[118]. Last of the Romans. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's Julius Cæsar, III, 2, 194.
[120]. Full fathom five. Shakespeare's The Tempest, I, 2, 396.
[126]. Ohé! jam satis est. Horace, Satires, I, 5, 12-13.
[126]. Tristram Shandy. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.
[133]. Put a girdle, etc. See Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, II, 1, 175.
John Keats
The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the Quarterly Review an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats, Endymion, and Quarterly are practically connotative terms; and this is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of Shelley—misguided because his information was incomplete and the more guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the Quarterly the brunt of the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to Blackwood's Magazine.
Endymion was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the Quarterly Review, to treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April number of the Quarterly, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has crept into W.M. Rossetti's Life of Keats, into Anderson's bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the Dictionary of National Biography, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on Croker in Dict. Nat. Biog. From the article on John Murray (ibid.) we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in the Quarterly.)
Meanwhile, Blackwood's Magazine, III (519-524) had made Endymion the text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry. The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but holds Lockhart responsible for the Endymion article. Mr. Andrew Lang, in his Life and Letters of Lockhart, dismissed the matter by saying that he did not know who wrote the article.