STAFFA.

NOT Aladdin magian

Ever such a work began;

Not the wizard of the Dee
Ever such a dream could see;
Not St. John, in Patmos' Isle,
In the passion of his toil,
When he saw the churches seven,
Golden-aisl'd, built up in heaven,
Gaz'd at such rugged wonder,
As I stood its roofing under.
Lo! I saw one sleeping there,
On the marble cold and bare;
While the surges wash'd his feet,
And his garments white did beat
Drench'd about the sombre rocks;
On his neck his well-grown locks,
Lifted dry above the main,
Were upon the curl again.

"What is this? and what art thou?"
Whisper'd I, and touch'd his brow;

What art thou? and what is this?"
Whisper'd I, and strove to kiss

5

10

15

20

20

After a detention of a few hours at Inverary owing to Brown's suffering from sore feet, the travellers started again on the 19th of January, walked along miles by the side of Loch Awe' -southward, I suppose, for they next paused "between Loch Craignish and the sea just opposite Long Island," where Keats gives a very minute account to Tom of the locale. They then pushed on to Oban, " 15 miles in a soaking rain" due north again. At Oban Keats finished the unpublished letter to Tom containing The Gadfly and the Stranger sonnet, and posted it, announcing that the travellers had given up the idea of Mull and Staffa on account of the expense. This was probably on the 22nd of July. On the 23rd he begins a fresh letter (Life, Letters &c.) stating that just after he had posted the other the guide to Mull came in and made a bargain with them. This latter letter is dated the 23rd of July, "Dunancullen" in the Life: "Dimancullen" is the name given in the same connexion in the New York World, where some Keats documents appeared; but probably the place indicated is Derrynaculen, which is at a situation on the walk through the southern part of the Isle of Mull corresponding with Keats's narrative. This narrative seems to show that on the 23rd of July they crossed from Oban to Kerrera by one ferry and from Kerrera to Mull by another, and walked across the south of the Island to the western extremity to cross to Iona by boat. By the 26th, Keats resumed his letter to Tom at Oban, and narrated that the thirty-seven miles of walking had been very miserable, and that he and Brown had taken a boat at a bargain to carry them from Iona to Staffa, and land them finally at the head of Loch Nakeal, whence they could return to Oban by a better route. He vividly describes Staffa, including Fingal's Cave, breaks into verse with the lines given above, and resumes prose with "I am

The spirit's hand, to wake his eyes;

Up he started in a trice:

"I am Lycidas," said he,

66

Fam'd in funeral minstrelsy!
This was architectur'd thus

By the great Oceanus ! —
Here his mighty waters play
Hollow organs all the day;
Here, by turns, his dolphins all,
Finny palmers, great and small,
Come to pay devotion due,

Each a mouth of pearls must strew!

Many a mortal of these days,

Dares to pass our sacred ways;
Dares to touch, audaciously,
This cathedral of the sea!
I have been the pontiff-priest,
Where the waters never rest,
Where a fledgy sea-bird choir
Soars for ever! Holy fire
I have hid from mortal man;
Proteus is my Sacristan!
But the dulled eye of mortal

25

330

35

40

45

Hath pass'd beyond the rocky portal;

So for ever will I leave

Such a taint, and soon unweave

All the magic of the place."

So saying, with a Spirit's glance
He dived!

50

sorry I am so indolent as to write such stuff as this." Probably the poem should be dated the 26th of July, 1818. In the Life, Letters &c., where it first appeared, is no indication of a hiatus to account for the lack of rhyme at the close. Mr. Colvin found the explanation in a commonplace book into which Woodhouse transcribed the chief part of Keats's poems remaining unpublished in 1819. In that book, Staffa 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 :--
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.

The holograph letter, happily extant, contains the six doggerel lines; but in line 45 the epithet is stupid, not dulled. The circumstances do not warrant the restoration of the doggerel lines to the text.

SONNET.

WRITTEN UPON THE TOP OF BEN NEVIS.

R

OEAD me a lesson, Muse, and speak it loud
Upon the top of Nevis, blind in mist!

I look into the chasms, and a shroud
Vapourous doth hide them, — just so much I wist
Mankind do know of hell; I look o'erhead,

And there is sullen mist, even so much
Mankind can tell of heaven; mist is spread
Before the earth, beneath me, even such,
Even so vague is man's sight of himself!
Here are the craggy stones beneath my feet,
Thus much I know that, a poor witless elf,
I tread on them, - that all my eye doth meet
Is mist and crag, not only on this height,

But in the world of thought and mental might!

At Oban, apparently on the 26th of July, the decision was taken to rest "a day or two" before pushing on to Fort William and Inverness. I find no precise record of the date of the ascent of Ben Nevis; but it was probably about the 1st of August 1818. Lord Houghton says in the Life, Letters &c., where this sonnet first appeared, "From Fort William Keats mounted Ben Nevis. When on the summit a cloud enveloped him, and sitting on the stones, as it slowly wafted away, showing a tremendous precipice into the valley below, he wrote these lines."

1

The late Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote to me of this sonnet as "perhaps the most thoughtful of Keats, and greatly superior in execution to the draft on Ailsa Crag." It was certainly by no means an unworthy finish to the tour, though I must confess to finding a little want of spontaneity - -not to be wondered at when we consider that Keats, though writing so bravely to his friends, had undertaken a task far beyond his physical strength, and probably one which laid the foundations of his mortal illness. He speaks to Tom lightly enough of "a slight sore throat;" but in a letter which Brown wrote from Inverness on the 7th of August, he says "Mr. Keats will leave me, and I am full of sorrow about it; . . . a violent cold and an ulcerated throat make it a matter of prudence that he should go to London in the Packet: he has been unwell for some time, and the Physician here is of opinion he will not recover if he journeys on foot thro' all weathers and under so many privations." So Brown went on to walk another 1200 miles alone, and Keats having accomplished 600 and odd, "went on board the smack from Cromarty," as he says in a hitherto unpublished letter to his sister dated "Hampstead, August 18th * and "after a nine days passage . . . landed at London Bridge" on the 17th of August 1818.

...

These lines occur in a letter to George Keats dated the 29th of October 1818, first given by Lord Houghton in the Life, Letters &c., and appear to belong to that date. They follow immediately upon this passage:

"If I had a prayer to make for any great good, next to Tom's recovery, it should be that one of your children should be the first American poet. I have a great mind to make a prophecy; and they say that prophecies work out their own fulfilment."

JATURE withheld Cassandra in the skies,

NA

For more adornment, a full thousand years;
She took their cream of Beauty's fairest dyes,
And shap'd and tinted her above all Peers:
Meanwhile Love kept her dearly with his wings,
And underneath their shadow fill'd her eyes

(42-3) This couplet recalls curiously one in the Daisy's Song in Extracts from an Opera, page 398 of this volume.

* I presume this translation was made about September 1818. It was first given by Lord Houghton in the Life, Letters &c. (1848) in a letter to Reynolds, undated, but belonging to that time. The sonnet follows the words "Here is a free translation of a Sonnet of Ronsard, which I think will please you. I have the loan of his works they have great beauties." Lord Houghton supplied the couplet thus:

So that her image in my soul upgrew,

The only thing adorable and true.

In the copy of Shakespeare's Poetical Works given to Keats by Reynolds, and containing the manuscript of Keats's last sonnet, there is also a manuscript of these three quatrains, wanting, like the version adopted by Lord Houghton, the last two lines. The readings of this manuscript are generally inferior to those of the other