Part 2

, II. iv.

[54] Replying to an ecstatic note of Haydon's about a seal with a true lover's knot and the initials W. S., lately found in a field at Stratford-on-Avon.

[55] _Dentatus_ was the subject of Haydon's new picture.

[56] The famous picture now belonging to Lady Wantage, and exhibited at Burlington House in 1888. Whether Keats ever saw the original is doubtful (it was not shown at the British Institution in his time), but he must have been familiar with the subject as engraved by Vivares and Woollett, and its suggestive power worked in his mind until it yielded at last the distilled poetic essence of the "magic casement" passage in the _Ode to a Nightingale_. It is interesting to note the theme of the Grecian Urn ode coming in also amidst the "unconnected subject and careless verse" of this rhymed epistle.

[57] _Sic_: probably, as suggested by Mr. Forman, for "I hope what you achieve is not lost upon me."

[58] The English rebels against tradition in poetry and art at this time took much the same view of the French dramatists of the _grand siecle_ as was taken by the _romantiques_ of their own nation a few years later; and Haydon had written to Keats in his last letter, "When I die I'll have Shakspeare placed on my heart, with Homer in my right hand and Ariosto in the other, Dante at my head, Tasso at my feet, and Corneille under my ----"

[59] "He hath fought with a Warrener":--Simple in _Merry Wives_, I. iv.

[60] The first draught of the proposed preface to _Endymion_.

[61] Changed in the printed version to--"His image in the dusk she seemed to see."

[62] The quotation is from Slender in _Merry Wives of Windsor_, I. i.

[63] Meaning the atmosphere of the little Bentleys in Well Walk.

[64] "I will make an end of my dinner; there's pippins and cheese to come":--Sir Hugh Evans in _Merry Wives of Windsor_, I. ii.

[65] The crossing of the letter, begun at the words "Have you not," here _dips_ into the original writing.

[66] The _Oxford Herald_ for June 6, 1818.

[67] Referring probably to the unfortunate second marriage made by their mother.

[68] A leaf with the name and "from the Author," notes Woodhouse.

[69] _Compare the Ode to Psyche_:--

"Far, far around shall those dark-crested trees Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep."

[70] Wordsworth's lines "To Joanna" seem to have been special favourites with Keats.

[71] Keats here repeats for his brother the Meg Merrilies piece contained in the preceding letter to Fanny.

[72] Reading doubtful.

[73] Here follows a sketch.

[74] The Swan and Two Necks, Lad Lane, London, seems to have been the coach office for Liverpool and the North-West; compare Lamb's _Letters_ (ed. Ainger), vol. i. p. 241.

[75] By Long Island Keats means, not of course the great chain of the Outer Hebrides so styled, but the little island of Luing, east of Scarba Sound. His account of the place from which he is writing, and its distance from Oban as specified in the paragraph added there next day, seem to identify it certainly as Kilmelfort.

[76] Cary's translation.

[77] No place so named appears on any map: but at the foot of the Cruach-Doire-nan-Cuilean, off the road, is a house named Derrynaculan, and a few miles farther on, at the head of Loch Seridain, an ancient fortified site or _Dun_, with an inn on the road near by.

[78] For Loch na Keal.

[79] The six lines from "place" to "dance" were judiciously omitted by Keats in copying these verses later.

[80] Miss Charlotte Cox, an East-Indian cousin of the Reynoldses--the "Charmian" described more fully in Letter LXXIII.

[81] Referring to these words in John Scott's letter in his defence, _Morning Chronicle_, October 3, 1818:--"That there are also many, very many passages indicating both haste and carelessness I will not deny; nay, I will go further, and assert that a real friend of the author would have dissuaded him from immediate publication."

[82] Miss Charlotte Cox; see above, Letter LXX.

[83] This, notes Woodhouse, is in reply to a letter of protest he had written Keats concerning "what had fallen from him, about six weeks back, when we dined together at Mr. Hessey's, respecting his continuing to write; which he seemed very doubtful of."

[84] On the death of his brother Tom (which took place December 1, a few hours after the last letter was written) Brown urged Keats to leave the lodgings where the brothers had lived together, and come and live with him at Wentworth Place--a block of two semi-detached houses in a large garden at the bottom of John Street, of which Dilke occupied the larger and Brown the smaller: see _Keats_ (Men of Letters Series), p. 128. Keats complied; and henceforth his letters dated Hampstead must be understood as written not from Well Walk, but from Wentworth Place.

[85] A paper of the largest folio size, used by Keats in this letter only, and containing some eight hundred words a page of his writing.

[86] This is Keats's first mention of Fanny Brawne. His sense on first acquaintance of her power to charm and tease him must be understood, in spite of his reticence on the subject, as having grown quickly into the absorbing passion which tormented the remainder of his days.

[87] Of Bedhampton Castle: a connection of the Dilkes and special friend of Brown.

[88] _I.e._ on George Keats's mother-in-law, Mrs. Wylie.

[89] The tassels were a gift from his sister-in-law.

[90] The sheet which Keats accidentally left out in making up his packet in the spring, and which he forwarded with this supplement from Winchester the following September, seems to have begun with the words, "On Monday we had to dinner," etc. (p. 231), and to have ended with the words, "but as I am" (p. 235, line 1): at least this portion of the letter is missing in the autograph now before me. I supply it from Jeffrey's transcript.

[91] To about this date must belong the posthumously printed _Ode on Indolence_, which describes the same mood with nearly the same imagery. Possibly the "black eye" mentioned by Keats in his footnote, together with the reflections on street-fighting later on, may help us to fix the date of his famous fight with the butcher boy.

[92] Compare the repetition of the same thought and phrase in the ode _To a Nightingale_ written two months later.

[93] Slightly misquoted from _Macbeth_ in the banquet scene.

[94] By mistake for the 19th of March.

[95] For "put together"?

[96] Brown's younger brothers: see below, p. 245.

[97]

"Sometime am I All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues Do hiss me into madness."

Caliban in _Tempest_, II. ii.

[98] This old word for a snack between meals is used by Marlowe and Ben Jonson, and I believe still survives at some of the public schools.

[99] This notice of Reynolds's parody was printed, with some revision, in the _Examiner_ for April 26, 1819.

[100] There is no other autograph copy of this famous poem except the draft here given. It contains several erasures and corrections. In verse 3 Keats had written first, for "a lily" and "a fading rose," "death's lily" and "death's fading rose": in verse 4, for "Meads," "Wilds": in verse 7, for "manna dew," "honey dew": in verse 8, for "and sigh'd full sore," "and there she sigh'd"; in verse 11, for "gaped wide," "wide agape": and in verse 12, for "sojourn," "wither."

[101] _Sic_: obviously for "run" or "go."

[102] In all probability the _Ode to a Nightingale_, published in the July number of the _Annals of the Fine Arts_, of which James Elmes was editor.

[103] This and the next interpolation are Brown's.

[104] So copied by Woodhouse: query "battle-axe"?

[105] Keats's quotation from his first draft of Lamia continued, says Woodhouse, for thirty lines more: but as the text varied much from that subsequently printed, and as Woodhouse's notes of these variations are lost, I can only give thus much, from an autograph first draft of the passage in the possession of Lord Houghton.

[106] Keats here copies, with slight changes and abridgments, his letter to Tom of July 23, 1818 (see above, p. 147), ending with the lines written after visiting Staffa: as to which he adds, "I find I must keep memorandums of the verses I send you, for I do not remember whether I have sent the following lines upon Staffa. I hope not; 'twould be a horrid bore to you, especially after reading this dull specimen of description. For myself I hate descriptions. I would not send it if it were not mine."

[107] The beautiful _Ode to Autumn_, the draft of which Keats had copied in a letter (unluckily not preserved) written earlier in the same day to Woodhouse.

[108] Sir George Beaumonts and Lord Mulgraves: compare Haydon's _Life_ and _Correspondence_.

[109] In the interval between the last letter and this, Keats had tried the experiment of living alone in Westminster lodgings, and failed. After a visit to his beloved at Hampstead, he could keep none of his wise resolutions, but wrote to her, "I can think of nothing else ... I cannot exist without you ... you have absorb'd me ... I shall be able to do nothing--I should like to cast the die for Love or Death--I have no patience with anything else" ... and at the end of a week he had gone back to live next door to her with Brown at Wentworth Place. Here he quickly fell into that state of feverish despondency and recklessness to which his friends, especially Brown, have borne witness, and the signs of which are perceptible in his letters of the time, and still more in his verse, viz. the remodelled _Hyperion_ and the _Cap and Bells_: see _Keats_ (Men of Letters Series), pp. 180-190.

[110] Referring to the fairy poem of _The Cap and Bells_, the writing of which, says Brown, was Keats's morning occupation during these weeks.

[111] Spenser's Cave of Despair was the subject of the picture (already referred to in Letter CXXIV.) with which Severn won the Royal Academy premium, awarded December 10 of this year.

[112] George Keats had come over for a hurried visit to England on business.

[113] Hemorrhage from the lungs; in which Keats recognised his death-warrant, and after which the remainder of his life was but that of a doomed invalid. The particulars of the attack, as related by Charles Brown, are given by Lord Houghton, and in _Keats_ (Men of Letters Series), p. 193.

[114] Brown having let his house (Wentworth Place) when he started for a fresh Scotch tour on May 7, Keats moved to lodgings at the above address in order to be near Leigh Hunt, who was then living in Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town.

[115] The _Cap and Bells_ was to have appeared under this pseudonym. By "begin" Keats means begin again (compare above, CXXXVIII.): he did not, however, do so, and the eighty-eight stanzas of the poem which are left all belong to the previous year (end of October--beginning of December 1819).

[116] The volume containing _Lamia_, _Isabella_, _The Eve of St. Agnes_, _Hyperion_, and the _Odes_.

[117] After the attack last mentioned, Keats went to be taken care of in Hunt's house, and stayed there till August 12.

[118] Chapman's _Homer_.

[119] The _Maria Crowther_ had in fact sailed from London September 18: contrary winds holding her in the Channel, Keats had landed at Portsmouth for a night's visit to the Snooks of Bedhampton.

[120] On the 10th of December following came a renewal of fever and hemorrhage, extinguishing the last hope of recovery: and after eleven more weeks of suffering, only alleviated by the devoted care of Severn, the poet died in his friend's arms on the 23d of February 1821.