ny Keats"--all this (or much of it) before he published anything
except occasional sonnets and other fugitive poems in _The Examiner_ and
elsewhere. And then when _Endymion_ appeared it was abundantly reviewed.
_The Edinburgh_ reviewers had nothing on it (the book cannot have been
sent to them, for in 1820 they say they have only just met with it),
and I could not find anything in the way of _original_ criticism in
_The Examiner_; but many provincial papers (in Manchester, Exeter, and
elsewhere) and some metropolitan papers retorted on _The Quarterly_. All
this, however, does not disturb the impression which (Lord Houghton and
Mr. W. M. Rossetti notwithstanding) I have been from the first compelled
to entertain, namely, that "labour spurned" did more than all else to
kill Keats _in 1821_.

Most men who rightly know the workings of their own minds will agree
that an adverse criticism rankles longer than a flattering notice
soothes; and though it be shown that Keats in 1820 was comparatively
indifferent to the praise of _The Edinburgh_, it cannot follow that in
1818 he must have been superior to the blame of _The Quarterly_. It is
difficult to see why a man may not be keenly sensitive to what the world
says about him, and yet retain all proper manliness as a part of his
literary character. Surely it was from the mistaken impression that
this could not be, and that an admission of extreme sensitiveness to
criticism exposed Keats to a charge of effeminacy that Lord Houghton
attempted to prove, against the evidence of all immediate friends,
against the publisher's note to _Hyperion_, against the | poet's
self-chosen epitaph, and against all but one or two of the most
self-contained of his letters, that the soul of Keats was so far from
being "snuffed out by an article," that it was more than ordinarily
impervious to hostile comment, even when it came in the shape of
rancorous abuse. In all discussion of the effects produced upon Keats
by the reviews in _Blackwood and The Quarterly_, let it be remembered,
first, that having wellnigh exhausted his small patrimony, Keats was
to be dependent upon literature for his future subsistence; next, that
Leigh Hunt attempted no defence of Keats when the bread was being taken
out of his mouth, and that Keats felt this neglect and remarked upon
it in a letter in which he further cast some doubt upon the purity of
Hunt's friendship. Hunt, after Keats's death, said in reference to this:
"Had