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Boswell, J.: The Life of Samuel Johnson; with Shorter, C. K.: Immortal Memories (New York, the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, ed. Harper, 1907). by G. B. Hill, 6 vols. (London, Macmillan, Stephen, L.: "Dr. Johnson's Writings," Hours in 1887). a Library, 3 vols. (London, Smith, 1874-79; New York and London, Putnam, 1899); 4 vols. (1907).

Boswell, J.: The Life of Samuel Johnson (Globe ed.: London, Macmillan, 1893); 6 vols. (Temple Library ed.: London, Dent, 1898); 2 vols. in 1 (Oxford ed.; London, Frowde. 1904).

Taggart, S.: "Dr. Johnson as a Literary Critic," The Westminster Review, Sept., 1913 (180: 291).

Longfellow and Other Essays (New York,
Crowell, 1910).

Broadley, A. M.: Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale Trent, W. P.: "Bicentenary of Dr. Johnson," (London and New York, Lane, 1910). Dobson, A.: "Dr. Johnson's Haunts and Habitations," Side-Walk Studies (London, Chatto, 1902).

Grant, F.: Life of Samuel Johnson (Great Writers
Series: London, Scott, 1887).

Hutton, L.: Literary Landmarks of London (Lon-
don, Unwin, 1885, 1888).

Scott, W.: Lives of the Novelists (London, Dent,
n. d.).

Stephen, L.: Samuel Johnston (English Men of
Letters Series: London, Macmillan, 1878;
New York, Harper).

Walker, H.: The English Essay and Essayists, ch. 6 (London, Dent, 1915; New York, Dutton).

Wheatley, H. B.: "Dr. Johnson as a Bibliographer," Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 1907, Vol. 8.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, J. P.: In Grant's Life of Samuel Johnson (1887).

Tinker, C. B.: Dr. Johnson and Fanny Burney Courtney, W. P.: Bibliography of Samuel Johnson (New York, Moffat, 1911).

CRITICISM

Arnold, M.: "Johnson's Lives," Essays in Criti 1180.
cism, Third Series (Boston, Ball, 1910).
Boynton, P. H.: "Johnson's London," London in
English Literature (Univ. of Chicago Press,
1913).

Carlyle, T.: "Boswell's Life of Johnson," Fra

ser's Magazine, May, 1832 (5:379); Critical
and Miscellaneous Essays, 4 vols. (Boston,
Houghton, 1880).

Carlyle, T.: "The Hero as Man of Letters," On
Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in His-
tory (London, Chapman, 1841, 1887; New
York, Longmans, 1906).

Collins, J. C.: "Johnson's Lives of the Poets,"
The Quarterly Review, Jan., 1908 (208 :72).
Dawson, W. J.: The Makers of English Prose
(New York and London, Revell, 1906).
Dobson, A.: "Johnson's Library," Eighteenth
Century Vignettes, Second Series (London,
Chatto, 1892).

Gosse, E.: The Fortnightly Review, Dec., 1884
(42:781).

Hill, G. B.: Dr. Johnson: His Friends and his
Critics (London, Smith, 1878).

Hodell, C. W.: "The Great Cham of Literature
after Two Centuries," Putnam's Magazine,
Oct., 1909 (7:33).

Macaulay, T. B.: "Boswell's Life of Johnson,"

The Edinburgh Review, Sept., 1831 (54:1);
Critical and Historical Essays, 2 vols. (Lon-
don and New York, Longmans, 1898).
Meynell, A. C.: Johnson (Chicago, Browne, 1913).
Raleigh, Sir W.: Samuel Johnson (Leslie Stephen
Lecture: London, Clarendon Press, 1907).
Raleigh, Sir W.: Johnson on Shakespeare (Lon-
don, Frowde, 1908).

Raleigh, Sir W.: Six Essays on Johnson (London,
Frowde, 1910).

(Oxford Univ. Press, 1915).

CRITICAL NOTES

PREFACE TO SHAKSPEARE

Johnson published an edition of Shakspere's Works in 1765. The selection here printed is from the Preface to that work. 1184b. 60. Cato.-Voltaire says of this play (Letters on the English, 18, "On Tragedy") : "The first English writer who composed a regular tragedy, and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it, was the illustrious Mr. Addison. His Cato is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and to the beauty and harmony of the numbers. ... Mr. Addison's Cato appears to me the greatest character that was ever brought upon any stage."

In contrast to Voltaire's extravagant praise of Cato, cf. the following criticism from Ward's A History of English Dramatic Literature, 3, 441-42: "When we view this famous tragedy as it now lies dead and cold before us, and examine it, as we needs must, on its own merits, there remains surprisingly little to account for its unprecedented success. Cato is full of effective commonplaces, many of which are to this day current as familiar quotations; but otherwise it would be difficult to find in it any distinguishing feature. . . . Such as Cato was, it helped to make English tragedy pursue more resolutely than before the path into which it had unfortunately entered. ... The play which Addison had written and which Voltaire eulogized marks no doubt with incontestable definiteness an epoch in the history of English tragedy; but this epoch was one of decay, holding out no prospect of recovery by any signs easily admitting of interpretation."

JOHN KEATS (1795-1821), p. 751

EDITIONS Poetical Works and Other Writings, 4 vols., ed. by H. B. Forman (London, Reeves, 1883, 1889); suppl. vol. (1890).

Complete Works, 5 vols., ed., with a Memoir, by H. B. Forman (Glasgow, Gowans (1900-01); New York, Crowell).

Poetical Works, ed. by H. B. Forman (London, Reeves, 1889, 1898; Imperial ed.: New York, Crowell, 1895).

Complete Poetical Works and Letters, ed., with a Biographical Sketch, by H. E. Scudder (Cambridge ed. Boston, Houghton, 1899). Poetical Works (Globe ed.: London and New York, Macmillan, 1902).

Hunt, Leigh.: Autobiography (London, Smith, 1850, 1906); 2 vols., ed. by R. Ingpen London, Constable, 1903; New York, Dutton).

Rossetti, W. M.: Life of John Keats, Great
Writers Series: (London, Scott, 1887).
West, K.: "Keats in Hampstead," The Century
Magazine, Oct., 1895 (50:898).

Wolff, L.: John Keats, sa Vie et son Euvre (Paris, Hachette, 1910).

CRITICISM

Arnold, M.: Essays in Criticism, Second Series (London and New York, Macmillan, 1888).

Poetical Works, ed. by W. S. Scott (London, Finch, Blackwood's Magazine: "On the Cockney School 1902). of Poetry" (Endymion), Aug., 1818 (3:519). Poems, ed. by E. de Sélincourt (New York, Dodd, Bradley, A. C.: "The Letters of Keats," Oxford 1905, 1912).

Poetical Works, ed., with an Introduction, by H. B. Forman (Oxford ed.: Oxford Univ. Press, 1906, 1908).

Poetical Works, ed. by G. Sampson (London, Nimmo, 1906).

Poems, 2 vols., ed., with a Preface, by S. Colvin

(London, Chatto, 1915; New York, Brentano). Poetical Works, ed. by F. T. Palgrave (Golden Treasury ed.: London and New York, Macmillan, 1884).

Poems, ed. by Arlo Bates (Athenæum Press ed.: Boston, Ginn, 1896).

Poems, ed., with an Introduction by R. S. Bridges (Muses' Library ed.: London, Bullen, 1896; New York, Scribner).

Poems, selected and edited, with an Introduction, by A. Symons (London, Jack, 1907). Letters to Fanny Brawne, ed., with an Introduction, by H. B. Forman (London, Reeves, 1878, 1890; New York, Scribner). Letters, ed. by S. Colvin (London and New York, Macmillan, 1891). Letters, Papers, and Other Relics, ed., with Fore

words by T. Watts-Dunton, and an Introduction by H. B. Forman, by G. C. Williamson (London and New York, Lane, 1914).

BIOGRAPHY

Clarke, C. C.: "Recollections of John Keats," The Gentleman's Magazine, Feb., 1874 (12:177).

Lectures on Poetry (London, Macmillan, 1909, 1911).

Bridges, R.: John Keats, A Critical Essay (Privately printed, 1895); Reprinted as the Introduction to Muses' Library edition of Keats's Poems (1896).

Brooke, S. A.: Studies in Poetry (New York,
Putnam, 1907; London, Duckworth).
Croker, J. W.: "Endymion," The Quarterly Re
view, April, 1818 (19:204).

Dawson, W. J.: The Makers of English Poetry (New York and London, Revell, 1906).

De Vere, A.: Essays, Chiefly on Poetry (New York, Macmillan, 1887).

Geest,

S.: Der Sensualisms bei John Keats (Heidelberg, C. Winter, 1908). Gosse, E.: "Keats in 1894," Critical Kit-Kats (New York, Dodd, 1896, 1903). Graham, W.: Last Links With Byron, Shelley, and Keats (London, Smithers, 1899). Harrison, F.: "Lamb and Keats," Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and Other Literary Estimates (New York and London, Macmillan, 1900, 1902).

Hudson, W. H.: Keats and His Poetry (New
York, Dodge, 1912).
Hutton, R. H.: Brief Literary Criticisms, ed. by
his niece (London, Macmillan, 1906).
Jeffrey, F.: "Endymion, Lamia, Isabella, The
Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems," The
Edinburgh Review, Aug., 1820 (34:203).
Long, A.: Letters on Literature (New York,
Longmans, 1889).

Clarke, C. C. and Mary: Recollections of Writers Lowell, J. R.: Among My Books, Second Series (London, Low, 1878).

Colvin, S.: Keats (English Men of Letters Series: London, Macmillan, 1887; New York, Harper).

Hancock, A. E.: John Keats, A Literary Biography (London, Constable, 1908; Boston, Houghton).

(Boston, Houghton, 1884); Collected Writings (Boston, Houghton, 1890-92).

Mabie, H. W.: Essays in Literary Interpretation (New York, Dodd, 1892).

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Houghton, Lord (R. M. Milnes) (ed.): Life, Let-Mackail, J. W.: Lectures on Poetry (London, ters, and Literary Remains of John Keats,

Longmans, 1911).

2 vols. (London, Moxon, 1848, 1867; New Masson, D.: Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Universal Library ed.: London, Routledge,

1906; New York, Dutton).

other Essays (London, Macmillan, 1874, 1881).

Miller, Barnette :

Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley, and Keats (Columbia Univ. Press, 1910).

CRITICAL NOTES

"Every one of Keats's poems was a sacrifice of vitality; a virtue went away from him into every More, P. E.: Shelburne Essays, Fourth Series one of them; even yet, as we turn the leaves, they (New York and London, Putnam, 1906). seem to warm and thrill our fingers with the Olivero, F.: "Keats and the Minor Poems of Milflush of his fine senses, and the flutter of his ton," Englische Studien, 1911 (43). Owen, F. M.: John Keats: A Study (London, that what he did was to be done swiftly. . . . electrical nerves, and we do not wonder he felt Paul, 1880). Payne, W. M.: The Greater English Poets of the Nineteenth Century (New York, Holt, 1907, 1909). Rickett, A.: "The Poet: Keats and Rossetti," Personal Forces in Modern Literature (London, Dent, 1906; New York, Dutton). Robertson, J. M.: "The Art of Keats," New Essays towards a Critical Method (New York, Lane, 1897).

Severn, J.: "On the Vicissitudes of Keats's
Fame," The Atlantic Monthly, April, 1863

(11:401).

Speed, J. G. "Sojourns of John Keats," The
Century Magazine, Sept., 1910 (80:684).
Stedman, E. C.: The Century Magazine, Feb.,
1884 (27:599).

Stedman, E. C.: Genius and Other Essays (New
York, Moffat, 1911).
Suddard, S. J. M.: Keats, Shelley, and Shakespeare
Studies (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1912; New
York, Broadway).

Swinburne, A. C.: Miscellanies (London, Chatto,
1886, 1911; New York, Scribner).
Symons, A.: The Romantic Movement in English
Poetry (London, Constable, 1909; New York,

Dutton).

Texte, J.: "Keats et le néo-hellénisme dans la

Keats certainly had more of the penetrative and sympathetic imagination which belongs to the poet, of that imagination which identifies itself with the momentary object of its contemplation, than any man of these later days. It is not merely that he has studied the Elizabethans and caught their turn of thought, but that he really sees things with their sovereign eye, and feels them with their electrified senses. . . . We are apt to talk of the classic renaissance as of a phe

nomenon long past, nor ever to be renewed, and
mighty magic to work such a miracle.
one of the most interesting aspects of Keats is
that in him we have an example of the renaissance
going on almost under our own eyes, and that the
intellectual ferment was in him kindled by a
purely English leaven. He had properly no scholar-
he assimilated at a touch whatever could serve
ship, any more than Shakespeare had, but like him
his purpose,

to think the Greeks and Romans alone had the
To me

His delicate senses absorbed culture trained himself (unexampled in one so young) the at every pore. Of the self-denial to which he second draft of Hyperion as compared with the his Lamia from the lavish indiscrimination of first is a conclusive proof. And far indeed is Endymion. In his odes he showed a sense of form and proportion which we seek vainly in almost any other English poet, and some of his sonnets

poésie anglaise," Etudes de Littérature européene (Paris, Colin, 1898). Torrey, B. Friends on the Shelf (Boston, Hough- (taking all qualities into consideration) are the

ton, 1906).

Van Dyke, H.: "The Influence of Keats," The
Century Magazine, Oct., 1895 (50:910).
Watson, W.: "Keats's Letters," Excursions in
Criticism (New York, Macmillan, 1893).
An Essay on Keats's Treatment of the
Wolff, L.:
Heroic Rhythm and Blank Verse (Paris,
1909).

most perfect in our language. No doubt there is something tropical and of strange overgrowth in his sudden maturity, but it was maturity nevertheless. Happy the young poet who has the saving fault of exuberance, if he have also amend it!"-J. R. Lowell, in Among My Books the shaping faculty that sooner or later will (1876).

"Not since Spenser had there been a purer gift Woodberry, G. E.: "On the Promise of Keats," Studies in Letters and Life (Boston, Hough- since Milton a line of nobler balance of sound, of poetry among English-speaking peoples; not

ton, 1890).

CONCORDANCE

Broughton, L. N.: A Concordance to the Poems of Keats (Carnegie Institution of Washington; in press, 1916).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

thought, and cadence. There is no magic of color in written speech that is not mixed in the diction of The Eve of St. Agnes,-a vision of beauty, deep, rich, and glowing as one of those dyed windows in which the heart of the Middle Ages still burns. While of the odes, so perfect in form, so ripe with thought, so informed and irradiated by the vision and the insight of the imagination, what remains to be said save that they furnish us

Anderson, J. P.: In Rossetti's Life of John Keats with the tests and standards of poetry itself? (1887).

They mark the complete identification of thought Forman, H. B.: In his edition of Keats's Com- with form, of vision with faculty, of life with plete Works (1900-01).

Sélincourt, E. de and Bradley, A. C.: "Short
Bibliography of Keats" in Short Bibliographies

art."-H. W. Mabie, in Essays in Literary Interpretation (1892-93).

See Shelley's Adonais (p. 730), and Hunt's of Wordsworth, etc. (English Association Proem To Selection from Keats's Poetry (p. Leaflet, No. 23, Oxford, 1912). 882).

751.

752.

753.

754.

IMITATION OF SPENSER

"Probably no English poet who has used the Spenserian stanza, first assimilated so fully the spirit of Spenser, before using the stanza, as did Keats; and to this fact may be partly attributed his effective use of it as an organ for his imagination in its lingering, loving, particularizing mood.'"-Hiram Corson, in A Primer of English Verse (1892).

TO CHATTERTON

Keats was an early and constant admirer of Chatterton. Endymion was dedicated to him.

HOW MANY BARDS GILD THE LAPSES OF

TIME

This sonnet gained Keats an introduction to the literary circle of which Leigh Hunt was the center.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

After Charles Cowden Clarke and Keats had read over Chapman's translation of Homer together, Keats composed this sonnet, which he presented to Clarke the next morning. George Chapman was an Elizabethan poet and dramatist; his translation of Homer was pub lished in 1598-1616.

As a contrast to Keats's interest in Chapman's translation, cf. Cowper's remarks in a letter to Thomas Park, dated July 15, 1793:

"Within these few days I have received

His

your acceptable present of Chapman's translation of the Iliad. I know not whether the book be a rarity, but a curiosity it cer tainly is. I have as yet seen but little of it, enough, however, to make me wonder that any man, with so little taste for Homer, or apprehension of his manner, should think it worth while to undertake the laborious task of translating him; the hope of pecuniary advantage may perhaps account for it. information, I fear, was not much better than his verse, for I have consulted him in one passage of some difficulty, and find him giving a sense of his own, not at all warranted by the words of Homer. Pope sometimes does this, and sometimes omits the difficult part entirely. I can boast of having done neither, though it has cost me infinite pains to exempt myself from the necessity."

Pope's translation of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey appeared in 1715-26; Cowper's, in 1791.

I STOOD TIPTOE UPON A LITTLE HILL

"When Keats wrote the lines which here follow he was living in the Vale of Health in Hampstead, happy in the association of Hunt and kindred spirits, and trembling with the consciousness of his own poetic power. He

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This poem was written in Leigh Hunt's library which had been temporarily fitted up as a sleeping room. "It originated in sleeping in a room adorned with busts and pictures, and is a striking specimen of the restlessness of the young poetical appetite, obtaining its food by the very desire of it, and glancing for fit subjects of creation from earth to heaven.' Nor do we like it the less for an impatient, and as it may be thought by some, irreverent assault upon the late French school of criticism and monotony, which has held poetry chained long enough to render it somewhat indignant when it has got free."-Hunt, in a review of Keats's first volume of poems; the review was published in The Examiner, July, 1817.

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759. 96-98. Cf. these lines with When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be (p. 765). 760. 162-229. "Both the strength and the weakness of this are typically characteristic of the time and of the man. The passage is likely to remain for posterity the central expression of the spirit of literary emancipation then militant and about to triumph in England. The two great elder captains of revolution, Coleridge and Wordsworth, have both expounded their cause, in prose, with much more maturity of thought and language. But neither has left any enunciation of theory having power to thrill the ear and haunt the memory like the rhymes of this young untrained recruit in the cause of poetic liberty and the return to nature. It is easy, indeed, to pick these verses of Keats to shreds, if we choose to fix a prosaic and rational attention on their faults... But controversy apart, if we have in us a touch of instinct for the poetry of imagination and beauty, as distinct from that of taste and reason, however clearly we may see the weak points of a passage like this, however much we may wish that taste and reason had had more to do with it, yet we cannot but feel that Keats touches truly the root of the matter; we cannot but admire the elastic life and variety of his verse, his fine spontaneous and effective turns of rhetoric, the ring and power of his appeal to the elements, and the glow of his delight in the achievements and promise of the new age."-Sidney Colvin, in Keats (English Men of Letters Series, 1901).

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Haydon (1786-1840) was an historical painter, a member of the literary circle composed of Hunt, Keats, Shelley, and others. As originally written the thirteenth line of this sonnet was filled out with the words "in the human mart." Haydon suggested omitting them and sending the sonnet to Wordsworth. Keats replied in a note as follows (Nov. 20, 1816):

"Your letter has filled me with a proud pleasure, and shall be kept by me as a stimulus to exertion-I begin to fix my eye upon one horizon. My feelings entirely fall in with yours in regard to the ellipsis, and I glory in it. The idea of your sending it to Wordsworth put me out of breath-you know with what reverence I would send my wellwishes to him."

766. ON SITTING DOWN TO READ "KING LEAR" ONCE AGAIN

This sounet was inserted in a letter to Keats's brothers, dated Jan. 23, 1818, after the following statement: "I think a little change has taken place in my intellect lately I cannot bear to be uninterested or unemployed, I, who for SO long a time have been addicted to passiveness. Nothing is finer for the purposes of great pro ductions than a very gradual ripening of the intellectual powers. As an instance of thisobserve I sat down yesterday to read King Lear once again: the thing appeared to demand the prologue of a sonnet, I wrote it, and began to read-(I know you would like to see it)."

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LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN

This and the following poem were sent in a letter to Reynolds, dated Feb. 3, 1818, in return for two sonnets on Robin Hood which Reynolds had sent Keats. For the letter to Reynolds, see p. 862. Both Reynolds and Keats were in full sympathy with the spirit of the Elizabethans. The Mermaid Tavern in London was famous as the resort of Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, and other Elizabethan dramatists.

ROBIN HOOD

See note to previous poem. Keats was fond of the legendary medieval hero, Robin Hood, noted as a chivalrous and generous outlaw. Little John and Maid Marian were associates of Robin Hood.

TO THE NILE

Keats, Hunt, and Shelley all wrote sonnets on the Nile on the same day, Feb. 4, 1818. For Hunt's sonnet, see p. 868; for Shelley's, see note on The Nile, p. 1278a.

THE HUMAN SEASONS

This sonnet was sent by Keats in a letter to Bailey, dated Mar. 13, 1818, after the following statement: "You know my ideas about religion. I do not think myself more in the right than other people, and that nothing in this world is provable. I wish I could enter into all your feelings on the subject, merely for one short 10 minutes, and give you a page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very skeptical as to think poetry itself a mere Jack o' Lantern to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As tradesmen say everything is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardor of the pursuer-being in itself a nothing. Ethereal things may at least be thus real, divided under three heads-things realthings semireal-and nothings. Things real, such as existences of sun, moon, and stars

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