550

GUESSES AND A CERTAINTY

of the odes, or odes, or the playfulness and affectionate confidences of the letters, or dictating that tragical return against himself and his achievements in the revised Hyperion, could it and would it with experience have mellowed into such compassionate wisdom as might have made him one of the rare great healers and sages among the poets of the world?

Such speculations are as vain as they are inevitable. Let us indulge ourselves at any rate by remembering that it is the greatest among his successors who have held the most sanguine view as to the powers that were in him. Here are more words of Tennyson's,-'Keats, with his high spiritual vision, would have been, if he had lived, the greatest of us. There is something magic and of the innermost soul of poetry in almost everything which he wrote.' Leaving with these words the question of what he might have done, and looking only at what he did, it is enough for any man's glory. The days of the years of his life were few and evil, but above his grave the double aureole of poetry and friendship shines eternally.

APPENDIX

I. The Alexander fragment (page 33). Here is the text:Whenne Alexandre the Conqueroure was wayfayringe in y londe of Inde, there mette hym a damoselle of marvellouse beautie slepynge uponne the herbys and flourys. He colde ne loke uponne her withouten grete plesance, and he was welle nighe loste in wondrement. Her forme was everyche whytte lyke y fayrest carvynge of Quene Cythere, onlie thatte yt was swellyd and blushyd wyth warmthe and lyffe wythalle.

Her forhed was as whytte as ys the snowe whyche y talle hed of a Norwegian pyne stelythe from ye northerne wynde. One of her fayre hondes was yplaced thereonne, and thus whytte wyth whytte was ymyngld as ye gode Arthure saythe, lyke whytest lylys yspredde on whyttest snowe; and her bryght eyne whenne she them oped, sparklyd lyke Hesperus through an evenynge cloude.

Theye were yclosyd yn slepe, save that two slauntynge raies shotte to her mouthe, and were theyre bathyd yn sweetenesse, as whenne by chaunce ye moone fyndeth a banke of violettes and droppethe thereonne ye silverie dewe.

The authoure was goynge onne withouthen descrybynge y ladye's breste, whenne lo, a genyus appearyd-Cuthberte,' sayeth he, 'an thou canst not descrybe ye ladye's breste, and fynde a simile thereunto, I forbyde thee to proceede yn thy romaunt.' Thys, I kennd fulle welle, far surpassyd my feble powres, and forthwythe I was fayne to droppe my quille.

This queer youthful passage in a would-be Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde spelling seems scarcely worth taking trouble about, but I thought it worth while to try and trace what reading Keats must have been fresh from when he wrote it, and consulted both Prof. Israel Gollancz and Mr Henry Bradley, with the result stated briefly in the text. At first I had thought Keats must have drawn his idea from some one of the many versions of the

great medieval Alexander romance especially considering that in all forms of that romance a flight into the skies and a trip under the sea are regular incidents, and might later have suggested the parallel incidents in Endymion. But neither in the version which Keats is most likely to have known, the English Alisaunder as published in Weber's collection of metrical romances, 1810, nor indeed, I believe, in any other, is there any incident closely parallel to this of the Indian maiden; although love and marriage generally come into the story towards the close. In the English version there is a beautiful Candace who declares her passion for the hero: he puts her off for the time being, but goes disguised as an ambassador to her court, where he is recognized and imprisoned. Among things derived from the main medieval cycle, the nearest approach to such an idea as Keats was working on is to be found in the Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo, book ii, canto i, stanzas 6, 21-29; but here the beauty is a lady of Egypt whom Boiardo calls Elidonia. His description of the great painted hall of the giant Agramante at Biserta, adorned with pictures of the life and deeds of Alexander, closes with the following:

In somma, ogni sua guerra ivi è dipinta
Con gran richezza e bella a riguardare.
Poscia che fu la terra da lui vinta,

A due grifon nel ciel si fè portare,
Col scudo in braccia e con la spada cinta;
Poi dentro un vetro si cala nel mare,
E vede le balene e ogni gran pesce
E campa e ancor quivi di fuor n'esce.

Da poi che vinto egli ha ben ogni cosa,
Vedesi lui che vinto è dall' amore,

Perchè Elidonia, quella graziosa,

Co' suoi begli occhi gli ha passato il core

And then ensues the history of their loves and of the hero's death.

But Keats in his hospital days knew no Italian, and could only have heard of such a passage in Boiardo through Leigh Hunt. So I think the derivation of his fragment from any of the regular Alexander romances must be given up, and the source indicated in the text be accepted, namely the popular fabliau of the Lai d'Aristote (probably in Way's rimed version), where the thing happens exactly as Keats tells it, and whence the idea of the sudden encounter with an Indian maiden probably lingered in his

mind till he revived it in Endymion. As for the sources of the attempt at voluptuous description, it is a little surprising to find Milton's 'tallest pine hewn on Norwegian hills' remembered in such a connexion: other things are an easily recognizable farrago from Cymbeline,

'Cytherea,

How bravely thou becomest thy bed, fresh lily,
And whiter than the sheets !'

from Venus and Adonis,

'A lily prison'd in a gaol of snow;'

"Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white;'

from Lucrece,

-the morning's silver-melting dew;'

from Twelfth Night,

-'like the sweet sound

That breathes upon a bank of violets;'

and so forth. Prof. Gollancz suggests that 'Cuthberte' as the name of the author is a reminiscence from the 'Cuddie' of Spenser's Shepheard's Calendar, and that the 'good Arthure' may also be some kind of Spenserian reference: but I suspect 'Arthure' here to be a mis-transcription (we have no autograph) for 'authoure.'

II. Verses written by Brown and Keats after visiting Beauly Abbey (p. 295).-The text, of which there exist two separate transcripts, is as follows. I have printed in italics the lines which Keats, as he told Woodhouse, contributed to the joint work.

ON SOME SKULLS IN BEAULY ABBEY, NEAR INVERNESS

I shed no tears;

Deep thought or awful vision, I had none
By thousand petty fancies I was crossed.

Wordsworth.

And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by.

1

Shakspeare.

In silent barren Synod met

Within these roofless walls, where yet
The shafted arch and carved fret

Cling to the Ruin

The Brethren's Skulls mourn, dewy wet,

Their Creed's undoing.