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ct. I remember you advising me not to publish my first blights, on Hampstead Heath[5]. I am returning advice upon your hands. Most of the poems in the volume I send you [this was the volume containing _Lamia, Hyperion_, &c.] have been written above two years[6], and would never have been published but for hope of gain: so you see I am inclined enough to take your advice now. 'I must express once more my deep sense of your kindness, adding my sincere thanks and respects for Mrs. Shelley. In the hope of soon seeing you I remain 'Most sincerely yours, 'JOHN KEATS.' It may have been in the interval between writing his note Of invitation to Keats, and receiving the reply of the latter, that Shelley penned the following letter to the Editor of the _Quarterly Review_--the periodical which had taken (or had shared with _Blackwood's Magazine_) the lead in depreciating _Endymion_. The letter, however, was left uncompleted, and was not dispatched. (I omit such passages as are not directly concerned with Keats):-- 'SIR, '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 am not in the habit of permitting myself to be disturbed by what is said or written of me.... 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[7]; 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 2, line 833, &c., and book 3, lines 113 to 120; re
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