Endymion in England: The Literary History of a Greek Myth 9780231881579

Citation preview

EN DY MI ON IN

ENGLAND

ENDYMION IN

ENGLAND η

The Literary History of A Greek

Myth

BY EDWARD S. LE COMTE

Φ New York : Morntngside

Heights

KING'S CROWN PRESS 1

944

COPYRIGHT 1944 BY EDWARD

S. L E C O M T E

Printed in the United Sutes of America

η King's Crown Press is a division of Columbia University Press organized for the purpose of making certain scholarly material available at minimum cost. Toward that end, the publishers have adopted every reasonable economy except such as would interfere with a legible format. The wor\ is presented substantially as submitted by the author, without the usual editorial attention of Columbia University Press.

To

Dr. John Le Comte ov πατέρα ονομάζω

CONTENTS Introduction I. The Ancient Myth: A Kaleidoscopic View II. III.

ix ι

Endymion: Recalling the Scene

40

Endymion in Court Intrigue

66

IV. Drayton

85

V.

The Trivial Endymion

107

VI.

Endymion Interpreted

124

Keats

152

Index

185

VII.

INTRODUCTION tries out what is still a novel approach to literary history. Although Professor Douglas Bush, in two books which have been invaluable to the present writer, has traced at fascinating length the course of Greek myth in English poetry, there are certain advantages, both critical and historical, in surveying a particular myth in detail. One has an unrivalled opportunity to study the development of an image from Greco-Roman times to modern times, and to see just what writers of various talents and intentions have done with a convention that was a common heritage of them all. The result is a history of some complexity and considerable range. The myth of Endymion (and in this respect it is typical) has known many vicissitudes. For Drayton and for Keats it symbolized that Platonic dualism which is, for better or for worse, the chief philosophical inheritance of the Western world; for others the same myth has been matter only for an obscene jest. The trivial enters into the picture as well as the sublime, and inferior writers have shared an interest with the best in making an allusion that is the same, yet vastly different. The resemblances, too, are sometimes striking, whether attributable to direct influence or to that spiritual metempsychosis of which source studies are so seldom aware. T H I S BOOK

Were there many, or even several, studies like this, there might not be good reason for adding another to the list. Actually little has been done in the way of an intensive literary history of a myth, with the exception of that of Prometheus. The Endymion myth lacks the epic proportions of the Prometheus myth, but it has—legion are the authors who bear witness —a potent and mysterious charm all its own. Slight though it is, it encompasses great themes : love, sleep, death, immortality, divine intercourse. Another reason for its currency is of course the moon; it is the only wellknown myth involving the Moon. Keats, for example, was attracted to the myth for a combination of these reasons. Mr. G. Wilson Knight is the latest of the critics to comment on that poet's extraordinary preoccupation with sleep and dreams, swoons, and other borderlands of consciousness: "sleep to Keats is not at all a simple thing but rather the entry to final mysteries." Given that interest and his passion for the moon, Keats must

χ

INTRODUCTION

have seemed to himself a latter-day Endymion. Accordingly, much of his poem is autobiographical. N o poet can escape the moon (though some are more lunar than others), and it is overwhelmingly clear that the generality of poets, today and yesterday, are far from agreeing with that acquaintance of Mr. Walter de la Mare's, a "gifted young poet" who insisted that "an image now so trite and so incorrigibly romantic as the moon should henceforth be taboo in English verse." Only less numerous are the English poets and rhetoricians who have been so incorrigibly romantic (or neo-classic) as to remember the Greek myth of the moon-goddess's love for Endymion. This book is a study in what that remembering has amounted to in the three and a half centuries from the reign of Elizabeth through that of Victoria. In connection with this topic I quote no English poet earlier than Thomas Howell (circa 1567), and should, indeed, be hard put to do so. I consider nothing published after 1900, that being the year in which Ernest Dowson and Oscar Wilde, who both put the myth to notable use, died. This terminal date, if arbitrary—and any date short of the present would be arbitrary, has proved convenient. "I have, God woot, a large feeld to ere" without reckoning with the matted vine of copyright. This work began as a study in English non-dramatic verse, and, despite certain expansions, it is still mainly that. Here, as well as in my treatment of the myth in antiquity, I profess some thoroughness. I have perused literally hundreds of volumes of the collected poetry of poets of great and of little fame. What I could not read I at least scanned, for I was unwilling to miss even the smallest allusion, since it is as a brief allusion that the myth is usually found, and found at its characteristic best. This is a moral that neither Keats nor Drayton heeded, but it is none the less true. The references to the myth in Greek and Roman literature are, almost without exception, very fleeting. My apology for my heavily footnoted first chapter on Endymion in antiquity is that one ought to see what the myth was before seeing what it became. Many interesting comparisons are thus made possible, and one gets that precious sense of continuity and recurrence that makes traditionalists of us all. By collecting all the allusions to the myth I could find in Greek and Roman literature, and considering these in their original contexts, I have built up what I think is a reasonably complete picture. Of course it is not difficult for him who comes last to be the most thorough. I have not hesitated to go off briefly on tangents, for this myth, like all

INTRODUCTION

xt

myths, has a periphery as well as a center, and impinges on many domains besides pure literature—ancient religion, philology, anthropology, ethics, psychology, philosophy, and the fine arts. I have tried to suggest this background in passing. I might also have been drawn into some general remarks on the relation between poetry and myth, had not that subject already been treated with rare insight by Frederick Clarke Prescott in his Poetry and Myth (New York, 1927). Besides, my own attitude doubtless emerges from the pages that follow. My original intention to confine this study to English non-dramatic verse was immediately confronted with Lyly's Endimioti, a play and in prose. That was too famous to ignore, even if its connection with the myth is mainly nominal. It got the greater part of a chapter. Allusions in other plays, even other whole plays themselves, naturally followed. These were regularly in verse, but the artificial barriers were down, and I have in fact drawn illustrations from several kinds of prose as well as verse. The penalty for this catholicity is that I cannot claim to be exhaustive. I can only hope that the harvest is large enough, and representative. Reference is also made, usually in the notes, to pertinent passages in American, French, German, and Italian literature, but only for flavor and by way of reminder that this could be, but is not, a study in comparative literature (unless the comparison be with Greece and Rome). Endymion knows no national boundaries, and none of time, but I, at least, must draw a line somewhere. The myth, needless to say, goes on into our century. Among the contemporary authors who have used it, conventionally or otherwise, in prose or in verse, are Alfred Noyes, Amy Lowell, E. M. Forster, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Isak Dinesen, George Santayana, and T. Sturge Moore. A word of explanation may be helpful regarding the arrangement of the chapters. A strictly chronological arrangement of the material was neither possible nor desirable, and yet—with necessary concessions to more significant categories—a certain chronological progress has been maintained. After the first chapter on the myth in antiquity, comes a chapter embracing mainly Elizabethan and Stuart allusions, those which are concerned with giving a picture or being rhetorical, rather than interpreting in the nineteenth century manner. Then follow the chapters on Lyly and on Drayton. Next comes the satirised or burlesqued Endymion, who belongs typically to the age of classicism, which was also the age of travesty. The book ends with two chapters on the nineteenth century Endymion, the Endymion who was freshly interpreted and made a symbol. Chapter

INTRODUCTION VI, after a backward glance, deals entirely with the poets who follow Keats. Their poetry is, on the whole, so sadly mediocre, that I have put the chapter on Keats last, out of chronological order, to avoid anticlimax. In considering Keats's poem from a mythological point of view I have, by the way, been anticipated by Mr. Edward B. Hungerford, but it will be seen that mine is a different, even differing, account. In the first chapter, translations from the Greek and Latin are mine, unless otherwise indicated. Often I had no choice but to do my own translating, and since these are mostly fragments, and the learned reader can always go to the original, I have put literalness above elegance. Quotations follow the editions named, except that long f and the old use of "u" and "v," and "i" and "j" have been changed to accord with modern practice. Also, I have occasionally taken liberties with a final mark of punctuation for the sake of weaving a particular quotation into my text. I am grateful to those who read and commented on this book in manuscript. My friend Dr. Andrew Chiappe I must thank first, for he was my severest critic. He read each chapter as it was written, and made many suggestions, some of which I fortunately heeded. Also, he gave me several references, relating directly or indirectly to my topic, which I have no reason to believe I should otherwise have found. Professor Ernest Hunter Wright's many kindnesses began before this book was conceived, and continued throughout. I look back with pleasure on several stimulating talks with Professor Mark Van Doren. I can invade the classical field with more confidence thanks to the fact that among the readers of the manuscript were two such classicists as Professors Nelson Glenn McCrea and Moses Hadas. I am obliged to the Yale University Library and particularly to Miss Anne S. Pratt, Reference Librarian, for sending me a microfilm of D'Urfey's Cinthia and Endimion. My oldest and greatest debt of all, not a literary one, is remembered in the dedication. E. S. L. Columbia University December, 1943

EN DY MI ON IN ENGLAND

". . . Ja, wer hat, wenn du willst, Götter gebildet, uns zu ihnen erhoben, sie zu uns herniedergebracht, als der Dichter?" —WILHELM

MEISTER

THE

ANCIENT

Chapter

One

MYTH:

A

KALEIDOSCOPIC

VIEW VISITORS to the Capitoline Museum in Rome, which is but an easy walk from the cemetery by the Aurelian wall where Keats is buried, may see there a marble relief of the sleeping Endymion. The sculpture is striking even in reproduction.1 The boy—he cannot be over eighteen—is resting on a ledge of Mount Latmus, a long thin spear across his left shoulder, his dog seated in a nook a little above and baying savagely. One has to be told that the boy is only asleep, for the utter quiescence of his figure suggests death. The dog eying intently an invisible moon, the jagged, gloomy background, the extraordinary tapering of Endymion's neck—contribute in their several ways to the work's well-nigh hypnotic power over the observer. But it is the similitude of death that fascinates the philosophic mind. When Longfellow began his sonnet on Keats with the words, " T h e young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep," 2 he was indulging in a cherished euphemism 3 based on an analogy which had impressed the ancients also. In this very tale of the shepherd who was lulled into perpetual sleep and visited at night by the moon-goddess, Cicero 4 found a fable of death. The turning of analogy into myth was under way in the Iliad, where Sleep is called "Death's brother." 5 1 See A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculptures . . . of the Museo Capitolino, ed. H. Stuart Jones (Oxford, 1 9 1 2 ) , pl. 53; or The Mythology of All Races, ed. L . H. Gray, I, Greek, and Roman, by W. S. Fox (Boston, 1 9 1 6 ) , pl. X I V (op. p. 3 6 ) . 2 Longfellow, Complete Poetical Works (Cambridge Edition, Boston, 1 8 9 3 ) , 3 1 6 . 3 A euphemism that got its impetus, of course, with the introduction of Christianity and the belief in the resurrection. The early history of dormio in reference to the sleep of death may be followed in Thesaurus Unguae Latinae (Leipsig), V ( 1 9 0 9 - 1 9 3 4 ) , 2030 ff. Tertullian, in an ironic passage, calls departed souls Endymions. " C u m transactione enim mundi reserabuntur regna caelorum. Sed in aethere dormitio nostra, cum pueris Platonis; aut in aere, cum Ario; aut circa lunam, cum Endymionibus Stoicorum." ( D e Anima, cap. 55, J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Latinae, II, 789.) Cf. Hippolytus, Elenchos, V, 7, 1 1 - 1 3 (Werke, ed. P. Wendland, Leipsig, 1 9 1 6 , III, 8 1 ) . For full references to a lunar abode for souls, see Paulus Capelle, De Luna Stellis Lácteo Orbe Animarum Sedibus (Halle, 1 9 1 7 ) .

Tusculanae Disputationes, I, 38 (92). » κασί·γνητοί θο^άτοιο, Iliad, X I V , 2 3 1 . So too Hesiod, Theogony,

4

756; the vague mother

2

THE

ANCIENT

MYTH

There are fragmentary indications that Endymion's slumber had become proverbial by the time of Hesiod, and the two earliest allusions which survive in a context we owe to the circumstance that a philosopher, Plato in the one instance, Aristotle in the other, was discussing the wakeful state, and consequently its opposite. The former 6 uses the name "Endymion" prefixed simply by the definite article, but we know he means "the sleeping Endymion." The latter drives home a point in connection with his exposition in the Nicomachean Ethics 7 of happiness as an activity. Even the gods "surely live and function—they do not lie asleep like Endymion." Among the Romans, following Greek precedent, the phrase (or an equivalent), "Endymionis somnum dormire" passed into current speech.8 It was one of Euphues' accomplishments that he could "sleepe with Endimion." 9 The Oxford English Dictionary gives the noun "Endymiony," meaning "sleepiness like that of Endymion," and quotes from Cyril Tourneur's Transformed Metamorphosis, published in 1600: "Long Endimionie Hath pierc'd the clearenes of thy sight." 1 0 And in William Hazlitt's essay "On Coffee-House Politicians" occurs this delightful sentence: "Our cup-bearer slept in a corner of the room, like another Endymion, in the pale rav of a half-extinguished lamp . . . " 1 1 These few examples suffice to show how a very special aspect of the myth has persisted over a period of 2500 years. It will be of advantage to examine the myth more broadly, and notice how, after the manner of myths, it grew and was transformed. That the ancients held in high respect Apollonius's epic poem on the expedition of the Argonauts a fat body of scholia bears witness. Thanks to a passing mention of Endymion in the fourth book of that poem, 12 there has been subjoined an encyclopedic discussion of the Endymion legend. Only a companion footnote to Theocritus, 13 which reviews the same material, approaches it in fullness. Arid, fossilized prose, this dead matter is yet such stuff as poems are made on: of both was Night, ibid., 2 1 1 - 1 2 . It is significant that Hermes, using his wand as god of sleep, appears at the beginning of the twenty-fourth book of the Odyssey to escort the gibbering ghosts of the slain wooers to the realms below. 6 7 Phaedo, 72c. X, viii, 7. 8 Cicero, De Finibus, V, 20 (55). Cf. Diogenian, IV, 40: Ένδυμίωνο! ΰττνον KaSeideiS; Suidas, s.v. In extant classical literature the word dormitor is used once only, when Martial scoffingly inquires of the myth-loving reader, "Quid tibi dormitor proderit Endymion?"

(X,9

4, 4·)

John Lyly, Complete Works, ed. R. W. Bond (Oxford, 1902), I, 186. 10 Sixth stanza of text (in The Worths of Cyril Tourneur, ed. AUardyce Nicoli, London, 1929, 58). 1 1 Table Tal\, Essay X X , Everyman's Library, 201. 12 13 Argonautica, IV, 57-58. Scholia in Theocritum Vetera, III, 49-5 ic.

THE

ANCIENT

MYTH

3

"Latmus—a mountain in Caria, where is the cave in which Endymion passed away the long hours. This is the site of the city of Heraclea. It is reported that the goddess Selene comes down into this cave to Endymion. Sappho and Nicander (in the Europeia) tell the story of Selene's love for him. Hesiod represents Endymion (the son of Aethlius the son of Zeus and Calyce 15 ) as receiving from Zeus the privilege of being the dispenser of death for himself, what time he should wish to die . . . 1β Ibycus avers that he was king over Elis. In the Great Eoiai [a lost poem by Hesiod] it is said that Endymion was carried up by Zeus into Heaven; that, falling in love with Hera, he was deceived with a cloud-wraith, was cast out, and descended to Hades. Epimenides narrates how while dwelling among the gods he came to love Hera. The result was, he begged of furious Zeus the favor of uninterrupted sleep. Some have it that for all his righteousness he was deified and [lacuna?] 17 asked only to sleep by Zeus forever. Others confute the myth of the sleep of Endymion. Being a lover of the chase, he hunted every night by moonlight, since at this time the wild animals go out into the pastures. He slept during the day in a cavern; thus some imagine him to sleep all the time. Moreover they offer an allegorical interpretation, explaining that Endymion was the first to attempt a philosophy in regard to astronomical phenomena: he discovered independently the sources of the moon's illumination and movements.18 Wherefore, devoting himself to such things by night, he did not take sleep, but slept throughout the day. They say of a person enamored of sleep that he is an Endymion, whence the proverb, 'sleep of Endymion,' alluding to those who sleep a great part of the time,19 or so negligently perform something that they seem asleep. 14

Scholia in ApoUonium Rhodium Vetera, recensuit Carol us Wendel (Berlin, 1 9 3 5 ) , pp. 264-65. 15 Conon (Narrationes, 1 4 ) makes Protogeneia the mother of Endymion, but she is regularly his grandmother, the mother of Aethlius (Pausanias, V , 1 , 3; Apollodorus, I, vii, 2 ) . 16 The text becomes corrupt. Additional authorities are mentioned: Pisander, Acusilaus, Pherecydes, the Aetolica—another lost poem by Nicander, and Theopompus the epic poet. 17 Wendel ad loc. One codex adds, νλημμιΧήσαντί τι. Cf. Wendel on this codex, pp. xv, xxii. 18 Cf. IV, 2Ö3-64b of the scholia, "Some say that Endymion discovered the orbits and the numbers of the moon . . . ," and see below, pp. 25-26. 19 Cf. Macarius, Centuria, III, 89; Vili, 5 1 ; Gregorius Cyprius in Paroemiographi Craeci, ed. E. L. Leutsch (Gottingae, 1 8 5 1 ) , II, p. i n , # 1 1 . Herodes (Mime VIII, 10) rouses his servant Megallis with the words, "Are you sleeping Latmian fashion?" ( 2 0 1 ) . 9 E. K . on "Julye," 64. See above, Ch. I, p. 1 3 . 10 "But Memory is not a Muse," Landor, " T o Wordsworth," 1. 7 (Poetical Works, ed. S. Wheeler, Oxford, 1937, II, 3 8 1 ) . 11 See below, Ch. IV, p. 87. 8

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

And all the skic doth leane; There is the cave where Phebe layed The shepheard long to dreame. Whilome there used shepheards all To feede theyr flocks at will, Till by his foly one did fall, That all the rest did spill. 12 Spenser, it is known, was following Mantuan's eighth eclogue. Among other things he got from Mantuan a hint for the introduction of Endymion, 13 and more than a hint for the introduction of Adam, the shepherd who fell. E.K. identifies the "hyllye place" as Mount Ida, and Spenser has at least beguiled one of his modern editors into believing that that is where Endymion belongs. 14 There are those, however, who might prefer to ignore the gloss, since the poem is consistent and intelligible without it. The far East is the traditional site of the Terrestrial Paradise, 15 and there is Endymion's mount, from behind which rises the sun. What impresses is the blend in this passage of classical and Christian: Pan, Christ, Endymion, Adam—shepherds all. There is, indeed, some evidence in early Christian art that Endymion became identified with the ideal of the Good Shepherd, 10 and his fair figure asleep on sarcophagi must often have been a reminder of the Resurrection. This is one devious reason why the length of the shepherd's dream is better left unspecified. It can almost be claimed 12

" J u l y e , " 53-68.

' ; I "esse locum memorant, ubi surgit ab acquorc Titan, qui (nisi dedidici) contingit vertice Lunam, et vixisse illic hominem, sed postea abactum improbitate gulae, quod scilicet omnia poma manderet, et magno servaret nulla Tonanti." (Baptista Mantuanus, Ecloga VIII, 45-49.) 14 There is the same confusion, at least on Phillida's part, in "Phillidaes Love-call to her Coridon, and his replying" (England's Helicon, 1600, ed. Rollins, Cambridge, Mass., 1935, I, 70): "Phil. Had my Coridon, my Coridon, Beene (alack) my Swaine: Cor. Had my lovely one, my lovely one, Beene in Ida plaine— Phil. Cinthia Endimion had refus'd, Preferring, preferring My Coridon to play withal;" etc. A copy in MS. Rawlinson Poet. 148, made by John Lilliat, has "on yonder" in place of "in Ida" (Rollins, II, 126). 15 See Arturo Graf, "Il Mito del Paradiso Terrestre" (Miti, Leggende e Superstizioni del Medio Ero, Torino, 1892, I), Ch. I; on the association with a mount, ibid., pp. 16-18. 111 H. Ledercq in Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie, ed. with F. Cabrol (Paris, 1922), V, 42.

44

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

that the difference here between "long" and "xxx yeares" symbolises the difference between poetry and prose. A few words, at most a few lines, have generally sufficed to recreate one of the world's great love stories, How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, First saw the boy Endymion from whose eyes She took eternal fire that never dies ; How she conveyed him softly in a sleep, His temples bound with poppy, to the steep Head of old Latmus, where she stoops each night, Gilding the mountain with her brother's light, To kiss her sweetest. John Fletcher in this passage from The Faithful Shepherdess17 has provided what is practically the locus classicus of the myth for English readers. Again, it would be rash to claim that any later poet who treated the same subject could not have found all the inspiration he needed here. Here is the essential picture, free of quirks and superfluities. The one addition, the poppies, is a traditional iconographical symbol. The shift from the past tense to the present puts us immediately in touch with Endymion's immortality and the seasonless passion of the moon. When Rupert Brooke ventures the generalization, "Love wakens love," he does not, of course, mean that a literary allusion to a famous love affair will melt a poet's mistress by stirring in her the spirit of emulation, but this seems to be the guiding principle behind certain Elizabethan (and Jacobean) references to the story of Endymion. The lines just quoted form part of an invitation to amorous dalliance. The surface naïveté of these appeals varies. Thomas Howell, writing around 1567, is relatively crude, apart from the strange reading, "Laemi." I reade how Luna loved one, Of birth but meane, of right good fame, By name iclipt Endimione, Whose love was quite devoyde of blame : In Laemi Hill it thus befell, She saw him sit all sad alone, Tis I (quoth she) I know full well, For whome he mournes and makes his moane : She was not shamde of Laemi Hill, 17

1 , iii, 36-43.

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

45

Nor yet of Lovers simple state, But straight consents unto his will, And him did choose for loving make. O Luna looke upon thy Love, EnJimion makes his mone to thee. Be not ashamde, let pittie move, And love me like as I love thee. 18 Slyer and less consistent is a passage in Marston's melodrama, The Insatiate Countess.19 Mendoza has been serenading the Lady Lentulus. Len. I thank you for your music; now, good night. Men. Leave not the world yet, Queen of Chastity; Keep promise with thy love Endymion, And let me meet thee there on Latmus* top. The invitation does not sound like the kind to which a queen of chastity could lend a favorable and unblushing ear. A contributor to The Paradise of Dainty Devices,20 probably the Earl of Oxford, also sees in the myth at least a faint indication of condescension to come. Sometimes the exact degree of condescension hoped for is explained. In one sonnet Fulke Greville says he will be content if only his Cynthia will not frown on him. He knows he cannot expect much more than that. Are you afraid, because my heart adores you, The world will thinke I hold Endymion's place? Hippolytus, sweet Cynthia, kneel'd before you, Yet did you not come downe to kisse his face. 21 The same writer in another sonnet, however, asks for the return to favor symbolised by "Dianas kisse." 22 And for Sir William Alexander the kiss is not mainly figurative. Then whil'st that Lathmos did containe her blisse, Chast Phoebe left her Church so much admir'd, ,B " A n humble sute to his friende, requesting Love for L o v e " (Poems, ed. Grosart, 1879, 1 2 9 ) . First printed in New Sonéis, and pretie Pamphlets, the poem reappears with slight alterations in Howell. His Devises ( 1 5 8 1 ) , the quoted passage now beginning, "Some say how Luna loved one, Of lowe estate and little fame, . . ." 18 20 III, i. Ed. Rollins (Cambridge, 1 9 2 7 ) , 83. 21 Caelica, X V I I ( P o e m s and Dramas, ed. G. Bullough, Edinburgh, I, 82). The tone of this sonnet and Sonnet X L V I bears out the editor's reasoning (p. 42) that "Cynthia," like "Caelica" and " M y r a , " is a name for the poet's mistress rather than Queen Elizabeth. 22 Sonnet X L V I (p. 1 0 ' ) .

46

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

And when her brother from that bounds retir'd, Would of the sleepie shepheard steale a kisse, But to no greater grace I crave to clime, Then of my goddesse whiles whil'st she reposes, That I might kisse the stil-selfekissing roses, And steale of her that which was stolne of him; And though I know that this would onely prove, A maim'd delight, whereof th'one hälfe would want, Yet whil'st the light did Morpheus power supplant: If that my theft did her displeasure move, I render would all that I rob'd againe, And for each kisse I take would give her twaine.23 The closing conceit has a familiar ring. The scene conjured up in these poems is static, sculpturesque. The writer has before him the tableau of the moon stooping to kiss her slumbering lover. We can skip to the nineteenth century and find the same set picture,24 though it is now much rarer. In 1802 there was contributed to the Morning Post a quinzain (sometimes assigned, without authority, to Wordsworth 2 5 ), in which the poet begged the moon to "guide hither" his beloved,— If e'er thy beam, as Smyrna's shepherds tell, Soft as the gentle kiss of amorous maid On the closed eyes of young Endymion fell, That he might wake to clasp thee in the shade. Such invocations to the moon by lovers are very old,26 and it is fascinating to watch them vary through the centuries. A song by Thomas Moore begins, 23 Aurora, Son. 28 (Earl of Stirling, Poetical Wor\s, ed. L. E. Kastner and H. B. Charlton, Manchester, 1929, II, 468). 24 See, e.g., Goethe's Faust, Part II, Act I, Scene VII, "Rittersaal," 1 3 2 ff. 25 See the Oxford Standard Edition of Wordsworth's Poetical Works, ed. Thomas Hutchinson, 1933, pp. 629-30. " E . H. C." (Ernest Hartley Coleridge?) quoted the poem in the Athenaeum of Nov. 4, 1893 (LXVII, 628), arguing, on the basis of internal evidence and the fact that Wordsworth (as well as Coleridge and Southey) did contribute to the Morning Post at this period, that it might be an unacknowledged poem. It was pointed out that the fourth line of this "Written in a Grotto"—"When thou wert hidden in thy monthly grave" anticipates "thy beauty . . . is hidden, buried in its monthly grave" (p. 460) of Wordsworth's lines " T o the Moon" ("Wanderer! that stoop'st so low . . . " ) , composed in 1835. However, the conservative opinion, as voiced by George M. Harper (edition cited, p. 991) is that the poem is "Probably not by Wordsworth." 26 See above, Ch. I, pp. 22 ff. and note 139. Compare two of Ronsard's sonnets, "Lune à l'œil brun . . . " and "Cache pour cette nuit ta corne, bonne Lune" (Les Amours, ed. Hugues Vagancy, Paris, 1910, pp. 255, 4 2 1 ) .

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE SCENE

47

Bright moon, that high in heaven art shining, All smiles, as if within thy bower to-night Thy own Endymion lay reclining, And thou wouldst wake him with a kiss of light!— 2 7 and goes on with a similar prayer, using the same key words, "Guide hither." Both these poems make a merit of presenting the Moon as the moon, a visible numen, not an abstraction. We do know that it was Wordsworth who issued from Rydal Mount the following sonnet in honor of Lucca Giordano, who had renewed the Endymion theme on his canvas. The 17th century painting had been brought back from Italy by the poet's eldest son. Giordano, verily thy Pencil's skill Hath here portrayed with Nature's happiest grace The fair Endymion couched on Latmos-hill : And Dian gazing on the Shepherd's face In rapture,—yet suspending her embrace, As not unconscious with what power the thrill Of her most timid touch his sleep would chase, And, with his sleep, that beauty calm and still. Oh may this work have found its last retreat Here in a Mountain-bard's secure abode, One to whom, yet a School-boy, Cynthia showed A face of love which he in love would greet, Fixed, by her smile, upon some rocky seat; Or lured along where green-wood paths he trod. 28 That sonnet, smouldering with the genius of a poet who had attained the longevity and prestige of a patriarch, might cause—at least its octave might cause—some passing regret that Wordsworth did not offener take advantage of the evocative power of myth. Our regret dies, of course, with the reflection that a mythological Wordsworth would not be Wordsworth at all. He could seldom allow "a mere fiction of what never was" 2 9 to stand between him and the object.30 He had his own form of animism, whatever 2T

"Bright Moon," Complete Poems, cd. W. M. Rossetti (Burt), 281. Evening Voluntaries, XIV (composed 1846). Preface to The Excursion, 5 1 . 30 S e e Basil Willey, The Seventeenth Century Background (London, 1934), Ch. XII, "On Wordsworth and the Locke Tradition." A. E. Housman points out, nevertheless, that Wordsworth's "conception of nature as a living and sentient and benignant being" is "a conception as purely mythological as the Dryads and the Naiads" ( T h e Name and Nature of Poetry, New York, 1933, 3 3 ) . 28

48

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

understanding he might show in The Excursion of that of the pagans. Here it took a picture to inspire a picture. By this time myth meant to a poet either rhetoric or a mould for fresh meanings: Wordsworth repudiated the first alternative, and the second was uncongenial to him, neither Laodamia nor Dion to the contrary. The same scene is deftly painted—with particular attention to background—by the American, Thomas B. Read, 31 whose poems befit the water-colorist that he was. A final example of treatment that is both static and objective is supplied by Richard Garnett.32 He slept on Latmian pinnacle upraised 'Neath amethystine skies uncrost by cloud : No ripple rose on sea; no blade was bowed; Sole in the purple void Love's sapphire blazed. Selene came, stooped, rose; he woke amazed In Moonland's fiery silence, where nor loud Or low breathes hovering wind, or billows crowd Booming from beds of oceans long erased. The sun with undeflected arrow seared The flameless crater's swart and torrid wail; The silver raiment shrouded Earth afar; Yet nought Endymion's spirit could appal; For nought beheld he in that desert weird Save Dian's eyes, more sweet than moon or star. This is fin de siècle bizarrerie. The gaudy, jewel-intoxicated setting reminds us of Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx, which the same publishers were to bring out a year later. It is an open question whether Endymion's vision has not taken on the contours of a nightmare, but at least the wonder of myths and dreams is here. We can contrast earlier over-familiar treatments that make the goddess humdrum, as when James Shirley absurdly has "the Love-sick Moon" approach Latmus "in her night-Gown." 3 3 In addition to these tableaux, there were attempts to act out the myth. Since Somnus and Morpheus were sometimes personified in masques (Morpheus in two 3 4 of these was garlanded with the poppy emblem, like S1

"Endymion" (Poetical Works, Philadelphia, 1 8 9 4 , 1 , 1 0 5 1 0 6 ) . Compare the "Endymiori" of Samuel V. Cole (Atlantic Monthly, LVIII, August, 1886, 186). 32 Poemi (London, 1893), 149. 33 "Narcissus," stanza 31 (Poems, ed. R. L. Armstrong, New York, 1 9 4 1 , 2 1 ) . M See Ml?rdyce Nicoli, Stuart Marques and 'he Rerais'anre Stage (New York, 1938). 160.

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

49

Fletcher's Endymion), the slumbering shepherd was evidently not too sluggish for the stage, and besides, as we shall see, he could always be made to wake up and say something. He is alluded to in four of Jonson's masques,35 and a conventional reference to him by Night in the masque interpolated into The Maid's Tragedy 36 of Beaumont and Fletcher draws from Cynthia an unexpectedly sharp denial : Thou dream'st, dark queen; that fair boy was not mine, Nor went I down to kiss him. Ease and wine Have bred these bold tales: poets, when they rage, Turn gods to men, and make an hour an age. He is personally present in "The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch, Prince Charles" written by Drummond to welcome the king to Edinburgh in June, 1633. Both visually and aurally the climax of this spectacle came when "The stand discovered the seven planets sitting on a throne, and Endymion." Apparelled "in a long coat of crimson velvet coming over his knee," sheephook in hand, the shepherd stepped forward in "buskins of gilt leather" to herald the good omens of the heavens. Rous'd from the Latmian cave, where many years That empress of the lowest of the spheres, Who cheers the night, did keep me hid apart From mortal wights, to ease her love-sick heart, As young as when she did me first enclose, As fresh in beauty as the morning rose, Endymion, that whilom kept my flocks Upon Ionia's flow'ry hills and rocks, And warbling sweet lays to my Cynthia's beams, Out-sang the swannets of Meander's streams; To whom, for guerdon, she heaven's secret bars Made open, taught the paths and powers of stars : By this dear lady's strict commandement, To celebrate this day I here am sent.37 From each of the planets come assurances that the reign of Charles will mark the return of the golden age. Endymion as an astrologer would not be a startling novelty, as this rationalization had gained wide currency, 35 " H u e and Cry after C u p i d " (produced 1 6 0 8 ) ; "Oberon, the Fairy Prince" ( 1 6 1 1 ) ; " N e w s from the N e w World Discovered in the M o o n " ( 1 6 2 1 ) ; " T i m e Vindicated" ( 1 6 2 3 ) . 3ΰ 37 I, ii (43 ff. of " T h e M a s q u e " ) . Poems, ed. Ward, II, 88-89.

50

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

thanks, in part, to the handbooks, which never left a myth uninterpreted. 38 Nearly fifty years before, Greene had corrected in Planetomachia the lewd notions of those who thought Pasiphae, for instance, loved a bull, an unzodiacal bull, whereas the myth is only a way of saying she "fell in love with the science of Astrologie." Amongst them which have been favourers of this Arte, some have laboured in one part and some in an other: one seeking to knowe the perfect course of the Moone: some of the Sunne: others of the rest of the Planets, according to their particular disposition: as Endimion whom they faine to have slept with Luna: and Phaeton to be the sonne of Soil: but these being fables, did yet allude unto their Astronomicall qualities, wherewith these men were severally indewed. 39 This is not out of the frivolous dialogue of Planetomachia, but from the "briefe Apologie of the sacred science of Astronomie" in which the author speaks in his own person and with all apparent seriousness. A more influential work, Sylvester's Bartas his Devine Weekes, contains a digression in "praise of learnd Astronomers, and the profit of their Doctrine" beginning, O true Endymions, that imbrace above Upon Mount Latmos your Imperiall Love . . . 4 0 The plural makes the figure ridiculous; however, that is not the point. Incidentally, Leigh H u n t in the course of a reverie entitled "Daisies" turns the tables on this star-gazing Endymion. . . . the growing moon seems to lie looking at the stars, like a young shepherdess at her flock. A few days ago she lay gazing in this manner at the solitary evening star, like Diana, on the slope of a valley, looking up at Endymion. His young eye seemed to sparkle out upon the world; while she, bending inwards, her hands behind her head, watched him with an enamoured dumbness. 41 Here is the starting-point for a nature myth celebrating the passion of Diana for bright-eyed Hesperus. 38 As the title and opening pages make very clear, the Mythologiae, sive explicationum fabularum, Libri decern of Comes featured interpretations, the moral being what mattered. 39 Complete Works, ed. Grosart, V, 22. 40 Second Weck, Second Day, Fourth Part, 674-75 (Grosart's edition, I, 160). 41 From The Indicator, April 19, 1820 (Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist, ed. Charles Kent, London, Chandos Classics, 1 8 5 ) .

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

5/

A New Opera, call'd, Cinthia and Endimion by Thomas D'Urfey was produced at Drury Lane in April, 1697, and printed the same year.42 Its alternate title, The Loves of the Deities, sums up the action, which involves no less than four divine passions. Cynthia loves Endymion, Apollo Daphne, Cupid Psyche, and Pan Syrinx. Daphne and Syrinx prove to be unworthy, and the latter's conspiracy against Endymion and base abuse of Pan's love make her the villain of the piece. She represents "irregular Passion, Treachery, and Envy." The other characters are likewise tagged as "morally fashioning the Vertues and Vices of Human Nature," but the allegory thus decreed is never very insistent. Clearly in this production the scenery, the plot, and the songs come first : the blank verse follows after, a neglected and wayward child. A more than fair sample is Endymion's first speech, in answer to Apollo's complaint at the doom which makes him, a god, a wretched lingerer among mortals. Divine Apollo, Jove will soon relent, Finding his Glories dearkned by the Loss Of the chief Light of his Eternal Palace, The God of Musick, Wit, and Poetry; As he is just, he's merciful: I once prov'd it, When an abhorr'd Detractor, the Court being here, Envying the Grace I found in Juno's Eyes, Strove to possess him, that she was too kind; Then urg'd him straight to doom me, for Presumption, To take a Drug brought out of Hell from Proserpine, Which could cause Sleep perpetual : But Jove, Scorning his Malice, rais'd me more to Favour, And so, no doubt, e're long he will Apollo . . * 3 This is an interesting adaptation of an old tradition. It is unfortunate, however, in that it renders the later action repetitious, for Endymion again runs the gauntlet of malice and deadly sleep brought on by a drug from hell and is again raised to higher favor by Jove. The grace he has found in Cynthia's eyes sets envious Syrinx plotting. As in his play the gods are very emotional and very far from omniscient, D'Urfey, as if remembering the admonition, 42 43

Printed by W . Onley, London. P. ι (The printer has failed to assign this speech to E n d y m i o n ) .

52

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

Never presume to make a God appear, But for a business worthy of a God, 44 apologises by having Hermes bring a special edict from Jove that whimsically subjects the deities, for one month, to the "Accidents, Passions, and Punishments" of the "Mortal State." 45 Only Cupid symbolically retains his power, and has come to exercise it "on haughty Cinthia" for Psyche has agreed to yield to him when Cynthia kisses a man. Cupid is confident, So let me gain Love's Fruit, As you on Latimus-top shall see her do't.46 He infects Syrinx with an unrequited love for Endymion. Syrinx becomes desperate when she sees that Endymion loves Cynthia, and that the goddess, whatever she may pretend, is by no means cold to him. To Cynthia he Aspires, Cynthia the Fair, The Great, the Haughty—but she shall not have him; No, I'll oppose their Pleasure tho' I die; This I think the Covert of God Pan ; Whom I've observ'd to be as fond of me, As I am of Endimion, and tho' I hate him, Yet I for once, and meerly for my Ends, Will work upon his Temper : he has a Drug Given him by Proserpine, and Envious Pluto, Of such strange Force, and deadly Nature, That it can cast one into such a Sleep, That nothing can awake. This is Revenge, I'll wheedle out of him, to give Endymion·, So shall he be incapable of loving, And she of being belov'd.47 Pan naively relinquishes the drug. Syrinx finds her intended victim lying on the ground in utter depression after Cynthia, making a final effort to "controll this Tyrant" in her veins, has spoken harshly to him. Endymion quickly takes the potion when Syrinx pretends it is a gift from Cynthia. The deadly sleep is upon him when the relenting goddess returns to the scene. She goes into mourning. 44 Earl of Roscommon, translating Horace's " A r t of Poetry" (Johnson's Poets, London, 1 7 7 9 , X» 2 6 7 ) . 45 46 47 P. 3 . 7. 23.

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

53

Bring me my Sable Veil, and put it on: Thus I Eclipse the Lustre of the Moon. 48 In the second scene of Act IV the oracle that Cynthia has gone to consult issues a prophecy. When she whose figure like the World's vast Frame, That's always one, yet never is the same : Constant, yet waving still when most encreast, Descends to kiss and make Endimion blest. Then that which seems like Death shall take No more Effect, but he that sleeps shall wake. By now the resemblance between the plot of this play and that of Lvly's Endimion has become acute.49 The above lines are no more than a versification of the prophecy brought back by Eumenides: When shee whose figure of all is the perfectest, and never to bee measured—alwaies one, yet never the same—still inconstant, yet never wavering—shall come and kisse Endimion in his sleepe, hee shall then rise; els never.50 Syrinx is only a reincarnation of Lyly's Tellus, and Pan corresponds roughly to Corsites. There is a similar scene in the last act, where Cynthia, after much struggle and persuasion, performs her unique act of condescension : Take this Kiss, which Oracles ordain; Take what no Mortal did before obtain; Nor ever, after thee, must hope again.51 Lyly's Cynthia says the same thing in prose.52 Endymion awakes, Syrinx is exposed, and both are destined for metamorphosis—in the one case as a punishment, in the other as a reward. Apollo comes in with a crown of stars: Endimion, take this Crown, and put it on; The King of Gods adopts thee for his Son: «31. 49 Curiously enough, D'Urfey's indebtedness to Lyly has not been noticed by the older commentators and R. S. Forsythe, A Study of the Plays of Thomas D'Urjey (Cleveland, 1 9 1 6 ) , 113-16. so Endimion, III, iv, 1 5 5 - 5 8 (Lyly's Works, ed. Bond, III, 5 1 ) . 51 52 42. See below, Ch. III, p. 72.

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

Wonder not, but receive the Gift from me; The next to this is Immortality. 53 The last stage direction reads : "Endimion is chang'd into a Star, and with a Chorus the Opera concludes." 5 4 D'Urfey's play, in its forthright development, has greater dramatic interest than Lyly's. The later dramatist has shown a certain skill in adapting material from Lyly and from mythology to his purpose. Other extensions of the myth suffer by comparison. There is, for instance, the masque which George Powell attached to the end of his "triffle of a Comedy," The Imposture Defeated, produced and printed the following year, 1698.5S Cupid, Cynthia, and Endymion are dull rhymesters, though perhaps their costumes were effective. The "cantatas" of John Cunningham 5 6 and Henry Carey 5 7 are insipid when read, however they may be when sung. Samuel Boyse's "Cynthia and Endymion: A Tale," 5 8 full of faded conventions, does not call on any of the sister arts to give it the help it sorely needs. A prettily expanded picture comes into English literature through Philip Ayres, whose "Endymion and Diana, An Heroic Poem" 59 is admittedly "taken out of the 8th Canto 60 of Alessandro Tassoni his La Secchia Rapita." Ayres has translated so skilfully that we could not have guessed his thirteen eight-line stanzas were not the product of his own fancy. The action is very simple. Diana comes upon the weary lad as he sleeps. Her modesty being no match for his beauty, she falls to kissing him. He awakes in alarm and strives to rise. 'Fair Sleeper, would'st thou go,' said she, 'so soon? Be not afraid, behold, it is the Moon, That comes to sport with thee in this sweet grove, 53 44 54

·

Among the numerous operas by Niccola Piccinni, Gluck's rival, was Diane et Endymion, produced at Paris in 1784. It failed because its book "avait . . . complètement travesti la fable" (Gustave Desnoiresterres, Gluc\ et Piccinni, Paris, 1875, 3 6 1 ) . There is also record of a ballet, "Endymion's Dream," performed at the New York Theatre, Oct. 15, 1863 (G. C. D. Odell, Annals of the New York^ Stage, VII, 578). "Endimion, Pastorale en Cinq Actes" by Fontenelle (Oeuvres, Amsterdam, 1764, IV, 50-87) dramatises the futile resistance to the flames of love by the pair who have their respective confidants, and are respectively beloved by Licoris and Pan. 55 London, printed for Richard Wellington, pp. 45-47. 56 "Love and Chastity: A Cantata" {Poems, chiefly Pastoral, Newcastle, 1766, 8 7 - 9 1 ) . 57 "Cantata VI—Cynthia and Endymion" (Poems, ed. F. T. Wood, London [ 1 9 3 0 ] , 169-70). 58 Translations and Poems written on several Subjects (London, 1 7 3 4 ) , 1 0 6 - 1 5 . 59 Text in Saintsbury, Minor Poets of the Caroline Period (Oxford, 1906), II, 285-87. 60 Stanzas 47-49, 51-60.

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE SCENE

55

Guided by Fate, Necessity and Love; Be not disturb'd at this unusual sight, W e silently in joys will spend the night; But if thou tell what I to thee have said, Expect Heav'n's utmost vengeance on thy head.' 'Goddess of Night, that tak'st from Sol thy flame, I,' said the Youth, 'a silly shepherd a m ; But if thou promise me in Heav'n a place, T o be translated hence from human race, Then of my faith thou may'st assurèd live, O f which this mantle as a pledge I'll give; T h e sage my father Etho gave the night, That he his faith to Calice did plight.' This said, his mantle quickly he unbound, That was with flowers of pearl embroider'd round, Which then he wore o'er his left shoulder slung, And with two ends beneath his right arm hung; Gave it the Goddess, who had now thrown by All sense of honour and of modesty : And like a frost-nip'd flower, she by his charms Being thus o'ercome, dropt down into his arms. 6 1 O n e must marvel at the peculiar blend of traditions. Endymion bargains for heaven with a pledge that seems to be a transmutation of Spenser's— 61

VIII-X. Ayres is not only a better poet than James Atkinson, who later translated the whole of La Secchia Rapita into verse (London, 1 8 2 5 ) ; he gives a more faithful reading of the original, as comparison of his tenth stanza with Tassoni and Atkinson will show. "Così dicendo, un vel candido schietto Che di gigli di perle era fregiato, E Ί tergo in un gli circondava e Ί petto Giù da la spalla destra al manco lato, Porse in dono a la Dea, eh' ogni rispetto Già spinto avea del cor tutto infiammato; E come fior che langue allor eh' aggiaccia, Si lasciava cader ne le sue braccia." Here is Atkinson's rendering: "So saying, he a gauzy veil displayed, Adorned with pearls and lilies—it was long, Covering the back and chest, and, overlaid From right to left, in folds pictorial hung; This he enamoured gave, no more afraid, Terror no longer to his fibres clung; And, as a flower when languid, frozen, pale, So ht into her arms impassioned fell."

56

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

ultimately Virgil's—fleece, for in the original the whiteness of the "velo" is stressed.62 Ayres makes more of the "velo" as a garment whose removal brings the action to a voluptuous climax. It is to be recalled in this connection that Lucían 6 3 has Selene find Endymion lying with his mantle in alluring disorder 64 (by the way, a similar situation involving a sleeping gardener proves the undoing of an abbess in one of Boccaccio's tales 6 a ), if he is not absolutely nude, as in Girodet-Trioson's sensational painting, "Le Sommeil d'Endymion." e 6 At any rate, the dispensing with the mantle is clearly functional as well as symbolic, as the two converts to love pass such a night that Diana regrets every moment she has lost in hunting. 'Ah, Fool!' said she, 'How I too late repent That to the woods I e'er a hunting went ; How many years have I consum'd since then, Which I must never think to see again ? H o w many precious minutes ev'ry day, Did I in that mad pastime fool away! And how much better is one sweet embrace, Than all the toilsome pleasures of the chase?' Here Ayres wisely stops, though the original does not. Surely this reproduction from the Italian, at once so faithful and so fresh, is entitled to an honorable place among the bric-a-brac of literature. 62 1 adopt the first part (though not the last) of a suggestion made by one o£ Tassoni's commentators (Salviani, ad loc.) : "Finge il Poeta, che Endimione donasse a Diana una banda bianca, . . . per adombrare il dono, che finsero i Poeti antichi esserle stato donato da quel pastore, e per mostrare, che le femmine, comunque innamorate, sempre vogliono qualche cosa dall' amante." Tasso only spread the story by denying it: " O Dea, non fosti tu da bianca lana Vinta, nè trasse te dall' Orizzonte

Vago pastor . . ." ( " A l l a Sig. Diana . . ." Opere, Pisa, 1 8 6 1 , III, p. 209: "Parmi ne' sogni . . . " ) . 63 Dialogues of the Gods, XI, Aphrodite and Selene. 64 See C. M. Wieland in Diana und Endymion (1762) : " . . . Ein leicht beschattendes Gewand Erlaubt den ungewohnten Blicken Nur allzu viel—sie zu berücken. Man sagt sogar, sie zog mit leiser Hand Auch dieses weg·—doch wer hat zugesehen? Was sagt man nicht?—Und war' es auch geschehen, So zog sie doch beim ersten Blick Gewiss die Hand so schnell zurück Als jenes Kind, das einst im Grase spielte, Nach Blumen griff und eine Schlange fühlte." Sämmtliche Werke (Leipzig, 1 8 5 4 ) , X , 16. 65 66

The Decameron, Third Day, First Story. At the Louvre. See Nouvelle Mythologie Illustrée,

ed. J. Richepin, Paris, I, plate op. p. 208.

ENDYMION:

RECALLING

THE

SCENE

57

Two centuries later another pleasing miniature came from the pen of Stopford Brooke.67 In short trochaic measures the first meeting which led to the first rendezvous "in Latmos' deepest dell" is lightly sketched. Dian hunting through the woods, Emptied all her quiver, And the evening overtook her By a mountain river . . . Her austere presence silences her nymphs who, left behind in the chase, have been merry among themselves. The goddess lies down to sleep, with only her dog to love her. This picture of proud loneliness prepares the scene for Endymion, who comes by driving home his flock. Swift as light the Goddess rose, Anger in her glance divine! But the boy was innocent, And his eyes began to shine. 'Who art thou?' he said, and smiled, 'One of the great Gods who move On the dread Olympus top! Take a simple shepherd's love; I will build an altar here, Milk and honey every morn I will bring, and in the eve, Flowers thy footsteps shall adorn.' Dian hesitates, For the boy was brave and true, And in loveliness so wise, That he filled the living air With the childhood in his eyes. Hovering Cupid has no trouble piercing her exposed heart. She arranges for Endymion to meet her at the full moon. The two lovers go their separate ways with strange new feelings. As for the rest, Who can tell what happened then When they met within the glen ? The piece is a clever revival, using the old conventions in the simplest possible way. It is winsome, out-of-date, and very easily forgotten, or rather, 47

"Erdymion," Poems (London, 1889), 239-43.

5est;ad, 181 ff.

DRAYTON

9/

purtenanccs, such as Phoebe's apparel.30 He has an apparently unlimited interest in the starry heavens whence Phoebe comes and whither, for a time, Endymion goes. Stars and jewels form the leitmotiv of his imagery, and the flesh itself serves to remind him of them. His dainty hand, the snow it selfe dyd stayne, Or her to whom Jove showr'd in golden rayne: From whose sweet palme the liquid Pearle dyd swell, Pure as the drops of Aganippas Well: Cleere as the liquor which fayre Hebe spylt; Hys sheephooke silver, damask'd all with gilt. The staffe it selfe, of snowie Ivory, Studded with Currall, tipt with Ebony; His tresses, of the Ravens shyning black, Stragling in curies along his manly back. The balls which nature in his eyes had set, Lyke Diamonds inclosing Globes of Jet: Which sparkled from their milky lids out-right, Lyke fayre Orions heaven-adorning light. 31 Further on Endymion's eye-lids are, strangely enough, "those pure Christall covers." 3 2 Nor was Drayton likely to resist calling the lips "the Loadstones of desire." 3 3 The allegory starts when Phoebe, descending to woo Endymion, comes not in the full glory of her divinity, but disguised as a nymph. From Latmus top (her stately throne) shee rose, And to Endimion downe beneath she goes. Her Brothers beames now had shee layd aside, Her horned cressent, and her full-fac'd pride : For had shee come adorned with her light, No mortali eye could have endur'd the sight; But like a Nymph, crown'd with a flowrie twine, And not like Phoebe, as herselfe divine.34 For this variation of the story, as developed further on by Endymion's regarding the nymph he does not recognise as a rival to the goddess he 111 8 2 479· See 11. m - 3 2 . Endimion and Phoebe, 1 3 9 - 5 2 . Ibid., 203. It is not surprising to find in "The Ninth Nimphall" of The Muses Elizium "the most extended section on the influence of jewels in Elizabethan literature." (Don Cameron Allen, "Drayton's Lapidaries," Modern Language Notes, LHI, 93-95 [Feb. 1938]). 34 Endimion and Phoebe, 103-10. 30

33

92

DRAYTON

adores, no source has been found. 35 The fact is of interest not only as showing how Drayton shaped his story to his Platonic moral. The variation is Keats's variation, and the moot question is whether he re-invented it or actually had access to a rare copy of Drayton's poem. Drayton's meaning is so unobtrusive that it is possible to be blind to it. The lines above, at least when isolated, could be taken as without special significance. Other writers had had the Moon lay aside her accoutrements as Queen of the Night before going to her lover: it was part of the myth. As for no mortal eye's being able to endure the sight, that could be a recollection of what happened to Semele. There is nothing surprising about Diana in the role of a nymph, since she was a nymph, the Nymph, "nympha nympharum." The lines are sufficient unto themselves as narrative. However, the point that Phoebe seems not herself on earth is returned to often enough and under such circumstances as to call attention to its philosophical appropriateness. We come to realize that when the goddess adapts herself to mortal senses she is platonically bound to seem less than, lower than, her celestial self. And Drayton's Endymion, like Keats's, fails to connect the ideal he has long worshipped at a distance with that beauty which, entering at the eye, makes its way to his heart. Before Endymion succumbs to the Nymph, though, we are given a pretty picture of his resistance and her pursuit. Her dainty Buskins lac'd unto the knee, Her pleyted Frock, tuck'd up accordingly,36 she scours the woods for venison for her favorite or carves their two names in Gordian knots on the trees. She finds Endymion fishing, and the expected hyperbole follows : she wishes she were a fish, and why does he use a hook when he need only use his hand. She gives an attractive false account of herself, and names reasons why she should be loved. The place wherein my bare feete touch the mold, Made up in balls, for Pomander is sold.37 35 I have not seen "L'Endimione" by Francesco Ellio, cited by Bush (Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition, 159) as partially parallel in that Diana comes to her lover dressed as a nymph; but what Mrs. Tillotson rightly calls "the crucial notion" of the rivalry is missing. Nor is there any record of an earlier appearance of this poem than in Giovanni Batista Bidelli's Gl'idillii di diversi ingegni illustri, Milan, 1618 (dated by Mazzuchelli also 1612). 37 36 Endimion and Phoebe, 157-58. Endimion and Phoebe, 199-200.

DRAYTON

93

What Phoebe then says she will do for Endymion has reminded more than one reader 38 of Titanias promises to Bottom, since the same rhetoric serves the different purposes of both poets. Ile deck thy Ram with bells, and wreathes of Bay, And gild his homes upon the sheering day; And with a garlond crown thee Shepheards king, And thou shalt lead the gay Gyrles in a ring; Birds with their wings shall fan thee in the Sun, And all the fountaynes with pure Wine shall run, I have a Quier of dainty Turtle-doves, And they shall sit and sweetly sing our loves: lie lay thee on the Swans soft downy plume, And all the Winde shall gently breath perfume, lie plat thy locks with many a curious pleate, And chafe thy temples with a sacred heate.38 The unhappy analogy can be carried still further. Titania tells her longeared attractor, And I will purge thy mortal grossness so That thou shalt like an airy spirit go, 40 no bad summary of what happens to Endymion. So maneuverable is the all-important boundary between the sublime and the ridiculous. One would like to be sure of the chronological relation, at least, between these contemporary productions. Endymion has no patience with this wooing. He explains "he was Phoebes servant sworne," vowed to keep "her chast lawes." Now, he requests, that shee would stand aside, Because the fish her shadow had espide.41 He "frownes and chafes" like a child interrupted at play. Petulance was all that was needed to complete the portrait of this dainty mignonnette 42 who fills the woman's place so well that he is only nominally, or rather pro38

See Kathleen Tillotson's note to II. 207-24 (Drayton's Worlds, V, 21). 40 Endimion and Phoebe, 209-20. A Midsummer Night's Dream, III, i, 163-64. 41 Endimion and Phoebe, 237-38. 42 Cf. Edmund Burke: "An air of robustness and strength is very prejudicial to beauty. An appearance of delicacy, and even of fragility is almost essential to it." A Philosophical Inquiry into . . . the Sublime and Beautiful, Part III, Sect. XVI. 39

94

DRAYTON

nominally, masculine. Despite the moral difference, readers are reminded of another of Drayton's heroes, "that Girle-Boy, wanton Gaveston." 4 3 The unnatural situation is not kept up much longer, however. When, after further protestations, the nymph leaves Endymion, she does not leave him whole. But whilst the wanton thus pursu'd his sport, Deceitfull Love had undermin'd the Fort, And by a breach (in spight of all deniance,) Entred the Fort which lately made defiance: And with strong siedge had now begirt about The may den Skonce which held the souldier out. 44 The poison spreads and does its work. The stricken lad sits in the moonlight by his sheep and calls on the constellations to help him in his passion. He might be Rowland, the pining shepherd of The Shepheards Garland. The poem has made a second start, so to speak, with the previous situation reversed. It is now the conventional situation, the one to which Drayton, both as poet and man, was used. His wooed has become the wooer, the sexes are in their proper place, and it will be Phoebe's turn to show coyness. The contrivance is routine, but it keeps the poem going. The poet has paid his curious respects to the myth as commonly received. But his scheme calls for a love that is reciprocal. Indeed, we are to understand that Endymion had "offered at the shrine" 4 5 of Phoebe for years, though he did not now identify this "nymph" with her. While having no place in his poem for the perpetually dormant Endymion, Drayton could not, any more than other Elizabethans, leave unpainted that legendary scene of the Moon kissing her lover as he sleeps. It is given ritualistic importance. After his plaints to the stars, Endymion falls naturally asleep, to be found by the Moon at dawn. And comming now to her Endimion, Whom heavy sleepe had lately ceas'd upon, Kneeling her downe, him in her armes she clips, And with sweet kisses sealeth up his lips, Whilst from her eyes, teares streaming downe in showrs Fell on his cheekes like dew upon the flowrs, 43 The phrase is from Englands Heroicall Epistles, Queene Isabel to Mortimer, 64 {Works, II, 162). Peirs Gaveston antedates Endimion and Phoebe sixteen months, according to the Stationers' Register. 45 44 Endimion and Phoebe, 303-308. Cf. ibid., 641 lì.

DRAYTON

95

In globy circles like pure drops of Milk, Sprinckled on Roses, or fine crimson silk.46 These are ceremonial tears. Phoebe acts as if she were presiding at a mystery, though Drayton denies that: she is "Sporting herselfe the tyme to entertayne." 47 She addresses Endymion's features separately. Then her nymphs anoint and garland the sleeper's body, kiss him, do a "stately daunce" and depart. And now to shew her powerfull deitie, Her sweet Endimion more to beautifie, Into his soule the Goddesse doth infuse, The fiery nature of a heavenly Muse, Which in the spyrit labouring by the mind Pertaketh of celestiali things by kind : For why the soule being divine alone, Exempt from vile and grosse corruption, Of heavenly secrets comprehensible, Of which the dull flesh is not sensible, And by one onely powerfull faculty, Yet governeth a multiplicity, Being essentiall, uniforme in all; Not to be sever'd nor dividuall, But in her function holdeth her estate, By powers divine in her ingenerate, And so by inspiration conceaveth What heaven to her by divination breatheth.48 Fire—"fiery nature"—of course has always been the symbol of the divine.40 It is in a "fiery Mantle" that Phoebe afterwards carries Endymion "up from this lumpish mould." 50 In fact that flight to the skies says concretely, acts out, what is here said abstractly. We have here a gloss on the allegory. 47 Endimion and Phoebe, 469-76. ibid., 488. Ibid., 5 0 5 - 2 2 . Drayton's best lines on the soul, however, are penned by Lady Jane Gray to Gilford Dudley, 1 3 3 ff., Englands Heroicall Epistles (Worths, II, 299). 49 See, for example, Dionysius the Areopagite, Celestial Hierarchy, Ch. X V , section II (Oeuvres, traduites du Grec en Français par l'Abbé J. Dulac, Paris, 1865, 3 8 3 - 8 5 ) . See further, G . A. Gaskell, A Dictionary of the Sacred Language of all Scriptures and Myths ( N e w York, 1 9 3 0 ) , 2 7 4 - 7 5 . Arturo Graf (Prometeo nella Poesia, Torino, 1888, 6) points out that "in tutte le mitologie il fuoco ebbe origini celesti." 50 Endimion and Phoebe, 663 ff. (See above, Ch. I, p. 38.) 49

48

96

DRAYTON

The initiate is now "from his sweet sleepe softly" wakened. He flusters and blushes At sight of her which he intirely loved, Not knowing yet great Phoebe this should be, His soveraigne Goddesse, Queene of Chastitie.51 He declares his love, ending up with a sad Ovidian tale of the metamorphosis of a swain and a nymph. That nymph did not pity her lover, and as a result the gods changed him into a fountain and her into a purple flower. Phoebe pretends to be unmoved by this appeal. She cites the notorious fickleness and hypocrisy of men. When, however, Endymion takes appropriate oaths "by holy Latmus," including the vow of secrecy, Phoebe reveals who she is. I am no Huntresse, nor no Nymph (quoth she) As thou perhaps imagin'st me to be, I am great Phoebe, Latmus sacred Queene, Who from the skies have hether past unseene, And by thy chast love hether was I led, Where full three yeares thy fayre flock have I fed, Upon these Mountaines and these firtile plaines, And crownd thee King of all the Sheepheards swaines: Nor wanton, nor lascivious is my love, Nor never lust my chast thoughts once could move; But sith thou thus hast ofîerd at my Shrine, And of the Gods hast held me most divine, Mine Altars thou with sacrifice hast stord, And in my Temples hast my name ador'd, And of all other, most hast honor'd mee, Great Phoebes glory thou alone shah see.52 For the aerial journey Drayton needed no other inspiration 53 than an interest in astronomy and astrology, and the knowledge that some had claimed Endymion to be an astronomer who plotted the course of the moon. He would claim it himself in Poly-Olbion: So Latmus by the wise Endymion is renown'd: That Hill, on whose high top he was the first that found 5S

52 Endimwn and Phoebe, 558-60. Ibid., 631-46. For literar;· p?ral)els, ser Mrs. TUIotson's no'c to 663 fí.

DRAYTON

97

Pale Phoebes wandring course; so skilfull in her Sphere, As some stick not to say that he enjoy'd her there.54 The tour gives Drayton an opportunity which he does not slight to discourse on the Ptolemaic universe, with a proper array of references to the zodiac, astral influence on "this little fleshly world of ours," 55 the four elements, conjunctions, constellations, and the poles. Mounted to the sphere of the moon, Endymion receives "heavenly secrets." 56 Unlike Elijah, he eventually comes back from heaven, but to a heaven on earth. He is so blessed that now his every velleity is automatically satisfied. Muses, bees, and nymphs serve him; his sheep are luminous at night; if he thirsts, fountains spring up out of the grass. It was philosophically right for Endymion to soar, but the point of Drayton's fable is nearly lost in the elaborate pageant with which he brings the poem to a close. The narrative excuse for this final procession is as follows : And now at length, the joyful tyme drew on, Shee meant to honor her Endimion, And glorifie him on that stately Mount Whereof the Goddesse made so great account. Shee sends Joves winged Herauld to the woods, The neighbour Fountains, & the bordring floods, Charging the Nymphes which did inhabit there, Upon a day appoynted to appeare, And to attend her sacred Majestie In all theyr pompe and great solemnity.57 It turns out that Phoebe commands a very impressive, well decked following of oreads, dryads, hamadryads, fauns, satyrs, and naiads. Drayton lingers fondly over every floral, silken, or jewelled detail, not forgetting to embellish the milk-white bulls on which the hamadryads ride, the dappled stags of the dryads, and the sea-horses of "the watry Niades." But the ultimate in eccentric luxury is Endymion's conveyance. Upon a Charriot was Endimion layd, In snowy Tissue gorgiously arrayd, Of precious Ivory covered or'e with Lawne, Which by foure stately Unicornes was drawne, Of ropes of Orient pearle their traces were, 54

Poly-Olbion, Song VII, 121-24. ««/«0 44

First stanzas of "Die Jugend," Hölderlin's Gesammeitc Werke (Jena, 1909), II, 2 1 0 - 1 1 . 1 , 686-90. The wind in "The Fall of Hyperion" blows "legend-laden through the trees" (Canto Π, 6). 48 47 48 49 1 , 918. 1 , 854. 1 , 970. II, 204. 50 It seems that Keats changcd his mind without making the necessary adjustments in the poem. Peona is not, as she had been led to expect, told of the third encounter with the goddess. Keats has decided to tell us himself in the next book. The first book is left with a structural 45

1 6 4

KEATS

How the idea of an itinerant Endymion came to Keats has been matter for interesting if futile conjecture. The only mythological justification would be that since Diana was "Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell," 5 1 her votary might appropriately explore those regions in quest of her or under her guidance. If we can grant this, we can grant that he might visit the sea, too. It has, to be sure, been objected that the scene of the second book is not Hell. Nevertheless it is an under-world where Adonis sleeps a death-like sleep, Endymion does find his goddess there, and the connection is close enough for us to believe that it may have originally been closer, but deteriorated before Keats's resolution not to treat of the unpleasant. On the other hand, a simpler suggestion in regard to the second book is that, given in the ancient myth a cave and confronted with the problem of expanding that myth, Keats decided that he would do more with the cave than any romancer had ever done before him. In this "dusky empire and its diadems" 5 2 we scarcely recognize the cavern where the lovers met of old. The allegorical journey of Alastor could here as elsewhere have been very suggestive, for Shelley's hero also penetrated to secret jewelled caves.53 Endymion seems to form, whether intentionally or not, a sort of answer to that publication of 1816, the "Preface" alone of which would have given Keats the framework, as well as the stimulus, for his long "L'Allegro" to Shelley's "II Penseroso." Recently Mr. Edward B. Hungerford 54 has argued that the cave where Endymion wanders is deliberately patterned after the famous Corycian Cave of antiquity. This contention collapses of its own weight for lack of impressive evidence that the two caves resemble each other in any important detail. The topographical features they possess in common are flaw. The voice bidding Endymion enter the cave, in the first book (965 ff.), ought to be Diana's, but in any case we are left without any explanation that makes her his "thrice-seen love," II, 168; cf. I, 918: "thrice have I this fair enchantment seen." 51 Sonnet " T o Homer," last line: " T o Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell." 52 II, 224. 53 Compare with Endymion, II, 225 if., Alastor, 87-94: ". . . secret caves Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with Chrysolite." Not this parallel, but many others are ingeniously pursued by Leonard Brown, "The Genesis, Growth, and Meaning of Endymion," Studies in Philology, X X X (October, 1 9 3 3 ) , 6 1 8 - 5 3 , who attempts to show how, "in a very real sense, Keats is re-writing Alastor" (646). 54 Shores of Darkness (New York, 1 9 4 1 ) , 1 1 7 ff.

KEATS

165

those that any two eaves might share. The differences alone are striking. There is nothing in the accounts of the Corycian Cave to suggest even faintly the gemmed beauty of Keats's cavern. Therein Endymion comes upon neither lair of Typhon nor temple to Jove, and the trite claim put forth by the geographers that the cave in Cilicia was worthy to be inhabited by the gods is hardly a sufficient explanation for a subterranean encounter with Venus and Adonis, and Cybele, and Cynthia. We cannot believe Mr. Hungerford when he labors to prove that the line, "One track unseams/A wooded cleft" 5 5 was pieced together by Keats from the Latin, now of Pomponius Mela, now of Solinus,5" and the fact that there are "snow-covered mountains . . . to be encountered between Latmos and Cilicia" 57 is curiously unconvincing evidence that Endymion, because he had seen "icy pinnacles," 58 has been travelling in that southeasterly direction. There were "pinnacles of ice," 59 as well as other features of Keats's second book scenery, in Shelley's Alastor. If we must go source hunting, we can hunt nearer home in English poetry of Keats's own day. For example, Mr. Hungerford makes much of the coincidence that the cavern in Endymion and the legendary one of Cilicia both emerge under the sea. Also, we are offered an explanation for the poet's sudden introduction of the streams Alpheus and Arethusa: "Perhaps the inclusion of this story was suggested to Keats by one of Mela's annotatore, who compares the underground stream of the Corycian Cave to the River Alpheus." 60 But an English poem published in 1816 could have accounted for both features: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.61 Although Keats did not have Professors Lowes' reasons for believing that "Alph" is a truncation of "Alpheus," 82 the association was nevertheless 55

56 Endymion, II, 74-75. Shores 0} Darkness, 1 2 1 . ¡bid., 1 1 9 . As Keats mentions "oaks" and "wilderness" also, Mr. Hungerford includes these in his sentence, "Oak forest, wilderness, and snow-covered mountains are all to be encountered between Latmos and Cilicia," etc. 53 59 60 I I , 208. Alastor, 84. Hungerford, op. cit., 127. 111 In a different connection Amy Lowell concludes that Keats was surely familiar with Coleridge's poem (John Keats, I, 428). So many guesses have been offered as to Keats's inspiration for his singing Indian maid that there can be no harm in adding another: that Keats had Coleridge's "Abyssinian maid," the "damsel with a dulcimer," on his mind. 02 See The Road to Xanadu (Boston, 1927), 393-96. 57

ι 6 6

KEATS

there, graspable. Certainly the now famous caverns and meandering river issuing out on "a lifeless ocean" in this magic poem make a more likely inspiration for Keats than a description of a cave in Strabo, whose Greek he could not read. All this is not to say that Keats might not have heard of the Corycian Cave. While he was not nearly so learned as the vast range of the scholarly conjectures as to his sources 63 would lead us to suppose, he was an enthusiastic reader, and no one can say what he might not have read in the languages he understood. Indeed Mr. Hungerford passes up one point in favor of his contention, namely that the ancients regarded the cave as named after a nymph, Corycia, and a nymph addresses Endymion from her "hollow cell" 64 before he plunges below. However, as Sir Sidney Colvin observes,65 this passage through a spring or fountain into the underworld is a common folk-tale motif. Accounts of the Corycian Cave were unquestionably accessible in dictionaries and elsewhere. What must be questioned is that this legendary cave has left any tangible mark on Endymion. For just as the poem has been a bottomless well for the philosophical ruminations of some critics, others have lavished upon it an unnecessary amount of learning. The Greek myth of Adonis has it that Persephone kept the fair youth underground for part of each year. Keats pictures him just before Venus cames to break the spell of his long "winter-sleep." 6 6 W e can see how one myth has suggested another. Endymion is sent into the caverns of the earth to gaze upon his counterpart in this favored mortal who stirs in his dreams at the kiss of a goddess. Lines that might have been applied to Endymion are assigned to Adonis instead. Sideway his face repos'd On one white arm, and tenderly unclos'd, By tenderest pressure, a faint damask mouth To slumbery pout; just as the morning south Disparts a dew-lipp'd rose. 87 Keats's version is that when Adonis was "tusk'd" by the boar, Venus's tears healed up the wound and "Medicined death to a lengthened drowsiness." 6 8 In other words, to insist on the parallel, Venus was responsible for Adonis's sleep, as Diana was for Endymion's. N o mention is made of Persephone—who was not only anciently thought of as Adonis's keeper, 63 The most elaborate survey is by Claude L. Finney, The Evolution (Cambridge, 1936), I, 200-322. 64 65 66 67 I I , 130. Op. cit., 184. II, 480. II, 403-407.

of Keats's 68

I I , 484.

Poetry

KEATS

167

but was also, no reader of poetry can forget, the subject of a similar myth of the seasons herself—yet clearly in this poem, as in the old rituals, the awakening of Adonis is associated with the arrival of the blooming time of the year. T h e cupids who have been keeping such indolent guard over the sleeper are bestirred in these words. 'Come! come Arise! awake! Clear summer has forth walk'd Unto the clover-sward, and she has talk'd Full soothingly to every nested finch: Rise, Cupids! or we'll give the blue-bell pinch T o your dimpled arms. Once more sweet life begin!' At this, from every side they hurried in, Rubbing their sleepy eyes with lazy wrists, And doubling over head their little fists · In backward yawns. 69 T h e reader has exquisite reason to remember these putti. They had been set by Venus to wait on Adonis who is pictured as, like Drayton's Endymion, the enjoyer of a languorous elysium of fruits and flowers and sweet sounds and odors. Delights of the palate comparable (but not as poetry) to those Porphyro heaped on Madeline's table are offered by a "feather'd lyrist"

70

to Endymion—wine, pears, cream, and a bunch of blooming plums

Ready to melt between an infant's gums. 7 1 T h i s final inelegancy makes us appreciate all the more the swift but definitive enumeration of the later poem. 72 As we have had occasion to notice, paradise, terrestrial or celestial, has been Endymion's repeated lot in literature. Characteristically, Keats mixes the two. In this second book, after the initial ecstasies of their meeting, Diana finds words to make her lover a promise. 'Now a soft kiss— Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss, An immortality of passion's thine: Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine O f heaven ambrosial; and we will shade Ourselves whole summers by a river glade; ββ

II, 501-10.

70 Π |

432.

71 n, 450-51.

™ "The Eve of St. Agnes," xxx.

ι68

KEATS And I will tell thee stories of the sky, And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy.' 7 3

Heaven sounds very much like earth, except that its passions endure. Metaphysically speaking, that is what is wrong with Keats's poem. T h e ideal and the sensuous real are inextricably confused throughout. Keats succeeds neither in separating them nor harmonising them. T h e crowning act of philosophical desperation comes at the end of the poem : of which more anon. T h e Alpheus and Arethusa episode serves as the transition from "the earth's deep maw"

74

of the second book to "the deep, deep water-world"

75

of the third. T h e third book, written at Oxford, is less exuberant than its predecessors. Once started on the story of Glaucus, a compound of Ovid and his own invention, Keats tells it straightforwardly and with newfound restraint. He is trying his hand, for the first time, at pure narrative. First, however, after the lame political introduction, come the passages of tribute to the Moon, among the most fervent ever written. What all of nature was for Wordsworth the moon was for Keats: it transfigured nature, "Kissing dead things to l i f e . " 7 6 Keats speaks first in his own person, then, more perfectly, through his hero. 'What is there in thee, Moon! that thou shouldst move My heart so potently? W h e n yet a child I oft have dried my tears when thou hast smil'd. T h o u seem'dst my sister: hand in hand we went From eve to morn across the

firmament.

N o apples would I gather from the tree, Till thou hadst cool'd their cheeks deliciously : N o tumbling water ever spake romance, But when my eyes with thine thereon could dance : N o woods were green enough, no bower divine, Until thou liftedst up thine eyelids fine: In sowing time ne'er would I dibble take, Or drop a seed, till thou wast wide awake; And, in the summer tide of blossoming, N o one but thee hath heard me blithely sing And mesh my dewy flowers all the night. N o melody was like a passing spright 73

II, 8 0 6 - 1 3 .

7

M I , 899.

73

III, 1 0 1 .

76

III, 5 7 .

KEATS If it went not to solemnize thy reign. Yes, in my boyhood, every joy and pain By thee were fashion'd to the self-same end; And as I grew in years, still didst thou blend With all my ardours: thou wast the deep glen; Thou wast the mountain-top—the sage's pen— The poet's harp—the voice of friends—the sun; Thou wast the river—thou wast glory won; Thou wast my clarion's blast—thou wast my steed— My goblet full of wine—my topmost deed:— Thou wast the charm of women, lovely Moon! O what a wild and harmonized tune My spirit struck from all the beautiful! On some bright essence could I lean, and lull Myself to immortality.' 77 The "bright essence" of Romanticism is concentrated here : love of nature, animism, nostalgic remembrance of childhood, the inward idealistic turmoil, the lyric hunger for myriad forms of beauty, and running through all the personal note which makes of myth a form of self-revelation. When Endymion soliloquizes in this manner he is inseparable from Keats: the imagined moon-lover has behind him the real. This poet's interest in the moon was supersensuous, in both meanings of the word—it was keenly sensuous and yet it transcended sense. The moon stands for "the principle of beauty in all things." 78 It is a supremely apt symbol, since moonlight does shed beauty on common things. Both Keats and Drayton flirt with what, for lack of a better term, must be called Neo-Platonism, but these lines are far from Drayton. Much attention has been paid by critics to those respects in which Endymion resembles an Elizabethan poem. It is profitable to remember the differences, as well, especially when they are to Keats's advantage. The following passage from Endimion and Phoebe offers a rough parallel. Be kind (quoth he) sweet Nymph unto thy lover, My soules sole essence, and my sences mover, Life of my life, pure Image of my hart, Impressure of Conceit, Invention, Art, My vitall spirit, receves his spirit from thee, " π ι , 142-73. 78

Bridges, Collected Essays, IV, 85, 87, but the phrase is Keats's, Letters, 468.

KEATS Thou art that all which ruleth all in me, Thou art the sap, and life whereby I live, Which powerfull vigor doost receive and give; Thou nourishest the flame wherein I burne, The North wherto my harts true tuch doth turne. 79 The antithesis is admirable, the versification shows great skill, but Drayton is abstract and impersonal where Keats is concrete and personal. It is Drayton's wit, not his imagination, which is at work. The eye has not chosen to see. He is content with a general conception. The compliments are what any lover, versed in the prevailing conventions, might pay to any mistress. It is true that this Endymion is in the state of "Not knowing yet great Phoebe this should be," 8 0 and therefore cannot be expected to sound as if he were addressing the moon-goddess. The ground for objecting to the passage is that he does not sound as if he were addressing anyone in particular. Keats's Endymion, on the other hand, who is not addressing a person at all, sounds very much as if he were: he has an eager listener, at least in himself. Even here Keats has lines that might have been written by Drayton— No one but thee hath heard me blithely sing And mesh my dewy flowers all the night . . . 8 1 but the passage as a whole possesses a personal idealistic quality that Drayton in all his voluminous and varied production never captures, never, it is perhaps fair to add, tried to capture. Endymion and Adonis have perceptible affinities, but Endymion and Glaucus would seem to have been far apart until Keats brought them together. Myths other than the titular myth had been playing an ever larger part in the poem. They entered by allusion in the first book. In the second, room is found on the stage of action for them. Thus, turreted Cybele passes across this stage, and we do not question why, because Keats has sculptured her so well. 82 Now the whole third book is to center on Glaucus and his story. But Glaucus does not exist, like Cybele, sombrely apart from the main line of the narrative. He has a function—to develop the character of Endymion. The latter suddenly becomes a savior, the man of destiny for whom Glaucus had waited a thousand years. Keats not only invents this relationship between the two : he supports it with an 79

81

Endimion and Phoebe, III, 1 5 6 - 5 7 .

569-78.

80

82

Ibid., 559. II, 639-49.

KEATS

171

elaborate fable of drowned lovers brought to life by the hocus pocus, if not by the shining inward virtue, of his hero, now a hero in a sense hitherto dormant. The knight-errant in Greek dress has at last been given something to do. H e has, it is clear, performed the greatest possible deliverance. Like Tennyson's Gareth he has conquered death. Lemprière's Classical Dictionary 8 3 supplies this description of Glaucus : " H e is represented like the other sea deities with a long beard, dishevelled hair, and shaggy eyebrows, and with the tail of a fish." Keats follows the tradition as far as is compatible with keeping Glaucus human. The fish's tail must needs go, and yet a suggestion of it remains : Upon a weeded rock this old man sat, And his white hair was awful, and a mat Of weeds were cold beneath his cold thin feet; 8 4 This gives us a merman without the grotesqueness of a merman, and in the "cold thin feet" all Glaucus's misery is concentrated. The "shaggy brows" become the most extravagant part of the picture. . . . his snow-white brows Went arching up, and like two magic ploughs Furrow'd deep wrinkles in his forehead large, Which kept as fixedly as rocky marge . . . 8 5 As so often in Ovid, the cleverness undoes itself. For the greater part of the Glaucus episode, however, Keats steers clear of the stylistic excesses that mar the rest of the poem; when he lapses it is the rhyme that makes him lapse. The venom of his portrait of Circe is undiluted. Only less memorable are the "silent rows" of lovers in their mausoleum under the sea. Turn to some level plain where haughty Mars Has legion'd all his battle; and behold H o w every soldier, with firm foot, doth hold His even breast : see, many steeled squares, And rigid ranks of iron—whence who dares One step? Imagine further, line by line, These warrior thousands on the field supine:— So in that crystal place, in silent rows, 83 Citations are from the edition of 1806, which is the edition to be found at the Keats House. 84 85 III, 1 9 3 - 9 5 . ΙΠ, 2 2 1 - 2 4 .

ιη2

KEATS Poor lovers lay at rest from joys and woes.— T h e stranger from the mountains, breathless, trac'd Such thousands of shut eyes in order placed; Such ranges of white feet, and patient lips All ruddy,—for here death no blossom nips. H e mark'd their brows and foreheads; saw their hair Put sleekly on one side with nicest care; And each one's gentle wrists, with reverence, Put cross-wise to its heart. 8 6

There they lie in the chastity of death, awaiting the time of their deliverance, now come. It is not altogether easy to see moral or allegorical appropriateness in Endymion's being their deliverer. T h e poet has not so much prepared him for the role as thrust it upon him. T o be sure, Endymion, like Glaucus, is a lover, and unlike Glaucus, he is a lover who has not broken faith with his love nor lost sight of the ideal in the sensual. A true lover may fittingly come to the rescue of other lovers. Moreover, according to the Platonic doctrine given expression in this very poem, love is of the immortal : . . . this earthly love has power to make Man's being mortal, immortal. 8 7 Love is death's opposite. T h u s Endymion is able to perform the deed which leaves "Death . . . a weeping in his charnel-house."

88

But seeking

to justify Endymion's part is like inquiring why it is the prince, and that particular prince, who releases Sleeping Beauty in the fairy-tale, for Keats here does not sound like an allegorist at all, but rather, like a hugely gifted versifier of folk-lore. W i t h Glaucus of Anthedon the theme of immortality was already associated. Another Glaucus—as Mr. Hungerford notes— Glaucus the son of Minos, actually participated in a resurrection. 89 T h e Endymion of old was also, of course, connected with the theme of immortality. Keats mingled myths and invented freely, producing a fable that hovers on the threshold of meaning without ever entering firmly in. W i t h the triumphal entry of Endymion and the host of lovers into the gaudy halls of Neptune, the poem returns to its old luxuriant manner. 86

87 88 III, 728-44. 1 , 843-44. i n , 788. Apollodorus, III, iii, 1. See Sir James G. Frazer's edition in the Loeb Library (London, 1 9 2 1 ) , I, 3 1 0 - 1 3 , and II, Appendix, "The Resurrection of Glaucus," 363-70, where parallel folk-tales are given. 89

KEATS

173

There is also, at the end oí the book, one of those abrupt transitions, those kaleidoscopic shifts in the narrative, in which the author, whether from failure of invention or excess of fancy, overindulged. Famous is the "diamond balustrade" 90 in the second book which comes to an end "Abrupt in middle air," 9 1 requiring the rescue of Endymion by a Chaucerian, or Dantean, or, as the context deposes, simply Jovian eagle. Now, before the throne of Neptune, Endymion's senses are overwhelmed by the supernatural sights around him. He becomes giddy and instantly faints, making an exit from the palace that is anything but triumphant, for he has to be carried out by the Nereids. Keats has extricated his shepherd-prince from the sea, leaving him to wake beside a forest, ready for a new adventure. The Indian maid, "that dark-eyed stranger," 9 2 dominates the fourth book, teasing the Carian with her beauty until he is torn with anguish and doubt. She exists to woo him, to create a diversion, and she is disturbingly successful. The good deed of the previous book was impersonally done. This call of distress cannot be so simply and cleanly answered. It endangers the peace of mind of the answerer. Endymion finds himself in the usual quandary of the ardent lover of beauty when he makes the polygamous discovery that no one embodiment of that beauty is exhaustive and unrivalled. Having committed his affections to a blonde goddess, he has his fidelity to her put to a severe test by the dark lady singing her siren song of sorrow. Yet, a larger fidelity is at stake, the fidelity of the lover of beauty to beauty in all its forms, and that fidelity will assert itself. Being very much a lover of beauty, Endymion must pay obeisance to it wherever he meets it. When it knocks at his senses, he cannot choose but yield, at least partly, protesting: 'Goddess! I love thee not the less: from thee By Juno's smile I turn not—no, no, no— While the great waters are at ebb and flow.— I have a triple soul! O fond pretence— For both, for both my love is so immense, I feel my heart is cut for them in twain.' And so he groan'd, as one by beauty slain. 93 The resulting tangle it will take a miracle to straighten out, a miracle that Keats has up his sleeve for the closing lines of the poem. That immortal jingle, the "roundelay" of the Indian maid, begins and 90

II, 597.

91

II. 653.

92

IV, 977-

»s IV, 92-98.

KEATS ends as a plaint. In between is the splendid picture of Bacchus and his crew which Lord Houghton considered to be "in fact the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian in the National Gallery, translated into verse." 9 i Severn took Keats to see this painting when it was on exhibition at the British Institution in 1816. 95 Such a stanza as the following seems specially designed to fulfill the doctrine, "ut pictura poesis": Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood, Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood, With sidelong laughing; And little rills of crimson wine imbrued His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white For Venus' pearly bite: And near him rode Silenus on his ass, Pelted with flowers as he on did pass Tipsily quaffing. 96 At the same time, the movement which Lessing said ought to distinguish a poem from a picture is far from lost. Certain features of the procession, not accounted for by the Titian painting, may have some other visual source, possibly, as Sir Sidney Colvin suggests,97 in sarcophagus reliefs of Bacchus proceeding with his train through India. The point to be made is that very often the fine arts, either directly or through reproductions or even through descriptions, must have had an undetected but major influence on poetry for which critics have rambled far to find literary sources. In this case Amy Lowell goes to Diodorus Siculus and Rabelais. 98 T h e myth of Endymion may well on occasion owe its place in literature to a 94

446. 95

Houghton, quoted by E. de Sélincourt, editor, Poems of John Keats (New York, 1905),

96 Colvin, 2 3 1 . I V , 209-17. John Keats, 2 3 1 - 3 2 . Referring to the lines (IV, 2 4 1 - 4 2 ) , "Onward the tiger and the leopard pants, With Asian elephants:" Colvin (p. 2 3 1 ) says, "Tiger and leopard panting along with Asian elephants on the march are not present in that picture, nor anything like them," which is not altogether true, since two leopards—or beasts very like them—are drawing a chariot in the Titian painting. Tigers would follow as a matter of course, and the value of "elephants" as sound is explanation enough for their presence, in this context. But Colvin's main point is not invalidated. At the same time, we ought to notice what Lemprière's Classical Dictionary says, s.v. Bacchus: "His expedition into the east is most celebrated. He marched at the head of an army composed of men, as well as of women, all inspired with divine fury, and armed with thyrsuses, cymbals and other musical instruments. The leader was drawn in a chariot by a lion and a tiger, and was accompanied by Pan and Silenus, and all the satyrs." 98 John Keats, I, 425-38. 87

KEATS

175

particular painting or statue. Wordsworth's sonnet " T o Lucca Giordano" 9 9 is only the most obvious example. Such artists as Carracci (Lodovico and Annibale), Girodet-Trioson, Guerrino, Poussin, and Watts lavished their very different talents on this same subject. Keats's older contemporary, Canova, sculptured an "Endimione dormiente," and home in England "old marbles ever beautiful" 100 —including one in the British Museum—gave the myth a kind of reality that words cannot bestow. The song gives us Bacchus, but where is Ariadne ? Only recently has a commentator 1 0 1 pointed out that, though specific allusions are necessarily absent, the Indian maid sounds like Ariadne mourning her abandonment by Theseus on the Isle of Naxos (or Dia). According to the well known myth, Bacchus, coming along with his revelers, consoled that muchwronged maiden by becoming her successful wooer. In short, the Indian maid's song, "with its sequence of the lament and the joyful arrival of Bacchus, seems to have been designed upon the theme of Ariadne's desertion, and then deliberately modified for another story." 1 0 2 This conjecture is the most plausible yet offered to account for the Indian maid, and it follows logically upon Lord Houghton's suggestion as to the Titian painting. Bacchus's expedition to India was "the most famous part of his wanderings in Asia." 1 0 3 Keats is continuing his practice of introducing other myths, this time sharply adapting to his special purpose. The Indian maid must not bear the name of Ariadne nor any other name until the time comes for her to turn into Diana. We recognize her attributes and her conceivably philosophical purpose. Her musical plaint is made to lure. Endymion would not care for beauty if he did not heed it. 'Come then, Sorrow! Sweetest Sorrow! Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast : I thought to leave thee And deceive thee, But now of all the world I love thee best. 'There is not one, No, no, not one But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid ; »» See above, Ch. II, p. 47. 1°° I, 319. 101 102 Hungerford, op. cit., i l l ff. Ibid., 115· 108 I quote Lemprière's successor, William Smith, A Classical Dictionary.

ιηβ

KEATS Thou art her mother, And her brother, Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade.' 1 0 4

That has the wily cadence of a Shakespearean song. At a most unlooked for time sleep comes to Endymion, bringing recollections of the old myth with it. " T h e mountaineer"

105

and the languishing

lady are soaring through the air on winged jet-black steeds when drowsiness descends upon them, or rather, rises to them. 'Twas Sleep slow journeying with head on pillow. For the first time, since he came nigh dead born From the old womb of night, his cave forlorn Had he left more forlorn; for the first time, H e felt aloof the day and morning's prime— Because into his depth Cimmerian There came a dream, shewing how a young man, Ere a lean bat could plump its wintery skin, Would at high Jove's empyreal footstool win An immortality, and how espouse Jove's daughter, and be reckon'd of his house. Now was he slumbering towards heaven's gate, T h a t he might at the threshold one hour wait T o hear the marriage melodies, and then Sink downward to his dusky cave again. 1 0 6 It will be remembered that the legend in Hesiod and other poets was that the lord of the gods did indeed elevate Endymion to heaven, where he made advances to, not "Jove's daughter," but Jove's wife. Like Ixion, he was deceived with a cloud phantom, and cast out of heaven. Either Hades or uninterrupted sleep was his ultimate fate. Keats, who needed only to consult a comprehensive classical dictionary to learn of this obscure portion of the myth, has put this material to transmogrified use. Even the story of a phantom beloved appears to have survived. Mr. Hungerford does not recognize it because he takes the envelopment of the hero in the mist of sleep as the only remnant of it. "In the deception of this slumber Endymion enters Heaven."

107

It is true that Endymion does dream he is in heaven,

but this dream is like—to quote Keats on Imagination—"Adam's dream— he awoke and found it truth." 104 107

I V , 279-90. Shores of Darkness,

105

133.

108

108

Having awaked, he

I V , 721, 54; II, 203. Letters, 68.

106

I V , 370-84.

KEATS

ιηη

Beheld awake his very dream: the gods Stood smiling; merry Hebe laughs and nods; And Phoebe bends towards him crescented. O state perplexing! 109 It is perplexing because "the panting side" 1 1 0 o£ the dark lady is still palpable "On the pinion bed." 1 1 1 He looks from one to the other, from the "fair shadow'd" 1 1 2 goddess to the dark unknown, in love alternately with each. When he responds to the sleeper at his side by kissing her, he loses the goddess. At this the shadow wept, melting away. 113 Here, then, is a goddess who dissolves because she has not been embraced. It is possible to go even further and contend that this tradition that Endymion had a love other than Selene inspired the apparent rival to Diana in the fourth book of Keats's poem. This would be an interesting case of the myth's having given to Keats a hint, a germinating idea, which he developed along lines entirely his own. It is at any rate a novel alternative to the assumption, which Amy Lowell 1 1 4 and Claude L. Finney 1 1 5 have mistaken for a demonstrable fact, that Endymion was influenced by the Endimion and Phoebe of Michael Drayton. No one doubts that Keats knew Drayton's later inferior poem, The Man in the Moone, an edition of which he in fact owned, but the question of whether he came in contact with a rare copy of Endimion and Phoebe poses a difficult problem in literary genetics. The great feature shared in common by Endimion and Phoebe and Endymion (and missing from The Man in the Moone) is that in both these poems Diana comes in disguise as a rival to herself, for presumably Platonic reasons, i.e., to show that Heavenly Beauty and Earthly Beauty are different aspects of the same thing. Other resemblances between the poems are minor by comparison and cease to be impressive if the prop falls from under the main resemblance. And the prop is not extremely steady. The chances were against Keats's ever seeing Endimion and Phoebe, copies of the unique edition (1595) of which had become so scarce that J. P. Collier, who published the first reprint of it in 1856, knew of only two. Amy Lowell traced one of these copies to the library of Westminster Abbey. All that can be said is that if Keats saw this or an110 111 ">· IV, 436-39. I V , 440. I V , 439. 112 114 I V , 446. IV, 456. John Keats. I, 339: "a certainty." 115 "Drayton's Endimion and Phoebe and Keats's Endymion," P.M.L.A., XXXIX (1924), 805-13, and later in The Evolution of Keats's Poetry, I, 247 ff.

ij8

KEATS

other copy, it was chance, and not hearsay, that led him to it, for Drayton's poem, after such frail glory as eighteen unentitled excerpts in England's Parnassus (1600) 1 1 6 may have given it, had sunk into obscurity. If Keats did borrow a leading idea from his exuberant Elizabethan predecessor, that would be an agreeable instance, full of poetic justice, of the continuity of English literature. Unfortunately, however, the internal evidence is not decisive. The recompense for considering certain alternatives, such as the one above, or those, more plausible prima facie, assembled by Professor Bush, 1 1 7 is that they give us a more independent Keats, one who got from his sources only hints, not a full-bodied idea. Given his allegorical purpose, his introduction of a disguised Diana seems, we can agree with Professor Bush, an almost indispensable device. On the other hand, the plot and the Indian maid's roundelay may have come first, and the glimmerings of allegory only afterwards: for the crucial last lines have the quality of an improvisation. In any event the seeds could have been sown by the ancient tradition that Endymion loved Hera and lost heaven on that account. Indeed the first significant words of Keats's hero to "the stranger of dark tresses" 1 1 8 are these: '. . . I am full of grief— Grief born of thee, young angel! fairest thief! Who stolen hast away the wings wherewith I was to top the heavens.' 119 It is a long-drawn-out struggle between beauty that faces him and the beauty of his dreams. The sensuous real wrings out of him such exclamations as, "I'm giddy at that cheek so fair and smooth," 1 2 0 while his impending betrayal of the ideal is paid for in bitter despondency. The psychomachy outlasts all the episodes of the sky journey. The shelter of the Cave of Quietude—the lulling opposite of Spenser's Cave of Despair—is only temporary. That prophecy, heard in the halls of Neptune, that Endymion, "escap'd from dull mortality's harsn net," 1 2 1 will be borne off "into endless heaven" 1 2 2 has a perilously devious fulfillment. 118 Compiled by Robert Allot. See the edition of Charles Crawford (Oxford, 1 9 1 3 ) . In only one of the eighteen excerpts is Endymion clearly mentioned, but that one ( # 1 5 3 3 ) is the highly suggestive passage commencing, " / And now / to shew her powerfull deitie, Her sweet Endimion more to beautifie," quoted above, Ch. IV, p. 95. 117 Mythology and the Romantic Tradition in English Poetry (Cambridge, 1937), 9 9 - 1 0 1 . 118 119 120 IV, 462. I V , 107-10. IV, 311. 121 122 III, 907. III, 1027.

KEATS

/79

The ending of the poem is too delayed, and when it does come it is too abrupt. The bobbing Sight on the "raven horses" is confusing to follow even on the narrative plane, and what it has to do with Endymion's being "spiritualiz'd" 1 2 3 does not appear. The fine suggestive writing of the Cave (which fulfills, by the way, the promise of the opening lines that Beauty will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing)

124

is followed by the unobtrusively skilful song celebrating "Cynthia's wedding," 1 2 6 a song to which, as in Drayton, the signs of the zodiac lend local color. Only after Endymion has returned to earth, however, does the impression grow strong that Keats is spinning out his poem unduly. Although "His first touch of the earth went nigh to kill," 1 2 8 the moon-lover renounces all his visions as soon as he sees the sweet Indian maid. Like the disguised Nymph in Endimion and Phoebe, he woos with extravagant promises: . . The rill, Thou haply mayst delight in, will I fill With fairy fishes from the mountain tarn, And thou shah feed them from the squirrel's barn. Its bottom will I strew with amber shells, And pebbles blue from deep enchanted wells. Its sides I'll plant with dew-sweet eglantine, And honeysuckles full of clear bee-wine. I will entice this crystal rill to trace Love's silver name upon the meadow's face. I'll kneel to Vesta, for aflameof fire; And to god Phoebus, for a golden lyre; To Empress Dian, for a hunting spear; To Vesper, for a taper silver-clear, That I may see thy beauty through the night; To Flora, and a nightingale shall light Tame on thy finger; to the River-gods, And they shall bring thee taper fishing-rods Of gold, and lines of Naiads' long bright tress. Heaven shall shield thee for thine utter loveliness! 123

IV, 993.

1M

I. 3-5·

IV, 566.

lse

I V , 614.

i8o

KEATS T h y mossy footstool shall the altar be 'Fore which I'll bend, bending, dear love, to thee : Those lips shall be my Delphos, and shall speak Laws to my footsteps, colour to my cheek . . . ' 1 2 7

Here, in his use of this formula, Keats imitates the Elizabethan style more consistently than in any other portion of his poem. T h e surprising turn comes when all this rhetoric proves in vain. T h e Indian, for reasons which may have been clear to her but which are forever veiled to us, refuses her prize now that she has won him. 'Ah, bitter strife! I may not be thy love : I am forbidden— Indeed I am—thwarted, affrighted, chidden, By things I trembled at, and gorgon wrath.' 1 2 8 It is at this point that the suspicion gains ground that Keats is drifting, that, having written only seven hundred and fifty lines, he is awkwardly putting off the denouement until his quota of a thousand can be filled. W e cannot enter Keats's mind, or know how far ahead he planned. W e can only note that the remaining lines, considered as narrative, are feeble. Nor does anything happen allegorically until the very last. T h e poet himself seems to have felt some apology necessary, for he interjects, Endymion! unhappy! it nigh grieves Me to behold thee thus in last extreme : Ensky'd ere this, but truly that I deem Truth the best music in a first-born song. 1 2 9 It sounds callous to suggest that not " T r u t h , " but a simple arithmetical fact accounts for the delay, 130 yet even the motto which served St. Augustine so well, Credo ut intellegam, does not enable us, in the final analysis, to take Keats at his cryptic word. Unhappy Endymion remains until the magic end of the poem. Meeting Peona, and hearing her habitually cheerful words, he tells his sister that he is resolved to renounce his right to "an earthly realm" for the life of a hermit. In saying this he sounds a little, but not markedly, like the visionary again: he is, rather, the rejected suitor, bent on leaving the social world. 127

128 IV, 6 9 1 - 7 1 4 . IV, 7 5 1 - 5 4 . 12» IV, 770-73. Even Middleton Murry admits—and proves—the difficulty of taking any other view (Studies in Keats New and Old, 34 ff.). 130

KEATS

ι8ι

T h e stranger declares that she, for her part, will join the sisterhood of Diana. The two maidens, having been bid adieu, are walking away when Endymion impulsively arranges one more meeting for that night. More than half of the remaining ninety lines are spent in marking time with Endymion, who romantically broods on death. Even his sister, when evening brings her and the stranger, so far catches his mood as to say 'Unhappy wight! Endymion!' said Peona, 'we are here! What wouldst thou ere we all are laid on b i e r ? ' 1 3 1 Of course here, as so often, the rhyme is an influence. Endymion's answer sets the quick denouement in motion. Then he embrac'd her, and his lady's hand Press'd, saying: 'Sister, I would have command If it were heaven's will, on our sad fate.' 1 3 2 T h e moral of the Wife of Bath's tale is here reversed, for the "dark-eyed stranger" joyously tells Endymion he shall have his wish. And as she spake, into her face there came Light, as reflected from a silver flame: Her long black hair swell'd ampler, in display Full golden: in her eyes a brighter day Dawn'd blue and full of love. Aye, he beheld Phoebe, his passion! 1 3 3 Thus, by prestidigitation, Keats disposes of the Indian maid and the philosophical problem she presents. Having had nympholeptic trouble maintaining any firm distinction between Uranian and Pandemian Aphrodite, the poet impatiently avows that they are one. With the two united lovers "vanish'd far away" 134 —evidently in fulfillment of the prophecy that Endymion would have a celestial home—we may share some of Peona's "wonderment." 1 3 5 This happy conclusion comes without due preparation, though with considerable delay. Cynthia's own comment on the latter is: 'Drear, drear Has our delaying been; but foolish fear Withheld me first; and then decrees of fate; 131

I V , 971-73.

132 IV, 974-76.

133

IV, 982-87.

134

IV, 1002.

135

IV, 1003.

l8 2

KEATS And then 'twas fit that from this mortal state Thou shouldst, my love, by some unlook'd for change Be spiritualiz'd.' 136

By what "unlook'd for change" has Endymion been "spiritualiz'd"? His last decision was to give up visions and take the earthly maid, which would seem to be the opposite of a spiritual decision. Keats could be pointing out that the lower rungs of the Platonic ladder naturally come first. But the issue is confused, and so is the solution, a solution not by demonstration but by fiat. Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, Endymion has received excellent criticism, though much of it sounds repetitious because critics have agreed so well on the style, if not the meaning, of the poem. Its faults, especially, have been obvious to all. As remarked before, it is at once the product of immaturity—"a feverish attempt" 137 —and the product of genius capable of the dazzling heights of, say, Hyperion. (It is natural to think of that later poem for the contrast it affords: the difference between them is the difference between prettiness and sublimity.) Despite its errors, or rather, with them, Endymion emerges as the most exciting long moment in Keats's development. In that one poem are mingled, often inextricably, his promise and his achievement. Some of its four thousand lines are undeniably among the finest he ever contrived; some, no less deniably, could pass as gleanings from a grotesquely out-of-date bluestocking anthology. Probably nowhere else in English literature, or any literature, can be found so instructive an instance of a poet becoming a poet. Climax is jostled by anticlimax, and the ears of Pegasus have a distressing tendency to elongate without warning. Keats, we know, was tired of the poem, and shirked revision. When he did revise he invariably improved. While agreeing with Amy Lowell that the poem is not "a complete allegory," 1 3 8 one can Still apply to it Robert Bridges' comment—which Miss Lowell quotes approvingly—that it is "full of shadowy outlines of mysterious truth." 1 3 9 For this is true of many poems which would not be called allegories. They have a way of making the particular universal and the universal particular. Miss Lowell is yielding nothing to the allegorizers when she says, "Endymion is Keats, is any young man, full of life, natural desire, and an idealistic habit of mind." 1 4 0 She is only pointing to a human fact that gives the poem immense psychological value. 136 139

138 I V , 988-93. 137 Keats's Preface. John Keats, I, 459. 140 Bridges, Collected Essays, IV, 88. John Keats, I, 387.

KEATS

183

The titular myth, though it failed him in his need for a story, did give Keats the tool for symbolism. It was a tool that he adapted freely to his hand. As we have seen, Endymion is no mere sleeper, but a dreamer—a distinction of consequence. Sleep which does not bring visions is "stupid sleep." 1 4 1 Most important, the moon-lover, voyaging up and down the Platonic ladder of love and truth and beauty, has turned out to be an effective symbol of aspiration, of that which becks Our ready minds to fellowship divine, A fellowship with essence.142 The myth has meant many things to many men; it is abundantly apparent that it has never meant more to any man than it meant to John Keats. It is Coventry Patmore, writing under the obvious influence of Keats, who provides this book with a not unchallenging conclusion: He who has known, even once in his life, the somnus Endymionis, in which the Queen of Purity has visited him as being also the Queen of Love, lifting his ideal, if not his way of life, for ever after, and convincing him that the felicity of the spirit and its senses is as far above the best of the waking life of the body as the electric light is above that of a smoky torch, will have discarded the ignorant distinction between realities and dreams, and will understand how 'Real are the dreams of gods, and smoothly pass Their pleasures in a long immortal dream.' 143 141

142 1,678. 1 , 777-79Courage in Politics, and other Essays, 1885-1896 (Oxford, 1921), 101. The verses are "Lamia," Parti, 127-28. 143

INDEX (.Authors and Commentators) 36

Ά.Ε.\ Acusilaus, 3 Akenside, M a r k , 65 Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling, 4546, 59-60 Allen, D . C . , 91 Allot, Robert, 178 Andersen, J . C., 39 Apollodorus, 3, 5, 6, 14, 30, 172 Apollonius Rhodius, 2, 3, 4, 24, 25, 26 Apuleius, 15 Ariosto, Ludovico, 146 Aristophanes, 5 Aristotle, 2 Arnobius, 11 Arnold, E d w i n , 65 Arnold, Matthew, 135-36 Artemidorus, 25 Athenaeus, 10 Atkinson, James, 55 Ausonius, 3, 6, 7, 22, 58, 125 Ayres, Philip, 54-56, 64 Aytoun, Sir Robert, 65 Aytoun, William Edmondstoune, 20, 119-21, 145 Bacon, Francis, 66-68, 126, 127-28, 129 Baker, G . P . , 77, 78 Barnfield, Richard, 70-71 Basse, W i l l i a m , 88-89, 111 Baudelaire, Charles, 12 Baxter, Nathaniel, 104-06 Beaconsficld, Earl oí. See Disraeli, B e n j a m i n . Beaumont, Francis, 7, 49 B e h n , Mrs. Aphra, 112 Benet, S . V . , 147 Bennett, J . W . , 79-83 Bethe, E . , 4, 5, 30, 35 Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, m Boas, F . S „ 63 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 56, 128 Boeckh, Α . , 29 Boll, F., 38 Bond, R . W . , 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 82 Boswell, James, 130

Boyesen, Η . H . , 65 Boyse, Samuel, 54 Bridges, J. W . , 128 Bridges, Robert, 157, 169, 182 Brifiault, Robert, 6, 18 Brontë, Anne, 63 Brontë, Charlotte, 63 Brooke, C . F . T . , 75, 78 Brooke, Lord. See Greville, Fulke. Brooke, Rupert, 44 Brooke, Stopford, 57-58, 59 Brough, William, 62, 121-22 Brown, L . , 164 Browne, Sir T h o m a s , 107, 128 Browne, William, 3 1 , 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 71 Browning, Robert, 13, 146 Brugmann, K . , 31 Buchanan, Robert, 132-33, 134 Buckle, G . E., 115 Bullen, A . H . , 100 Burke, Edmund, 93 Burton, Robert, 61, 116 Bush, Douglas, ix, 41, 89, 92, 104, 119, 136, 144, 146, 178 Butler, Samuel, 29 Byron, Lord, 14, 19-20 Campbell, J . F., 36 Campbell, O. J . , 70 Ca pella, M a r i a n u s , 21 Capelle, P . , ι Cardan, Jerome, 61 Carey, Henry, 54 Carpenter, H . , 112 Caster, M., 4 Cato, Valerius, 25 Catullus, 7 Chaloner, Sir T h o m a s , 108 Chambers, E . K . , 79, 80, 81 Chapman, George, 40, 42, 62, 64, 86-87, 99> 128 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 173, 181 Chillier, André, i 6 Child, H . H . , 100 Cibber, Colley, 108, 113

ι86

INDEX

Cicero, ι , 3, 7, 9, 61, 87 Clarke, Η. Α., 132 Claudian, 22 Clement of Alexandria, 1 1 Cleveland, John, 1 1 2 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 131-32 Cole, S. V., 48 Coleridge, Ε. H., 46 Coleridge, Hardey, 146 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 40, 46, 165-66 Collier, J. P., 177 Colvin, Sir Sidney, 153, 160, 166, 174 Comes, Natalis, 40, 42, 50, 66, 87 Conon, 3, 5 Cook, A. B., 6, I I Cooper, Edith, 144 Cooper, Thomas, 40 Cotton, Charles, 62, 64 Courthope, W. J., 107 Cowley, Abraham, 58 Cox, G. W „ 3 1 , 34, 36 Coxe, William, 1 1 3 Craig, K. T., 127 Cranch, Christopher Pearse, 148-49 Crashaw, Richard, 37, 70 Creek, Α., 36 Croker, John Wilson, 159 Cunningham, John, 54 Daniel, Samuel, 99 Dante, i n , 142, 173 Daremberg, C., 31 Darley, George, 65 D'Avenant, Sir William, 1 1 ; Davits, Sir John, 70 Decharme, P., 4, 29, 34 Dekker, Thomas, 58-59, 109 de la Mare, Walter, x, 128 Demoustier, C. Α., 9 Dermody, Thomas, 65 Desnoiresterres, G., 54 Dickens, Charles, 107 Dinesen, Isak, xi Diodorus Siculus, 4, 174 Diogenian, 2, 10 Dionysius the Areopagite, 95 Disraeli, Benjamin, 1 1 5 , 1 1 9 , 1 2 1 Dolben, Digby Mackworth, 136-37, 140 Donne, John, 81 Dowson, Ernest, x, 139-42 Drayton, Michael, ix, x, xi, 8, 16, 26, 38, 42, 58, 62, 86, 87, 88, 89-104, 106, 110, m , 1 1 4 , 1 1 8 , 126, 1 4 1 , 142, 152, 158, 167, 169-70, 177-78, 179

Drummond, William, of Hawthornden, 36, 42, 49» 59. 60. 64. 125-26, 128-29 Dryden, John, 15, 142 Du Bartas, Guillaume, 50, 64, 98 D'Urfey, Thomas, 51-54, 152 Dwight, Μ. Α., 31 Eisler, Robert, 30, 34, 35, 38 Eliot, Sir John, 60 El lio, Francesco, 92 Elton, Oliver, 100 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 124, 128 Epimenides, 3, 127 Erasmus, 1 1 , 108 Espinosa, A. M., 18 Euripides, 17, 19 Fairchild, Η. N., 162 Farnell, L. R., 5, 7, 18, 32 Fausset, H. L., 157 Faust, Α., 38 Fehrle, E., 18 Feu ¡Herat, Albert, 72, 76, 78, 79, 83 Ficino, Marsilio, 40, 98 Finney, C. L., 166, 177 Fiske, John, 34 Flaccus, Valerius, 8 Fletcher, John, 7, 19, 44, 49, 155 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 54 Forster, E. M., xi Forsythe, R. S., 53 Fountain, John, 1 1 5 Fox, W. S., ι Frazer, Sir James George, 7, 14, 18, 19, 34, 38, 39. 172 Freeman, E., 127 Freud, Sigmund, 129 Fulgentius, 25, 3 1 , 42 Gareth, Benedetto, 85-86 Garnett, Richard, 48 Gaskell, G. Α., 95 Gaspar)', Α., 85 Gautier, Théophile, 16, 19 Gay, John, 7, 117-18 Gayley, C. M„ 17 Gerard, John, 40 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 20, 46 Gombauld, Jean Ogier de, 153-54, 155 Gosse, Edmund, 137-39 Graesse, J., 153 Graf, Arturo, 43, 95 Grange, John, 108 Gray, H. D., 78 Gray, Thomas, 150

INDEX Greene, Robert, 50, 61, 62, 1 1 ; , I i i Greg, W. W., 78, 81 Gregorius Cyprius, 3 Greville, Fulke, Lord Brooke, 4 ; , 70, 129-30 Grosse, Β., 29, 30 Grotíus, Hugo, 1 2 ; Gruppe, Otto, 5, 6, 1 1 , 29, 38 Guild, E. C., 124 Gutch, C., 5 Haipin, N. J., 74, 75, 78, 81 Hannay, Patrick, 70 Hansard, T. C., 1 1 3 Harding, M. E., 17 Harley, Timothy, n o , m Harper, G. M., 46 Harrison, ). E., 30 Hazlitt, William, 2, 128-29 Hebel, J. W„ 88, 89 Hecataeus, 38 Hcliodorus, 153 Hentze, C., 8 Heraclitus, 10 Herford, C. H., 70 Herodes, 3, 58 Herrick, Robert, 1 1 4 - 1 5 Hesiod, ι , 2, 3, 4, 6, 3 1 , i n , 126, 127, 176 Hichens, Robert S., 65 Hippolytus, ι Hirst, Henry Beck, 150, 1 5 1 Hölderlin, Friedrich, 162-63 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1 1 , 35 Homer, 1, 2, 4, 15, 18, 30, 38, 40, 64, 87, 130 Hone, William, 114 Hood, Thomas, 21, 1 2 1 , 147 Horace, 52, 144 Houghton, Lord, 130, 174, 175 Housman, Λ. E., 47 Howard, Lord Henry, 78, 79, 82 Howarth, R. G., 77 Howell, Thomas, x, 44-45 Hungerford, E. Β., xii, 6, 164-6$, 172, 1 7 ; , 176 Hunt, Leigh, 50, 158 Hunter, Joseph, 104 Hurst, Richard, 153 Hyginus, 1 ; Ibycus, 3 Jackson, Holbrook, 65 Jeffery, V. M., 76, 85 Jeffrey, Francis, 130, 1 3 1 Johnson, Lionel, 145-46

Johnson, Samuel, 130 Jones, H. S., 1 Jonson, Ben, 22, 49, 61, 68, 69-70, n i - t i , »7 Jung, Carl, 17, 36 Juvenal, 15, 66 Keats, John, ix-x, xii, 1, 5, 6, 7, 15, 36, 40, 41, 86, 92, 100, l i t , 1 1 8 , 1 2 1 , 129, 130, 1 3 1 , 1 4 1 , 144, 147, 148, 150, 152-83 Kern, O., 30 King, William ( 1 6 6 3 - 1 7 1 2 ) , 27 King, William (1685-1763), 1 1 8 Knight, G. Wilson, ix, 155 Köhler, R., i n Krappe, A. H., 38, 39 Landon, Letitia E., 134 Landor, Walter Savage, 7, 42, 65, 116, 1 1 7 , 122-23, 134-35 Lang, Andrew, 35 Larousse, 29 Leclercq, H., 43 Leconte de Lisle, Charles-Marie, 148 Lee, Nathaniel, 16 Legouis, Emile, 70 Lemmi, C. W., 66, 128 Lemprière, John, 40, 1 7 1 , 174, 175 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 174 Lewy, H., 30 Licymnius of Chios, 10, 107 Linton, William James, 1 1 5 , 134 Lodge, Thomas, 59, 62, 63, 64, 99 Long, P. W „ 73-74, 75, 77, 78, 79 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 1, 136, 147 Loomis, R. S., 31 Lovelace, Richard, 116 Lowell, Amy, xi, 147, 155, 160, 165, 174, 177, 182 Lowes, J. L., 36, 165 Lucas, F. L., 100 Lucían, 8-9, 1 1 , 30, 56, 107, i n , 112, 155 Lucretius, 102 Lyly, John, xi, 2, 12, 53, 54, 70, 71-84, 85, 86, 89, 1 0 ; , i n , 1 1 4 , 126, 152 Macarius, 3 Mackie, Gascoigne, 144 MacPherson, James, 36 Macrobius, 13 Macurdy, G. H., 35 Mansfield, Katherine, 18 Mantuan, 43 Marcellus, Nonius, 107 Marcus, L., 29, 31

ι88

INDEX

Marlowe, Christopher, 62, 63, 64, 89, 90 Mantón, John, 7, 41, 4$, 60 Martial, 2 Marvel!, Andrew, 1 2 Maximus Tyrius, 1 2 7 Mayor, J. E. B., 30 Mela, Pomponius, 7, 165 Meleager, 9 Menander, 6 Meredith, George, 19, 1 1 9 Meres, Francis, 1 1 6 Meyer, Eduard, 4 Meynell, Alice, 37 Middleton, Thomas, 108, 1 1 6 Millay, Edna St. V., xi Milton, John, 40, 125-26, 1 2 7 , 129 Mnaseas, 31 Montaigne, 9 Moore, T . Sturge, xi Moore, Thomas, 46-47, 63 Morley, Henry, 84 Morris, Lewis, 1 3 1 , 142-43, 144 Müller, Friedrich Max, 4, 29, 32-35, 39 Murphy, Gardner, 127 Murray, Gilbert, 1 7 , 30 Murry, J. Middleton, 157, 180 Näke, A. F., 1 2 , 20 Nashe, Thomas, 109 Nicander, 3 Niccols, Richard, 70 Nicoli, Α., 48 Nicolson, Marjorie, 150 Nieremberg, J. E., 128 Nilsson, M. P., 14 Nonnus, 7, 8, 9-10, 12, 15, 16, 19, 24, 25 Notcutt, H. C., 157 Noyes, Alfred, xi Odell, G . C. D., 54 CHympiodorus, 1 2 7 Ossian, 36 Ovid, 7 , 9, 1 3 , 23, 63, 72, 77, 89, 90, 96, 1 2 5 , 168, 1 7 1 Oxford, Earl of, Edward de Vere, 45, 78, 7983 Panofsky, E., 32 Pater, Walter, 1 3 7 Patmore, Coventry, 183 Patón, L . Α., 3 1 Pauly-Wissowa, 4 Pausamas, 3, 4, 5, 30, 87 Percopo, E., 85 Persson. A. W , 8

Petrarch, 85 Pettie, George, 59 Pherecydes, 3 Philargyrius, 13 Phillips, Stephen, 58, 1 3 1 , 142, 143-44 Philodemus, 20 Piccinni, N., 54 Pike, Albert, 89 Pisander, 3 Plarr, V., 139 Plato, ix, 2, i l , 36, 40, 85, 89, 92, 98, 1 4 1 , 172, 177, 182, 183 Pliny, 25 Ploix, C., 7 Plomer, H. R., 1 1 2 Plodnus, 29 Plutarch, 4, 1 1 , 1 3 - 1 4 Poe, Edgar Allan, 60, 150 Pontano, G., 60 Pope, Alexander, 107 Porphyry, 1 3 , 128 Porter, Endymion, 1 1 4 - 1 5 Powell, George, 54 Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 147 Preller, L., 30, 3 1 Prescott, F. C., xi, 126 Prior, Matthew, 65, 68, 129 Propertius, 1 3 , 14 Puteanus, Erycius, 16 Puttenham, George, 82-83 Pythagoras, 126

Quintus Smyrnaeus, 7, 24 Rabelais, François, 174 Racine, Jean, 17 Raglan, Lord, 6 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 59, 68, 69, 7 1 Randolph, Thomas, 10, 12 Read, Thomas Buchanan, 48 Richter, 6 Robert, C., 9, 10 Rodd, Rennell, 150-51 Rollins, H. E., 108 Ronsard, Pierre de, 46 Roscher, W. H., 4, 5, 6, 8, 13, 16, 29, 30, 3 5 Roscommon, Earl of, 52 Rose, H. J., 8, 25, 3 1 Ross, Alexander, 26-29, 3 1 , 36, 38, 134 Rossi, V., 85 Rowley, Samuel, 1 1 0 - 1 1 Rowley, William, 108 Rühle, O., n o Russell, George William. 36

INDEX Salvimi, 56 Sandys, George, 70 Santayana, George, xi Sappho, 3 , 1 7 Scaputa, 40 Schiller, Friedrich von, 148 Schmidt, P. Wilhelm, 32, 34 Schmitz, L., 30 Schoell, F. L., 40, 87 Schroeder, Leopold von, 1 7 Schwenck, Κ., 5, 29, 34 Selincourt, E. de, 174 Seneca, 16, 1 7 , 18, 20-21, 24-25 Servius Grammaticus, 1 3 , 42 Shad well, Tilomas, 1 1 5 Shakespeare, William, 15, 19, 59, 6 1 , 63-64, 70. 89. 93, m . " 9 , 176 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 19, 37, 63, 87, 132, 148, 164, 165 Shephard, Ο. H., 155 Shirley, James, 48, 58, 1 1 6 Sidney, Sir Philip, 104 Siecke, E., 29, 34 Smart, Christopher, 65 Smith, William, 30, 1 7 ; Solinus, 165 Southey, Robert, 46 Spenser, Edmund, 40, 41-44, 5 ; , 70, 87, 99, 158, 178 Stanley, Thomas, 6 Starnes, D. T., 40 Steinhäuser, Κ., 84 Stephanos of Byzantium, 4, ; Strabo, 5, 7, 38, 166 Suidas, 2, 10 Swift, Jonathan, 39, 109-10 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 37, 38, 132, 1 3 3 , 148 Sybel, L. von, 4 Sylvester, Joshua, so, 64 Tasso, Torquato, 56 Tassoni, Alessandro, 54, 5 ; , 56 Tenison, E. M., 68 Tennyson, Alfred, 123, 1 7 1 Tertullian, 1

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 1 7 Theocritus, 2, 5, 8, 9, 1 3 , 23, 59, 147 Theodosius, 4 Theopompus, 3 Thompson, Stith, 3 1 , 3 ; Thomson, James, 107 Thomson, W., 1 1 4 Thorpe, C. D., 155 Tighe, Mary, 158 Tillotson, K., 89, 92, 93, 96, 98 Tillyard, E. M. W., 126 Todd, Henry John, 40, 1 2 5 Tourneur, Cyril, 2, 70 Townshend, D., 1 1 4 , 1 1 5 Tryon, Thomas, 128 Turberville, George, 23-24 Usener, H., 30 Varrò, 8, 107 Vaughan, Henry, 23, 65, 128, 153-54 Vere, Edward de. See Oxford, Earl of. Virgil, 1 2 - 1 3 , 42, 56, 81, 127, 130, 153 Ward, Β. M., 80, 81 Warton, Thomas, 40 Welcker, F. G., 29, 30, 35 Weller, E. V., 158 Wendel, C., 3 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 56, 1 2 2 , 129 Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von, 4, 8, 39 Wilde, Oscar, x, 48, 65, 1 3 7 , 146-50 Willey, Basil, 47 Wilson, E. C., 68 Wilson, J. Dover, 70, 78 Wolfï, Lucien, 41 Wordsworth, William, 26, 46, 47-48, 138-39, 149, 158, 168, 175 Xenophanes, 1 1 Yeats, William Buder, 36 Young, Edward, 12, 65 Zimmern, Α., 6