared in the same paper, namely The Champion for
Sunday the 4th of January 1818. See pages 54 and 76 of this
volume.—H. B. F.]
ON “DON GIOVANNI,” A PANTOMIME

ACTED AT DRURY LANE THEATRE.

Don Giovanni after having been wire drawn for many
years past at the neighbour theatres, made a pet of at
the Surrey, and fiddled away to hell at the Italian
Opera, has found its way into the Drury-lane pantomime
for the Christmas of 1817-18. Your great antiquaries
now would pronounce his whole history from’ the day
of his birth to this present, not omitting the gradual
‘changing of his hair from flaxen to black, nor any little
choice conversation or riddle-me-ree between him and
his nursery maid on the day he was breeched ; nor how
fond he was of rabbits, and pigeons, and cockchaffers,
and moo-cows, and hunt the slipper, nor how he volun-
teered among the little tambour workers for weeks and
weeks, so breathing in an intoxicating air, sucking in
poison from a sampler, and forgetting himself at a red
morocco slipper. Unfortunate Don! unthinkingly didst
thou treasure up the forms of things in thine imagination
—the storm, the fatal storm was mustering by little and
little till it burst to the utter astonishment of a certain
fair playmate. Then were his eyes opened, he forgot his
kite, his top, and what is more his knitting needles—for
now that happy time was gone where with a luxurious
patience he would frame and fashion delicately a pair of
garters for a being made of light. Aye happy and yet
62 ‘ESSAYS LATELY FOUND.

not happy was that May morning on which the young
Giovanni and the fair Silentilla walked forth—but this
is no place for a fairy tale; suffice it to say, that’in con-
sequence, has the poor youth been thrown into Tartarus
from every stage in Europe, to the great delight of
greater part of the male audience from a spirit of rivalry,
jealousy, and certain other things which do haunt the
heads and hearts of men, and to the retrospective com-
passion of the more soft and pitying spectators: he has,
say they—
—— “ Bought golden opinions—

Which s[h]ould be worn now in their newest gloss,

Not cast aside so soon.”

In the course of the pantomime Punch and Judy with
their family were introduced: an illustrious house, of
which the pranks and witty squeaking are more popular
than Giovanni himself; and it would not be an useless
or uninstructive speculation to enquire why and where-
fore. In the first place if the Don is well made, Punch
is ill made; if the Rake has a dozen mistresses, Punch
has his Judy, who has the charms of a dozen in her
summed up—if the former has a confident stamp, the
latter has the neatest jerk of the left leg; if the former
has his quizzing glass the latter has his ladle. The
Commentators have started a variety of frivolous ob-
jections to this entertaining hunchback ; those of Ste-
phanio one turns from disgusted, seeing that in his
discourse concerning the wife Judy, he has punned upon
the word Lemon. Malonius has objected to the bit of
black ribbon which confines his pigtail, calling it an
unapt contrast to the white powder, and saying more-
over that it is a plagiarism from the chess board, the
origin of which and that of the Punch family he thinks
intimately connected. Theobaldio, Warburtonio, and
ON “DON GIOVANNI,” A PANTOMIME, 63

many more make such like stands against all common
sense and decency, with a blind sort of pertin[a]city, as
if they were to seal the book of fame and remain un-
assailable by after critics. To answer these gentlemen
separately would be to count the grains in a bushel of
corn: to have a doubt of their vanity would be to take
a hawk for a handsaw. One particular however may
as well be noticed. Much cavilling has arisen con-
cerning which of the ruined damsels shed the most
tears, and to settle this matter we must turn, as natu-
rally as horse to manger, towards tradition, from which
we glean that three had black eyes, one blue, three
hazel, six grey, and eight brown ; is there any thing to
be resolved on from this? One almost fears to say
again we find from the secret memoirs of a lady-bird,
the measurement the crique and breadth of their re-
spective dimples: some ten, some twenty, some thirty
paces across: yet this affords no clew to anything like
probability. One of them, however, we learn, was in a
few particulars distinct from the rest, and she we think»
must have been the most tearful unfortunate. Her
finger nails were touched with the faintest crimson, like
the heart of a maiden’s blush ; and if you did not sud-
denly snatch her into your vision, you might suppose
that the fair roundure of her fingers reached back to
heaven and faded into the milky way. She never
plucked a lily but once.

As to the pantomime, be it good or bad, a child
should write a critique upon it. We were pleased
knowing how much better it ought to be—a child’s is
‘the eulogy—and that not merely in pantomimes.
FRESH LETTERS AND ADDITIONAL
PASSAGES.

\
[By far the largest part of the following section is proper to the
third volume of the Library edition. To avoid a wearisome repe-
tition of the term “Volume III,” the references are sometimes.
made to the relative page without repeating the mention of the
volume. The reader should bear in mind, therefore, that the
allusions to page so-and-so in the Italic portions of this section and
in the foot-notes, up to page 156, are almost entirely to Volume
TIL—H. B. F.] =
FRESH LETTERS AND ADDITIONAL
PASSAGES.

Since the publication of the library edition of Keats's
Works in 1883, there has been an American issue of Lord
FHloughton's edition of the poetry, together with a volume of
letters, superintended by Mr. J. G. Speed, who, being a
grandson of George Keats, has had access to some of the
papers formerly preserved at Louisville in Kentucky, and
has been enabled to publish one new letter of considerable
interest as well as to give several passages omitted from
previous printed versions of Keats's letters. Later, Professor
Szdney Colvin contributed to the“ English Men of Letters”
series an admirable volume on Keats, which, though based in
the main upon previous publications, had the advantage of
some fresh material. Notably Mr. Colvin had complete access
to Lord Houghton’s papers and to some manuscript books of
Keats's friend Richard Woodhouse; and such writings
of Keats as have been preserved in these records, but not
used in Mr. Colvin’s volume, he has kindly communicated
to me,—allowing me also to use the autographs of Letters
LVI, LXX, LXXXIV and LXXXVI, which have been
placed in his care since his book came out. By means of the

present Supplement I am adding to my edition all new

material that is of consequence ; and it is from the above-

mentioned sources that the greater part of this material is
F
68 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

drawn. The significance of the new passages will be much
enhanced by reading this section with Volumes III and IV
at hand ; and no difficulty will be found in connecting the
compositions with the help of the indications given for that
purpose in the ensuing pages.

The following letter, which bears no post-mark, and was
therefore probably sent by hand to Reynolds, appears to
belong to the beginning of the year 1817, and may be placed
between No. IV and No. V in the third volume :-—

Sunday Evening
My dear Reynolds

Your kindness affects me so sensibly that I can
merely put down a few mono-sentences—your criticism
only makes me extremely anxious that I should not de-
ceive you.

It’s the finest thing by God—as Hazlitt would say.
However I hope I may not deceive you.—There are
some acquaintances of mine who will scratch their
Beards and although I have, I hope, some Charity, I
wish their nails may be long.—I will be ready at the
time you mention in all Happiness. j

There is a report that a young Lady of 16 has written
the new Tragedy God bless her—I will know her by
Hook or by Crook in less than a week—My Brother's
and my Remembrances to your kind sisters.

yours most sincerely
John Keats

From the letter which Keats wrote to Reynolds when
staying at Carisbrooke a passage has hitherto been omitted,
at the commencement of the newly dated portion. Between
“ April 18th [1817]” and“ PU tell you what,’ at page 54
of Volume ITI, insert :—
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 69

Will you have the goodness to do this? Borrow a
Botanical Dictionary—turn to the words Laurel and
Prunes, show the explanations to your sisters and Mrs.
Dilk[e] and without more ado let them send me the
cups, Basket and Books they trifled and put off and off
while I was in Town. Ask them what they can say for
themselves—ask Mrs. Dilk[e] wherefore she does so dis-
tress me—let me know how Jane has her health—the
weather is unfavourable for her—Tell George and Tom
to write.

The next new letter reads very much like the opening of
the Oxford campaign. It is addressed to Miss Reynolds
at Little Hampton, but ts indicted to both Jane and
Mariane Reynolds. Perhaps it will be safe to read tt
between No. XI (page 69) and No. XII (page 70) of the
third volume; and No. XII has, tt seems, been shorn of
its first paragraph, which I now give at the close of this
new letter for insertion before the words “ Believe me”.

Oxf—[ord, 5 Sept. 1817.]
My dear Friends,

You are I am glad to hear comfortable at Hamp-
ton, where I hope you will receive the Biscuits we ate the
other night at Little Britain. I hope you found them
good. There you are among Sands, stones, Pebbles,
Beeches, Cliffs, Rocks, Deeps, Shallows, weeds, Ships
Boats (at a distance) Carrots, Turnips, sun, moon, and
stars and all those sort of things—here am I among
Colleges, halls, Stalls, Plenty of Trees, thank God—
Plenty of water, thank heaven—Plenty of Books, thank
the Muses—Plenty of Snuff, thank Sir Walter Raleigh—
Plenty of segars,—Ditto—Plenty of Flat country, thank
7O : ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Tellus’s rolling pin—I’m on the sofa—Buonaparte is on
the snuff-box—But you are by the sea side—argal, you
bathe—you walk—you say “how beautiful ”—find out
resemblances between waves and camels—rocks and
dancing masters—fireshovels and telescopes—Dolphins
and Madonas—which word, by the way, I must acquaint
you was derived from the Syriac, and came down ina
way which neither of you I am sorry to say are at alk
capable of comprehending—but as a time may come
when by your occasional converse with me you may.
arrive at “something like prophetic Strain,” I will unbar
the gates of my pride and let my condescension stalk
forth like a Ghost at the Circus—The word Ma-don-a,
my dear Ladies—or—the word Mad-o-na—so I say! I
am not mad.—Howsumever when that aged Tamer
Kewthon sold a certain camel called Peter to the over-
seer of the Babel Sky works, he thus spake, adjusting
his cravat round the tip of his chin—‘ My dear Ten-
story-up-in-air! this here Beast, though I say it as
shouldn’t say’t, not only has the power of subsisting 4o
days and 40 nights without fire and candle but he can
sing—Here I have in my Pocket a Certificate from
Signor Nicolini of the King’s Theatre; a Certificate to
this effect ..,,. I have had dinner since I left that
effect upon you, and feel too heavy in mentibus to dis-
play all the Profundity of the Polyglon—so you had.
better each of you take a glass of cherry Brandy, and
drink to the health of Archimedes, who was of so benign
a disposition that he never would leave Syracuse in his
life—So kept himself out of all Knight Errantry—This
I know to be a fact ; for it is written in the 45" book of
Winkine’s treatise on,garden-rollers, that he trod ona
fishwoman’s toe in Liverpool, and never begged her
pardon. Now the long and short is this—that is by
j
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 71

comparison—for a long day may be a short year—a
long Pole may be a very stupid fellow as a man. But
let us refresh ourself from this depth of thinking, and
turn to some innocent jocularity—the Bow cannot always
be bent—nor the gun always loaded, if you ever let it off
—and the life of man is like a great Mountain—his breath
is like a Shrewsbury cake—he comes into the world like
a shoeblack, and goes out of it like a cob[b]ler—he eats
like a chimney sweeper, drinks like a Gingerbread baker
—and breathes like Achilles—so it being that we are
such sublunary creatures, let us endeavour to correct all
our bad spelling—all our most delightful abominations,
and let us wish health to Marian and Jane, whoever they

be and wherever—
your's truly

John Keats.

Oxford, Sunday Evening
| [14 September 1817.]
My dear Jane

You are such a literal translator, that I shall some
day amuse myself with looking over some foreign sen-
tences, and imagining how you would render them into
English. This is an age for typical curiosities; and I
would advise you, as a good speculation, to study
Hebrew, and astonish the world with a figurative ver-
sion in our native tongue. The mountains skipping like
rams, and the little hills like lambs, you will leave as far
behind as the hare did the tortoise. It must be so or
you would never have thought that I really meant you
would like to pro and con about those honeycombs—no,

I had no such idea; or, if I had, ’twould be only to teaze
you a little for love. So now let us put down in black —
and white briefly my sentiments thereon. Imprimis I
sincerely believe that Imogen is the finest creature, and
\

72 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

that I should have been disappointed at hearing you
prefer Juliet—Item—yet I feel such a yearning towards
Juliet that I would rather follow her into Pandemonium
than Imogen into Paradise—heartily wishing myself a
Romeo to be worthy of her, and to hear the Devils quote
the old proverb “Birds of a feather flock together.”
Amen.—Now let us turn to the sea-shore.

It may be mentioned that Woodhouse particularizes the

date of this letter No. XII by the evidence of the post-mark,

namely the 15th af September 1817. The letter to Rey- |

nolds numbered XIII belongs to the 21st of September
1817, and the passage represented by the asterisks at the
top of page 75 reads thus :—“1 think I see you and Hunt
meeting in the Pit. —What a very pleasant fellow he is,
if he would give up the sovereignty of a room pro bono
—What evenings we might pass with him, could we
have him from Mrs. H—Failings” &c. The two blanks
immediately afterwards should be filled up with the word
“He”. .

Letter No. XVI to Bailey (pages 82 and 83 of the
third volume) was given from Lord Houghton’s version.
As it consists, in that form, merely of some transposed and
manipulated extracts, it ts best to print it here in its in-
tegrily :-—

: Hampstead, Oct" Wednesday.

. (8 October 1817.]
My dear Bailey,

After a tolerable journey I went from coach to
Coach as far as Hampstead where I found my Brothers—
the next Morning finding myself tolerably well I went to
Lambs Conduit Street and delivered your parcel—Jane
and Marianne were greatly improved, Marianne especially,
she has no unhealthy plumpness in the face—but she
comes me healthy and angular to the chin.—I did not see

VAY
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 73

‘

John—I was extremely sorry to hear that poor Rice,
after having had capital health—during his tour, was
very ill. I dare say you have heard from him. From
No. 19 I went to Hunt’s and Haydon’s who live now
neighbours—Shelley was there—I know nothing about
anything in this part of the world—everybody seems at
Loggerheads. There’s Hunt infatuated—there’s Hay-
don’s picture in statu quo—There’s Hunt walks up and
down his painting room—criticising every head most un-
mercifully. There’s Horace Smith tired of Hunt. “The
web of our life is of mingled yarn.” Haydon having re-
moved entirely from Marlborough Street—Crip[p]s must
direct his letter to Lisson Grove, North Paddington.
Yesterday morning while I was at Brown’s, in came
Reynolds, he was pretty bobbish, we had a pleasant day
—he would walk home at night that cursed cold distance.
Mrs. Bentley’s children are making a horrid row—where-
by I regret I cannot be transported to your Room to
write to you—I am quite disgusted with literary men and
will never know another except Wordsworth—no not
even Byron. Here is an instance of the friendship of
such, Haydon and Hunt have known each other many
years—now they live—pour ainsi dire, jealous neighbours
- —Haydon says to me, Keats, don’t show your lines to
Hunt on any Account or he will have done half for you—
so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he
met Reynolds in the Theatre, John told him that I was
getting on to the completion of 4000 lines—Ah ! says
Hunt, had it g@t been for me they would have been
7000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to
other people? Haydon received a Letter a little while
‘back on this subject from some Lady—which contains a
caution to me, thro’ him, on the subject—now is not all
this a most paultry thing to think about? You may see
74 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

the whole of the case by the following Extract from a
Letter I wrote to George in the Spring—* As to what
“you say about my being a Poet, Ican return no answer
“but by saying that the high idea I have of poetical
“fame makes me think I see it towering too high above
“me, At any rate, I have no right to talk until Endy-
“ mion is finished, it will be a test, a trial of my Powers
“of Imagination, and chiefly of my invention which is a
“rare thing indeed—by which I must make 4000 lines of
‘one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry—and
“when I consider that this is a great task, and that when
“done it will take me but a dozen paces towards the
“temple of fame—it makes me say—God forbid that I
“should be without such a task! I have heard ‘Hunt
“say, and [I] may be asked—why endeavour after a long
“ Poem? To which-I should answer. Do not the Lovers
“of Poetry like to have a little Region to wander in,
“where they may pick and choose, and in which the
“images are so numerous that many are forgotten and
“found new in a second Reading: which may be food
“for a Week’s stroll in the Summer? Do not they like
“this better than what they can read through before Mrs
“Williams comes down stairs? a morning work at most.
“ Besides, a long poem isa test of invention, which I take
“to be the Polar Star of Poetry, as Fancy is the Sails—
“and Imagination the rudder.—Did our great Poets ever
“write Short Pieces? I mean in the shape of Tales—
“ This same invention seems indeed of late years to have
“been forgotten'as a Poetical excellencg—But enough of
“this, I put on no Laurels till I shall have finished
“Endymion, and I hope Apollo is not angered at my
“having made a Mockery at Hunts—”

You see Bailey how independent my Writing has been.
Hunt’s dissuasion was of no avail—I refused to visit

 
FRESH LETTERS, ETC.’ 75

Shelley that I might have my own unfettered scope ;—
and after all, I shall have the Reputation of Hunts eléve.
His corrections and amputations will by the knowing
ones be traced in the Poem. This is, to be sure, the
vexation of a day—nor would I say so many words about
it to any but those whom I know to have my welfare
and reputation at heart. Haydon promised to give
directions for those casts,and you may expect to see
them soon, with as many Letters—You will soon hear
the dinning of Bells—never mind! you and Gle[ilg will
defy the foul fiend—But do not sacrifice your health to
Books: do take it kindly and not so voraciously. I am
certain if you are your own Physician, your stomach will
resume its proper strength and then what great benefits
will follow.—My sister wrote a Letter to me, which I
think must be at the post-office—Ax Will to see—My
Brother’s kindest remembrances to you—we are going to
dine at Brown’s where I have some hopes of meeting
Reynolds. The little Mercury I have taken has corrected
the poison and improved my health—tho’ I feel from my
employment that I shall never be again secure in Robust-
ness. Would that you were as well as
Your sincere friend and brother,
John Keats.—

The letter which Lord Houghton described as the “ Out-
side sheet of a letter to Mr. Bailey,’ and which occupies
pages 84, and 85 of Volume IIT, zs also incomplete, even as
an outside sheet, and it appears from the post-mark that
the letter was sent on the 5th of November 1817. Ln place
of the first line of asterisks, read as follows :—

I will speak of something else or my spleen will get
higher and higher—and I am a bearer of the two-edged
sword,—I hope you will receive an answer from Haydon
76 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

soon, if not, Pride! Pride! Pride! I have received no
more subscription—but shall soon have a full health,
Liberty and leisure to give a good part of my time to
him. I will certainly be in time for him—We have pro-
mised him one year: let that have elapsed, then do as we
think proper. If I did not know how impossible it is, I
should say—‘“ do not at this time of disappointments,
disturb yourself about others.”—

Lam now enabled to fill up the blanks in Letter No.
AIX, pages 86 and 87. That in the second line of the text
should contain the name of Cripps, the young man whom
Haydon undertook to teach painting ; and that in line 5 of
page 87 should contain the name of Rice. Three lines
Surther on, after the word “mother,” occur the words “he
was, soothly to sain.” Zhe asterisks at page 100 stand
Sor very little: instead of “ qualities” read “ qualities, in
sooth la!!”

The following letter, sent to George and Thomas Keats
while they were in temporary residence at Teignmouth,
should be read after letter No. XXII in the third volume,
| pages 98 to 100. I have collated Mr. Speed’s version with
the incomplete copy sent by Mr. Jeffrey to Lord Houghton:—

Featherstone Buildings, Monday.

[5 January 1818.]
My Dear Brothers :

I ought to have written before, and you should
have had a long letter last week, but I undertook the
“Champion ” for Reynolds, who is at Exeter. I wrote
two articles, one on the Drury Lane Pantomime, the
other on the Covent Garden new Tragedy,’ which they

 

‘* See Postscript. The tragedy was Retribution, or the Chieftain's
Daughter,—the pantomime Don Giovanni. Keats’s two papers
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 77

have not putin. The one they have inserted is so badly
punctuated that, you perceive, I am determined never to
write more without Some care in that particular. Wells
tells me that you are licking your chops, Tom, in expec-
tation of my book coming out. I am sorry to say I
have not begun my corrections yet: to-morrow I set out.
I called on Sawrey this morning. He did not seem to
be at all out at anything I said and the inquiries I made
with regard to your spitting of blood, and moreover
desired me to ask you to send him a correct account of
all your sensations and symptoms concerning the palpi-
tation and the spitting and the cough—if you have any.
Your last letter gave me a great pleasure, for I think the
invalid is in a better spirit there along the Edge’; and
as for George, I must immediately, now I think of it,
correct a little misconception of a part of my last letter.
The Miss Reynolds have never said one word against
me about you,” or by any means endeavoured to lessen
you in my estimation. That is not what I referred to;
but the manner and thoughts which I knew they inter-
nally had towards you, time will show. Wells and
Severn dined with me yesterday. We had a very
pleasant day. I pitched upon another bottle of claret.
We enjoyed ourselves very much; were all very witty
and full of rhyme. We played a concert * from 4 0’clock
till 10—drank your healths, the Hunts’, and MW. B.

 

are reprinted in this volume from The Champion for 4 January
1818.

1 It will be remembered that the brothers were on the sea
coast.

2 The curious locution may or may not be Keats’s. What he
meant, at all events, was to assure his brothers that the Misses
Reynolds had not said anything ¢o him against George.

3 Each one, that is to say, imitated vocally some musical instru-
78 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Severn, Peter Pindar’s. I said on that day the only good
thing I was ever guilty of. We were talking about
Stephens *and the 1s. [?] Gallery. Isaid I wondered that
careful folks would go there, for although it was but a
shilling, still you had to pay through the Nose. I saw
the Peachey family in a box at Drury one night. I have
got such a curious,” or rather I had such, now I am in
my own hand.

Ihave had a great deal of pleasant time’ with Rice
lately, and am getting initiated into alittle band. They
call drinking deep dyin’ scarlet. They call good wine a
pretty tipple, and call getting a child knocking out an
apple; stopping at a tavern they call hanging out.
Where do you sup*? is where do you hang out?

Thursday I promised to dine with Wordsworth, and
the weather is so bad that I am undecided, for he lives
at Mortimer street. I had an invitation to meet him at
Kingston’s, but not liking that place I sent my excuse.
What I think of doing to-day is to dine in Mortimer
sian (Words"), and sup here in the Feath® buildings, as

r, Wells‘ has invited me. On Saturday, I called on,
laa before he went to Kingston’s, and was sur-
prised to find him with a stiff collar. I saw his spouse, and
I think his daughter. I forget whether I had written

 

f
ment, according to a custom in which Keats and his brothers and
intimates indulged.

* Henry Stephens was one of Keats’s fellow medical students.

? Mr. Speed notes that “a word is evidently omitted here.”

® So according to Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Speed ; but where do you

' stop would be the proper equivalent nowadays, and would accord
with the’ context.

* I suppose we may assume from this a single small fact in the
occult biography of Charles Wells, to wit that in the winter of 1817-
18 his people were living in Featherstone Buildings, a curious little
court in Holborn,
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 79

my last before my Sunday evening at Haydon’s—no, I
did not, or I should have told you, Tom, of a young man
you met at Paris, at Scott’s, of the [name of] Ritchie.
I think he is going to Fezan, in Africa; then to proceed
if possible like Mungo Park. He was very polite to me,
and inquired very particularly after you. Then there
was Wordsworth, Lamb, Monkhouse, Landseer, King-
ston, and your humble servant. Lamb got tipsy and
blew up Kingston—proceeding so far as to take the
candle across the room, hold it to his face, and show us
what a soft fellow he was.

I astonished Kingston at supper with a pertinacity in
favour of drinking, keeping my two glasses at work in a
knowing way.’ He sent me a hare last week, which I
sent to Mrs. Dilke. Brown is not come back. I and
Dilke are getting capital friends. He is going to take
the “Champion.” He has sent his farce to Covent
Garden. I met Bob Harris on the steps at Covent
Garden ; we had a good deal of curious chat. He came
out with his old humble opinion. The Covent Garden
pantomime is a very nice one, but they have a middling
Harlequin, a bad Pantaloon, a worse Clown, and a shock-
ing Columbine, who is one of the Miss Dennets,

I suppose you will see my critique on the new tragedy

 

1 Joseph Ritchie, who started on his proposed journey, and died
in Africa, wrote a charming poetical Farewell to England, which, as
Mr. Garnett has pointed out to me, was printed by Alaric Watts in his
Poetical Album, The reference to the house at which Tom Keats met
Ritchie is extremely interesting, as indicating how poor John Scott
probably became possessed of that copy-book of Tom’s in which so
many of the early poems of John Keats were written out fair by
his younger brother.

2 Although Lord Houghton does not give this letter, he mentions
this particular incident.
80 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

in the next week’s “Champion.” It is a shocking bad
one. I have not seen Hunt; he was out when I called.
Mrs, Hunt looks as well as ever I saw her after her
confinement. There is an article in the sennight “ Exa-
miner” on Godwin’s “ Mandeville,” signed E. K. I think
it Miss Kent’s.! I will send it. There are fine sub-
scriptions going on for Hone.
You ask me what degrees there are between Scott’s
- novels and those of Smollet. They appear to me to be
quite distinct in every particular, more especially in their
aim. Scott endeavours to throw so interesting and
romantic a colouring into common and low characters as
to give them a touch of the sublime. Smollet, on the
contrary, pulls down and levels what with other men
would continue romance. The grand parts of Scott are
within the reach of more minds than the finest humours
in “Humphrey Clinker.” I forget whether that fine thing
of the Sargeant is Fielding’s or Smollet’s, but it gives
me more pleasure than the whole novel of “ The Anti-
quary.” You must remember what I mean.” Someone
saysto the Sargeant: “ That’sa non-sequiter!” “If you
come to that,” replies the Sargeant, “you're another!”
I see by Wells’ letter Mr. Abbey does not overstock
you with money. You must write. I have not seen

 

1 The article which Keats seems to have attributed to his admirer
Miss Bessy Kent (Hunt’s sister-in-law) was in fact by Shelley,
“EE, K.” standing for “Elfin Knight,” a pseudonym of Shelley’s.
The review appeared in The Examiner for Sunday the 28th of
December 1817. ; ‘

2 ““Excuse me there, Mr. Serjeant,’ quoth, Partridge, ‘that’s a

' non seguitur” ‘None of your outlandish lingo,’ answered the Ser-
jeant, leaping from his seat; ‘I will not sit and hear the cloth
abused.‘ You mistake me, friend,’ cries Partridge. ‘I did not
mean to abuse the cloth: I only said your conclusion was a 207
seguitur’ ‘You are another, cries the Serjeant, ‘an’ you come to
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 81

1

 

yet, but expect it on Wednesday. I am afraid it
is gone. Severn tells me he has an order for some
drawings for the Emperor of Russia.

I was at a dance at Redhall’s, and passed a pleasant
time enough—drank deep, and won 104 at cutting for
half crowns.” There was a younger brother of the
made himself very conspicuous after the ladies had retired
from the supper table by giving mater [word illegible].
Mr. Redhall said he did not understand any thing but
plain English, whereat Rice egged the young fool to say
the word plainly out, after which there was an enquiry
as to the derivation of the word ..... said a very
good thing, “ Gentlemen,” says he, “I have always under-
stood it to be a root and not a derivative” .....

Bailey was there and seemed to enjoy the evening.
Rice said he cared less about the hour than any one;
and the proof is his dancing—he cares not for time,
dancing as if he was deaf. Old Redhall not being used
to give parties, had no idea of the quantity of wine that
would be drank, and he actually put in readiness on the
kitchen stairs eight dozen.

 

 

 

that, no more a sequitur than yourself.’”—Fielding’s Zom Jones,
Book IX, chapter 6.

1 Mr. Speed says “ The word is not legible, but he evidently re-
ferred to some play of the day.” This is not at all evident to me.

2 Mr. Jeffrey gives this passage as above; but Mr. Speed reads
“10.6 at cutting for half guineas.” No doubt the incident is the
same as that referred to by Lord Houghton when he says Keats
“speaks of having drunk too much as a rare piece of joviality,
and of having won Io/, at cardsas a great hit.” Whether Mr. Speed
or Mr. Jeffrey ‘misread the letter who shall say? With reference
to the gap in the letter Mr. Speed says, “In many places it is
almost illegible . . . and considering how many words I would
have to leave to conjecture, I have concluded to omit the whole
passage.” Mr. Jeffrey attempted to copy it; but I have only been
able to supply a portion from his imperfect transcript.
82 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

'

Every one inquires after you, and every one desires
their remembrances to you. I have seen Fanny twice
lately—she inquired particularly after you and wants a
‘co-partnership letter from you. She has been unwell,
but is improving—I think she will be quick well. Mrs.
Abbey was saying that the Keatses were ever indolent,
that they would ever be so, and that it is born in them.
Well, whispered Fanny to me, if it is born with us, how
can we help it. She seems very anxious for a letter. As
I asked her what I should get for her, she said a “ Medal
of the Princess.”* I called on Haslam—we dined very
well. You must get well, Tom, and then I shall feel
whole and genial as the winter air. Give me as many
letters as you like, and write to Sawrey soon. I received
a short letter from Bailey about Crip[p]s,” and one from
Haydon, ditto. Haydon thinks he improved very much.
Mrs. Wells’ desires® particularly to Tom and her respects
to George, and I desire no better than to be ever your
most affectionate brother,

John.

P.S. I had not opened the “Champion” before. I
found both my articles in it.

The next fresh letter which T have to give appears to
have been written on the same morning as that to Haydon

 

1 Of course a commemoration medal for the death of the Princess
Charlotte, which had taken place the previous month, namely on
the 6th of November 1817.

2 See pages 80, 89, 96, 101, and 105 of Volume III.

® The expression “ Mrs, Wells’ desires,” though quite an unusual
one, may have been written by Keats and may possibly have been
what he meant to write; but I do not remember meeting with
this form of message elsewhere, either in Keats’s letters or in those
of any other writer,
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 83

numbered XXIII in Volume IL. As to which of the two
letters should come first, I find no evidence.

Saturday morning
[Postmark, 10 January 1818.]

My dear Taylor

Several things have kept me from you lately :—
first you had got into a little hell, which I was not
anxious to reconnoitre—secondly, I have made a vow
not to call again without my first book: so you may ex-
pect to see me in four days. Thirdly, I have been
racketing too much, and do not feel over well—I have
seen Wordsworth frequently—Dined with him last Mon-
day—Reynolds, I suppose you have seen—Just scribble
me thus many lines to let me know you are in the land
of the living, and well. Remember me to the Fleet Street
Household—And should you see any from Percy Street,
give my kindest regards to them.

your sincere friend John Keats»

In Letter No. XXIV, at page 103, the following para-
graphs should be inserted between the, word “ splendid”
(line 6) and “T have just finished” (line 7):

I was speaking about doubts and fancies—I mean
there has been a quarrel of a severe nature between
Haydonand Reynolds and another (“the Devil rides upon
a fiddle stick”) between Hunt and Haydon. The first
grew from the Sunday on which Haydon invited some
friends to meet Wordsworth. Reynolds never went, and
never sent any notice about it, this offended Haydon
more than it ought to have done—he wrote a very sharp
and high note to Reynolds and then another in pallia-
tion—but which Reynolds feels as an aggravation of the
first.—Considering all things, Haydon’s frequent neglect

G
84 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

of his appointments &c., his notes were bad enough to put
Reynolds on the right side of the question; but then
Reynolds has no powers of sufferance ; no idea of having
the thing against him ; so he answered Haydon in one
of the most cutting letters I ever read; exposing to him-
self all his own weaknesses, and going on to an excess,
which whether it is just or no, is what I would fain have
unsaid, the fact is they are both in the right and both in
the wrong.

The quarrel with Hunt I understand thus far. Mrs. H.
was in the habit of borrowing silver of Haydon, the last
time she did so, Haydon asked her to return it at a
certain time—She did not—Haydon sent for it; Hunt
went to expostulate on the indelicacy &c.—they got to
words and parted for ever. All I hope is at some time
to bring them all together again—Lawk ! Molly there’s
been such doings—Yesterday evening I made an ap-
pointment with Wells to go to a private theatre, and it
being in the neighbourhood of Drury Lane and thinking
we might be fatigued with sitting the whole evening in
one dirty hole; I got the Drury Lane ticket and there-
with we divided the evening with a spice of Richard III.—

Good Lord! I began this letter nearly a week ago,
what have I been doing since—I have been—I mean not
been sending last Sunday’s paper to you I believe be-
cause it was not near me—for I cannot find it and my
conscience presses heavy on me for not sending it; you
_ would have had one last Thursday, but I was called
away, and have been about somewhere ever since.
Where? What? Well I rejoice almost that I have not
heard from you, because no news is good news. I can-
not for the world recollect why I was called away; all I
“know is, that there has been a dance at Dilke’s and
another at the London Coffee House; to both of which
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 85

Y went. But I must tell you in another letter the cir-
cumstances thereof—for though a week should have
passed since I wrote on the other side it quite appals
me—lI can only write in scraps and patches. Brown is
returned from Hampstead—Haydon has returned an
answer in the same style—they are all dreadfully irritated
against each other—On Sunday I saw Hunt and dined
with Haydon, met Hazlitt and Bewick there ; and took
Haslam with me—forgot to speak about Crip[p]s though
I broke my engagement to Haslam’s on purpose—Mem.
Haslam came to meet me, found me at breakfast, had
the goodness to go with me my way.

In Letter XXV as printed by Lord Houghton, Keats's
extract from Haydon's letter has been retrenched. The
asterisks should be replaced by this not very mellifiuous
passage :

Thus I will do, and this will be effectual, and as I
have not done it for any other human being, it will have
an effect.

The letter has also a postscript—

If Reynolds calls tell him three lines will be accept-
able, for I am squat at Hampstead.

From Letter No. XX VII to George and Thomas Keats,
Lord Houghton’s omissions were considerable. After the
enumeration of friends whom Keats met at Hazlitt’s lec-
ture should come the following passage, between“ aye and
more” and “I think” (page 108) :

The Landseers enquired after you particularly—I
know not whether Wordsworth has left town—But sun-
day I dined with Hazlitt and Haydon, also that I took
Haslam with me—I dined with Brown lately. Dilke
186 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

having taken the Champion Theatricals was obliged to
be in town. Fanny has returned to Walthamstow. Mr.
Abbey appeared very glum the last time I went to see
her, and said in an indirect way, I had no business to be ,
there. Rice has been ill, but has been mending much
lately.

The asterisks at page 109 should be replaced by the fol-
lowing passage:

. I left off short in my last just as, I began an account
of a private theatrical—Well it was of the lowest order,
all greasy and oily, insomuch that if they had lived in
‘olden times, when signs were hung over the doors; the
only appropriate one for that oily place would have
been—a guttered candle.—They played John Bull, The
Review, and it was to conclude with Bombastes Furioso—
T saw from a Box the 1* Act of John Bull, then went to
Drury and did not return till it was over; when by
Wells’ interest we got behind the scenes—there was not
a yard wide all the way round for actors, scene shifters
and interlopers to move in; for ‘Nota Bene’ the Green
Room was under the stage, and there was I threatened
over and over again to be turned out by. the oily scene
shifters, There did I hear a little painted Trollop own,
very candidly, that she had failed in Mary, with a
“damned if she’d play a serious part again, as long as
she lived,” and at the same time she was habited as the
Quaker in the Review—there was a quarrel and a fat

good natured looking girl in soldiers clothes wished she’ | |

had only been a man for Tom’s sake,—One fellow began
a song but an unlucky finger-point from the Gallery sent
him off like a shot. One chap was dressed to kill for the
King in Bombastes, and he stood at the edge of the
scene in the very sweat of anxiety to show himself, but
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 87

alas the thing was not played. The sweetest morsel of
the night moreover was, that the musicians began peg-
ging and fagging away—at an overture—never did you
see faces more in earnest, three times did they play it
over, dropping all kinds of correctness and still did not
the curtain go up. Well then they went into a country-
dance, then into a region they well knew, into the old
boonsome Pothouse, and then to see how pompous o’ the
sudden they turned; how they looked about and chatted ;
how they did not care a damn; was a great treat—I

‘hope I have not tired you by. this filling up of the dash |

in my last.

From Letter XXIX, again, Lord Houghton omttted the
opening. Instead of the asterisks, should stand at page 111,
the following paragraph:

My dear Reynolds

I have parcell’d out this day for Letter Writing—
more resolved thereon because your Letter will come as
a refreshment and will have (sic parvis &c) the same
effect as a kiss in certain situations where people become
overgenerous. I have read this first sentence over, and
think it savours rather ; however an inward innocence is
like a nested dove; or as the old song says—

O blush not so, O-blush not so, &c.!

Between the words “ simplicity is the only thing” and
“Tt may be said,” in the letter to Reynolds numbered
XXX, page 112 of Volume III, should be inserted—

The first is the best on account of the first line, and

 

1 Here follows the whole song which is printed at pages 279 and
280 of Volume IJ, under the title of Sharing Eve's Apple.
88 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

the “arrow foil’d of its antler’d food”—-and moreover (and
this is the only word or two I find fault with, the more
because I have had so much reason to shun it as a
quicksand) the last has “tender and true”. We must
cut this, and not be rattlesnaked into any more of the
like.

After.quoting the Lines on the Mermaid Tavern in the
same letter, Keats seems to have written thus ( page 114) :—

I will call on you at 4 tomorrow and we will trudge
together for it is not the thing to be a stranger in the
Land of Harpsicols. I hope also to bring you my 29 ©
Book.

The next fresh letter which I have to insert shouid be
read between those numbered XXX and XXXII, pages
114 and 115 of the third sisi lt refers to“ Endy-

mion.”
Fleet St. Thursd: Morn.
[5 February 1818.]

My dear Taylor,

I have finished copying sey 24 Book—but I want
it for one day to overlook it—And moreover this day I
have very particular employ in the affair of Cripps—so I
trespass on your indulgence, and take advantage of
your goodnature. You shall hear from me or see me
soon. I will tell Reynolds of your engagement to-
morrow,

yrs unfeigned’y,
John Keats. ©

Letter XX XI to George and Thomas Keats, as given
at pages 115 and 116 of Volume III, was shorn by Lord
Houghton of two short passages: between “copied it all”
and “ Hazlitt’s last lecture” (page 115) we should read—
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 89

Horace Smith has lent me his manuscript called
“Nehemiah Muggs, an exposure of the Methodists ”—
perhaps I may send you a few extracts.

And at the end, after “ Popular Preachers,” should stand
the words—

All the talk here is about Dr. Croft, the Duke of
_ Devon ete.

The next letter to his brothers, numbered XXX. ITI, also :
requires completion. In the first paragraph (page 120),
between the words “ Horace Smith” and “T received”,
should stand—

The occasion of my writing to-day is the enclosed
letter, by Postmark, from Miss W—— Does she expect
you in town George?

And after “ Uriel”, at the end of the paragraph, should
be this additional one:

Reynolds has been very ill for some time confined to
the house, and had leeches applied to the chest ; when I
saw him on Wednesday he was much the same, and he
is in the worst place for amendment, among the strife
[of ] women’s tongues, in a hot parch’d room: I wish he
would move to Butler’s for a short time.

At page 121, line 2, instead of “they are kind to me,” we
should read “we are very thick; they are very kind to
me, they are well”; and the asterisks after the word
“ yeadiness” stand in place of an interesting allusion to a
contemporary poet of the first magnitude :

| I am sorry that Wordsworth has left a bad impression
wherever he visited in town by his egotism, vanity and
bigotry, yet he is a great poet if not a philosopher.
go ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

In Letter XXXIV, to Taylor, the references to“ En-
dymion” when given in full, instead of in the truncated
’ form in which they appear in the fourth paragraph (page
123), Stand thus :

I have copied the Third Book and begun the Fourth.
On running my eye over the proofs, I saw one mistake
—I will notice it presently, and also any others,.if there
be any. There should be no comma in “the raft branch
. down sweeping from a tall ash-top.” I have besides
made one or two alterations and also altered the 13%
line p. 32 to make sense of it, as you will see. I will
take care the printer shall not trip up my heels, There
should be no dash after Dryope, in the line “ Dryope’s
lone lulling of her child.”

From Letter XL, to James Rice, a passage of much
humour was excised by Lord Houghton. It should be
between the words “ sow-sow-west” and the allusion to
Dawlish fair, at page 137.

Some of the little Bar-maids look’d at me as if I
knew Jas. Rice—but when I took (cherry ?) Brandy they
were quite convinced. One asked whether you (pre-
serv ?)-ed a secret she gave you on the nail—Another,
how many buttons of your coat were buttoned in general.
—I told her it used to be four—But since you had be-
come acquainted with one Martin you had reduced it to
three, and had been turning this third one in your mind
—and would do so with finger and thumb only you had
taken to snuff. I have met with a brace or twain of
little Long-heads—not a bit 0’ the German. All in the
neatest little dresses, and avoiding all the puddles, but
very fond of peppermint drops, laming ducks and ....
Well, I can’t tell! I hope you are shewing poor Reynolds
the way to get well.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. OI

The asterisks at page 146 (Letter XLIV, to Reynolds)
stand for something more than the stanzas which Keats
copied from “ Isabella” for his friend’s edification. These
appear to have been followed by the words—

I heard from Rice this morning—very witty—and
have just written to Bailey—Don’t you think I am
brushing up in the letter way? and being in for it you
shall hear again from me very shortly :—if you will pro-
mise not to put hand to paper for me until you can do it
with a tolerable ease of health—except it be a line or
two.

Again from Letter XLV a paragraph was omitted by
Lord Houghton, and should follow the first paragraph
(page 147)

I think those speeches which are related—those parts
where the Speaker repeats a speech, such as Glaucus’s
repetition of Circe’s words, should have inverted commas
to every line. In this there is a little confusion. If we
divide the speeches into identical and related’; to the
former put merely one inverted comma at the beginning
and another at the end; to the latter inverted commas
before every line, the book will be better understood at
the first glance—Look at pages 126, 127, you will find
in the 3° line the begin[n]ing of a related speech marked
thus “ Ah! art awake—” while, at the same time, in the
next page the continuation of the zdentzcal speech is
marked in the same manner “ young man'of Latmos ”—
you will find on the other side all the parts which should
have inverted commas to every line.

At page 149, between the quotation from Milton and the
statement that Tom wants to be in town, should appear
the curious sentence “1 shall breathe, worsted stockings
g2 | ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

sooner than I thought for.” And, continuing the same
letter to Reynolds, we come to an omission at page 153.
The asterisks should be replaced by this passage :—

Have you not seen a gull, an orc, a sea-mew, or any-
thing to bring this Line to a proper length, and also fill
up this clear part ; that like the gull I may a—I hope,
not out of sight—and also, like a gull, I hope to be
lucky in a good sized fish. ,

Woodhouse has recorded that the first page of the letter
was crossed, and that the first two lines, being written in
the margin, stood out clearly, while the word “ dip” was
the first word that dipped into the obscurity of the writing
which at that point Keats began to cross, '

Between Letters XLVILIM and XLIX may be read the
JSollowing fresh one.

Sunday evening,
[21 June 1818.]

My dear Taylor,

T am sorry I have not had time to call and wish
you health till my return. Really I have been hard run
these last three days. However, au revoir, God keep
us all well! I start tomorrow Morning. My brother
Tom will I am afraid be lonely. I can scarcely ask the
loan of books for him, since I still keep those you lent
me a year ago. If I am overweening, you will I know

_be indulgent. Therefore when you shall write, do send
him some you think will be most amusing—he will be
careful in returning them. Let him have one of my
books bound. I am ashamed to catalogue these mes-
sages. There is but one more, which ought to go for
nothing as there is a lady concerned. I promised Mrs.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 93

Reynolds one of my books bound. As I cannot write
in it let the opposite be pasted in ’prythee. Remember
me to Percy St.—Tell Hilton that one gratification
on my return will be to find him engaged on a history
piece to his own content. And tell Dewint I shall
become a disputant on the landscape. Bow for me very
genteely to Mrs. D. or she will not admit your diploma.
Remember me to Hessey, saying I hope he'll Carey his
point. I would not forget Woodhouse. Adieu!

Your sincere friend,

John o’Grots.

In Letter XLIX after “ Helm Crag” (page, 164, line
20) should be the words—“ We shall proceed immediately
to Carlisle, intending to enter Scotland on the Ist of July
via .” In Letter LI, the passage about the kirk (at
page 171) should stand thus after the words “ Scotch
Kirk” in line 14—*‘A Scotch girl stands in terrible aw[e]
of the Elders—poor little Susannahs. They willscarcely
laugh ; and their Kirk is greatly to be damned. These
Kirk-men have done Scotland good (Query ?).” Then
should come “ They have made men”, &¢., as at page 171,
down to neighbourhood” in line 21. Then between that
and“ How sad” in line 24, should stand instead of the words
printed by Lord Houghton and followed in my edition :—
“These Kirk-men have done Scotland harm; they
have banished puns, and laughing and kissing &c. (ex-
cept in cases where the very danger and crime must
make it very gustful). I shall make a full stop at
kissing, for after that there should be a better parenthesis,
and go on to remind you of the fate of Burns:—poor,
unfortunate fellow! his disposition was Southern!”

 

Letter LI, to Reynolds, needs to be completed by the
94 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

insertion of the following additional paragraph ‘between
the last and the last but one ( page 179):

The short stay we made in Ireland has left few remem-
brances—but an old woman’ in a dog-kennel Sedan with
a pipe inher Mouth, is what I can never forget—I wish I
may be able to give you an idea of her—Remember me
to your Mother and Sisters, and tell your Mother how
I hope she will pardon me for having a scrap of paper
pasted in the Book sent to her.2 I was driven on all .
sides and had not time to call on Taylor.—So Bailey is
coming to Cumberland—well, if you'll let me know where
at Inverness, I will call on my return and pass a little
time with him—I am glad ’tis not Scotland.

Letter LVI as printed at pages 198 to 203 of the third
volume shows a few verbal variations from the holograph,
has been a little rearranged towards the close, and lacks
the following passages:

Have you heard in any way of George? I should
think by this time he must have landed—I in my care-
lessness never thought of knowing where a letter would
find him on the other side—I think Baltimore but I am
afraid of directing it to the wrong place. I shall begin
some chequer work for him directly and it will be ripe
for the post by the time I hear from you next after this.
. .. With respect to women I think I shall be able to
conquer my passions hereafter better than I have yet

 

1 The old woman was of course the same whom Keats has
immortalized by his inimitable portrait of “the Duchess of Dung-
‘ hill,” in his letter to Tom begun at Auchencairn (pages 173-4).
2 Woodhouse explains that Keats wrote “from the Author” ona
scrap of paper which he left to be pasted into a copy of Endymion
when sent to Mrs. Reynolds. See top of preceding page.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 95

done. You will help me to talk of George next winter
and we will go now and then to see Fanny. Let me
hear a good account of your health and comfort telling
me truly how you do alone,

In the letter to Mrs. Wylie, page 212 of Volume III, line
14, Keats appears to have perpetrated the mild joke of writ-
ing “ werry” (underlined) instead of “ very.’ After the
words “smoking on a large scale,’ Mr. Feffrey’s transcript
gives another sentence—

Besides riding about 400, we have walked about 600
miles, and may therefore reckon ourselves as set out.

According to the same authority, the final paragraph
begins with “I wish, my dear Madam,” instead of “I
assure you, my dear Madam.”

The letter to Benjamin Bailey numbered LXII in this
edition and printed at pages 218 to 222 of the third
volume, I gave with the place and date assigned to it by
Lord Houghton, “ Teignmouth, September 1818,” express-
ing, however, some doubt as to the correctness of the date.
Mr. Colvin shows that the true date 1s Friday the 13th of
March 1818; and thus the supposition that Keats and
his brother Tom made two journeys to Teignmouth in
1818, one in the spring and one in the autumn, falls to the
ground. Mr. Colvin traces the mistake in the date back to
Woodhouse,—whose exactness in such matters might well
impose upon Lord Houghton. My reasons for doubting .
his Lovdship’s date ave adduced by Mr. Colvin as proof of
its incorrectness: proof they certainly are not; and they
did not justify me in classing the letter with those of the
spring. The real proof appears to have been found by Mr.
Colvin among Lord Houghton’s papers, which I was un-
able to examine, though invited to do so at Fryston Hall,
96 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

This letter No. LXII should in future, [ think, stand be-
tween No. XXXV and No. XXXVI.
Letter LXX (pages 235 to 245 of Volume II1) has been
a good deal cut down and manipulated: many of the verbal
changes, though impertinent and meaningless, are of minor
consequence ; but there are passages which I must now take
the opportunity of restoring from the holograph. After the
word “acquainted”, four lines from the foot of the text at
page 235, should be inserted—

This sentence should it give you any uneasiness do
not let it last for before I finish it will be explained
away to your satisfaction.

And in place of “ Your welfare is a delight to me which
L cannot express,” at the opening of the new paragraph on
page 236, should be the corresponding passage—

I will relieve you of one uneasiness overleaf. I re-
turned I said on account of my health—I am now well
from a bad sore throat which came of bog trotting in the
Island of Mull—of which you shall hear by the copies I
shall make from my Scotch Letters. Your content in
each other is a delight to me which I cannot express.

Instead of the short paragraph forming lines 6 to 12 of
page 237, we should read as follows :

Tomorrow I shall call on your Mother and exchange
information with her. On Tom’s account I have not
been able to pass so much time with her as I would
otherwise have done. I have seen her but twice—one I
dined with her and Charles. She was well, in good
spirits and I kept her laughing at my bad jokes. We
went to tea at Mrs. Millar’s and in going were particu-
larly struck with the light and shade through the Gate-
way at the Horse Guards. I intend to write you such
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 97

volumes that it will be impossible for me to keep any
order or method in what I write: that will come first
which is uppermost in my mind, not that which is upper-
most in my heart—besides I should wish to give you a
picture of our Lives here whenever by a touch I can do
it; even as you must see by the last sentence our walk
past Whitehall all in good health and spirits—this I am
certain of, because I felt so much pleasure from the
simple idea of your playing a game of Cricket. At
Mrs. Millar's I saw Henry quite well—there was Miss
Keasle—and the goodnatured Miss Waldegrave—Mrs.
Millar began a long story and you know it is her
Daughter’s way to help her on as though her tongue
were ill of the gout. Mrs. M. certainly tells a story as
though she had been taught her alphabet in Crutched
Friars. Dilke has been very unwell; I found him very
ailing on my return—he was under Medical care for
some time, and then went to the sea side whence he has
returned well. Poor little Mrs. D. has had another gall-
stone attack ; she was well ere I returned—she is now at
Brighton. Dilke was greatly pleased to hear from you
and will write a letter for me to enclose—He seems greatly
desirous of hearing from you of the settlement itself—

Between the allusions to horn spoons and Reynolds's re-
turn from Devonshire, at page 237, stands this sentence :

Severn has had a narrow escape of his Life from a
Typhous fever : he is now gaining strength.

And between the two paragraphs at page 238 there is
another omitted passage ;

Poor Haydon’s eyes will not suffer him to proceed
with his picture—he has been in the Country—I have
seen him but once since my return. I hurry matters
98 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

together here because I do not know when the Mail sails
—I shall enquire tomorrow and then shall know whether
to be particular or general in my letter—you shall have
at least two sheets a day till it does sail whether it be
three days or a fortnight—and then I will begin a fresh
one for the next Month.

At the close of the celebrated passage about Miss Jane
Cox (“ Charmian”), incmediately before the quotation from
Byron (page 240) should stand the words—* Do not think
my dear Brother from this that my Passions are head-
long or likely to be ever of any pain to you ”—and after
the words “I have no town talk for you” Keats wrote “as
Ihave not been much among people.” Near the begin-
ning of the next page stands a vile expression which ts not
Keats’ s— because of the sake of éclat” : the holograph.
veads “ for the sake of éclat,” and eight lines lower on the
same page Keats's expression was “We breathe in a sort
of Officinal admosphere.” The poem “A Prophecy,” men-
tioned in the foot-note at page 242, is followed by a long
omitted passage, namely :

_ This is friday, I know not what day of the Month—I
will enquire tomorrow for it is fit you should know the
time I am writing. I went to Town yesterday and call-
ing at Mrs. Millar’s was told that your Mother would
not’ be found at home—I met Henry as I turned the
corner—I had no leisure to return, so I left the letters
with him. He was looking very well. Poor Tom is no
better to-night—I am afraid to ask him what Message
I shall send for him. And here I could go on complain-
ing of my Misery, but I will keep myself cheerful for
your sakes. With a great deal of trouble I have suc-.
ceeded in getting Fanny to Hampstead. She has been
several times. Mr. Lewis has been very kind to Tom all
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 99

the summer there has scarce a day passed but he has
visited him and not one day without bringing or sending
some fruit of the nicest kind. He has been very
assiduous in his enquiries after you. It would give the
old Gentleman a great deal of pleasure if you would
send him a sheet enclosed in the next parcel to me, after
you receive this—how long it will be first—Why did I
not write to Philadelphia? Really I am sorry for that
neglect. I wish to go on writing ad infinitum to you—I
wish for interesting matter and a pen as swift as the
wind. But the fact is I go so little into the Crowd now
that I have nothing fresh and fresh every day to specu-
late upon except my own whims and theories. I have
been but once to Haydon’s, once to Hunt’s, once to
Rice’s, once to Hessey’s. I have not seen Taylor, I
have not been to the Theatre. Now if I had been many
times to all these I could on my return at night have
each day something new to tell you of without any stop.
But now I have such a dearth that when I get to the
end of this sentence and to the bottom of this page I
much [szc] wait till I can find something interesting to you
before I begin another. After all it is not much matter
what it may be about, for the very words from such a
distance penned by this hand will be grateful to you—
even though I were to copy out the tale of Mother
Hubbard or Little Red Riding Hood. I have been
over to Dilke’s this evening—there with Brown we have
been talking of different and indifferent Matters—of
Euclid, of Metaphisics, of the Bible, of Shakespeare, of
the horrid system and conseque[nce]s of the fagging at
great schools. I know not yet how large a parcel I can
send—I mean by way of Letters—I hope there can be
no objection to my dowling up a quire made into a
small compass. That is the manner in which I shall
H
100 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

write. I shall send you more than Letters—I mean a
tale which I must begin on account of the activity of my
Mind ; of its inability to remain at rest. It must be
prose and not very exciting. I must do this because in
the way I am at present situated I have too many inter-
ruptions to a train of feeling to be able to write Poetry.
So I shall write this Tale, and if I think it worth while
get a duplicate made before I send it off to you.

This is a fresh beginning the 21st October. Charles
and Henry were with us on Sunday and they brought
me your Letter to your Mother—we agreed to get a
Packet off to you as soon as possible. I shall dine with
your Mother tomorrow when they have promised to
have their Letters ready. I shall send as soon as possible
without thinking of the little you may have from me in
the first parcel, as I intend as I said before to begin
another Letter of more regular information. Here I
want to communicate so largely in a little time that Iam
puzzled where to direct my attention. Haslam has pro-
mised to let me know from Capper and Hazlewood. For
want of something better I shall proceed to give you
some extracts from my Scotch Letters. But now I think
on it why not send you the letters themselves—I have
three of them at present, I believe Haydon has two
which I will get in time. I dined with your Mother
and Henry at Mrs. Millar's on Thursday when they gave
me their Letters—Charles’ I have not yet—he has pro-
mised to send it. The thought of sending my Scotch
Letters has determined me to enclose a few more which
I have received and which will give you the best cue to
how I am going on better than you could otherwise
know. Your Mother was well and I was sorry I could
not stop later. Icalled on Hunt yesterday—it has been
always my fate to meet Ollier there. On Thursday I
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. IOI

walked with Hazlitt as far as covent Garden: he was
going to play Rackets. I think Tom has been rather
better these few last days—he has been less nervous. I
expect Reynolds tomorrow. Since I wrote thus far I
have met with that same Lady again, whom I saw at
Hastings and whom I met when we were going to the
English Opera. It was in a street which goes from
Bedford Row to Lamb’s Conduit Street. I passed her
and turned back: she seemed glad of it; glad to see me
and not offended at my passing her before. We walked
on towards Islington where we called on a friend of her’s
who keeps a Boarding School. She has always been an
enigma to me—she has been in a Room with you and
Reynolds and wishes we should be acquainted without
any of our common acquaintance knowing it. As we
went along, sometimes through shabby, sometimes
through decent Streets I had my guessing at work not
knowing what it would be and prepared to meet any
surprise. First it ended at this House at Islington: on
parting from which I pressed to attend’her home. She
consented and then again my thoughts were at work
what it might lead to, tho’ now they had received a sort
of genteel hint from the Boarding School. Our Walk
ended in 34 Gloucester Street Queen Square—not
exactly,so for we went up stairs into her sitting room, a
very tasty sort of place with Books, Pictures, a bronze
statue of Buonaparte, Music, aeolian Harp; a Parrot, a
Linnet. A case of choice Lique[u]rs &c. &c. She behaved
in the kindest manner—made me take home a Grouse
for Tom’s dinner. Asked for my address for the pur-
pose of sending more game. As I had warmed with her
before and kissed her I thought it would be living back-
wards not to do so again—she had a better taste: she
perceived how much a thing of course it was and shrunk
102 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

from it—not in a prudish way but in as I say a good
taste. She continued to disappoint me in a way which

made me feel more pleasure than a simple kiss could do.
She said I should please her much more if I would only
press her hand and go away. Whether she was in a

different disposition when I saw her before—or whether
I have in fancy wrong’d her I cannot tell. I expect to
pass some pleasant hours with her now and then: in

which I feel I shall be of service to her in matters of
knowledge and taste: if I can I will. [have no libidinous
thought about her—she and your George are the

only women a peu prés de mon age whom I would be
content to know for their mind and friendship alone. I

shall in a short time write you as far as I know how I

intend to pass my life—I cannot think of those things.
now Tom is so unwell and weak.

Again at the close of this important letter much has been
left out: instead of the brief passage from “ Tom is rather
more easy” ( page 244) to the close, the holograph reads thus :

Haslam has been here this morning and has taken all
the Letters except this sheet, which I shall send him by
the Twopenny, as he will put the Parcel in the Boston.
post Bag by the advice of Capper and Hazlewood, who
assure him of the safety and expedition that way—the
Parcel will be forwarded to Warder and thence to you
all the same. There will not be a Philadelphia ship for
these six weeks—by that time I shall have another
Letter to you. Mind you I mark this letter A. By the
time you will receive this you will have I trust passed
through the greatest of your fatigues. As it was with
your Sea sickness I shall not hear of them till they are
past. Do not set to your occupation with too great an
anxiety—take it calmly—and let your health be the
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 103

prime consideration. I hope you will have a son, and it
ds one of my first wishes to have him in my Arms—which
I will do please God before he cuts one double tooth.
- Tom is rather more easy than he has been: but is still
so nervous that I cannot speak to him of these Matters
——indeed it is the care I have had to keep his Mind aloof
from feelings too acute that has made this Letter so short
a one—I did not like to write before him a Letter he
knew was to reach your hands. I cannot even now ask
him for any Message—his heart speaks to you. Beas
happy as you can. Think of me and for my sake be
cheerful.

Believe me my dear Brother and Sister

Your anxious and affectionate Brother

John

‘This day is my birthday—
All our friends have been anxious in their enquiries
and all send their remembrances.

Between Letters LXX VI and LX XVII (pages 252 and
253) may be read the following new one.

Wentworth Place [24 Dec. 1818.]
My dear Taylor
Can you lend me £30 for a short time? ten I
want for myself—and twenty for a friend—which will
be repaid me by the middle of next month. I shall go
to Chichester on Wednesday and perhaps stay a fort-
night—I am afraid I shall not be able to dine with you
before I return—
Remember me to Woodhouse
Yours sincerely
John Keats
104 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

Of the long and important letter of 1818-19, No.
LXXXIV, to George and Georgiana Keats, the holograph
is fortunately extant and accessible, although Mr. Speed
does not seem to have seen it. Among the many unwarrant-
able interferences with the text, to which Keats's letters
have been subjected, few exceed in calm misrepresentation
the closing sentence of the first paragraph ( page 264 of the
third volume) as hitherto printed. Instead of the words
“T have a firm belief in immortality, and so hae Lom,” the
hologvaph contains this passage :—

I have scarce a doubt of immortality of some nature
of [séc] other—neither had Tom. My friends have been
exceedingly kind to me every one of them—Brown de-
tained me at his House. I suppose no one could have had
their time made smoother than mine has been.

Lower down on the same page, instead of the words “ I
am going to domesticate with Brown,” the original letter
veads “With Dilke and Brown I am quite thick—with
Brown indeed Iam going to domesticate.” Jz the second
line at page 206 the word “ passage” should be substituted
Sor “ page ”; and the paragraph, instead of closing with
“in the same room” proceeds thus in the holograph :—

I saw your Mother the day before yesterday, and in-
tend now frequently to pass half a day with her—she
seem’d tolerably well. JI called in Henrietta Street and
so was speaking with your Mother about Miss Millar—
we had a chat about Heiresses—she told me I think of
7 or eight dying swains. Charles was not at home. I
think I have heard a little more talk about Miss Keasle.
All I know of her is she had a new sort of shoe on of
bright leather like our knapsacks. Miss Millar gave me
one of her confounded pinches. N. B. did not like it.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 105

Mrs. Dilke went with me to see Fanny last week, and
Haslam went with me last Sunday. She was well-—she
gets a little plumper and had a little Colour. On Sunday
‘I brought from her a present of facescreens and a work
bag for Mrs. D. They were really very pretty. From
Walthamstow we walked to Bethnal green—w/[hlere I felt
so tired from my long walk that I was obliged to go to
Bed at ten. Mr. and Mrs. Keasle were there. Haslam
has been excessively kind and his anxiety about you is
great. I never meet him but we have some chat thereon.
He is always doing me some good turn—he gave me this
thin paper for the purpose of writing to you. I have
been passing an hour this morning with Mr. Lewis—he
wants news of you very much. Haydon was here yester-
day—he amused us much by speaking of young Hopner.
who went with Capt” Ross on a voyage of discovery to
the Poles. The Ship was sometimes entirely surrounded
with vast mountains and crags of ice and in a few Minutes
not a particle was to be seen all round the Horizon.
Once they met with so vast a Mass that they gave them-
selves over for lost ; their last recourse was in meeting it
with the Bowsp[r]it which they did and split it asunder
and glided through it as it parted for a great distance—
one Mile and more. Their eyes were so fatigued with
the eternal dazzle and whiteness that they lay down on

‘their backs upon deck to relieve their sight on the blue

sky. Hopner describes his dreadful weariness at the

continual day—the sun ever moving in a circle round
above their heads—so pressing upon him that he could
not rid himself of the sensation even in the dark Hold of
the Ship. The Esquimaux are described as the most
wretched of Beings—they float from the summer to their
winter residences and back again like white Bears on the
ice floats) They seem never to have washed, and so
106 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

when their features move the red skin shows beneath the
cracking peal of dirt. They had no notion of any in-
habitants in the World but themselves. The sailors who
had not seen a star for some time, when they came again
southwards on the hailing of the first revision of one all
ran upon deck with feelings of the most joyful nature.
Haydon’s eyes will not suffer him to proceed with his
' Picture—his Physician tells him he must remain two
months more, inactive. Hunt keeps on in his old way—
I am completely tired of it all. He has lately publish’d
a Pocket Book called the literary Pocket-Book—full of
the most sickening stuff you can imagine. Reynolds is
well—he has become an Edinburgh Reviewer.

I have not heard from Bailfe]y. Rice I have seen very
little of lately—and I am very sorry for it. The Miss
Rs are all as usual. Archer above all people called on
me one day—he wanted some information by my means,
from Hunt and Haydon, concerning some Man they
knew. I got him what he wanted but-know none of the
whys and wherefores. Poor Kirkman left Wentworth
place one evening about half past eight and was stopped,
beaten and robbed of his Watch in Pond Street. I saw
him a few days since—he had not recovered from his
bruize. I called on Hazlitt the day I went to Romney
Street—I gave John Hunt extracts from your letters—
he has taken no notice. I have seen Lamb lately—
Brown and I were taken by Hunt to Novello’s—there we
were devastated and excruciated with bad and repeated
puns. Brown don’t want to go again. We went the
other evening to see Brutus a new Tragedy by Howard
Payne, an American—Kean was excellent—the play was
very bad. It is the first time I have been since I went
with you to the Lyceum.

Mrs. Brawne who took Brown's house for the summer
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 107

still resides in Hampstead—she is a very nice woman—
and her daughter senior is I think beautiful and elegant,
graceful, silly, fashionable and strange—we have a little
tiff now and then—and she behaves a little better, or I
must have sheered off. I find by a sidelong report from
your Mother that I am to be invited to Miss Millar’s birth-
day dance. Shall I dance with Miss Waldegrave ? Eh!
I shall be obliged to shirk a good many there. I shall be
the only Dandy there—and indeed I merely comply with
the invitation that the party may not be entirely destitute
of a specimen of thatrace. I shall appear in a complete
dress of purple Hat and all—with a list of the beauties
I have conquered embroidered round my Calves.

The next new section in the original letter begins—
“Thursday. This morning is so very fine, I should have
walked over to Walthamstow if I had thought of it yes-
terday—” and not in the manner shown at page 266, and
lower down, after the question as to pointers, comes this
other, “Have you seen Mr. Trimmer? He isan acquain-
tance of Peachey’s.”

In recounting the Jane Porter incident of pages 266-7,
Keats quotes in full a letter from Woodhouse which has
been ignored hitherto, a few words only being incorporated
in what has purported to be Keats’s own, so as to make Mr.
Neville figure as a friend of the poet instead of as a friend
of Woodhouse. After the allusion toa £25 note sent anony-
mously, the holograph reads thus :—

I have many things to tell you—the best way will be
to make copies of my correspondence; and I must not
forget the Sonnet I received with the Note.—Last Week
I received the following from Woodhouse whom you
must recollect—“My dear Keats——I send enclosed a
108 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

“ Letter, which when read take the trouble to return to me.
“ The History of its reaching me is this. My Cousin, Miss
“ Frogley of Hounslow borrowed my copy of Endymion ~
“ for a specified time. Before she had time to look into it;
“ she and my friend Mr. Hy. Neville of Esher, who was
“house Surgeon to the late Princess Charlotte, insisted
“ upon having it to read for a day or two, and undertook
“to make my Cousin’s peace with me on account of the
“extra delay. Neville told me that one of the Misses
“ Porter (of romance Celebrity) had seen it on his table,
“ dipped into it, and expressed a wish to read it. I desired
“he should keep it as long and lend it to as many as he
“ pleased, provided it was not allowed to slumber on any
“ one’s shelf. I learned subsequently from Miss Frogley
“ that these Ladies had requested of Mr. Neville, if he was
“ acquainted with the Author, the Pleasure of an introduc-
“tion. About a week back the enclosed was transmitted
“ by Mr. Neville to my Cousin, as a species of Apology for
“ keeping-her so long without the Book and she sentit to
“ me, knowing that it would give me Pleasure—I forward
“it to you for somewhat the same reason, but principally
“ because it gives me the opportunity of naming to you
“(which it would have been fruitless to do before) the
“ opening there is for an introduction to a class of society
“from which you may possibly derive advantage, as well
“ as gratification, if you think proper to avail yourself of
“it. In such a case I should be very happy to further
“ your Wishes. But do just as you please. The whole is
“entirely entre nous—Your’s &c. R.W.” Well—now
this is Miss Porter’s Letter to Neville.

Keats then gives the letter of Miss Porter without much
variation from the published text down to“ when life is
granted” ; but from that point the text must have been re-
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 109

stored from another source, probably Miss Porter's actual
letter ; for Keats dismisses it unfinished with“ ‘when Life
is granted &c.’—and so she goes on.” Ais comment, im-
mediately following the letter, on the proposed new introduc-
tions has also been mercilessly tampered with: it reads as
Sollows in the holograph :— S

Now I feel more obliged than flattered by this—so
obliged that I will not at present give you an extrava-
ganza of a Lady Romancer. I will be introduced to
them if it be merely for the pleasure of writing to you
about it—I shall certainly see a new race of People. I
shall more certainly have no time for them. Hunt has
asked me to meet Tom Moore some day—so you shall
hear of him. The Night we went to Novello’s there was
a complete set to of Mozart and punning. I was so
completely tired of it that if I were to follow my own
inclinations I should never meet any one of that set
again, not even Hunt who is certainly a pleasant fellow
in the main when you are with him—but in reality he is
vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and
in morals. He understands many a beautiful thing ; but
then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same
degree of perception as he himself professes—he begins
an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste
and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one
harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things
hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care
not for white Busts—and many a glorious thing when
associated with him becomes a nothing. This distort’s
one’s mind—makes one’s thoughts bizarre—perplexes
one in the standard of Beauty. Martin is very much
irritated against Blackwood for printing some letters in
his Magazine which were Martin’s property—he always
IIo ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

found excuses for Blackwood till he himself was injured
and now he is enraged. I have been several times
thinking whether or not I should send you the Examiners
as Birkbeck no doubt has all the good periodical Publi-
cations—I will save them at all events. I must not
forget to mention how attentive and useful Mrs. Bentley
has been—I am very sorry to leave her—but I must and
I hope she will not be much a loser by it—Bentley is very
well—he has just brought me a cloathe’s basket of
Books. Brown has gone to town today to take his
Nephews who are on a visit here to see the Lions.

The next new section of this long letter,—that headed
“ Friday” at page 268,—shows in the holograph the follow-
ing unpublished passage after the words “on the next
sheet” :—

I shall dine with Haydon on Sunday and go over to
Walthamstow on Monday if the frost hold. I think also
of going into Hampshire this Christmas to Mr. Snook’s—
they say I shall be very much amused. But I don’t
know—I think I am in too huge a Mind for study—I
must do it—I must wait at home and let those who wish
come to see me. I cannot always be (how do you spell
it?) trapsing. Here I must tell you that I have not been
able to keep the journal or write the Tale I promised—
now I shall be able to do so.

Again at the same page, between “even across the
Atlantic” and“ Shall I give you Miss - ” we have to
insert new matter :—

 

But now I must speak particularly to you my dear
Sister—for I know you love a little quizzing, better than ©
a great bit of apple dumpling. Do you know Uncle
Redall? He is a little man with an innocent powdered
upright head, he lisps with a protruded underlip—he has
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. III

two Nieces each one would weigh three of him—one for
height and the other for breadth—he knew Bartolozzi.
He gave a supper and ranged his bottles of wine all up
the kitchen and cellar stairs—quite ignorant of what
might be drank—it might have been a good joke to pour
on the sly bottle after bottle into a washing tub and roar
for more. If you were to trip him up it would discom-
pose a Pigtail and bring his under lip nearer to his nose.
He never had the good luck to loose a silk Handkerchief
in a Crowd and therefore has only one topic of conver-
sation—Bartolozzi.

Then comes the fine sketch of Miss Brawne ; and here
the holograph is invaluable, as it sets at rest for ever any
doubts which might linger as to the identity of the original,
by opening clearly with the words “ Shall I give you Miss
Brawne?” Jn this same passage Keats himself underlines
the emphatic word “ Minx” (page 269), and in describing
the obnoxious person whom Miss Brawne, and she only,
admired or professed to admire, he makes use of some

phrases which were judiciously enough omitted in the first

zmpressions of the letter, though there ts no longer any need
to omit them. Thus, after “you have known plenty such”,
he says “ her face is raw as if she was standing out in a

\ frost—her lips raw and seem always ready for a Pullet.”

The identity of this young person is also established, in-
directly. Mr. Dilke (see foot-note, page 269) had suggested
that the reference might be to a Miss Robinson: it was ;
for, after the phrase“ superiour as a rose to a Dandelion”,
the holograph reads—

When we went to bed Brown observed as he put out
the Taper what a very ugly old woman that Miss Robin-
son would make—at which I must have groaned aloud
for I’m sure ten minutes. I have not seen the thing
112 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Kingston again—George will describe him to you—I
shall insinuate some of these. Creatures into a Comedy
some day—and perhaps have Hunt among them.—Scene,
‘a little Parlour—Enter Hunt—Gattie—Hazlitt—Mrs.
Novello—Ollier. Gattie:—“Ha! Hunt got into your
new house? Ha! Mrs. Novello: seen Altam and his
wife? Mrs. N. Yes (witha grin): it’s Mr. Hunt’s isn’t it ?
Gattie; Hunt's? no, ha!’Mr. Ollier I congratulate you
upon the highest compliment I ever heard paid to the
Book. Mr Hazlitt, I hope you are well. Hazlitt :—Yes
Sir, no Sir—Mr. Hunt (at the Music) “La Biondina”

, &c—Hazlitt, did you ever hear this?—“ La Biondina”
&c. Hazlitt :—O no Sir—Inever— Oller ;—Do Hunt
give it us over again—divine— — Gattie: divino—Hunt
when does your Pocket-Book come out— Hunt:—“ What
‘is this absorbs me quite?” O we are spinning on a
little, we shall floridize soon I hope. Such a thing was
very much wanting—people think of nothing but money
getting—now for me I am rather inclined to the liberal
side of things. I am reckoned lax in my christian prin-
ciples &c. &c. &c. :

It is some days since I wrote the last page—and what
have I been about since I have no Idea—I dined at
Haslam’s on Sunday—with Haydon yesterday and saw
Fanny in the morning—she was well—Just now I took
out my poem to go on with it—but the thought of my
writing so little to you came upon me and I could not
get on—so I have began at random and I have nota
word to say—and yet my thoughts are so full of you
that I can do nothing else. I shall be confined at
Hampstead a few days on account of a sore throat—the
first thing I do will be to visit your Mother again. The
last time I saw Henry he show’d me his first engraving
which I thought capital. Mr. Lewis called this morning
Diperrerreer

FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 113

and brought some American Papers. I have not looked
into them. I think we ought to have heard of you be-
fore this—I am in daily expectation of Letters—Nil
desperandum. Mrs. Abbey wishes to take Fanny from
School—I shall strive all I can against that. There has
happened a great Misfortune in the Drewe Family—old
Drewe has been dead some time; and lately George
Drewe expired in a fit—on which account Reynolds has
gone into Devonshire. He dined a few days since at
Horace Twisse’s with Liston and Charles Kemble. I
see very little of him now, as I seldom go to Little
Britain because the Ennui always seizes me there, and
John Reynolds is very dull at home. Nor have I seen
Rice. How you are now going on is a Mystery to me—I
hope a few days will clear it up. I never know the day
ofthe Month. It is very fine here to-day though I expect
a Thundercloud or rather a snow cloud in less than an
hour. I am at present alone at Wentworth place—Brown
being at Chichester and Mr. and Mrs. Dilke making a
little stay in Town. I know not what I should do with-
out a sunshiny morning now and then—it clear’s up one’s
spirits. Dilke and I frequently have some chat about
you. I have now and then some doubt ; but he seems to
have great confidence. I think there will soon be per-
ceptible a change in the fashionable slang literature of
the day—it seems to me that Reviews have had their
day—that the public have been surfeited—there will
soon be some new folly to keep the Parlours in talk.
What it is I care not. We have seen three literary Kings
in our Time—Scott—Byron—and then the Scotch novels.’

 

1 It is interesting to observe that Keats, at all events, had not
fathomed Sir Walter Scott’s secret ; and it will be seen later on
(page 118) that the professional critic Hazlitt was in the same case.
x

II4 ' ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

All now appears to be dead—or I may mistake—
literary Bodies may still keep up the Bustle which
I do not hear. Haydon show’d me a letter he had
received from Tripoli—Ritchie was well and in good
Spirits, among Camels, Turbans, Palm Trees and Sands,
—You may remember I promised to send him an
Endymion which I did not—however he has one—you
have one.—One is in the Wilds of America—the other is
on a Camel’s back in the plains of Egypt.

ft will be seen from the foregoing that the new section
' begun at the top of page 270 had been properly vetrenched
but very improperly manipulated. Only a few words of
the passage will be found in the old text, and those inaccu-
vately given by way of introduction to the account of
’ Dubois's book. Of the following passage, which in the
‘original letter comes after the sonnet and £25 note episode.
(page 271), only a few words were extracted in the Jeffrey-
Houghton text, namely those about the Tomtit shooting on
Hampstead Heath, and “ Thursday—On my word, I
think so little, I have not one opinion except in matters of
taste,’—which are wrong :—

I have your Miniature on the Table George the great
—it’s very like—though not quite about the upper lip.
I wish we had a better of you, little George. I must-not
forget to tell you that a few days since I went with
Dilke a shooting on the heath and shot a Tomtit.
There were as many guns abroad as Birds. I intended
to have been at Chichester this Wednesday—but on
account of this sore throat I wrote him (Brown) my
excuse yesterday.

Thursday. I will date when I finish—I received a
note from Haslam yesterday asking if my letter is ready
—now this is only the second sheet—notwithstanding
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. II5

all my promises. But you must reflect what hindrances
I have had. However on sealing this I shall have
nothing to prevent my proceeding in a gradual journal
which will increase in a Month to a considerable size.
I will insert any little pieces I may write—though I
will not give any extracts from my large poem which is
scarce began. I want to hear very much whether Poetry
and literature in general has gained, or lost interest with
you, and what sort of writing is of the highest gust with
you now. With what sensation do you read Fielding ?
and do not Hogarth’s pictures seem an old thing to
you? Yet you are very little more removed from general
association than I am—recollect that no Man can live
but in one society at a time—his enjoyment in the
different states of human society must depend upon the
Powers of his Mind—that is you can imagine a Roman
triumph or an olympic game as well as I can. We with
our bodily eyes see but the fashion and Manners of one
country for one age—and then we die. Now to me
manners and customs long since passed whether among
the Babylonians or the Bactrians are as real, or even
more real than those among which I now live. My
thoughts have turned lately this way. The more we
know the more inadequacy we find in the world to satisfy
us—this is an old observation; but I have made up my
Mind never to take anything for granted—but even to
examine the truth of the commonest proverbs. This
however is true—Mrs. Tighe and Beattie once delighted
me—now I see through them and can find nothing in
them or weakness, and yet how many they still delight!
Perhaps a superior being may look upon Shakespeare in
the same light—is it possible? No—This same inade-
quacy is discovered (forgive me little George—you know
I don’t mean to put you in the mess) in Women with
I
116 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

few exceptions—the Dress Maker, the blue Stocking and
the most charming sentimentalist differ but in a slight
degree and are equally smokeable. But I’ll go no further
I may be speaking sacrilegeously—and on my word I
have thought so little that I have not one opinion upon
any thing except in matters of taste.

We have been sadly in need of a few correct and full
dates for this letter ; and here at last the holograph yields
one,—the allusion to Hazlitt's lectures (page 272) being
followed immediately by this passage—

Saturday Jan’ 2nd. [1819] Yesterday Mr. and Mrs. D.
and myself dined at Mrs. Brawne’s—nothing particular
passed, I never intend hereafter to spend’ any time
with ladies unless they are handsome—you lose time to swe
no purpose. For that reason I shall beg leave to decline
going again to Redall’s or Butler’s or any Squad where |
a fine feature cannot be mustered among them all—and
where all the evening’s amusement consists in saying |
your good health, your good health, and youR good
health—and (O I beg your pardon) yours Miss — — and
such thing [szc] not even dull enough to keep me awake—
with respect to amiable speaking I can read—let my
eyes be fed or T’ll never go out to dinner anywhere.
Perhaps you may have heard of the dinner given to
Thos. Moore in Dublin, because I have the account here
by me in the Philadelphia democratic paper. The most
pleasant thing that occur[r]ed was the speech Mr. Tom
made on his Father’s health being drank. I am afraid
a great part of my Letters are filled up with promises
and what I will do rather than any great deal written—
but here I say once for all—that circumstances prevented
me from keeping my promise in my last, but now I
affirm that as there will be nothing to hinder me I will

 
FRESII LETTERS, ETC, 117

keep a journal for you. That I have not yet done so
you would forgive if you knew how many hours I have
been repenting of my neglect. For I have no thought
pervading me so constantly and frequently as that of
you—my Poem cannot frequently drive it away—you
will retard it much more than you could by taking up
my time if you were in England. I never forget you
except after seeing now and then some beautiful woman
—but that is a fever—the thought of you both is a passion
with me but for the most part a calm one. I asked
Dilke for a few lines for you—he has promised them—I
shall send what I have written to Haslam on Monday
Morning—what I can get into another sheet tomorrow
I will—there are one or two little poems you might like.
I have given up snuff very nearly quite—Dilke has
promised to sit with me this evening—I wish he would
come this minute for I want a pinch of snuff very much
just now—I have none though in my own snuffbox. My
sore throat is much better to day—I think I might
venture on a pinch.

Here are the Poems—they will explain themselves—
as all poéms should do without any comment

Ever let the Fancy roam, &c.'

' I did not think this had been so longa Poem. I have
another not so long—but as it will more conveniently be
copied on the other side I will just put down here some
observations on Caleb Williams by Hazlitt—I meant to
say St. Leon, for although he has mentioned all the
Novels of Godwin very freely I do not quote them ; but
this only on account of its being a specimen of his usual —
abrupt manner and fiery laconicism. He says of St.

 

1 See Volume II, pages 122 to 126,
118 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

Leon “ He is a limb torn off society. In possession of
“eternal youth and beauty he can feel no love; sur-
“ rounded, tantalized and tormented with riches, he can

“dono good. The faces of Men pass before him as in a
“ speculum ; but he is attached to them by no common

“tie of sympathy or suffering. | He is thrown back into.
“himself and his own thoughts, He lives in the solitude
“of his own breast—without wife or child or friend or

“ Enemy in the world. Thzs is the solitude of the soul,

“not of woods or trees or mountains—but the desert of
“ society—the waste and oblivion of the heart. He is

“himself alone. His existence is purely intellectual, and

“ig therefore intolerable to one who has felt the rapture
“ of affection, or the anguish of woe.” As Iam about it

I might as well give you his character of Godwin as a
Romancer “Whoever else is, it is pretty clear that the

“ author of Caleb Williams is not the Author of Waverley.
“Nothing can be more distinct or excellent in their
“ several ways than these two writers. If the one owes.
“almost everything to external observations and tradi-
“ tional character, the other owes everything to internal

“ conception and contemplation of the possible workings.
“ of the human Mind. There is little knowledge of the
“ world, little variety, neither an eye for the picturesque
“nor a talent for the humourous in Caleb Williams, for:
“instance, but you cannot doubt for a moment of the
“ originality of the work and the force of the conception..
“The impression made upon the reader is the exact
“measure of the strength of the author’s genius. For
“the effect both in Caleb Williams and St. Leon is.
“ entirely made out, not by facts nor dates, by blackletter,
“ or magazine learning, by transcript nor record, but by
“intense and patient study of the human heart, and by
“an imagination projecting itself into certain situations,
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 11g

“and capable of working up its imaginary feelings to
“the height of reality.” This appears to me quite correct
—now I will copy the other Poem—it is on the double
immortality of Poets—

Bards of Passion and of Mirth, &c.*

These are specimens of a sort of rondeau which I
think I shall become partial to—because you have one
idea amplified with greater ease and more delight and
freedom than in the sonnet. It is my intention to wait
a few years before I publish any minor poems—and then
I hope to have a volume of some worth—and which
those people will relish who cannot bear the burthen of
a long poem. In my journal I intend to copy the
poems I write the days they are written—there is just
room I see in this page to copy a little thing I wrote off
to some Music as it was playing—

I had a dove and the sweet dove died, &c.? ,

Sunday [3 January 1819]. I have been dining with
Dilke to day—He is up to his Ears in Walpole’s letters.
Mr. Manker® is there ; I have come round to see if I
can conjure up anything for you. Kirkman came down
to see me this morning—his family has been very badly
off lately. He told me of a villainous trick of his Uncle
William in Newgate Street who became sole Creditor to
his father under pretence of serving him, and put an
execution on his own sister’s goods. He went into the
family at Portsmouth ; conversed with them, went out and
sent inthe Sheri[f]f’s officer. He tells me too of abomi-
nable behaviour of Archer to Caroline Mathew—Archer
has lived nearly at the Mathews these two years; he

 

1 See Volume II, pages 127 to 129. 7? See Volume II, page 281.
3 Probably identical with the “ Mancur” of page 148.
120 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

has been amusing Caroline—and now he has written a
Letter to Mrs. M. declining on pretence of inability to
support a wife as he would wish, all thoughts of mar-
riage. What is the worst is Caroline is 27 years old.
It is an abominable matter. He has called upon me
twice lately—I was out both times. What can it be
for—There is a letter to day in the Examiner to the
Electors of Westminster on Mr. Hobhouse’s account.’
In it there is a good character of Cobbet[t]—I have not
the paper by me or I would copy it. I do not think I

have mentioned the discovery ofan African kingdom—the

account is much the same as the first accounts of Mexico
—all magnificence—there is a Book being written about
it. I will read it and give you the cream in my next.
The romance we have heard upon it runs thus: they
have window frames of gold—100,000 infantry—human
sacrifices. The gentleman who is the Adventurer has his
wife with him—she I am told is a-beautiful little sylphid
woman—her husband was to have been sacrificed to
their Gods and was led through a Chamber filled with
different instruments of torture with privelege to choose
what death he would die, without their having a thought
of his aversion to such a death—they considering it a
supreme distinction. However he was let off and be-
came a favorite with the King who at last openly
patronized him, though at first on account of the
Jealousy of his Ministers he was wont to hold conversa-
tions with his Majesty in the dark middle of the night.
All this sounds a little Blue-beardish—but I hope it is
true. There is another thing I must mention of the

 

1 It is this allusion that fixes the particular Sunday and shows
that the writing had not been broken off for a week. The letter re-
ferred to isin The Examiner for the 3rd of January 1819,
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, I21:

momentous kind ;—but I must mind my periods in it—
Mrs. Dilke has two Cats—a Mother and a Daughter—
now the Mother is a tabby and the daughter a black and
white like the spotted child. Now it appears to me for
the doors of both houses are opened frequently—so that
there is a complete thoroughfare for both Cats (there
being no board up to the contrary) they may one and
several of them come into my room ad libitum. But no—
the Tabby only comes—whether from sympathy from Ann
the Maid or me I cannot tell—or whether Brown has left
behind him atmospheric spirit of Maidenhood I cannot
tell. The Cat is not an old Maid herself—her daughter
is a proof of it—I have questioned her—I have look’d at
the lines of her paw—I have felt her pulse—to no pur-
pose. Why should the old Cat come to me? I ask
myself—and myself has not a word to answer. It may
come to light some day ; if it does you shall hear of it.

The next and final paragraph in the original letter has
been so maltreated in previously published texts that I have
no alternative but to give the opening and close here:
at begins thus—

Kirkman this morning promised to write a few lines
to you and send them to Haslam. I do not think I have
anything to say in the Business way. You will let me
know what you would wish done with your property in
England—what things you would wish sent out—but I
am quite in the dark about what you are doing—if I do
not hear soon I shall put on my wings and be after you.
I will in my next, and after I have seen your next letter
tell you my own particular idea of America. Your next
letter will be the key by which I shall open your hearts
and see what spaces want filling with any particular
information,
122 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

The reasons for materially altering the facts by repre-
senting that Keats was unaware of his brother's arrivalin
America, and had not heard from him (see page 272), are
anything but obvious ; though there may have been some
colourable excuse for tmproving the grammar of the account
of Miss Millar’s lovers, which in the holograph ends thus—

The ninth stuck to her mother—the tenth kissed the
Chambermaid and told her to tell her Mistress—But he
was soon discharged—his reading‘lead him into an error
—he could not sport the Sir Lucius to any advantage.

The end of the letter ts not that of the Jeffrey-Houghton
version, but this:

And now for this time I bid you goodby—I have been
thin[kin]g of these sheets so long that I appear in closing
them:to take my leave of you—but that is not it—I
shall immediately as I send this off begin my journal—
when some days I shall write no more than Io lines and
others 10 times as much. Mrs. Dilke is knocking at the
wall for Tea is ready—I will tell you what sort of a tea
it is and then bid you—Good bye—This is monday
morning ‘—nothing particular happened yesterday even-
ing, except that when the tray came up Mrs. Dilke and I
had a battle with celery stalks—she sends her love to
you. I shall close this and send it immediately to
Haslam—remaining ever

My dearest brother and sister
Your most affectionate Brother
John—

The American editor makes considerable additions to the

 

The 4th of January 1819.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 123

long and important journal-letter to George and Georgiana
Keats begun on the 14th of February 1819, printed at pages
274 to 286 of Volume L[Il,and numbered LXXXVI,; and
indeed he would seem to have seen the manuscript of a small
portion. Of the greater part the autograph is in England,
and has been consulted for the purposes of this book.
The earlier part of this document was greatly retrenched
and altered when first published by Lord Houghton.
Mr. Speed says that his grandmother's second husband,
who transcribed it for Lord Houghton, did not exercise a
very wise discretion in his manipulations ; and certainly
there was some lack of judgment somewhere; for, in pre-
vious versions, the reference, made near the beginning, to
the second place at which Keats and Brown had been
staying in Hampshire is cut out, and the statement that
“nothing worth speaking of happened AT EITHER PLACE”
zs left standing—without mark of omission. The first
part of the letter now stands thus :—

Sunday Morn, Feby. 14th 1819.

My Dear Brother and Sister :

How is it we have not heard from you from the
Settlement yet? The letters must surely have mis-
carried. I am in expectation every day. Peachey wrote
me a few days ago, saying some more acquaintances of
his were preparing to set out for Birkbeck ; therefore, I
shall take the opportunity of sending you what I can
muster in a sheet or two. I am still at Wentworth
Place—indeed, I have kept indoors lately, resolved if
possible to rid myself of my sore throat ; consequently,
I have not been to see your mother since my return from
Chichester ; but my absence from her has been a great
weight upon me. I say since my return from Chichester
—I believ#I told you I was going thither. I was nearly
124 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

a fortnight at Mr. John Snooks’s,’ and a few days at old
Mr. Dilke’s. Nothing worth speaking of happened at
either place. I took down some thin paper and wrote
on it a little poem call’d “St. Agnes’ Eve,” which you |
shall have as it is when I have finished the blank part of
the rest for you. I went out twice at Chichester to old
dowager card parties. I see very little now, and very
few persons, being almost tired of men and things.
Brown and Dilke are very kind and considerate towards
me. The Miss R s* have been stopping next door
lately, but are very dull. Miss Brawne and I have every
now and then a chat and a tiff. Brown and Dilke are
walking round their garden, hands in pockets, making '
observations. The literary world I know nothing about.
There is a poem from Rogers*® dead born; and another
satire is expected from Byron, called “Don Giovanni.”
Yesterday I went to town for the first time for these
three weeks, I met people from all parts and of all sets
—Mr. Towers,’ one of the Holts, Mr. Dominie Williams,
Mr. Woodhouse, Mrs. Hazlitt and son, Mrs. Webb, and
Mrs. Septimus Brown. Mr. Woodhouse,was looking up
at a book window in Newgate street, and,. being short-
sighted, twisted his muscles into so queer a stage that I
stood ‘by in doubt whether it was him or his brother, if he

 

 

? This should of course be Sxook’s. The mistake may have
been Keats’s own ; but it would be unsafe in the circumstances to
assume that he is responsible for the improvement of his friend’s
name.

2 Probably Keats did not indicate any further who the friends
were ; for it is scarcely credible that Mr. Speed would have any de-
lieacy about naming them if he knew them.

®> Human Life.

* Charles Cowden Clarke had lodged at the house of a Mr.
Towers, in Warner Street, Clerkenwell, =
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 125

has one, and turning round, saw Mrs. Hazlitt, with that
little Nero, her son.’

The following passage, almost all fresh, Mr. Speed inter-
polates after “till I hear from you” (page 275, third
volume, line 6 from foot) :-—

I am invited to Miss Millar’s birthday dance on the
19th. Iam nearly sure I shall not be able togo. A
dance would injure my throat very much. I see very
little of Reynolds. Hunt, I hear is going on very badly
—I mean in money matters. I shall not be surprised to
hear of the worst. Haydon, too, in consequence of his
eyes, is out at elbows. I live as prudently as it is
possible for me to do. I have not seen Haslam lately.
I have not seen Richards for this half year, Rice for
three months, or Charles Cowden Clarke for God knows
when.

When J last called in Henrietta street, Miss Millar
was very unwell, and Miss Waldegrave as staid and self-
possessed as usual. Henry was well. There are two
new tragedies—one by the apostate Maw, and one by
Miss Jane Porter. Next week I am going to stop at
Taylor’s for a few days, when I will see them both and
tell you what they are. Mrs. and Mr. Bentley are well,
and all the young carrots. I said nothing of consequence
passed at Snooks’s *—no more than this—that I like the
family very much. Mr. and Mrs. Snooks* were very
kind. We used to have a little religion and politicks to-

 

1 This seems more likely to be right than the old version, “saw
Mr. Hazlitt, with his son.” See page 275, where also Woodhouse
figures as twisting his muscles into “so queer a style,” which is
certainly more likely to be what Keats wrote than s¢age, though shape
is likelier still.

2 See note at page 124.
126 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

gether almost every evening,—and sometimes about you.
He proposed writing out for me his experience in farm-
ing, for me to send to you. If I should have an oppor-
tunity of talking to him about it, I will get all I can at
all events; but you may say in your answer to this what
value you place upon such information. I have not seen
Mr. Lewis lately, for I have shrunk from going up the
hill. Mr. Lewis went a few mornings ago to town with
Mrs. Brawne. They talked about me, and I heard that
Mr. L. said a thing that I am not at all contented
with. Says he, “O, he is quite the little poet.”" Now
this is abominable. You might as well say Buonaparte is
quite the little soldier. You see what it is to be under six
foot and not a lord. There is a long fuzz to-day in the
“Examiner” about a young man who delighted a young
woman with a valentine. I think it must be Ollier’s.
Brown and I are thinking of passing the summer at
Brussels. If we do, we shall go about the first of May.
We—ze., Brown and I—sit opposite one another all day
authorizing. (N.B.,an “s” instead of a“z” would givea
different meaning.”) He is at present writing a story of
an old woman who lived in a forest, and to whom the
devil or one of his aid-de-feus came one night very late
and in disguise. The old dame sets before him pudding
after pudding,—mess after mess,—which he devours, and
moreover casts his eyes up at a side of bacon hanging

 

? These last two lines, though new as now given, are represented
at page 275 by the following :—“ Mrs. S. met me the other day. I
heard she said a thing I am not at all content with. Says she, ‘O,
he is quite the little poet.’” For the next three lines see page 275.

* I suppose Keats’ meant that the word authorising, spelt as
printers generally choose to spell all such words, would have its
usual sense, and thought he had sufficiently differentiated it into a
cognate meaning with philosophizing, poetizing, &c., by employing
a #,—a curious delusion enough.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 127

over his head, and at the same time asks whether her
cat is a rabbit. On going, he leaves her three pips
of Eve’s apple,’ and somehow she, having lived a virgin
all her life, begins to repent of it, and wished herself
beautiful enough to make all the world and even the
other world fall in love with her. So it happens, she.
sets out from her smokey cottage in magnificent apparel.
The first city she enters, every one falls in love with her,
from the prince to the blacksmith. A young gentleman
on his way to the church to be married leaves his un-
fortunate bride and follows this nonsuch. A whole
regiment of soldiers are smitten at once and follow her.
A whole convent of monks in Corpus Christi procession
join the soldiers. The mayor and corporation follow
the same road. Old and young, deaf and dumb—all but
the blind,—are smitten, and form an immense concourse
of people, who—what Brown will do with them I know
not. The devil himself falls in love with her, flies away
with her to a desert place, in consequence of which she
lays an infinite number of eggs. The eggs, being
hatched from time to time, fill the world with many
nuisances, such as John Knox, George Fox, Johanna
Southcote, and Gifford.

There have been within a fortnight eight failures of
the highest consequence in London. Brown went a few
evenings since to Davenport’s, and on his coming in he
talked about bad news in the city with such a face I
began to think of a national bankruptcy. I did not feel
much surprised and was rather disappointed. Carlisle,

 

1 The curious poem Sharing Eve's Apple (Volume II, page 279)
may perhaps be connected in its origin with this story of Brown’s,
—the sharing of the apple being, in the poem, incompatible with
virginity. If so, the date of the poem may perhaps be 1819 instead
of 1818
128 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

a bookseller on the Hone principle, has been issuing
pamphlets from his shop in Fleet street called the Deist.
He was conveyed to Newgate last Thursday ; he in-
tends making his own defense. I was surprised to hear
from Taylor the amount of money’ of the booksellers’
last sale. What think you of £25,000? He sold 4000
copies of Lord Byron. I am sitting opposite the Shak-

speare I brought from the isle of Wight—and I never _

look at it but the silk tassels on it give me as much
pleasure as the face of the poet itself.

Mr. Speed gives another fresh passage between the
words “I must wait for the spring to rouse me a little”
(page 276) and the paragraph beginning with the date
“ Friday, 19th February (1819].” , The interpolation is as
Sollows :—

The only time I went out from Bedhampton was to
see a chapel consecrated. Brown, I, and John Snook
the boy,’ went in a chaise behind a leaden horse. Brown
drove, but the horse did not mind him. This chapel is
built by a Mr. Way,’ a great Jew converter, who in that
line has spent one hundred thousand pounds. He main-
tains a great number of poor Jews. Of course, his com-
munion-plate was stolen: He spoke to the clerk about it.
The clerk said he was very sorry, adding: “J dare shay,
your honour, it's among ush.”

 

1 Probably a mistake of the American editor : the real words are
likely to be “the amount of Murray the bookseller’s last sale.”

2 Mr. John Snook of Belmont Castle (“the boy ”) died on the rst
of February 1887. :

5 From Brown’s part of the joint letter written by him and Keats
to Mr. and Mrs. Dilke on the 24th of January 1819 (page 262), it
appears that the consecration was fixed for the 25th, to be per-
formed by the Bishops of Gloucester and St. Davids, and that the
chapel was at a place called Sanstead.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 129

The chapel is built in Mr. Way’s park. The consecra-
tion was not amusing. There were numbers of carriages
—and his house crammed with clergy. They sanctified
the chapel, and it being a wet day, consecrated the
burial-ground through the vestry window. I begin to
hate parsons ; they did not make me love them that day,
when I saw them in their proper colours. A parson is a
lamb in a drawing-room and a lion in a vestry. The
notions of society will not permit a parson to give way
to his temper in any shape—so he festers in himself—his
features get a peculiar, diabolical, self-sufficient, iron
stupid expression. He is continually acting. His mind
is against every man, and every man’s mind is against
him. He is an hypocrite to the believer and a coward
to the unbeliever. He must be either a knave or an
idiot—and there is no man so much to be pitied as an
idiot parson, The soldier who is cheated into an esprit
du corps* by a red coat, a band, and colours, for the
purpose of nothing, is not half so pitiable as the parson
who is led by the nose by the bench of bishops and is
smothered in absurdities—a poor, necessary subaltern of
the Church.

1

The paragraph headed “ Friday, 19th February [1819]”
at page 276 of the third volume opens thus in the original
Letter :—

Friday Feby 18.—The day before yesterday I went to
Romney Street—your Mother was not at home—but I
have just written her that I shall see her on wednesday.

 

2 It is impossible, in the absence of the manuscript, to say
whether Keats, whose French was certainly not particularly good,
is indebted or not to his brother’s grandson for the unfortunate
turn of this phrase.
130 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

I call’d on Mr. Lewis this morning—he is very well—and
tells me not to be uneasy about Letters the chances
being so arbit[rJary. He is going on as usual among his
favorite democrat papers. We had a chat as usual about
Cobbett and the Westminster electors. Dilke has lately
been very much harassed about the manner of educating
his son—he at length decided for a public school—and
then he did not know what school—he at last has decided
for Westminster; and as Charley is to be a day boy,
Dilke will remove to Westminster.

There are many minute variations from the published
versions in what follows the above; and after the allusion
to a pheasant given to Mrs. Ditke (page 277) we read “on
which tomorrow Rice, Reynolds and the Wentworthians
will dine next door.” Then, after “ The next I intend for
your Mother,” comes this :—

These moderate sheets of paper are much more pleasant
to write upon than those large thin sheets which I hope
you by this time have received—though that can’t be now
I think of it.

After “ who wins or who loses” in the last line but one of
page 277 stands the following passage :

Brown is going on this morning with the story of his
old woman and the devil. He makes but slow progress.
The fact is it is a Libel on the Devil, and as that person
is Brown’s Muse, look ye, if he libels his own Muse how
can he expect to write. Either Brown or his muse must
turn tale [sic].

Yesterday was Charley Dilke’s birthday. Brown and
I were invited to tea. During the evening nothing
passed worth notice but a little conversation between
FRESH LETTERS, “ETC. 131

Mrs. Dilke and Mrs. Brawne. The subject was the
Watchman. It was ten o’Clock and Mrs. Brawne who
lived during the summer in Brown’s house and now lives
in the Road, recognized her old Watchman’s voice and
said that he came as far as her now: “indeed” said
Mrs. D. “does he turn the Corner?” There have been
some Letters pass between me and Haslam but I have
not seen him lately—the day before yesterday—which I
made a day of Business—I called upon him—he was out
as usual. Brown has been walking up and down the’
room a breeding—now at this moment he is being de-
livered of a couplet—and I dare say will be as well as can
be expected.—Gracious—he has twins! I have a long
story to tell you about Bailey—I will say first the cir-
cumstances as plainly and as well as I can remember and
then I will make my comment. You know that Bailey
was very much cut up about a little Jilt in the country
-somewhere. I thought he was in a dying state about it
when at Oxford with him: little supposing as I have
since heard that he was at that very time making im-
patient Love to Marian[e] Reynolds—and guess my
astonishment at hearing after this that he had been try-
ing at Miss Martin. Somatters have been. So Matters
stood—when he got ordained and went to a Curacy near
Carlisle where the family of the Gleigs reside. There
his susceptible heart was conquered by Miss Gleig—and
thereby all his connections in town have been annulled
both male and female. I do not now remember clearly
the facts. These however I know. He showed his corre-
spondence with Marian[e] to Gleig—returned all her
Letters and asked for his own—he also wrote very abrupt
Letters to Mrs. Reynolds. I do not know any more of
the Martin affair than I have written above. No doubthis
conduct has been very bad. The great thing to be con-
K
132 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

sidered is—whether it is want of delicacy and principle
or want of knowledge and polite experience. And again
weakness—yes that is it—and the want of a Wife—yes
that is it—and then Marian[e] made great Bones of him
although her Mother and sister have teased her very
much about it. Her conduct has been very upright
throughout the whole affair—She liked Bailey as a
Brother but not as a Husband—especially as he used to
woo her with the Bible and Jeremy Taylor under his
arm—they walked in no grove but Jeremy Taylor's.
Marian[e]’s obstinacy is some excuse—but his so quickly
taking to Miss Gleig can have no excuse—except that of
a Ploughman who wants a wife. The thing which sways
me more against him than anything else is Rice’s con-
duct on the occasion; Rice would not make an immature
resolve: he was ardent in his friendship for Bailey, he
examined the whole for and against minutely; and he
has abandoned Bailey entirely. All this I am not sup-
posed by the Reynoldses to have any hint of. It will be
a good lesson to the Mother and Daughters—nothing
would serve but Bailey. If you mentioned the word
Teapot some one of them came out with an a propos
about Bailey—noble fellow—fine fellow! was always in
their mouths—this may teach them that the man who
ridicules romance is the most romantic of Men—that he
who abuses women and slights them—loves them the
most—that he who talks of roasting a Man alive would
not do it when it came to the push—and above all that
they are very shallow people who take every thing literal.
A Man’s life of any worth is a continual allegory—and
very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life—a life like
the scriptures figurative—which such people can no more
make out than they can the Hebrew Bible. Lord Byron
cuts a figure but he is not’ figurative. Shakespeare
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 133

led. a life of Allegory: his works are the comments
on it.’

March 12. Friday. I went to town yesterday chiefly
for the purpose of seeing some young Men who were to
take some Letters for us to you—through the medium of
Peachey. I was surprised and disappointed at hearing
they had changed their minds and did not purpose going
so far as Birkbeck’s. I was much disappointed for I had
counted upon seeing some persons who were to see you
—and upon your seeing some who had seen me—I have
not only lost this opportunity—but the sail of the Post-
Packet to New York or Philadelphia—by which last your
Brothers have sent some Letters. The weather in town
yesterday was so stifling that I could not remain there
though I wanted much to see Kean in Hotspur. I have
by me at present Hazlitt’s Letter to Gifford—perhaps
you would like an extract or two from the high seasoned
parts. It begins thus “Sir, You have an ugly trick of
“saying what is not true of any one you do not like; and
“it will be the object of this Letter to cure you of it.

‘« You say what you please of others; it is time you were
“told what you are. In doing this give me leave to
“ borrow the familiarity of your style :—for the fidelity of
“the picture I shall be answerable. You are a little
“ person but a considerable cat’s paw ; and so far worthy
“of notice. Your clandestine connection with persons
“high in office constantly influences your opinions and
“alone gives importance to them. You are the govern-
“ment critic, a character nicely differing from that of a
“government spy—the invisible link which connects

 

1 This passage ends at the bottom of a page; the next words are
at the top of a new page of a different sized paper ; and there may
possibly be something missing between them.
134 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

“ literature with the Police.” Again—“ Your employers,
“ Mr. Gifford; do not pay their hirelings for nothing—for
“ condescending to notice weak and wicked sophistry; for
“ pointing out to contempt what excites no admiration ;
“ for cautiously selecting a few specimens of bad taste and
“bad grammar where nothing else is to be found. They
“ want your invincible pertness, your mercenary malice,
“your impenetrable dullness, your barefaced impudence,
“ your pragmatical self-sufficiency, your hypocritical zeal,
“ your pious frauds to stand in the gap of their Prejudices
“ and pretensions to fly blow and taint public opinion, to
“ defeat independent efforts, to apply not the touch of the
“ scorpion but the touch of the Torpedo to youthful hopes,
“to crawl and leave the slimy track of sophistry and lies
“ over every work that does not ‘ dedicate its sweet leaves’
“to some Luminary of the tre[a]sury bench, or is not
“ fostered in the hot bed of corruption. This is your office;
“this is what is look’d for at your hands and this you do
“ ‘not baulk ’—to sacrifice what little honesty and prosti-
“ tute what little intellect you possess to any dirty job you
“ are commission’d to execute. ‘ They keep you as an ape
« «does an apple in the corner of his jaw, first mouth’d to
“beat last swallow’d.’ You are by appointment literary
a Recacerne! to greatness and taster to the court. You have

‘a natural aversion to whatever differs from your own
“ pretensions, and an acquired one for what gives offence

“to your superiors. Your vanity panders to yourinterest

“and your malice truckles only to your love of Power. If
“ your instructive or premeditated abuse of your enviable
“trust were found wanting in a single instance; if you
“were to make a single slip in getting up your select com-
“ mittee of enquiry and green bag report of the state of

“ Letters, your occupation would be gone. You would .
“never after obtain a squeeze of the hand from a great
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 135

“man, orasmile from a Punk of Quality. The great and
“ powerful (whom you call wise and good) do not like to
“have the privacy of their self love startled by the
“ obtrusive and unmanageable claims of Literature and
“ Philosophy, except through the intervention of people
“like you, whom, if they have common penetration, they
“soon find out to be without any superiority of intellect ;
“ or if they do not whom they can despise for their mean-
“ness of soul. You ‘have the office opposite to saint
“« Peter.’ You keep a corner in the public mind for foul
“ prejudice and corrupt power to knot and gender in; you
“volunteer your services to people of quality to ease
“scruples of mind and qualms of conscience ; you lay the
“ flattering unction of venal prose and laurell’d verse to
“their souls. You persuade them that there is neither
“ purity of morals, nor depth of understanding except in
“‘ themselves and their hangers on ; and would prevent the
“unhallow’d names of Liberty and humanity from ever
“ being whispered in ears polite! You, sir, do you not all
“this? I cry you mercy then: I took you for the Editor
“ of the Quarterly Review!” This is the sort of feu de joie
he keeps up—there is another extract or two—one espe-
cially which I will copy tomorrow—for the candles are
burnt down and I am using the wax taper—which has a
long snuff on it—the fire is at its last click—I am sitting
with my back to it with one foot rather askew upon the
rug and the other with the heel a little elevated from the
carpet—I am writing this on the Maid’s tragedy which I
have read since tea with Great pleasure. Besides this
volume of Beaumont and Fletcher—there are on the
table two volumes of Chaucer and a new work of Tom
Moore’s called “Tom Cribb’s Memorial to Congress ’—
nothing init. These are trifles but I require nothing so
much of you but that you will give mea like description
I 36 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

of yourselves, however it may be when you are writing to
me. Could I see the same thing done of any great Man
long since dead it would bea great delight: As to know
in what position.Shakespeare sat when he began “To be
or not to be ”—such things become interesting from dis-
tance of time or place. I hope you are both now in that
sweet sleep which no two beings deserve more than you
do—I must fancy you so—and please myself in the
fancy of speaking a prayer and a blessing over you and
your lives—God bless you—I whisper good night in your
ears and you will dream of me.

Saturday 13 March [1819]. I have written to- Fanny
this morning and received a note from Haslam. I was
to have dined with him tomorrow: he give[s] me a bad
account of his Father who has not been in Town for 5
weeks—and is not well enough for company—Haslam is.
well—and from the prosperous state of some love affair
he does not mind the double tides he has to work. I
have been a walk past Westend—and ‘was going to call
at. Mr. Monkhouse’s—but I did not not being in the
humour. I know not why Poetry and I have been so
distant lately I must make some advances soon or she
will cut me entirely. Hazlitt has this fine Passage in
his Letter: Gifford in his Review of Hazlitt’s characters.
of Shakespeare’s plays attacks the Coriolanus critique.
He says that Hazlitt has slandered Shakespeare in say-
ing that he had a leaning to the arbit[rJary side of the
question. Hazlitt thus defends himself “My words
“are ‘Coriolanus is a storehouse of political common-
“*places. The Arguments for and against aristocracy

ace

“oe

claims of the many, on Liberty and slavery, power and
“‘the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably
“ ‘handled, with the spirit of a Poet and the acuteness of

and d[e]mocracy on the Privileges of the few and the _
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 137

“*a Philosopher. Shakespeare himself seems to have had
“ «a leaning to the arbit[r]ary side of the question, perhaps
“from some feeling of contempt for his own origin, and
“*to have spared no occasion of bating the rabble. What
“he says of them is very true ; what he says of their
“betters is also very true, though he dwells less upon it.’
“T then proceed to account for this by showing how it is
“ that ‘the cause of the people is but little calculated for
“a subject for poetry ; or that the language of Poetry
“ «naturally falls in with the language of power.’ I affirm,
“ Sir, that Poetry, that the imagination generally speaking,
“ delights in power, in strong excitement, as well as in
“ truth, in good, in right, whereas pure reason and the
“ moral sense approve only of the true and good. I pro-
“ ceed to show that this general love or tendency to imme-
“ diate excitement or theatrical effect no matter how pro-
“ duced gives a Bias to the imagination often consistent
“ with the greatest good, that in Poetry it triumphs over
“ principle, and bribes the passions to make a sacrifice of
“common humanity. You say that it does not, that there
“ is no such original Sin in Poetry, that it makes no such
“ sacrifice or unworthy compromise between poetical effect
“and the still small voice of reason. And how do you
“ prove that there is no such principle giving a bias to the
“ imagination and a false colouring to poetry? Why by
“asking in reply to the instances where this principle
“ operates, and where no other can with much modestyand
“ simplicity—‘ But are these the only topics that afford
“ ¢ delight in Poetry &c.’ No; but these objects do afford
“ delight in poetry, and they afford it in proportion to their
“ strong and often tragical effect, and not in proportion to
“the good produced, or their desireableness in a moral
“ point of view? Do we read with more pleasure of the
“ ravages of a beast of prey than of the Shepherd’s pipe

t
138 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

“ upon the Mountain? No but we do read with pleasure of
“ the ravages of a beast of prey,and we dosoon the principle
“ Thave stated, namely from the sense of power abstracted
“ from the sense of good ; and it is the same principle that
“ makes us read with admiration and reconciles us in fact
“ to the triumphant progress of the conquerors and mighty
“ Hunters of mankind, who come to stop the Shepherd's
“ Pipe upon the Mountains and sweep away his listening
“ flock. Do. you mean to deny that there is anything im-
“ posing to the imagination in power, in grandeur, in out-
“ ward show, in the accumulation of individual wealth and
" luxury; at the expense of equal justice and the common
“ weal? Do you deny that there is anything in the ‘ Pride
“ «Pomp, and Circumstance of glorious war, that makes
“ ‘ambition virtue’ ? in the eyes of admiring multitudes?
“Ts this a new theory of the pleasures of the imagination,
“ which says that the pleasures of the imagination do not
“ take rise so[le]ly in the calculation of the understanding? |
“is it a paradox of my creating that ‘one murder makes
“4 villain, millions a Hero’! orisit not true, that here as
“in other cases, the enormity of the evil overpowers and
“makes a convert of the imagination by its very magni-
“tude? You contradict my reasoning because you know
“ nothing of the question, and you think that no one has a
“ right to understand what you do not. My offence against
“ purity in the passage alluded to ‘ which contains the con-
“ “centrated venom of my malignity’is that Ihaveadmitted
“that there are tyrants and slaves abroad in the world;
_““and you would hush the matter up and pretend that
* there is no such thing in order that there may be nothing
“else. Farther I have explained the cause, the subtle.
“ sophistry of the human mind, that tolerates and Pampers
“ the evil in order to guard against its approaches ; you
“ would conceal the cause in order to prevent the cure and
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 139

“to leave the proud flesh about the heart to harden and
“ossify into one impenetrable mass of selfishness and
“ hypocrisy, that we may not ‘ sympathise in the distresses
“ ‘of suffering virtue’ in any case in which they come in
“ competition with the fictitious wants and ‘imputed weak-
“ ‘nesses of the great.’ You ask ‘are we gratified by the
“ “cruelties of Domitian or Nero?’ No not we—they were
“ too petty and cowardly to strike the imagination at a
“ distance; but the Roman senate tolerated them, ad-
“ dressed their perpetrators, exalted them into gods, the
“fathers of the people, they had pimps and scribblers of
“all sorts in their pay, their Senecas, &c., till a turbulent
“ rabble thinking there were no injuries to Society greater
“ than the endurance of unlimited and wanton oppression,
“ put an end to the farce and abated the nuisance as well as
“theycould. Had you and I lived in those times we should
“have been what we are now, I ‘a sour mal content,’ and
“ you ‘a sweet courtier.” The manner in which this is
managed: the force and innate power with which it
yeasts and works up itself—the feeling for the costume
of society ; is in a style of genius. He hath a demon, as
he himself says of Lord Byron. We are to have a party
this evening. The Davenports from Church row—I dont
think you know anything of them—they have paid me a
good deal of attention. I like Davenport himself. The
names of the rest are Miss Barnes, Miss Winter with the
Children.

At this point there is a break in the manuscript arising
Jrom the fact that Keats overlooked a sheet when he de-
spatched the budget to his brother and sister-in-law, Fortu-
nately, however, some sort of transcript was made by Mr.
Jeffrey, and from that the missing passage can be tolerably
well restored. Keats eventually discovered his omtssion,
140 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

and sent the omitted sheet on with another batch, having-
Jirst added an explanatory paragraph under a new date as
well be seen later on.

The words Augustan Age of the Drama” in the seventh
line of ‘page 278, should be followed by ““Comme on sait’
as Voltaire says” ; and in the thirteenth line of the same
page, the word “ Bellamiva” should be followed by“ alias—
(Alias—Yea and I say unto you a greater than Elias—
there was Abbot, and talking of Abbot his name puts
me in mind of a spelling book lesson, descriptive of the
whole Dramatis personae—Abbot—Abbess—Actor—.
Actress—)”’.

The paragraph which ends with the second line on page
279 requires completion thus :

she is a make-believe—(she is bona side a thin young
‘oman—). But this is mere talk of a fellow creature ; yet
pardie I would not that Henry have her. , (Non volo ut
eam possideat, nam, for, it would be a bam, for it would
be asham—). Don’t think I am writing a petition to
the Governors of St. Luke—no, that would be in another
style. May it please your worships ; forasmuch as the
undersigned has committed, transferred, given up, made
over, consigned, and aberrated himself, to the art and
mystery of poetry ; forasmuch as he hath cut, rebuffed
affronted, huffed, and shirked, and taken stint, at all
other employments, arts mysteries and occupations,
honest, middling, and dishonest ; forasmuch as he hath
at sundry times and in diverse places, told truth unto
the men of this generation, and eke to the women ; more-
over, forasmuch as he hath kept a pair of boots that
did not fit, and doth not admire Sheild’s [sic] play, Leigh
Hunt, Tom: Moore, Bob Southey and Mr. Rogers; and
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. I4t

does admire Wm Hazlitt ; more over[er] for as more as.
he liketh half of Wordsworth, and none of Crabbe;
more over-est for for as most; as he hath written this.
page of penmanship, he prayeth your worships to
give him a lodging—witnessed by Rd. Abbey and Co.
cum familiaribus & consanguiniis (signed) Count de
Cockaigne—

On the same page the paragraph ending with the word
“perquisite” should be extended thus :

Parsons will always keep up their character, but as it
is said there are some animals the ancients knew which
we do not, let us hope our posterity will miss the black
badger with tri-cornered hat; who knows but some
Reviewer of Buffon or Pliny may put an account of the
parson in the Appendix; No one will then believe it
any more than we believe in the Phoenix. I think we
may class the lawyer in the same natural history of
monsters ; a green bag will hold as much as a lawn
‘sleeve. The only difference is that one is fustian and
the other flimsy; I am not unwilling to read Church
history—at present I have Milnes in my eye—his is
reckoned a very good one.
18th September [1819]. In looking over some of my
papers I found the above specimen of my carelessness,
It is a sheet you ought to have had long ago—my letter
must have appeared very unconnected, but as I number
the sheets you must have discovered how the mistake
happened. How many things have happened since I
wrote it. How have I acted contrary to my resolves ;
the interval between writing this sheet and the day I
put this supplement to it, has been completely filled
with generous and most friendly actions of Brown to-
wards me. How frequently I forget to speak of things
i42 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

which I think of and feel most. ’Tis very singular the
idea about Buffon above, has been taken up by Hunt in
the Examiner, in some papers which he calls “ A Preter-
natural History.”

After this point the holograph recommences, and shows
again curious variations from the Jeffrey-Houghton ver-
sion. In line 16 of page 280 “power” should be substi-
tuted for frown”; and three lines lower down, where
Poetry, Ambition and Love are described as three figures,
the unwarrantable liberty has been taken of changing
Keats's words from “a Man and two women” Zo “two
men and a woman.” After the allusion to the impending
death of Haslam’s father, in the next paragraph, editorial
propriety has removed the harmless statement “his mother
bears up, he says, very well.” Jn the sixth line of page
281 the word “interested” should be “influenced”; and
a few lines further on the sentence ending “ injuring
society” vequires completion by the words—“which it
would do I fear pushed to an extremity.”

Before the sentence beginning “ The noble animal Man”
should be restored the words “they get their food in the
same manner ;” and on the next page (282) the passage about
Socrates and Jesus has been so mis-hahdled that I give it
from the holograph, after the words “ Their histories evince
ab

What I heard a little time ago, Taylor observe with
respect to Socrates, may be said of Jesus—That he was
so great a man that though he transmitted no writing of
his own to posterity, we have his Mind and his sayings
and his greatness handed: to us by others. It is to be
lamented that the history of the latter was written and
revised by Men interested in the pious frauds of Religion.
Yet through all this I see his splendour.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 143

The new paragraph headed “15th April [1819]” at
page 283 should open with“ This is the 15th of April
[1819]”; and between the words “write in the light” and
“It looks so much like rain,” the holograph contains the
Sollowing mass of prose and a quantity of verse:

I was in town yesterday and at Taylor’s heard that
young Birkbeck had been in Town and was to set forward
in six or seven days—so I shall dedicate that time to
making up this parcel ready for him. I wish I could
hear from you to make me “whole and general as the
casing air.” A few days after the 19th of April’ I re-
ceived a note from Haslam containing the news of his
father’s death. The Family has.all been well. Haslam
has his father’s situation. The Framptons have behaved.
well to him. The day before yesterday I went to a.
rout at Sawrey’s—it was made pleasant by Reynolds
being there and our getting into conversation with one
of the most beautiful Girls I ever saw. She gave a
remarkable prettiness to all those commonplaces which.
most women who talk must utter. I like Mrs. Sawrey
very well. The Sunday before last your Brothers were:
to come by a long invitation—so long that for the time
I forgot it when I promised Mrs. Brawne to dine with
her on the same day. On recollecting my engagement.
with your Brothers I immediately excused myself with.
Mrs, Brawne but she would not hear of it and insisted on
my bringing my friends with me. So we all dined at
Mrs. Brawne’s. I have been to Mrs. Bentley’s this morn-
ing and put all the letters to and from you and poor

 

1 Keats of course meant the 19th of March : it was only the 15th.
of April when he was writing.

{
144 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Tom and me [sic]. I found some of the correspondence
between him and that degraded Wells and Amena. It is
a wretched business, I do not know the rights of it—but
what I do know would I am sure affect you so much
that I am in two Minds whether I will tell you anything
about it. And yet I do not see why—for anything tho’
it be unpleasant that calls to mind those we still love
has a compensation in itself for the pain it occasions—so -
very likely tomorrow I may set about copying the

whole of what I have about it: with no sort of a Richardson vi

selfsatisfaction—I hate it to a sickness—and I am afraid
more from indolence of mind than anything else. I
wonder how people exist with all their worries. I have
not been to Westminster but once lately and that was
to see Dilke in his new Lodgings—I think of living ’
somewhere in the neighbourhood myself. Your mother
was well by your Brothers’ account. I shall see her
perhaps tomorrow—yes I shall. We have had the Boys
here lately—they make a bit of a racket—I shall not be
sorry when they go. I found also this morning in a
note from George to you my dear sister a lock of your
hair which I shall this moment put in the miniature case.
A few days ago Hunt dined here and Brown invited
Davenport to meet him. Davenport from a sense of:
weakness thought it incumbent on him to show off—and
pursuant to that never ceased talking and boaring [sic] all
day till I was completely fagged out—Brown grew melan-
choly—but Hunt perceiving what a complimentary ten-
dency all this had bore it remarkably well—Brown
grumbled about it for two or three days. I went with
Hunt to Sir John Leicester’s gallery ; there I saw North-
cote—Hilton—Bewick and many more of great and
Little note. Haydon’s picture is of very little progress
this year. He talks about finishing it next year.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 145

Wordsworth is going to publish a Poem called Peter Bell
—what a perverse fellow it is! Why will he talk about
Peter Bells—I was told not to tell—but to you it will
not be telling—Reynolds hearing that said Peter Bell
was coming out, took it into his head to write a skit
upon it called Peter Bell. He did it as soon as thought
on; it is to be published this morning, and comes out
before the real Peter Bell, with this admirable motto
from the “Bold stroke for a Wife” “I am the real
Simon Pure.” It would be just as well to trounce Lord
Byron in the same manner.’ I am still at a stand in
versifying—I cannot do it yet with any pleasure—I
mean however to look round on my resources and means
—and see what I can do without poetry. To that end I
shall live in Westminster. I have no doubt of making
by some means a little to help on or I shall be left in
the Lurch—with the burden of a little Pride. However
I look in time. The Dilkes like their Lodgings at West-
minster tolerably well. I cannot help thinking what a
shame it is that poor Dilke should give up his comfort-
able house and garden for his Son, whom he will cer-
tainly ruin with too much care. The boy has nothing in
his ears all day but himself and the importance of his

 

1 This juxtaposition of the names of Byron and Wordsworth in
such a context tempts one to recall an epigram by another poet who
shared Keats’s opinion that those two luminaries were not altogether

. free from reproach. Landor, in his Dry Sézcks, has the following
lines “To Recruits”— ;

Ye who are belted and alert to go

Where bays, won only in hard battles, grow,
Asthmatic Wordsworth, Byron piping-hot,
Leave in the rear, and march with manly Scott.
Along the coast prevail malignant heats,

Halt on high ground behind the shade of Keats.
146 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

education. Dilke has continually in his mouth “My
Boy.” This is what spoils princes: it may have the
same effect with Commoners. Mrs. Dilke has been very |
well lately. But what a shameful thing it is that for
that obstinate Boy Dilke should. stifle himself in Town:
Lodgings and wear out his Life by his continual appre-

hension of his Boy’s fate in Westminster school with the
rest of the Boys and the Masters. Every one has some
wear and tear. One would think Dilke ought to be

quiet and happy—but no—this one Boy makes his face

pale, his society silent and his vigilance jealous. He

would I have no doubt quarrel with anyone who snubb’d
his Boy. With all this he has no notion how to manage.
him. O what a farce is our greatest cares! Yet one

must be in the pother for the sake of Clothes food and

Lodging. There has been a squabble between Kean and

Mr. Bucke. There are faults on both sides—on Bucke’s

the faults are positive to the Question: Kean’s fault is a

want of genteel knowledge and high Policy. The former
writes knavishly foolish and the other silly bombast. It
was about a Tragedy written by said Mr. Bucke which it
appears Mr. Kean kick’d at—it was so bad. After a
little struggle of Mr. Bucke’s against Kean drury Lane
had the Policy to bring it out and Kean the impolicy

not to.appear in it. It wasdamn’d. The people in the

Pit had a favourite call on the night of “ Buck Buck rise
up” and “Buck Buck how many horns do IJ hold up.”
Kotzebue the German Dramatist and traitor to his
country was murdered lately by a young student whose
name I forget—he stabbed himself immediately after
crying out “Germany! Germany!” I was unfortunate
to miss Richards the only time I have been for many
months to see him. Shall I treat you with a little
extempore ?—
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 147

Flere follow the ninety-six lines of verse which will be
Sound among the fresh poetry and new readings (see pages
31 40 34 of this volume). Keats then breaks off his extem-
pore, as suddenly as he had begun it, with the following :—

Brown is gone to bed—and I am tired of rhyming—
there is a north wind blowing playing young gooseberry
with the trees. I don’t care so it helps even with a side
wind a Letter to me—for I cannot put faith in any
reports I hear of the Settlement some are good and
some bad. Last Sunday I took a walk towards Highgate
and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield’s
park I met Mr. Green our Demonstrator at Guy’s in
conversation with Coleridge. I joined them after en-
quiring by a look whether it would be agreeable. I
walked with him a[t] his alderman-after-dinner pace for
near two miles I suppose. In those two miles he
broached a thousand things—let me see if I can give you
a list—Nightingales, Poetry—on Poetical Sensation—
Metaphysics—Different genera and species of Dreams—
Nightmare—a dream accompanied with a sense of touch
—single and double touch—a dream related—First and
second consciousness—the difference explained between
will and Volition—so m[an]y metaphysicians from a want
of smoking the second consciousness— Monsters—the
Kraken — Mermaids — Southey believes in them —
Southey’s belief too much diluted—a Ghost story—Good
morning—I heard his voice as he came towards me—I
heard it as he moved away—I had heard it all the inter-
val—if it may be called so. He was civil enough to ask
me to call on him at Highgate. Good night!

It will be seen that the few lines about Brown's having
gone to bed, embodied in the foregoing passage, had been

garbled and misplaced in the version reprinted at the top of
L
148 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

page 284. In place of the three lines and a half following
“ patient Griselda” the original letter has the following :

The servant has come for the little Browns this morn-
ing—they have been a toothache to me which I shall
enjoy the riddance of. Their little voices are like wasps’
stings. Sometimes am I all wound with Browns.’ We
had a claret feast some little while ago. There were
Dilke, Reynolds, Skinner, Mancur, John Brown, Martin,
Brown and I. Weall got a little tipsy—but pleasantly
so. I enjoy Claret to a degree. I have been looking
over the correspondence of the pretended Amena and
Wells this evening. I now see the whole cruel deception.
I think Wells must have had an accomplice in it. Amena’s
Letters are in a Man’s language and in a Man’s hand
imitating awoman’s. The instigations to this diabolical
scheme were vanity and the love of intrigue. It was no
thoughtless hoax—but a cruel deception on a sanguine
Temperament, with every show of friendship. I do not.
think death too bad for the villain. The world would
look upon it in a different light should I expose it—they
would call it a frolic—so I must be wary—but I consider
it my duty to be prudently revengeful. I will hang over
his head like a sword by a hair. I will be opium to his
vanity if I cannot injure his interests. He is a rat and
he shall have ratsbane to his vanity. I will harm him
all I possibly can. I have no doubt I shall be able to
do so. Let us leave him to his misery alone except
when we can throw in a little more.

At page 285, tn line 3, “bever” should replace “ bite” ;
and between “always with my Compliments” and “ After
you have eaten your breakfast,” should be inserted—

 

1 Compare The Tempest, Act II, Scene 11:

sometime am I
All wound with Adders.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 149

When you are both set down to breakfast I advise
you to eat your full share—but leave off immediately
on feeling yourself inclined to anything on the other
side of the puffy—avoid that for it does not become
young women.

The words printed at the top of page 286 as“ tear off his
buttons” should, it seems, be “ Sew off his buttons” ; they
should follow a full stop, and be followed by this passage :—

Yesterday I could not write a line I was so fatigued
for the day before I went to town in the morning called
on your Mother, and returned in time for a few friends
we had to dinner. These were Taylor, Woodhouse,
Reynolds—we began cards at about 9 o’Clock, and the
night coming on and continuing dark and rainy they
could not think of returning to town. So we played at
Cards till very daylight—and yesterday I was not worth
a sixpence. Your Mother was very well but anxious for
a Letter. We had half an hour talk and no more for I
was obliged tobe home. Mrs. and Miss Millar were well
and so was Miss Waldegrave. I have asked your
Brothers here for next Sunday. When Reynolds was
here on Monday—he asked me to give Hunt a hint to
take notice of his Peter Bell in the Examiner—the best
thing I can do is to write a little notice of it myself which
I will do here and copy out if it should suit my Purpose.
“Peter Bell. There have been lately advertized two
Books both Peter Bell by name; what stuff the one was
made of might be seen by the motto ‘I am the real
Simon Pure.’ This false florimel has hurried from the
press and obtruded herself into public notice while for
ought we know the real one may be still wandering
about the woods and mountains. Let us hope she may
soon make her appearance and make good her right to
150 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS. t

the magic girdle. The Pamphleteering Archimage we
can perceive has rather a splenetic love than a downright
hatred to real florimels—if indeed they had been so
christened—or had even a pretention to play at bob
cherry with Barbara Lewthwaite: but he has a fixed
aversion to those three rhyming Graces Alice Fell, Susan
Gale and Betty Foy and-whe-can-wenderatit? and now
at length especially to Peter Bell—fit Apollo. Fhe-writer
ofthiclittleckitfemunderstandiag It may be seen from
one or two Passages of in this little skit, that the writer of
it has felt the finer parts of Mr. Wordsworths Postsy, and
perhaps expatiated with his more remote and sublimer
muse; who—sits-aleefin—a—cheerful-sadnesspand This
as far as it relates to Peter Bell is unlucky. The more
he may love the sad embroidery of the Excursion; the
more he will hate the coarse Samplers of Betty Foy and
Alice Fell; and as they come from the same hand, the
better will be able to imitate that which can be imitated,
to wit Peter Bell—as far as can be imagined from the
obstinate name. We repeat it is very unlucky—this
real Simon Pure is in parts the very Man—there isa
pernicious likeness in the scenery, a ‘ pestilent humour’ in
the rhymes and an inveterate cadence in some of the
Stanzas that must be lamented. If we are one part pleased
amused with this we are three parts sorry that an appre-
ciator of Wordsworth should show so much temper at
this really provoking name of Peter Bell—!” This will do
well enough—I have copied it and enclosed it to Hunt.
You will call it a little politic—seeing I keep clear of all
parties—I say something for and against both parties—
and suit it to the tune of the Examiner—I meant to say
Ido not unsuit it—and I believe I think what I say—nay
I am sure I do—I and my conscience are in luck to day
—which is an excellent thing. The other night I went
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. I51

to the Play with Rice, Reynolds and Martin—we saw a
new dull and half damn’d opera call’d “the Heart of
Mid Lothian ”—that was on Saturday. Istopt at Taylor’s
on Sunday with Woodhouse—and passed a quiet sort of
pleasant day. I have been very much pleased with the
Panorama of the Ships at the north Pole—with the ice-
bergs, the Mountains, the Bears, the Wolves—the seals,
. the Penguins—and a large whale floating back above
water—it is impossible to describe the place.

Wednesday Evening—
La belle dame sans merci—

The little review of “ Peter Bell” was printed in “ The
Examiner” for April 25, 1819, with some modification
(see page 48 of this volume). The heading given above is
followed in the holograph by the wonderful ballad of “La
Belle Dame,” showing revisions of text of the most interest-
ing kind. At the close of the poem ts the following charm-
ing comment :

Why four kisses—you will say—why four because I
wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse—
she would have fain said “score” without hurting the
rhyme—but we must temper the Imagination asthe Critics
say with Judgment. I was obliged to choose an even
number that both eyes might have fair play, and to speak
truly I think two a piece quite sufficient. Suppose I had
said seven there would have been three and a halfa piece
—a very awkward affair and well got out of on my side—

This immediately precedes the “ Chorus of Fairies 4 Fire,
air, earth and water—Salamander, Zephyr, Dusketha,
Breama—” which will be found at pages 340 to 344 of
Volume IT; and that poem is followed by an unusually
thoughtful passage of prose, to wit—

I have been reading lately two very different books,
152 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Robertson’s America and Voltaire’s Siecle de Louis xiv.
It is like walking arm and arm between Pizarro and the
great-little Monarch. In how lamentable a case do we
see the great body of the people in both instances; in
the first when Men might seem to inherit quiet of Mind
from unsophisticated senses; from uncontamination of
civilization and especially from their being as it were
estranged from the mutual helps of Society and its
mutual injuries—and thereby more immediately under
the Protection of Providence—even there they had
mortal pains to bear as bad, or even worse than Ba[i]liffs,
Debts and Poverties of civilized Life. The whole appears
to resolve into this—that Man is originally a poor forked
creature subject to the same mischances as the beasts of
the forest, destined to hardships and disquietude of some
kind or other. If he improves by degrees his bodily ac-
com[m]Jodations and comforts—at each stage, at each
accent there are waiting for him a fresh set of annoyances
—he is mortal and there is stilla heaven with its stars above
his head. The most interesting question that can come
before us is, How far by the persevering endeavours of a
seldom appearing Socrates Mankind may be made happy
—I can imagine such happiness carried to an extreme—
but what must it end in ?—-Death—and who could in
such a case bear with death—the whole troubles of life
which are now frittered away in a series of years, would
the[n] be accumulated for the last days of a being who in-
stead of hailing its approach would leave this world as
Eve left Paradise. But in truth I do not at all believe
in this sort of perfectibility—the nature of the world will
not admit of it—the inhabitants of the world will corre-
spond to itself. Let the fish Philosophise the ice away
from the Rivers in winter time and they shall be at con-
tinual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 153

Poles and at the Sands of Africa, whirlpools and vol-
canoes. Let men exterminate them and I will say that
they may arrive at earthly Happiness. The point at
which Man may arrive is as far as the para[l]lel state in
inanimate nature and no further. For instance suppose
a rose to have sensation, it blooms on a beautiful morn-
ing, it enjoys itself, but then comes a cold wind, a hot
sun—it cannot escape it, it cannot destroy its annoy-
ances—they are as native to the world as itself—no more
can man be happy in spite, the worldly elements will
prey upon his nature. The common cognomen of this
world among the misguided and superstitious is “a vale
of tears ” from which we are to be redeemed by a certain
arbitrary interposition of God and taken to Heaven.
What a little circumscribed straightened [szc] notion !
Call the world if you please “The vale of Soul-making.”
Then you will find out the use of the world (I am speak-
ing now in the highest terms for human nature admitting
it to be immortal which I ‘will here take for granted for
the purpose of showing a thought which has struck
me concerning it) I say “ Soul making”—Soul as distin-
guished from an Intelligence. There may be intelli-
gences or sparks of the divinity in millions—but they
are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is
personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception
—they know and they see and they are pure, in short
they are God.— How then are Souls to be made? How
then are these sparks which are God to have identity
given them—so as ever to possess a bliss peculiar to each
one’s individual existence? How but by the medium of
a world like this? This point I sincerely wish to con-
sider because I think it a grander system of salvation
than the christian religion—or rather it is a system of
spirit creation. This is effected by three grand materials
154 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

acting the one upon the other for a series of years,
These three materials are the Jntelligence the human
heart (as distinguished from intelligence or Mind) and
the World or Elemental space suited for the proper action
of Mind and Heart on each other for the purpose of form-
ing the Soul or Intelligence destined to possess the sense of
Identity, I can scarcely express what I but dimly per-
ceive—and yet I think I perceive it—that you may judge
the more clearly I will put it in the most homely form
possible. I will call the wor/d a School instituted for the
purpose of teaching little children to read—I will call the
human heart the horn Book read in that School—and I
will call the Child able to read the Soul made from that
School and its horn book. Do you not see how necessary
a World of Pains and troubles is to school an Intelli-
gence and make it a Soul? A Place where the heart
must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways. Not
merely is the Heart a Hornbook, It is the Mind’s Bible, it
is the Mind’s experience, it is the text from which the
Mind or Intelligence sucks its identity. As various as
the Lives of Men are—so various become their Souls,
and thus does God make individual beings, Souls, Iden-
tical Souls of the sparks of his own essence. This
appears to me a faint sketch of a system of Salvation
which does not offend our reason and humanity. I am
convinced that many difficulties which christians labour
under would vanish before it—there is one which even
now strikes me—the salvation of Children. In them the
spark or intelligence returns to God without any identity
—it having had no time to learn of and be altered by
the heart—or seat of the human Passions. It is pretty
generally suspected that the christian scheme has been
copied from the ancient Persian and Greek Philosophers.
Why may they not have made this simple thing even more
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 155

simple forcommon apprehension by introducing Mediators
and Personages in the same manner as in the he[a]then
mythology abstractions are personified? Seriously I
think it probable that this system of Soul-making—
“may have been the Parent of all the more palpable and
personal schemes of Redemption among the Zoroastrians,
the Christians and the Hindoos. For as one part of the
human species must have their carved Jupiter ; so another
part must have the ‘palpable and named Mediation and
Saviour, their Christ, their Oromanes and their Vishnu.
If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear
it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began
in this series of thoughts—I mean I began by seeing how
man was formed by circumstances—and what are circum-
stances? but touchstones of his heart? and what are
touchstones but provings of his heart, but fortifiers or
alterers of his nature? and what is his altered nature but
his Soul ?—and what was his Soul before it came into
the world and had these provings and alterations and per-
fectionings ?—An intelligence without Identity —and
how is this Identity to be made? Through the medium
of the Heart? and how is the heart to become this
Medium but in a world of Circumstances? There now
I think what with Poetry and Theology you may
thank your stars that my pen is not very long winded.
Yesterday I received two Letters from your Mother and
Henry which I shall send by young Birkbeck with this.

Friday April 30th—Brown has been here rummaging
up some of my old sins—that is to say sonnets. I do
not think you remember them so I will copy them out
as well as two or three lately written. I have just written
one on Fame which Brown is transcribing and he has his
book and mine. I must employ myself perhaps in a sonnet
on the same subject.
156 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

For the two sonnets on Fame and one to Sleep, which
Sollow in the holograph, see Volume II, pages 345 to 348.
The letter proceeds as at page 286 of the third volume,
with the paragraph beginning “ The following poem” and
the Ode to Psyche; and after that poem ave the words

Here endethe ye Ode to Psyche.
Incipit altera Sonneta.

I have been endeavouring &c. (as at page 286, with
slight verbal variation).

The following new letter of the Winchester series should
be read between Letters CVII and CVIII, pages 324 and
325 of Volume II.

Winchester Sept 1. 1819.
My dear Taylor

Brown and I have been employed for these 3
weeks past from time to time in writing to our different
friends—a dead silence is our only answer—no mail
morning after morning. Tuesday is the day for the
Examiner to arrive, this is the 24 Tuesday which has
been barren even of a Newspaper—Men should be in
imitation of Spirits “responsive to each others note”.
Instead of that I pipe and no one hath danced. We have
been cursing like Mandeville and Lisle. With this I
shall send by the same post a 3° letter to a friend of
mine who though it is of consequence has neither
answered right or left. We have been much in want of
news from the Theatres having heard that Kean is going
to America—but no—not a word. Why I should come
on you with all these complaints I cannot explain to
myself, especially as I suspect you must be in the
country. Do answer me soon for I really must know
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 157

something. I must steer myself by the rudder of
Information. '
ever yours sincerely
John Keats.

In reprinting the great Winchester journal-letter begun
on Friday the 17th of September 1819 (see Volume IV, pages
3 40 34), Mr. Speed reproduces most of the old mistakes of
the version published in the New Vork “ World,” and in-
troduces a few fresh ones, as well as several new passages,
and a foot-note which is interesting of trustworthy. Ad-
verting to Keats's statement that he “cannot help thinking
Mr. Audubon a dishonest man, Mr. Speed says“ Audu-
bon, the naturalist, sold to George Keats a boat loaded with
merchandise, which at the time of the sale Audubon knew
to be at the bottom of the Mississippi River.” The first new
passage is in that part of the letter where the poet tells of
his return to Winchester after posting to Town on George's
business, after the words “ they must be,” line 6, page ©.
In the “ World” version (followed in this respect in the
body of the library edition) this is disposed of by the first
13 words of the following paragraph ; and a full-stop is
placed after “ alone,’ without mark of omission :—

I returned to Winchester the day before yesterday,
and am now here alone, for Brown some days before I
left, went to Bedhampton, and there he will be for the
next fortnight. The term of his house’ will be up in the
middle of next month, when we shall return to Hamp-

 

1 It is perhaps worth while to explain that Brown was in the
habit of letting his house in Wentworth Place, where he and Keats
domesticated together, and that he generally arranged to go off on
country trips during those terms for which the house was thus

profitably employed.
158 - ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

stead. On Sunday I dined with your mother and Hen
and Charles in Henrietta Street. Mrs. and Miss Millar
were in the country. Charles had been but a few days
returned from Paris. I dare say you will have letters
expressing the motives of his journey. Mrs. Wylie and
Miss Waldegrave seem as quiet as two mice there alone.
I did not show your last. I thought it better not, for
better times will certainly come, and why should they
be unhappy in the meantime?

The next interpolation of the American editor in the
Winchester journal-letter is before the words “ When I left
Mr, Abbey,” Volume LV, page 1, line 12 : the fresh passage
veads thus, or rather, I presume, should read thus; for
Mr. Speed does not give the extract from Burton :-—

I have been reading lately Burton’s “Anatomy of
Melancholy,” and I think you will be very much amused
with a page I here copy for you. I call ita Feu de Joie
round the batteries of Fort St. Hyphen-de-Phrase on
the birthday of the Digamma. The whole alphabet was
drawn up ina phalanx on the corner of an old dictionary,
band playing “Amo, amas, &c.”

“Every lover admires his mistress, though she be very
“ deformed of her self, ill-favored, wrinkled, pimpled, pale,
“red, yellow, tan’d, tallow-faced, have a swoln juglers
“platter face, or a thin, lean, chitty face, have clouds in her
“face, be crooked, dry, bald, goggle-ey’d, blear-ey’d or
“with staring eys, she looks like a squis’d cat, hold her
“head still awry, heavy, dull, hollow-ey’d, black or yellow
“about the eys, or squint-ey’d, sparrow-mouthed, Persean
“hook-nosed, have a sharp fox nose, a red nose, China
“flat, great nose, zare simo patulogue, a nose like a pro-
“montory, gubber-tushed, rotten teeth, black, uneven,
“brown teeth, beetle browed, a witches beard, her breath
\

FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 159

“stink all overthe room, her nose drop winter and summer,
“with a Bavarian poke under her chin, a sharp chin, lave
“eared, with a long cranes neck, which stands awry too,
“pendulis mammis, her dugs like two double jugs, or else
“no dugs in the other extream, bloody faln-fingers, she
“have filthy long unpaired nailes, scabbed hands or wrists,
“a tan'd skin, a rotten carcass, crooked back, she stoops,
“is lame, splea-footed, as slender in the middle as a
“cow in the wast, gowty legs, her ankles hang over her
“shooes, her feet stink, she breed lice, a meer change-
“ling, a very monster, an aufe imperfect, her whole com-
“‘plexion savours, an harsh voyce, incondite gesture, vile
“gate, a vast virago, or an ugly tit, a slug, a fat fusti-
“lugs, a trusse, a long lean rawbone, a skeleton, a
“sneaker (st gua latent meliora puta), and to thy judg-
“ment looks like a mard in a lanthorn, whom thou
“couldst not fancy for a world, but hatest, loathest, and
“wouldst have spit in her face, or blow thy nose in her
“bosome, vemedium amoris to another man, a dowdy, a
“slut, a scold, a nasty, rank, rammy, filthy, beastly quean,
“dishonest peradventure, obscene, base, beggerly, rude,
“ foolish, untaught, peevish, Irus daughter, Thersites sister,
“Grobians scholler ; if he love her once, he admires her
“for all this, he takes no notice of any such errours, or
“imperfections of body or mind.” *

There’s a dose for you. Fire!! I would give my
favourite leg to have written this as a speech in a play.

 

1 T am in some doubt whether Keats took the trouble to write out
more or less than I have given of Burton’s strange out-pouring of
ugly phrases. Mr. Speed says “Here follows a page taken from
Part III. Sec. 2, on the Symptoms of Love,—‘ Every lover admires
his mistress,’ etc. etc.” But whether a page of Keats’s letter, or a
page of Burton’s book, and if so of what edition, we are left to

guess.
160 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

With what effect could Matthews popgun it at the pit!
This, I think, will amuse you more than so much poetry,
Of that I do not like to copy any, as I am afraid it is too
mal & propos for you at present ; and yet I will send you
some, for by the time you receive it, things in England
may have taken a different turn.

The next point in the Winchester letter at which we get
some interesting variations from the“ World” version is
where Keats inserts his old Derrynaculen letter. After the
words “ Incipit epistola caledoniensa” (Volume IV, page 15)
we have now the characteristic confession of dependence on
Brown for any chance knowledge of the lapse of time on
the Scotch tour':—

I did not know the day of the month, for I find I have
not added it. Brown must have been asleep.

And then before he proceeds to copy the letter varying so
curiously from the almost identical one which he wrote to
Thomas Keats on the 23rd of July 1818, he gives the fol-
lowing parenthetical explanation of his reasons for copying
at instead of enclosing tt :—

(before I go any further, I must premise that I would
send the identical letter, instead of taking the trouble to
copy it; I do not do so, for it would spoil my notion of
the neat manner in which I intend to fold these three
genteel sheets. The original is written on coarse paper,"
and the soft ones would ride in the post-bag very uneasy.
Perhaps there might be a quarrel).

 

1 If there were any doubt as to the genuineness of the Win-
chester letter or the new additions to it, here were a point of
vantage. It is an undoubted fact that the Scotch letters were on

“coarse paper”: most of those I have seen are on folio sheets of
thick foolscap.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, 161

Next, in that part of the Winchester letter describing the
election of the Mayor—or rather the need there was before
that event that some excitement should supervene upon the
remarkable sleepiness of the place, there is the following
tnterpolation after the words “ they have not exposed them-
selves in the street” (Volume IV, page 18, last line) :—

' The first night, tho’, of our arrival here there was a
slight uproar took place at about ten of the clock. We
heard distinctly a noise patting down the street, as of a
walking-cane of the good old dowager breed; and a
little minute after we heard a less voice observe, “ What
a noise the ferril made—it must be loose.” Brown
wanted to call the constables, but I observed it was only
a little breeze, and would soon pass over.’

Ln the same letter, after the mention of certain specks on
the teeth of the servant who admitted Keats at Mrs.
Wylie's (Volume IV, page 22), Mr. Speed gives the follow-
ing passage :—

_ Your mother said something about Miss Keasle—what
that was is quite a riddle to me now, whether she had
got fatter or thinner, or broader or longer, straiter, or
had taken to the zigzags—whether she had taken to or
left off asses’ milk. That, by the by, she ought never to
touch. How much better it would be to put her out to
nurse with the wise woman of Brentford. I can say no
more on so spare a subject. Miss Millar, now, is a diffe-
rent morsel, if one knew how to divide and subdivide,
theme her out into sections and subsections, lay a little
on every part of her body as it is divided in common
with all her fellow-creatures, in Moor’s Almanack. But,

 

* The same passage, it seems, needs restoration to the same
context in the letter to Reynolds, No. CIX, Volume III, page 328.
162 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

alas, I have not heard a word about her, no cue to begin
upon: there was indeed a buzz about her and her
mother’s being at old Mrs. So and So’s, who was like to
die, as the Jews say. But I daresay, keeping up their
dialect, she was not like to die.

After the warning words “ But be careful of those
Americans” (Volume IV, page 30), Mr. Speed has the
following passage in place of and including the few lines
given before :-—

I could almost advise you to come when ever you
have the sum of £500 to England. Those Americans
will, I aim afraid, still fleece you. If ever you think of
such a thing, you must bear in mind the very different
state of society here,—the immense difficulties of the
times, the great sum required per annum to maintain
yourself in any decency. In fact, the whole is with
Providence. I know not how to advise you but by
advising you to advise with yourself. In your next tell
me at large your thoughts about America,—what chance
there is of succeeding there, for it appears to me you
have as yet been somehow deceived. I cannot help
thinking Mr. Audubon has deceived you. I shall not
like the sight of him. I shall endeavour to avoid seeing
him. You see how puzzled I am. I have no meridian
to fix you to, being the slave of what is to happen. I
think I may bid you, finally, remain in good hopes, and
not tease yourself with my changes and variations of
mind. IfI say nothing decisive in any one particular
part of my letter, you may glean the truth from the whole
pretty correctly. You may wonder why I had not put
your affairs with Abbey in train on receiving your letter
before last, to which there will reach you a short answer
dated from Shanklin, I did write and speak to Abbey,
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. . 163

but to no purpose. Your last, with the enclosed note,
has appealed home to him. He will not see the neces-
sity of a thing till he is hit in the mouth. ’Twill be
effectual. I am sorry to mix up foolish and serious
things together, but in writing so much I am obliged to
do so, and I hope sincerely the tenor of your mind will
maintain itself better.

Coming to the latter portion of the Winchester letter, the
portion addressed particularly to Mrs. George Keats, we
jind the following sentences given by Mr. Speed next to the
words “ No step hasty or injurious to you must be taken”
(Volume IV, page 33, line 6) :-—

You say let one large sheet be all tome. ‘You will
find more than that in different parts of this packet for
you. Certainly, I have been caught in rains. A catch
in the rain occasioned my last sore throat; but as for
red-haired girls, upon my word, I do not recollect ever
having seen one. Are you quizzing me or Miss Walde-
grave when you talk of promenading ?

The short conclusion of the letter (same page), in which
George ts again divectly addressed, is more than doubled in
extent in the new verston,—the following passage having
been inserted after the assurance “ You shall not have
cause to think I neglect you” :—

I have kept this back a little time in expectation of
hearing from Mr. Abbey. You will say I might have
remained in town to be Abbey’s messenger in- these
affairs, That I offered him, but he in his answer con-
vinced me he was anxious to bring the business to an
issue. He observed, that by being himself the agent in
the whole, people might be more expeditious. You say
you have not heard for three months, and yet your letters

M
164 | ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

‘

‘have the tone of knowing how our affairs are situated, by
which I conjecture I acquainted you with them in a
letter previous to the Shanklin one. That I may not
have done. To be certain I will here state that it is in
consequence of Mr. Jennings’ threatening a chancery
suit that you have been kept from the receipt of monies
and myself deprived of any help from Abbey. I am
glad you say you keep up your spirits. I hope you make
a true statement on that score. Still keep them up, for
we are all young. I can only repeat here that you shall
hear from me again immediately. Notwithstanding
this bad intelligence, I have experienced some pleasure
in receiving so correctly two letters from you, as it gives
me, if I may so say, a distant idea of proximity. This
last improves upon my little niece—kiss her for me.

The next new letter is addressed to “Jas. Rice Esq,
Poland. St. Oxford [Street]” and seems to belong to De-
cember 1819.

‘Wentworth Place.
My dear Rice

As I want the coat on my back mended, I would
be obliged if you would send me the one Brown left at
your house by the Bearer—During your late contest I
had regular reports of you, how that your time was
completely taken up and your health improving—TI shall
call in the course of a few days, and see whether your
promotion has made any difference in your Behaviour
tous. I suppose Reynolds has given you an account of

 

* It is to be presumed that the Zr. Jennings of this passage has
been evolved out of the inner consciousness of Mr. Speed ; and
that we should read Mrs. for Mr. The claim and threat in ques-
tion were certainly on the part of Keats’s Aunt ; and I seeno reason
for supposing the aforementioned Jr. to be other than mythical.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 165

Brown and Elliston. As he has not rejected our Tragedy,
I shall not venture to call him directly a fool; But as
he wishes to put it off till next season, I cannot help
thinking him little better than a knave.—That it will
not be acted this season is yet uncertain. Perhaps we
may give it another furbish and try it at Covent Garden.
’Twould do one’s heart good to see Macready in
Ludolph. If you do not see me soon it will be from
the humour of writing, which I have had for three days
continuing. I must say to the Muses what the maid:
says to the man—“ Take me while the fit is on me.”—
Would you like a true story? “There was a man and
his wife who being to go a long Journey on foot, in the
course of their travels came to a river which rolled knee-
deep over the pebbles—In these cases the man generally
pulls off his shoes and stockings, and carries the woman
over on his back. This man did so. And his wife
being pregnant and troubled, as in such cases is very
common, with strange longings, took the strangest that
ever was heard of. Seeing her husband’s foot, a hand-
some one enough, look very clean and tempting in the
clear water, on their arrival at the other bank, she
earnestly demanded a bit of it. He being an affectionate
fellow, and fearing for the comeliness of his child, gave
her a bit which he cut off with his clasp knife—Not
satisfied, she asked for another morsel. Supposing there
might be twins, he gave her a slice more. Not yet con-
tented she craved another piece. ‘You wretch,’ cries the
man, ‘would you wish me to kill myself ?—Take that ’—
upon which he stabbed her with the knife, cut her open,
and found three children in her Belly : two of them very
comfortable with their mouths shut, the third with its
eyes and mouth stark staring wide open. ‘Who would
have thought it,’ cried the Widower, and pursued his
166 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Journey—”. Brown has a little rumbling in his stomach
this morning—
Ever yours sincerely,
John Keats.—

This letter is from the material gathered by Mr. Colvin,
and ts not, of course, to be found in Mr. Speed’s book.
The vest of the American editor's interpolations are in
letter No. CX XIII of this edition, which will be found in
Volume IV, at pages 50 to 57. Mr. Speed rejects asa
Sorgery (!) the choicest passage in the letter as it stands in
my edition, the passage recovered from“ The Philobiblion” ;
but what he interpolates, taken in conjunction with that
passage, goes far to vender the whole composition a master-
piece of letter-writing. Addressing his sister-in-law in a
letter to be conveyed to her by his brother, Keats says, in
a few lines which Mr. Speed has inserted after the words
“tn good health” (lines 3 and 4 of the letter) :-—:

To write to you by him is almost like following one’s
own letter in the mail. That it may not be quite so, I
will leave common intelligence out of the question, and
write wide of him as I can. |

The following little bit of sober seriousness Mr. Speed
places between the words “success of my friends” and
“ We smoke George about his little girl” (page 51) :—

I could almost promise that if I had the means I would
accompany George back to America, and pay you a
visit of a few months. I should not think much of the
time, or my absence from my books; or I have no right
to think, for I am very idle. But then I ought to be
diligent, and at least keep myself within the reach of
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 167

materials for diligence. Diligence, that Ido not mean to
say; I should say dreaming over my books, or rather
other people’s books. George has promised to bring you
to England when the five years have elapsed. I regret
very much that I shall not be able to see you before
that time, and even then I must hope that your affairs
will be in so prosperous a way as to induce you to stop
longer. Yours is a-hardish fate, to be so divided from
your friends and settled among a people you hate. You
will find it improve. You have a heart that will take
hold of your children; even George’s absence will make
things better. His return will banish what must be your
greatest sorrow, and at the same time minor ones with it.
Robinson Crusoe,” when he saw himself in danger of
perishing on the waters, looked back to his island as to
the haven of his happiness, and on gaining it once more
was more content with his solitude.

The following interpolated passage, belonging between
the words “ engraved in the middle of it” and “ The even-
ing before last,’ at page 52 of Volume IV, ts useful as re-
vealing the name of “Fool L” and showing that the
mysterious “IT” who made such a ridiculous lover ( pages
7 and 8 of Volume IV) was almost of a certainty
Haslam :—

Charles had a silk handkerchief belonging to a Miss

 

1 Note the evidence of Keats’s familiarity with De Foe’s great
work : since issuing this edition of Keats in 1883, a reperusal of
Robinson Crusoe in the orthography of the first edition has con-
vinced me that the book must be taken into account among the
sources of Keats’s English. There is great similarity of spelling,
capitalling, inflexion, &c., between Keats’s writings and the first
edition of Rodinson Crusoe; and this direct evidence of familiarity
with the book is satisfactory.
168 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

Grover, with whom he pretended to be smitten, and for
her sake kept exhibiting and adoring the handkerchief
all the evening. Fool Lacon, Esqre., treated’ it with a
little venturesome, trembling contumely, whereon Charles
set him quietly down on the floor,’ from where he as
quietly got up. This process was repeated at supper
time, when your mother said, “If I were you, Mr. Lacon,
I would not let him do so.” Fool Lacon, Esqre., did not
offer any remark. He will undoubtedly die in his bed,
Your mother did not look quite so well on Sunday.
Mrs. Henry Wylie is excessively quiet before people. I
hope She is always so. Yesterday we dined at Taylor’s,
in Fleet street. George left early after dinner to go to
Deptford ; he will make all square there forme. I could
not go with him—I did not likethe amusement. Haslam
is a very good fellow indeed; he has been excessively
anxious and kind to us. But is this fair? He hasan |
innamorata at Deptford, and he has been wanting me for
some time past to see her. This is a thing which it is
impossible not to shirk. “A man is like a magnet—he
must have a repelling end. Sohowam I to see Haslam’s
lady and family, if I even went? for by the time I got to
Greenwich I should have repell’d them to Blackheath,
and by the time I got to Deptford they would be on
Shooters’ Hill; when I came to Shooters’ Hill they
would alight at Chatham, and so on-till I drove them
into the sea, which I think might be indictable.

After the reference to the Scotchman at Taylors who

 

4
* Presumably what Keats wrote was ¢reated; but Mr. Speed
prints heated. a
°® This phrase may be either literal or figurative. “To set aman
down” is of course a common phrase enough ; but “to set a man
down on the floor” is certainly not a common form of the figure.

,
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 169

“was as clean as he could get himself” (Volume IV, page
52), we get in the American edition the following piece,
which is all new save the reference to the introduction of
Mr. Hart by George Keats ; and even there the name is
newly given in full :-—

Not having succeeded in Drury Lane with our tragedy,
we have been making some alterations, and are about to
try Covent Garden. Brown has just done patching up
the copy,—as it is altered. The reliance I had on it was
in Kean’s acting. Iam not afraid it will be damn’d in
the Garden. You said in one of your letters that there
was nothing but Haydon & Co. in mine. There can be
nothing of him in this, for I never seehim or Co. George
has introduced to us an American of the name of Hart.
I like him ina moderate way. He was at Mrs. Dilke’s
party, and sitting by me; we began talking about Eng-
lish and American ladies. The Miss and some of
their friends made not a very enticing row opposite us.
I bade him mark them and form his judgement of them.

 

The passage about scandal and fun which, in this
edition, ends with the word “ours” at the top of page 53,
Volume IV, is succeeded in the American book by the follow-~

| ing passage, which is all new except the opening sentence,
that about Mrs. George Keats shooting, and a few words
concerning her brothers :-—

There were very good pickings for me in George’s
letters about the prairie settlement, if I had any taste to
turn them to account in England. I knew a friend of
Miss Andrews, yet I never mentioned her to him ; for
after I had read the letter I really did not recollect her
story. Now I have been sitting here a half hour, with
my invention at work, to say something about your
170 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

mother or Charles or Henry, but it is in vain. I know
not what to say. Three nights since, George went with
your mother to the play. I hope she will soon see mine
acted. Ido not remember ever to have thanked you for
your tassels to my Shakspeare—there he hangs so ably
supported opposite me. I thank you now. It is a con-
tinual memento of you. If you should have a boy, do
not christen him John, and persuade George not to let
his partiality for me come across. ’Tis a bad name, and
goes against a man. If my name had been Edmund, I
should have been more fortunate. I was surprised to
hear of the state of society at Louisville; it seems you
are just as ridiculous there as we are here—threepenny
parties, halfpenny dances. The best thing I have heard
of is your shooting ; for it seems you follow the gun.
Give my compliments to Mrs. Audubon, and tell her I
cannot think her either good-looking or honest. Tell
Mr. Audubon he’s a fool, and Briggs that ’tis well I was
not Mr. A :

 

Saturday, Jan 15th.

It is strange that George, having to stop so short a
time in England, I should not have seen him for nearly
two days. He has been to Haslam’s, and does not en-
courage me to follow his.example. He had given pro-
mise to dine with the same party tomorrow, but has
sent an excuse which I am glad of, as we shall havea
pleasant party with us tomorrow. We expect Charles
here today. This is a beautiful day. I hope you will
not quarrel with it if I call it an American one. The
sun comes upon the snow and makes a prettier candy
than we have on twelfth-night cakes. George is busy
this morning in making copies of my verses. He is
making one now of an Ode to the Nightingale which is
like reading an account of the Black Hole at Calcutta on
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 171

an ice-bergh. You will say this is a matter of course.
I am glad it is—I mean that I should like your brothers
more the more I know them. I should spend much
more time with them if our lives were more run in
parallel; but we can talk but on one subject—that is
you.

The next interpolation follows the passage about the Irish
servant who said Keats's portrait of Shakespeare was like
her father,“ only he had more colour than the engraving”
(page 54, Volume IV) :—

You will find on George’s return that I have not been
neglecting your affairs. The delay was unfortunate, not
faulty. Perhaps by this time you have received my three
last letters, not one of which had reach’d before George
sail’d. I would give two-pence to have been over the
world as much as he has. I wish I had money enough
to do nothing but travel about for years.

After the allusion to the ladies to whom Keats was
afraid to speak “for fear of some sickly vetteration of
phrase or sentiment,’ also at page 54, Mr. Speed adds :—

When they were at the dance the other night I tried
manfully to sit near and talk to them, but to no purpose;
and if I had I [szc] would have been to no purpose still.
My question or observation must have been an old one,
and the rejoinder very antique indeed.

After the words “TI shall enjoy cities more” (Volume IV,
page 55) the American edition gives the following passage,
obviously a rejoinder to some strictures of Mrs. George
Keats’s on American ladies :—

If the American ladies are worse than the English,
they must be very bad. You say you should like your
\
172 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS,

Emily brought up here. You had better bring her up
yourself. You know a good number of English ladies ;
what encomium could you give of half a dozen of them?
The greater part seem to me downright American. I
have known more than one Mrs. Audubon. Her affec-
tation of fashion and politeness cannot transcend ours.
Look at our Cheapside tradesmen’s sons and daughters
—only fit to be taken off by a plague. I hope now soon
to come to the time when I shall never be forced to walk
through the city and hate as I walk.

After this, and before the account of the three witty
people* (also at page 5 5) we find the following in Mr.
Speed’s version :—

i Monday, Jan. 17

George had a quick rejoinder to his letter of excuse to
Haslam, so we had not his company yesterday, which I
was sorry for, as there was our old set.

Between the account of the three wits and the “ three
people of no wit at all” (foot of page 55, Volume IV),
Mr. Speed gives the following passage :—

Charles came on Saturday, but went early ; he seems
to have schemes and plans, and wants to get off. He is
quite right ; Lam glad to see him employed at business.
You remember I wrote you a story about a woman

 

1 To the paragraph about Rice, Reynolds, and Richards Mr.
Speed adds, after the words “The first is Swiftean, the second
Tom Cribean, the third Shandean,” the words, “And yet these
three eaus are not three eaus but one eau.” This: is nonsense :
what Keats wrote was, of course, “And yet these three eans are
not three eans but one ean,” meaning that, although there is a dis-
tinction between the wit of Swift, of Tom Moore (as exemplified. in
Tom Cril’s Memorial to Congress), and of Sterne in 7vistram
Shandy, the essential quality of the wit is the same in all three.
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 173

samed Alice* being made young again, or some such
stuff. In your next letter tell me whether I gave it as
riy own, or whether I gave it as a matter Brown was

/employed upon at the time. He read it over to George
the other day, and George said he had heard it all before.
So Brown suspects I have been giving you his story as ©
my own. I should like to set him right in it by your
evidence. George has not returned from town; when he
does I shall tax his memory. We had a young, long,
raw, lean Scotchman with us yesterday, call’d Thornton.
Rice, for fun or for mistake, would persist in calling him
Stevenson.

The last and perhaps best interpolation of the American
editor comes after the words “ Young lambs to sell” on
page 56 0f Volume IV,—to the exclusion of three lines about
“ pickings in George's letters about the prairie settlements,”
which, as the reader has already seen, Mr. Speed intro-
duces elsewhere (page 169, ante). The fresh passage,
which probably preceded immediately the “new departure”
of “Friday 27th” which Mr. Speed rejects, is as follows :—

Twang-dillo-dee. This, you must know, is the amen
to nonsense. I know a good many places where amen
should be scratched out, rubbed over with po[uJnce made
of Momus’s little finger bones, and in its place Twang-
dillo-dee written. This is the word I shall be tempted
to write at the end of most modern poems. Every
American book ought to have it. It would be a good
distinction in society. My Lords Wellington and
Castlereagh, and Canning, and many more, would do
well to wear Twang-dillo-dee written on their backs,

 

1 Presumably the name of the old woman referred to in the long
interpolated passage about a story of Brown’s (see pages 126-7).
174 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

instead of wearing ribbons in their button-holes. How
many people would go sideways along walls and quick-
set hedges to keep their Twang-dillo-dee out of sight,
or wear large pigtails to hide it. However, there would
be so many that the Twang-dillo-dees would keep one
another in countenance—which Brown cannot do for me.
I have fallen away lately. Thieves and murderers would
gain rank in the world, for would any one of them have
the poorness of spirit to condescend to be a Twang-
dillo-dee? “I have robbed many a dwelling-house; I
have killed many a fowl, many a goose, and many a
Man (would such gentlemen say), but, thank heaven, I
was never yet a Twang-dillo-dee.” Some philosophers
in the.moon, who spy at our globe as we do at theirs, say
that Twang-dillo-dee is written in large letters on our
globe of ‘earth ; they say the beginning of the “ T” is
just on the spot where London stands, London being
built within the flourish; “wan” reaches downwards
and slants as far as Timbuctoo in Africa; the tail of the
“g” goes slap across the Atlantic into the Rio della
Plata; the remainder of the letters wrap around New
Holland, and the last “e” terminates in land we have
not yet discovered. However, I must be silent; these
are dangerous times to libel a man in—much more a
world.

The document printed at pages xxx and xxxi of the first
volume of this edition, and mentioned as having been in-
tended to serve as Keats's last will and testament, has re-
ceived a full authentication since 1883. In was in Jact
sent ina letter to Keats's friend and publisher John Taylor,
whose nephew, Mr. John Taylor, has found it apart from
the documents which he placed at my disposal when I was
at work on these volumes as issued in 1883. The testa-
FRESH LETTERS, ETC, neg

mentary writing was not quite complete or perfectly accu-
vate as printed from the transcript lent to me by Sir
Charles Dilke ; and I now give it from the original with
the covering letter to Taylor :—
Wentworth Place
My dear Taylor
Ido not think I mentioned anything of a Pas-
sage to Leghorn by Sea. Will you join that to your
enquiries, and, if you can, give a peep at the Birth [szc]
if the Vessel is [in] our river.
Your sincere friend
John Keats

P.S. Somehow a copy of Chapman’s Homer, lent to
me by Haydon, has disappeared from my Lodgings—it
has quite flown I am affraid [szc], and Haydon urges the
return of it so that I must get one at Longman’s and
send it to Lisson Grove—or you must—or as I have
given you a job on the River—ask Mistessey.’ I had
written a Note to this effect to Hessey some time since
but crumpled it up in hopes that the Book might come
to light. This morning Haydon has sent another mes-
senger. The copy was in good condition with the head.
Damn all thieves! Tell Woodhouse I have not lost his
Blackwood.

' Mr. Taylor endorsed the letter as follows :-—

“ Inclosed in this Letter I received a Testamentary Paper
in John Keats's Handwriting without date on which I have
endorsed a memorandum to this effect for the purpose
of identifying it & for better security it 1s hereunto

annexed.
John Taylor”

22 Sept 1820

2 Meant, of course, to indicate Mr. Hessey.
176 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.
The “ Testamentary Paper” runs thus :—

My Chest of Books divide among my friends.

In case of my death this scrap of paper may be ser-
viceable in your possession.

All my Estate real and personal consists in the hopes
of the sale of books publish’d or, unpublish’d. Now I
wish Brown and you to be the first paid Creditors—the
rest is in nubibus—but in case it should shower pay my
Taylor the few pounds I owe him.

This memorandum, again, is thus endorsed in the hand-
writing of the recipient :-—

“NB. On the 14th August or the 15th 1820 I received
this paper which is in John Keats's Handwriting inclosed
in the annexed Letier which came by the 3” post.

John Taylor”
22 Sept 1820

“ The Philosophy of Mystery,” by Walter Cooper Dendy
(1841), yzelds a morsel by Keats with which-I was not
acquainted in 1883. Treating of “ Poetic Phantasy, or
Frenzy” (page 99), the writer says—“ Even in the lecture-
room of Saint Thomas's, I have seen Keats in a deep poetic
dream: his mind was on Parnassus with the muses.
And here is a quaint fragment which he one evening
scribbled in our presence, while the precepts of Sir Astley
Cooper fell unheeded on his ear :—”

Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure was wayfayringe
in y° londe of Inde, there mette hym a damoselle of
marveillouse beautie slepynge uponne the herbys and
flourys. He colde ne loke uponne her withouten grete
plesance, and he was welle nighe loste in wondrement.
Her forme was everyche whytte lyke y* fayrest carvynge
FRESH LETTERS, ETC. 177

of Quene Cythere, onlie thatte y' was swellyd and
blushyd wyth warmthe and lyffe wythalle.

Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snowe whyche y* ©
talle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe from y® northerne
wynde. One of her fayre hondes was yplaced thereonne,
.and thus whytte wyth whytte was ymyngld as ye gode
Arthure saythe, lyke whytest lylys yspredde on whyttest
snowe ; and her bryghte eyne whenne she them oped,
sparklyd lyke Hesperus through an evenynge cloude.

Theye were yclosyd yn slepe, save that two slaun-
tynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were theyre bathyd
yn sweetenesse, as whenne bye chaunce y* moone fyndeth
a banke of violettes and droppethe thereonne y® sylverie
dewe.

The authoure was goynge onne withouthen descry-
bynge y° ladye’s breste, whenne lo, a genyus appearyd—
“‘Cuthberte,” sayeth he, “an thou canst not descrybe y®
ladye’s breste, and fynde a simile thereunto, I forbyde
thee to proceede yn thy romaunt.” Thys, I kennd fulle
welle, far surpassyd my feble powres, and forthwythe I
was fayne to droppe my quille.

Although this is a sufficiently boyish piece of trifling, at
zs not quite what any boy might have written, and is in
some respects characteristic. It has not, of course, any
connexion with the study of Chatterton, but is interesting
as evidence that Sir John Mandeville must be reckoned
among the sources of Keats's English.

This place must serve for the introduction of one
more ttem—a piece of contemporary testimony. ‘Dr. R.
Garnett informs me that his father was intimately ac-
quainted with Joseph Ritchie the African traveller, who
zs mentioned by Haydon (Volume IV, page 356) as having
promised Keats to carry “Endymion” to Africa with
178 ADDITIONAL PROSE WRITINGS.

him and fling it into the midst of the Sahara Desert.
Ln a letter to Mr. Garnett written in 1818, Ritchie says—
“Tf you have not seen the poems of J. Keats, a lad of about
20, they ave well worth your reading. If I am not mis-
taken, he ts to be the great poetical luminary of the age to
come.” Had Keats lived, Ritchie might not have been far
wrong.

 

1 See page 79, foot-note, and also page 114, where Keats refers
to this matter.
ADDENDA. .
ADDENDA.

HAVING recently had an opportunity of visiting Teign-
mouth, I made further enquiries about the brooks men-
tioned by Keats as Arch Brook and Larch Brook, in the
poem called Teignmouth which appears at pages 260-3
of the second volume of the Library Edition. Arch
Brook, or Archy Brook, falls into the Teign on the
Shaldon side just below Coomb Cellars: the road passes
across it by means of a single arch. Of Larch Brook
“the oldest inhabitant ” can tell me nothing: probably
Keats chose to give that name either to the Bitton
(Coomb Vale) brook or to the Brimley brook, for the
sake of the jingle.

Since these sheets came from the press, my son
Maurice Buxton Forman has found in the catalogue of
a New York autograph auction the following extract
from a letter addressed by Keats to an unnamed cor-
respondent :—

“If George succeeds it will be better, certainly, that

they should stop in America; if not, why not return?
182 ADDENDA.

It is better in ill luck to have at least the comfort of one’s |
friends than to be shipwrecked among Americans. But
I have good hopes, as far as I can judge from what I
have heard from George. He should by this time be
taught alertness and carefulness. If they should stop in
America for five or six years let us hope they may have
about three children. Then the eldest will be getting
old enough to be society. The very crying will keep
their ears employed and their spirits from being melan-
choly.”

It is scarcely to be doubted that the extract represents
a genuine letter of Keats, and that an interesting one.
The following is unquestionably genuine, and is given
from the original letter, addressed outside to “ Mr.
William Haslam, Frampton & Co,, Leadenhall Street”:

My dear Haslam,

We have news at last—and tolerably good—
they have not gone to the Settlement—they are both in
good Health—I read the letter to Mrs. Wylie to day
and requested her after her Sons had read it—they
would enclose it to you immediately which was faith-
fully promised. Send it me like Lightning that I may
take it to Walthamstow.

Yours ever and amen
John Keats

Though it has no heading or written date, the letter
ADDENDA. 183

is legibly post-marked “ Hampstead” and “12 o'clock
MY. 13 1819,” and is clearly one of the letters which
Keats told his sister he was writing to friends when he
wrote to her on this occasion (Volume III, page 300).
It bears a black seal, the device of which is a lyre with
the motto “Qui me néglige me désole.” Haslam, as
may be seen at page 301 of Volume III, prevented
Keats from reading the letter to his sister at Waltham-
stow, by tearing it into small pieces. The reason for
this act is still to seek; there is nothing to account for
it in Keats’s letter.

In Medwin’s Life of Shelley (1847) occur some in-
teresting passages about Keats, including certain ex-
tracts from a letter which seemed to be from Fanny
Brawne. From the lady’s family I learnt in 1877 that
Medwin’s mysteriously introduced correspondent was
no other than she. Indeed, I had actually cut out the
relative portion of his book for use in the introduc-
tion to the Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne.
By some inexplicable oversight I omitted even to refer
to Medwin and the passages in question; and they re-
mained for Professor Colvin to point out in his “ English
Men of Letters” Keats. I now gladly follow Mr.
Colvin’s lead in citing an important authority upon the
vexed question of Fanny Brawne’s appreciation of
Keats. The following is what Medwin gives from her
communication as bearing upon the effect of the Quar-

terly Review article on Keats:
184 ADDENDA.

“JT did not know Keats at the time the review ap-
peared. It was published, if I remember rightly, in
June, 1818.1. However great his mortification might
have been, he was not, I should say, of a character likely
to have displayed it in the manner mentioned in Mrs.
Shelley’s Remains of her husband. Keats, soon after the
appearance of the review in question, started on a walk-
ing expedition into the Highlands. From thence he
was forced to return, in consequence of the illness of a
brother, whose death a few months afterwards affected
him strongly.

“Tt was about this time that I became acquainted
with Keats. We met frequently at the house of a
mutual friend, (not Leigh Hunt’s), but neither then nor
afterwards did I see anything in his manner to give the
idea that he was brooding over any secret grief or dis-
appointment. His conversation was in the highest
degree interesting, and his spirits good, excepting at
moments when anxiety regarding his brother’s health
dejected them. His own illness, that commenced in
January 1820, began from inflammation in the lungs,
from cold. In coughing, he ruptured a blood-vessel.
An hereditary tendency to consumption was aggravated
by the excessive susceptibility of his temperament, for

I never see those often quoted lines of Dryden without

 

* It appeared in No. XXXVII, headed “April, 1818,” on page I,
but described on the wrapper as “ published in September, 1818.”
ADDENDA. 185

thinking how exactly they applied to Keats :—

The fiery soul, that working out its way,
Fretted the pigmy body to decay.

From the commencement of his malady he was forbidden
to write a line of poetry, and his failing health, joined to
the uncertainty of his prospects, often threw him into
deep melancholy.

“The letter, p. 295 of Shelley’s Remains, from Mr.
Finch, seems calculated to give a very false idea of
Keats. That his sensibility was most acute, is true, and
his passions were very strong, but not violent, if by that
term violence of temper is implied. His was no doubt
susceptible, but his anger seemed rather to turn on him-
self than on others, and in moments of greatest irritation,
it was only by a sort of savage despondency that he
sometimes grieved and wounded his friends. Violence
such as the letter describes, was quite foreign to his
nature. For more than a twelvemonth before quitting
England, I saw him every day, often witnessed his
sufferings, both mental and bodily, and I do not hesitate
to say that he never could have addressed an unkind
expression, much less a‘violent one, to any human being.
During the last few months before leaving his native
country, his mind underwent a fierce conflict ; for what-
ever in moments of grief or disappointment he might
say or think, his most ardent desire was to live to
redeem his name from the obloquy cast upon it; nor

was it till he knew his death inevitable, that he eagerly
186 ADDENDA.

wished to die. Mr. Finch’s letter goes on to say—
‘Keats might be judged insane’—I believe the fever
that consumed him, might have brought on a temporary
species of delirium that made his friend Mr. Severn’s
task a painful one.”

I must here record with sincere regret the death of
my friend Sefiora Fanny Keats de Llanos, Keats’s only
sister. This took place at Madrid, after a very short
illness, on the 16th of December 1889. Sefiora Llanos

was eighty-six years of age.
INDEX.
INDEX.

Abbey (Mrs.), 82, 113

Abbey (Richard), “does not overstock” the Keatses with money, 80
Objects to Keats’s visits to Fanny Keats, 86
Referred to, 162, 163, 164

African Kingdom, supposed discovery of an, 120

“ After dark vapors,” date of Sonnet beginning, 21

ALTHAM AND HIS WIFE, a novel by Charles Ollier, 112

Andrews (Miss), 169

Arch Brook, identified, 181

Archer, his “abominable behaviour ” to Miss Mathew, 119-20
Referred to, 106 :

Audubon (John James), accused of dishonesty, 157, 162
Referred to, 170

Audubon (Mrs.), 170, 172

“ Authorizing” with Brown, 126

Bailey (Benjamin), Letter from Hampstead to, 72-5
Passage restored to letter to, 75-6
An inconstant lover, 131-2
Referred to, 23, 82, 91, 94, 95
“Bards of Passion and of Mirth,” copied into journal-letter of
1818-19, 16, 119
Barnes (Miss), 139
Beattie (James), Keats sees “nothing or weakness” in, 115
Beaumont and Fletcher, Keats reads THE MaIv’s TRAGEDY by, 135
Bedhampton, visit of Keats to, 128
Visit of Brown to, 157
BELLE DAME SANS MERCI (LA), Keats’s jocular note on, 151
Variations shown by holograph of, 35-8
Bentley (Benjamin), 125
190 INDEX.

Bentley (Mrs.), her noisy children, 73
Regrets at leaving, I10
Referred to, 125, 143
Bewick (Wiliam), 85, 144
Birkbeck (Morris), 110, 123, 133
Birkbeck (young), 143, 155
Birthday, Keats’s, 103
Blackwood’s Magazine, letters belonging to Martin printed in, 109
Brawne (Fanny), described by Keats as beautiful, elegant, graceful,
silly, fashionable and strange, 107
Her estimate of Keats, 184-6
An occasional “ chat and tiff” with, 124
Referred to, 111
Brawne (Mrs.), still resident at Hampstead, 107
Referred to, 116, 126, 131, 143
Briggs (—), 170
Brown (Charles Armitage), account of a story by, 126-7, 130
Generous and friendly actions to Keats, 141
Referred to, 19, 20, 29, 34, 38, 42, 73, 75, 79, 85, 99, 104, 106,
IIo, III, 113, 124, 128, 144, 147, 148, 155; 156, 157; 160,
161, 164, 165, 166, 173, 176
Brown (John), 148
Brown (Mrs. Septimus), 124
Bucke (Charles), quarrel with Kean, 146
Buffon, 141, 142 ,
Burns (Robert), his disposition Southern, 93
Burton’s ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY, Extract from, 158-9
Butler (—-), 116
Byron (Lord), a “literary king,” 113
Sale of his works, 128
“ Cuts a figure but is not figurative,” 132
“ Byron piping-hot,” 145 (soze)
Referred to, 73, 124, 145

CALEB WILLIAMS contrasted with WAVERLEY, 118
Capper and Hazlewood, 100, 102
Card-party (a), 149
Cards, Keats wins £10 at, 81
Carlile (Richard), taken to Newgate for issuing The Deist, 128
Cats (Mrs. Dilke’s), curious behaviour of, 121
Century Guild Hobby Horse (The), “ fac-simile ” of manuscript in, 25
Champion (The), Sonnet published in, 22
Theatrical notices by Keats in, 55-63
INDEX. I9gI

Charlotte (Princess), commemoration medal on death of, 82
Referred to, 108

Chatterton (Thomas), 177

Chaucer (Geoffrey), 135

Chichester, Keats’s visit to, 103, 123-4

“Claret feast” (a), 148

Clarke (Charles Cowden), 125

Clergy, Keats’s opinion of the, 129

Cobbett (William), gets “a good character” in The Examiner, 120
Referred to, 130

Coleridge (Samuel Taylor), discourses to Keats, 147

Colvin (Professor Sidney), 3, 5, 14, 17, 19, 28, 31, 36, 38, 67, 95, 166,

183

Concert (a), 77

Consecration of a chapel, 128-9

Crabbe (George), 141

Cripps (—), 73, 76, 82, 85, 88

Davenport (Mr.), 127, 144
Davenports (the) of Church Row, 139
Dendy (Walter Cooper), piece of Keats’s prose preserved by, 176-7
Dennet (Miss), Columbine at Covent Garden, 79
De Wint (Peter), message to, 93
Dilke (Charles Wentworth), Keats’s friendship with, 79
Sends a farce to Covent Garden, 79
Keats goes to a dance at house of, 84
Up to his ears in Walpole’s letters, 119
Removal to Westminster, 130, 144, 145
His preoccupation about his son, 146
Referred to, 97, 99, 104, III, 113, 116, 117, 124, 148
Dilke (Mrs.), “a battle with celery stalks ” between Keats and, 122
Her illness, 97
Referred to, 69, 79, 105, 113, 116, 121, 131, 146, 169
Dilke (Sir Charles Wentworth), first baronet, son of the above,
birthday of, 130
Dilke (Mr.) of Chichester, visit of Keats to, 124
Doeg (Mr. W. H.), 20
DON GIOVANNI, a Pantomime, noticed by Keats in The Champion,
61-3, 76-7
Drewe family, a misfortune in the, 113
DREAM (A) AFTER READING DANTE’S EPISODE OF PAULO AND
FRANCESCA, date of Sonnet, 29
Drive (a) “behind a leaden horse,” 128
192 INDEX.

Dryden (John), 184
“ Duchess of Dunghill (the),” 94

Elliston (Robert William), wishes to put off OTHO THE GREAT, 165
ENDYMION, a test of Keats’s imagination, 74
Second Book copied, 88
Third Book copied and fourth begun, 90
Taken to Africa by Ritchie, 114
A copy bound for Mrs. Reynolds, 93, 94
EvE OF St. AGNES (THE), Mr. Colvin’s collation of Woodhouse’s
transcript, 5, 14-15
. See ST. AGNES’ EVE
Examiner (The), LINES WRITTEN IN THE HIGHLANDS printed in, 26
PETER BELL, A LYRICAL BALLAD, reviewed by Keats in, 48
EXTEMPORE (AN), fresh nonsense verses, 31-4

FAME (SONNETS ON), sent to George and Georgiana Keats, 156
Variations in, 34-5

FANCY, poem of 1819 sent to George and Georgiana Keats, 117
Variations of text in, 16

Fielding (Henry), quotation from, 80
Referred to, 115

Finch (Mr.), “false idea of Keats” given to Shelley by, 185

“Fool Lacon Esqre.,” 168

Forman (Maurice Buxton), extract from letter of Keats found by, 181

Fox (George), 127

Framptons (the), 143, 182

Frogley (Miss), Woodhouse’s cousin, 108

Garnett (Dr. Richard), 177

Gattie (—), 112

Gifford (William), classified by Brown among “ nuisances,” 127
Extracts from Hazlitt’s LETTER to, 133-9 -

Gleig (the Rev. G. R.), 75, 131

Gleig (Miss), Bailey’s engagement to, 131-2

Godwin (William), his MANDEVILLE reviewed by Shelley, 80 (xo#e)
Hazlitt’s remarks on his St. LEON, 118-19

Green (Mr.), demonstrator at Guy’s, 147

Grover (Miss), 168
INDEX. 193

“ Hadst thou liv’d in days of old,” cancelled passages of, 4
Harris (Bob), 79
Hart (Mr.), 169
Haslam (William), new letter to, 182
Death of his father, 143
His innamorata, 168
Referred to, 82, 85, 100, 102, 105, 112, 117, 121, 125, 131, 136,
170, 172
Hastings, adventure with a lady whom Keats met at, IOI
Haydon (Benjamin Robert), unpleasantness between Hunt and,
73, 83
Quarrels with Reynolds, 83
Keats’s Sunday evening with, 79
Impeded in his work by bad eyes, 97
Qut at elbows, 125
Referred to, 75, 99, 100, 105, 106, 110, 112, I14, 144, 169, 175
Hazlitt (William), met by Keats at Haydon’s, 85
“ Going to play Rackets,” 101
Keats calls on him, 106
Remarks on Godwin’s St. LEON by, 118-19
Extracts from his LETTER TO GIFFORD, 133-9
Referred to, 68, 112, 113 (ote), 141
Hazlitt (Mrs.) and her son, 124-5
Heart (the), the Mind’s Bible, 154
Hessey (James Augustus), 93, 99, 175
Hilton (William), R.A., message to, 93
Referred to, 144
Hobhouse, letter in Te Examiner on, 120
Hogarth (William), 115
Holts (the), 124
Hone (William), subscriptions for, 80
Hopner (young), recounts polar adventures with Captain Ross, 105
Horwood (Mr.), 25
Houghton (Lord), Keats collection of, 5
Referred to, 27, 36, 38, 41, 42, 67, 72, 75, 76, 79 (note), 81
(zote), 85, 87, 88, 99, 91, 93, 95, 114, 122, 123, 142
HUMAN SEASONS (THE), Sonnet, new version of, 23
Hunt (James Henry Leigh), alleged “patronage” of Keats, 73
Unpleasantness with Haydon, 73, 83
His LITERARY POCKET-BOOK “ sickening stuff,” 106
Strictures on, 109
Going on badly in money matters, 125
Referred to, 36, 72, 75, 80, 99, 100, 106, 112, 140, 142, 144,
149, 150, 184
Hunt (Mrs. James Henry Leigh), 80
194 INDEX.

Hunt (John), 106

HYMN TO APOLLO, new readings, 21

HYPERION, Mr. Colvih’s collation of Woodhouse’s copy, 5, 17-19
Last line recovered, 19

HYPERION, A VISION, an attempt to reconstruct the poem, 19

“T had a dove,” song of 1819 sent to George and Georgiana Keats,
I 19 t

New readings for, 26

Imagination, powers of the, 115

Immortality, Keats’s opinion on, 104

ISABELLA, transcript by Woodhouse revised by Keats, 10
Cancelled passages and new readings, 10-14
Written at Teignmouth, at Reynolds’s suggestion, 14

Jeffrey (Mr.), 76, 81 (zoZe), 95, 122, 123, 139, 142
Jennings (Mrs.), threatens a chancery suit, 164
Jesus and Socrates compared, 142

Kean (Edmund), in Howard Payne’s BRUTUS, 106
His quarrel with Mr. Bucke, 146
Referred to, 58, 133, 156, 169
Keasle (Miss), 97, 104, 161
Keasle (Mr. and Mrs.), 105
Keats (Emily), 172
Keats (Fanny), 75, 82, 86, 95, 98, 105, 112, 113, 136, 183, 186
KEATS (GEORGE), variations in EPISTLE TO, 4
Valentine written for, 4
Referred to, 15, 16, 26, 35, 67, 69, 74, 94, 95, 166, 167, 168,
169, 170, 171, 182
Keats (George and Georgiana), new passages of letter to, 96-103
Fresh passages of letter of 1818-19 to, 104-22
Additions to letter begun 14 February 1819 to, 123-156
Additions to Winchester journal-letter to, 157-64
Keats (George and Thomas), new letter to, 76-82
New passages of letter to, 85-7
Keats (Georgiana Augusta), additions to letter to, 166
Referred to, 15, 16, 26, 102, 182
See Wylie (Georgiana Augusta)
Keats (Thomas), Junior, his view as to immortality, 104
Wells’s cruel hoax on, 144, 148
Referred to, 69, 92, 96, 98, 101, 102, 103, 184
INDEX. 195

Kemble (Charles), 56, 57, 113
Kent (Bessie), Keats attributes an article by Shelley to, 80
KING STEPHEN, manuscript variations, 38-42
KING LEAR, SONNET ON SITTING DOWN TO READ (1818), variation
in, 25
Kingston (—), 78, 79
Kirkman (—), beaten and robbed in Pond Street, 106
His family badly off, 119
“Villainous trick” of his “ Uncle William,” 119
Referred to, 121
Knox (John), 127
Kotzebue (August von), assassination of, 146

“Lacon (Fool) Esqre.,” 168
Lamb (Charles), tipsy at Haydon’s, 79
Referred to, 106
Lamia, ISABELLA, THE EVE OF ST. AGNES, AND OTHER POEMS,
fresh collations, 5-19
A rejected title-page, 5
Lamia, cancelled passages and readings from fragment of draft, 6-9
Landor (Walter Savage), his lines TO RECRUITS a tribute to Keats,
145 (zote)
Landseer, 79
Leicester (Sir John), Keats visits gallery of, 144
Lewis (Mr.), calls Keats “ quite the little poet,” 126
Kind to Tom Keats, 98-9
Referred to, 105, 130
LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN, Woodhouse’s transcript, 17
LINES ON SEEING A LOCK OF MILTON’s HAIR, newly found draft,
23-4
LINES WRITTEN IN THE SCOTCH HIGHLANDS, printed in The
Examiner, 26
Partly printed in The New Monthly Magazine, 27
Variations shown by holograph, 27-8
Liston (John), 113
“ Literary kings,” Scott and Byron described as, 113
Llanos (Sefiora), See Keats (Fanny)
London Coffee House, Keats goes to a dance at, 84

Macmillan’s Magazine, Article by Mr. Colvin in, 31, 36
Macready (William Charles), 56
196 INDEX.

MAID’s TRAGEDY (THE), Keats reads, 135
Man formed by circumstances, 155
Mancur (—), 148
Mandeville (Sir John), among the sources of Keats’s English, 177
Manker = Mancur? 119
Martin (John), 90, 109, 148, 151
Martin (Miss), Bailey’s attentions to, 131
Maw (“the Apostate ”), tragedy by, 125
Mathew (Caroline), “abominable behaviour ” of Archer to, 119-20
Matthews (Charles), 160
Medwin (Thomas), extract from Life of Shelley by, 184-6
Mermaid Tavern, See LINES
Millar (Miss), her birthday dance, 107, 125
Referred to, 104, 122, 149, 161
Millar (Mrs.), 96, 97, 98, 100, 149
Milton, See LINES and PARADISE LOST ;
Monkhouse (Mr.), 79, 136
Moore (Thomas), Hunt invites Keats to meet, 109
Dinner given in Dublin to, 116
“Nothing in” his Tom CRIB’S MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS, 135
Referred to, 140 :
Murray (John), 128 (ode)

NEHEMIAH MUGGS, manuscript lent by Horace Smith to Keats, 89

Neville (Henry), house surgeon to Princess Charlotte, 108

New Monthly. Magazine (The), part of LINES WRITTEN IN THE
HIGHLANDS given in, 27 :

Northcote, 144

Novello’s, Keats and Brown’s sufferings at, 106, 109

Novello (Mrs.), 112

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, Woodhouse’s transcript of, 15
ODE TO PsycueE, in holograph of journal-letter, February-May
1819, 15
Variations, 15-16
Ollier (Charles), 100, 112, 126
O’Neill (Miss), 56, 57, 58
OTHO THE GREAT, Elliston versus Macready, 165
Rejected at Drury Lane and offered to Covent Garden, 169
Otway (Thomas), 57
Oxford, fresh particulars as to nonsense verses on, 42-4
INDEX. 197

Panorama of ships at North Pole, Keats visits, 151

PARADISE LOST, 55

Parson (the), “the black badger with tri-cornered hat,” 141

Parsons, Keats’s views on, 129

Payne (Howard), Keats sees his tragedy BRUTUS acted, 106

Peachey (—), 107, 123, 133

Peachey family (the), 78

Perfectibility, Keats’s views as to, 152

PETER BELL, by Wordsworth, travestied by Reynolds, 48-52, 145

PETER BELL, A LYRICAL BALLAD, reviewed by Keats in Zhe
Examiner, 48-52, 149-50

PHILOSOPHY OF MYSTERY (THE), fragment of Keats’s prose from,
176-7

“ Petition to the Governors of St. Luke,” 140

Pindar (Peter), Severn drinks the health of, 78

Pizarro, 152

PoEMs (1817), fresh collations, 3-5

Porter (Jane), borrows ENDYMION and desires Keats’s acquaintance,
107-8

Tragedy by, 125

Quarterly Review article, effect on Keats of, 183-4

Radcliffe‘(Ann), 55
Redhall (Mr.), parties given by, 81, III
Referred to, 116
RETRIBUTION, OR THE CHIEFTAIN’S DAUGHTER, a Tragedy,
noticed by Keats in The Champion, 55-8, 76-7
Reynolds (Mrs. Charlotte), copy of ENDYMION to be bound for, 93,94
Referred to, 131
Reynolds (Jane), letters from Oxford to her and Mariane, 69-72
Referred to, 69, 72, 77
Reynolds (John Hamilton), Sonnet to Keats by, 45
Review by Keats of his PETER BELL, 49-52
New letter to, 68
Fresh passages of letters to, 69, 87-8, 91-2, 94
Quarrel between Haydon and, 83
Serious illness of, 89, 90
“ Become an Edinburgh Reviewer,” 106
Referred to, 14, 17, 42, 72, 73) 75) 76, 83, oH 88, IOI, 113,
125, 130, 143, 148, 149, 151
198 INDEX.

Reynolds (Mariane), letters from Oxford to her and Jane, 69-72
Bailey’s inconstancy to, 131
Referred to, 71, 77
Rice (James), fresh passage in letter to, 90
Fresh letter to, 164-6
His illness, 73, 86
Abandons Bailey, 132
Referred to, 76, 78, 81, 91, 99, 113, 125, 130, 151, 173
Richards, 125, 146
Richardson (Samuel), 144
Ritchie (Joseph), meets Keats at Haydon’s, 79
News from Tripoli of, 114 ‘
Foretells Keats’s greatness, 178
Robertson’s AMERICA, Keats reads, 152
RoBIN Hoop, variation in Woodhouse’s transcript of, 17
Robinson (Miss), obnoxious to Keats, 111
ROBINSON CRUSOE, among the sources of Keats’s English, 167
Rogers (Samuel), a poem “ deadborn ” from, 124
Referred to, 140
Rondeau, Keats’s conception of the, 119
Ross (Captain), polar expedition of, 105
Rowe (Nicholas), 57

ST. AGNES’ EVE, written at Chichester, 124
Salvation, a “grand system ” of, 153
Sawrey, Tom Keats’s doctor, gives a rout, 143
Referred to, 77, 82
Sawrey (Mrs.), 143
Scott (John), visited by Tom Keats in Paris, 79
Scott (Sir Walter), compared with Smollett, 80
A “literary king,” 113
“Manly Scott,” 145 (sote)
See WAVERLEY
Severn (Joseph), has typhus fever, 97
Referred to, 77, 78, 81, 186
Shakespeare, could a “superior being” see “nothing or weakness ” °
in? 115
“Led a life of Allegory,” 132-3
Gifford misrepresents Hazlitt’s views on, 137-8
Referred to, 136
SHARING EVE’s APPLE, poem sent in a letter to Reynolds, 87
Sheil (Richard Lalor), 140 :
INDEX. 199

Shelley (Percy Bysshe), meets Keats at Hunt’s or Haydon’s, 73
Keats refuses to visit him, 74-5
Reviews MANDEVILLE in The Examiner, 80
Medwin’s Life quoted, 183-6
Skinner (—), 148
Smith (Horace), tired of Hunt, 73
Lends Keats manuscript of NEHEMIAH Muccs, 89
Smollett (Tobias), compared with Scott, 80
Snook (John), visit of Keats to, 110, 124, 125
Snook (John), of Belmont Castle, 128 (zoze)
Snuff, verses on women, wine and, 20
Keats almost gives it up, 117
Socrates compared with Jesus, 142
Referred to, 152
SONG OF FOUR FAERIES, new readings for, 30-1°
SONNET ON THE SEA, published in The Champion, 22
SONNET TO HOMER, new reading in, 23
SONNET TO THE NILE, date of, 25
New readings in, 25
SONNET ON BLUE, new readings in, 25-6
SONNET TO A LADY SEEN FOR A FEW MOMENTS AT VAUXHALL,
date of, 26
SONNET TO SLEEP, holograph of, 35
SONNET TO MRS. REYNOLDS’s CAT, variations in, 44
SONNETS ON FAME, variations shown by holograph of, 34-5
Sonnets, other references to, 21, 22, 23, 25, 29
Sore throat, caught in Mull, 96
Keats fears to dance on account of, 125
Other references to, 112, 114, 117, 123
Southcote (Johanna), 127
Southey (Robert), 140
SPENSERIAN STANZAS ON CHARLES ARMITAGE BROWN, variations
in, 30
Speed (Mr. J. G.), 67, 76, 78 (mote), 81 (zote), 104, 123, 124 (no?e),
125, 128, 157, 158, 159 (o¢e), 161, 162, 163, 164 (noe),
166, 168 (ote), 171, 172, 173
STAFFA, cancelled passage of, 28-9
Stephens (Henry), 20, 78
Story, a dreadful, 165-6

‘

Tale, Keats proposes to write a, 100
Taylor (Jeremy), 132
200 INDEX.

Taylor (John), fresh letters to, 83, 88, 92, 103, 156, 175
Fresh passages of letters to, 90, 91
Requested to lend Keats £30, 103
Keats intends to stay with, 125
Referred to, 12, 28, 99, 142, 143, 149, 151, 168
Teignmouth, ISABELLA written at, 14
George and Thomas Keats staying at, 76-7
Fresh enquiries as to brooks at, 181
Terry, 56, 58
Thornton (—), 173
Tighe (Mrs.), Keats sees “nothing or weakness” in, 115
Tom CRIB’S MEMORIAL TO CONGRESS, “ nothing in it,” 135
Towers (Mr.), 124
Trimmer (Mr.), “an acquaintance of Peachey’s,” 107
“ Twang-dillo-dee, the amen to nonsense,” 173
Twiss (Horace), 113

“ Unfelt, unheard, unseen,” new reading for poem beginning, 21-2
2 2 ? gi bey

e
Valentine, “ Had’st thou liv’d in days of old” written for a, 4
“Vale of soul-making (the),” 153
Voltaire’s SIECLE DE LOUIS XIV, Keats reads, 152

Waldegrave (Miss), will Keats dance with her? 107
“ Staid and self-possessed as usual,” 125
Referred to, 97, 149, 158, 163
WAVERLEY contrasted with CALEB WILLIAMS, 118
Way (Mr.), a great Jew-converter, 128
Webb (Mrs.), 124
“Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,” new readings in poem
beginning, 22
Wells (Charles), Keats visits theatres with, 84, 86
Cruel hoax on Tom Keats, 144, 148
Referred to, 77, 78, 80
Wells (Mrs.), 82
Westminster, Keats thinks of living at, 144, 145
“When I have fears,” date of sonnet beginning, 22
New reading in, 23
“ Why did I laugh to-night ?”—new readings in sonnet beginning, 29
INDEX. 201

Will (Keats’s), 174-6
Williams (Mr. Dominie), 124
Winchester journal-letter, new passages in, 157-64
Winter (Miss), 139
Women, “inadequacy” of, 115
WOMEN, WINE AND SNUFF, early nonsense verses, 20
Woodhouse (Richard), the Keats Commonplace book of, 4, 5, 10,
14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, 25, 26, 28, 29, 44
Referred to, 67, 72, 92, 93, 95, 103, 107, 124, 149, 151, 175
Wordsworth (William), parodied by Keats, 42-3
Travestied by Reynolds, 48, 145
Keats to dine with him, 78
Keats dines with him and sees him frequently, 83
In a stiff collar, 78
At Haydon’s, 79
His egotism and vanity, 89
Announcement of his PETER BELL, 145
Referred to, 73, 85, 141, 150
World (the), “the vale of soul-making,” 153
Wylie (Charles), 96, 100, 104, 143, 158, 168, 170, 182
Wylie (Henry), 97, 98, 100, 125, 140, 143, 155, 158, 170, 182
Wylie (Georgiana Augusta), Valentine sent to, 4
Wylie (Mrs.), 95, 96, 100, 104, 107, 129, 144, 149, 155, 158, 168, 170,
182
Wylie (Mrs. Henry), 168

Yellow Dwarf (The), Reynolds’s Robin Hood sonnets in, 17
Young (Charles Mayne), 56, 57

THE END.

 

CHISWICK PRESS :—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE,
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
AND JOHN KEATS. WORKS

EDITED BY H BUXTON FORMAN

 

AND PUBLISHED BY REEVES AND

TURNER 196 STRAND LONDON
WORKS EDITED BY
Hl. BUXTON FORMAN.

MESSRS. REEVES & TURNER

HAVE NOW READY
A REISSUE OF THE COMPLETE LIBRARY EDITION

OF
THE WORKS OF JOHN KEATS,

EDITED BY H. BUXTON FORMAN,

With copious Notes and Appendices, and full Indexes of Subjects and First
Lines, 4 vols. 8vo, strongly and handsomely bound in buckram, price
£2 125. 6d.

The text of the poems published by Keats has been scrupu-
lously revised from the poet’s own editions; and these as well
as the posthumous poems have been collated as far as possible
with the Author’s manuscripts. Variations and numerous can-
celled passages are given in foot-notes; and much is added
from manuscript and other sources.

An important mass is now (1890) added to the letters; and
those re-edited from printed sources have been largely revised
from the originals.

Among the illustrations are five authentic portraits, by Severn,
Haydon, and Hilton, and a beautiful etching of Keats’s burial-
place from a drawing by Samuel Palmer. The book has been
printed in the best style at the Chiswick Press by Messrs.
Charles Whittingham & Co., and no pains have been spared to

render it in all respects complete, both as to material and as to
illustration and execution.

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS.

VOLUME I.—Fresh verses and new readings gathered since 1883 —
Porms published in 1817—ENDyYMION collated throughout with the
first draft, the final manuscript, and a corrected copy of the first
edition — Criticisms by Leigh Hunt, the Quarterly and Edinburgh

Reviews, &c.
4

VOLUME II. —Lamia, ISABELLA, THE Eve or ST. AGNES, and
other Poems (1820)—Posthumous Poems—OTHO THE GREAT—
Criticisms by Leigh Hunt—IsaBELLA from Boccaccio by John Payne
—The Pot of Basil Song, &c.

VOLUME III.—Letters found since 1883, and passages formerly sup-
pressed—Review of Reynolds’s PETER BELL—Notices of RETRIBUTION,
a Tragedy, and Don GIOVANNI, a Pantomime—Criticism of Edmund
Kean—Notes on Shakespeare and Milton—Miscellaneous Letters—
The ‘‘ Cockney School” attack on Keats—Reynolds’s Defence, &c.

VOLUME IV.— Miscellaneous Letters—-Letters to- Fanny Brawne—
Severn’s Account of Keats’s death—Aponais—Shelley and Byron
on Keats—Personal Recollections of Keats by Leigh Hunt, Charles
Cowden Clarke, Haydon, Charles Armitage Brown, Joseph Severn,
and George Keats—General Index, &c.

‘*That a critical edition may serve not only to satisfy a reader’s and a writer’s love for
order and for minute and precise detail, but also to awaken in both a warmer and more
sympathetic sense of the artistic aspects of the subject than would-have been possible with-
out it, is abundantly proved by the new edition of Keats, which is the occasion of the

resent paper. Mr. Buxton Forman indeed found himself the heir of a great opportunity.
Tn thecase both of Shelley and Keats he has been led across subjects of no mere antiquarian
importance, but of living interest to all who read and think, while at the same time
sufficiently removed from the present moment to be susceptible of a treatment at once
critical and exhaustive. In both cases there was room and demand for a comprehensive,
edition, embracing all that had gone before and adding to it whatever materials still
existed for a careful textual criticism. With regard to Keats, a certain number of fresh
letters and of scattered poems remained to be gathered up; the MS. material, of which
very little use had been made by Lord Houghton, was rich and accessible ; and we are
now sufficiently removed from Keats's death, and from the literary circle that surrounded
him, to make it very desirable to bring together, as Mr. Forman has done, .all the docu-
ments bearing upon the estimate of Keats, formed both by his personal friends and his
famous contemporaries. Such have been the grounds of the present edition, and it is not
too much to say that Mr. Forman’s industry has not only satisfied the wish for information
which belongs to the scientific side in us, but that it ought very much toquicken and stimu-
late in all lovers of Keats their sense of his marvellous poetic growth, and their perception
of some of the finest and most delicate qualities in his genius.” —Macmillan’s Magazine,
March 1884. au

‘* All lovers of English poetry and all who desire to know more fully the nature and
character of a great poet will welcome the handsome library edition of the writings of
Keats which Mr. Forman has just given to the world... . It is likely to remain the
standard edition, and to pass into libraries and private collections wherever the English
language is spoken or studied. . .-. The editor's essay on the portraits of Keats is of
great interest, and it is illustrated by sketches of the mask taken from Keats’s face in the
positions of portraits taken from the life by Haydon, Hilton, and Severn."—The Times,
12 December 1883. E

“That the editor has done his work with loving care and untiring labour will be
questioned by no one'who gives to these volumes the attention they deserve. And noone
with a heart and ear for lovely verse can think any toil too great to be bestowed upon a
poet whose rare genius has won for him a unique place in the literature of his country.
- . » For the extent of his knowledge, and for his careful annotations on the text, the
-highest praise is dueto Mr. Forman. The assiduity with which he has brought together
every fact calculated to illustrate the career of Keats, shows with how hearty a zest the
labour has been undertaken. We do not know that any needful explanation is lacking, or
any suggestive illustration omitted.”—Spectator.

“* Keats's letters to his sister . . . afford a charming picture of the poet, and were necessary
to modify the impression of Keats’s querulousness and injustice to his friends which the
Brawne correspondence undoubtedly created. Another attractive section of the volumes
consists of extracts from D, G, Rossetti’s letters, in which many of Keats’s poems are dis-
cussed. Whenever he poe of Keats Rossetti must be listened to with especial respect,
for no one understood eats’s poetry better than he. ... On the whole, though we dissent
from Mr. Forman’s views upon the limit and the range of an editor’s duties, we cannot
help being struck by the extraordinary exactitude of his mind, his industry, and his passion
for accuracy of detail. He has produced a variorum edition of Keats of quite remarkable
interest.” —~A thenaum,

“Mr, Ferman has been engaged for many years on the preparation of these volumes,
which are admirably edited. ... The name of the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti is
mentioned, as we think, too often, in consideration of the absence of reference to elder and
contemporary names, . . . The predominance of this one poet, and of some of his very feeble
imitators, as set against a total absence of reference to what other and greater writers,
5

down to Mr. Matthew Arnold, have said about Keats, is almost the only fault which we
have to bring, in this instance, to Mr. Forman’s charge. . . . Some of Mr. Forman's
appendices are very curious and interesting. He has shown a genuine spirit of research
in ransacking the periodical press of that time for passages which throw a collateral light
on the career of Keats.”—Saturday Review.

‘*It is complete, careful, conscientious, and replete with interest. The poet’s own cor-
rections of his own work in ‘‘ Endymion” and ‘The Eve of St. Agnes” are wonderfully
illustrative of his marvellously rapid growth in taste and power of expression, and the
study of them should bea valuable lesson for all who are disposed to underrate the power
of style."—Standard.

“The MS. collations made use of in ‘‘ Endymion” and “The Eve of St. Agnes” strike
us as specially interesting. With all its beauty there is no denying the perversity and
amateurishness of much of Keats’s first considerable poem. But as we follow Mr.
Forman’s extracts from the first draft, representing work rejected by Keats in favour of
the text as it now stands, we are able, in the working of the poet’s mind thus laid bare to
us, to watch the gradual emergence of that faculty of taste which, weak as it showed
itself in his earlier work in comparison to the strength and exuberance of his instincts for
sensuous beauty, went on peperally strengthening in Keats, asserted itself nobly in the
volume of 1820, and must have eventually raised him to a place among the great poets of
the world. Constantly, as one compares the earlier with the later ‘‘ Endymion,” one sees
extravagance simplified and garrulousness chastened into terseness. Six pretty ineffective
lines give place to one pregnant with grace and meaning, or an. image is refined and
improved upon till the exquisite fancy it embodies is as clear to the reader as to the inward.
vision of the poet. Nowhere is this process of delicate elaboration, resembling nothing so
much as the play of the sculptor’s hand as he disengages his thought from the encumber-
ing clay, more striking than in the composition of some of 'the richest stanzas of “ The
Eve of St. Agnes.” e would advise all who revel in that loveliest of poems to turn to
Mr. Buxton Forman's pages, and to follow therein, with all due gratitude to the industry
which has provided them with the opportunity, the gradual transformation of certain
vague and rich imaginations crossing the poet’s mind into the closely-woven, exquisite
whole so familiar to the devotees of English verse." Pall Mall Gazette, 12 January 1884.

‘*Sixty-two years have passed away since Keats died, and now, for the first time, we
are presented with a final edition of his text. . . . We may congratulate ourselves on our
good fortune in receiving it at this particular time, but much more, it seems to me, on its
excellence and on Mr. Forman’s ability. . . . In pure bibliography, then, Mr. Forman
is a passed master ; nay, more, he has actually invented a method of arranging editorial
material which is apparently the best known. His severest critics have never assailed his
general accuracy; and I must confess that his scrupulous examination of documents, his
taste in typography, his attention to the mint and anise and cummin of book-production,
are delightful to me, and that he ures me not a note or an appendix too many.”—
E. W. Goss, in The Academy, 22 December 1883.

 

Third edition, price 8s.
KEATS’S POETICAL WORKS, in Large Type without

Notes, one volume, crown 8vo. Strongly bound in buckram, sides gilt
from an original Design, and Frontispiece Etched by W. B. ScorT.
“ Tt will be to most people ie edition of Keats.” —Atheneum.

‘Cannot be other than the authoritative and accepted edition for those who seek to
possess the poems alone.”—Notes and Queries.

 

Now ready, second edition, price 6s.

LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS TO
FANNY BRAWNE,

With Introduction, Notes, and Appendix, including Fanny
Brawne’s estimate of Keats. Illustrated with SevErRn’s last
portrait of Keats, etched by W. B. Scott; silhouette of
Fanny BrAwNE; and fac-simile of a three-page letter, printed
6

upon actual paper of the period. In one volume, foolscap 8vo,
strongly bound in buckram.

“It is full of most important disclosures with regard to the hidden springs of Keats's
life and thought. It reveals to us in a new light, not only the man, but also the poet. ...
In a certain sense, the publication of these letters might even be called the fulfilment of
a duty.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

‘‘ Nothing in the literature of this century has been so much looked forward to and
desired as these love letters. . . . Mr. Forman has displayed in editing them a scrupulous
care and a tasteful delicacy that will do him great credit. He is a bibliographer of genius,
and on every obscure point he has patiently concentrated the light of investigation.”—
Academy.

‘That these letters are an essential part of Keats's biography, that they show at the

same time the close reciprocity of the poet’s life and the poet’s work, no competent judge
can deny.”—New Quarterly Magazine.

Rossetti , . . thought Mr. Forman’s work admirably done, and as for the letters
themselves, he believed they placed Keats indisputably among the highest masters of
English epistolary style."—ecollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. 172.

 

LIBRARY EDITION OF SHELLEY.

THE WHOLE WORKS OF PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
IN VERSE AND PROSE. Edited with Notes and Appendices by
H. Buxton Forman. Eight volumes, demy 8vo, half Roxburghe.
With copious Index of Subjects and Index of First Lines; Pedigree
and Shield of Arms; Portraits of Shelley; Etchings, by Arthur
Evershed, of Shelley’s Birthplace, Residences at Marlow and San
Terenzio, and Grave; a beautiful Etching, by W. B. Scott, from
Guido’s Cenci; and Fac-similes of MSS. and of a drawing by Shelley,
executed by George Tupper. Price £5.

The principle on which Mr. Forman prepared the text had not
been applied to any other edition of Shelley’s Works. The numerous
volumes published by Shelley during his lifetime are reprinted pre-
cisely as they stand, except where there are obvious printer’s errors,
or writer’s inadvertencies ; but, as these are often matters of opinion,
the Editor does not deviate in so much as a comma or a single letter
from the original, without indicating in a foot-note the precise change
made. Some of the most important of those works which first ap-
peared after Shelley’s death are given from manuscript sources, instead
of being reproduced from the incorrect editions formerly circulated ;
and for purposes of revision, as well as for variorum readings, manu-
scripts of works published in the poet’s lifetime, ds well as those of
posthumous works, have been consulted. The highly-important Leigh
Hunt manuscripts, the actual copy of Zao and Cythna on which
Shelley made the MS. changes converting the Poem into The Revolt
of Islam, Shelley’s own copy of Queen Mab, most copiously revised,
and other special sources of information, enabled the ‘Editor not
only to set the text right with absolute certainty in numerous instances,
but also to give to the reading public Poems by Shelley not formerly
known to Shelley students; and through the kindness of the late Sir
Percy Shelley and of Lady Shelley, the Editor has been able to add
several important pieces not before published.

All the copyright works are, by special arrangement, included.

‘Mr. Buxton Forman has collected with scrupulous and conscientious care, from
various sources, in his great classical edition of the poems and prose works of Shelley,

every detail that can throw light on the purity of the text and the circumstances
under which they were composed, . . . In our judgment Shelley’s prose composi-
7

tions are, in beauty of style and vigour of thought, only one degree less remarkable
than his poetry.”—Zdinburgh Review. e " a

“Co. the eee execution is all that the most fastidious could desire,
while it is symbolical of the critical care that has been bestowed by the most con-
scientious of editors.” —Timzes,

 

Also, to be had separately, a re-issue of Mr. Buxton Forman’s
Annotated Library Edition of

SHELLEY’S POETICAL WORKS, with Mrs. SHELLEY’s
Notes, an Index of First Lines, and a copious Subject Index. Four
vols., demy 8vo, half Roxburghe, £2 10s. With Portrait of Shelley ;
Etchings by Arthur Evershed of Shelley’s Birthplace, Residence at
Marlow, and Grave; Etching by W. B. Scott from Guido’s Cenci ;
and five Fac-similes of MSS. executed by George Tupper.

“The revision of the text has been carried out in the most thorough manner, and
every variety of reading noted.” ‘‘Mr. Forman has produced the most complete
ae authentic edition of Shelley which has till now been published.”—Saturday

eview. '

‘*We have here an edition of Shelley’s poems, which, in beauty, carefulness, and
fidelity to printed texts, is superior to any that have gone before it.” Atheneum.

“It is superbly got up....” ‘‘Not the least valuable part of Mr. Forman’s
ably executed work is the section in each volume devoted,to a philological criticism
of the obsolete and rare words used by Shelley in his poems.”—Votes and Queries.

‘ It is difficult to convey any idea of the immense labour that has been devoted to
the task of clearing up corruptions in the text.”—London Quarterly Review.

“We find in Mr. Forman’s various introductions and comments the most sagacious
and sympathetic criticism.”— World.

** The same spirit of affectionate reverence is shown-in Mr. Buxton Forman’s new
and elaborate edition of Shelley.” —Zzwzes.

“« This edition is, from its own point of view, an excellent one ; very handsomely
got up, not more costly than its size and quality require, and executed with a
conscientious laboriousness, a resolution to leave nothing chanced or undone, and .
a ‘ piety’ towards Shelley’s memory such as cannot be too earnestly praised.”—
Academy.

“«, . . a most valuable edition of Shelley. . . ."—Dazly News.

**. .. worthy great consideration for its intent and scope, worthy praise, so far,
for its conscientious performance.”—Dazly Telegraph.

“ Altogether we regard this sumptuous edition, with its artistic etchings and
careful portrait, as the most worthy monument yet raised to the fame of Shelley.”—
Civil Service Review.

“ Quite a dainty addition to one’s drawing-room books.” —Liverpool Mercury.

“ The history of this great eae [Laon and Cythna) has called forth a literature
of its own, a literature which Mr. Forman has summarized and illustrated in an
appendix which will be read with a by all the Shelley specialists... . Without
doubt the most adequate tribute to Shelley’s genius yet produced.” ‘‘ The reader .
will note Mr. Forman’s extraordinary zeal in hunting out minute data.”—Examiner.

‘© Of the special merits of the edition of the great poet before us we can speak
only in terms of the warmest admiration and praise. Mr. Buxton Forman has
done a great work, and done it worthily.”—Pubize Opinion.

“© By the aid of Mr, Forman’s edition we can understand as much of Shelley’s
method of workmanship as is ever likely to come under our ken. The splendidly
executed fac-similes show us his writing and his method of correction.” ‘“In_
appearance, in its quaint, fanciful, and highly artistic binding, in type, in paper, and
in all respects, the book is one of the handsomest ever issued from the press,”—
Sunday Times. ri ead

“ Surely never did editor do his work more thoroughly and conscientiously than
Mr. Forman, and, thanks to him and his publishers, we now have an edition of
the most melodious of England’s singers in every way worthy of him.”— Western
Morning News. ,

«|, the magnificent and truly monumental edition just edited by Mr. H. Buxton
Forman.”—Mirror. .

“©, . it will be regarded asa happy circumstance that Mr. Forman’s admirable
editorship has been so widely and speedily appreciated as to make the present re-
issue necessary.” —Court Circular.
8

Also, price 16s., Second Edition of

SHELLEY’S POETICAL WORKS, in Large Type without

Foot-notes, but containing the whole of Mrs. Shelley’s Notes, with
Index of First Lines and copious Subject Index. Two vols., crown
8vo. Strongly bound in buckram, sides gilt from a Design by the late
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI, and Frontispieces Etched by W. B.
ScoTT. ; ;

«« | ,. the best edition of the poet for general use that has yet been published . is
excellently suited to become the standard. . . .”"—Pall Mall Gazette.

 

THE SHELLEY LIBRARY; an Essay in Bibliography, by -

H. Buxton ForMAN. A complete bibliographical account of all the
works issued by Shelley, and of the various editions since published ;
together with particulars concerning Shelley Literature.

Now ready, Part I., Editiones Principes and Reproductions thereof,
price 3s. 6d.

EDITED FOR THE SHELLEY SOCIETY.

THE CENCI, from Shelley’s own editions, with Introduction

by ALFRED ForMAN‘and H. Buxton ForMan, Prologue by JOHN
TODHUNTER, Names of Actors, &c., and Portrait of Beatrice Cenci.
Cr. 8vo, boards, 25. 6d. i

THE MASK OF ANARCHY: Fac-simile of the Holograph

A

Manuscript, with Introduction by H. Buxton ForMAN, 4to, boards,
10s.

PROPOSAL FOR PUTTING REFORM TO THE
VOTE THROUGHOUT THE KINGDOM: Fac-simile of the
Holograph Manuscript, with Introduction by H. BuxTON FORMAN.
4to, boards, Ios.

ROSALIND AND HELEN, A MODERN ECLOGUE,

WITH OTHER POEMS: Type Fac-simile of Shelley’s edition,
with Introduction by H. BUXTON FORMAN. 8vo, boards, Ios.

London: Reeves & TURNER, 196, Strand.
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