For nearly two months after the death of Keats, 23 February, 1821,
Shelley appears to have remained in ignorance of the event: he knew it
on or before 19 April. The precise date when he began his Elegy does not
seem to be recorded: one may suppose it to have been in the latter half
of May. On 5 June he wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Gisborne: 'I have been
engaged these last days in composing a poem on the death of Keats, which
will shortly be finished; and I anticipate the pleasure of reading it to
you, as some of the very few persons who will be interested in it and
understand it. It is a highly wrought piece of art, and perhaps better,
in point of composition, than anything I have written.'
A letter to Mr. Ollier followed immediately afterwards.
'Pisa, June 8th, 1821,
'You may announce for publication a poem entitled _Adonais_. It is a
lament on the death of poor Keats, with some interspersed stabs on the
assassins of his peace and of his fame; and will be preceded by a
criticism on _Hyperion_, asserting the due claims which that fragment
gives him to the rank which I have assigned him. My poem is finished,
and consists of about forty Spenser stanzas [fifty-five as published]. I
shall send it to you, either printed at Pisa, or transcribed in such a
manner as it shall be difficult for the reviser to leave such errors as
assist the obscurity of the _Prometheus_. But in case I send it printed,
it will be merely that mistakes may be avoided. I shall only have a few
copies struck off in the cheapest manner. If you have interest enough in
the subject, I could wish that you enquired of some of the friends and
relations of Keats respecting the circumstances of his death, and could
transmit me any information you may be able to collect; and especially
as [to] the degree in which (as I am assured) the brutal attack in the
_Quarterly Review_ excited the disease by which he perished.'
The criticism which Shelley intended to write on _Hyperion_ remained, to
all appearance, unwritten. It will be seen, from the letter of Shelley
to Mr. Severn cited further on (p. 34), that, from the notion of writing
a criticism on _Hyperion_ to precede _Adonais_, his intention developed
into the project of writing a criticism and biography of Keats in
general, to precede a volume of his entire works; but that, before the
close of November, the whole scheme was given up, on the ground that it
would produce no impression on an unregardful public.
In another letter to Ollier, 11 June, the poet says: 'Adonais is
finished, and you will soon receive it. It is little adapted for
popularity, but is perhaps the least imperfect of my compositions.'
Shelley on 16 June caused his Elegy to be printed in Pisa, 'with the
types of Didot': a small quarto, and a handsome one (notwithstanding his
project of cheapness); the introductory matter filling five pages, and
the poem itself going on from p. 7 to p. 25. It appeared in blue paper
wrappers, with a woodcut of a basket of flowers within an ornamental
border. Its price was three and sixpence: of late years £40 has been
given for it--perhaps more. Up to 13 July only one copy had reached the
author's hands: this he then sent on to the Gisbornes, at Leghorn. Some
copies of the Pisa edition were afterwards put into circulation in
London: there was no separate English edition. The Gisbornes having
acknowledged the Elegy with expressions of admiration, the poet replied
as follows:
'Bagni [di Pisa], July 19.
'MY DEAREST FRIENDS,
'I am fully repaid for the painful emotions from which some verses of my
poem sprung by your sympathy and approbation; which is all the reward I
expect, and as much as I desire. It is not for me to judge whether, in
the high praise your feelings assign me, you are right or wrong. The
poet and the man are two different natures: though they exist together,
they may be unconscious of each other, and incapable of deciding on each
other's powers and efforts by any reflex act. The decision of the cause
whether or not I am a poet is removed from the present time to the hour
when our posterity shall assemble: but the court is a very severe one,
and I fear that the verdict will be "Guilty--death."'
A letter to Mr. Ollier was probably a little later. It says: 'I send you
a sketch for a frontispiece to the poem _Adonais_. Pray let it be put
into the engraver's hands immediately, as the poem is already on its way
to you, and I should wish it to be ready for its arrival. The poem is
beautifully printed, and--what is of more consequence--correctly:
indeed, it was to obtain this last point that I sent it to the press at
Pisa. In a few days you will receive the bill of lading.' Nothing is
known as to the sketch which Shelley thus sent. It cannot, I presume,
have been his own production, nor yet Severn's: possibly it was supplied
by Lieutenant Williams, who had some aptitude as an amateur artist.
I add some of the poet's other expressions regarding _Adonais_, which he
evidently regarded with more complacency than any of his previous
works--at any rate, as a piece of execution. Hitherto his favourite had
been _Prometheus Unbound_: I am fain to suppose that that great effort
did not now hold a second place in his affections, though he may have
considered that the _Adonais_, as being a less arduous feat, came nearer
to reaching its goal. (To Peacock, August, 1821.) 'I have sent you by
the Gisbornes a copy of the Elegy on Keats. The subject, I know, will
not please you; but the composition of the poetry, and the taste in
which it is written, I do not think bad.' (To Hunt, 26 August.) 'Before
this you will have seen _Adonais_. Lord Byron--I suppose from modesty on
account of his being mentioned in it--did not say a word of
_Adonais_[13], though he was loud in his praise of _Prometheus_, and
(what you will not agree with him in) censure of _The Cenci_.' (To
Horace Smith, 14 September,) 'I am glad you like _Adonais_, and
particularly that you do not think it metaphysical, which I was afraid
it was. I was resolved to pay some tribute of sympathy to the unhonoured
dead; but I wrote, as usual, with a total ignorance of the effect that I
should produce.' (To Ollier, 25 September.) 'The _Adonais_, in spite of
its mysticism, is the least imperfect of my compositions; and, as the
image of my regret and honour for poor Keats, I wish it to be so. I
shall write to you probably by next post on the subject of that poem;
and should have sent the promised criticism for the second edition, had
I not mislaid, and in vain sought for, the volume that contains
_Hyperion_.' (To Ollier, 14 November.) 'I am especially curious to hear
the fate of _Adonais_. I confess I should be surprised if that poem were
born to an immortality of oblivion.' (To Ollier, 11 January, 1822.) 'I
was also more than commonly interested in the success of _Adonais_. I do
not mean the sale, but the effect produced; and I should have [been]
glad to have received some communication from you respecting it. I do
not know even whether it has been published, and still less whether it
has been republished with the alterations I sent.' As to the alterations
sent nothing definite is known, but some details bearing on this point
will be found in our Notes, p. 105, &c. (To Gisborne, 10 April) 'I know
what to think of _Adonais_, but what to think of those who confound it
with the many bad poems of the day I know not.' This expression seems to
indicate that Mr. Gisborne had sent Shelley some of the current
criticisms--there were probably but few in all--upon _Adonais_: to this
matter I shall recur further on. (To Gisborne, 18 June.) 'The _Adonais_
I wished to have had a fair chance, both because it is a favourite with
me, and on account of the memory of Keats--who was a poet of great
genius, let the classic party say what it will.'
Earlier than the latest of these extracts Shelley had sent to Mr. Severn
a copy of _Adonais_, along with a letter which I append.
'Pisa, Nov. 29th, 1821.
'DEAR SIR,
'I send you the Elegy on poor Keats, and I wish it were better worth
your acceptance. You will see, by the preface, that it was written
before I could obtain any particular account of his last moments. All
that I still know was communicated to me by a friend who had derived his
information from Colonel Finch, I have ventured [in the Preface] to
express as I felt the respect and admiration which _your_ conduct
towards him demands.
'In spite of his transcendent genius, Keats never was, nor ever will be,
a popular poet; and the total neglect and obscurity in which the
astonishing remains of his mind still lie was hardly to be dissipated by
a writer who, however he may differ from Keats in more important
qualities, at least resembles him in that accidental one, a want of
popularity.
'I have little hope therefore that the poem I send you will excite any
attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice of his writings
would find a single reader. But for these considerations, it had been my
intention to have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to
have published them with a Life and criticism. Has he left any poems or
writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they? Perhaps
you would oblige me by information on this point.
'Many thanks for the picture you promise me [presumably a portrait of
Keats, but Shelley does not seem ever to have received one from Severn]:
I shall consider it among the most sacred relics of the past. For my
part, I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my friend Leigh
Hunt's, that I should survive him.
'Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the pleasure of
seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into something pleasant,
begun under such melancholy auspices.
'Accept, my dear Sir, the assurance of my highest esteem, and believe me
'Your most sincere and faithful servant,
'PERCY B. SHELLEY.
'Do you know Leigh Hunt? I expect him and his family here every day.'
It may have been observed that Shelley, whenever he speaks of critical
depreciation of Keats, refers only to one periodical, the _Quarterly
Review_: probably he did not distinctly know of any other: but the fact
is that _Blackwood's Magazine_ was worse than the _Quarterly_. The
latter was sneering and supercilious: _Blackwood_ was vulgarly taunting
and insulting, and seems to have provoked Keats the more of the two,
though perhaps he considered the attack in the _Quarterly_ to be more
detrimental to his literary standing. The _Quarterly_ notice is of so
much import in the life and death of Keats, and in the genesis of
_Adonais_, that I shall give it, practically _in extenso_, before
closing this section of my work: with _Blackwood_ I can deal at once. A
series of articles _On the Cockney School of Poetry_ began in this
magazine in October, 1817, being directed mainly and very venomously
against Leigh Hunt. No. 4 of the series appeared in August, 1818,
falling foul of Keats. It is difficult to say whether the priority in
abusing Keats should of right be assigned to _Blackwood_ or to the
_Quarterly_: the critique in the latter review belongs to the number for
April, 1818, but this number was not actually issued until September.
The writer of the _Blackwood_ papers signed himself Z. Z. is affirmed to
have been Lockhart, the son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards
editor of the _Quarterly Review_: more especially the article upon Keats
is attributed to Lockhart. A different account, as to the series in
general, is that the author was John Wilson (Christopher North), revised
by Mr. William Blackwood. But Z. resisted more than one vigorous
challenge to unmask, and some doubt as to his identity may still remain.
Here are some specimens of the amenity with which Keats was treated in
_Blackwood's Magazine_:--
'His friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and
he was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in
town.... The frenzy of the _Poems_ [Keats's first volume, 1817] was bad
enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the
calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of _Endymion_.... We
hope however that, in so young a person and with a constitution
originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly incurable....
Mr. Hunt is a small poet, but a clever man; Mr. Keats is a still smaller
poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities which he has done
everything in his power to spoil.... It is a better and wiser thing to
be a starved apothecary than a starved poet: so back to the shop, Mr.
John, back to "plaster, pills, and ointment-boxes," &c. But for Heaven's
sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and
soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.'
Even the death of Keats, in 1821, did not abate the rancour of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. Witness the following extracts. (1823) 'Keats
had been dished--utterly demolished and dished--by _Blackwood_ long
before Mr. Gifford's scribes mentioned his name.... But let us hear no
more of Johnny Keats. It is really too disgusting to have him and his
poems recalled in this manner after all the world thought they had got
rid of the concern.' (1824) 'Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume
of Mr. Keats's poetry "grasped with one hand in his bosom"--rather an
awkward posture, as you will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash
man Shelley was to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on
board!... Down went the boat with a "swirl"! I lay a wager that it
righted soon after ejecting Jack.'... (1826) 'Keats was a Cockney, and
Cockneys claimed him for their own. Never was there a young man so
encrusted with conceit.'
If this is the tone adopted by _Blackwood's Magazine_ in relation to
Keats living and dead, one need not be surprised to find that the
verdict of the same review upon the poem of _Adonais_, then newly
published, ran to the following effect:--
'Locke says the most resolute liar cannot lie more than once in every
three sentences. Folly is more engrossing; for we could prove from the
present Elegy that it is possible to write two sentences of pure
nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would bring us to
ninety-nine out of every hundred; or--as the present consists of only
fifty-five stanzas--leaving about five readable lines in the entire....
A Mr. Keats, who had left a decent calling for the melancholy trade of
Cockney poetry, has lately died of a consumption, after having written
two or three little books of verses much neglected by the public.... The
New School, however, will have it that he was slaughtered by a criticism
of the _Quarterly Review_: "O flesh, how art thou fishified!" There is
even an aggravation in this cruelty of the Review--for it had taken
three or four years to slay its victim, the deadly blow having been
inflicted at least as long since. [This is not correct: the _Quarterly_
critique, having appeared in September, 1818, preceded the death of
Keats by two years and five months].... The fact is, the _Quarterly_,
finding before it a work at once silly and presumptuous, full of the
servile _slang_ that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar
indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the
truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of
masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he wrote _indecently_,
probably in the indulgence of his social propensities.'
The virulence with which Shelley, as author of _Adonais_, was assailed
by _Blackwood's Magazine_, is the more remarkable, and the more
symptomatic of partizanship against Keats and any of his upholders, as
this review had in previous instances been exceptionally civil to
Shelley, though of course with some serious offsets. The notices of
_Alastor, Rosalind and Helen_, and _Prometheus Unbound_--more especially
the first--in the years 1819 and 1820, would be found to bear out this
statement.
From the dates already cited, it may be assumed that the Pisan edition
of _Adonais_ was in London in the hands of Mr. Ollier towards the middle
of August, 1821, purchasable by whoever might be minded to buy it. Very
soon afterwards it was reprinted in the _Literary Chronicle and Weekly
Review_, published by Limbird in the Strand--1 December, 1821: a rather
singular, not to say piratical, proceeding. An editorial note was worded
thus: 'Through the kindness of a friend, we have been favoured with the
latest production of a gentleman of no ordinary genius, Mr. Bysshe
Shelley. It is an elegy on the death of a youthful poet of considerable
promise, Mr. Keats, and was printed at Pisa. As the copy now before us
is perhaps [surely not] the only one that has reached England, and the
subject is one that will excite much interest, we shall print the whole
of it.' This promise was not literally fulfilled, for stanzas 19 to 24
were omitted, not apparently with any special object.
After the publication in London of the Pisan edition of _Adonais_, the
poem remained unreprinted until 1829. It was then issued at Cambridge,
at the instance of Lord Houghton (Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes) and Mr.
Arthur Hallam, the latter having brought from Italy a copy of the
original pamphlet. The Cambridge edition, an octavo in paper wrappers,
is now still scarcer than the Pisan one. The only other separate edition
of _Adonais_ was that of Mr. Buxton Forman, 1876, corresponding
substantially with the form which the poem assumes in the _Complete
Works of Shelley_, as produced by the same editor. It need hardly be
said that _Adonais_ was included in Mrs. Shelley's editions of her
husband's Poems, and in all other editions of any fulness: it has also
appeared in most of the volumes of Selections.
As early as 1830 there was an Italian translation of this Elegy. It is
named _Adone, nella morte di Giovanni Keats, Elegia di Percy Bishe
Shelley, tradotta da L. A. Damaso Pareto_. _Genova, dalla Tifografia
Pellas_, 1830. In this small quarto thirty pages are occupied by a
notice of the life and poetry of Shelley.
I shall not here enter upon a consideration of the cancelled passages of
_Adonais_: they will appear more appositely further on (see pp. 92-94,
&c.). I therefore conclude the present section by quoting the _Quarterly
Review_ article upon _Endymion_--omitting only a few sentences which do
not refer directly to Keats, but mostly to Leigh Hunt:--
'Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty; far from it; indeed, we
have made efforts, almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to
be, to get through it: but, with the fullest stretch of our
perseverance, we are forced to confess that we have not been able to
struggle beyond the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance
consists. We should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it
may be, on our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we
are no better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we
have so painfully toiled than we are with that of the three which we
have not looked into.
'It is not that Mr. Keats (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt
that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a
rhapsody)--it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of
language, rays of fancy, and gleams of genius. He has all these: but he
is unhappily a disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere
called "Cockney Poetry," which may be defined to consist of the most
incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language.
'Of this school Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former number,
aspires to be the hierophant.... This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt,
but he is more unintelligible, almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and
ten times more tiresome and absurd, than his prototype, who, though he
impudently presumed to seat himself in the chair of criticism, and to
measure his own poetry by his own standard, yet generally had a meaning.
But Mr. Keats had advanced no dogmas which he was bound to support by
examples. His nonsense, therefore, is quite gratuitous; he writes it for
its own sake, and, being bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism,
more than rivals the insanity of his poetry.
'Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
circumstances. "Knowing within myself." he says, "the manner in which
this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that
I make it public. What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader,
who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every error
denoting a feverish attempt rather than a deed accomplished." We humbly
beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be "quite so clear";
we really do not know what he means. But the next passage is more
intelligible. "The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel
sensible, are not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
press." Thus "the two first books" are, even in his own judgment, unfit
to appear, and "the two last" are, it seems, in the same condition; and,
as two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we
have a clear, and we believe a very just, estimate of the entire work.
'Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this "immature and feverish
work" in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we
confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of
the tortures of the "fierce hell" of criticism[15] which terrify his
imagination if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might
write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent
which deserves to be put in the right way, or which at least ought to be
warned of the wrong; and if finally he had not told us that he is of an
age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
'Of the story we have been able to make out but little. It seems to be
mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion;
but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
cannot speak with any degree of certainty, and must therefore content
ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and versification.
And here again we are perplexed and puzzled. At first it appeared to us
that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying his readers with an
immeasurable game at _bouts rimés_; but, if we recollect rightly, it is
an indispensable condition at this play that the rhymes, when filled up,
shall have a meaning; and our author, as we have already hinted, has no
meaning. He seems to us to write a line at random, and then he follows,
not the thought excited by this line, but that suggested by the _rhyme_
with which it concludes. There is hardly a complete couplet enclosing a
complete idea in the whole book. He wanders from one subject to another,
from the association, not of ideas, but of sounds; and the work is
composed of hemistichs which, it is quite evident, have forced
themselves upon the author by the mere force of the catchwords on which
they turn.
'We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least
liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem;--
"Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils,
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead," &c.
Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_, produces the
simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that "the _dooms_ of the mighty
dead" would never have intruded themselves but for the "fair musk-rose
_blooms_."
'Again:--
"For 'twas the morn. Apollo's upward fire
Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
Of brightness so unsullied that therein
A melancholy spirit well might win
Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
Into the winds. Rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of Nature's lives and wonders pulsed tenfold
To feel this sunrise and its glories old."
Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_--a silvery pyre--of clouds,
_wherein_ a spirit might _win_ oblivion, and melt his essence _fine_;
and scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the _sun_, and cold springs had
_run_ into the _grass_; and then the pulse of the _mass_ pulsed
_tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of the new-born day, &c.
'One example more:--
"Be still the unimaginable lodge
For solitary thinkings, such as dodge
Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
Then leave the naked brain; be still the leaven
That spreading in this dull and clodded earth,
Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth."
_Lodge, dodge--heaven, leaven--earth, birth_--such, in six words, is the
sum and substance of six lines.
'We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed
write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see.
The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English
heroic metre:--
"Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite.
"So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.
"Of some strange history, potent to send.
"Before the deep intoxication.
"Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.
"The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepared.
"Endymion, the cave is secreter
Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."
'By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the
meaning of his sentences and the structure of his lines. We now present
them with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh
Hunt, he adorns our language.
'We are told that turtles _passion_ their voices; that an arbour was
_nested_, and a lady's locks _gordianed_ up; and, to supply the place of
the nouns thus verbalized, Mr. Keats, with great fecundity, spawns new
ones, such as men-slugs and human _serpentry_, the _honey-feel_ of
bliss, wives prepare _needments_, and so forth.
'Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their
natural tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads. Thus
the wine out-sparkled, the multitude up-followed, and night up-took: the
wind up-blows, and the hours are down-sunken. But, if he sinks some
adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language with adverbs and
adjectives which he separates from the parent stock. Thus a lady
whispers _pantingly_ and close, makes _hushing_ signs, and steers her
skiff into a _ripply_ cove, a shower falls _refreshfully_, and a vulture
has a _spreaded_ tail.
'But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte. If any one should
be bold enough to purchase this Poetic Romance, and so much more patient
than ourselves as to get beyond the first book, and so much more
fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted
with his success. We shall then return to the task which we now abandon
in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr. Keats and to our
readers.'
This criticism is not, I think, exactly what Shelley called it in the
Preface to _Adonais_--'savage:' it is less savage than contemptuous, and
is far indeed from competing with the abuse which was from time to time,
and in various reviews, poured forth upon Shelley himself. It cannot be
denied that some of the blemishes which it points out in _Endymion_ are
real blemishes, and very serious ones. The grounds on which one can
fairly object to the criticism are that its tone is purposely
ill-natured; its recognition of merits scanty out of all proportion to
its censure of defects; and its spirit that of prepense disparagement
founded not so much on the poetical errors of Keats as on the fact that
he was a friend of Leigh Hunt, the literary and also the political
antagonist of the _Quarterly Review_. The editor, Mr. Gifford, seems
always to have been regarded as the author of this criticism--I presume,
correctly so.
That Keats was a friend of Leigh Hunt in the earlier period of his own
poetical career is a fact; but not long after the appearance of the
_Quarterly Review_ article he conceived a good deal of dislike and even
animosity against this literary ally. Possibly the taunts of the
_Quarterly Review_, and the alienation of Keats from Hunt, had some
connexion as cause and effect. In a letter from John Keats to his
brother George and his sister-in-law occurs the following passage[16],
dated towards the end of 1818: 'Hunt has asked me to meet Tom Moore some
day--so you shall hear of him. The night we went to Novello's there was
a complete set-to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it
that, if I were to follow my own inclinations, I should never meet any
one of that set again; not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow
in the main, when you are with him--but in reality he is vain,
egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste, and in morals. He
understands many a beautiful thing; but then, instead of giving other
minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself professes,
he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and
self-love are offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine
things petty, and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent
to Mozart, I care not for white busts; and many a glorious thing, when
associated with him, becomes a nothing. This distorts one's mind--makes
one's thoughts bizarre--perplexes one in the standard of Beauty.'
For the text of _Adonais_ in the present edition I naturally have
recourse to the original Pisan edition, but without neglecting such
alterations as have been properly introduced into later issues; these
will be fully indicated and accounted for in my Notes. In the minor
matters of punctuation, &c., I do not consider myself bound to reproduce
the first or any other edition, but I follow the plan which appears to
myself most reasonable and correct; any point worthy of discussion in
these details will also receive attention in the Notes.