Keats

ymi

references to the tale, as every one knows, form part of the stock repertory of classical allusion in modern literature: and several modern writers before Keats had attempted to handle the subject at length. In his own special range of Elizabethan reading, he was probably acquainted with Lyly's court comedy of Endimion, in prose, which had been edited, as it happened, by his friend Dilke a few years before: but in it he would have found nothing to his purpose. On the other hand I think he certainly took hints from the Man in the Moon of Michael Drayton. In this piece Drayton takes hold of two post-classical notions concerning the Endymion myth, both in the first instance derived from Lucian,-one that which identifies its hero with the visible 'man in the moon' of popular fancy,-the other that which ra

on now

ts that shephe

mind so gen

cted, to the gr

?be, that him

queen) unto the

rivers beautifi

des bathe them

her the sea-ho

lue Nereide

ters goddes

mountains act

ongst the li

swift roes, Ph

t those that wi

es, doth the

stays not, b

dragons that he

mion pleased

eon, in twink

ng the

dyllic and lyric parts of his work, is closely kindred to his own-Fletcher in the Faithful

Ph?be, hunti

boy Endymion,

rnal fire th

y'd him softl

und with poppy

us, where she st

ntain with her

her sw

h his natural sensibility to the physical and spiritual spell of moonlight: but deeper and more abstract meanings than its own had gathered about the story in his mind. The divine vision which haunts Endymion in dr

a Greek, but no farther. The rooted artistic instincts of that race, the instincts which taught them in all the arts alike, during the years when their genius was most itself, to select and simplify, rejecting all beauties but the vital and essential, and paring away their material to the quick that the main masses might stand out unconfused, in just proportions and with outlines rigorously clear-these instincts had neither been implanted in Keats by nature, nor brought home to him by precept and example. Alike by his aims and his gifts, he was in his workmanship essentially 'romantic,' Gothic, English. A general characteristic of his favourite Elizabethan poetry is its prodigality of i

formations, and on endless journeyings by subterranean antres and a?rial gulfs and over the floor of ocean. The scenery of the tale, indeed, is often not merely of a Gothic vastness and intricacy; there is something of Oriental bewilderment,-an Arabian Nights jugglery with space and time,-in the vague suddenness with which its changes are effected. Such organic plan as the poem has can best be traced by fixing our attention on the main divisions adopted by the author of his narrative into books, and by keeping hold at the same time, wherever we can, of

cented

sweets to that

st in him; cold

hilliest bubble

on the mountai

es and wonders

un-rise and it

the living activities and operant magic of the earth? Not less excellent is the realisation, in the course of the same episode, of the true spirit of ancient pastoral life and worship; the hymn to Pan in especial both expressing perfectly the meaning of the Greek myth to Greeks, and enriching it with touches of northern feeling that are foreign to, and yet most harmonious with, the original. Keats having got from Drayton, as I surmise,

mighty palace

trunks, and

, glooms, the bi

wers in heavy

o see the ha

cks where meetin

solemn hours dos

melody of b

ces, where dank

ock to strang

hee, how mel

ose fair Syrin

ove's mi

embling mazes

s, gre

··

o the loud cl

nd anon to h

eating: Winde

ild-boars rout

man: Breather r

ldews, and all

trant of unde

wooning over

rearily on b

of the myst

universal k

son of

are come to

s about th

e is apt to make fever and unman them quite: as indeed a helpless and enslaved submission of all the faculties to love proved, when it came to the trial, to be a weakness of his own nature. He partly knew it, and could not help it: but the consequence is that the love-passages of Endymion, notwithstanding the halo of beautiful

is the

it is strange,

ough this middle

journing demi-

he harp-string,

rd than simp

and fearfully

cheek; and how

re; and how he

was love: and

be but love? H

rig of yew-tr

and then, that

t, as Northern

allad of his s

and an ala

A Naiad, in the disguise of a butterfly, leads Endymion to her spring, and there reveals herself and bids him be of good hope: an airy voice next invites him to descend 'Into the sparry hollows of the world': which done, he gropes his way to a subterranean temple of dim and most un-Grecian magnificence, where he is admitted to the presence of the sleeping Adonis, and whither Venus herself presently repairing gi

adown a so

s never sound

ps, some snow

lence, when u

k let forth a

itself to

religion strongly co

ugged arch, in

r Cybele-a

riot; dark fo

esty, and fro

rrets c

and alighting, presently finds a 'jasmine bower,' whither his celestial mistress again stoops to visit him. Next he encounters the streams, and hears the vo

e was a whelmin

ooler light;

by a sandy

y than doth

the earth wer

iant sea abo

handles this latter legend with great freedom, omitting its main point, the transformation of Scylla by Circe into a devouring monster, and making the enchantress punish her rival not by this vile metamorphosis, but by death; or rather a trance resembli

the green con

tting calm an

d rock this

hair was awf

ld beneath his

ntress turns and scathes her unhappy lover. In the same book the description of the sunk treasures cumbering the ocean-floor challenges comparison, not all unequally, with the famous similar passage in Shakspere's Richard III. In the halls of Neptune Endymion again meets Venus, and receives from her more explicit encouragement than heretofore. Thence Nereids

farewell to mortality and to Peona, and reunion with his celestial mistress in her own shape, make up a narrative inextricably confused, which only becomes partially intelligible when we take it as a parable of a soul's experience in pursuit of the ideal. Let a soul enamoured of the ideal-such would seem the argument-once suffer itself to forget its goal, and to quench for a time its longings in the real, nevertheless it will be still haunted by that lost vision; amidst all intoxications, disappointment and lassitude will still dog it, until it awakes at last to find that the reality which has thus allured it derives from the ideal its power to charm,-that it is after all but a reflection from the ideal, a phantom of it. What chiefly or alone makes the episode poetically acceptable is the strain of lyric poetry which Keats has put into the mouth of the supposed Indian maiden when she tells her story. His later and more famous lyrics, though they are free from the faults and immaturities which disfigure this, yet do not, to my mind at least, show a command over such various sources of imaginative and musical effect,

, merry Damsels!

so many, an

left your bo

, and gent

cchus, Bacchu

nque

Bacchus! good

e him thorough

lady fair,

ild mins

, jolly Satyrs!

so many, an

t your forest h

in oak-tre

wine we left

t our heath, an

ld mus

low Bacchus thr

athless cups and

lady fair,

ad minst

ual; and finally, returning to the opening motive, the lyric

then,

est s

be I nurse the

t to lea

eceiv

the world I l

is n

o, no

omfort a poor

rt her

er br

and her wooer

him "a native relish for poetry, and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm." In the main body of the work, beauties and faults are so bound up together that a critic may well be struck almost as much by one as by the other. Admirable truth and charm of imagination, exquisite freshness and felicity of touch, mark such b

as wondering

ive over-honeyed narrative; or again, a couplet forc

Scylla! Cursed

h, hast never

her on by a masterly touch o

O col

limbs, and lik

well took

ve to his own youth and temperament are joined others derived from an exclusive devotion to the earlier masters of English poetry. The creative impulse of the Elizabethan age, in its waywardness and lack of discipline and discrimination, not less than in its luxuriant strength and freshness, seems actually revived in him. He outdoes even Spenser in his proneness to l

mph of

ronal of ten

yonder

alf-fledged lit

wy forest, w

ef, young strang

the rose

of his imagery, by the use of compound and other adjectival coinages in Chapman's spirit-'far-spooming Ocean', 'eye-earnestly', 'dead-drifting', 'their surly eyes brow-hidden', 'nervy knees', 'surgy murmurs'-coinages sometimes legitimate or even happy, but often fantastic and tasteless: as well as by sprinkling his nineteenth-century diction with such archaisms as 'shent', 'sith', and 'seemlihed' from Sp

thought Keats had carried this method too far, even to the negation of metre. Some later critics have supposed the rhythm of Endymion to have been influenced by the Pharonnida of Chamberlayne: a fourth-rate poet remarkable chiefly for two things, for the inextricable

or which precedent may not be found in the work of almost every poet who employed it during the half-century that followed its brilliant revival for the purposes of narrative poetry by Marlowe. At most, he can

btless have saved him, had he been willing to listen. But he was determined that his poetry should at all times be the true spontaneous expression of his mind. "Had I been nervous," he goes on, "about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently without judgmen