received from an unknown admirer. However, the next letter to the same correspondents, February 19, 1819, clearly attests some annoyance.

...

"My poem has not at all succeeded. The reviewers have enervated men's minds, and made them indolent; few think for themselves. These reviews are getting more and more powerful, especially The Quarterly. They are like a superstition which, the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing weakness. I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do now) all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not care who wins or who loses. I have been at different times turning it in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a physician. . . . It is not worse than writing poems, and hanging them up to be fly-blown in the Review shambles."

We find in Keats's letters nothing further about the criticisms; but, when he replied in August 1820 to Shelley's first invitation to Italy, he referred to "Endymion" itself: "I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation." We must also take into account the publishers' advertisement (not Keats's own) to the "Lamia" volume, saying of "Hyperion "-"The poem. was intended to have been of equal length with 'Endymion,' but the reception given to that work

L

It can

discouraged the author from proceeding." scarcely be supposed that the publishers printed this without Keats's express sanction; yet he never assigned elsewhere any similar reason for discontinuing "Hyperion," nor was "Hyperion" open to exception on any such grounds as had been urged against "Endymion." The earliest written reference which I can trace to any serious despondency of Keats consequent upon the attacks of reviewers (if we except a less strongly worded statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted further on) is in a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually send, to the editor of the Quarterly Review. It was written after Shelley had seen the "Lamia" volume, and can hardly, I suppose, date earlier than October 1820, two full years after the publication of the Quarterly (and also the Blackwood) tirades against "Endymion." Shelley adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the Quarterly critique, and then proceeds

"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 his existence, and inducing a disease from which there are now but faint hopes of his recovery. The first effects are described to me to have resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to have begun."

The informants of Shelley with regard to Keats's acute feelings and distress were (it is stated) the Gisbornes, and possibly Leigh Hunt may have confirmed them in some measure; but the Gisbornes knew nothing directly of what had been taking place in England in or about the autumn of 1818, and that which Hunt published regarding Keats is far from corroborating so extreme a view of the facts. Later on Shelley received from Mr. Gisborne a letter written by Colonel Finch, the date of which would perhaps be in May 1821 (three months after the death of Keats). This letter appears to have been one of his principal incentives for the indignation expressed in the preface to "Adonais," but not in the poem itself, which had been completed before Shelley saw the letter; and it is remarkable that Colonel Finch's expressions, when one scrutinizes them, do not really say anything about mental anguish caused to Keats by any review, but only by ill-treatment of a different kindseemingly that of his brother George and others, as previously detailed. The following is the only relevant passage: "He left his native shores by sea in a merchant vessel for Naples, where he arrived, having received no benefit during the passage, and brooding over the most melancholy and mortifying reflections, and nursing a deeply-rooted disgust to life and to the world, owing to having been infamously treated by the very persons whom his generosity had rescued from want and woe." Shelley however put into print in the preface to "Adonais" the same view of the blighting of Keats's life by the Quarterly critique (he seems to have known nothing of the Blackwood scurrility), which had appeared in his undespatched letter to the editor of the Quarterly

"The savage criticism on his 'Endymion' which appeared in The Quarterly Review produced the most violent effect on his susceptible mind. The agitation thus originated ended in the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs. A rapid consumption ensued, and the succeeding acknowledgments from more candid critics of the true greatness of his powers were ineffectual to heal the wound thus wantonly inflicted. . . . Miserable man! you, one of the meanest, have wantonly defaced one of the noblest specimens of the workmanship of God. Nor shall it be your excuse that, murderer as you are, you have spoken daggers but used none."

Thus far we have found no strong evidence (only assertions) that Keats took greatly to heart the attacks upon him, whether in the Quarterly or in Blackwood. Shelley seems to be the principal authority, and Shelley, unless founding upon some adequate information, is next to no authority at all. He had left England in March 1818, five months before the earlier-printed in Augustof these spiteful articles. Were there nothing further, we should be more than well pleased to rally to the opinion of Lord Houghton, who came to the conclusion that the idea of Keats's extreme sensitiveness to criticism was a positive delusion—that he paid little heed to it, and pursued his own course much as if no reviewer had tried to be provoking. But there is, in fact, a direct witness of high importance-Haydon. Haydon knew Keats very intimately, and saw a great deal of him; he admired and loved him, and had a vigorous, discerning insight into character and habit of mind, such as makes his observa

tions about all sorts of men substantial testimony and first-rate reading. He took forcible views of many things, and sometimes exaggerated views: but, when he attributed to Keats a particular mood of feeling, I should find it very difficult to think that he was either unfairly biassed or widely mistaken. In his reminiscences proper to the year 1817-18 occurs the following passage:

"The assaults on Hunt in Blackwood at this time, under the signature of Z, were incessant. Who Z was nobody knew, but I myself strongly suspect him to have been Terry the actor. Leigh Hunt had exasperated Terry by neglecting to notice his theatrical efforts. Terry was a friend of Sir Walter's, shared keenly his political hatreds, and was also most intimate with the Blackwood party, which had begun a course of attacks on all who showed the least liberalism of thinking, or who were praised by or known to The Examiner. Hunt had addressed a sonnet to me. This was enough: we were taken to be of the same clique of rebels, rascals, and reformers, who were supposed to support that production of so much power and talent. On Keats the effect was melancholy. He became morbid and silent; would call and sit whilst I was painting, for hours, without speaking a word."

But

This counts for something-not very much. another passage forming an entry in Haydon's diary, written on March 29, 1821, perhaps as soon as he had heard of Keats's death, carries the matter much further