[p. 166], note 1. At what precise date La Belle Dame Sans Merci was written is uncertain. As of the Ode to Melancholy, Keats makes no mention of this poem in his correspondence. In Woodhouse MSS. A. it is dated 1819. That Woodhouse made his transcripts before or while Keats was on his Shanklin-Winchester expedition in that year, is I think certain both from the readings of the transcripts themselves, and from the absence among them of Lamia and the Ode to Autumn. Hence it is to the first half of 1819 that La Belle Dame Sans Merci must belong, like so much of the poet’s best work besides. The line quoted in my text shows that the theme was already in his mind when he composed the Eve of St Agnes in January. Mr Buxton Forman is certainly mistaken in supposing it to have been written a year later, after his critical attack of illness (Works, vol. II. p. 357, note).
[p. 186], note 1. The relation of Hyperion, A Vision, to the original Hyperion is a vital point in the history of Keats’s mind and art, and one that has been generally misunderstood. The growth of the error is somewhat interesting to trace. The first mention of the Vision is in Lord Houghton’s Life and Letters, ed. 1848, Vol. I. p. 244. Having then doubtless freshly in his mind the passage of Brown’s MS. memoir quoted in the text, Lord Houghton stated the matter rightly in the words following his account of Hyperion:—“He afterwards published it as a fragment, and still later re-cast it into the shape of a Vision, which remains equally unfinished.” When eight years later the same editor printed the piece for the first time (in Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society, Vol. III. 1856-7) from the MS. given him by Brown, he must have forgotten Brown’s account of its origin, and writes doubtfully: “Is it the original sketch out of which the earlier part of the poem was composed, or is it the commencement of a reconstruction of the whole? I have no external evidence to decide this question:” and further,—“the problem of the priority of the two poems—both fragments, and both so beautiful—may afford a wide field for ingenious and critical conjecture.” Ten years later again, when he brought out the second edition of the Life and Letters, Lord Houghton had drifted definitely into a wrong conclusion on the point, and printing the piece in his Appendix as ‘Another Version,’ says in his text (p. 206) “on reconsideration, I have no doubt that it was the first draft.” Accordingly it is given as ‘an earlier version’ in Mr W. M. Rossetti’s edition of 1872, as ‘the first version’ in Lord Houghton’s own edition of 1876; and so on, positively but quite wrongly, in the several editions by Messrs Buxton Forman, Speed, and W. T. Arnold. The obvious superiority of Hyperion to the Vision no doubt at first sight suggested the conclusion to which these editors, following Lord Houghton, had come. In the mean time at least two good critics, Mr W. B. Scott and Mr. R. Garnett, had always held on internal evidence that the Vision was not a first draft, but a recast attempted by the poet in the decline of his powers: an opinion in which Mr Garnett was confirmed by his recollection of a statement to that effect in the lost MS. of Woodhouse (see above, Preface, [p. v], and W. T. Arnold, Works &c. p. xlix, note). Brown’s words, quoted in my text, leave no doubt whatever that these gentlemen were right. They are confirmed from another side by Woodhouse MSS. A, which contains the copy of a real early draft of Hyperion. In this copy the omissions and alterations made in revising the piece are all marked in pencil, and are as follows, (taking the number of lines in the several books of the poem as printed).
Book I. After line 21 stood the cancelled lines—
“Thus the old Eagle, drowsy with great grief,
Sat moulting his weak plumage, never more
To be restored or soar against the sun;
While his three sons upon Olympus stood.”
In line 30, for “stay’d Ixion’s wheel” stood “eased Ixion’s toil”. In line 48, for “tone” stood “tune”. In line 76, for “gradual” stood “sudden”. In line 102, after the word “Saturn,” stood the cancelled words—
“What dost think?
Am I that same? O Chaos!”
In line 156, for “yielded like the mist” stood “gave to them like mist.” In line 189, for “Savour of poisonous brass” stood “A poison-feel of brass.” In line 200 for “When earthquakes jar their battlements and towers” stood “When an earthquake hath shook their city towers.” After line 205 stood the cancelled line “Most like a rose-bud to a fairy’s lute.” In line 209, for “And like a rose” stood “Yes, like a rose.” In line 268, for “Suddenly” stood “And, sudden.”
Book II. In line 128, for “vibrating” stood “vibrated.” In line 134 for “starry Uranus” stood “starr’d Uranus” (some friend doubtless called Keats’s attention to the false quantity).
Book III. After line 125 stood the cancelled lines:—
“Into a hue more roseate than sweet pain
Gives to a ravish’d nymph, when her warm tears
Gush luscious with no sob; or more severe.”