Probably
he thought that the poet was a member of a London clique. There is
really no excuse for Lockhart, except that he DID repent, that much
of his banter was amusing, and that, above all, his censures were
accepted by the poet, who altered, later, many passages of a fine
absurdity criticised by the infamous reviewer. One could name great
prose-writers, historians, who never altered the wondrous errors to
which their attention was called by critics. Prose-writers have been
more sensitively attached to their glaring blunders in verifiable
facts than was this very sensitive poet to his occasional lapses in
taste.
The Lady of Shalott, even in its early form, was more than enough to
give assurance of a poet. In effect it is even more poetical, in a
mysterious way, if infinitely less human, than the later treatment of
the same or a similar legend in Elaine. It has the charm of
Coleridge, and an allegory of the fatal escape from the world of
dreams and shadows into that of realities may have been really
present to the mind of the young poet, aware that he was "living in
phantasy." The alterations are usually for the better. The daffodil
is not an aquatic plant, as the poet seems to assert in the first
form -
"The yellow-leaved water-lily,
The green sheathed daffodilly,
Tremble in the water chilly,
Round about Shalott."
Nobody can prefer to keep
"Though the squally east wind keenly
Blew, with folded arms serenely
By the water stood the queenly
Lady of Shalott.
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