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undertook to criticise. This impertinence should have prevented the article from having any weight. The Blackwood sought to be facetious, and tells Keats, "It is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary, (alluding to the time he spent with a surgeon,) than a starved poet," and he bids him "back to his gallipot." How bright and beautiful by contrast shine forth the remarks of Jeffreys, who, after pointing out the great excellences of Endymion, finishes by saying we do not know any book which we would sooner employ as a test to ascertain whether any one had in him a native relish for poetry and a genuine sensibility to its intrinsic charm. Byron regarded this praise with jealous. discontent at first, but afterwards says, "This (Keats') fragment of Hyperion seems

actually inspired by the Titians, and is sublime as Eschylus." Shelley, who loved Keats as a brother, was indignant with the Quarterly, and says the Endymion should not have been noticed at all, except for the purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, and continues: "I speak impartially, for the canons of taste to which Keats has conformed in his other compositions, are the very reverse of my own." He describes the agony of the poet upon reading the article in question, and adds: "It has induced a disease from the recovery of which there is but little hope." Many of the friends of Keats denied such effects upon his mind and system, and in justification quote letters from him written at this time.

He says in one of these: "I have read the papers, and feel indebted to those gen

tlemen who have taken my part. I will write independently. I have done so per haps without judgment. Hereafter I will write independently, with judgment. I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not to be among the greatest." This certainly does not sound like one who takes the subject much to heart; but his brother tells us: "After all, Blackwood and the Quarterly, associated with our family disease, consumption, were ministers of death sufficiently venomous, cruel and deadly to have consigned one of less sensibility to a premature grave."

In the hope of prolonging a life which was consuming itself by its own ardent longings, Keats embarked for Italy. A dear and tender friend accompanied him. Soothed and cheered by his gentle ministrations, his

life ebbed slowly away. When vitality seemed exhausted, his spirit appeared to rally again and again the dying energy of his nature, and re-animate itself in death. Gentleness and submission, patience and resignation, were his crowning virtues, and as the death damps were gathering on his brow he whispered to his friend his epitaph: "My name was writ in water." A plain white stone marks the last resting place of this young and gifted son of poetry. Thither has many a pilgrimage been taken. The last recognition has been freely given when he could no longer be soothed by caresses or stimulated by approval, and now-

"He has outsoared the shadow of our night,
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain,

And that unrest which men miscall delight,

Can touch him not and torture not again.
From the contagion of the world's slow stain
He is secure, and now can never mourn

A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain.
Nor when the spirit's self has ceased to burn,
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn."

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