University of Virginia Library

Notes on Keats's Letters
by
Hyder E. Rollins

THE FOLLOWING NOTES ON THE LETTERS OF John Keats (Oxford University Press, 1952) may be of interest or use to students.[1] In general they deal, not with problems of text or arrangement, which need further investigation, but with illustrations and explanations. A few are taken from annotations in Louis A. Holman's books, now in the Houghton Library, Harvard, and a few others were contributed by my students. Magazine titles are conventionally abbreviated, and other abbreviations used are:

• F. W. Haydon Benjamin Robert Haydon: Correspondence and Table-Talk. With a Memoir by His Son, 2 vols., 1876.
• Huxley Aldous Huxley, The Autobiography and Memoirs of Benjamin Robert Haydon, new ed., 2 vols., New York, n.d. [1926].
• K Keats.
• KC The Keats Circle, ed. Hyder E. Rollins, 2 vols., Harvard University Press, 1948.
• Lowell Amy Lowell, John Keats, 2 vols., Boston and New York, 1925.
• Milnes R. M. Milnes, Life, Letters, and Literary Remains, of John Keats, 2 vols., 1848.
• NED A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

The place of publication is given for books only when it is not London. The entry numbers refer to pages.

• xlvii Maria Jane Jewsbury did not visit Bailey in 1831. She married W. K. Fletcher on August 1, 1832, and she and her husband went to Colombo at the end of January, 1833.
• 7 "Mr Towers." According to Blunden, K-SJ, III (1954), 40, John Towers moved from 6 Little Warner Street, Clerkenwell, to Thanet, Kent, in 1819. "The Sonnet to the Sun." Holman says, "Undoubtedly written by

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  C.C.C." He adds that Clarke (see his Recollections of Writers [1878], pp. 199 f.) sent some verses, probably this sonnet, in December, 1818, to Hunt, who planned to, but did not, publish them in the Examiner. Holman's suggestion is interesting: it would explain why "one of the earliest things JK wrote," as Clarke told Woodhouse in August, 1823 (KC, I, 274), "was a Sonnet to the Moon wh: he gave to C.C.C."
• 8 In the Locker-Lampson "Great Album" (see p. xiii) a letter from K. to Severn, November 1, 1816 (see M. C. Bates, K-SJ, III [1954], 81 f.), shows that his engagement was for a first visit to Haydon's studio for breakfast on Sunday, November 3.
• 9 "Last Evening." Haydon refers to this evening, November 19, in his journal (Huxley, p. 252). It was then that he made the profile sketch of K., dated "Nov 1816-BRH," which is reproduced by Clarke Olney, Benjamin Robert Haydon (Athens, Georgia, 1952), p. 294, and others.
• 11 "Golden opinions . . . sorts of men." See Macbeth, I.vii.33.
• 14 "The new Tragedy." Manuel was written, not by "a young Lady of 16," but by C. R. Maturin. Though it "was received and announced for repetition with great applause" (New Monthly Magazine, VII [1817], 256 f.), Kean disliked and quickly killed it.
• 15 No. 10 is endorsed: "To W. F. Watson Esqre (Edinburgh—) With C Cowden Clarke's Regard, and best Wishes for Success in his interesting enterprise." William Finley Watson, bookseller (died 1881), bequeathed his collection of autographs, some 3000 items, to the National Gallery of Scotland, whence in 1930 it was transferred to the National Library.
• 19 "Jack." K. always addresses Reynolds by his surname, though he calls him "John" on pp. 43 (twice), 51 (twice), 61. Only Clarke is called by his first name (or a nickname) in the letters. "From my window." Holman says that Carisbrooke Castle could not be seen from Canterbury House "except from a modern bay window." Holman thought that K. lodged in a smaller house in Castle Road nearer the Castle from which he could see the latter. The two houses were in 1929 owned by brothers, and Holman supposed that in 1817 Mrs. Cook owned both.
• 20 In the comment on "some Fairy" (and elsewhere) W. W. Beyer, JEGP, LI (1952), 336 f., sees borrowings from William Sotheby's translation of C. M. Wieland's Oberon, X.11 f.
• 22 "Old Wood's a very Varmant." Is this a reference to Sir George Wood (1743-1824), who presided at the trial of R. G. Butt for libel (Examiner, April 27, 1817, p. 272)? Gaynor Bradish suggests that K. had in mind Swift's poem, "Wood an Insect," which pictures William Wood (1671-1730) as an insect with a coat of mail.
• 25 "150 Miles." The figure is incorrect unless he went to Margate via London. "Heaven, Hues and Prototypes." Compare Acts ii.9 f. "The Maid was fair." Compare Genesis xxiv.16, Esther i.11, ii.7. "Thus endeth." See the rubric of the Prayer Book. "Unsuperfluous lift," "faint Bowers," and "fibrous mould" (not "roots") are from "The Nymphs" in Leigh Hunt's

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  Foliage (1818), pp. xix, xx, xvii. A copy of that book, by the way, inscribed "John Keats/ from his affectionate friend the Author.—" is in the Houghton Library.
• 26 "Junkets." According to Milnes, I, 44, "an appellation given him [K.] in play upon his name, and in allusion to his friends of Fairyland." See also Clarke's Recollections of Writers (1878), p. 194.
• 28 On K.'s reading in Plutarch see J. L. Lowes, PMLA, LI (1936), 1098-1103.
• 30 K. often uses "feel" as a noun, no doubt encouraged by such phrases as "the blind feel of false Philosophy," "at the feel of Jove," "the feel of sleep" in Hunt's Foliage, pp. v, cxix, 55. On his usage see Woodhouse's comments in KC, I, 64.
• 33 "The Castle . . . Draw Bridge." He had in mind the Castle Joyeous and Pollente's toll bridge in The Faerie Queene, III.i.31-34, V.ii.4-28.
• 35 f. "Camel . . . Skyworks." J. L. Lowes, PMLA, LI (1936), 1109 f., says that the camel, Babel, "Ten Storyupinair" are taken from an engraving, "The Building of Babel," in Henry Southwell's (or Robert Sanders') Bible (1773), a copy of which K. owned.
• 36 "Though I say it as shouldn't say 't." Possibly K. noticed this commonplace in Beaumont and Fletcher's Wit at Several Weapons, II. ii. "Nicolini of the Kings Theatre." David B. Green, NQ, March, 1955, p. 124, suggests that K. took from the Spectator (an edition of which he owned), No. 405, June 14, 1712, this reference to Nicolino Grimaldi (1673-1726), who sang at the King's, later the Haymarket, Theatre.
• 37 "The Defiance." According to Cary's New Itinerary for 1819, the Defiance left Belle Sauvage, Ludgate Hill, at 7.45 a.m. and reached the Mitre Inn, Oxford, around 3 p.m.
• 40 No. 21 also has a blurred postmark "MINCHINHAMPTON 10" preceded by a manuscript note "Missent to."
• 43 "So real a fellow." K. uses "real" to express the highest praise: see pp. 83, 144, 177.
• 50 "Stummed up." NED defines the verb as "?set going, worked up." Bailey endorsed No. 25: "I think this letter will be a groundwork for a defence of poor Keats's having had Hunt for a Patron.—which is so shamelessly insisted on by the writers of Blackwds. B B—" Also in Taylor's hand, but scratched out, are lines from Hamlet, I.iii.5 f., 9, "As for Hamlet & the trifling of his favour Hold it a fashion & a toy in blood The perfume &c."
• 56 "Hopkinses and black beetles." Richard Van Fossen notes that Henry John Hopkins matriculated at Magdalen Hall on March 17, 1815, and received the A.B. degree in 1819 (Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses [Oxford, 1888], I, 688), and suggests that "black beetles" is slang for the Oxford beadles. Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang (1949), p. 58, defines "black beetles" as "the lower classes."
• 58 Bailey endorsed No. 28, "Respecting Hunt's Conduct to Keats—" If K. actually wrote No. 28 on Monday, November 3, 1817, he waited two

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  days to post it. The paragraph beginning "Yesterday Rice" (p. 61) may well have been a November 4 continuation.
• 61 Two longer "advertisements" to "Z." appeared in the Examiner, November 16, December 14, 1817, pp. 729, 788. "Z." replied to Hunt in Blackwood's, January, 1818 (II, 414-417), refusing to give his name and indulging in further abuse.
• 63 The Wednesday in November, 1817, on which K. wrote No. 29 was November 5, 12, or 19. He was at Burford Bridge on November 26. No. 30 should follow No. 31, as Lowell, I, 446 f., showed long ago. No. 31 was written either on November 21 or else in the late morning or early afternoon of November 22, 1817 ("I am just arrived at Dorking"), and was postmarked at Leatherhead, the post town some three miles distant. No. 30 was written late at night on the 22nd after K. "went up Box hill this Evening . . . came down—and wrote some lines" of Endymion. Lowell was puzzled by the postmarks attributed to No. 30. She did not realize that it is printed from a transcript by Woodhouse, who gave the date of writing "(Leatherhead 22d Novr 1817)." K. actually was staying at Burford Bridge (see the postscript to No. 31), and No. 30 was probably mailed at Leatherhead, some three miles away, on November 23.
• 64 "Soothly to sain." Compare "sooth to sayne" in Troilus and Criseyde, III.430, and The Shepherd's Calendar, "May," line 158.
• 65 The "advertizement . . . to Poets" appeared in the Chronicle on November 20, p. 2. Reynolds did not "lack" poems because he was in charge of the poetry department of the Champion.
• 66 Bailey endorsed No. 31, "Extracts from this letter might be made with great credit to the <poor> unfortunate writer's memory. BB." All Bailey's endorsements were designed for Taylor's use in his proposed biography of K.
• 67 "To compare great things with small." See Paradise Lost, II.921 f., X.306; Paradise Regained, IV.563 f.
• 69 K. says that he stayed in town to meet Christie at Reynolds', presumably on or about November 21. He fails to say that (according to William Godwin's diary, as Mr. Lewis Patton tells me) he dined at Shelley's with Hunt and Godwin on November 18. He may have begun No. 32 earlier than December 21, 1817, for Jeffrey's transcript omits some words (possibly even a page) after the first sentence, an omission that J. G. Speed, editing the letters in 1883, p. 7, duplicated. At any rate, the second sentence of the letter as transcribed was written in the morning or afternoon of December 21, the sentence beginning "I have had two" late at night, presumably also on December 21. Kean was absent from Drury Lane for several weeks in November and December. The playbill for December 8 mentions his "continued and severe indisposition." See K.'s words on p. 113 about "poor Kean."
• 70 "Riches." In his diary Godwin (so Mr. Patton tells me) notes that at Riches he saw Lamb, Talfourd, and K. "Lord Ellenborough . . . his

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  own coin." According to Lord Campbell, The Lives of the Chief Justices, III (1857), 225, Ellenborough presided at the second and third trials, December 19, 20, 1817, of Hone for publishing scandalous libels (K. is referring to the third as reported in the Examiner, December 21, pp. 806 f.), and the jury's verdict of not guilty "was followed by a tremendous burst of applause, which he could not even attempt to quell," while it was popularly believed that he "was killed by Hone's trial, and he certainly never held up his head in public after." Horace and James Smith are still well known; their brother was Leonard (1778-1837). Thomas Jonathan Wooler (1786?-1853), editor of the Black Dwarf (1817-1824), had been tried before another judge on June 5 for libeling the ministry, and was acquitted (Examiner, June 8, pp. 361, 366-368).
• 71 f. "Christmas pantomime." K. probably saw the first performance, December 26, 1817, of Harlequin's Vision. If he went to the second, December 27, then this part of the letter was written on December 28 before he attended Haydon's "immortal dinner" (pp. 74 f.). K. probably learned about Shelley's difficulty with Laon and Cythna from Godwin, who notes in his diary for December 25, 1817 (so Mr. Patton tells me), "Meet Keats." For "Sooth la!" see Antony and Cleopatra, IV.iv.8. For a discussion of how K. met Wordsworth at Monkhouse's around December 15, 1817, see T.O. Mabbott, NQ, May 10, 1941, pp. 328 f. "The Penetralium of mystery." Garrod, K. (Oxford, 1926), p. 33 n., has "tried to believe that Keats knew better" and wrote "Penetralia." But what may be believed of R.M. Milnes, who (II, 52) speaks of the poet's "access to that inmost penetralium of Fame"?
• 74 "Wordsworth . . . his Daughter." Kathleen Coburn, The Letters of Sara Hutchinson (1954), p. 114 n., thinks that K. saw Wordsworth, Mrs. Wordsworth, and Miss Hutchinson. Dora Wordsworth was at the time with her aunt, Dorothy, at Rydal Mount. On Joseph Ritchie see Annals of Philosophy, July, 1818 (XII, 72 f.), and particularly Captain George Francis Lyon, A Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa, in the Years 1818, 19, and 20 (1821).
• 75 "Bob Harris in the Slips." The slips are the sidings from which scenery was pushed on the stage. Thomas Harris, chief proprietor and manager of Covent Garden for many years, died on October 1, 1820. Whether Bob Harris was related to him I do not know. K. calls Bologna a middling Harlequin," but the European Magazine, January, 1817 (LXXI, 64) says that he is "decidedly our best Harlequin."
• 76 "Loveless . . . affraid it is gone." W. J. Bate suggests that the reference is to Loveless, the rake-hero of Colley Cibber's Love's Last Shift (1696) or its sequel, Sir John Vanbrugh's Relapse (1696), which was rewritten as Sheridan's Trip to Scarborough (1777).
• 78 In No. 36 * the name "Bewick" is heavily scratched out. As the same thing is true of "Bewick" in No. 59, one might suppose the canceler to have been Haydon's son, Frederic Wordsworth Haydon.

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• 79 "In town two days." If the first sentence of No. 40 is to be taken literally, K. returned home on the night of January 12, 1818. With "uproar's your only music" compare K.'s "How many bards," line 14, "pleasing music, and not wild uproar."
• 81 Because K. asked his sister on February 27, 1819 (p. 283), "to teach me a few common dancing steps," his biographers assume that at least up to that time he could not dance. He went to dances three times in January, 1818 (pp. 76, 81), on February 19, 1819 (pp. 285, 296), and on January 11, 1820 (p. 449). A non-dancer could hardly have seen that Rice danced "as if he was deaf" (p. 76) or have expressed an intention of not leaving Scotland "without having got the Highland fling" (p. 162). Instead of "Brown is returned from Hampstead" K. should have written "to Hampstead" or "from Hampshire," since Brown (see p. 75) was apparently at Bedhampton.
• 84 "Milton's Hair." On Hunt's "Collection of Locks of Hair" see Blunden, Leigh Hunt (1930), pp. 368-373. The Milton lock is now in the University of Texas Library.
• 85 "Your Sermon." A Discourse Inscribed to the Memory of the Princess Charlotte Augusta, published anonymously by Taylor and Hessey, 1817. It was praised by Coleridge and was reviewed by Dilke in the Champion, March 22, 1818 (KC, I, 8, 10, 20).
• 86 "What hindered me from writing so long." Yet he had finished and presumably mailed No. 37 to them only four or five days before. Compare the first sentence of No. 50.
• 87 "But who's afraid? . . . demme if I am." David B. Green reminds me that this is a quotation (repeated on p. 113) from the part of Horace Smith's Nehemiah Muggs that K. copied, "Pooh! Nonsense! damme! who's afraid?" (see p. 100 n.).
• 89 "Scott." The reference cannot be to Sir Walter. Hunt and John Scott had waged a bitter war about Byron in the Champion and the Examiner during 1816. Naturally Hunt suspected his old enemy (whom Tom K. had met in Paris) of having written the Cockney School attacks. John Scott wrote to the publisher, Robert Baldwin, so Elmer Brooks tells me, January 24, 1819, of having seen two issues of Blackwood's: "I sent to England for them because some one had said (I was told) that I had written the scandalous articles on Mr. Hunt! Articles I read with disgust and abhorrence." Haydon at first thought that "Z." was Daniel Terry (1780?-1829), playwright, and next Christopher North (Huxley, I, 265, 290).
• 91 "As the old song says." Perhaps a reference to Isaac Watts's "Innocent Play" in his Divine Songs . . . for the Use of Children, Song 2 (Poetical Works, III [1807], 90), "But Thomas and William, and such pretty names,/ Should be cleanly, and harmless, as doves, or as lambs,/ Those lovely sweet innocent creatures." "Sigh . . . sigh." Woodhouse and Garrod, K.'s Poetical Works (Oxford, 1939), p. 542, interpret the word as a cockneyism for "say."
• 97 "The Mermaid lines." E. F. Madden, Harper's New Monthly Magazine,

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  LV (1877), 361, has the following important comments based on a now lost letter of K.: "He [K.] alludes to an evening at the 'Mermaid' with Horace Twiss and Horace Smith, saying their being together at this place revived thoughts of Ben Jonson, Fletcher, Beaumont, and others who used to assemble there in days of yore. Upon the occasion in question Keats composed the lines commencing,
  "'Souls of poets dead and gone . . . .
  
  "'Reynolds, Dilke and others,' says Keats, 'were pleased with this beyond any thing I ever did.' In this letter Keats alludes to the fondness of Twiss for repeating extempore verses—written, however, at home—and incloses a very clever take-off on him and his verses by Horace Smith."
• 101 "A sheet of Endymion." This remark indicates that, once again, Jeffrey made large omissions from a letter written on more than one day. When K. began it, the printers had done nothing on Endymion, and he was anticipating an indefinite delay; before he finished it, he had seen one printed sheet, and he thought that the printers would soon have the entire poem set up.
• 104 "By not writing." Actually he had written No. 47 just seven days or less (see the preceding note) before. Compare the odd apology with which he begins No. 41.
• 105 Wilkie's "Bathsheba" was also condemned in the Examiner, February 15, 1818, p. 107, but the New Monthly Magazine, March, 1818 (IX, 156), said that it was "calculated greatly to aggrandize his fame." K. actually wrote "Leslie's Uriel," confusing the pupil with his teacher (see K-SJ, I [1952], 38). "Uriel in the Sun," impressively reproduced as Plate XLI in E. P. Richardson's Washington Allston (Chicago, 1948), now belongs to Harvard's Fogg Museum, where it reposes ignominiously in storage. In a passage Jeffrey omits in No. 50 "Le Mesurier's image" is mentioned. I observe that one Isaac Lemesurier, aged 53, died at Edmonton in July, 1818 (Monthly Magazine, August [XLVI, 79]).
• 106 "I have not seen Hunt since." Perhaps he meant to write "since January 21" (p. 84). Instead of a "new Poem" Scott published The Heart of Midlothian in the following June.
• 108 "13 Line Page 32" of the printed Endymion shows no change from K.'s own manuscript. See Garrod, K.'s Poetical Works (Oxford, 1939), p. lxxxvi.
• 112 "Tom desires to be remember'd." But Bailey did not know Tom: see KC, II, 279.
• 113 "Lodgment . . . glacis." Norman Holland observes that these military terms were suggested by Tristram Shandy. Compare "giving such clear ideas of the differences and distinctions between the scarp and counterscarp,—the glacis and covered way,—the half-moon and ravelin" (Vol. II, chapter 1); "the talus of the glacis" (VI, 21); "When the duke of Marlborough made a lodgment,—my uncle Toby made a lodgment too" (VI, 22); "[The morning] was that of the storm of the counterscarp" (VI, 24).

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• 118 "Damn me if I shoul'nt like him to damn me." The first three words were scratched out apparently by K. They were, accordingly, omitted by Haydon when he transcribed the letter in his autobiography (Huxley, I, 277), but he and F. W. Haydon, II, 9, printed "I should like him to damn me." The deletion completely changes the meaning of the sentence: K., who admired the vitriolic letter to Gifford, would hardly have wished to be similarly damned.
• 119 "When I die I'll have." After "have" about six lines are heavily scratched out. All I can read is "Lear placed on my head, Macbeth in my hand, othello on my heart, Romeo & Juliet on my lips and be covered up with the others, & the Midsummer dream on one side of my head[?] & the Tempest on the other." They are ignored by F. W. Haydon, II, 9 f., whose changes in the letters he prints are surprising. "Haslitt . . . Crown & Anchor." Howe, The Life of William Hazlitt (1922), p. 250, says, "This proposal did not eventuate." In the revised edition (1947), p. 227, the sentence reads, "This proposal eventuated in April." The Examiner, March 29, p. 201, announced that Hazlitt "is now re-delivering [the lectures] at the Crown and Anchor."
• 120 "A ramance is a fine thing." Woodhouse notes, "It had been suggested that a romance was an improper title for the book" (Endymion).
• 121 As for Salmasius' "unhappy end" Walter Mac Kellar, The Latin Poems of John Milton (New Haven, 1930), pp. 41 f., remarks: "The general success of Milton's Defense . . . reduced Salmasius to utter chagrin, cost him the favor of the Queen [Christina of Sweden], and so undermined his health that he shortly died." From the inscription in Guzman d' Alfarache (1634), "John Keats From his Friend Js Rxxx 20th April 1818," Holman believed that Rice spent the week-end of April 18-20 with K. at Teignmouth, and from him Lowell, I, 616-618, took over the idea.
• 124 Colvin, editing K.'s Letters (1891), p. 91 n., says that K. could only have seen an engraving of Claude's "Enchanted Castle" by François Vivarès and William Woollett. Hewlett, A Life of John K. (1949), p. 156, adds that the picture was in William Wells's home, Redleaf, near Sevenoaks, Kent.
• 135 "An awful while." Only eighteen days, but compare the apologies for dilatory writing on pp. 72, 86.
• 139 For attempted explanations of "pip-civilian" see J. M. Murry and Roberta D. Cornelius in TLS, July 9, August 6, 1938, pp. 466, 520.
• 141 "Fly the garter." "A game," says NED, citing this as the first of two examples, "in which the players leap from one side of a 'garter' or line of stones over the back of one of their number."
• 142 "Chequer works . . . a Milkmaid." Perhaps he was thinking of "the Milkmaid singeth blithe" and "Dancing in the Chequer'd shade" of "L'Allegro," lines 65, 96.
• 144 "Moore's present . . . is real." Howe, The Life of William Hazlitt (1947), pp. 227 f., thought that K. referred to The Fudge Family, a copy of which (3d ed., 1818) on April 27, 1818, Thomas Moore inscribed to Hazlitt

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  "as a small mark of respect for his literary talents & political principles." It was small indeed, not "real" in the sense in which K. (pp. 43, 83, 177) used the word. When he wrote this sentence K. had not met Moore (p. 251), and, as Holman acutely noted, K. and Reynolds could hardly have known of his gift of a book six days after it was made, particularly since Reynolds was ill in London, K. a visitor in Teignmouth. Hazlitt disliked and disparaged Moore (see P. G. Patmore, My Friends and Acquaintance, III [1854], 136-138), while Moore was far too poor to make a "real" present. Holman is certainly correct in thinking the present a gift of money and the giver Peter Moore (1753-1828), M.P., one of the managers of Drury Lane, a rich man who patronized Sheridan. K. would almost inevitably have seen Peter Moore "at the Theatre just before I left Town."
• 149 In the Hampstead K. (New York, 1938), I, lxxxv, Naomi Kirk says that George K. married on June 4, 1818 (see also p. xxxiii). June 4 seems impossible, for writing here on that very day K. says that the marriage took place "a Week ago," that is, about May 28.
• 150 On No. 69 Bailey wrote: "There is so much amiable feeling & tenderness in this that I think it might be printed entire, or very copious extracts made from it. B B." He also put a brace in the margin to call attention to the striking sentence ending "dying for a great human purpose."
• 153-209 The letters on the tour of Scotland cannot be fully understood without consulting Brown's journal ("Walks in the North," Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal, October 1, 8, 15, 22, 1840) and Nelson S. Bushnell's A Walk after John K. (New York, 1936). Both supply essential dates and other facts.
• 164 "Richard Bradshaw." Brown calls him Richard Radshaw, and gives many picturesque details about him.
• 170 "I have missed a day from fanny's Letter." Bushnell, p. 282, explains, "Because he had written her on the evening of the third in Kirkcudbright [see p. 166], and again on the morning of the fifth at Newton Stewart" (see p. 169). K. missed July 4 in both Nos. 74 and 75.
• 171 "Some Ruins." That is, of Glenluce Abbey (1190), a mile and a half northwest on Luce Water.
• 173 "Squab and lean." "Squab" means short and stout. Probably K. intended to repeat "squat" (pp. 82, 171).
• 174 n. Lowell is credited with saying that Bailey's and K.'s signatures appear in "the visitors' book of Holy Trinity Church," Stratford-on-Avon, October 2, 1817. She merely followed Colvin, John Keats (1920), p. 150, who presumably had seen the book.
• 175 "His rigs of Barley." The refrain of Burns's "It was upon a Lammas night."
• 176 "'A curious old Bitch'." The phrase reminds one of James Humphry, a Mauchline mason (died 1844), who often referred to himself

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  as "Burns's blethering bitch" (see DeLancey Ferguson, Pride and Passion [New York, 1939], p. 85).
• 179 "It wont do." See the same words on pp. 249, 386. Here they mean that Dilke at a glance will see that the poem is not a genuine folk-song. "27 Miles from Stranraer." Presumably he means twenty-seven miles from Portpatrick, via Stranraer and Cairn Ryan to Ballantrae. At this point, unhappily, Brown's journal ends, for reasons he gives in KC, II, 38.
• 181 "Two Ruins." Robert Heron, Observations Made in a Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland (Perth, 1793), II, 326 f., says that the "ruinous castle of Baltersan . . . standing near [to Maybole], I should suppose to have been a palace for the abbots" of Crossraguel Abbey.
• 182 "Kean . . . at Glasgow." According to Giles Playfair's Kean (New York, 1939), pp. 137, 152, Kean acted at Glasgow every night in Holy Week, 1815.
• 183 Oddly enough No. 78 was in the possession of Severn, who on October 6, 1845 (KC, II, 131 f.), offered to send it to Milnes. The latter accepted the offer, and had a copy made which is now in the Harvard K. Collection.
• 187 K. says that The Stranger "has been scoffed at lately almost to a fashion." Mrs. Clement Parsons, The Incomparable Siddons (1909), pp. 156-158, observes that, though Mrs. Siddons played in it twenty-six times in 1798, the "British critics, to a man, fell upon the play." K. probably knew the parody by James Smith in Rejected Addresses (1812) and Reynolds' characterization, in the Champion, March 2, 1817, of the play as "among the worst" specimens of German drama. Yet the European Magazine (LXIX, 445) gave great praise to performances in May, 1816, and later, May, 1818 (LXXIII, 432), attacked it only on moral grounds.
• 190 No. 79 has in the address not "T. Bailey" but "I. Bailey" (died 1822), who lived at Thornley Abbey, near Peterborough. It was probably John Bailey's hand that forwarded this misaddressed letter to his newly ordained son.
• 196 No. 80 was printed in part by J. F. Clarke in the Louisville Western Messenger, July, 1836 (I, 820-823). Clarke, p. 773, thought K.'s letters "of a higher order of composition than his poems." Burns gave K. the word "sax" for "six."
• 207 In No. 82 Mrs. Wylie's address is given (by John Jeffrey) as Henrietta Street. Her sister, Mrs. Millar, had that address; Mrs. Wylie lived in Romney Street.
• 208 The "Jessy" reference is just as likely to be to R. A. Smith's "Jessie the Flow'r o' Dumblane, a favorite Scottish Song," which the European Magazine, January, 1816 (LXIX, 49 f.), reviewing the fourth edition, said "has obtained more popularity than any other [song] that has appeared for a considerable time."
• 218 Since No. 87 * is endorsed by Tom, that unfortunate boy must have read the ominous comments therein made on him.

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• 219 "Vincent." Holman notes that Grant Richards, in his Author Hunting (1934), p. 25, says that K. meant Vincent Novello, adding, "But K. would not be calling him by his Christian name."
• 220 f. Colvin, editing K.'s Letters (1891), p. 167 n., identified J. S. as John Scott. Lowell, II, 89, denied the identification because Scott "was still abroad" in October, 1818. Actually Scott's journal, partly printed in his Sketches of Manners (1821), shows (p. 166) that he was in England and that he first reached Calais on November 23.
• 222 "The Tale." Gittings, John K. (1954), p. 23, thinks the reference is to a prose tale of St. Agnes' Eve which K. proposed to base on Boccaccio, and which he told George on October 16 (p. 237) he was about to begin. See also p. 252. J. M. Murry, K. (1955), pp. 139 f., rejects these ideas, and declares that Reynolds "was almost certainly referring to Isabella."
• 230 Henry Wylie appears to have lived with his aunt, Mrs. Millar, in Henrietta Street.
• 231 "Coming the Richardson." W. J. Bate suggests "becoming," that is, coming to be like Richardson, who rakes and rummages (p. 433), makes mountains out of molehills (p. 408), and with self-satisfaction (p. 318) gives gossipy accounts of social and especially amorous intrigue.
• 233 "Notwithstand." K. uses this obsolete variant of "notwithstanding" again on pp. 239, 394.
• 248 K. called Payne's Brutus "very bad." Yet it was produced on December 3 with (as the next night's program says) "the most unbounded and rapturous approbation." At the December 4 performance it "experienced a reception even surpassing those torrents of loud and rapturous approbation." A smash hit, it was also given on December 5, 7-12, 14-19, 21-23 (after which Kean left for the provinces), January 13-16, 18-23, 25-29, February 1-4, 6, 8, 10, 12 (forty-one nights). Then after Miss Porter's Switzerland (p. 297) failed, it was presented again on February 16, 18, 20, March 1. Payne got £183 for the play, while Drury Lane made £10,000 (J. F. Molloy, The Life . . . of Edmund Kean, II [1888], 47).
• 251 f. Alan Strout reminds me that Blackwood's, May, 1818 (III, 162-168), reviewed a Rodwell and Martin edition of Walpole's letters to George Montagu, and suggests that Martin owned the single letter of Walpole's that was printed in the October and Walpole's nine letters printed in the November issues (IV, 40 f., pp. 148-155).
• 255 "His first engraving." In Louisville George K. had a "miniature of a dog by Hy Wylie in mezzotinto" (Rollins, More Letters [Cambridge, Mass., 1955], p. 24).
• 256 "Scott . . . the scotch novels." He means Scott and Byron as poets and then Scott as a novelist. He had surely read in the Examiner, May 17, 1818, p. 313, the statement that Scott's "secret . . . is no longer kept."
• 266 "African Kingdom." Summaries of T. E. Bowdich's "mission" to Ashantee are given in the Annals of Philosophy, January, 1818 (XI, 9-13), and the Gentleman's Magazine, December, 1818 (LXXXVIII, ii, 556), but,

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  like his book, they differ from K.'s account. Sarah Wallis Bowdich (1791-1856), afterwards Mrs. Robert Lee, herself a popular author, is not mentioned in Bowdich's Mission (1819).
• 270 On Monday, December 21, 1818, K. went to Walthamstow in the morning and then dined with Haydon (pp. 254 f.), and so the Tuesday on which he wrote No. 101 seems likely to have been December 15. On December 14 he had called on Mrs. Wylie, Mrs. Millar, Hazlitt, and presumably Mrs. Reynolds (pp. 246, 248).
• 271 "Salmon." "Sammons, my model," "my old corporal," who "was 6 feet 3 inches tall" (Huxley, I, 143, 217, 281).
• 279 Mr. Gittings (who has published interesting details about the persons named in this letter) suggests to me that the "girls in Havant" were the daughters of Mat Snook, a cousin of John Snook. He also tells me that John Blagden was a former mayor of Chichester, who in 1819 was a bankrupt.
• 283 "Always pay the postage." Yet in writing to Fanny K. he paid the postage only on this letter and No. 135.
• 285 "Our Brother in laws' cousin's." The phrase proves that Mrs. Wylie and Mrs. Millar were sisters. K. heard of Miss Millar's dance on December 14, 1818 (p. 248). See also p. 296.
• 287 Perhaps the "dreadful fire" was that of March 8 mentioned in the Examiner, March 14, p. 176. No. 118 has endorsements by Severn, F. R. Franz, and Locker Lampson. The last also put his autograph on other letters, as Nos. 163, 168, 239.
• 292 Among sums owing to K. but not repaid were, according to George (Rollins, More Letters, p. 28), £40 or £50 loaned to Wilkinson (see p. 18).
• 293 "Birkbeck's sons." Morris Birkbeck had four sons and three daughters. Perhaps the reference here is to the eldest son Richard (born 1795), who married at Albion, Illinois, in 1820 or 1821. See Robert Birkbeck, The Birkbecks of Westmorland (privately printed, 1900), pp. 101 f.
• 295 With the mock leave-taking at the end of No. 122 compare K.'s words on p. 420.
• 304 Kean acted Hotspur in 1 Henry IV (Stephen Kemble was Falstaff) at Drury Lane on March 9, 11 (when K. was in town), and April 30, and, said the Examiner, March 13, p. 170, disappointed everybody. March 11, which K. called "stifling," actually had cloudy weather with temperatures ranging from 41° to 48°.
• 306 "That sweet sleep." See Othello, III.iii.332.
• 313 Hodgkinson was certainly alive and prosperous in May, 1826 (KC, I, 299 f.).
• 323 "Playing young gooseberry." The usual phrase is "playing old gooseberry," that is, making havoc with.
• 324 Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang (1949), throws light on K.'s slang, as "Tom"gin, and "ruin blue"gin of poor quality.

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• 325 On K.'s dream see Elizabeth Schneider, Coleridge, Opium, and "Kubla Khan" (Chicago, 1953), pp. 50 f.
• 327 Sara Hutchinson, Letters, ed. Kathleen Coburn (1954), p. 154, says of Reynolds' parody: "Some People attribute the latter to H. Smith. . . . but I believe it is Hazlitt (tho Wm says H. could not write anything so foolish) because there are some expressions & rhymes, in the extracts which we have seen, that occur only in Peter Bell which Hazlitt saw many years ago. . . . The false one is very stupid, but I have no doubt that it has helped the sale of the true one." In K.'s printed review Barbara Lewthwaite, the heroine of Wordsworth's "Pet Lamb," is not mentioned.
• 328 "A new dull and half damn'd Opera." But The Heart of Midlothian was presented on April 17, 19, 20, 22, 26, 27, 29—sixteen times by June 12. Henry Barker's panorama, "representing the north coast of Spitzbergen," was advertised in The Times for April 19, the day on which K. visited it.
• 341 After finishing this long letter on May 3 K. presumably called on his sister. See p. 295, the conclusion of No. 122, which was written on May 1, not April 17.
• 343 "Your Honiton Letter." Evidently Sarah Jeffrey accompanied K. and Tom in the chaise to Honiton, and then wrote them a note after their departure for Bridport and London. Observe that in writing to her mother No. 65 (which Sarah may have carried back) K. mentioned only Marian and Fanny Jeffrey, and that No. 128, obviously to Sarah, ends, "I shall ever remember our leave-taking with you." Later K. described the Jeffreys, in whose house he and Tom had lodged, as "some Acquaintances" (p. 347). That there was (p. lvi) a fourth Jeffrey girl is altogether unlikely.
• 346 Fairly close to K.'s Boiardo anecdote is this passage from Leigh Hunt's Stories from the Italian Poets (New York, 1846), pp. 239 f.: "There is said to have been a tradition at Scandiano, that having tried in vain one day, as he was riding out, to discover a name for one of his heroes, expressive of his lofty character, and the word Rodamonte coming into his head, he galloped back with a pleasant ostentation to his castle, crying it out aloud, and ordering the bells of the place to be rung in its honour; to the astonishment of the good people." E. H. Wilkins tells me that Hunt followed some such source as Giovanni Maria Mazzuchelli's Gli scrittori d' Italia (Brescia, 1753), II, iii, 1438, and adds: "Keats perhaps heard the story from Hunt, but he might have heard it from W. S. Rose or T. J. Mathias or some other English man of letters interested in Italian literature."
• 355 In the address of No. 136 everything after "Miss Brawne" is printed, as if K. wished to disguise his handwriting. A postmark shows that he prepaid the postage.
• 363 On K.'s idea of "introducing an Elephant" into Otho see the comments in M. W. Disher's Greatest Show on Earth (1937), p. 78.
• 371 Naturally puzzled, even affronted, by No. 144, Taylor forwarded it to Woodhouse, who copied part of it in his letter-book, and then wrote a long explanation of it to Taylor on August 31 (KC, I, 81-85).

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• 375 "A gimlet through my Ears." Compare K.'s sonnet, "The House of Mourning," lines 11 f.
• 376 On K.'s lodgings and walks in Winchester see W. C. Forman, Cornhill Magazine, n.s., L (1921), 144-146.
• 379 f. K.'s harangue on climate, agriculture, and the Chinese follows, says H. E. Briggs, PMLA, LIX (1944), 596-598, Robertson's History of America (Dublin, 1777), I, 343-345, and Hazlitt's essay "On Manner" in The Round Table, I (1817), 111-124.
• 382 "Brown . . . three weeks." Brown's son wrote in 1890 (KC, I, lvi): "In August 1819, when Brown left Keats at Winchester, he went over to Ireland and married Abigail Donohoo," and K.'s biographers usually change "August" to "September" and accept his words. But Brown left Winchester sometime after September 5, he was certainly in Bedhampton when K. played his practical joke on Benjamin early in September (pp. 427 f.), he received four letters at Chichester from K. on September 23 (p. 425), and he was apparently back at Winchester before October 1 (p. 431), certainly by October 3 (p. 434). See Brown's Life of John K., ed. Dorothy Bodurtha and Willard B. Pope (1937), p. 108.
• 386 "You'll pardon me for being jocular." H. E. Briggs, MLN, LIX (1944), 572, notes that Master Vellum (see p. 26) says this three times in Addison's Drummer.
• 389 "Line of circumvallation." K. remembered "The lines of circumvallation" in Annals of the Fine Arts, I (1817), 263 n.
• 391 Sir Herbert Warren, Nineteenth Century, XCIII (1923), 65 n., says that "peroccupatus" "would be an excellent word if only . . . [it] were Latin."
• 400 "I dined with your Mother . . . in Henrietta Street." That is, in Mrs. Millar's home (see the note on p. 207). On pp. 419 f. K. again tells of dining with the Wylies at Mrs. Millar's house. The Millars, as usual on such occasions, were away, this time "at old Mrs So and So's who was like to die."
• 405 Cantos I and II of Don Juan were published in July, 1819, with the names of author and publisher omitted. Abbey read to K. Canto I, stanza 218, possibly from the Monthly Review, LXXXIX (1819), 317. Holman thought that "the coffee-german'" was only another name for Hodgkinson.
• 407 "Manchester . . . Hunt's." On Henry Hunt's triumphal entry into London on September 13 (after the Peterloo Massacre of August 16, 1819) see the Monthly Magazine, XLVIII (1819), 280.
• 413 n. In connection with the 1820 review of K. in the Edinburgh it is worth remembering that on July 13, 1820 (see The Times, October 30, 1928, p. 19), Reynolds wrote to Jeffrey, tactfully urging him to notice the Lamia volume.
• 421 K.'s remark, "seven years ago it was not this hand that clench'd itself against Hammond" cannot point "to an early stage in the rupture"

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  with Hammond. "Seven years ago," September, 1812, he had been with Hammond a year, and he stayed three further years. Incidentally, Mrs. Thomas Hammond died at Edmonton in July, 1817 (Monthly Magazine, XLIV [1817], 84).
• 422 "A relation of the Bishop of Winchester." That is, Francis North (1772-1861), sixth Earl of Guildford, master of St. Cross, son of Brownlow North (1741-1820), bishop of Winchester. See W. C. Forman, Cornhill Magazine, n.s., L (1921), 145.
• 425 "A misunderstand." NED cites only George Meredith, 1864, for this noun. But K. loved to use verbs, like "harass" and "feel," as substantives.
• 426 K. could not remember what he did on May 1, 1819, but at least on that day he wrote No. 122 to his sister, and the Dilkes dined with him and Brown.
• 427 On the strike of the Manchester and Selford weavers see the Monthly Magazine, September, October, 1818 (XLVI, 186, 280).
• 435 "Ah hertè mine!" Often in Troilus and Criseyde, as IV.1214, 1216, V.939.
• 438 f. The hurry in which K. wrote No. 165 and the leisureliness of No. 166 would suggest that their order be reversed were it not that their postmarks (not reproduced in any of the editions) show No. 165 to have been stamped at noon, No. 166 at 7 p.m.
• 440 "From Holl and." Perhaps K. intended "Holland." Two attorneys named Charles Holland are listed in the directories. "Frank M. Citing." The name, David B. Green tells me, actually is Frank M. Etting. Colonel Etting (1833-1890) willed his collection of autographs and other manuscripts, about 20,000 items, to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Edgartown, Massachusetts, by the way, was long the home port of Arctic whaling ships.
• 450 It is worth noting that the world premiere of Otho was at St. Martin's Theatre, London, November 2, 1950, with Robin Bailey as Ludolph. "George . . . to the play." They saw The Comedy of Errors at Covent Garden, January 10, a night in which Drury Lane presented an opera, The Siege of Belgrade.
• 453 "I can see nothing but dullness." These comments resemble the conclusion to Shelley's Peter Bell the Third, the manuscript of which Leigh Hunt received at the end of 1819.
• 466 The incident of K.'s forgetting to ask the hungry, tired Reynolds to stay for lunch is reproduced, says R. F. Rashbrook, NQ, November 13, 1948, p. 499, in K.'s sonnet, "The House of Mourning," "want of cheer/ After a walk up hill to a friend's cot."
• 468 H. B. Forman suggested that No. 187, like Nos. 213, 214, 223, was addressed to Mrs. Brawne because of "a sensitiveness to observation from any unaccustomed quarter." Annotating that comment, James Russell Lowell wrote: "I believe it rather one of those archaisms of which K. was

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  overfond. How if he were playing with a fancy of Mrs Anne Page?" Lowell might also have cited Mrs. Joanna Baillie.
• 472 In connection with the references to Rousseau, it should be noted that K. owned a copy of La nouvelle Héloïse (KC, I, 259). "Thank God I am born in England," etc. Perhaps these insular remarks were influenced by Wordsworth's sonnet "Great Men," in which France is said to have "equally a want of books and men."
• 484 "All the Letters are on one side." In September, 1819 (KC, I, 94), Woodhouse said of writing letters to K.: "I promised amendment, & stipulated (as Paddy says) 'that all the reciprocity should not be on one side.'"
• 489 K.'s "pleasantry about not dating" No. 215 "from such a place as this" really concerns, not the date, but the street-name "Wesleyan Place."
• 507 No. 227 could scarcely have a postmark as it was carried by the Gisbornes (see Leigh Hunt's Correspondence, I [1862], 158). They sailed from Dover to Calais on September 3 and reached Leghorn about October 10 (F. L. Jones, Maria Gisborne [Norman, Oklahoma, 1951], p. 9).
• 508 "Advising me not to publish." According to N. I. White, Shelley (New York, 1940), I, 504, Shelley gave this advice in 1817 but "helped him to print his volume after advising against it."
• 509 "At my lunes." See The Merry Wives of Windsor, IV.ii.21, and The Winter's Tale, II.ii.80.
• 510 "I am indicating," etc. Evidently a pun on the Indicator, which on August 2 and 9 had been devoted solely to glowing comments on the Lamia volume but on August 16 contained only a very dull fairy tale. The reference in No. 231 to "my Lodgings" is to 2 Wesleyan Place, where at least for a time K.'s books and other belongings remained after he had moved into Hunt's home. Certainly he would not have called the Hunts (or later the Brawnes) "thieves."
• 511 "My Taylor." K. owed him £30 or £40, which George ordered Abbey to pay in 1825 (Rollins, More Letters, pp. 26, 28).
• 523 "Care Giovanni." Was this the courier mentioned on p. 526?
• 527 It is somewhat misleading to say that K. had a letter of introduction from Sir Thomas Lawrence to Canova. Sharp, The Life . . . of Joseph Severn (1892), pp. 48, 50, says that Lawrence gave a letter to Severn.
• 529 K. and Severn went ashore at Naples, not on November 1 (see p. xxxii), but on October 31, when K.'s passport was registered. The passport (now at Harvard) was viséed at the British Legation on November 6 and by the Papal Consulate General on November 7. Hence K. and Severn must have started for Rome on November 7 or 8. They reached Rome, not on November 17 (p. xxxii), but certainly by November 15, on which date (see the Bulletin of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Rome, No. 2 [1913], pp. 94 f.) Prince Torlonia's bank paid K. (or Severn) 92 scudi on his draft against Taylor and Hessey. It is of interest that Henry Matthews (The Diary of an Invalid, 2nd ed. [1820], pp. 167-169) left Rome by carriage before daybreak on February 9, 1818, spent the night at Terracina, and reached Naples

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  after dark on February 10. On the return trip (pp. 227 f.) he left Naples on April 5, slept at Capua, spent the night of April 6 at Velletri, and reached Rome in time for breakfast the next morning.
• 531 No. 242 took exactly three weeks to reach Brown, whose reply, No. 242 *, took almost as much time, reaching Rome, as an omitted postmark shows, on "9 Gennaio."

Notes