It has frequently been assumed that Keats, in revising the earlier version of Hyperion into The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, was liberating himself from the influence of Milton and, especially, of Paradise Lost. In the new induction to The Fall he abandoned the epic structure of the first Hyperion for a form that is both more personal and allegoric—that of a vision or dream. The change is sweeping, involving not only structure but style, and apparently reflects the poet's dissatisfaction with the epic nature of the earlier version. Valid reasons for that dissatisfaction are not difficult to find. The first two books of Hyperion, with their description of the fallen divinities and their conclave, in general parallel the action of the first two books of Paradise Lost. Whereas Milton in his opening books gradually introduces his main subject, the fall of man, Keats suddenly presents, in his third, the deification of the poet, Apollo, through an imaginative and supremely intense realization of human destiny and its suffering. That vision is largely subjective and personal and represents Keats's groping toward a new and more mature conception of tragic beauty, the relevance of which to the epic events that precede it is not, and perhaps never could have been, made clear. Nor is it apparent how he could have continued his narrative when its climax had already been achieved.