(8-9) In Lord Houghton's version

She took me to her elfin grot,

And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore,

And there I shut her wild wild eyes

With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep,...

And in line 4 of stanzas 9 and 11, we have hill's side for hill side. The kisses four perhaps struck Keats, upon review, as a little quaint; and the other changes are an organic consequence of that made here.

(10) Lord Houghton reads They for Who in line 3.

(11) The reading gloam for gloom, which occurs in the Literary Remains, is so characteristic that there is some temptation to retain it against the evidence of The

12.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,

Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake,
And no birds sing.

SONNET.*

WRITTEN ON A BLANK PAGE IN SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, FACING “A LOVER'S COMPLAINT."

RIGHT star, would I were stedfast as thou art

BRIGH

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —

Indicator in favour of its rejection by Keats; -for Hunt may have made that small change. There is a graphic value in the strained use of gloam for gloaming which counterbalances its grammatical laxity; and it certainly exceeds the more ordinary word gloom in poetic intensity.

*Lord Houghton records that, after Keats had embarked for Italy he "landed once more in England, on the Dorsetshire coast, after a weary fortnight spent in beating about the Channel; the bright beauty of the day and the scene revived the poet's drooping heart, and the inspiration remained on him for some time even after his return to the ship. It was then that he composed that sonnet of solemn tenderness, 'Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art,' &c.

and wrote it out in a copy of Shakespeare's Poems he had given to Severn a few days before. I know of nothing written afterwards."

The copy of Shakespeare's Poetical Works had been given to Keats by John Hamilton Reynolds, and is now in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke. It is a royal 8vo volume" 'printed for Thomas Wilson, No. 10, London-House-yard, St. Paul's," in 1806; and this sonnet, of which a fac-simile is here given, is written upon the verso of the fly-title to A Lover's Complaint. It seems fair to assume that the reason of its being so high up on the page is that it thus faces a space of equal size containing no words except the boldly printed heading of Shakespeare's poem, A Lover's Complaint, as if in that mournful moment Keats desired to appropriate to his last poetic utterance a style and title already immortal. Lord Houghton gives a variant of the last line

Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.

As there is no trace of this in the Shakespeare, there must have been another manuscript-perhaps a pencilled draft - and it is to be presumed that the words fall

No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever- or else swoon to death.

and swell, in line 11 of Lord Houghton's text occurred in that, swell and fall, the reading of the Shakespeare, being in that case an error of transcription on Keats's part. The date of the poem is about the end of September or beginning of October 1820. It was published in February 1846, with a letter from Severn, in The Union Magazine.

OTHO THE GREAT:

A TRAGEDY, IN FIVE ACTS.

[Keats and Brown went to the Isle of Wight for a summer sojourn in 1819; and during the months of July and August the following tragedy was written at intervals under very peculiar conditions. They are thus described by Brown in a note given by Lord Houghton in the Aldine edition of 1876:-" At Shanklin he undertook a difficult task; I engaged to furnish him with the title, characters, and dramatic conduct of a tragedy, and he was to enwrap it in poetry. The progress of this work was curious, for while I sat opposite to him, he caught my description of each scene entire, with the characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with it. Thus he went on, scene after scene, never knowing nor inquiring into the scene which was to follow, until four acts were completed. It was then he required to know at once all the events that were to occupy the fifth act; I explained them to him, but, after a patient hearing and some thought, he insisted that many incidents in it were too humorous, or, as he termed them, too melodramatic. He wrote the fifth act in accordance with his own views, and so contented was I with his poetry that at the time, and for a long time after, I thought he was in the right." There are numerous references to this undertaking in Keats's letters; but one in particular should be quoted here. It is in a letter to Mr. Dilke dated, Shanklin, August 2, 1819," and is as follows: — "Brown and I are pretty well harnessed again to our dog-cart. I mean the tragedy, which goes on sinkingly. We are thinking of introducing an elephant, but have not historical reference within reach to determine as to Otho's menagerie. When Brown first mentioned this I took it for a joke; however, he brings such plausible reasons, and discourses so eloquently on the dramatic effect, that I am giving it a serious consideration." In The Papers of a Critic (1875), Volume I, page 9, Sir Charles Dilke gives the following extract from a letter dated August 12 1819, from Brown, in the Isle of Wight, to Mr. Dilke: Keats is very industrious, but I swear by the prompter's whistle, and by the bangs of stage-doors, he is obstinately monstrous. What think you of Otho's threatening cold pig to the newly-married

46

couple? He says the Emperor must have a spice of drollery. His introduction of Grimm's adventure, lying three days on his back for love, though it spoils the unity of time, is not out of the way for the character of Ludolf, so I have consented to it; but I cannot endure his fancy of making the princess blow up her hairdresser, for smearing her cheek with pomatum and spoiling her rouge. It may be natural, as he observes, but so might many things. However, such as it is, it has advanced to nearly the end of the fourth act." The late Joseph Severn possessed an autograph manuscript of this play, from which he was in the habit of giving away pieces as specimens of Keats's writing. After his death there were still many leaves entire a small portion of Act I, the greater part of scene 11, Act IV, and most of Act V. I have collated these portions with the printed text, adopted some readings, and noted others, as will be seen. The exact order in which this tragedy and the two fragments of King Stephen and The Cap and Bells should be arranged in regard to the latest of Keats's other posthumous poems cannot, I imagine, be determined. Having regard to this circumstance and the entire difference of form and matter from what is characteristic of Keats, I have thought it well to place these three essays last, rather than disturb the sequence of those poems which are more representative, though of course the sonnet written in Shakespeare's Poems, at all events, was later than either of these three tentative pieces. — H. B. F.]