VII.

KEATS AND THE QUARTERLY REVIEW;

TWO LETTERS TO THE EDITOR OF

THE MORNING CHRONICLE

published in that paper

on Saturday the 3rd and Thursday the 8th of October 1818.

Sir,

I.

Although I am aware that literary squabbles are of too uninteresting and interminable a nature for your Journal, yet there are occasions when acts of malice and gross injustice towards an author may be properly brought before the public through such a medium.— Allow me, then, without further preface, to refer you to an article in the last Number of The Quarterly Review, professing to be a Critique on "The Poems of John Keats." Of John Keats I know nothing; from his Preface I collect that he is very young-no doubt a heinous sin; and I have been informed that he has incurred the additional guilt of an acquaintance with Mr. Leigh Hunt. That this latter Gentleman and the Editor of The Quarterly Review have long been at war, must be known to every one in the least acquainted with the literary gossip of the day. Mr. L. Hunt, it appears, has thought highly of the poetical talents of Mr. Keats; hence Mr. K. is doomed to feel the merciless tomahawk of the Reviewers, termed Quarterly, I presume from the modus operandi. From a perusal of the criticism, I was

led to the work itself. I would, Sir, that your limits would permit a few extracts from this poem. I dare appeal to the taste and judgment of your readers, that beauties of the highest order may be found in almost every page-that there are also many, very many passages indicating haste and carelessness, I will not deny ; I will go further, and assert that a real friend of the author would have dissuaded him from an immediate publication.

Had the genius of Lord Byron sunk under the discouraging sneers of an Edinburgh Review the nineteenth century would scarcely yet have been termed the Augustan æra of Poetry. Let Mr. Keats too persevere—he has talents of [no] common stamp ; this is the hastily written tribute of a stranger, who ventures to predict that Mr. K. is capable of producing a poem that shall challenge the admiration of every reader of true taste and feeling; nay if he will give up his acquaintance with Mr. Leigh Hunt, and apostatise in his friendships, his principles and his politics (if he have any), he may even command the approbation of the Quarterly Review.

I have not heard to whom public opinion has assigned this exquisite morceau of critical acumen. If the Translator of Juvenal' be its author, I would refer him to the manly and pathetic narrative prefixed to that translation, to the touching history of genius oppressed by and struggling with innumerable difficulties, yet finally

1 These references are so well chosen as to give some countenance to the suggestion that John Scott was the writer of the letter. The translator of Juvenal was of course William Gifford, the editor of The Quarterly Review. The biographer of Kirke White was Robert Southey; and the author of The Battle of Talavera was John Wilson Croker, who, like Southey, was one of the most prominent contributors to the Quarterly.

triumphing under patronage and encouragement. If the Biographer of Kirke White have done Mr. Keats this cruel wrong, let him remember his own just and feeling expostulation with the Monthly Reviewer, who "sat down to blast the hopes of a boy, who had confessed to him all his hopes and all his difficulties." If the 'Admiralty Scribe' (for he too is a Reviewer) be the critic, let him compare the "Battle of Talavera" with "Endymion." I am, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

Sir,

2.

J. S.

The spirited and feeling remonstrance of your correspondent J. S. against the cruelty and injustice of the Quarterly Review, has most ably anticipated the few remarks which I had intended to address to you on the subject. But your well known liberality in giving admission to every thing calculated to do justice to op- pressed and injured merit, induces me to trespass further on your valuable columns, by a few extracts from Mr. Keat's Poem. As the Reviewer professes to have read only the first book, I have confined my quotations to that part of the Poem; and I leave your readers to judge whether the Critic who could pass over such beauties as these lines contain, and condemn the whole Poem as "consisting of the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language," is very implicitly to be relied on. I am, Sir

Your obedient servant,

Temple, Oct. 3rd 1818.

R. B.

The extracts range over pages 12 to 42 of the original edition of Endymion (pages 130 to 163 of the first volume of this edition).

VIII.

LETTER BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Sir,

CONCERNING

JOHN KEATS,

addressed but not sent to the Editor of The Quarterly

Review.

Should you cast your eye on the signature of this letter before you read the contents, you might imagine that they related to a slanderous paper which appeared in your Review some time since. I never notice anonymous attacks. The wretch who wrote it has doubtless the additional reward of a consciousness of his motives, besides the thirty guineas a sheet, or whatever it is that you pay him. Of course you cannot be answerable for all the writings which you edit, and I certainly bear you no ill-will for having edited the abuse to which I allude -indeed, I was too much amused by being compared to Pharaoh, not readily to forgive editor, printer, publisher, stitcher, or any one, except the despicable writer, connected with something so exquisitely entertaining. Seriously speaking, I am not in the habit of permitting myself to be disturbed by what is said or written of me, though, I dare say, I may be condemned sometimes justly enough. But I feel, in respect to the writer in question, that "I am there sitting, where he durst not soar,"

The case is different with the unfortunate subject of

this letter, the author of "Endymion," to whose feelings and situation I entreat you to allow me to call your attention. I write considerably in the dark; but if it is Mr. Gifford that I am addressing, I am persuaded that, in an appeal to his humanity and justice, he will acknowledge the fas ab hoste doceri. I am aware that the first duty of a Reviewer is towards the public, and I am willing to confess that the "Endymion" is a poem considerably defective, and that, perhaps, it deserved as much censure as the pages of your Review record against it; but, not to mention that there is a certain contemptuousness of phraseology, from which it is difficult for a critic to abstain, in the review of "Endymion," I do not think that the writer has given it its due praise. Surely the poem, with all its faults, is a very remarkable production for a man of Keats's age, and the promise of ultimate excellence is such as has rarely been afforded even by such as have afterwards attained high literary eminence. Look at book ii., line 833, &c., and book iii., line 113 to 120; read down that page, and then again from line 193. I could cite many other passages, to convince you that it deserved milder usage. Why it should have been reviewed at all, excepting for the purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, I cannot conceive, for it was very little read, and there was no danger that it should become a model to the age of that false taste, with which I confess, that it is replenished.

Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this review,' which, I am persuaded, was not written. with any intention of producing the effect, to which it has, at least, greatly contributed, of embittering hist

1 It is now well known that this view of the matter was considerably exaggerated by Shelley's imagination and righteous wrath.