he 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 str