[Keats's first volume, published early in 1817, is a foolscap octavo worked in half sheets. It was issued in drab boards, with a back label Keats's Poems, and consists of a blank leaf, fly-title Poems in heavy black letter, with imprint on verso, "PRINTED BY C. RICHARDS, NO. 18, WARWICK STREET, GOLDEN SQUARE, LONDON", title-page as given opposite, Dedication with note on verso as reproduced, and pages 1 to 121 including the fly-titles to the Epistles, Sonnets, and Sleep and Poetry, all as reproduced in the following pages. There are head-lines in Roman capitals running throughout each section, recto and verso alike, (1) Poems, (2) Epistles, (3) Sonnets, and (4) Sleep and Poetry. Leigh Hunt, reviewing with characteristic boldness, loyalty, and insight this volume, dedicated to him, laid his finger unerringly on its weak and strong points. His review appeared in The Examiner for the 1st of June and 6th and 13th of July 1817, and will be found reprinted as an Appendix in the present edition of Keats's Works; but I have not hesitated to snatch a line from it now and then by way of appropriate foot-note to these early poems.-H. B. F.]

DEDICATION.

TO LEIGH HUNT, ESQ.

GLORY and loveliness have pass'd away;
For if we wander out in early morn,

No wreathed incense do we see upborne
Into the east, to meet the smiling day:

No crowd of nymphs soft voic'd and young, and gay,
In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,

Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn
The shrine of Flora in her early May.
But there are left delights as high as these,
And I shall ever bless my destiny,
That in a time, when under pleasant trees
Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free

A leafy luxury, seeing I could please

With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

Readers of Charles Cowden Clarke's Recollections of Keats, printed in the present edition, will remember the statement, still appropriate here, that, "on the evening when the last proof sheet [of the 1817 volume] was brought from the printer, it was accompanied by the information that if a 'dedication to the book was intended it must be sent forthwith.' Whereupon he withdrew to a side table, and in the buzz of a mixed conversation (for there were several friends in the room) he composed and brought to Charles Ollier, the publisher, the Dedication Sonnet to Leigh Hunt." The first of the three Sonnets to Keats in Hunt's Foliage forms a fitting reply to this; and the three will be found in the Appendix.

[THE Short Pieces in the middle of the Book, as well as some of the Sonnets, were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems.]