[210] Cf. the "self-precipitation" of Céladon. Perhaps no class of writers has ever practised "imitation," in the wrong sense, more than these "heroic" romancers.
[211] I am glad to find the high authority of my friend Sir Sidney Colvin on my side here as to the wider position—though he tells me that he was not, when he read Endimion, conscious of any positive indebtedness on Keats' part.
[212] V. sup. p. 177, note 3.
[213] Gombauld seems to have been a devotee of both Queens: and commentators will have it that this whole book is courtship as well as courtiership in disguise.
[214] A kind of intermediary nymph—an enchantress indeed—who has assisted and advised him in his quests for the goddess.
[215] Émile Magne, Mme. de V., Paris, 1907.
[216] This sometimes causes positive obscurity as to fact. Thus it is impossible to make out from M. Magne whether Hortense, in her last days, actually married the cousin with whom she had been intimate in youth, or merely lived with him.
[217] By M. H. E. Chatenet, Paris, 1911.
[218] There is a little in the verse, most of which belongs to the "flying" kind so common in the century.
[219] V. inf. upon it.