Few literary questions of the last three-quarters of a century have been regarded from more absolutely different points of view than the problem--How did Keats receive the attacks made upon his poem and himself? From an early date in the controversy three points seem to have been very generally agreed upon: (1) That "Endymion" is (as Shelley judiciously phrased it), "a poem considerably defective;" (2) that the attacks upon it were, in essence, partly true, but so biassed--so keen of scent after defects, and so dull of vision for beauties--as to be practically unfair and perverse in a marked degree; and (3) that the unfairness and perversity _quoad_ Keats were wilful devices of literary and especially of political spite _quoad_ a knot of writers among whom Leigh Hunt was the central figure. The question remains--In what spirit did Keats meet his critics? Was he greatly distressed, or defiant and retaliatory, or substantially indifferent? Among the documents of Keats's life I find few records strictly contemporary with the events themselves, serving to settle this point. When the abuse of Z against Hunt began, Keats was indignant and combative. He said in a letter which may belong to October 1817-- "There has been a flaming attack upon Hunt in the Edinburgh magazine.... There has been but one number published--that on Hunt, to which they have prefixed a motto by one Cornelius Webb, 'Poetaster,' who unfortunately was one of our party occasionally at Hampstead, and took it into his head to write the following (something about)-- 'We'll talk on Wordsworth, Byron, A theme we never tire on,' and so forth till he came to Hunt and Keats. In the motto they have put 'Hunt and Keats' in large letters. I have no doubt that the second number was intended for me, but have hopes of its non-appearance.... I don't mind the thing much; but, if he should go to such lengths with me as he has done with Hunt, I must infallibly call him to an account, if he be a human being, and appears in squares and theatres where we might 'possibly meet.' I don't relish his abuse." 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:--