It is worth observing also that, in a paper “On Kean as Richard Duke of York” which Keats published on December 28, 1817, he wrote: “The English people do not care one fig about Shakespeare, only as he flatters their pride and their prejudices;... it is our firm opinion.” If he thought that English indifference to Shakespeare was of this degree of density, he must surely have been prepared for a considerable amount of apathy in relation to any poem by John Keats.
On October 9, 1818, just after the spiteful notices of himself in Blackwood and The Quarterly had appeared, and had been replied to in The Morning Chronicle by two correspondents signing J. S. and R. B., Keats wrote as follows to his publisher Mr. Hessey; and to treat the affair in a more self-possessed, measured, and dignified spirit, would not have been possible:—
“You are very good in sending me the letters from The Chronicle, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a kindness sooner; pray forgive me. It has so chanced that I have had that paper every day. I have seen to-day’s. I cannot but feel indebted to those gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or The Quarterly could possibly inflict; and also, when I feel I am right, no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J. S. is perfectly right in regard to the ‘slipshod “Endymion.”’[15] That it is so is no fault of mine. No; though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as I had power to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written, for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently, without judgment: I may write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. The genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In ‘Endymion’ I leaped headlong into the sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest. But I am nigh getting into a rant; so, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse, &c., I am yours very sincerely,
“John Keats.”
This letter, equally moderate and wide-reaching, proves conclusively that Keats, at the time when he wrote it, treated depreciatory criticism in exactly the right spirit; acknowledging that it was not without a certain raison d’être, but affirming that he could for himself see much further and much deeper in the same direction, and in others as well. On October 29, 1818, he wrote to his brother George:—
“Reynolds... persuades me to publish my ‘Pot of Basil’ as an answer to the attack made on me in Blackwood’s Magazine and The Quarterly Review.... I think I shall be among the English poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest, the attempt to crush me in The Quarterly has only brought me more into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, ‘I wonder The Quarterly should cut its own throat.’ It does me not the least harm in society to make me appear little and ridiculous. I know when a man is superior to me, and give him all due respect; he will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the rest, I feel that I make an impression upon them which ensures me personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when my back is turned.... The only thing that can ever affect me personally for more than one short passing day is any doubt about my powers for poetry. I seldom have any; and I look with hope to the nighing time when I shall have none.”
Towards December 1818 he wrote in a similarly contented strain to George Keats and his wife: “You will be glad to hear that Gifford’s attack upon me has done me service; it has got my book among several sets.” The same letter mentions a sonnet, and a bank-note for £25 received from an unknown admirer. However, the next letter to the same correspondents, February 19, 1819, clearly attests some annoyance.
“My poem has not at all succeeded.... The reviewers have enervated men’s minds, and made them indolent; few think for themselves. These reviews are getting more and more powerful, especially The Quarterly. They are like a superstition which, the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing weakness. I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do now) all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not care who wins or who loses.... I have been at different times turning it in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a physician.... It is not worse than writing poems, and hanging them up to be fly-blown in the Review shambles.”
We find in Keats’s letters nothing further about the criticisms; but, when he replied in August 1820 to Shelley’s first invitation to Italy, he referred to “Endymion” itself: “I am glad you take any pleasure in my poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation.” We must also take into account the publishers’ advertisement (not Keats’s own) to the “Lamia” volume, saying of “Hyperion”—“The poem was intended to have been of equal length with ‘Endymion,’ but the reception given to that work discouraged the author from proceeding.” It can scarcely be supposed that the publishers printed this without Keats’s express sanction; yet he never assigned elsewhere any similar reason for discontinuing “Hyperion,” nor was “Hyperion” open to exception on any such grounds as had been urged against “Endymion.”
The earliest written reference which I can trace to any serious despondency of Keats consequent upon the attacks of reviewers (if we except a less strongly worded statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted further on) is in a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually send, to the editor of the Quarterly Review. It was written after Shelley had seen the “Lamia” volume, and can hardly, I suppose, date earlier than October 1820, two full years after the publication of the Quarterly (and also the Blackwood) tirades against “Endymion.” Shelley adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the Quarterly critique, and then proceeds—