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John Keats
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John Milton : Paradise Lost
H. J. Jackson discusses copy of Paradise Lost annotated by John Keats for Mrs Dilke, in which passages highlighted and critical commentary added.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats' annotated copy of "Paradise Lost"]: 'The Genius of Milton, more particularly in respect to its span in immensity, calculated him, by a sort of birthright, for such an "argument" as the paradise lost: he had an exquisite passion for what is properly, in the sense of ease and pleasure, poetical Luxury; and with that it appears to me he would fain have been content, if he could, so doing, have preserved his self-respect and feel of duty performed; but there was working in him as it were that same sort of thing as operates in the great world to the end of a Prophecy's being accomplished: therefore he devoted himself rather to the Ardours thean the pleasures of Song, solacing himself at intervals with cups of old wine; and those are with some exceptions the finest parts of the Poem. With some exceptions - for the spirit of mounting and adventure can never be unfruitful or unrewarded: had he not broken through the clouds which envellope [sic] so deliciously the Elysian fields of Verse, and committed himself to the Extreme, we should never have seen Satan as described - But his face/ Deep Scars of thunder had entrench'd etc.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" on "The Argument"]: There is a greatness which the "Paradise Lost" possesses over every other poem - the Magnitude of Contrast, and that is softened by the contrast being ungrotesque to a degree. Heaven moves on like music throughout. Hell is also peopled with angels; it also move[s] on like music, not grating and harsh, but like a grand accompaniment in the Base to Heaven.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" on the opening]: 'There is always a great charm in the openings of great Poems, more particularly where the action begins - that of Dante's Hell. Of Hamlet, the first step must be heroic and full of power; and nothing can be more impressive and shaded then the commencement of the action here - "Round he throws his baleful eyes -" '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 53-75]. Keats underlines the following phrases and lines: 'round he throws his baleful eyes'; 'At once, as far as Angel's ken, he views/ The dismal situation waste and wild'; 'sights of woe,/ Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace/ And rest can never dwell; hope never comes/ That comes to all'. He writes after line 75: 'One of the most mysterious of semi-speculations is, one would suppose, that of one Mind's imagining into another. Things may be described by a Man's self in parts so as to make a grand whole which that Man himself would scarcely inform to its excess. A Poet can seldom have justice done to his imagination - for men are as distinct in their conceptions of material shadowings as they are in matters of spiritual understanding: it can scarcely be conceived how Milton's Blindness might here ade [for aid] the magnitude of his conceptions as a bat in a large gothic vault'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 318-21]: Keats underlines the line 'To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven?' and writes: 'There is a cool pleasure in the very sound of vale. The english word is of the happiest chance. Milton has put vales in heaven and hell with the very utter affection and yearning of a great Poet. It is a sort of delphic Abstraction - a beautiful thing made more beautiful by being reflected and put in a Mist. The next mention of Vale is one of the most pathetic in the whole range of Poetry. "Others, more mild, / Retreated in a silent Valley etc". How much of the charm is in the Valley!'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 527-67]: Keats underlines the lines from 'the glittering staff unfurl'd' to 'Of warriors old with order'd spear and shield'. He then writes: 'The light and shade - the sort of black brightness - the ebon diamonding - the ethiop Immortality - the sorrow, the pain, the sad-sweet Melody - the Phalanges of Spirits so depressed as to be "uplifted beyond hope" - the short mitigation of Misery - the thousand Melancholies and Magnificences of this Page - leaves no room for anything to be said thereon but "so it is".'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 591-9]: Keats underlines the lines from 'his form had not yet lost/ All her original brightness, nor appear'd' to 'Perplexes monarchs', and writes: 'How noble and collected an indignation against Kings, "and for fear of change perplexes Monarchs" etc. His very wishing should have had power to pull that feeble animal Charles from his bloody throne. "The evil days" had come to him; he hit the new System of things a mighty mental blow; the exertion must have had or is yet to have some sequences.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 1, lines 710-30]: Keats underlines the lines from 'Anon out of the earth a fabric huge/ Rose like an exhalation' to 'yielded light/ As from a sky' and writes: 'What creates the intense pleasure of not knowing? A sense of independence, of power, from the fancy's creating a world of its own by the sense of probabilities. We have read the Arabian Nights and hear there are thousands of those sorts of Romances lost - we imagine after them - but not their realities if we had them nor our fancies in their strength can go further than this Pandemonium - "Straight after the doors opening" etc. "rose like an exhalation" - '
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost" in Book 2, lines 546-61]: Keats underlines the following: the lines from 'Others, more mild, /Retreated in a silent valley' to 'By doom of battle'; 'Their song was partial, but the harmony'; 'Suspended Hell'; 'in discourse more sweet/ (For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense)/ Others apart sat on a hill retired'. He writes: 'Milton is godlike in the sublime pathetic. In Demons, fallen Angels, and Monsters the delicacies of passion, living in and from their immortality, is of the most softening and dissolving nature. It is carried to the utmost here - "Others more mild" - nothing can express the sensation one feels at "Their song was partial" etc. Examples of this nature are divine to the utmost in other poets - in Caliban "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments" etc. In Theocritus, Polyphemus, and Homer's Hymn to Pan where Mercury is represented as taking his "homely fac'd" to heaven. There are numerous other instances in Milton - where Satan's progeny is called his "daughter dear", and where this same Sin, a female, and with a feminine instinct for the showy and martial is in pain lest death should sully his bright arms, "nor vainly hope to be invulnerable in those bright arms." Another instance is "pensive I sat alone". We need not mention "Tears such as Angels weep."'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
William Shakespeare : unknown
'I felt rather lonely this Morning at breakfast so I went and unbox'd a Shakspeare - "There's my Comfort".
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
Edmund Spenser : The Faerie Queene
'Just now I opened Spencer, and the first Lines I saw were these.- "The noble Heart that harbors vertuous thought, And is with Child of glorious great intent, Can never rest, until it forth have brought Th' eternal Brood of Glory excellent -"
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, Lines 51-9]: The management of this Poem is Apollonian. Satan first "throws round his baleful eyes", then awakes his legions, he consults, he sets forward on his voyage - and just as he is getting to the end of it we see the Great God and our first parent, and that same satan all brought in one's vision - we have the invocation to light before we mount to heaven - we breathe more freely - we feel the great Author's consolations coming thick upon him at a time when he complains most - we are getting ripe for diversity - the immediate topic of the Poem opens with a grand Perspective of all concerned.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, lines 135-7]: 'Hell is finer than this'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, lines 487-9]: 'This part in its sound is unaccountably expressive of the description.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 3, lines 606-17]: Keats underlines the phrases and lines "Breathe forth Elixir pure"; "when with one virtuous touch/ The arch-chemic Sun" and "as when his beams at noon Culminate from the equator". He writes: 'A Spirit's eye'.
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 4, lines 1-5] Keats underlines the lines: "O for that warning voice, which he who saw/ The Apocalypse heard cry in Heaven aloud,/ Then when the Dragon put to second rout,/ Came furious down to be revenged on men,". He writes: 'A friend of mine says this Book has the finest opening of any - the point of time is gigantically critical - the wax is melted, the seal is aobut to be applied - and Milton breaks out, "O for that warning voice," etc. There is moreover an opportunity for a Grandeur of Tenderness - the opportunity is not lost. Nothing can be higher - Nothing so more than delphic.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 4, lines 268-72] Keats underlines the lines: "Not that fair field/ Of Enna, where Proserpin gathering flowers,/ Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis/ Was gather'd, which cost Ceres all that pain/ To seek her through the world." He writes: 'There are two specimens of a very extraordinary beauty in the "Paradise Lost"; they are of a nature as far as I have read, unexampled elsewhere - they are entirely distinct from the brief pathos of Dante - and they are not to be found even in Shakespeare - these are according to the great prerogative of poetry better described in themselves than by a volume. The one is in the fol[lowing] - "which cost Ceres all that pain" - the other is that ending "Nor could the Muse defend her son" - they appear exclusively Miltonic without the shadow of another mind ancient or modern.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 6, lines 58-9] Keats underlines "reluctant flames, the sign/ Of wrath awaked", and writes '"Reluctant" with its original and modern meaning combined and woven together, with all its shades of signification has a powerful effect.'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 7, lines 420-34] Keats underlines the phrase "With clang despised the ground, under a cloud/ In prospect." He writes: 'Milton in every instance pursues his imagination to the utmost - he is "sagacious of his Quarry", he sees Beauty on the wing, pounces upon it and gorges it to the producing of his essential verse. "So from the root the springs lighter the green stalk," etc. But in no instance is this sort of perseverance more exemplified than in what may be called his stationing or statuary. He is not content with simple description, he must station, - thus here, we not only see how the Birds "with clang despised the ground" but we see them "under a cloud in prospect." So we see Adam "Fair indeed and tall - under a plantane" - and so we see Satan "disfigured - on the Assyrian Mount." This last with all its accompaniments, and keeping in mind the Theory of Spirits' eyes and the simile of Gallilio [sic], has a dramatic vastness and solemnity fit and worthy to hold one amazed in the midst of this "Paradise Lost" -'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 9, 41-7]: 'Had not Shakespeare liv'd?'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: John Keats Print: Book
John Milton : Paradise Lost
[Marginalia in Keats's annotated copy of "Paradise Lost", Book 9, 179-91]. Keats underlines the whole passage, excluding "where soonest he might find /the serpent", and writes: 'Satan having entered the Serpent, and inform'd his brutal sense - might seem sufficient - but Milton goes on "but his sleep disturb'd not". Whose spirit does not ache at the smothering and confinement -the unwilling stillness - the "waiting close"? Whose head is not dizzy at the prosaible [sic] speculations of satan in the serpent prison - no poetry ever can give a greater pain of suffocation.'
