[32] That is, in ‘half-knowledge,’ ‘doubts,’ ‘mysteries’ (see p. 235), while the philosopher is sometimes supposed by Keats to have a reasoned certainty about everything. It is curious to reflect that great metaphysicians, like Spinoza and Hegel, are often accused of the un-moral impartiality which Keats attributes to the poet.
[33] LXXVI, C., LXXX, F.
[34] The ultimate origin of the dream-passage in both poems may well be Adam’s dream in Paradise Lost, Book viii.:
| She disappear’d, and left me dark: I waked To find her, or for ever to deplore Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure. |
Keats alludes to this in XXII, C., XXIV, F.
[35] It is tempting to conjecture with Mr. Forman that the full-stop before the last sentence is a misprint, and that we should read ‘the world,—those who,’ etc., so that the last two clauses would be relative clauses co-ordinate with ‘who love not their fellow-beings.’ Not to speak of the run of the sentences, this conjecture is tempting because of the comma after ‘fellow-beings,’ and because the paragraph is followed by the quotation (‘those’ should be ‘they’),
| The good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as summer’s dust Burn to the socket. |
The good who die first correspond with the ‘pure and tender-hearted’ who perish and, as we naturally suppose, perish young, like the poet in Alastor. But, as the last sentence stands, these, as well as the torpid, live to old age. It is hard to believe that Shelley meant this; but as he was in England when Alastor was printed, he probably revised the proofs, and it is perhaps easier to suppose that he wrote what is printed than that he passed unobserved the serious misprint supposed by Mr. Forman.
[36] XVIII, C., XX, F.
