to Grecian mythology
for another subject: the full length of the poem was to have been ten
books.

"Lamia" was the last poem of considerable length which Keats brought to
completion and published. It seems to have been begun towards the summer
of 1819, and was written with great care, after a heedful study of
Dryden's methods of composition. On September 18, 1819, Keats wrote: "I
am certain there is that sort of fire in it which must take hold of
people in some way, give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensations."
The subject was taken from Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy," in which
there is a reference to the "Life of Apollonius" by Philostratus as the
original source of the legend.

The volume--entitled "Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and other
Poems"--came out towards the beginning of July 1820, when the malady of
Keats had reached an advanced and alarming stage. At the beginning of
September Keats wrote to Brown--"The sale of my book is very slow,
though it has been very highly rated." I am not aware that there is any
other record to show how far the publication may ultimately have
approached towards becoming a commercial success; nor indeed would it be
altogether easy to define the date at which Keats became a recognized
and uncontested poet of high rank, and his works a solid property. His
early death, at the beginning of 1821, must have formed a
turning-point--not to speak of the favourable notice of "Endymion," and
subordinately of the "Lamia" volume, which appeared in _The Edinburgh
Review_, Jeffrey being the critic, in August 1820. Perhaps Jeffrey's
praise may have facilitated an arrangement which Keats made in September
1820--the sale of the copyright of "Endymion" to Messrs. Taylor and
Hessey for L100; no second edition of the poem appeared, however, while
he was alive. I should presume that, within five or six years after
Keats's decease, ridicule and rancour were already much in the minority;
and that, by some such date as 1835 to 1840, they had finally "hidden
their diminished heads," living only, with too persistent a life, in the
retributive memory of men.

Some of the shorter poems in the "Lamia" volume must receive brief
mention here. The "Ode to Psyche" was written in February 1819, and was
termed by Keats the first poem with which he had taken pains--"I have
for the most part dashed off my lines in a hurry." "To Autumn," the "Ode
on Melancholy," and the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," succeed