Lines 760, 761.

These tenderest and by the breath- the love

The passion-nectar-Heaven!-'Jove above! Line 800.

Does Pallas self not love? she must-she must!

Lines 849, 850.

But after the strange voice is on the wane And 't is but guess'd from the departing sound.

Mr. Forman makes a very plausible surmise that Keats had a half purpose to go on with a fine description of this voice and he prints the verses that follow. They are not in the draft, nor in any of the annotated copies to which he refers, but appear in Leigh Hunt's The Indicator for 19 January, 1820. They are well worth preserving, since if they are not by Keats they must surely have been penned by some one in Keats's and Hunt's circle who had an extraor dinary knack at imitation of Keats.

Oh! what a voice is silent. It was soft
As mountain-echoes, when the winds aloft
(The gentle winds of summer) meet in caves;
Or when in sheltered places the white waves
Are 'waken'd into music, as the breeze
Dimples and stems the current or as trees
Shaking their green locks in the days of June:
Or Delphic girls when to the maiden moon
They sang harmonious pray'rs or sounds that come
(However near) like a faint distant hum

Out of the grass, from which mysterious birth
We guess the busy secrets of the earth.
-Like the low voice of Syrinx, when she ran
Into the forest from Arcadian Pan;
Or sad Enone's, when she pined away
For Paris, or (and yet 't was not so gay)
As Helen's whisper when she came to Troy,
Half sham'd to wander with that blooming boy.
Like air-touch'd harps in flowery casements hung;
Like unto lovers' ears the wild woods sung
In garden bowers at twilight; like the sound
Of Zephyr when he takes his nightly round
In May, to see the roses all asleep :

Or like the dim strain which along the deep
The sea-maid utters to the sailors' ear,
Telling of tempests, or of dangers near.
Like Desdemona, who (when fear was strong
Upon her soul) chaunted the willow song,
Swan-like before she perish'd or the tone
Of flutes upon the waters heard alone:
Like words that come upon the memory,
Spoken by friends departed; or the sigh
A gentle girl breathes when she tries to hide
The love her eyes betray to all beside.'

Line 880.

And shells outswelling their faint tinged curls.

BOOK III. 'Keats said with much simplicity,' reports Woodhouse, "It will be easily seen what I think of the present ministers, by the beginning of the third Book." Keats may have had Milton and Lycidas in mind when he thus covertly made a poem serve as a scourge. Lines 31, 32.

In the several vastnesses of air and fire:
And silent as a corpse upon a pyre.

Lines 41. Keats was wont to record the date when he finished a book, but he wrote against this line, Oxford, Septr. 5, [1817] as if to register his oath and connect the opening of the book with the immediate time.

Yes, yes! and thou dost love her well- I'U pull.

Page 110. ISABELLA, OR THE POT OF BASIL. Stanza xxx., line 5. A manuscript variation is:

'What might have been too plainly did she see,' Stanza XXXV., lines 4-7, another reading: 'Had marr'd his glossy hair, that once could shoot Bright gold into the Sun, and stamp'd his doom Upon his soiled lips, and took the mellow Lute From his deep voice, and down past his loamed ears.' Stanza xxxviii., the last two lines in the manuscript read:

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

Stanza lxiii. 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 260. A line was added to this,'Thou to Elysium gone, here for the vultures L' Line 378. A royal-squared lofty portal door. PART II., line 45. Two lines were here added: :

'Too fond was I believing, fancy fed

In high deliriums, and blossoms never shed!' Lines 82-84.

Became herself a flame - 't was worth an age Of minor joys to revel in such rage.

She was persuaded, and she fixt the hour When he should make a Bride of his fair Para

mour.

After the hottest day comes languidest
The colour'd Eve, half-hidden in the west;
So they both look'd, so spake, if breathed
sound,

That almost silence is, hath ever found
Compare with nature's quiet. Which lov'd

most,

Which had the weakest, strongest heart so lost,
So ruin'd, wreck'd, destroy'd for certes they
Scarcely could tell they could not guess
Whether 't was misery or happiness.
Spells are but made to break. Whisper'd the
Youth.

Line 174.

Fill'd with light, music, jewels, gold, perfume

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.

A manuscript reading of the last line is:
'Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.'

'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.