oftener than Clarke did, and we must observe that he refers to
"Keats's own expression" as to the claret ensuing after the cayenne
pepper, and affirms that he himself remonstrated in vain against the
"dissipation," which means apparently excess in drinking alone.

To advert to what Lord Byron wrote about Keats as having been killed by
_The Quarterly Review_ is hardly worth while. His first reference to the
subject is in a letter to Mr. Murray (publisher of _The Quarterly_)
dated April 26, 1821. In this he expressly names Shelley as his
informant, and with Shelley as an authority for the allegation I have
already dealt.

There are two writings of Leigh Hunt in which the question of Keats and
his critics is touched upon. The first is the review, August 1820, of
the "Lamia" volume. In speaking of the "Ode to a Nightingale" he says--

"The poem will be the more striking to the reader when he
understands, what we take a friend's liberty in telling him, that
the author's powerful mind has for some time past been inhabiting
a sickened and shaken body; and that in the meanwhile it has had
to contend with feelings that make a fine nature ache for its
species, even when it would disdain to do so for itself--we mean
critical malignity, that unhappy envy which would wreak its own
tortures upon others, especially upon those that really feel for
it already."

Hunt's posthumous Memoir of Keats was first published in 1828. He refers
to the attack in _Blackwood_ upon himself and upon Keats, and says: "I
little suspected, as I did afterwards, that the hunters had struck him;
that a delicate organization, which already anticipated a premature
death, made him feel his ambition thwarted by these fellows; and that
the very impatience of being impatient was resented by him and preyed on
his mind." Hunt also says regarding Byron--"I told him he was mistaken
in attributing Keats's death to the critics, though they had perhaps
hastened and certainly embittered it."

Another item of evidence may be cited. It is from a letter written by
George Keats to Mr. Dilke in April 1824, and refers to the insolences of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. George, it will be remembered, was already out
of England before the articles appeared in _Blackwood_ and in _The
Quarterly_, and he only saw a little of John Keats at the close of the
ensuing year, 1819. "_Blackwood's Magazine_ has fallen into my hands. I
could have walked 100 miles to h