Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/106

82 the poems for transcription from Brown, and, moreover, that they were all in Keats's autograph; and Brown is the last person who could be expected to honour George Keats by the preservation of one of his poems. This evidence, though not conclusive against the signature in the scrap-book, is at least as weighty; and I incline myself to restore the lines to John, though their quality is not such as to make that restoration an act of grace. If John indeed wrote them, he wrote them at a very early stage in his poetic career.

A sonnet 'On Peace' is also found in the Woodhouse transcript. It runs as follows:—

The sonnet is undated in the manuscript, but we can hardly be wrong in assigning it to 1814 or 1815. It was obviously inspired either by Napoleon's retirement to Elba or by the peace which followed upon the battle of Waterloo. The weakness of the sonnet would lead us to favour the earlier date. Again we notice a reminiscence of the early poems of Milton (the "sweet mountain nymph" being borrowed from 'L'Allegro'), whilst a phrase here and there suggests that Keats had already made the acquaintance of Wordsworth's 'Poems' of 1807.

Another early poem shows the influence of Wordsworth in a somewhat amusing way. In 1816, probably early in the year, Keats sent to his future sister-in-law, Georgiana Augusta Wylie, an "elegant" set of verses in the manner of Moore, then fashionable. Their first line runs:—

These stanzas were not published till 1883, when they appeared in Mr. Buxton Forman's monumental edition. They are to be found in the Woodhouse transcript, but for the name "Georgiana" in the first stanza is substituted "my dear Emma"; and in the third stanza for "And there, Georgiana," we read "There, beauteous Emma." It will be remembered that Emma or Emmeline, according to the exigencies of metre, was the name by which Wordsworth referred to his sister Dorothy, and there can be little doubt that Keats intended to veil the identity of his future sister-in-law under the same nom de plume.

The next point upon which our manuscript throws new light is the identity of the friend to whom Keats addressed his fine sonnet beginning,

This sonnet was first published by Lord Houghton in the 'Life, Letters,' &c., of 1848, with the title Sonnet, 'To John Hamilton Reynolds'; and it is generally attributed to February March, 1818, when Keats was at Teignmouth. No other manuscript of this poem is known to exist, so that it seems probable that Lord Houghton printed it from the Woodhouse transcript; but it is headed there 'To J. R.,' which, as Mr. Colvin has reminded me, would undoubtedly refer not to Reynolds—who always signed himself and was addressed J. H. Reynolds—but to James Rice, known to Keats and many of his circle as one of the wittiest and most lovable of men. Keats was in correspondence with Rice at the time when this sonnet is agreed to have been composed, so that there is no improbability in the matter; whilst it is quite easy to understand, when we consider the small part played by Rice in the literary life of Keats, how Lord Houghton might for the moment forget his existence, and interpret J. R. as referring to Reynolds.

My last note upon the contents of this Woodhouse transcript deals with that pathetic sonnet written by Keats late in 1819

which is preserved in a somewhat different form from that given to the world by Lord Houghton. In l. 3 Woodhouse reads tranced for light—far more in keeping with the spirit of the line, and more characteristic of Keats; whilst still more striking is the fact that the second and third quatrains are transposed. A truly Shakspearian effect, always striven after by Keats in his later sonnets, and often attained as no other poet has attained it, is secured by the repetition of the word "faded" when it is reserved for the climax of the sonnet, and the general effect of the whole is immeasurably enhanced. Thus:—