The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 07, No. 39, January, 1861: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
It was during his abode in Wentworth Place that the savage and vulgar
attacks upon the "Endymion" appeared in the "Quarterly Review," and
in "Blackwood's Magazine." There was, indeed, ruffian, low-lived
work,--especially in the latter publication, which had reached a pitch
of blackguardism, (it used to be called "Blackguard's Magazine,") with
_personal abuse_,--ABUSE,--the only word,--that would damage the sale
of any review at this day. The very reverse of its present management.
There would not now be the _inclination_ for such rascal bush-fighting;
and even then, or indeed at any period of the Magazine's career, the
stalwart and noble mind of John Wilson would never have made itself
editorially responsible for such trash. As to him of the "Quarterly," a
thimble would have been "a mansion, a court," for his whole soul. The
style of the articles directed against the Radical writers, and those
especially whom the party had nicknamed the "Cockney school" of poetry,
may be conceived by its provoking the following observation from Hazlitt
to me:--"To pay those fellows, Sir, _in their own coin_, the way would
be, to begin with Walter Scott, and _have at his clump-foot_." "Verily,
the former times were not better than these."
To say that these disgusting misrepresentations did not affect the
consciousness and self-respect of Keats would be to underrate the
sensitiveness of his nature. He felt the insult, but more the injustice
of the treatment he had received; he told me so, as we lay awake one
night, when I slept in his brother's bed. They had injured him in the
most wanton manner; but if they, or my Lord Byron, ever for one moment
supposed that he was crushed or even cowed in spirit by the treatment he
had received, never were they more deluded. "Snuffed out by an article,"
indeed! He had infinitely more magnanimity, in its fullest sense,
than that very spoiled, self-willed, and mean-souled man,--and I have
authority for the last term. To say nothing of personal and private
transactions, pages 204-207 in the first volume of Mr. Monckton Milnes's
life of our poet will be full authority for my estimate of his Lordship.
"Johnny Keats" had, indeed, "a little body with a mighty heart," and
he showed it in the best way: not by fighting the ruffians,--though
he could have done that,--but by the resolve that he would produce
brain-work which not one of their party could approach; and he did.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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