LONDON, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1905.
CONTENTS.—No. 58.
NOTES:—Recently Discovered Keats MSS., 81—Father Paul Sarpi in Early English Literature, 84—Photographs and Lantern Slides: their Registration—Col. W. Light's Publications, 85—Patent Medicines—"Earpick"—"Swedenborgianism" in Philadelphia—William Kastell—New Year's Eve in Baskish—"Prosopoyall"—Christmas Custom in Somersetshire—Nathanael Taubman, 86—"Larcin": Bevan, 87.
QUERIES:—Englishmen under Foreign Governments—Eton Lists—Strahan, Publisher—"Harpist"—Sunset at Washington—Laurel Crowns at Olympia—"The hungry forties"—Halls of the City Companies—Cope of Bramshill—James and Jane Hogarth, 87—Kingsley Quotation—Roper—Sothern's London Residence—'Suffolk Mercury'—Faded Handwriting—Authors of Quotations Wanted—Kennington—Rev. Randolph Marriott—"And thou, blest star"—"Snowte": Weir and Fishery, 88—Torpedoes, Submarines, and Rifled Cannon—Baptist Confession of Faith, 1660—"Ælian"—Firearms—"Abraham Newland"—'The Phenix,' 1707—Verse on a Cook—Gladstone as Playwright, 89—Patents of Precedence, 90.
REPLIES:—Horseshoes for Luck, 90—Heraldic Mottoes Isabelline as a Colour—Southey's 'Omniana,' 92—Children at Executions—Loutherbourgh—Flying Bridge—Ruskin at Neuchâtel, 93—Ben Jonson and Bacon—"Dogmatism is puppyism full grown"—Heraldic—'The Northampton Mercury'—Count A. de Panignano: Holloway—Duelling—Bacon or Usher? 94—"Walkyn Silver"—Solitary Mass—Split Infinitive, 95—Rule of the Road—'Notes on the Book of Genesis,' 93—Mercury in Tom Quad—Hugh Percy—Disbenched Judges, 97—Arithmetic—Penny Wares Wanted—"Iland"—Felix Bryan Macdonough—Blake: Norman: Oldmixon—Sir T. W. Stubbs, 98.
NOTES ON BOOKS:—'The Garrick Club'—Sir George Trevelyan's 'American Revolution'—'The Shade of the Balkans'—Burton's 'Anatomy.'
Notes.
RECENTLY DISCOVERED KEATS MSS.
The rediscovery, in October last, of the Woodhouse transcript of 'The Fall of Hyperion,' which differs in some important respects from the printed version of the poem, and contains, moreover, twenty-one additional lines, has already been made known. With the consent of Lord Crewe, the owner of the manuscript, this has just been published, and with his kind permission, obtained through the good offices of Mr. Sidney Colvin, I am enabled to communicate to students of Keats some further matters of considerable interest. At the end of the manuscript is a small collection of minor poems, most of which are already familiar; but among them are two early poems which have never appeared in print, and there are some points arising from a study of the transcript which throw fresh light upon the poet's work. The earliest poem included in our manuscript bears the date August, 1814; it is therefore, so far as we know, only preceded among Keats's Juvenilia by the 'Imitation of Spenser,' which was written in 1813, and published among the 'Poems' of 1817. Of as little intrinsic value as its predecessor, it is, I think, of equal interest in the light it throws upon the influences which affected his early work. It runs as follows:—
And let me in it drown my soul:
But put therein some drug, designed
To banish women from my mind:
For I want not the stream inspiring
That fills the mind with—fond desiring,
But I want as deep a draught
As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd,
From my despairing heart to charm
The Image of the fairest form
That e'er my reveling eyes beheld,
That e'er my wandering fancy spell'd.
In vain! Away I cannot chace
The melting softness of that face,
The happiness of those bright Eyes,
That breast—earth's only Paradise.
My sight will never more be blest;
For all I see has lost its zest:
Nor with delight can I explore
The classic page, or Muse's lore
Had she but known how beat my heart,
And with one smile reliev'd its smart,
I should have felt a sweet relief
I should have felt "the joy of grief."
Yet as a Tuscan mid the snow
Of Lapland thinks on sweet Arno,
Even so for ever shall she be
The Halo of my Memory.
Aug. 1814.
Just as in the 'Imitation of Spenser' we only see the Elizabethan master through the veil of his later and more conventional imitators, so here we have the influence of the early poems of Milton acting upon the young poet, though he is only treating a conventional subject in a purely conventional manner; and the lines are interesting as certainly Keats's first experiment in the measure which he learnt from Milton and Fletcher, and was afterwards to bring to such perfection in 'Fancy' and 'The Eve of St. Mark.'
The next verses calling for comment are those entitled 'A Song,' of which the first line runs:—
Stay, ruby-breasted warbler, stay.
They were first printed by Lord Houghton among the early poems, but were omitted by Mr. Buxton Forman from his editions of Keats because, in a scrap-book
"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 reads more like one of the effusions which George is recorded to have produced than an early poem by John."
With this evidence before him Mr. Forman had no choice but to reject the lines; but their appearance in the Woodhouse transcript puts a somewhat different complexion on the matter. It is highly probable, as I have shown elsewhere, that Woodhouse obtained
