(no subject)

[proximoception]

Fuck. There's just enough of the quote I recall in Google Books that I can't be entirely sure it's about Shelley, and I don't have time to get to a university library.

If anyone has The Prose of John Clare (1970) and has time to check page 223 of it for a paragraph about Shelley that and you would be miraculous.

And I will send you some kind of present.

Comments

[toctoc.livejournal.com]

Have found an earlier version of the requested volume (though it seems, fortunately, to have the same pagination as the 1970 if Google Books be any guide). Top of the page is a meditation on Pope, a "great poet" & of "uniform excellence [with] few or no shadows in his sunshine." (Why, Mr. Clare!) There is a paragraph about Keats that mentions Shelley once but (malheureusement) no paragraph on Shelley proper (Ran the search only function in the Hathi Digital Trust; "Shelley" appears only once in the volume & only on p. 223, the passim ref.). Here 'tis:

KEATS

He keeps up a constant allusion or illusion to the grecian mythology & there I cannot follow--yet when he speaks of woods Dryads & Fawns are sure to follow & the brook looks alone without her naiads to his mind yet the frequency of such classical accompaniment make it wearisome to the reader where behind every rose bush he looks for a Venus & under every laurel a thrumming Appollo--In spite of all this his descriptions of scenery are often very fine but as it is the case with other inhabitants of great cities he often described nature as she appeared to his fancies & not as he would have described her had he witnessed the things he describes--Thus it is he has often undergone the stigma of Cockneyism & what appears as beautys in the eyes of a pent-up citizen are looked upon as consciets by those who live in the country--these are merely errors but even here they are merely the errors of poetry--he is often mystical but such poetical liscences have been looked on as beauties in Wordsworth & Shelley & in Keats they may be forgiven

The Prose of John Clare eds. J.W. & Anne Tibble. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1951.

(Ampersands & non-standard orthographies/usages typed as read. Promise!)

Hope that helps!

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Thanks and more to come!