17. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Edited by William T. Arnold. London, 1884.
The Introduction to this edition contains the only attempt with which I am acquainted at an analysis of the formal elements of Keats’s style.
18. An Æsculapian Poet—John Keats: an article by Dr B. W. Richardson in the Asclepiad for 1884 (vol. i. p. 134).
19. Notices and correspondence concerning Keats which have appeared at intervals during a number of years in the Athenæum.
In addition to printed materials I have made use of the following unprinted, viz.:—
I. Houghton mss. Under this title I refer to the contents of an album from the library at Fryston Hall, in which the late Lord Houghton bound up a quantity of the materials he had used in the preparation of the Life and Letters, as well as of correspondence concerning Keats addressed to him both before and after the publication of his book. The chief contents are the manuscript memoir of Keats by Charles Brown, which was offered by the writer in vain to Galignani, and I believe other publishers; transcripts by the same hand of a few of Keats’s poems; reminiscences or brief memoirs of the poet by his friends Charles Cowden Clarke (the first draft of the paper above cited as no. 10), Henry Stephens, George Felton Mathew, Joseph Severn, and Benjamin Bailey; together with letters from all the above, from John Hamilton Reynolds, and several others. For the use of this collection, without which my work must have been attempted to little purpose, I am indebted to the kindness of its owner, the present Lord Houghton.
II. Woodhouse mss. a. A common-place book in which Richard Woodhouse, the friend of Keats and of his publishers Messrs Taylor and Hessey, transcribed—as would appear from internal evidence, about midsummer 1819—the chief part of Keats’s poems at that date unpublished. The transcripts are in many cases made from early drafts of the poems: some contain gaps which Woodhouse has filled up in pencil from later drafts: to others are added corrections, or suggestions for corrections, some made in the hand of Mr Taylor and some in that of Keats himself.
III. Woodhouse mss. b. A note-book in which the same Woodhouse has copied—evidently for Mr Taylor, at the time when that gentleman was meditating a biography of the poet—a number of letters addressed by Keats to Mr Taylor himself, to the transcriber, to Reynolds and his sisters, to Rice, and Bailey. Three or four of these letters, as well as portions of a few others, are unpublished.
Both the volumes last named were formerly the property of Mrs Taylor, a niece by marriage of the publisher, and are now my own. A third note-book by Woodhouse, containing personal notices and recollections of Keats, was unluckily destroyed in the fire at Messrs Kegan Paul and Co’s. premises in 1883. A copy of Endymion, annotated by the same hand, has been used by Mr Forman in his edition (above, no. 15).
IV. Severn mss. The papers and correspondence left by the late Joseph Severn, containing materials for what should be a valuable biography, have been put into the hands of Mr William Sharp, to be edited and published at his discretion. In the meantime Mr Sharp has been so kind as to let me have access to such parts of them as relate to Keats. The most important single piece, an essay on ‘The Vicissitudes of Keats’s Fame,’ has been printed already in the Atlantic Monthly (above, no. 8), but in the remainder I have found many interesting details, particularly concerning Keats’s voyage to Italy and life at Rome.