I have pointed out certain marked resemblances between _Alastor_ and
_Endymion_, and it would be easy to extend the list. These resemblances
are largely due to similarities in the minds of the two poets, and to
the action of a common influence on both. But I believe that, in
addition, Keats was affected by the reading of _Alastor_, which appeared
in 1816, while his own poem was begun in the spring of 1817.
The common influence to which I refer was that of Wordsworth, and
especially of the _Excursion_, published in 1814. There is a quotation,
or rather a misquotation, from it in the Preface to _Alastor_. The
_Excursion_ is concerned in part with the danger of inactive and
unsympathetic solitude; and this, treated of course in Shelley's own
way, is the subject of _Alastor_, which also contains phrases
reminiscent of Wordsworth's poem. Its Preface too reminds one
immediately of the _Elegiac Stanzas on a Picture of Peele Castle_; of
the main idea, and of the lines,
Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone,
Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind.
As for Keats, the reader of his letters knows how much he was occupied
in 1817 and 1818 with thoughts due to the reading of Wordsworth, and how
great, though qualified, was his admiration of the _Excursion_. These
thoughts concerned chiefly the poetic nature, its tendency to 'dream,'
and the necessity that it should go beyond itself and feel for the
sorrows of others. They may have been suggested _only_ by Wordsworth;
but we must remember that _Alastor_ had been published, and that Keats
would naturally read it. In comparing that poem with _Endymion_ I am
obliged to repeat remarks already made in the lecture.
_Alastor_, composed under the influence described, tells of the fate of
a young poet, who is 'pure and tender-hearted,' but who, in his search
for communion with the ideal influences of nature and of knowledge,
keeps aloof from sympathies with his kind. 'So long as it is possible
for his desires to point towards objects thus infinite and unmeasured,
he is joyous and tranquil and self-possessed.' But a time comes when he
thirsts for intercourse with an intelligence like himself. His ideal
requirements are embodied in the form of a being who appears to him in a
dream, and to whom he is united in passionate love. But his
'self-centred seclusion' now avenges itself. The 'spirit of sweet human
love' vanishes as he wakes, and he wanders over the earth, vainly
seeking the 'prototype' of the vision until he dies.
In _Endymion_ the story of a dream-vision, of rapturous union with it,
and of the consequent pursuit of it, re-appears, though the beginning
and the end are different. The hero, before the coming of the vision,
has of course a poetic soul, but he is not self-secluded, or inactive,
or fragile, or philosophic; and his pursuit of the goddess leads not to
extinction but to immortal union with her. It does lead, however, to
adventures of which the main idea evidently is that the poetic soul can
only reach complete union with the ideal (which union is immortality) by
wandering in a world which seems to deprive him of it; by trying to
mitigate the woes of others instead of seeking the ideal for himself;
and by giving himself up to love for what seems to be a mere woman, but
is found to be the goddess herself. It seems almost beyond doubt that
the story of Cynthia and Endymion would not have taken this shape but
for _Alastor_.
The reader will find this impression confirmed if he compares the
descriptions in _Alastor_ and _Endymion_, Book I., of the dreamer's
feelings on awakening from his dream, of the disenchantment that has
fallen on the landscape, and of his 'eager' pursuit of the lost vision.
Everything is, in one sense, different, for the two poets differ
greatly, and Keats, of course, was writing without any conscious
recollection of the passage in _Alastor_; but the conception is the
same.[34]
Consider, again, the passage (near the beginning of _Endymion_, Book
III.) quoted on p. 230 of the lecture. The hero is addressing the moon;
and he says, to put it baldly, that from his boyhood everything that was
beautiful to him was associated with his love of the moon's beauty. The
passage continues thus:
On some bright essence could I lean, and lull
Myself to immortality: I prest
Nature's soft pillow in a wakeful rest.
But, gentle Orb! there came a nearer bliss--
My strange love came--Felicity's abyss!
She came, and thou didst fade, and fade away.
In spite of the dissimilarities, surely the 'wakeful rest' here
corresponds to the condition of the poet in _Alastor_ prior to the
dream. 'So long as it is possible for his desires to point towards
objects thus infinite and unmeasured, he is joyous and tranquil and
self-possessed'; but when his 'strange love' comes these objects, like
the objects of Endymion's earlier desires, no longer suffice him.
There is, however, further evidence, indeed positive proof, of the
effect of _Alastor_, and especially of its Preface, on Keats's mind. In
the revised version of _Hyperion_, Book I., the dreamer in the Temple
wonders why he has been preserved from death. The Prophetess tells him
the reason (I italicise certain words):
'None can usurp this height,' returned that shade,
'But those to whom the _miseries of the world_
Are misery, and will not let them rest.
_All else_ who find a haven in the world,
Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,
If by a chance into this fane they come,
Rot on the pavement where thou rottedst half.'
'Are there not thousands in the world,' said I,
Encouraged by the sooth voice of the shade,
'Who _love their fellows_ even to the death,
Who feel the giant agony of the world,
And more, like slaves to poor humanity,
Labour for mortal good?'
If the reader compares with this the following passage from the Preface
to _Alastor_, and if he observes the words I have italicised in it, he
will hardly doubt that some unconscious recollection of the Preface was
at work in Keats's mind. Shelley is distinguishing the self-centred
seclusion of his poet from that of common selfish souls:
'The picture is not barren of instruction to actual men. The Poet's
self-centred seclusion was avenged by the furies of an irresistible
passion pursuing him to speedy ruin. But that Power which strikes the
luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by
awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to
a slow and poisonous decay those meaner spirits that dare to abjure its
dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their
delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no
generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge,
duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and
cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with their
kind, rejoicing neither in human joy nor mourning with human grief;
these, and such as they, have their apportioned curse. They languish,
because none feel with them their common nature. They are morally dead.
They are neither friends, nor lovers, nor fathers, nor citizens of the
world, nor benefactors of their country. Among those who attempt to
exist without human sympathy, the pure and tender-hearted perish through
the intensity and passion of their search after its communities, when
the vacancy of their spirit suddenly makes itself felt. _All else_,
selfish, blind, and torpid, are those unforeseeing multitudes who
constitute, together with their own, the lasting _misery_ and loneliness
_of the world_. Those who _love not their fellow-beings_, live
unfruitful lives, and prepare for their old age a miserable grave.'[35]
I have still a passage to refer to. Let the reader turn to the quotation
on p. 236 from Keats's reply to Shelley's letter of invitation to his
home in Italy; and let him ask himself why Keats puts the word
"self-concentration" in inverted commas. He is not referring to anything
in Shelley's letter, and he is not in the habit in the letters of using
inverted commas except to mark a quotation. Without doubt, I think, he
is referring from memory to the Preface to _Alastor_ and the phrase
'self-centred seclusion.' He has come to feel that this self-centred
seclusion is _right_ for a poet like himself, and that the direct
pursuit of philanthropy in poetry (which he supposes Shelley to
advocate) is wrong. But this is another proof how much he had been
influenced by Shelley's poem; and it is perhaps not too rash to
conjecture that his consciousness of this influence was one reason why
he had earlier refused to visit Shelley, in order that he might 'have
his own unfettered scope.'[36]
If it seems to anyone that these conclusions are derogatory to Keats,
either as a man or a poet, I can only say that I differ from him
entirely. But I will add that there seems to me some reason to
conjecture that Shelley had read the _Ode to a Nightingale_ before he
wrote the stanzas _To a Skylark_.