'Go, shed a tear upon my heather bloom And I shall turn a diamond in my tomb.' Stanza liv., last line. Leafits seems to be a word of Keats's coinage.

Stanza Ixiii. Mr. Forman in the Appendix to the second volume of his edition of Keats has a long note on the 'sad ditty' born of the story of Isabella, in which he shows that the air of the Basil Pot song, though not now current, was common enough in mediæval manuscripts and printed collections of popular poetry.

Page 123. TRANSLATION FROM A SONNET BY RONSARD.

The following is the original:
'Nature, ornant Cassandre, qui deuoit
De sa douceur forcer les plus rebelles,
La composa de cent beautez nouuelles,
Que dès mille ans en espargne elle anoit :-
De tous les biens qu' Amour au ciel connoit
Comme un trèsor cherement sous ses ailes
Elle enrichit les graces immortelles
De son bel œil qui les Dieux esmouuoit. -
Du Ciel à peine elle estoit descenduë
Quand ie la vey, quand mon asme esperduë
En dueint folle, et d'un si poignant trait,
Amour coula ses beautez en mes veines,
Qu'autres plaisirs ie ne sens que mes peines
Ny autre bien qu'adorer son portrait.

Page 123. SONNET: TO A LADY SEEN FOR A FEW MOMENTS AT VAUXHALL.

Every joy is spoilt by use;

Every pleasure, every joy

Not a mistress but doth cloy.

Where's the cheek that doth not fade,

Line 89. The following lines were dropped out, the two drafts agreeing again at line 90:

'And Jove grew languid. Mistress fair!
Thou shalt have that tressed hair
Adonis tangled all for spite;
And the mouth he would not kiss,
And the treasure he would miss ;
And the hand he would not press
And the warmth he would distress.
O the Ravishment - the Bliss!

Fancy has her where she is

Never fulsome, never new,

There she steps! and tell me who

Has a mistress so divine?

Be the palate ne'er so fine

She cannot sicken. Break the mesh."

Page 125. ODE: BARDS OF PASSION AND OF MIRTH.

In the copy made for George and Georgiana Keats are the following variations:

In line 8, Lord Houghton's copy reads lulling for dewy which is found in a manuscript of Sir Charles Dilke. In another draft of twelve lines by Keats which was copied in The Athenæum, October 26, 1872, the first three lines are the same as printed; the next nine are as follows:

'As wearisome as darkness is divine

O soothest sleep, if so it please thee close
My willing eyes in midst of this thine hymn
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws

Its sweet death dews o'er every pulse and limb

Then shut the hushed Casket of my soul

And turn the key round in the oiled wards And let it rest until the morn has stole,

Bright tressed from the grey east's shuddering bourn.'

Page 142. ODE TO PSYCHE.

The copy sent by Keats to his brother and sister varies from that printed in the 1820 volume in at least one important particular, and it is not quite clear why Keats, when he substituted roof for fan in line 10, did not mend the rhyme also. In line 14 the copy in the letter reads Syrian.

Page 146. LAMIA.

The manuscript copy, presumably the one given to the printer, is in existence, and Mr. Forman notes amongst others the following readings, changed apparently in the proof.

Line 231. In Tom Taylor's Autobiography of Haydon, vol. i. p. 354, is a passage which is a slight comment on these lines. He then, in a strain of humor beyond description, abused me for putting Newton's head into my picture. "A fellow," said he, "who believed nothing unless it was as clear as three sides of a triangle." And then he and Keats agreed he had destroyed all the beauty of the rainbow, by reducing it to the prismatic colors. It was impossible to resist him, and we all drank Newton's health and confusion to mathematics.'

That youth might suffer have I shielded thee
Up to this very hour, and shall I see
Thee married to a Serpent? Pray you mark,
Corinthians! A Serpent, plain and stark !'

At the close of the poem, Keats appended the passage from Burton which had given him his theme:

'Philostratos, in his fourth book, de Vita Apollonii, hath a memorable instance in this kind, which I may not omit, of one Menippus Lycius, a young man twenty-five years of age that, going betwixt Cenchreas and Corinth, met such a phantasm in the habit of a fair gentlewoman, which, taking him by the hand, carried him home to her house, in the suburbs of Corinth, and told him she was a Phoenician by birth, and if he would tarry with her, he should hear her sing and play, and drink such wine as never any drank, and no man should molest him; but she, being fair and lovely, would die with him, that was fair and lovely to behold. The young man, a philosopher, otherwise staid and discreet, able to moderate his passions, though not this of love, tarried with her awhile to his great content, and at last married her, to whose wedding, amongst other guests, came Apollonius; who, by some probable conjectures, found her out to be a serpent, a lamia; and that all her furniture was, like Tantalus' gold, described by Homer, no substance, but mere illusions. When she saw herself descried, she wept, and desired Apollonius to be silent, but he would not be moved, and thereupon she, plate, house, and all that was in it, vanished in an instant; many thousands took notice of this fact, for it was done in the midst of Greece.'Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part III., Sect. 2, Memb. I. Subs. I.

Page 199. HYPERION.

Since the introductory note to this poem was printed, a letter from Canon Ainger has appeared in The Athenæum (26 August, 1899), in which he states that he has seen a copy of the 1820 volume, given by Keats to a Hampstead friend and neighbor, and bearing on the title page 'with J. Keats's compliments.' He adds, 'Keats has with his own hand scored out, in strong ink lines, the publisher's preface. . . . At the head of this preface Keats has written, "I had no part in this; I was ill at the time." And after the concluding sentence about Endymion, which he has carefully bracketed off, he has written, "This is a lie!" This is interesting testimony, especially if Canon Ainger's opinion as to this being in Keats's handwriting is correct.

Page 232. THE LAST SONNET.

Thy thoughts, dear Keats, are like fresh gathered leaves,

Or white flowers pluck'd from some sweet lily bed; They set the heart a-breathing, and they shed The glow of meadows, mornings, and spring eves O'er the excited soul. Thy genius weaves

Songs that shall make the age be nature-led,
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 older woods among :
So shall thy Muse be ever in her May,
And thy luxuriant spirit ever young.'

4. Page 257. Aunt Dinah's counterpane.' The letter was crossed, after a fashion more common in days of heavy postage than now.

5. Page 259. Hazlitt had reviewed in The Examiner for May 4, 1817, Southey's Letter to William Smith Esq., M. P., and had been excessively severe.

7. Page 259. Does Shelley go on telling strange stories of the death of kings?' Gilfillan, in his Gallery of Literary Portraits, tells the story of Shelley amusing himself and Hunt, when they were travelling in a stage coach, and startling an old lady travelling with them, by suddenly crying out to Hunt, For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of kings.' King Richard II., iii. 2. 8. Page 261. 'I long to see Wordsworth's as well as to have mine in.' Haydon was painting his Christ's Entry into Jerusalem, and was introducing likenesses of his friends into the picture.

9. Page 262. Bertrand,' i. e., General Bertrand, who was one of Bonaparte's petty court at St. Helena.

10. Page 263. Jane Reynolds afterward married Thomas Hood. The Reynolds family lived in Little Britain, so quaintly sketched by Washington Irving.

11. Page 263. 'Hampton,' i. e., Little Hampton, a quiet watering place at the mouth of the Arun, on the south coast of Sussex, a little more than halfway between London and Portsmouth.

12. Page 265. 'Miss Taylor's essays in Rhyme.' Fanny Keats was fourteen years old at this time, and the Norwich ladies, Ann and Jane Taylor, were in the height of their popularity with young readers.

13. Page 266. 'Tell Dilke.' The Dilkes were friends living in Hampstead whom Reynolds had introduced to Keats. Charles Wentworth Dilke was at the time a clerk in the Navy Pay-Office, and a disciple of Godwin and warm friend of Hunt. Later he became a man of great consequence in the literary world as editor and chief owner of The Atheneum. The W. D. mentioned below is William Dilke, a younger brother, who had served in the Commissariat department. He was at this time about forty-two years old.

14. Page 268. 'Northern Poet.' See Wordsworth's Personal Talk, beginning

'I am not one who much or oft delight
To season my fireside with personal talk.'

15. Page 269. Hazlitt had just collected and published his The Round Table, which he first printed in The Examiner.

16. Page 271. You and Gleig.' Mr. Colvin makes this note: 'G. R. Gleig, son of the Bishop of Stirling: born 1796, died 1888: served

18. Page 274. The little Song.' See headnote to 'Lines,' p. 37. The allusion just below in Adam's waking is to Paradise Lost, Book VIII., lines 478–484.

19. Page 275. 'Christie.' Jonathan H. Christie, a college friend of Lockhart, who took up Lockhart's quarrel with John Scott, fought the latter in a duel and killed him.

20. Page 277. 'Wells.' Charles J. Wells, a schoolmate of Tom Keats. See the Sonnet, p. 13, To a Friend who sent me some Roses.' The family of Wells lived in Featherstone Buildings, from which Letter 24 was written. 21. Page 277. 'Shelley's poem.' Laon and Cynthia, renamed The Revolt of Islam.

22. Page 277. The tragedy was Retribution, or the Chieftain's Daughter; the pantomime was Don Giovanni. The articles, as the postscript to this letter shows, did appear in The Champion.

23. Page 278. 'We played a concert.' A burlesque affair. Keats, his brothers and friends, were wont to entertain themselves with imitating musical instruments, vocally.

24. Page 278. Haydon's Autobiography, I. 384, gives a more detailed account of this supper party. Ritchie, here referred to, Mr. Colvin tells us, was Joseph Ritchie, who started on a Government mission to Fezzan in September, 1818, and died at Morzouk the following November. An account of the expedition was published by his travelling companion, Captain G. F. Lyon, R. N.' Ritchie wrote a poetical Farewell to England, which was printed by A. A. Watts in his Poetical Album.

25. Page 278. 'Medal of the Princess,' i. e., Princess Charlotte, who died November 6, 1817. 26. Page 278. 'Bob Harris,' the manager of Covent Garden Theatre.

27. Page 279. 'Miss Kent's.' Mr. Forman notes that the article was not by Miss Bessy Kent, Hunt's sister-in-law, but by Shelley, who used the initials E. K. for 'Elfin Knight.'

28. Page 279. Mr. Abbey.' Mr. Richard Abbey, a tea-merchant, one of the guardians of the Keats family. See above, p. xv.

29. Page 283. See a lively refutation of this conjecture of Hunt's, and a general statement of the relations of the 'Cockney school' with the Edinburgh critics in Lang's The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart, I. 150-155.