One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, _Adonais_ (1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous article in the _Literary Gazette_ of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which _Blackwood's Magazine_ permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's youthful poetical indiscretion, _Queen Mab_, which he himself called "villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his control, and forthwith the readers of the _Literary Gazette_ were regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of _Adonais_ write:--"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the Cockney] school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another." 115. _Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling_. Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's Dream_, V, 1, 12. 115. _Above this visible diurnal sphere_. Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Book VII, 22. 116. _Parcâ quod satis est manu_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 16, 24. 116. _Lord Fanny_. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate noble of the time of George II. 117. _O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_. Horace, _Satires_, II, 6, 60. 117. _Mordecai_. See Book of _Esther_, V, 13. 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_.