which Lord Houghton had not thought it worth while to print. Lord Crewe also discovered in 1904 a fragment of the manuscript of Keats's Ode to Fanny, of which Mr. de Sélincourt gave an account in Notes and Queries for the 4th of February 1905. And the Woodhouse transcript of the Sonnet "The day is gone" (pages 437-8 of this edition), now found in the same collection, varies from the Houghton text, hitherto adopted, by the transposition of the second and third quatrains. Mr. de Sélincourt gives the Woodhouse transposition in full, though only in his notes; but, as he pronounces the general effect of the whole sonnet "immeasurably enhanced" by the change, I presume that he would have adopted the new arrangement in the body of his book if he had had it in time. No other manuscript being then available, the choice lay between two hypotheses, (1) that Woodhouse's copy was made from a rough holograph which left a doubt and that the Houghton version was derived from a better holograph, and (2) that Lord Houghton himself transposed the quatrains from the Woodhouse copy. I think the sequence from line 12 to line 13 better than that from line 8 to line 13; and would leave the Sonnet as it is. Since the body of the present edition was printed I have had in my hands what is probably the holograph draft copied by Woodhouse, and have illustrated some remarks on it in The Bookman for October 1906 by means of a reproduction of the manuscript. Mr. de Sélincourt can quite properly claim this manuscript as evidence on his side; but it leaves me unconvinced. I can hardly suppose that Keats did not copy the Sonnet fairly for Miss Brawne; and I should expect her copy, if it were found, to show the quatrains arranged as in the Houghton text, and the reading light whisper in the third line as against the more significant but distinctly cacophonous tranc'd whisper of the newly discovered manuscript. The holograph is in the scrap-book lent to me by Mr. Sabin, of 118 Shaftesbury Avenue. In that book is a beautifully written manuscript of the Sonnet to Spenser (also "fac-simile'd" in The Bookman), which has great value in that it clears Keats of responsibility for the ridiculous line describing Phoebus with "a golden quill”: it turns out to be "a golden quell," wherever Keats may have got that bold and picturesque noun-whether from Macbeth ("our great quell") or out of his own head. He used it also in Endymion (II, 537, "a sovereign quell"); and he was quite capable of evolving the noun quell from the verb to quell, in sheer emulation of Leigh Hunt's liberties with the English language-the liberties of the "loved Libertas"! Mr. Sabin's book contains a third holograph-a leaf from a rough copy of The Eve of St. Mark, or of a part of that fragment. It is of very high interest, though the sixteen lines which I think it authorizes us to add to the fragment are not of equal quality with what we had already, and may have been specially rejected, not merely dropped with the whole scheme of the unfinished poem. The newly recovered passage deals with the essential legend which Dante Gabriel Rossetti told me he was convinced that Keats was going to treat as the back-bone of the poem-the legend about the wraiths of people who were in peril of death trooping into church on St. Mark's Eve. Rossetti identified the fragment with the poetic scheme mentioned in a letter to Fanny Brawne (COMPLETE edition, Volume v, page 185), and was of opinion that Bertha in The Eve of St. Mark had trifled with her lover and, now that he was sick, was to go to the cathedral porch and watch the wraiths going in, with the view of ascertaining whether her lover's wraith came out again— for those who were to die that year would not come out; but those who were to get well would. Keats simplified the legend: for him, all whose wraiths went in would die: here are the sixteen lines, which immediately precede line 99, Als writith he of swevenis, at page 342 of the present edition. Gif ye wol stonden hardie wight- For sooth to sain from everich house Wol come the Phantom and image Whom coldè Deathè hath in parle There is a rejected reading of the last couplet, which joins more perfectly than the final version does with line 99 And everichon shall by the[e] go of which the last three words seem to me to have been carelessly written for sayeth so. Appouchen in the fifth line is plain enough; but it seems likely that Keats meant to write Approchen. The British Museum holograph (Egerton 2780) shows, of course, no trace of this new passage; but it is not clear which was written last, the draft whereof the new passage is a fragment, or the Museum copy which is also a much revised draft. I have not been able to ascertain what bearing the copy sent to George Keats in the Winchester journal-letter of September 1819 has on the status of the new passage, as I do not know in whose possession that letter now is. But this is clear:both copies are drafts, showing Keats in the mood of composition and revision; and in both alike, for example, the first word in the line Gif that the modre (God her blesse) was first written as Iƒ and then altered to Gif, or, literally, to GIf. If he could be drafting The Eve of St. Mark twice, why not the Nightingale Ode? The beautiful draft of the HOUGHTON-CREWE collection is astonishingly mature. 66 Of work attributed to Keats in former editions and here excluded from the text there is very little; but of such rejection as has been necessary an account should be rendered. The poem and sonnet given in Lord Houghton's ALDINE edition (and others) as of doubtful authenticity are both omitted because I do not think that Keats had anything more to do with the poem than with the sonnet ("Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem "), which is to be found among Laman Blanchard's works, and is assigned to that author in several anthologies, as for instance in Leigh Hunt's Book of the Sonnet, Dr. Mackay's A Thousand and One Gems of English Poetry, and Mr. John Dennis's English Sonnets. Lord Houghton has recorded his belief that the sonnet was one of George Byron's forgeries" (ALDINE edition, page 493); but at page 326, the poem commencing with the words "What sylph-like form before my eyes," is introduced by a suggestion that there were genuine pieces among the forgeries sold at the George Byron "autograph" auction. My own belief is that, so far as the actual documents are concerned, all were forged; but that many of them were copies, in assumed hands, of genuine documents. Some of the Shelley letters certainly were; and I think it is only a question of time how soon this particular piece of verse shall be traced to the source outside Keats's work from which George Byron copied it. The song "Stay, rubybreasted warbler, stay," given at page 6 of the ALDINE edition, was probably sent to Lord Houghton from America. I omitted it because, in the scrap-book mentioned at page xxiv, containing a mass of transcripts by George Keats from his brother's poetry, this poem is not only written in George's hand but signed "G. K." instead of "J. K."; and indeed it seems to me more likely to be one of the effusions which George is recorded to have produced than an early poem by John. The occurrence of the song among the lately found Woodhouse papers of the HOUGHTON-CREWE collection induced Mr. de Sélincourt to enter it once more to the credit (or discredit) of Keats's account with the Muse, against the evidence of George Keats. I still think that George's claim holds good; but here are the verses, for those who wish to form an opinion on the subject. SONG. TUNE-"Julia to the Wood-Robin.” Stay while I tell thee, fluttering thing, So when in youth the eye's dark glance And when bleak storms resistless rove, E'en so the words of love beguile When Pleasure's tree no flower bears, And draw a soft endearing smile Amid the gloom of grief and tears. |