corroborates the view that the reading recorded above is what Keats intended. It is, moreover, far more effective.
In stanza 7 there is little divergence to remark upon. In the last line Keats wrote last. Lord Houghton printed lost in 1848, but in the Aldine edition corrected to last. Mr. Buxton Forman, regarding the Aldine last as a misprint (as, indeed, it is quite likely to have been), reproduced in his editions the reading of the first edition.
2, Grove Place, Oxford.
FATHER PAUL SARPI IN EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE.
(See ante, p. 44.)
Another intimate friend of Father Paul's, even more so than Wotton, was that truly -excellent man William Bedell, afterwards Bishop of Kilmore, in Ireland. Sir Henry Wotton, in a letter which he addressed to King Charles I. in Bedell's interest, uses this expression : "This is the Man whom Padre Paulo took (I may say) into his very Soul " <' Life,' p. 32). Bedell was chaplain to Sir Henry Wotton in Venice for eight years, and Burnet, in his life of the bishop, has many sympathetic references to Father Paul, -and what follows may suffice in the way of quotation (p. 7) :
"P. Paulo was then the Divine of the State, a n>an equally eminent for vast learning and a most consummated prudence ; and was at once one of the greatest Divines, and of the wisest Men of his Age. But to commend the celebrated Historian of the Council of Trent, is a thing so needless that I may well stop ; yet it must needs raise the Character of Bedell much, that an Italian, who, besides the ^caution that is natural to the Countrey, and the prudence that obliged one in his circumstances to a more than ordinary distrust of all the World, was tyed up by the strictness of that Government to a very great reservedness with all people, yet took Bedell into his very Soul ; and as Sir Henry Wotton -assured the late King, He communicated to him the inwardest thoughts of his Heart, and professed that he had learnt more from him in all the parts of Divinity, whether Speculative or Practical, than irom any he had ever conversed with in his whole life. So great an intimacy with so extraordinary a person is enough to raise a Character, were there -no more to be added. P. Paulo went further, for -he assisted him in acquiring the Italian Tongue, in which Bedell became such a Master, that he spoke it as one born in Italy, and penned all the Sermons he then preached, either in Italian or Latine ; in this last it will appear by the productions of his Pen yet remaining, that he had a true Roman Stile, inferior to none of the Modern Writers, if not equal
to the Ancients The intimacy between them
grew so great and so publick, that when P. Paulo 'was wounded by those Assassinates that were set
on by the Court of Rome to destroy so redoubted
an Enemy, upon the failing of which attempt a
Guard was set on him by the Senate, that knew
how to value and preserve so great a Treasure ; and
much precaution was used before any were admitted
to come to him, Bedell was excepted out of those
rules, and had free access to him at all times."
Towards the close of the year in which he published his ' Life of William Bedell, Bishop of Kilmore,' viz., 1685, Bishop Burnet visited the city of Venice. By this time Father Paul was dead nearly sixty-three years, and the following is the only reference Burnet makes to him. I must say there is such an air of indifferency in his remarks as we should scarcely expect from a man who wrote the life of one of Father Paul's dearest friends (' Letters,' ed. 1687, p. 109) :
"I went to the Covent of the Servi but I found Father Paul was not in such consideration there as he is elsewhere ; I asked for his Tomb, but they made no account of him, and seemed not to know where it was ; it is true, the Person to whom I was recommended was not in Venice, so perhaps they refined too much in this matter. 1 had great Discourse with some at Venice concerning the Memorials out of which F. Paul drew his History, which are no doubt all preserved with great care in their Archives, and since the Transactions of the Council of Trent, as they are of great Importance, so they are become now much controverted by the different relations that F. Paul, and Cardinal Pallavicini have given the World of that matter ; the only way to put an end to all disputes in matter of fact is to Print the Originals themselves."
In a letter, without date, and from the initials addressed to Sir Henry Goodier, Dr. Donne mentions Father Paul by name and no more (p. 144) :—
"Justinian the Venetian is gone hence, and one Carraw come in his place : that State [Venice] hath taken a fresh offence at a Friar, who refused to absolve a Gentleman, because he would not expresse in confession what books of Father Paul, and such, he knew to be in the hands of any others ; the State commanded him out of that territory in three hours warning, and he hath now submitted himself, and is returned as prisoner for Mantua, and so remains as yet."
As far as I can make out, this is the only mention by Donne of Father Paul in the collection of 'Letters' published by his son in 1651. Turning, however, to 'The Life and Letters of John Donne' (2 vols., 1899), by Mr. Gosse what a wealth of most interest- ing matter he has brought together in this delightful biography, worthy alike of his subject and of himself ! I find the following bequest in Dr. Donne's will (vol. ii. p. 360) :
"To Doctor King my executor I give that medal of gold of the synod of Dort which the estates presented me withal at the Hague as also the two pictures of Padre Paolo and Fulgent io which hang in the parlour at my house at Paul's."
