Westminster cockpit; they like the battle, and do not care who
wins or who loses.... I have been at different times turning it
in my head whether I should go to Edinburgh and study for a
physician.... It is not worse than writing poems, and hanging
them up to be fly-blown in the Review shambles."

We find in Keats's letters nothing further about the criticisms; but,
when he replied in August 1820 to Shelley's first invitation to Italy,
he referred to "Endymion" itself: "I am glad you take any pleasure in my
poor poem, which I would willingly take the trouble to unwrite if
possible, did I care so much as I have done about reputation." We must
also take into account the publishers' advertisement (not Keats's own)
to the "Lamia" volume, saying of "Hyperion"--"The poem was intended to
have been of equal length with 'Endymion,' but the reception given to
that work discouraged the author from proceeding." It can scarcely be
supposed that the publishers printed this without Keats's express
sanction; yet he never assigned elsewhere any similar reason for
discontinuing "Hyperion," nor was "Hyperion" open to exception on any
such grounds as had been urged against "Endymion."

The earliest written reference which I can trace to any serious
despondency of Keats consequent upon the attacks of reviewers (if we
except a less strongly worded statement by Leigh Hunt, to be quoted
further on) is in a letter which Shelley wrote, but did not eventually
send, to the editor of the _Quarterly Review_. It was written after
Shelley had seen the "Lamia" volume, and can hardly, I suppose, date
earlier than October 1820, two full years after the publication of the
_Quarterly_ (and also the _Blackwood_) tirades against "Endymion."
Shelley adverts, with great reserve of tone, to the _Quarterly_
critique, and then proceeds--

"Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this
review, which I am persuaded was not written with any intention
of producing the effect (to which it has at least greatly
contributed) of embittering his existence, and inducing a disease
from which there are now but faint hopes of his recovery. The
first effects are described to me to have resembled insanity, and
it was by assiduous watching that he was restrained from
effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his sufferings at
length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the lungs, and
the usual process of consumpt