BY WHOM?

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25270, 23 August 1947, Page 7

BY WHOM?

IA Leading Article ta "The Times Literary supplement,” June 28.] and'lrt S ar , O £, aS ? rip ‘, ion in literature on tort? P^ ar to P la nt themselves as S ’.nd ? cqmfcrtably # «s winged STSnttitt to a m? Y a ? °t Wins with to exno-1 almo st a dangerous thing J2 ex PoJ>e them for what thev are a h li?ht te .hSU? a great name is n °t advantage. We published Mr John -Crow’s that one of the few «cS aPe °A'S .Poems ordinarily acnotbl ?£ Christopher Marlowe's was not by that master. A pee: who was vears e i s i^n ri ° We L followers after many JrfT t" ‘" another dispersal ■ „ traditional asstimption which of the "sLJS®*!« ‘ n . th l. latest isaue The ks$ uth Atlanta: Quarterly.” is Dtot^rS^ 7 detected error friend taresque. When John Keats's zS n d Ch s ar < ? Brown went to New t OOl1 ’ .’together with his j an im P«rfect copy of th? on of Learning,” edition. Brown’s son Chari? all X book pack to Sir of Ke-:to Dn J ? ‘" u England as a relic Sto K „<?' S ' r Charles, who perhaps °t’, count Philosophical books as readme for grown-ups. looked at the manuscript notes, which o£ Keats’s usual Sfertton fh a a °th hat he Produced the nf S the „ tl \ at th ? y were the work ' Sethi? % 1 1 schooldays, and altogether without literary value." In due course the volume became one of the treasures of Keats House, Hampstead. to^+ faithfully catalogued according to the recipe of Sir Charles Dilke Once more many years went by and t“ e " a heretic arrived—Mr Gates as aforesaid. Inspecting the relic, he hesitated ove- the handwriting in it and he could not quite take the substance of the notes as being due even to a poet’s schooldays. For example, ne read that Bacon’s “solidity was in reflection, not in invention. He was m fact a greater reviewer than Mr Jeffrey.” Further examination of the Advancement” with the annotations enabled Mr Gates to decide that “this volume contains the vigorous and pointed comment of one of the finest critics of his time. These notes are by William Hazlitt.”

Often enough such decisions are blurred by the various judgments which uncertain autographs occasion, but this is not an instance. Mr Gates collects plenty of evidence for his result. but one passage is decisive. He finds that eight of the passages marked in the book were used by Hazlitt in his lecture on Bacon, ir. the series on the “Literature of the Age of Elizabeth”; and moreover that some sentences written on a fly-leaf are a draft for the opening of the chapter on Bacon in the published lectures. Ir truth it would be difficult to 'ook through trite marginal comments in this quite famous volume without apprehending that they sprang from the mind of a trained philosopher arid also from an essayist on the look-out for abstract subjects. However, until Mr Gates’s curiosity led to activity, Charles Brown was the only man who had this information—and he died in 1841 At least half the period since then has been prolific in editors and students of Keats. But the imp of error has contrived to escape their net until now; upon which mystery whole lay sermons might be composed. We content ourselves with the thought that this corrective discovery at Hampstead will be an inspiration to scholars who perhaps began to fear that in some directions their occupation was gone. On the other hand, it may (with other finds of the same kind) give rise to an ardent and unrewarded scepticism among the “documents.” It must bo supposed that quite a number of these are what they are said to be and contain exactly what they contain in their published form. There are even paintings by Giorgione which refuse to have been painted by anybody else.