“But no—already had his death-bell rung;
The joys of all his life were said and sung;”
that of Angela where she calls herself
“A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,
Whose passing bell may ere the midnight toll.”
[57] Chartier was born at Bayeux. His Belle Dame sans Merci is a poem of over eighty stanzas, the introduction in narrative and the rest in dialogue, setting forth the obduracy shown by a lady to her wooer, and his consequent despair and death.—For the date of composition of Keats’s poem, see Appendix, [p. 230].
[58] This has been pointed out by my colleague Mr A. S. Murray: see Forman, Works, vol. iii. p. 115, note; and W. T. Arnold, Poetical Works, &c., p. xxii, note.
[59] Houghton MSS.
[60] “He never spoke of any one,” says Severn, (Houghton MSS.,) “but by saying something in their favour, and this always so agreeably and cleverly, imitating the manner to increase your favourable impression of the person he was speaking of.”
[62] Auctores Mythographi Latini, ed. Van Staveren, Leyden, 1742. Keats’s copy of the book was bought by him in 1819, and passed after his death into the hands first of Brown, and afterwards of Archdeacon Bailey (Houghton MSS.). The passage about Moneta which had wrought in Keats’s mind occurs at p. 4, in the notes to Hyginus.