'Many thanks for the picture you promise me [presumably a portrait of Keats, but Shelley does not seem ever to have received one from Severn]: I shall consider it among the most sacred relics of the past. For my part, I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my friend Leigh Hunt's, that I should survive him. 'Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into something pleasant, begun under such melancholy auspices. 'Accept, my dear Sir, the assurance of my highest esteem, and believe me 'Your most sincere and faithful servant, 'PERCY B. SHELLEY. 'Do you know Leigh Hunt? I expect him and his family here every day.' It may have been observed that Shelley, whenever he speaks of critical depreciation of Keats, refers only to one periodical, the _Quarterly Review_: probably he did not distinctly know of any other: but the fact is that _Blackwood's Magazine_ was worse than the _Quarterly_. The latter was sneering and supercilious: _Blackwood_ was vulgarly taunting and insulting, and seems to have provoked Keats the more of the two, though perhaps he considered the attack in the _Quarterly_ to be more detrimental to his literary standing. The _Quarterly_ notice is of so much import in the life and death of Keats, and in the genesis of _Adonais_, that I shall give it, practically _in extenso_, before closing this section of my work: with _Blackwood_ I can deal at once. A series of articles _On the Cockney School of Poetry_ began in this magazine in October, 1817, being directed mainly and very venomously against Leigh Hunt. No. 4 of the series appeared in August, 1818, falling foul of Keats. It is difficult to say whether the priority in abusing Keats should of right be assigned to _Blackwood_ or to the _Quarterly_: the critique in the latter review belongs to the number for April, 1818, but this number was not actually issued until September. The writer of the _Blackwood_ papers signed himself Z. Z. is affirmed to have been Lockhart, the son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards editor of the _Quarterly Review_: more especially the article upon Keats is attributed to Lockhart. A different account, as to the series in general, is that the author was John Wilson (Christopher North), revised by Mr. William Blackwood. But Z. resisted more than one vigorous challenge to unmask, and some doubt as to his identity may still remain. Here are some specimens of the amenity with which Keats was treated in _Blackwood's Magazine_:--