ts."

This letter, equally moderate and wide-reaching, proves conclusively
that Keats, at the time when he wrote it, treated depreciatory criticism
in exactly the right spirit; acknowledging that it was not without a
certain _raison d'etre_, but affirming that he could for himself see
much further and much deeper in the same direction, and in others as
well. On October 29, 1818, he wrote to his brother George:--

"Reynolds... persuades me to publish my 'Pot of Basil' as an
answer to the attack made on me in _Blackwood's Magazine_ and
_The Quarterly Review_.... I think I shall be among the English
poets after my death. Even as a matter of present interest, the
attempt to crush me in _The Quarterly_ has only brought me more
into notice, and it is a common expression among book-men, 'I
wonder _The Quarterly_ should cut its own throat.' It does me not
the least harm in society to make me appear little and
ridiculous. I know when a man is superior to me, and give him all
due respect; he will be the last to laugh at me; and as for the
rest, I feel that I make an impression upon them which ensures me
personal respect while I am in sight, whatever they may say when
my back is turned.... The only thing that can ever affect me
personally for more than one short passing day is any doubt about
my powers for poetry. I seldom have any; and I look with hope to
the nighing time when I shall have none."

Towards December 1818 he wrote in a similarly contented strain to George
Keats and his wife: "You will be glad to hear that Gifford's attack upon
me has done me service; it has got my book among several _sets_." The
same letter mentions a sonnet, and a bank-note for L25 received from an
unknown admirer. However, the next letter to the same correspondents,
February 19, 1819, clearly attests some annoyance.

"My poem has not at all succeeded.... The reviewers have
enervated men's minds, and made them indolent; few think for
themselves. These reviews are getting more and more powerful,
especially _The Quarterly_. They are like a superstition which,
the more it prostrates the crowd and the longer it continues, the
more it becomes powerful, just in proportion to their increasing
weakness. I was in hopes that, as people saw (as they must do
now) all the trickery and iniquity of these plagues, they would
scout them. But no; they are like the spectators at the