tip-toe upon a little hill," a good deal of space is devoted to showing that classical myths are an outcome of eager sensitiveness to the lovely things of Nature: the tales of Psyche, Pan and Sirynx, Narcissus, are cited in confirmation-and finally Diana and Endymion, in the following lines :—

"Where had he been from whose warm head outflew
That sweetest of all songs, that ever new,

That aye-refreshing pure deliciousness
Coming ever to bless

The wanderer by moonlight? to him bringing
Shapes from the invisible world, unearthly singing
From out the middle air, from flowery nests,

And from the pillowy silkiness that rests

Full in the speculation of the stars.

Ah surely he had burst our mortal bars :

Into some wondrous region he had gone
To search for thee, divine Endymion.

He was a poet, sure a lover too,

Who stood on Latmus' top what time there blew

Soft breezes from the myrtle-vale below,

And brought-in faintness solemn, sweet, and slow

A hymn from Dian's temple, while upswelling
The incense went to her own starry dwelling.
But, though her face was clear as infants' eyes,
Though she stood smiling o'er the sacrifice,
The poet wept at her so piteous fate-
Wept that such beauty should be desolate;
So in fine wrath some golden sounds he won,
And gave meek Cynthia her Endymion.
Queen of the wide air, thou most lovely queen
Of all the brightness that mine eyes have seen,
As thou exceedest all things in thy shine,
So every tale does this sweet tale of thine.
Oh for three words of honey that I might
Tell but one wonder of thy bridal night!

Where distant ships do seem to show their keels
Phoebus awhile delayed his mighty wheels,
And turned to smile upon thy bashful eyes
Ere he his unseen pomp would solemnize.

*

Cynthia, I cannot tell the greater blisses

That followed thine and thy dear shepherd's kisses :
Was there a poet born?"

Readers often go at a skating-pace over passages of this kind, without very clearly realizing to themselves the gist of the whole matter. I will therefore put the thing into the most prosaic form, and say that what Keats substantially intimates here is as follows:-The inventor of the myth of Artemis and Endymion must have been a poet and lover, who, standing on the hill of Latmos, and hearing thence a sweet hymn wafted from the low-lying temple of Artemis, while the pure maiden-like moon was shining resplendently, felt a pang of pity for this loveless moon or Artemis, and invented for her a lover in the person of Endymion; and ever since then the myth. has lent additional beauty to the effects, beautiful as in themselves they are, of moonlight. Without tying down Keats too rigidly to this view of the genesis of the myth, I may nevertheless point out that he wholly ignores as participants both the spirit of religious devoutness, and the device of allegorizing natural phænomena: the inventor is simply a poet and lover, who thinks it a world of pities that such a sweet maiden as Artemis should not have a lover sooner or later. Invention prompted by warmth of feeling is thus the sole motive-power recognized. The final phrase "Was there a poet born?" may with

out violence be understood as implying, "Ought not the loves of Artemis and Endymion to beget their poet, and why should not I be that poet ?" At all events, Keats determined that he would be that poet; and, contemplating the original invention of the myth from the point of view which we have just analysed, he not unnaturally treated it from a like point of view. The tale of Diana and Endymion was not to be a monument of classic antiquity re-stated in the timid, formal spirit of a schoolexercise, but an invention of a poet and lover, who, acting under the spell of natural beauty, re-informs his theme with poetic fancy, amorous ardour, and Nature's profusion of object and of imagery. And in this Keats thought and surely he rightly thought-that he would be getting closer to the spirit of a Grecian myth than by any cut-and-dry process of tame repetition or pulseless decorum. He wanted the dell of wild flowers, and not the hortus siccus.

"Endymion" was actually begun in the spring of 1817, much about the same time when the volume "Poems" was published. The first draft was completed (as we have said) on the 28th of November 1817, and by the end of the winter which opened the year 1818 no more probably remained to be done to it. The MS. was subjected to much revision and excision, so that it cannot be alleged that Keats worked in a reckless temper, or without such self-criticism as he could at that date bring to bear. It would even appear, moreover, from the terms of a letter which he addressed to Mr. Taylor, on April 27, 1818, that he allowed that gentleman to make some volunteer corrections of his own. Haydon had spurred him on to

the ambitious attempt, which Hunt on the contrary deprecated. Shelley-so the story goes-agreed with Keats that each of them should write an epic within a space of six months. Shelley produced "The Revolt of Islam," Keats the "Endymion." Shelley proved to be the more rapid writer of the two; for his poem of 4815 lines was finished by the early autumn of 1817, while Keats's, numbering 4,050 lines, went on through the winter which opened 1818. A good deal of it had been done during Keats's sojourn with Mr. Bailey, in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. Afterwards, on 8th October 1817, he wrote to Bailey "I refused to visit Shelley, that I might have my own unfettered scope;" an expression which one might be inclined to understand as showing that Shelley, having now completed "The Revolt of Islam," had invited Keats to visit him at Marlow, and there to proceed with "Endymion," not without the advantage it may well be supposed, of Shelley's sympathizing but none the less stringent counsel. Bailey's account of the facts may be given here. "He wrote and I read-sometimes at the same table, sometimes at separate desks—

from breakfast till two or three o'clock. He sat down to his task, which was about fifty lines a day, with his paper before him, and wrote with as much regularity and apparently with as much ease as he wrote his letters. Indeed, he quite acted up to the principle he lays down, "That, if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves of a tree, it had better not come at all.' Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but not often, and he would make it up another day. But he never forced himself. When he had finished his writing for the day, he usually

read it over to me, and then read or wrote letters till we went out for a walk." The first book of the poem was delivered into the hands of the publisher, Mr. Taylor, in the middle of January. Haydon undertook to make a finished chalk-sketch of the author's head, to be prefixed to the volume; he drew outlines accordingly, but the volume, an octavo, appeared in April without any portrait. We all know the now proverbial first line in "Endymion,"

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."

This seems to have been an inspiration of long anterior date; for Mr. Stephens, the surgical fellow-student and fellow-lodger of Keats, says that in one twilight when they were together the youthful poet produced the line

"A thing of beauty is a constant joy; "

which, failing wholly to satisfy its author's ear, was immediately afterwards improved into its present form. Even before handing over any part of his MS. to the printer, Keats, at the "immortal dinner" which came off in Haydon's painting-room, on the 28th of December 1817, and at which Wordsworth, Lamb, and others, were present, had bespoken a strange and heroic fate for one copy of his book; for he made Mr. Ritchie, who was about to set forth on an African exploration, promise that he would carry the volume "to the great desert of Sahara, and fling it in the midst."

"Invention" was the quality which Keats most sought for in his "Endymion," as shown in his letter to Mr. Bailey, already cited. He said " It ['Endymion'] will