tion I cannot make the distinction - Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation." To his brother he expressed it thus: "The Paradise Lost, though so fine in itself, is a corruption of our language. It should be kept as it is, unique, a curiosity, a beautiful and grand curiosity, the most remarkable production of the world; a northern dialect accommodating itself to Greek and Latin inversions and intonations. The purest English, I think - or what ought to be the purest is Chatterton's.... I prefer the native music of it to Milton's, cut by feet. I have but lately stood on my guard against Milton. Life to him would be death to me. Miltonic verse cannot be written, but is the verse of art. I wish to devote myself to another verse alone." 2 The difficulty in determining just what Keats meant by these utterances, with their failure to discriminate between style and language and their curious praise for the purity of Chatterton's manufactured language, is probably due to a vagueness in his own mind. It must be remembered that he wrote them, not in a carefully-worded preface, but in familiar letters presumably composed carelessly and in haste and in the mood that happened to be dominant at the time. By taking simply the parts that are clear and interpreting them literally, we arrive at the easy, definite, and commonly-accepted idea that the poem was abandoned because of its excessive use of such external Miltonisms as inversion. But so great a poem could hardly have been laid aside merely on account of a number of "Greek and Latin inversions and intonations," which as a matter of fact were not particularly numerous and might easily have been removed. Besides, such Latinisms are quite as characteristic of Wordsworth's best work - which Keats sincerely admired—as of Hyperion, and are indeed to be found in the noblest English blank verse. Why, then, was it discontinued? Clearly, because of some feeling? of constraint begotten by its Miltonic character. Yet it may be that Keats confused the fundamental similarity to Paradise Lost with some of the superficial marks of that similarity. The pith of his remarks is contained in the clause, "Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful, or, rather, artist's humour," that is, with self 1 Letter of Sept. 22, 1819. The reason alleged in the publishers' advertisement, that the reception given to Endymion "discouraged the author from proceeding," Keats himself branded as a "lie" (see De Sélincourt's edition, p. 487). 2 To George Keats, Sept. 17-27, 1819, the part quoted presumably being written on the 21st. In the letter to Reynolds noticed above he praised Chatterton's "genuine English Idiom in English words." As Robert Bridges remarks (Keats, 32-5), Keats "attributes his dissatisfaction to the style; but one cannot read to the end without a conviction that the real hindrance lay deeper.... he had not abused inversion in Hyperion." conscious effort as distinguished from natural self-expression, from the poet's "easy unpremeditated verse." As a result, "the true voice of feeling" seemed to him to be killed by "the false beauty proceeding from art"; he felt constrained and the poem seemed artificial. This "artful, or, rather, artist's humour" he attributed to the lack of "genuine English Idiom in English words"; but if he had removed the foreign idiom and words could he have completed the work? Apparently not. He seems to have gone over it marking its superficial Miltonisms, and was baffled by the result. "I cannot make the distinction," he exclaimed - "Every now and then there is a Miltonic intonation — But I cannot make the division properly. The fact is, I must take a walk." Does not this indicate that he failed to find the root of the difficulty, that he was troubled because removing the foreign words, idioms, and inversions did not remove the "false beauty proceeding from art" or the general Miltonic impression the poem produces? He was right in standing on his guard against Milton, and in thinking, "Life to him would be death to me"; but he apparently saw later that an influence so portentous to originality must go deeper than words and idioms. He might have inverted the inversions, changed the classical constructions, and dropped the foreign words if he had wished, but there would have remained the austere restraint, the impersonality and aloofness, the lack of color, warmth, and human interest, which deadened "the true voice of feeling." These qualities were not natural to him; he could assume them for a time, but the farther he proceeded in the poem the more conscious he grew of their constraint, until at last he found it intolerable. He came to feel that his enthusiasm for Paradise Lost had carried him out of his natural bent and led him to attempt a kind of work not suited to his powers.1 And he was right. For the greatness of Hyperion should not blind us, any more than it did him, to its defects. Nothing really happens in it; the central incident, the assembly of the Titans, to which the meeting of Thea and Saturn and in a way the account of Hyperion lead up, comes to nothing. No course of action is even discussed. So far as one can see, the intention is simply to introduce more characters and give a further picture of the fallen gods. To be sure, each of these scenes, as well as the deification of Apollo, does prepare for later action, but in what other epic is so little accomplished or even 1 The theory that Keats's ill health and hopeless love for Fanny Brawne made it impossible for him to go on with Hyperion fails to take account of the reason the poet himself gave, or to explain how, after abandoning his epic, he was able to compose most of his best work, including a piece as long as Lamia. > ? planned in the first nine hundred lines?1 Much noble description, O leave them, Muse! O leave them to their woes; For thou art weak to sing such tumults dire: A solitary sorrow best befits Thy lips, and antheming a lonely grief. That is, he felt unequal to the epic action that the poem required, and after writing one hundred and thirty lines more gave up the task. But the fragment was too good to be lightly discarded, and a few months later he tried recasting it. This later version, The Fall of Hyperion, was, be it remembered, his last important work and was probably laid aside because of failing strength. The clouds that hung low over the last sixteen months of Keats's life so dimmed his poetic powers and blurred his judgment that the second form of jo Hyperion is clearly inferior to the first. Furthermore, as the revision covers only a third of the original fragment, and as Keats said nothing of his plans concerning it, we have little idea what the later work was to have been. For these reasons a comparison of the two versions is sure to be perplexing and but partly satisfactory; yet the second does show an attempt on Keats's part to free himself from the aloofness and impersonality which had previously ham pered him. The most important difference between the two versions is that to the second is prefixed an entirely new beginning in which the poem becomes a vision or dream. This change from an epic to a vision is significant, for it indicates the difference in tone and manner between the two forms of the work? As the story may now be interrupted at any time, there is much more freedom in the manner of 1 In the words of Mr. Bridges (Keats, 33-4), “The subject lacks the solid basis of outward event, by which epic maintains its interest: like Endymion, it is all imagination...a languor... lingers in the main design." telling it; and, as the events are shown to the poet by Moneta, the last of the Titans, they come to us colored by the impressions of the two, Moneta and the poet, each of whom comments on them. Consequently the poem is less formal, less objective and impersonal; it is, to use Keats's own expression, "humanized."1 Even when the words of the first version remain, they gain a tenderness and pathos when spoken by the mourning Moneta of her fellow-Titans that they do not possess in their original form.2 Usually, however, there are omissions and slight changes which make the characters more human and moving, though less impressive. Compare, for instance, the following lines with the earlier form of them given on page 204 above: Along the margin sand large footmarks went His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead.3 Often the insertion of new passages of comment, interpretation, or description between the old ones tends to break the severity of the earlier fragment. For example, the fine line with which it opened, Deep in the shady sadness of a vale, though unchanged in the revised work, takes on an entirely different character: Side by side we stood (Like a stunt bramble by a solemn pine) Deep in the shady sadness of a vale Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn.' It will also be seen how the tender beauty of a passage like the following, introduced just before Saturn's first speech, softens the fallen Titan's lament: 1 The Fall, ii. 2. As the moist scent of flowers, and grass, and leaves Known to the woodland nostril, so the words Of Saturn fill'd the mossy glooms around . . . With sad, low tones, while thus he spake, and sent 2 To feel this, one has but to compare the opening lines of the second canto of The Fall with the corresponding passage in Hyperion (i. 158–68). 3 The Fall, i. 319-23. A better illustration, but one too long to quote, will be found in the two descriptions of Thea: ib. i. 332–40; Hyperion, i. 26–37. ▲ The Fall, i. 292-5; cf. also 319-40, 389-417, with Hyperion, i. 15–37, 83-112. The Fall, i. 404-11. It might be expected that in the revision Keats not only would have "humanized" the poem in these various ways, but would have eliminated those Miltonisms of style and diction which had formerly troubled him. Strange to say, he did nothing of the kind.1 Before recasting it he evidently came to realize how much deeper than these matters of expression the real trouble lay, and seems to have become quite indifferent to them. He certainly retained a number of external Miltonisms in the new version, "influence benign on planets pale," "Deity supreme," "of triumph calm," "voices of soft proclaim," "for rest divine," "with strides colossal."2 Likewise in the new lines that he wrote for The Fall he used freely such "Greek and Latin inversions and intonations" as "roof august," "with act adorant," "the faulture of decrepit things," and "That I am favour'd for unworthiness, By such propitious parley medicin'd In sickness not ignoble, I rejoice, Aye, and could weep for love of such award." So answer'd I, continuing.3 The use of adjectives for adverbs is more noticeable in The Fall than in the earlier version. Here, for example, are two instances within two lines: Soft mitigated by divinest lids Half closed, and visionless entire they seem'd.' New Miltonic constructions, such as "me thoughtless," "Moneta silent," are introduced, as well as no fewer than five borrowings from Milton. It is true that some of the changes Keats made do leave the poem less Miltonic, but these can be explained on grounds not connected with Paradise Lost." It is also true that the most Mil 1 None of the critics or editors seem quite clear as to why Keats abandoned the original poem or just what his purpose was in revising it, but all agree with Mr. Bridges (Keats, 41) that "the effect of an imitation of Milton is fairly got rid of from the Revision, and whole passages are excluded because they were too Miltonic, yet inversions and classicisms are used" (so, too, Hoops's edition of Hyperion, Berlin, 1899, pp. 29-30, 37; De Sélincourt, pp. 493, 516, 519–24; and L. Wolff's Keats, Paris, 1910, pp. 400-407, 568 n. 2). The following pages contain my reasons for thinking otherwise. The Fall, i. 414, 416, 433, 435, ii. 36, 39 (Hyperion, i. 108, 111, 128, 130, 192, 195). 3 i. 62, 283, 70, 182-6. i. 266-7. See also i. 27, 76, 124, 146, 159,217, 245, 301, 393, 397, 447, ii. 52. ' i. 368, 388. • See below, Appendix A. The only changes that might conceivably have been made in order to avoid the "excessive Miltonisms" of the first version are the following: a. The lines in Hyperion (i. 83-4), One moon, with alteration slow, had shed Her silver seasons four upon the night, |
