No More Learning

The Mermaid Tavern was an old inn in Bread Street, Cheapside. Tradition
says that the literary club there was established by Sir Walter Raleigh
in 1603. In any case it was, in Shakespeare's time, frequented by the
chief writers of the day, amongst them Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Selden, Carew, Donne, and Shakespeare himself. Beaumont, in a poetical
epistle to Ben Jonson, writes:

What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that any one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And has resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.


NOTES ON LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.

PAGE 131. l. 10. _bold Robin Hood. _ Cf. _Robin Hood_, p. 133.

l. 12. _bowse_, drink.

PAGE 132. ll. 16-17. _an astrologer's . . . story. _ The astrologer would
record, on parchment, what he had seen in the heavens.

l. 22. _The Mermaid . . . Zodiac. _ The zodiac was an imaginary belt
across the heavens within which the sun and planets were supposed to
move. It was divided into twelve parts corresponding to the twelve
months of the year, according to the position of the moon when full.
Each of these parts had a sign by which it was known, and the sign of
the tenth was a fish-tailed goat, to which Keats refers as the Mermaid.
The word _zodiac_ comes from the Greek +zodion+, meaning
a little animal, since originally all the signs were animals.


INTRODUCTION TO ROBIN HOOD.

Early in 1818 John Hamilton Reynolds, a friend of Keats, sent him two
sonnets which he had written 'On Robin Hood'. Keats, in his letter of
thanks, after giving an appreciation of Reynolds's production, says: 'In
return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope
they'll look pretty. ' Then follow these lines, entitled, 'To J. H. R. in
answer to his Robin Hood sonnets. ' At the end he writes: 'I hope you
will like them--they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry. '

Robin Hood, the outlaw, was a popular hero of the Middle Ages. He was a
great poacher of deer, brave, chivalrous, generous, full of fun, and
absolutely without respect for law and order. He robbed the rich to give
to the poor, and waged ceaseless war against the wealthy prelates of the
church. Indeed, of his endless practical jokes, the majority were played
upon sheriffs and bishops. He lived, with his 'merry men', in Sherwood
Forest, where a hollow tree, said to be his 'larder', is still shown.

Innumerable ballads telling of his exploits were composed, the first
reference to which is in the second edition of Langland's _Piers
Plowman_, c. 1377. Many of these ballads still survive, but in all these
traditions it is quite impossible to disentangle fact from fiction.


NOTES ON ROBIN HOOD.

PAGE 133. l. 4. _pall. _ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 268.

l. 9. _fleeces_, the leaves of the forest, cut from them by the wind as
the wool is shorn from the sheep's back.

PAGE 134. l. 13. _ivory shrill_, the shrill sound of the ivory horn.

ll. 15-18. Keats imagines some man who has not heard the laugh hearing
with bewilderment its echo in the depths of the forest.

l. 21. _seven stars_, Charles's Wain or the Big Bear.

l. 22. _polar ray_, the light of the Pole, or North, star.

l. 30. _pasture Trent_, the fields about the Trent, the river of
Nottingham, which runs by Sherwood forest.

PAGE 135. l. 33. _morris. _ A dance in costume which, in the Tudor
period, formed a part of every village festivity. It was generally
danced by five men and a boy in girl's dress, who represented Maid
Marian. Later it came to be associated with the May games, and other
characters of the Robin Hood epic were introduced. It was abolished,
with other village gaieties, by the Puritans, and though at the
Restoration it was revived it never regained its former importance.

l. 34. _Gamelyn. _ The hero of a tale (_The Tale of Gamelyn_) attributed
to Chaucer, and given in some MSS. as _The Cook's Tale_ in _The
Canterbury Tales_. The story of Orlando's ill-usage, prowess, and
banishment, in _As You Like It_, Shakespeare derived from this source,
and Keats is thinking of the merry life of the hero amongst the outlaws.

l. 36. '_grene shawe_,' green wood.

PAGE 136. l. 53. _Lincoln green. _ In the Middle Ages Lincoln was very
famous for dyeing green cloth, and this green cloth was the
characteristic garb of the forester and outlaw.

l. 62. _burden. _ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 503.


NOTES ON 'TO AUTUMN'.

In a letter written to Reynolds from Winchester, in September, 1819,
Keats says: 'How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A
temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste
weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye
better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field
looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me
so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it. ' What he composed
was the Ode _To Autumn_.

PAGE 137. ll. 1 seq. The extraordinary concentration and richness of
this description reminds us of Keats's advice to Shelley--'Load every
rift of your subject with ore. ' The whole poem seems to be painted in
tints of red, brown, and gold.

PAGE 138. ll. 12 seq. From the picture of an autumn day we proceed to
the characteristic sights and occupations of autumn, personified in the
spirit of the season.

l. 18. _swath_, the width of the sweep of the scythe.

ll. 23 seq. Now the sounds of autumn are added to complete the
impression.

ll. 25-6. Compare letter quoted above.

PAGE 139. l. 28. _sallows_, trees or low shrubs of the willowy kind.

ll. 28-9. _borne . . . dies. _ Notice how the cadence of the line fits
the sense. It seems to rise and fall and rise and fall again.


NOTES ON ODE ON MELANCHOLY.

PAGE 140. l. 1. _Lethe. _ See _Lamia_, i. 81, note.

l. 2. _Wolf's-bane_, aconite or hellebore--a poisonous plant.

l. 4. _nightshade_, a deadly poison.

_ruby . . . Proserpine. _ Cf. Swinburne's _Garden of Proserpine_.

_Proserpine. _ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63, note.

l. 5. _yew-berries. _ The yew, a dark funereal-looking tree, is
constantly planted in churchyards.

l. 7. _your mournful Psyche. _ See Introduction to the _Ode to Psyche_,
p. 236.

PAGE 141. l. 12. _weeping cloud. _ l. 14. _shroud. _ Giving a touch of
mystery and sadness to the otherwise light and tender picture.

l. 16. _on . . . sand-wave_, the iridescence sometimes seen on the
ribbed sand left by the tide.

l. 21. _She_, i. e. Melancholy--now personified as a goddess. Compare
this conception of melancholy with the passage in _Lamia_, i. 190-200.
Cf. also Milton's personifications of Melancholy in _L'Allegro_ and _Il
Penseroso_.

PAGE 142. l. 30.
_cloudy_, mysteriously concealed, seen of few.


INTRODUCTION TO HYPERION.

This poem deals with the overthrow of the primaeval order of Gods by
Jupiter, son of Saturn the old king. There are many versions of the
fable in Greek mythology, and there are many sources from which it may
have come to Keats. At school he is said to have known the classical
dictionary by heart, but his inspiration is more likely to have been due
to his later reading of the Elizabethan poets, and their translations of
classic story. One thing is certain, that he did not confine himself to
any one authority, nor did he consider it necessary to be circumscribed
by authorities at all. He used, rather than followed, the Greek fable,
dealing freely with it and giving it his own interpretation.

The situation when the poem opens is as follows:--Saturn, king of the
gods, has been driven from Olympus down into a deep dell, by his son
Jupiter, who has seized and used his father's weapon, the thunderbolt. A
similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by
Keats Titans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the
two races are quite distinct. These Titans are the children of Tellus
and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first
birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the
separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all
things, had reigned supreme. One only of the Titans, Hyperion the
sun-god, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by
young Apollo, the god of light and song.

In the second book we hear Oceanus and Clymene his daughter tell how
both were defeated not by battle or violence, but by the irresistible
beauty of their dispossessors; and from this Oceanus deduces 'the
eternal law, that first in beauty should be first in might'. He recalls
the fact that Saturn himself was not the first ruler, but received his
kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that
progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and
better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a
cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges his brethren to resist.

In Book I we saw Hyperion, though still a god, distressed by portents,
and now in Book III we see the rise to divinity of his successor, the
young Apollo. The poem breaks off short at the moment of Apollo's
metamorphosis, and how Keats intended to complete it we can never know.

It is certain that he originally meant to write an epic in ten books,
and the publisher's remark[245:1] at the beginning of the 1820 volume
would lead us to think that he was in the same mind when he wrote the
poem. This statement, however, must be altogether discounted, as Keats,
in his copy of the poems, crossed it right out and wrote above, 'I had
no part in this; I was ill at the time. '

Moreover, the last sentence (from 'but' to 'proceeding') he bracketed,
writing below, 'This is a lie. '

This, together with other evidence external and internal, has led Dr. de
Selincourt to the conclusion that Keats had modified his plan and, when
he was writing the poem, intended to conclude it in four books. Of the
probable contents of the one-and-half unwritten books Mr. de Selincourt
writes: 'I conceive that Apollo, now conscious of his divinity, would
have gone to Olympus, heard from the lips of Jove of his newly-acquired
supremacy, and been called upon by the rebel three to secure the kingdom
that awaited him. He would have gone forth to meet Hyperion, who, struck
by the power of supreme beauty, would have found resistance impossible.
Critics have inclined to take for granted the supposition that an actual
battle was contemplated by Keats, but I do not believe that such was, at
least, his final intention. In the first place, he had the example of
Milton, whom he was studying very closely, to warn him of its dangers;
in the second, if Hyperion had been meant to fight he would hardly be
represented as already, before the battle, shorn of much of his
strength; thus making the victory of Apollo depend upon his enemy's
unnatural weakness and not upon his own strength. One may add that a
combat would have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as
Keats conceived it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from
the speech of Oceanus in the second book. The resistance of Enceladus
and the Giants, themselves rebels against an order already established,
would have been dealt with summarily, and the poem would have closed
with a description of the new age which had been inaugurated by the
triumph of the Olympians, and, in particular, of Apollo the god of light
and song. '

The central idea, then, of the poem is that the new age triumphs over
the old by virtue of its acknowledged superiority--that intellectual
supremacy makes physical force feel its power and yield. Dignity and
moral conquest lies, for the conquered, in the capacity to recognize the
truth and look upon the inevitable undismayed.

Keats broke the poem off because it was too 'Miltonic', and it is easy
to see what he meant. Not only does the treatment of the subject recall
that of _Paradise Lost_, the council of the fallen gods bearing special
resemblance to that of the fallen angels in Book II of Milton's epic,
but in its style and syntax the influence of Milton is everywhere
apparent. It is to be seen in the restraint and concentration of the
language, which is in marked contrast to the wordiness of Keats's early
work, as well as in the constant use of classical constructions,[247:1]
Miltonic inversions[247:2] and repetitions,[247:3] and in occasional
reminiscences of actual lines and phrases in _Paradise Lost_. [247:4]

In _Hyperion_ we see, too, the influence of the study of Greek
sculpture upon Keats's mind and art. This study had taught him that the
highest beauty is not incompatible with definiteness of form and
clearness of detail. To his romantic appreciation of mystery was now
added an equal sense of the importance of simplicity, form, and
proportion, these being, from its nature, inevitable characteristics of
the art of sculpture. So we see that again and again the figures
described in _Hyperion_ are like great statues--clear-cut, massive, and
motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of
each of the group of Titans at the opening of Book II.

Striking too is Keats's very Greek identification of the gods with the
powers of Nature which they represent. It is this attitude of mind which
has led some people--Shelley and Landor among them--to declare Keats, in
spite of his ignorance of the language, the most truly Greek of all
English poets. Very beautiful instances of this are the sunset and
sunrise in Book I, when the departure of the sun-god and his return to
earth are so described that the pictures we see are of an evening and
morning sky, an angry sunset, and a grey and misty dawn.

But neither Miltonic nor Greek is Keats's marvellous treatment of nature
as he feels, and makes us feel, the magic of its mystery in such a
picture as that of the

tall oaks
Branch-charmed by the earnest stars,

or of the

dismal cirque
Of Druid stones, upon a forlorn moor,
When the chill rain begins at shut of eve,
In dull November, and their chancel vault,
The heaven itself, is blinded throughout night.

This Keats, and Keats alone, could do; and his achievement is unique in
throwing all the glamour of romance over a fragment 'sublime as
Aeschylus'.


NOTES ON HYPERION.

BOOK I.

PAGE 145. ll. 2-3. By thus giving us a vivid picture of the changing
day--at morning, noon, and night--Keats makes us realize the terrible
loneliness and gloom of a place too deep to feel these changes.

l. 10. See how the sense is expressed in the cadence of the line.

PAGE 146. l. 11. _voiceless. _ As if it felt and knew, and were
deliberately silent.

ll. 13, 14. Influence of Greek sculpture. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 18. _nerveless . . . dead. _ Cf. _Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 12, note.

l. 19. _realmless eyes. _ The tragedy of his fall is felt in every
feature.

ll. 20, 21. _Earth, His ancient mother. _ Tellus. See Introduction, p.
244.

PAGE 147. l. 27. _Amazon. _ The Amazons were a warlike race of women of
whom many traditions exist. On the frieze of the Mausoleum (British
Museum) they are seen warring with the Centaurs.

l. 30. _Ixion's wheel. _ For insolence to Jove, Ixion was tied to an
ever-revolving wheel in Hell.

l. 31. _Memphian sphinx. _ Memphis was a town in Egypt near to which the
pyramids were built. A sphinx is a great stone image with human head and
breast and the body of a lion.

PAGE 148. ll. 60-3. The thunderbolts, being Jove's own weapons, are
unwilling to be used against their former master.

PAGE 149. l. 74. _branch-charmed . . . stars. _ All the magic of the
still night is here.

ll. 76-8. _Save . . . wave. _ See how the gust of wind comes and goes in
the rise and fall of these lines, which begin and end on the same sound.

PAGE 150. l. 86. See Introduction, p. 248.

l. 94. _aspen-malady_, trembling like the leaves of the aspen-poplar.

PAGE 151. ll. 98 seq. Cf. _King Lear_. Throughout the figure of
Saturn--the old man robbed of his kingdom--reminds us of Lear, and
sometimes we seem to detect actual reminiscences of Shakespeare's
treatment. Cf. _Hyperion_, i. 98; and _King Lear_, I. iv. 248-52.

l. 102. _front_, forehead.

l. 105. _nervous_, used in its original sense of powerful, sinewy.

ll. 107 seq. In Saturn's reign was the Golden Age.

PAGE 152. l. 125. _of ripe progress_, near at hand.

l. 129. _metropolitan_, around the chief city.

l. 131. _strings in hollow shells. _ The first stringed instruments were
said to be made of tortoise-shells with strings stretched across.

PAGE 153. l. 145. _chaos. _ The confusion of elements from which the
world was created. See _Paradise Lost_, i. 891-919.

l. 147. _rebel three. _ Jove, Neptune, and Pluto.

PAGE 154. l. 152. _covert. _ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 221; _Eve of St. Agnes_,
l. 188.

ll. 156-7. All the dignity and majesty of the goddess is in this
comparison.

PAGE 155. l. 171. _gloom-bird_, the owl, whose cry is supposed to
portend death. Cf. Milton's method of description, 'Not that fair
field,' etc. _Paradise Lost_, iv. 268.

l. 172. _familiar visiting_, ghostly apparition.

PAGE 157. ll. 205-8. Cf. the opening of the gates of heaven. _Paradise
Lost_, vii. 205-7.

ll. 213 seq. See Introduction, p. 248.