Line 1. _Adonais_. There is nothing to show positively why Shelley
adopted the name Adonais as a suitable Hellenic name for John Keats. I
have already suggested (p. 59) that he may perhaps have wished to
indicate, in this indirect way, that his poem was founded partly upon
the Elegy of Bion for Adonis. I believe the name Adonais was not really
in use among the Greeks, and is not anywhere traceable in classical
Grecian literature. It has sometimes been regarded as a Doricized form
of the name Adonis: Mr. William Cory says that it is not this, but would
properly be a female form of the same name. Dr. Furnivall has suggested
to me that Adonais is 'Shelley's variant of Adonias, the women's yearly
mourning for Adonis.' Disregarding details, we may perhaps say that the
whole subject of his Elegy is treated by Shelley as a transposition of
the lament, as conceived by Bion, of the Cyprian Aphrodite for Adonis;
and that, as he changes the Cyprian into the Uranian Aphrodite, so he
changes the dead youth from Adonis into Adonais.
1. 4. _Motto from the poet Plato_. This motto has been translated
by Shelley himself as follows:
'Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled:--
Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.'
1. 8. _Motto from Moschus_. Translated on p. 66, 'Poison came, Bion,'
&c.
1. 13. _It is my intention to subjoin to the London edition of this poem
a criticism_, &c. As to the non-fulfilment of this intention see p. 31.
1. 16. _My known repugnance ... proves at least_. In the Pisa edition
the word is printed 'prove' (not 'proves'). Shelley was far from being
an exact writer in matters of this sort.
1. 21. _John Keats died ... in his twenty-fourth year, on the [23rd] of
[February]_ 1821. Keats, at the time of his death, was not really in his
twenty-fourth, but in his twenty-sixth year: the date of his birth was
31 October, 1795. In the Pisa edition of _Adonais_ the date of death is
given thus--'the----of----1821': for Shelley, when he wrote his preface,
had no precise knowledge of the facts. In some later editions, 'the 27th
of December 1820' was erroneously substituted. Shelley's mistake in
supposing that Keats, in 1821, was aged only twenty-three, may be taken
into account in estimating his previous observation, 'I consider the
fragment of _Hyperion_ as second to nothing that was ever produced by a
writer of the same years.' Keats, writing in August, 1820, had told
Shelley (see p. 17) that some of his poems, perhaps including
_Hyperion_, had been written 'above two years' preceding that date. If
Shelley supposed that Keats was twenty-three years old at the beginning
of 1821, and that _Hyperion_ had been written fully two years prior to
August, 1820, he must have accounted that poem to be the product of a
youth of twenty, or at most twenty-one, which would indeed be a
marvellous instance of precocity. As a matter of fact, _Hyperion_ was
written by Keats when in his twenty-fourth year. This diminishes the
marvel, but does not make Shelley's comment on the poem any the less
correct.
1. 22. _Was buried in the romantic and lonely cemetery of the
Protestants in that city, under the pyramid which is the tomb of
Cestius._ As to the burial of the ashes of Shelley himself in a separate
portion of the same cemetery, see p. 23. Shelley lies nearer than Keats
to the pyramid of C. Cestius.
1. 33. _The savage criticism on his_ Endymion _which appeared in the_
Quarterly Review. As to this matter see the prefatory Memoirs of Shelley
and of Keats, and especially, at p. 39 &c., a transcript of the
criticism.
1. 35. _The agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood
vessel in the lungs._ See pp. 27 and 37, The _Quarterly_ critique was
published in September 1818, and the first rupture of a blood-vessel
occurred in February 1820. Whether the mortification felt by Keats at
the critique was small (as is now generally opined) or great (as Shelley
thought), it cannot reasonably be propounded that this caused, or
resulted in, the rupture of the pulmonary blood-vessel. Keats belonged
to a consumptive family; his mother died of consumption, and also his
younger brother: and the preliminaries of his mortal illness (even if we
do not date them farther back, for which some reason appears) began
towards the middle of July 1818, when, in very rough walking in the
Island of Mull, he caught a severe and persistent attack of sore throat.
1. 37. _The succeeding acknowledgments, from more candid critics, of the
true greatness of his powers._ The notice here principally referred to
is probably that which appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_ in August
1820, written by Lord Jeffrey.
1. 42. _Whether the poisoned shaft lights on a heart made callous by
many blows._ Shelley, in this expression, has no doubt himself in view.
He had had serious reason for complaining of the treatment meted out to
him by the _Quarterly Review_: see the opening (partially cited at p.
17) of his draft-letter to the Editor.
1. 44. _One of their associates is, to my knowledge, a most base and
unprincipled calumniator._ Shelley here refers to the writer of the
critique in the _Quarterly Review_ of his poem _Laon and Cythna (The
Revolt of Islam)_. At first he supposed the writer to be Southey;
afterwards, the Rev. Mr. (Dean) Milman. His indignant phrase is
therefore levelled at Milman. But Shelley was mistaken, for the article
was in fact written by Mr. (afterwards Judge) Coleridge.
1. 46. _Those who had celebrated with various degrees of complacency and
panegyric_ Paris, _and_ Woman, _and_ A Syrian Tale, _and Mrs. Lefanu,
and Mr. Barrett, and Mr. Howard Payne._ I presume that most readers of
the present day are in the same position as I was myself--that of
knowing nothing about these performances and their authors. In order to
understand Shelley's allusion, I looked up the _Quarterly Review_ from
April 1817 to April 1821, and have ascertained as follows, (1) The
_Quarterly_ of April 1817 contains a notice of _Paris in 1815, a Poem_.
The author's name is not given, nor do I know it. The poem, numbering
about a thousand lines, is in the Spenserian stanza, varied by the
heroic metre, and perhaps by some other rhythms. Numerous extracts are
given, sufficient to show that the poem is at any rate a creditable
piece of writing. Some of the critical dicta are the following:--'The
work of a powerful and poetic imagination.... The subject of the poem is
a desultory walk through Paris, in which the author observes, with very
little regularity but--with great force, on the different objects which
present themselves.... Sketching with the hand of a master.... In a
strain of poetry and pathos which we have seldom seen equalled.... An
admirable mirable poet.' (2) _Woman_ is a poem by the Mr. Barrett whom
Shelley names, termed on the title-page 'the Author of _The Heroine._'
It was noticed in the _Quarterly_ for April 1818, the very same number
which contained the sneering critique of _Endymion_. This poem is
written in the heroic metre; and the extracts given do certainly
comprise some telling and felicitous lines. Such are--
'The beautiful rebuke that looks surprise.
The gentle vengeance of averted eyes;'
also (a line which has borne, and may yet bear, frequent re-quoting)
'Last at his cross, and earliest at his grave.'
For critical utterances we have the ensuing:--'A strain of patriotism
pure, ardent, and even sublime.... Versification combining conciseness
and strength with a considerable degree of harmony.... Both talent and
genius.... Some passages of it, and those not a few, are of the first
order of the pathetic and descriptive.' (3) _A Syrian Tale._ Of this
book I have failed to find any trace in the _Quarterly Review_, or in
the Catalogue of the British Museum. (4) Mrs. Lefanu. Neither can I
trace this lady in the _Quarterly_. Mrs. Alicia Lefanu, who is stated to
have been a sister of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and also her daughter,
Miss Alicia Lefanu, published books during the lifetime of Shelley. The
former printed _The Flowers, a Fairy Tale_, 1810, and _The Sons of Erin,
a Comedy_, 1812. To the latter various works are assigned, such as
_Rosard's Chain, a Poem_. (5) Mr. John Howard Payne was author of
_Brutus, or the Fall of Tarquin, an Historical Tragedy_, criticized in
the _Quarterly_ for April, 1820. I cannot understand why Shelley should
have supposed this criticism to be laudatory: it is in fact unmixed
censure. As thus:--'He appears to us to have no one quality which we
should require in a tragic poet.... We cannot find in the whole play a
single character finely conceived or rightly sustained, a single
incident well managed, a single speech--nay a single sentence--of good
poetry.' It is true that the same article which reviews Payne's _Brutus_
notices also, and with more indulgence, Sheil's _Evadne_: possibly
Shelley glanced at the article very cursorily, and fancied that any
eulogistic phrases which he found in it applied to Payne.
1. 51. _A parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron._ I have
not succeeded in finding this parallel. The _Quarterly_ _Review_ for
July 1818 contains a critique of Milman's poem, _Samor, Lord of the
Bright City_; and the number for May 1820, a critique of Milman's _Fall
of Jerusalem_. Neither of these notices draws any parallel such as
Shelley speaks of.
1. 52. _What gnat did they strain at here_. The word 'here' will be
perceived to mean 'in _Endymion_,' or 'in reference to _Endymion_'; but
it is rather far separated from its right antecedent.
1. 59. _The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were
not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press_. See p.
22.
1. 63. _The poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of
life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius
than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care_. This
statement of Shelley is certainly founded upon a passage in the letter
(see p. 22) addressed by Colonel Finch to Mr. Gisborne. Colonel Finch
said that Keats had reached Italy, 'nursing a deeply rooted disgust to
life and to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the
very persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe.' The
Colonel's statement seems (as I have previously intimated) to be rather
haphazard; and Shelley's recast of it goes to a further extreme.
1. 68. _'Almost risked his own life'_ &c. The substance of the words in
inverted commas is contained in Colonel Finch's letter, but Shelley does
not cite verbatim.
* * * * *
+Stanza 1,+ 1. 1. _I weep for Adonais--he is dead._ Modelled on the
opening of Bion's Elegy for Adonis. See p. 63.