Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/287

 12 s. i. APRIL s, 1916.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

281

LONDON, SATURDAY, APRIL S, 1916.

CON TENTS.- No. 15.


 * NOTKS : A Real Keats, 281 The Witches of Warboyg :

Bibliographical Note, 283 Henry Fielding: Two Cor- rections Menai Boating Calamity Coincidences, 284 Casanova in England Kev. S. J. Stone's Hymns Very Rev. Patrick F. Brannan "Dat Galenus opes," &c., 285 Westminster Abbey : the Mansfield Monument, 286.

QUERIES : Madame St. Alban : Missing Gainsboroughs, 286 Church Goods Maxse as a Surname George Mason, Miscellaneous Writer Dr. Adam Neale Moses Griffith, Copperplate Engraver Pechey's ' Whole Works -of Sydenham ' Erzerum Annoyance Juries Biblio- graphy of Spanish Literature Wanted Sir Henry Cavendish, 287-ElSzabeth Evelyn-Radcliffe of Leigh : Fazakerley John Pigott of the 12th Regiment Authors of Quotations Wanted Milan : San Babila, 288-Sup- posed Miscarriage of Justice "As dead as Queen Anne" Horse washed with Rice, 289.

{REPLIES : Death Warrants, 289 The Emerald and Chastity Father Christmas and Christmas Stockings " By the skin of his teeth " Locker's ' London Lyrics ' : the Cosmopolitan Club, 291 "Blighty": "Cushy" Authors Wanted, 292 -'God save the King ' Claver- house, 293 Fires at Alresford, Hants St. Nicholas- Arms of Merton College, Oxford, 294 Effect of Opening a Coffin, 295 Sarum Missal: Hymn David Compigne, Clockmaker, 296 Powdered Glass Macaulay's Prince Titi, 297 " Blizard " or "Blizzard" as a Surname- Richardson, e. 1783 - Epitaphs at North Hinksey " Re- 'mainder " Gerald Griffin Heraldry " Terra rodata," 598 Gennys of Launceston " Jerry Builder," 299.


 * NOTES ON BOOKS : Fryer's 'New Account of East

India and Persia ' ' The Writer of the Anonymous Letter to Lord Monteagle ' Reviews and Magazines.

Notices to Correspondents.

A REAL KEATS. (See ante, pp. 108, 237.)

As there are still thoughtless readers of Byron who believe with him that Words- worth talked about flowers and not humanity, so there are Byron readers who believe with him that Keats was a snuffed-out weakling, also without thought of humanity, sensuous and self-pleasing. Keats had as much physical prowess with his weight-throwing as Byron with his swimming.

As to his real life for which Byron had his usual irresponsible contempt, in

" No more Keats, I entreat : flay him alive ; if some of you don't, I must skin him myself " ;

or his irrelevant pity (after Keats's death), in

" I would not be the person who wrote that homicidal article for all the honour and glory of the world "

Keats, full of this real life, wrote (Oct. 27, 1818), when 23, on

" the life I purpose to myself. I am ambitious of doing the world some good : if I should be spared, that may be the work of maturer years in the interval I will assay to reach to as high a summit in poetry as the nerve bestowed upon me will suffer. The faint conceptions I have of poems to come bring the blood frequently into my forehead. All I hope is, that I may not lose all interest in human affairs . . . . "

Every one can say that Keats had the artist in him strong against the didactic ; making him fear the literal, the peeping, the botanizing, the dissecting : he who anathema- tizes Newton for prying into Nature's laws :

Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? There was an awful rainbow once in heaven ; We know her woof, her texture ; she is given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine Unweave a rainbow.

And even as un-Keats-like a baronial builder as Scott was, soon after, to write :

" I am no great believer in the extreme degree of improvement to be derived from the advance- ment of science ; for every study of that nature tends, when pushed to a certain extent, to harden the heart, and render the philosopher reckless of everything save the objects of his own pursuit; all equilibrium in the character is destroyed."

Perhaps Keats would never have felt easy even under Wordsworth's confidence in all science finding its breath in higher poetry. But as to learning, knowledge, not to say philosophy, let him not be mistaken ; he longed to know, he had the will to know, and to say, as a poet :

When every childish fashion Has vanished from my rhyme, Will I, grey gone in passion, Leave to an after time Hymning and Harmony

Of thee [Milton], and of thy works, and of thy life ; But vain is now the burning and the strife ; Pangs are in vain, until I grow high-rife

With old Philosophy, And mad with glimpses of futurity.

And Milton it is whom he alludes to so often, as a guide in life : Milton and King Alfred. No weaklings, no whiners, these ; nothing, if not workers.

If Keats in 1817 did write: " Oh, for a life of sensations " by which did he mean more, intuitions ? " rather than thoughts " ; then, in " sensations," was he pleading for imagination, as Campbell, against " proud Philosophy," teaching what