These things grew from darker creeds than Greece had ever
known since the elder traditions of Prometheus--creeds that sent down
their sounding plummets into far deeper wells within the human spirit.
What had been meant, by the question proposed to Shelley, was no doubt--
How so young a man as Keats, not having had the advantage of a regular
classical education, could have been so much at home in the details of the
_elder_ mythology? Tooke's 'Pantheon' might have been obtained by
favor of any English schoolboy, and Dumoustier's '_Lettres a Emile sur
la Mythologie_' by favor of very many young ladies; but these,
according to my recollection of them, would hardly have sufficed. Spence's
'_Polymetis_,' however, might have been had by favor of any good
library; and the '_Bibliotheca_' of Apollodorus, who is the cock of
the walk on this subject, might have been read by favor of a Latin
translation, supposing Keats really unequal to the easy Greek text. There
is no wonder in the case; nor, if there had been, would Shelley's kind
remark have solved it. The _treatment_ of the facts must, in any
case, have been due to Keats's genius, so as to be the same whether he had
studied Greek or not: the _facts_, apart from the treatment, must in
any case have been had from a book. Secondly--Let Mr. Landor rely upon it
--that Wordsworth never said the thing ascribed to him here as any formal
judgment, or what Scottish law would call _deliverance_, upon the
'Hyperion.
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