It is rather the preface to _Alastor_ than the poem itself which we can trace as having really worked in the mind of Keats. In it the evil fate of those who shut themselves out from human sympathies is very eloquently set forth, in a passage which is only partly relevant to the design of the poem, inasmuch as its warning is addressed not only to the poet in particular but to human beings in general. The passage may have had some influence on Keats when he framed the scheme of _Endymion_: what is certain is that we shall find its thoughts and even its words recurring forcibly to his mind in an hour of despondency some thirty months later: let us therefore postpone its consideration until then. For the rest, it is not difficult to show correspondence between some of the descriptive passages of _Alastor_ and _Endymion_, especially those telling of the natural and architectural marvels amid which the heroes wander. Endymion's wanderings we are fresh from tracing. Alastor before him had wandered--
where the secret caves Rugged and dark, winding amid the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numerous and immeasurable halls, Frequent with crystal columns, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite.
But these are the kind of visions which may rise spontaneously in common in the minds of almost any pair of youthful dreamers. Shelley's poetic style is of course as much sounder and less experimental than that of Keats at this time as his range and certainty of penetrating and vivifying imagination are, to my apprehension at least, less: he had a trained and scholarly feeling both for the resources of the language and for its purity, and Keats might have learnt much from him as to what he should avoid. But as we have seen, Keats was firmly on his guard against letting any outside influence affect his own development, and would not visit Shelley at Marlow during the composition of _Endymion_, in order 'that he might have his own unfettered scope' and that the spirit of poetry might work out its own salvation in him.
As to the _Hymn to Intellectual Beauty_, written though it was by Shelley under the fresh impression of the glory of the Alps and also in the first flush of his acquaintance with and enthusiasm for Plato, I think Keats would have felt its strain of aspiration and invocation too painful, too near despair, to make much appeal to him, and that Shelley's