granted that
in _Endymion_ he had but moved into the go-cart from the
leading-strings. 'If _Endymion_ serves me for a pioneer, perhaps I
ought to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand
Shakespeare to his depths; and I have, I am sure, many friends who if
I fail will attribute any change in my life to humbleness rather than
pride,--to a cowering under the wings of great poets rather than to
bitterness that I am not appreciated.' And for evidence of any
especial bitterness because of the lashing he received one will search
the letters in vain. Keats was manly and good-humored, most of his
morbidity being referred directly to his ill health. The trouncing he
had at the hands of the reviewers was no more violent than the one
administered to Tennyson by Professor Wilson. Critics, good and bad,
can do much harm. They may terrorize a timid spirit. But a greater
terror than the fear of the reviewers hung over the head of John
Keats. He stood in awe of his own artistic and poetic sense. He could
say with truth that his own domestic criticism had given him pain
without comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or the _Quarterly_ could
possibly inflict. If he had had any terrible heart-burning over their
malignancy, if he had felt that his life was poisoned, he could hardly
have forborne some allusion to it in his letters to his brother,
George Keats. But he is almost imperturbable. He talks of the episode
freely, says that he has been urged to publish his _Pot of Basil_ as a
reply to the reviewers, has no idea that he can be made ridiculous by
abuse, notes the futility of attacks of this kind, and then, with a
serene conviction that is irresistible, adds, 'I think I shall be
among the English Poets after my death!'

Such egoism of genius is magnificent; the more so as it appears in
Keats because it runs parallel with deep humility in the presence of
the masters of his art. Naturally, the masters who were in their
graves were the ones he reverenced the most and read without stint.
But it was by no means essential that a poet be a dead poet before
Keats did him homage. It is impossible to think that Keats's attitude
towards Wordsworth was other than finely appreciative, in spite of the
fact that he applauded Reynolds's _Peter Bell_, and inquired almost
petulantly why one should be teased with Wordsworth's 'Matthew with a
bough of wilding in his hand.' But it is also impossible that his
sense of humor should not have