Of the praises of that little dirty blackguard Keates in the Edinburgh, I shall observe, as Johnson did when Sheridan the actor got a pension: "What! has he got a pension? Then it is time that I should give up mine." Nobody could be prouder of the praises of the Edinburgh than I was, or more alive to their censure, as I showed in English] B[ards] and S[cotch] Reviewers]. At present all the men they have ever praised are degraded by that insane article. Why don't they review and praise "Solomon's Guide to Health"? it is better sense and as much poetry as Johnny Keates. (1820, November 18. Letter 846, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 120.) I am very sorry for it [i.e. Keats's death], though I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and was spoilt by Cockneyfying, and Suburbing, and versifying Tooke's Pantheon and Lempriere's Dictionary. (1821, April 26. Letter 884, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 269.) Are you aware that Shelley has written an elegy on Keats, and accuses the Quarterly of killing him? "Who killed John Keats?" "Who shot the arrow?" KEATS AND THE SUBURBAN SCHOOL 203 You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's poetry, or principles of poetry, or of his abuse of Pope; but as he is dead, omit all that is said about him in any MSS. of mine, or publication. His Hyperion is a fine monument, and will keep his name. I do not envy the man who wrote the article: your review people have no more right to kill than any other foot pads. However, he who would die of an article in a review would probably have died of something else equally trivial. [The Quarterly article reviewing "Endymion "which appeared in the number dated April 1818 and published September 1818-was written by John Wilson Croker and probably "touched-up" by William Gifford, the editor. (1821, July 30. Letter 914, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 331.) I return the proofs of the 2nd pamphlet [on Bowles]. I leave it to your choice and M' Gifford's, to publish it or not, with such omissions as he likes. You must, however, omit the whole of the observations against the Suburban School: they are meant against Keats, and I cannot war with the dead-particularly those already killed by Criticism. Recollect to omit all that portion in any case. (1821, August 4. Letter 916, to John Murray, Vol. V., p. 337.) With the rest of his [i.e. Leigh Hunt's] young people I have no acquaintance, except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's "Ode to Shakspeare," they "defy criticism." These are of the personages who decry Pope. One of them, a M' John Ketch, has written some lines against him, of which it were better to be the subject than the author. Mr Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would not "march through Coventry with them, that's flat"! were I in Mr Hunt's place. To be sure, he has "led his ragamuffins where they will be well peppered "; but a system-maker must receive all sorts of proselytes.. .. It may appear harsh to accumulate passages of this kind from the work of a young man in the outset of his career. But, if he will set out with assailing the Poet whom of all others a young aspirant ought to respect and honour and study-if he will hold forth in such lines his notions on poetry, and endeavour to recommend them by terming such men as Pope, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Congreve, Young, Gay, Goldsmith, Johnson, etc., etc., "a School of dolts," he must abide by the consequences of his unfortunate distortion of intellect. But like Milbourne he is "the fairest of Critics," by enabling us to compare his own compositions with those of Pope at the same age, and on a similar subject, viz. Poetry. As Mr K. does not want imagination nor industry, let those who have led him astray look to what they have done. Surely they must feel no little remorse in having so perverted the taste and feelings of this HYPERION AS SUBLIME AS ESCHYLUS 205 young man, and will be satisfied with one such victim to their Moloch of Absurdity. (1821. Two addenda sent by Byron for insertion in the Second Letter to Murray on the Bowles-Pope controversy [which was originally written 1821, March 25], Vol. V., pp. 588, 589, note 3.) Mr Keats died at Rome about a year after this was written. I have read the [Quarterly] article before and since; and although it is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he must inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of public notice. My indignation at M Keats's depreciation of Pope has hardly permitted me to do justice to his own genius, which, malgré all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was undoubtedly of great promise. His fragment of Hyperion seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as Eschylus. He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, as he himself before his death, is said to have been persuaded that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his style upon the more classical models of the language. (1821, November 12. MS. note to the reply to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. IV., p. 491, note 2.) Leigh Hunt It is my wish that our acquaintance, or, if you please to accept it, friendship, may be permanent. I have been lucky enough to preserve some friends from a very early period, and I hope, as I do not (at least now) select them lightly, I shall not lose them capriciously. I have a thorough esteem for that independence of spirit which you have maintained with sterling talent, and at the expense of some suffering. (1813, December 2. Letter 367, to Leigh Hunt, Vol. II., p. 296.) To-day sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to my acquaintance-through Moore-of last summer) a copy of the two Turkish tales. Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times--much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes on qualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again;-the rapid succession of adventure, since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don't think him deeply versed in life ;--he is the bigot of virtue (not religion and enamoured of the beauty of that "empty name, as the last breath of Brutus pronounced, and every day proves it. He is, perhaps, a little opinionated, as all men who are the centre of circles, wide or narrow-the Sir Oracles, in whose name two or three |