[18] The passage which begins—
“Hard by
Stood serene Cupids watching silently”
has some affinity with a passage in Shelley’s “Adonais.” The latter passage is, however, more directly based upon one in the Idyll of Bion on Adonis.
[19] I do not clearly understand from the poem whether Endymion does or does not know, until the story nears its conclusion, that the goddess who favours him is Diana. He appears at any rate to guess as much, either during this present interview or shortly afterwards.
[20] Keats has been laughed at for ignorance in printing “Visit my Cytherea”; but it appears on good evidence that what he really wrote was “Visit thou my Cythera.” A false quantity in this same canto, “Nèptŭnus,” cannot be explained away.
[21] Declared it in some very odd lines; for instance—
“Do gently murder half my soul, and I
Shall feel the other half so utterly!”
[22] See [p. 52] as to Miss Brawne.
[23] I presume the “three masterpieces” are “The Eve of St. Agnes,” “Hyperion,” and “Lamia”; this leaves out of count the short “Belle Dame sans Merci,” and the unfinished “Eve of St. Mark,” but certainly not because Dante Rossetti rated those lower than the three others.
[24] There are some various readings in this poem (as here, “wretched wight”); I adopt the phrases which I prefer.