Henry Fothergill Chorley (1808-1872) was one of the principal members of the staff of the Athenaeum, especially in literary and musical matters. Dr. Garnett (in the Dictionary of National Biography) says of him, shortly after his first joining the staff in 1833, that 'his articles largely contributed to maintain the reputation the Athenaeum had already acquired for impartiality at a time when puffery was more rampant than ever before or since, and when the only other London literary journal of any pretension was notoriously venal.' He also wrote several novels and dramas, which met with but little popular success.
Compare Aurora Leigh's asseveration:
'By Keats' soul, the man who never stepped
In gradual progress like another man,
But, turning grandly on his central self,
Ensphered himself in twenty perfect years
And died, not young.'
('Aurora Leigh,' book i.; Poetical Works, vi. 38.)
Poetical Works, iii. 172.