.. proves at least_. In the Pisa edition
the word is printed 'prove' (not 'proves'). Shelley was far from being
an exact writer in matters of this sort.
1. 21. _John Keats died ... in his twenty-fourth year, on the [23rd] of
[February]_ 1821. Keats, at the time of his death, was not really in his
twenty-fourth, but in his twenty-sixth year: the date of his birth was
31 October, 1795. In the Pisa edition of _Adonais_ the date of death is
given thus--'the----of----1821': for Shelley, when he wrote his preface,
had no precise knowledge of the facts. In some later editions, 'the 27th
of December 1820' was erroneously substituted. Shelley's mistake in
supposing that Keats, in 1821, was aged only twenty-three, may be taken
into account in estimating his previous observation, 'I consider the
fragment of _Hyperion_ as second to nothing that was ever produced by a
writer of the same years.' Keats, writing in August, 1820, had told
Shelley (see p. 17) that some of his poems, perhaps including
_Hyperion_, had been written 'above two years' preceding that date. If
Shelley supposed that Keats was twenty-three years old at the beginning
of 1821, and that _Hyperion_ had been written fully two years prior to
August, 1820, he must have accounted that poem to be the product of a
youth of twenty, or at most twenty-one, which would indeed be a
marvellous instance of precocity.
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