[14] CXVI, C., CXXXVII, F. The word ‘turn’ in the last sentence but two seems to be doubtful. Mr. Colvin reads ‘have.’
[15] Keats’s use of the word is suggested, probably, by Milton’s ‘pure intelligence of heaven.’
[16] XCII, C., CVI, F.
[17] CLXVI, F., LXXIII, C., LXXXI, F. In XLI, C., XLIV, F., occurs a passage ending with the words, ‘they are able to “consecrate whate’er they look upon.”’ Is not this a quotation from the Hymn:
| Spirit of Beauty that dost consecrate With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon? |
If so, and if my memory serves me, this is the only quotation from Shelley’s poetry in the letters of Keats. The Hymn had been published in Hunt’s Examiner, Jan., 1817.
[18] The first critic, I believe, who seriously attempted to investigate Keats’s mind, and the ideas that were trying to take shape in some of his poems, was F. M. Owen, whose John Keats, a Study (1880) never attracted in her too brief life-time the attention it deserved. Mr. Bridges’s treatment of these ideas is masterly. To what is said above may be added that, although Keats was dissatisfied with Endymion even before he had finished it, he did not at any time criticise it on the ground that it tried to put too much meaning into the myth. On Alastor and Endymion see further the Note appended to this lecture.
[19] A notable (but not isolated) remark, seeing that the poetic genius of Keats showed itself soonest and perhaps most completely in the rendering of Nature.
[20] XXIV, C., XXVI, F.
[21] CXVI, C., CXXXVII, F.