ly, and fancied that any
eulogistic phrases which he found in it applied to Payne.
1. 51. _A parallel between the Rev. Mr. Milman and Lord Byron._ I have
not succeeded in finding this parallel. The _Quarterly_ _Review_ for
July 1818 contains a critique of Milman's poem, _Samor, Lord of the
Bright City_; and the number for May 1820, a critique of Milman's _Fall
of Jerusalem_. Neither of these notices draws any parallel such as
Shelley speaks of.
1. 52. _What gnat did they strain at here_. The word 'here' will be
perceived to mean 'in _Endymion_,' or 'in reference to _Endymion_'; but
it is rather far separated from its right antecedent.
1. 59. _The circumstances of the closing scene of poor Keats's life were
not made known to me until the Elegy was ready for the press_. See p.
22.
1. 63. _The poor fellow seems to have been hooted from the stage of
life, no less by those on whom he had wasted the promise of his genius
than those on whom he had lavished his fortune and his care_. This
statement of Shelley is certainly founded upon a passage in the letter
(see p. 22) addressed by Colonel Finch to Mr. Gisborne. Colonel Finch
said that Keats had reached Italy, 'nursing a deeply rooted disgust to
life and to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the
very persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe.' The
Colonel's statement seems (as I have previously intimated) to be rather
haphazard; and Shelley's recast of it goes to a further extreme.
1. 68. _'Almost risked his own life'_ &c. The substance of the words in
inverted commas is contained in Colonel Finch's letter, but Shelley does
not cite verbatim.
* * * * *
+Stanza 1,+ 1. 1. _I weep for Adonais--he is dead._ Modelled on the
opening of Bion's Elegy for Adonis. See p. 63.
1. 3. _The frost which binds so dear a head_: sc. the frost of death.
11. 4, 5. _And thou, sad Hour,... rouse thy obscure compeers._ The
compeers are clearly the other Hours. Why they should be termed
'obscure' is not quite manifest. Perhaps Shelley means that the weal or
woe attaching to these Hours is obscure or uncertain; or perhaps that
they are comparatively obscure, undistinguished, as not being marked by
any such conspicuous event as the death of Adonais.
11. 8, 9. _His fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto
eternity._ By 'eternity' we may here understand, not absolute eternity
as contradistinguished from time, bu
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