APPENDIX. Page 2, note 1.-As to the exact date of Keats's birth the evidence is conflicting. He was christened at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, Dec. 18, 1795, and on the margin of the entry in the baptismal register (which I am informed is in the handwriting of the rector, Dr. Conybeare) is a note stating that he was born Oct. 31st. The date is given accordingly without question by Mr. Buxton Forman (Works, vol. i., p. xlviii). But it seems certain that Keats himself and his family believed his birthday to have been Oct. 29th. Writing on that day in 1818, Keats says, "this is my birthday." Brown (in Houghton MSS.) gives the same day, but only as on hearsay from a lady to whom Keats had mentioned it, and with a mistake as to the year. Lastly, in the proceedings in Rawlings v. Jennings, Oct. 29th is again given as his birthday, in the affidavit of one Anne Birch, who swears that she knew his father and mother intimately. The entry in the St. Botolph's register is probably the authority to be preferred.-Lower Moorfields was the space now occupied by Finsbury Circus and the London Institution, together with the east side of Finsbury Pavement. The births of the younger brothers are in my text given rightly for the first time, from the parish registers of St. Leonard's, Shoreditch, where they were all three christened in a batch on Sept. 24, 1801. The family were at that date living in Craven Street. P. 2, note 2.-Brown (Houghton MSS.) says simply that Thomas Keats was a "native of Devon." His daughter, Mrs. Llanos, tells me she remembers hearing as a child that he came from the Land's End. Persons of the name are still living in Plymouth. P. 5, note 2.-The total amount of the funds paid into Court by the executors under Mr. Jennings's will (see Preface, p. vii.) was £13,160 19s. 5d. P. 10, note 1, and p. 70, note 1.-Of the total last mentioned, there came to the widow first and last (partly by reversion from other legatees who predeceased her) sums amounting to £9343 2s. In the Chancery proceedings the precise terms of the deed executed by Mrs. Jennings for the benefit of her grandchildren are not quoted, but only its general purport; whence it appears that the sum she made over to Messrs. Sandell and Abbey in trust for them amounted approximately to £8000, and included all the reversions fallen or still to fall in as above mentioned. The balance, it is to be presumed, she retained for her own support (she being then seventy-four). P. 16, note 1.-The following letter written by Mr. Abbey to Mr. Taylor the publisher, under date April 18, 1821, soon after the news of Keats's death reached England, speaks for itself. The letter is from Woodhouse MSS. B. "Sir, I beg pardon for not replying to your favor of the 30th ult. respecting the late Mr. Jno. Keats. "I am obliged by your note, but he having withdrawn himself from my controul, and acted contrary to my advice, I cannot interfere with his affairs. "I am, Sir, "Yr. mo. Hble St., "RIOUD. ABBEY." P. 33, note 1.-The difficulty of determining the exact date and place of Keats's first introduction to Hunt arises as follows: Cowden Clarke states plainly and circumstantially that it took place in Leigh Hunt's cottage at Hampstead. Hunt in his Autobiography says it was "in the spring of the year 1816" that he went to live at Hampstead in the cottage in question. Putting these two statements together, we get the result stated as probable in the text. But on the other hand there is the strongly Huntian character of Keats's Epistle to G. F. Mathew, dated November, 1815, which would seem to indicate an earlier acquaintance (see p. 30). Unluckily Leigh Hunt himself has darkened counsel on the point by a paragraph inserted in the last edition of his Autobiography, as follows (Pref. no. 7, p. 257): "It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was at York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the Indicator, and he resided with me while in Mortimer Street, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I am one." The student must not be misled by this remark of Hunt's, which is evidently only due to a slip of memory. It is quite true that Keats lived with Hunt in Mortimer Street, Kentish Town, during part of July and August, 1820 (see page 195), and that before moving to that address Hunt had lived for more than a year (from the autumn of 1818 to the spring of 1820) at 8 New Road. But that Keats was intimate with him two years and a half earlier, when he was in fact living not in London at all but at the Vale of Health, is abundantly certain. P. 37, note 1.-Cowden Clarke tells how Keats, once calling and finding him fallen asleep over Chaucer, wrote on the blank space at the end of the Floure and the Leafe the sonnet beginning "This pleasant tale is like a little copse." Reynolds on reading it addressed to Keats the following sonnet of his own, which is unpublished (Houghton MSS.), and has a certain biographical interest. is dated Feb. 27, 1817: "Thy thoughts, dear Keats, are like fresh-gathered leaves, The glow of meadows, mornings, and spring eves It Songs that shall make the age be nature-led, And win that coronal for thy young head Which time's strange [qy. strong?] hand of freshness ne'er bereaves. Singing in that same key which Chaucer sung; Be thou companion of the summer day, Roaming the fields and older woods among: So shall thy muse be ever in her May, And thy luxuriant spirit ever young." P. 44, note 1.-Woodhouse MSS. A contains the text of the first draft in question, with some preliminary words of Woodhouse as follows: "The lines at p. 36 of Keats's printed poems are altered from a copy of verses written by K. at the request of his brother George, and by the latter sent as a valentine to the lady. The following is a copy of the lines as originally written: "Hadst thou lived in days of old, Oh what wonders had been told Than twin sister of Thalia? At least for ever, ever more Will I call the Graces four." Here follow lines 41-68 of the poem as afterwards published; and in conclusion "Ah me! whither shall I flee? "14 Feby., 1816." P. 47, note 1.-Mrs. Procter's memory, however, betrayed her when she informed Lord Houghton that the colour of Keats's eyes was blue. That they were pure hazel-brown is certain, from the evidence alike of C. C. Clarke, of George Keats and his wife (as transmitted by their daughter Mrs. Speed to her son), and from the various por traits painted from life and posthumously by Severn and Hilton. Mrs. Procter calls his hair auburn; Mrs. Speed had heard from her father and mother that it was "golden red," which may mean nearly the same thing; I have seen a lock in the possession of Sir Charles Dilke, and should rather call it a warm brown, likely to have looked gold in the lights. Bailey in Houghton MSS. speaks of it as extraor dinarily thick and curly, and says that to lay your hand on his head was like laying it "on the rich plumage of a bird." An evidently misleading description of Keats's general aspect is that of Coleridge, when he describes him as a "loose, slack, not well-dressed youth." The sage must have been drawing from his inward eye, those intimate with Keats being of one accord as to his appearance of trim strength and "fine compactness of person." Coleridge's further mention of his hand as shrunken and old-looking seems exact. P. 78, note 1.-The isolated expressions of Keats on this subject, which alone have been hitherto published, have exposed him somewhat unjustly to the charge of petulance and morbid suspicion. Fairness seems to require that the whole passage in which he deals with it should be given. The passage occurs in a letter to Bailey written from Hampstead and dated Oct. 8, 1817, of which only a fragment was printed by Lord Houghton, and after him by Mr. Buxton Forman (Works, vol. iii., p. 82, no. xvi.): "I went to Hunt's and Haydon's, who live now neighbours.Shelley was there I know nothing about anything in this part of the world-every Body seems at Loggerheads. There's Hunt infatuated there's Haydon's picture in statu quo-There's Hunt walks up and down his painting-room criticising every head most unmercifully-There's Horace Smith tired of Hunt-The Web of our life is of mingled yarn.' . . . I am quite disgusted with literary men, and will never know another except Wordsworth-no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the friendship of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years-now they live, pour ainsi dire, jealous neighbours. Haydon says to me, Keats, don't show your lines to Hunt on any account, or he will have done half for you-so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds in the Theatre, John told him I was getting on to the completion of 4000 lines-Ah! says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been 7000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people? Haydon received a Letter a little while back on the subject from some Lady, which contains a caution to me, thro' him, on this subject. Now is not all this a most paultry thing to think about?" P. 82, note 1.-See Haydon, Autobiography, vol. i., pp. 384-5. The letter containing Keats's account of the same entertainment was printed for the first time by Speed, Works, vol. i., p. i., no. 1, where it is dated merely "Featherstone Buildings, Monday." (At Featherstone Buildings lived the family of Charles Wells.) In Houghton MSS. I find a transcript of the same letter in the hand of Mr. Coventry Patmore, with a note in Lord Houghton's hand: "These letters I did not print. R. M. M." In the transcript is added in a parenthesis after the weekday the date 5 April, 1818: but this is a mistake; the 5th of April in that year was not a Monday; and the contents of Keats's letter itself, as well as a comparison with Haydon's words in his Autobiography, prove beyond question that it was written on Monday, the 5th of January. P. 87, note 1.-Similar expressions about the Devonshire weather occur in nearly all Keats's letters written thence in the course of March and April. The letter to Bailey containing the sentences quoted in my text is wrongly printed both by Lord Houghton and Mr. Forman under date Sept., 1818. I find the same date given between brackets at the head of the same letter as transcribed in Woodhouse MSS. B, proving that an error was early made either in docketing or copying it. The contents of the letter leave no doubt as to its real date. The sentences quoted prove it to have been written not in autumn but in spring. It contains Keats's reasons both for going down to join his brother Tom at Teignmouth and for failing to visit Bailey at Oxford on the way. Now in September Keats was not at Teignmouth at all, and Bailey had left Oxford for good, and was living at his curacy in Cumberland (see p. 121). Moreover, there is an allusion by Keats himself to this letter in another which he wrote the next day to Reynolds, whereby its true date can be fixed with precision as Friday, March 13th. P. 111, note 1. The following unpublished letter of Keats to Mr. Taylor (from Woodhouse MSS. B) has a certain interest, both in it. self and as fixing the date of his departure for the North: 66 Sunday evening. "My dear Taylor, I am sorry I have not had time to call and wish you health till my return. Really I have been hard run these last three days. However, au revoir, God keep us all well! I start tomorrow Morning. My brother Tom will I am afraid be lonely. I can scarcely ask the loan of books for him, since I still keep those you lent me a year ago. If I am overweening, you will I know be indulgent. Therefore when you shall write, do send him some you think will be most amusing-he will be careful in returning them. Let him have one of my books bound. I am ashamed to catalogue these messages. There is but one more, which ought to go for nothing as there is a lady concerned. I promised Mrs. Reynolds one of my books bound. As I cannot write in it let the opposite" [a leaf with the name and "from the author," notes Woodhouse] "be pasted in 'prythee. Remember me to Percy St.-Tell Hilton that one gratification on my return will be to find him engaged on a history piece to his own content. And tell Dewint I shall become a disputant on the landscape. Bow for me very genteely to Mrs. D. or she will not admit your diploma. Remember me to Hessey, saying I hope he'll Carey his point. I would not forget Woodhouse. Adieu ! Your sincere friend, "JOHN O'GROTS. "June 22, 1818. Hampstead." [The date and place are added by Woodhouse in red ink, presumably from the post-mark.] P. 118, note 1.-In the concluding lines quoted in my text Mr. Buxton Forman has noticed the failure of rhyme between "All the magic of the place" and the next line, "So saying, with a spirit's glance," and has proposed, by way of improvement, to read "with a spirit's grace." I find the true explanation in Woodhouse MSS. A, where the poem is continued thus in pencil after the word "place:" ""Tis now free to stupid face, To cutters, and to fashion boats, |