Page images
PDF
EPUB

upon her island, where he has been for seven years. 21. Laian. As of Laius, king of Thebes and father to Edipus, whose family was pursued by strange misfortunes.

23. A subtler Sphinx, etc. Edipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx; whereupon she slew herself. 637. 31. Saturn and Love. The age of gold, supposed to have existed before Saturn was overthrown by Jupiter, was thought of as one of perfect happiness and love.

WITH A GUITAR, TO JANE

1. Ariel to Miranda. The reference is, of course, to the characters in Shakspere's Tempest. Ariel is Shelley, and Miranda is Mrs. Williams.

10. Prince Ferdinand. Edward Williams, a young English officer with whom Shelley was intimate towards the end of his life. He and Shelley were drowned together. See Life, p. 614.

KEATS: KEEN, FITFUL GUSTS ARE WHISPERING HERE AND THERE

639. 10. a little cottage. Leigh Hunt's home at Hampstead Heath. Hunt was deeply interested in Italian poetry.

12. gentle Lycid drowned. For Milton's Lycidas, see p. 240.

13. Laura. The lady to whom Petrarch addressed his sonnets. According to one theory she was the wife of Hugues de Sade and mother of eleven children.

14. Petrarch gloriously crowned. Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). He was crowned poet laureate, at Rome, in 1341.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S

HOMER

4. Apollo. As patron of poetry.

8. Chapman. George Chapman published his translation of Homer in instalments between 1598 and 1616. It is still prized as one of the greatest of English poetical translations.

11. stout Cortez. Not Cortez, but Balboa actually discovered the Pacific Ocean.

14. Darien. The mountain from which Balboa first sighted the Pacific was nearly a month's jour ney from his base at Darien.

ENDYMION, BOOK I

640. 35. the story of Endymion. The most famous English treatment of the legend before Keats was that of John Lyly in his drama, Endymion (1579).

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

1. St. Agnes' Eve, January 20, in popular opin ien, apt to be the coldest night of the year. St. Agnes suffered martyrdom under Diocletian. The chief superstitions connected with the Eve of St. Agnes are given in the course of the poem, especially 11. 47-55.

643. 172. Since Merlin paid his Demon. According to the legend with which Keats was familiar, Merlin had been begotten by demons. He was beguiled by an enchantress who employed one of his own spells to imprison him forever in a tree in the forest of Broceliande. Immediately afterward, a

terrific tempest swept the forest. The legend forms the basis of Tennyson's Merlin and Vivien in The Idylls of the King.

643. 242. missal where swart Paynims pray. A prayer-book bearing upon its margin pictures of converted heathen in the act of prayer.

644. 270. Fez. See 611. 431, note.

271. Samarcand. A city in Turkestan, more important in the middle ages than now. It was the capital of the conqueror Tamerlane.

271. cedared Lebanon. A mountain range in Syria, famed from remote antiquity for its cedars.

293. In Provence called, La belle dame sans mercy. This is the title of a poem by Alain Chartier, a translation of which Keats had seen in a volume of Chaucer. The ascription of it to Provence is fanciful. The same words suggested to Keats the poem of this title, p. 654.

645. 350. Rhenish, wine from the vineyards of the Rhine.

350. mead, a liquor made by fermenting honcy, much prized by the ancient Teutons.

ROBIN HOOD

For the ballads of Robin Hood, see above. pp. 38-42.

LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN 646. 4. the Mermaid Tavern. A favorite resort of Elizabethan dramatists, Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, etc.

6. Canary wine. Wine made in the Canary islands. It was the sack' of Shakspere and hs contemporaries.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

647. 7. Tempe. See 636. 11, note.

7. Arcady. Arcadia, celebrated in pastoral poetry as the house of a carefree shepherd life. 41. brede, embroidery. Strictly, braid.

[blocks in formation]

ment of Hyperion, the former god of the sun, by Apollo and incidentally of those of Oceanus by Neptune, of Saturn by Jupiter, etc., and of the war of the Giants for Saturn's reestablishment with other events, of which we have but very dark hints in the mythological poets of Greece and Rome.' 650. 4. Saturn, an Italic deity, supposed to have ruled in the golden age; he was identified with the Greek Cronus, father and predecessor of Zeus. See, also, 250. 509, note.

23. there came one. Thea, sister of Hyperion, one of the female Titans.

30. Ixion's wheel. See 361. 133, note.

31. Memphian sphinx. A purely hypothetical sphinx. Memphis was an early capital of Egypt. 651. 147. The rebel three. Jupiter, Neptune, and Apollo.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[blocks in formation]

AUSTIN DOBSON: A DEAD LETTER

679. 11. Goldsmith's Madam Blaize. An allusion to Goldsmith's ridiculous poem An elegy on the Glory of her Sex, Mrs. Mary Blaize.

14. tea-board garden-maker. Apparently, one designing a garden on the scale of a tea-tray.

15. Dutch William's day. William of Orange's time, 1688 and after.

38. Tithonus. See p. 778 and note.

680. 52. Damson Jam. Jam made of the damson, or damask plum.

62. Padesoy, paduasoy, a rich heavy silk from l'adua.

63. the Vapors. See 666. 67, note.
79. Bonzes, images of Buddhist priests.
112. Point and Flanders. Lace.

[blocks in formation]

The version of the Confessions' adopted in the text is that of the original issue in the London Magazine (1821), which has been generally preferred, both by the critics and the public, to the enlarged edition published by De Quincey in his collected works thirty-five years later. On account of

his tendency to digression, De Quincey's second thoughts are sometimes less effective than his first. The additional details given in the later version have been used in the notes and are distinguished by quotation marks.

684. a. 1. an affection of the stomach. Opium is said to be a remedy for gastrodynia, or neuralgia of the stomach.

20. My father. Thomas Quincey, merchant, of Manchester, d. July 18, 1793.

50. and a ripe and good one.' See Henry VIII, IV, ii, 51-2. The master in question was a Mr. Morgan, of Bath Grammar School.

55. a

blockhead. The master of Winkfield, a small private school.

b. 1. a respectable scholar. Mr. Lawson, head of Manchester Grammar School.

[blocks in formation]

(2) his dislike of the head master; (3) the refusal of his guardian to allow him to go to Oxford, as explained above.

b. 3. valediction, farewell. 21. towers of the old church,' now the cathedral of the modern diocese of Manchester. 49.pensive citadel.' See Wordsworth's sonnet Nuns fret not, 537. 3, and note.

686. a. 9. cighteen years ago, when De Quincey wrote the ، Confessions' about Christmas, 1820; really nineteen when they were published, the following September and October.

13. lovely

A portrait of an unknown lady, reputed in the school to be a copy from Vandyke (1598-1641).

22.- clock, the old church clock.' 54-55. See Paradise Lost II, 306-7, p. 258. 56. Salisbury Plain, in Wiltshire.

b. 3. contretemps, mishap, unlucky accident. 25. canorous, resonant, ringing.

Christian

686. b. 27. the Seven Sleepers, seven youths of Ephesus, who took refuge in a cave from persecution, and, according to the legend, slept there for 230 years.

32. étourderie, heedless, giddy behaviour. 35. Dr.

The head-master at that time was Mr. Charles Lawson, In former editions of this work I created him a doctor; my object being to evade too close an approach to the realities of the case, and consequently to personalities, which (though indifferent to myself) would have been in some cases displeasing to others.'

50.

with Providence my guide.' Paradise Lost, closing lines:

The world was all before them, where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide. They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way.'

687. a. 16. lustrum, period of five years. 38. wux0nuepov, a night and a day.

42. That moveth. See Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence, 529. 77.

44. Now, then, I was again happy. This was in 1816, the year of De Quincey's marriage, which induced him to suddenly cut down from 8,000 to 1,000 drops his daily allowance of opium. Instantaneously, and as if by magic, the cloud of profoundest melancholy which rested upon my brain, like some black vapors that I have seen roll away from the summit of a mountain, drew off in one week.' De Quincey began to take opium in 1804 as a remedy for 'excruciating rheumatic pains of the head and face'; but he did not become a regular and confirmed opium eater till 1813, when he was attacked by a most appalling irritation of the stomach.' De Quincey made repeated efforts to free himself from thraldom to the drug, which brought on severe depression and made him at times incapable of mental exertion, but he never entirely succeeded.

b. 3. Kant, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the founder of Transcendental ' Philosophy.

22. Malay. There has been an inclination to regard this as a fictitious personage invented by De Quincey to give variety and color to his narra

tive; he himself protested that he had recorded the incident most faithfully.' He adds a note to the later edition: 'Between the sea-faring populations on the coast of Lancashire and the corresponding populations on the coast of Cumberland (such as Ravenglass, Whitehaven, Workington, Maryport, etc.) there was a slender current of interchange constantly going on, and especially in the days of press-gangs - in part by sea, but in part also by land.'

28. a young girl. This girl, Barbara Lewthwaite, was already at that time a person of some poetic distinction, being (unconsciously to herself) the chief speaker in a little pastoral poem of Wordsworth's. That she was really beautiful, and not merely so described by me for the sake of improv. ing the picturesque effect, the reader will judge from this line in the poem, written perhaps ten years earlier, when Barbara might be six years old:

'Twas little Barbara Lewthwaite, a child of beauty rare!'

De Quincey adds in an appendix that subsequently, when a young woman, she entered unconsciously into the composition of Wordsworth's Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood. Wordsworth, however, writing in 1843, when Barbara Lewthwaite was still living at Ambleside, says that she was not in fact the child whom he had seen and overheard as described in The Pet Lamb. Within a few months after the publication of the poem, it came to Barbara's knowl edge, and alas! I had the mortification of hearing that she was very vain of being thus distinguished: and, in after-life, she used to say that she remembered the incident and what I said to her upon the occasion.'

688. a. 32. Anastasius, a novel published in 1819, and in 1821 both of high reputation and of great influence amongst the leading circles of society.' Its hero was a Greek who ate opium, and it included a glossary of the Oriental terms used in the

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

successor, in the year 1809, to Wordsworth. Looking to the limitation here laid down viz. in those days the reader will inquire in what way Time can have affected the beauty of Grasmere. Do the Westmoreland valleys turn grey-headed? O reader! this is a painful memento for some of us! Thirty years ago, a gang of vandals (nameless, I thank heaven, to me), for the sake of building a mailcoach road that never would be wanted, carried, at a cost of £3,000 to the defrauded parish, a horrid causeway of sheer granite masonry, for three-quarters of a mile, right through the loveliest succession of secret forest dells and shy recesses of the lake, margined by unrivalled ferns, amongst which was the Osmunda regalis. This sequestered angle of Grasmere is described by Wordsworth, as it unveiled itself on a September morning, in the exquisite poems on the " Naming of Places." From this also viz. this spot of ground, and this magnificent crest (the Osmunda)- was suggested that unique line, the finest independent line through all the records of verse:

Or lady of the lake,

Sole-sitting by the shores of old romance.

Rightly, therefore, did I introduce this limitation. The Grasmere before and after this outrage were two different vales.'

689. a. 42. a witty author, Coleridge in The Devil's Thoughts:

He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility!

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.

b. 21. The Castle of Indolence, by Thomson, Canto I, Stanza 43. See p. 373.

25. a high latitude, far north. Lord Dufferin's travels in Iceland are described in Letters from High Latitudes.

[ocr errors]

32. particular,' precise, exactly. De Quincey puts the word in quotation marks because this use of it is a Northern provincialism.

34. Mr. - 'Anti-slavery Clarkson,' the author

of a History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade. 45. a Canadian winter. De Quincey seems to have been in earnest in this preference. At one time he thought of retiring to the woods of Lower Canada to devote himself to philosophic studies, and he had even fixed upon the situation for a cottage and a considerable library seventeen miles below Quebec. He gives the following reasons for this choice: My object was simply profound solitude, such as cannot now be had in any part of Great Britain with two accessory advantages, also peculiar to countries situated in the circumstances and under the climate of Canada: viz. the exalting presence in an under-consciousness of forests endless and silent, the everlasting sense of living amongst forms so ennobling and impressive, together with the pleasure attached to natural agencies, such as frosts, more powerfully manifested than in English latitudes, and for a much longer period. I

[merged small][ocr errors]

48. fee-simple, a legal phrase for absolute owner ship.

51. St. Thomas's day, December 21. 53. vernal, spring.

690. a. 10. bellum internecinum, war to the death Hanway wrote an Essay on Tea (1756), which Dra Johnson reviewed and condemned, declaring himself a hardened and shameless tea-drinker, whose kettle has scarcely time to cool.' A lively, controversy resulted. See Boswell's Life of Johns (Macmillan's edition Library of English Classics), I, pp. 224-5.

son

27. a double debt to pay.' Goldsmith's Deserted. Village, 466. 229-30.

46. eternal à parte ante and à parte post, from everlasting to everlasting, having no beginning and no end.

53. Aurora Hebe, beautiful Greek goddesses, the former the personification of Dawn, the latter of Youth.

54. dear M, Margaret, De Quincey's wife. b. 8. little golden receptacle, etc.,' quoted from the Anastasius mentioned above.

16. stately Pantheon,' a London theatre, so de scribed by Wordsworth, near which was the druggist's shop from which De Quincey first obtained opium, as described in an earlier passage in the Confessions' not included in our extracts.

[ocr errors]

29. my body should be had into court, adapted from the wording of the writ of habeas corpus.

[ocr errors]

37. the Opium-eater's exterior. As was pointed out in the introductory biography, De Quincey's personal appearance was peculiar. Carlyle describes him as one of the smallest men you ever in you: life beheld; but with a most gentle and sensible face, only the teeth are destroyed by opium, and the little bit of an under lip projects like a shelf." 'Blue-eyed, blonde-haired, sparkling face.- ba there not been a something, too, which said. covi, this child has been in hell!" Professor Mas son writes: In addition to the general impression of his diminutiveness and fragility, one was struck with the peculiar beauty of his head and forehead. rising disproportionately high over his small, wrinkly visage and gentle, deep-set eyes.' The effect of hi childish figure and odd gait was increased by his e centricities of dress. His clothes had generally look of extreme age, and also of having been mad for a person somewhat larger than himself." H was fond of list slippers for outdoor wear and some times forgot to put on one or both stockings.

48. categories, of Aristotle: 1 Substance or B ing, 2 Quantity, 3 Quality, 4 Relation, 5 Place, Time, etc.

« PreviousContinue »