get-me-not,--the blue-bell,--and, that queen
Of secrecy, the violet: what strange powers
Hast thou, as a mere shadow! But how great,
When in an Eye thou art alive with fate!

_Feb._ 1818.

In the _Athenaeum_ of the 3rd of June 1876 appeared a letter from Mr. A.
J. Horwood, stating that he had in his possession a copy of _The Garden
of Florence_ in which this sonnet was transcribed. Mr. Horwood, who was
unaware that the sonnet had been already published by Lord Houghton,
gives the transcript at length. His version reads _hue_ for _life_ in
the first line, and _bright_ for _wide_ in the second, and gives the
sixth line thus:

With all his tributary streams, pools numberless,

a foot too long: it also reads _to_ for _of_ in the ninth line. Mr.
Buxton Forman is of opinion that these variations are decidedly genuine,
but indicative of an earlier state of the poem than that adopted in Lord
Houghton's edition. However, now that we have before us Keats's first
draft of his sonnet, it is difficult to believe that the sixth line in
Mr. Horwood's version is really a genuine variation. Keats may have
written,

Ocean
His tributary streams, pools numberless,

and the transcript may have been carelessly made, but having got his line
right in his first draft, Keats probably did not spoil it in his second.
The _Athenaeum_ version inserts a comma after _art_ in the last line,
which seems to me a decided improvement, and eminently characteristic of
Keats's method. I am glad to see that Mr. Buxton Forman has adopted it.

As for the corrections that Lord Houghton's version shows Keats to have
made in the eighth and ninth lines of this sonnet, it is evident that
they sprang from Keats's reluctance to repeat the same word in
consecutive lines, except in cases where a word's music or meaning was to
be emphasized. The substitution of 'its' for 'his' in the sixth line is
more difficult of explanation. It was due probably to a desire on
Keats's part not to mar by any echo the fine personification of Hesperus.

It may be noticed that Keats's own eyes were brown, and not blue, as
stated by Mrs. Proctor to Lord Houghton. Mrs. Speed showed me a note to
that effect written by Mrs. George Keats on the margin of the page in
Lord Houghton's _Life_ (p. 100, vol. i.), where Mrs. Proctor's
description is given. Cowden Clarke made a sim