Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Book and heart: essays on literature and life

[16] always come either from his own finer perception and steady advance toward the precise conveyance of his own thought, or else from the aid he receives in this from some immediate friend or adviser-most likely a woman — who is in close sympathy with his own mood. The charm is greatest, of course, in seeing and studying and touching the actual page, just as it is. For this a photograph is the best substitute, since it preserves the original for the eye, as does the phonograph for the ear. Even with the aid of photography only, there is as much difference between the final corrected shape and the page showing the gradual changes as between the graceful yacht lying in harbor, anchored, motionless, with sails furled, and the same yacht as a winged creature, gliding into port. Let us now see, by actual comparison, how one of Keats's yachts came in.

There lies before me a photograph of the first two stanzas of Keats's “Ode on Melancholy” as they stood when first written. The manuscript page containing them was given to John Howard Payne by George Keats, the poet's brother, who lived for many years at Louisville, Kentucky, and died there; but it now belongs to Mr. R. S. Chilton, United