XXX MEMOIR OP JOHN KEATS.
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hey inflicted on his susceptible nature a shock whichhe never recovered. This notion was confirmed inpublic estimation by the well-known stanza of theeleventh canto of Don Juan ; concluding— " 'Tis strtmgo the mind, that yery fiery particle,Should let itself be suufifed out by an article." It is perhaps bold to say in opposition to thetestimony of many near and dear friends of Keats,that these effects had no existence, but it is certainthey have been greatly exaggerated. The sublimecurse hurled at the brutal critic in the '* Adouais " ofShelley has its due place in that lofty elegy, but withsuch means as we have to judge from, with the lettersand acts of Keats immediately after the reviewsappeared, before us, his feelings seem to have hadmuch more of indignation and contempt in themthan of wounded pride and mortified vanity. Ishould incline to believe that the little public interestwhich ** Endymion ** excited, and tlie growing senseof his own deficiencies, weighed far more on hismind than those shallow ribaldries, which Jeffrey'sarticle in the Edinburgh Review, if it had appearedsomewhat sooner, would have so completely counter-balanced. When told " to go back to his gallipots,'*just as Simon Peter might have been told to go backto his nets, and when reminded that ''a starvedapothecary was better than a starved poet," his incli-nation certainly was rather to call the satirist toaccount, " if he appears in squares and theatres wherewe might possibly meet," than to let tlie scoffingvisibly affect his health and spirits. Indeed in a
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