[25] "From Shakespeare to Pope." See also Sidney Colvin's "Keats." New York, 1887, pp. 61-64.
[26] Vide supra, p. 70.
[27] That he knew Pope's version is evident from a letter to Haydon of May, 1817, given in Lord Houghton's "Life."
[28] He could have known extremely little of mediaeval literature; yet there is nothing anywhere, even in the far more instructed Pre-Raphaelite school which catches up the whole of the true mediaeval romantic spirit—the spirit which animates the best parts of the Arthurian legend, and of the wild stories which float through mediaeval tale-telling, and make no small figure in mediaeval theology—as does the short piece of 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'. (Saintsbury: "A Short History of English Literature," p. 673).
[29] Vide supra, p. 85. And for Keats' interest in Chatterton see vol. i., pp. 370-72.
[30] The Dict. Nat. Biog. mentions doubtfully an earlier edition in 1795.
[31] See "Sonnet on Leigh Hunt's Poem 'The Story of Rimini.'" Forman's ed., vol. ii., p. 229.
[32] See Forman's ed., vol. ii., p. 334.
[33] "New Essays toward a Critical Method," London, 1897, p. 256.
[34] "Come, per sostentar solaio o tetto,
Per mensola talvolta una figura
Si vede giunger le ginocchia al petto,
La qual fa del non ver vera rancura
Nascere in chi la vede."
—"Purgatorio," Canto x., 130-34.