The _Quarterly_ article on _Endymion_ followed in the last week of September (in the number dated April), and was in an equally contemptuous strain; the writer professing to have been unable to read beyond the first canto, or to make head or tail of that. In this case again the question of authorship must remain uncertain: but Gifford, as editor, and an editor who never shrank from cutting a contributor's work to his own pattern, must bear the responsibility with posterity. The review is quite in his manner, that of a man insensible to the higher charm of poetry, incapable of judging it except by mechanical rule and precedent, and careless of the pain he gives. Considering the perfect modesty and good judgment with which Keats had in his preface pointed out the weaknesses of his own work, the attacks are both alike inexcusable. They had the effect of promptly rousing the poet's friends in his defence. Reynolds published a warm rejoinder to the Quarterly reviewer in a west-country paper, the _Alfred_; an indignant letter on the same side appeared in the _Morning Chronicle_ with the initials J. S.--those probably of John Scott, then editor of the _London Magazine_, and soon afterwards killed by a friend of Lockhart's in a duel, arising out of these very Blackwood brawls, in which it was thought that Lockhart himself ought to have come forward. Leigh Hunt reprinted Reynolds's letter, with some introductory words, in the _Examiner_, and later in his life regretted that he had not done more. But he could not have done more to any purpose. He was not himself an enthusiastic admirer of _Endymion_, and had plainly said so to Keats and to his friends. Reynolds's piece, which he reprinted, was quite effective and to the point; and moreover any formal defence of Keats by Hunt would only have increased the virulence of his enemies, as they both perfectly well knew; folly and spite being always ready to cry out that praise of a friend by a friend must needs be interested or blind.