Part 16 (1/2)
[23] xxxII, C, xxxIV, F
[24] He contemplates even the study of metaphysics, LI, C, LIV, F
[25] L, C, LIII, F
[26] XXIV, C, XXVI, F
[27] Cf in addition to the letters already referred to, the obscure letter to Bailey, XXII, C, XXIV, F, which, however, is early, and not quite in agreehts I should observe perhaps that if Keats's position, as formulated above, is accepted, the question still remains whether a truth which is also beauty, or a beauty which is also truth, can be found by man; and, if so, whether it can, in strictness, be called by either of those names
[28] CLV, C, CCVI, F See on these sentences the Note at the end of the lecture
[29] An expression used in reference to Wordsworth, xxxIV, C, xxxVI, F
[30] I have not space to dwell on this distinction, but I must warn the reader that he will probably e in the revised _Hyperion_, 161 ff, unless he consults Mr de Selincourt's edition
[31] XXII, C, XXV, F
[32] That is, in 'half-knowledge,' 'doubts,' 'mysteries' (see p
235), while the philosopher is sometimes supposed by Keats to have a reasoned certainty about everything It is curious to reflect that great el, are often accused of the un-moral impartiality which Keats attributes to the poet
[33] LXXVI, C, Lxxx, F
[34] The ultie in both poems may well be Adam's dream in _Paradise Lost_, Book viii:
She disappear'd, and left me dark: I waked To find her, or for ever to deplore Her loss, and other pleasures all abjure
Keats alludes to this in XXII, C, XXIV, F
[35] It is te to conjecture with Mr Forman that the full-stop before the last sentence is a misprint, and that we should read 'the world,--those who,' etc, so that the last two clauses would be relative clauses co-ordinate with 'who love not their fellow-beings'
Not to speak of the run of the sentences, this conjecture is tes,' and because the paragraph is followed by the quotation ('those' should be 'they'),
The good die first, And those whose hearts are dry as suood who die first correspond with the 'pure and tender-hearted'
who perish and, as we naturally suppose, perish young, like the poet in _Alastor_ But, as the last sentence stands, these, as well as the torpid, live to old age It is hard to believe that Shelley land when _Alastor_ was printed, he probably revised the proofs, and it is perhaps easier to suppose that he wrote what is printed than that he passed unobserved the serious misprint supposed by Mr Forman
[36] XVIII, C, XX, F
THE REJECTION OF FALSTAFF
THE REJECTION OF FALSTAFF[1]
Of the two persons principally concerned in the rejection of Falstaff, Henry, both as Prince and as King, has received, on the whole, full justice from readers and critics Falstaff, on the other hand, has been in one respect the most unfortunate of Shakespeare's fa froe; they tend to lose their harh the disproportionate attention bestowed on so conventionalised into types already faraded by Shakespeare hiinal character is to be found alive in the two parts of _Henry IV_, dead in _Henry V_, and nowhere else But not very long after these plays were composed, Shakespeare wrote, and he afterwards revised, the very entertaining piece called _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ Perhaps his company wanted a new play on a sudden; or perhaps, as one would rather believe, the tradition hted with the Falstaff scenes of _Henry IV_, expressed a wish to see the hero of theain, and to see him in love Noas no more possible for Shakespeare to show his own Falstaff in love than to turn twice two into five But he could write in haste--the tradition says, in a fortnight--a co frolish middle-class life, and that it is prosaic al the characters he could introduce a disreputable fat old knight with attendants, and could call them Falstaff, Bardolph, Pistol, and Ny, for financial purposes, the virtue of two matrons, and in the event baffled, duped, treated like dirty linen, beaten, burnt, pricked, mocked, insulted, and, worst of all, repentant and didactic It is horrible It is alh to convince one that Shakespeare himself could sanction the parody of Ophelia in the _Two noble Kinsmen_ But it no raded by that parody To picture the real Falstaff befooled like the Falstaff of the _Merry Wives_ is like io, or Becky Sharp the dupe of Amelia Osborne Before he had been served the least of these tricks he would have had his brains taken out and buttered, and have given theift I quote the words of the iave to him a few sentences worthy of Falstaff himself But they are only a few--one side of a sheet of notepaper would contain them And yet critics have soleibes of Master Ford, and whether we should put this comedy between the two parts of _Henry IV_, or between the second of theeneral reader, it is to be feared, is an ilomerate of two distinct characters, while the Falstaff of the oer is certainly much more like the impostor than the true o been effected by criticism, and is insisted on in almost all competent estimates of the character of Falstaff I do not propose to attempt a full account either of this character or of that of Prince Henry, but shall connect the remarks I have to make on them with a question which does not appear to have been satisfactorily discussed--the question of the rejection of Falstaff by the Prince on his accession to the throne What do we feel, and what are we meant to feel, as itness this rejection? And what does our feeling i?