p. 152, note 1. I think there is no doubt that _Hyperion_ was begun by Keats beside his brother's sickbed in September or October 1818, and that it is to it he alludes when he speaks in those days of 'plunging into abstract images,' and finding a 'feverous relief' in the 'abstractions' of poetry. Certainly these phrases could hardly apply to so slight a task as the translation of Ronsard's sonnet, _Nature ornant Cassandre_, which is the only specific piece of work he about the same time mentions. Brown says distinctly, of the weeks when Keats was first living with him after Tom's death in December--"It was then he wrote _Hyperion_"; but these words rather favour than exclude the supposition that it had been already begun. In his December-January letter to America Keats himself alludes to the poem by name, and says he has been 'going on a little' with it: and on the 14th of February, 1819, says 'I have not gone on with _Hyperion_.' During the next three months he was chiefly occupied on the _Odes_, and whether he at the same time wrote any more of _Hyperion_ we cannot tell. It was certainly finished, all but the revision, by some time in April, as in that month Woodhouse had the MS. to read, and notes (see Buxton Forman, _Works_, vol. II. p. 143) that "it contains 2 books and 1/2--(about 900 lines in all):" the actual length of the piece as published being 883 lines and a word, and that of the draft copied by Woodhouse before revision 891 and a word (see below, note to p. 164). When Keats, after nearly a year's interruption of his correspondence with Bailey, tells him in a letter from Winchester in August or September, "I have also been writing parts of my _Hyperion_," this must not be taken as meaning that he has been writing them lately, but only that he has been writing them,--like _Isabella_ and the _Eve of St Agnes_, which he mentions at the same time,--since the date of his last letter. p. 164, note 1. The version of _The Eve of St Agnes_ given in Woodhouse MSS. A. is copied almost without change from the corrected state of the original MS. in the possession of Mr F. Locker-Lampson; which is in all probability that actually written by Keats at Chichester (see p. 133). The readings of the MS. in question are given with great care by Mr Buxton Forman (_Works_, vol. II. p. 71 foll.), but the first seven stanzas of the poem as printed are wanting in it. Students may therefore be glad to have, from Woodhouse's transcript, the following table of the changes in those stanzas made by the poet in the course of composition:-- Stanza I.: line 1, for "chill" stood "cold": line 4, for "was" stood "were": line 7, for "from" stood "in": line 9 (and Stanza II., line 1), for "prayer" stood "prayers". Stanza III.: line 7, for "went" stood "turn'd": line 8, for "Rough" stood "Black". After stanza III. stood the following stanza, suppressed in the poem as printed. 4.