The ocean with its vastness, its blue green, Its ships, its rocks, its caves, its hopes, its fears,- Must think on what will be, and what has been. And she her half-discover'd revels keeping. have That for Who in the transcript; while the draft reads That in the Paleing (altered to feathery) gold. In line 6 of the draft, Dangers stands cancelled in favour of Rocks. Line 8 in both draft and transcript is Must muse on what's to come and what has been. In line to the draft reads silver for silken, and there is a cancelled line II: Giving the world such snatches of delight, for which the reading of the text is substituted. The final couplet was originally The Sights have warmed me but without thy love, This is cancelled in the draft in favour of the reading of the text. In line 13 the transcript has thoughts for thought. Even the small beginning of lunar impersonation that we see in lines 10 to 12 has its interest in the mental history of one who was born to luxuriate through such a harvest of luscious thought and imagery as Endymion. ΤΟ II. HAD I a man's fair form, then might my sighs Whose lips have trembled with a maiden's eyes. When steep'd in dew rich to intoxication. Tom Keats's copy-book contains a transcript of this sonnet showing no variation in the text, except by a copyist's error at the end,-the last word being incantations. There is no heading beyond the word Sonnet, no date, and no clue to the identity of the person addressed. III. Written on the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt WHAT though, for showing truth to flatter'd state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, In his immortal spirit, been as free As the sky-searching lark, and as elate. The Hunts left prison on the 2nd of February 1815, according to Leigh Hunt's own account, though Thornton Hunt says the 3rd at page 99, Volume I, of the Correspondence (1862). The expressions employed towards Leigh Hunt in this sonnet are not, one would say, intemperate; and yet, adding the innocuous phrase in Sleep and Poetry (lines 354-5), It was a poet's house who keeps the keys and the fact that the little volume was dedicated to Hunt, Professor Wilson, well described by Horne as "the clown of Blackwood's Magazine," found sufficient ground for one of the unseemliest of the coarse pleasantries delivered in the character of "Christopher North"-to wit the allegation that Keats fed Hunt" on the oil cakes of flattery" till he became "flatulent of praise." Keats's real offence in the eyes of Wilson was of course his friendship with such a radical as Hunt, and his venturing to characterize as showing truth to flatter'd state" the article in The Examiner for which Hunt and his brother were imprisoned for two years and fined a thousand pounds. What Hunt had written was the truth, no doubt; but it was unfortunate for Keats, at his start in literature, to subscribe to such truth 66 Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait? Think you he nought but prison walls did see, Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key? Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate! telling as this, for instance, in which Hunt translated The Morning Post's "language of adulation into that of truth": "What person, unacquainted with the true state of the case, would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this 'Glory of the people' was the subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches!... that this 'Exciter of desire' [bravo! Messieurs of the Post!]—this 'Adonis in loveliness' was a corpulent man of fifty! -in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, pleasurable, honourable, virtuous, true, and immortal prince, was a violator of his word, a libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country, or the respect of posterity!" Even towards such a ruthless polemic as Professor Wilson one must seek to be just; and I do not doubt that he felt called upon to oppose the Hunt set with every pulsation of "a heart as rough as Esau's hand," but loyal enough to those politicians whom Keats called the Prince Regent's "wretched crew." It was really, I take it, from this poor little sonnet that the animus of the predominant press party against Keats originated. An article celebrating "The Departure of the Proprietors of this Paper from Prison" occupied the first page of The Examiner for Sunday, the 5th of February 1815. The opening is as follows: "The two years' imprisonment inflicted on the Proprietors of this Paper for differing with the Morning Post on the merits of the PRINCE REGENT, expired on Thursday last; and on that day accordingly we quitted our respective Jails." On the subject of how they felt on the occasion, Hunt excuses himself from particularity, but observes with characteristic pleasantness, "there is a feeling of space and of airy clearness about everything, which is alternately delightful and painful." The greater part of the article is far from being in Hunt's best manner; but the end should stand on record here: "We feel that we have driven another nail or two into the old oaken edifice of English Liberty; and if we have rapped our fingers a little in the operation, it is only a laugh and a wring of the hands, and all is as it should be." |