SOURCE: “Chatterton and Keats: The Need for Close Examination,” in Keats-Shelley Review, No. 10, Spring 1996, pp. 35-50.

[In the following essay, Morrison argues that John Keats's poem “To Autumn” was strongly influenced by several poetic works produced by Chatterton. The critic observes that Keats preserves but softens the death imagery present in Chatterton's evocations of autumn, and remarks that Keats tried hard to overcome Chatterton's influence in order to present his own original voice.]

John Keats's philosophical writings shed some light upon his awareness of the influence of other writers upon him, whether consciously or subconsciously. As with any writer who is also a reader, Keats does not deny that material he reads exerts an influence upon his own writings:

It is a wretched thing to confess; but it is a very fact that not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature—how can it when I have no nature?¹

‘To Autumn’ clearly demonstrates a heavy reliance upon Thomas Chatterton's Thyrde Mynstrelle's song in the play ‘Aella’ as well as upon other Chatterton texts, including ‘Elegy to the Memory of Mr. Thomas Phillips, of Fairford,’ and ‘An Excelente Balade of Charitie.’ This connection has not been fully investigated hitherto, although critics have discussed Keats's fondness for Chatterton's work and have drawn comparisons between an assortment of lines by the two authors.²

Through critical examination of the writing process, it can be shown that the alterations made to the texts under consideration may be attributed to an awareness of similarities to other texts, and the process also demonstrates that the text of a poem as published today nevertheless manifests a heavy debt to other texts. Although the author's intention can never be conclusively established, the writing process can suggest the workings of the author's mind and perhaps indicate the difficulties of an author striving for originality, and the alterations perceived can be interpreted as being due to this natural determination for originality.

Keats wrote ‘To Autumn’³ at the beginning of the season, on Sunday, September 19th, 1819, following his return to Winchester from five days spent in London trying to raise money to relieve his brother George's financial difficulties in America, and Keats indicated the walk as his inspiration in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds two days later:

How beautiful the season is now—How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather—Dian skies—I never lik'd stubble-fields as much as now—Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow a stubble-plain looks warm—in the same way that some pictures look warm—This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.⁴

This section of Keats's letter has frequently been quoted as the obvious source of inspiration for the poem, and the walk was clearly a contributing factor, but there has been no thorough acknowledgement of the poem's debt to Chatterton or of the similarities between Keats's poem and Chatterton's work.

There are five versions of ‘To Autumn’ available, and the published version invariably used in the modern classroom differs quite substantially from Keats's own draft.⁵ Facsimiles of the drafts are available in Jack Stillinger's edition of John Keats: Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard, a Facsimile Edition. But while investigating the surface material alterations which the poem undergoes, it is simultaneously necessary to acknowledge the alterations in terms of a search for originality and thus in terms of Keats's assumed awareness of the similarities between his own text and those of Chatterton.

Although ‘Aella’ is Chatterton's principal text associated with Keats's ‘To Autumn,’ other Chatterton poems also need to be considered, as connections to several of Chatterton's works are evident and should not be overlooked: ‘Besides the third minstrel's song from “Aella,” other relaxed, spontaneous melodies of Chatterton's perhaps also flooded Keats's mind.’⁶ Although Nai-Tung Ting does not elucidate to which ‘melodies’ she is referring, other texts by Chatterton are clearly echoed by Keats. Claude Lee Finney suggests that the alterations in the drafting process be viewed as relatively insignificant and concerned mainly with spelling and word choice: ‘Comparing these manuscripts, we find some revision of phraseology but no essential change in imagery, emotion, and thought.’⁷ It is the ‘revision of phraseology’ which presents clear evidence of the echoes of Chatterton's work, and these would thus seem to be of prime significance in establishing the connections between texts.

Robert Gittings recognises that ‘To Autumn’ ‘echoes so much his [Keats's] own description of his walk that it might seem unnecessary to seek any literary source as well,’⁸ but Keats's walk must not be relied upon as unique inspiration. Importantly, Gittings acknowledges this supposition by concluding that ‘such there was, recognized quite consciously by Keats in the words “I somehow always associate Chatterton with autumn.”’⁹ Keats's Letters at the time of writing this poem clearly identify Chatterton as a source for his writing and this contemporary comment should not be ignored.

The first available draft of Keats's poem would seem to differ from the published version primarily in its spelling and word order, perhaps due to Keats's hurry in writing the poem down following his walk. But even the misspelled words throw some light upon Keats's thoughts behind the words. In the first stanza, the sun is ‘natturing’ rather than ‘maturing,’¹⁰ and although the difference could be attributed to a hasty spelling error, it could be that Keats was trying to convey the ideas of the sun's essential role within nature, and, furthermore, the necessity of the sun in order to achieve the ripeness of autumn.

Keats's opening lines are unaltered throughout the drafting process, as the season is introduced as one of peaceful and unthreatening lethargy, although there is an underlying implication that the season and the sun are in a conspiracy which is not wholly well-intentioned: ‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.’¹¹ The opening line suggests a completion whilst simultaneously indicating a decline, a relaxation as one of death. Although the season clings to the ‘maturing sun,’¹² trying to elicit its beneficial warmth, autumn cannot prevent the sun's withdrawal of its bounty. Keats wrote that ‘The setting sun will always set me to rights.’¹³ The days are certain to grow shorter as the year progresses irrevocably towards the darkness of winter. ‘The autumn fogs over a rich land is like the steam from cabbage water’¹⁴ presents an image of the season suggesting distaste two weeks before writing ‘To Autumn,’ but the aforesaid ‘fogs’ are altered to become more ambiguous and less disagreeable ‘mists’ within the text of the poem. Although Keats's inspiration might have come from his walk in Winchester, his previous dislike for the season is combined with the pleasantness of his walk to create a unique autumn: Keats cannot deny autumn's function as the simultaneous fulfilment of life and harbinger of the succeeding winter's death.

Chatterton also introduces autumn in ‘Aella’ in connection with the sun, but his season is ‘blake and sonne-brente.’¹⁵ Chatterton's own notes on the same page¹⁶ suggest that ‘blake’ stands for naked; but, read aloud, the word is more similar to the colour black, which symbolically suggests darkness and death. The sun is presented as excessive, since it harms by burning, and the implication behind Chatterton's first line is similar to that of Keats in that both lines suggest an air of evil lurking within or beyond the season. Just as an excess of sun causes painful burning, so the season of autumn described thus is harmful in that it presents an absoluteness which can be succeeded only by death. In both texts, the autumn introduced at the start of the poem is one which is harmful in its course, and even though Keats suggests that the maturing process is ‘mellow,’¹⁷ the implication would seem to be that autumn is deceptive in its slow ripening, as winter's death draws undeniably closer all the while.

Although the next two lines of Keats's text are essentially unaltered, the order of the fruit and the vines in line four is reversed, so that the first draft and transcripts read ‘Conspiring with him how to load and bless / The Vines with fruit that round the thatch eves run.’¹⁸ The revised version is easier to read and the capitalisation of the vines which lends them emphasis disappears, so that the revised version directs attention to the fruit which is the blessing of life's fulfilment. The alteration has the effect of weighing the rhythm of the line, as the positioning of the line-break compels the reader to pause before identifying the object of the verb ‘bless,’ and the reversal of the order delays its fulfilment still further. Wolf Z. Hirst suggests further that the word structure imitates the desired effect of the poem: ‘The convoluted phrase “bless / With fruit and vines that round the thatch-eves run” with its inversion and difficulty in articulation makes the tongue imitate the entwining creepers as they hug wall and roof.’¹⁹ Yet Hirst does not support his assertion with any analysis of the linguistic features involved and even misquotes the poem by replacing ‘the’ with ‘and’ and thus altering the line entirely.

Keats's line ‘To bend with apples the moss'd Cottage trees’²⁰ remains unaltered throughout the drafting process, and clearly demonstrates a similarity to Chatterton's ‘Whann the fayre apple, rudde as even skie, / Do bende the tree unto the fructyle ground.’²¹ In both texts, the apples are the impetus behind the bowing of the fruit trees, and Chatterton's image would seem to have been the suggestion behind Keats's line, especially since Chatterton employs a similar image in another poem: ‘The apple rodded from its palie greene / And the mole peare did bende the leafy spraie.’²² Keats's apples remain colourless, but Chatterton's apple and soft pear both bend the tree just as Keats's apples do. The fruit at its prime can usefully develop no further, and these visual images primarily suggest an air of admiration for the achievements of nature in its ripeness and growth amidst the stillness. Yet this ripeness is on the verge of becoming cloying; and although the fruit blesses the vines, it also loads them, as the trees are bent with their burden of apples.

The remaining six lines of the first stanza do not vary significantly throughout the drafting process. The hurried ‘sweeness’ of the sixth line of the first draft becomes ‘ripeness’ in Woodhouse's transcript, and the hurried ‘furuits’ of the first draft becomes singular ‘fruit’ in Woodhouse's copy. Again, this error could be attributed to hurried spelling, or could perhaps be linked to Keats's recent readings of Chatterton with its supposed medieval spellings. Keats's attention to detail is clear, as the fruit varies not only in spelling, but also between the singular and plural. Today's ‘sweet kernel’ was formerly ‘white,’²³ and Woodhouse mistakenly writes ‘yet’ for ‘still’ in his transcript.²⁴ Yet it is remarkable to note how essentially little this first stanza alters during the drafting process, perhaps indicating that the first available draft is in fact Keats's transcript of a previous composition.

Gittings suggests that ‘The “white kernel” of line eight gains its adjective from the autumnal song in Chatterton's Aella,’²⁵ assumably referring to Chatterton's line ‘Whan al the hyls wythe woddie sede ys whyte.’²⁶ Perhaps Chatterton's white seed did inspire Keats to adopt the same colour in application to the kernel or seed of his hazel shells, but as Gittings goes on to point out, ‘The “white” kernel inevitably went when the earlier change to “ripeness” left the adjective “sweet” available.’²⁷ Finney notes that ‘The first draft of the ode reproduces some of Chatterton's words, especially words depicting the colors of autumn,’²⁸ and I would agree that the colour change is not due solely to Gittings's suggestion that an alternative adjective became available, but rather that the alteration is in part due to Keats's awareness of the similarity. As Ting asserts: ‘It appears quite obvious, besides, that Keats sometimes took pains to disguise or suppress his more apparent borrowings from Chatterton.’²⁹ This seemingly minor adjustment is perhaps indicative of the alterations throughout the drafting process due to Keats's awareness of his own echoes of Chatterton's work.

The combination of infinite autumns is personified in the second stanza, and the movement is again into autumn as the first line clearly refers to previous autumns and to the expected successors: ‘Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?’³⁰ Yet Keats altered this line in his own first draft, since it originally read ‘Who hath not seen thee? for thy haunts are many,’³¹ and this original line seems to pose problems in connecting to the following lines within the stanza, perhaps explaining the adjustment. But this alteration could alternatively have been inspired by Chatterton's ‘Aella,’ and Keats's revision demonstrates a clear similarity to a line of Chatterton's: ‘Ofte have I seene thee atte the none-daie feaste.’³² The repetition of exact word choice is obvious and Keats's line could be almost a development upon Chatterton's, as Keats uses the same words and merely broadens the address and adapts it to fit his own personifications of autumn. Gittings dismisses similar turns of phrase: ‘Yet these, though strong, are only immediate and verbal influences,’³³ but it seems clear that the verbal influences indicate Keats's debt to Chatterton and cannot be summarily dismissed. The singular ‘store’ of the final version is also perhaps more attuned to Chatterton's singular occasion and further limits the realm of autumn. The store could refer to the fruits of the seasons or to the stored death of the personified autumn.

The following personification of autumn is primarily specific, suggesting a search ‘for thee,’³⁴ but is altered by Keats to become more sweeping in its compass, since the suggestion comes that this personified autumn can be found ‘abroad.’³⁵ The personification is depicted in attitudes of stillness and recline, of repose and idleness. She is ‘careless on a granary floor, / Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,’³⁶ and her stasis bears an element of uselessness, as she is without care and can remain motionless only while the light wind of nature tries without success to arouse her. Following this image, there are five lines in the original draft which are deleted:

While bright the sun slants through the (husky) barn;—
orr on a half reap'd furrow sound asleep
Or sound asleep in a half reaped field
Dos'd with read poppies; while thy reeping hook
Spares form some slumbrous minutes while wam slumpers creep.(37)

The second line above was a revision of the third, but Keats seems here to be struggling with words and ideas which do not co-ordinate with the rest of the poem. John Bayley goes so far as to suggest that ‘he [Keats] is using, I think, a conscious Chattertonism; and so also, perhaps, is the phrase “husky barn,”’³⁸ but fails to clarify the parallel further than his own individual interpretation and association. Critics see Keats's deletions as due to a desire to avoid similarities with other writers while simultaneously failing to give specific references, but this cancelled section is interesting primarily in terms of the final two lines.

As Finney points out, ‘The personification of autumn as a reaper, the most essential element in Keats's ode, was derived from Chatterton's song;’³⁹ and, although Finney does not go into detail regarding this assertion, Chatterton's work can be seen clearly as a starting point for Keats's personifications. In Chatterton's autumnal minstrel's song, the personification is not a gentle and ineffective woman, but rather a man and a perpetrator of violence. Autumn is depicted as a man who will ‘guylteynge the fallenge lefe’ and carry the ‘riped shefe,’⁴⁰ and is therefore imagined as the enactor and bearer of death. Keats's eradicated ‘reeping hook’ would seem to fit Chatterton's manly personification rather than his own gentler image. Chatterton's personification similarly cannot halt nature's murderous process of ‘bryngeynge oppe Wynterr to folfylle the yere,’⁴¹ and Keats's original also did not allow the natural growth any lasting respite: ‘Spares for some slumbrous minutes the next swath.’⁴² Just as Chatterton's personification causes death and simultaneously and inevitably heralds the death of the year, so Keats's image suggests that any respite from the approaching onslaught is only momentary.

The murderous hook is not completely lost, since Keats's personification is depicted ‘sound asleep’⁴³ with only half the furrow reaped ‘while thy hook / Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers.’⁴⁴ It is only in sleep that any part of the personified autumn's nature can escape its fate: her murderous and sacrificial sickle is allayed only by her momentary respite. The swath also becomes invested with flowers in the revision, and this addition not only softens the harshness of the image, but also incorporates a feminine aspect and suggests that the death is a gentle one, perhaps indicating Keats's acceptance of the inevitability of death.

The final four lines of this stanza also soften Chatterton's harsh personification of the murderous season, as the images are of stasis and almost of peacefulness:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.(45)

The final image was suggested perhaps by Chatterton's line in presenting autumn performing its duties: ‘From purple clusters prest the foamy wine.’⁴⁶ Chatterton's image is more active, but Keats's personification of autumn is one of relaxation and a lack of assertion. Although the personifications are different in temperament, the suggestion of autumn fulfiling life and creating out of the ripeness is shared, and Keats's image would therefore seem not to be wholly original.

Keats's personification rests by the life-giving water, her posture symbolically intimating her acceptance of the transition of the seasons, or she lies in the torpid passing of time, motionless, as she watches the last ounce of life being squeezed out of the complete apples. The closing mood of this stanza is one of resignation, as the movement and fulfilment of life is passed over in passing through autumn and only death remains. The drafting changes in these four lines are minor and are concerned primarily with the emphasis placed upon the words. The description of the head changes from ‘leaden’ to ‘laden’⁴⁷ and ‘the brook’⁴⁸ becomes ‘a Brook.’⁴⁹ The first alteration implies an unspecific weight upon the head of the reaper rather than emphasising the weight itself of her head, and perhaps suggesting a consciousness of the destruction reaped by autumn. The second change serves to release the image from any specific conjuring of the author, and broadens the sweep of the reference to include any images conjured in the minds of the readers.

Addressing autumn in a direct appeal at the start of the third stanza, spring is presented as almost inferior. Despite the promise of life and development of spring, autumn has the ultimate music in her ability for completion. Keats's ‘Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—’⁵⁰ remains unaltered throughout the revision process, and is sharply reminiscent of Chatterton's ‘rough October has his pleasures too.’⁵¹ Chatterton's poem presents all the seasons with their various redeeming attributes, such as ‘golden autumn, wreath'd in rip'ned corn,’⁵² and despite singing the praises of each of the seasons, Chatterton finds special features within autumn. Similarly, Keats compels the image of spring to arise within the readers' minds by mentioning it, and dismisses the privileges of life and beauty traditionally associated with spring and suggests that autumn is comparably wonderful in its own way. The similarity between lines is again clear, since the same words are employed and the two lines have similar turns of phrase, and the lack of revision of Keats's lines again reinforces his recent reading of Chatterton's texts and Keats's conscious or unconscious alignment between their work.

Although the clouds of Keats's poem are blooming over the day, which is dying without protest,⁵³ they are nevertheless ‘barred’⁵⁴ and do not possess the power to break free and wander over the sky. The ‘barred clouds bloom’ of the first draft is in fact altered from Keats's originally differently coloured image: ‘a gold cloud gilds.’⁵⁵ The original is reminiscent of Chatterton's reaper, with his ‘goulde honde guylteynge,’⁵⁶ and it would seem that Keats was aware of the similarity, one which perhaps inspired him to make the alteration, as Ting has noted: ‘The line in “To Autumn” (“While a gold cloud gilds the soft dying day,”) … clearly reminiscent of Chatterton, … were both [sic] omitted in publication.’⁵⁷

Keats alters the succeeding lines also in order to further build the images upon one another, since the ‘rosy hue’ of the ‘stibble plains,’ originally due to the day's ‘touching,’⁵⁸ is altered to rely upon the ‘while’: ‘And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.’⁵⁹ Thus the colours of the two separate images are combined to produce the setting sun colour of dusk, symbolising the end of the day and the end of life before winter's bleak onset. The gnats are left mourning for the passing of the seasons, at the mercy of nature's will: ‘borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.’⁶⁰ The wind originally ‘lives and dies,’⁶¹ and the alteration serves to emphasize the combination of life and death within the season. Just as the wind's actions are fluctuating and unpredictable, so autumn promises the absolute fulfilment of life while simultaneously heralding the inevitable death to follow.

The lambs are now ‘full-grown’⁶² and have lost the carefree time of youth and development. Only the ‘red-breast’⁶³ or robin is left in this changed season, surely indicative of the onset of winter as the swallows gather for migration. The ‘gathering swallows’⁶⁴ of the final version were originally ‘gather'd swallows,’⁶⁵ and the alteration again serves to imply the motion of the seasons and to perpetuate the omnipotent movement of autumn. The swallows cannot be in stasis, as all nature is always fluctuating and moving in the progressive cycle. The animals seem aware of the approaching darkness and accept the perpetual process of ripening, decay, and death.

The poem closes with death at the end of autumn, but also in a mood of acceptance of nature's cycle. The final glance is towards the sky, towards the heavenly region of human death and accompanying peace. The progression is one into and through autumn, entering on the boundary and completion of the cycle and departing as the approaching winter encroaches upon the scene and only death lies ahead. Just as the fullness of the fruit attracted Adam to sin, so the fulfilment of autumn and its promise of life can result only in death.

Chatterton's final lines are perhaps the most important to a reading of Keats's ‘To Autumn’: ‘Thann, bee the even foule, or even fayre, / Meethynckes mie hartys joie ys steynced wyth somme care.’⁶⁶ Keats acknowledged Chatterton's emotion and reproduces it within his own poem: although beauty is to be found in autumn, there is always an accompanying feeling of death with the natural completion. Paradoxically, however much autumn ripens life and develops it to its ultimate capacity, it inevitably simultaneously augurs death. The ‘care’ of autumn is the ambiguity of the season, as the promised fulfilment of life can be succeeded only by death. It would seem that Chatterton's lines were prominent in Keats's thoughts as he wrote his own poem, since the tone of Keats's poem duplicates the sentiment of Chatterton.

It is not only the tone and sentiment of Chatterton's text which are reproduced by Keats, as there are also similarities in melody. The stanzas of ‘To Autumn’ are altered from the quatrain-sestet with the rhyming scheme abab-cdecde that can be found in the Petrarchan sonnet form of ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’⁶⁷ to the quatrain-septet with a rhyming scheme of abab-cdecdde. Walter Jackson Bate adroitly acknowledges that the unexpected delay of the tenth line denies the stanza a sense of completion and thus complements the theme: ‘The ode stanza is given a more prolonged effect; and the prolonging of fulfillment is itself an intrinsic part of the theme of the ode.’⁶⁸ The rhyming couplets in the ninth and tenth lines of the stanzas of ‘To Autumn’ echo the rhyming couplets to be found at the end of each stanza in Chatterton's ‘Aella,’ but Keats's extra line at the end of each stanza denies any conventional adoption of closure.

Keats wrote of his admiration for Chatterton's language as the ‘purest’ and dismisses his own ‘Hyperion’ for having ‘too many Miltonic inversions in it,’⁶⁹ stressing his preference for Chatterton's language as being ‘entirely northern.’⁷⁰ In considering ‘To Autumn,’ Geoffrey Hartman asks the reader to

consider the northernisms. … There is hardly a romance language phrase: sound-shapes like sallows, swallows, borne, bourn, crickets, croft, predominate. And, finally, the poise of the stanza's ending, on the verge of flight like joy always bidding adieu.⁷¹

The northernisms which Hartman identifies but does not define are perhaps a further indication of Keats's attachment to Chatterton's language, but the melodic fondness which Bailey recalls⁷² is far more convincingly demonstrated in Keats's text.

Supplementary to the clear word and phrase reproduction seen in ‘To Autumn,’ the text seems also to replicate Chatterton's melody or rhythm. Bailey recalls Keats's fondness for Chatterton's line ‘Come with acorn cup and thorn,’⁷³ and E. C. Pettet points out that ‘in his own practice Keats certainly made a very considerable use of the melodic principle embodied in this admired line from Chatterton.’⁷⁴ Pettet uses line twenty-nine of ‘To Autumn’ as an example: ‘Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies.’⁷⁵ The interwoven vowel sounds of Chatterton's ‘come’ and ‘cup,’ ‘acorn’ and ‘thorn’ are repeated by Keats's ‘sinking’ and ‘lives,’ ‘light’ and ‘dies.’ Pettet points out also that the line ‘While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day’⁷⁶ ‘forms the antithesis of Chatterton's “Come with acorn cup and thorn” …’ since ‘though there are of course two strong alliterations, all eight of the principal vowel sounds are different.’⁷⁷ Thus Keats's poem can be seen both to reproduce Chatterton's melody and to juxtapose and contrast this with Keats's own melodic style.

Douglas Bush points out that ‘it is generally agreed that this poem is flawless in structure, texture, tone, and rhythm,’⁷⁸ but he states that ‘Keats's notion of Chatterton's English was unsophisticated,’⁷⁹ whereas Gittings finds virtue in Keats's identification with Chatterton's English:

Direct borrowings from the minstrel's song of Autumn in Chatterton's Aella are apparent in the first draft, but alter under Keats's hand to more rich and positive form, though he retained the essential simplicity of Chatterton.⁸⁰

Keats's poem remains objective and consciousness is almost absorbed into the poem; and, although the shared sentiment of Chatterton and Keats is clear, the images are adequate in themselves and in their symbolic suggestiveness as the real and the ideal are concretely presented.

Autumn is the paradoxical area between life and death, between warmth and chill. Keats takes his reader into autumn nearly at its closure and almost imperceptibly moves through autumn towards the unavoidable death. He has accepted the undeniable fact of man's mortality as the immediate successor to the fullness of life, seemingly suggested to him by Chatterton's lines. As Shakespeare's Edgar stated prior to his triumph over his wicked brother:

Men must endure
Their going hence even as coming hither,
Ripeness is all.(81)

Keats has accepted life's cycle, serenely acknowledging the loss of life prior to the creation of new life. Three months after writing ‘To Autumn,’ Keats was to suffer a haemorrhage which led to his own death.

It is only by considering all available versions of Keats's text that their clear connections to Chatterton's work can be established, and only through this consideration can influence be duly acknowledged. The alterations and awareness of the context in which the text was produced indicate to some extent that Keats was aware of Chatterton's influence, whether consciously or unconsciously. There is a sense of continuation between texts within the poetic tradition, demonstrated by the perpetuating concern with the theme of autumn evident in the texts of the authors under consideration. But extensive textual examination of all extant versions is also essential in contemplating the texts, and Chatterton clearly merits further examination, particularly since his texts have influenced later poets and since they actively participate within ongoing traditions.

Notes

1. Letters 157-58.

2. See Robert Gitting's ‘Keats and Chatterton’ KSJ 4, and Nai-Tung Ting's ‘The Influence of Chatterton on Keats’ KSJ 5, and ‘Chatterton and Keats: A Reexamination’ KSJ 30.

3. Poetical Works 218-19.

4. Letters 152.

5. In order to refer to each of the drafts in analysing the changes therein, Jack Stillinger's extremely useful coded system to be found in his editing of The Poems of John Keats (476-77) has been adapted, and the transcript by George Keats and the modern Published Oxford edition of the poem are also considered:

   D refers to Keats's own draft

   L refers to the copy sent by Keats to Richard Woodhouse in a letter

   CB refers to the transcript by Charles Brown, revised by Keats and corrected by Woodhouse

   GK refers to the transcript by George Keats

   RW refers to the transcript by Woodhouse

   M refers to the published version in the Oxford edition of Keats's poetical works.

6. ‘Chatterton and Keats’ 116.

7. 706.

8. The Living Year 187.

9. The Living Year 187.

10. D, line 2.

11. M, 1-2.

12. M, 2.

13. Letters 38.

14. Letters 286.

15. ‘Aella,’ line 296.

16. 1986 Carcanet Edition, 50.

17. M, 1.

18. D, L, CB, GK, RW, 3-4.

19. 151.

20. M, 5.

21. ‘Aella,’ 302-03.

22. ‘An Excelente Balade of Charitie,’ 3-4.

23. D, L, RW, 8.

24. RW, 9.

25. The Odes of Keats 75.

26. 300.

27. 75.

28. 709.

29. ‘The Influence of Chatterton on Keats’ 108.

30. M, 12.

31. D, 12.

32. ‘Aella’ 163.

33. The Living Year 188.

34. D, 13.

35. D, 13.

36. M, 14-15.

37. D, 15-16.

38. 10.

39. 708.

40. 297, 299.

41. 298.

42. D, 18.

43. M, 16.

44. M, 17-18.

45. M, 19-22.

46. from ‘Elegy to the Memory of Mr. Thomas Phillips, of Fairford,’ hereafter ‘Elegy’ line 22.

47. CB, 20.

48. D, CB, GK, 20.

49. RW, 20.

50. M, 23.

51. ‘Elegy’ 53.

52. 21.

53. ‘soft-dying’ M, 25.

54. M, 25.

55. D, 25.

56. ‘Aella’ 297.

57. ‘The Influence of Chatterton on Keats’ 108.

58. D, 26.

59. M, 26.

60. M, 28-29.

61. D, L, RW, 29.

62. M, 30.

63. M, 32.

64. M, 33.

65. D, L, RW, 33.

66. ‘Aella’ 304-05.

67. Poetical Works 207-09.

68. 581.

69. Letters 292.

70. Letters 325.

71. 94.

72. 276.

73. 276.

74. 92.

75. M, 29.

76. M, 25.

77. 93.

78. 176.

79. 173.

80. John Keats 349.

81. King Lear 5.2-11.

Works Cited

Bailey, Benjamin. ‘To R. M. Milnes.’ 7 May 1849. Letter 253 in The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers and More Letters and Poems of the Keats Circle. Ed. Hyder Edward Rollins. 2nd ed. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1965, p. 276.

Bate, Walter Jackson. John Keats. Cambridge, MA: Belknap P, 1964, p. 581.

Bayley, John. Keats and Reality. [Folcroft, PA]: Folcroft, 1969, p. 10.

Bush, Douglas. John Keats: His Life and Writings. New York: Macmillan, 1967, pp. 173, 176.

Chatterton, Thomas. Thomas Chatterton: Selected Poems. Ed. Grevel Lindop. Manchester: Carcanet, 1986, pp. 30-33, 42-72, 73-76.

Finney, Claude Lee. The Evolution of Keats's Poetry. Vol. 2. New York: Russell, 1963, pp. 706, 708, 709.

Gittings, Robert. John Keats. London: Penguin, 1979, p. 349.

———. John Keats: The Living Year, 21 September 1818 to 21 September 1819. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1954, pp. 187, 188.

———. ‘Keats and Chatterton.’ Keats-Shelley Journal 4 (1955): 47-54.

———. ed. The Odes of Keats and Their Earliest Known Manuscripts. Ohio: Kent State UP, 1970, p. 75.

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