...last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights and live laborious days. Milton, Lycidas. And again: How hard it is to climb The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar! Beattie, The Minstrel. Finally, we can also see why the vainest of all nations constantly talks about...

...ambition. Beattie's The Minstrel, for instance, with its Spenserian stanzas and its warnings that no one 'can tell how hard it is to climb / The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar', illustrates the point. The 'plan of the poem'6 (and of Keats's reading as a whole) describes a pilgrimage...

...by the endurance of labours and difficulty, and the sacrifice of desires and gratifications.3 " Ah, who can tell how hard it is to climb The steep where fame's proud temple shines afar ?"6 Hence that saying of the Sanctified, " Paradise is begirt with disgusts, and hell with pleasures."...