ave dirked him _a l'Americaine_ for his
cruelly associating John in the Cockney School, and other
blackguardisms. Such paltry ridicule will have wounded deeper than the
severest criticisms, particularly as he regarded what is called the
cockneyism of the coterie with so much disgust. He either knew John
well, and touched him in the tenderest place purposely; or knew nothing
of him, and supposed he went all lengths with the set in their festering
opinions and cockney affectations." And from a later letter dated in
April 1825: "After all, _Blackwood_ and _The Quarterly_, associated with
our family disease, consumption, were ministers of death sufficiently
venomous, cruel, and deadly, to have consigned one of less sensibility
to a premature grave.... John was the very soul of courage and
manliness, and as much like the Holy Ghost as 'Johnny Keats.'"

The evidence of latest date on this subject (there is none such in
Severn's correspondence[17]) is that of Cowden Clarke. In his
"Recollections," already mentioned, he refers to the attacks upon Keats,
having his eye, it would seem, rather upon those in _Blackwood_ than in
_The Quarterly_, and he remarks: "To say that these disgusting
misrepresentations did not affect the consciousness and self-respect of
Keats would be to under-rate the sensitiveness of his nature. He did
feel and resent the insult, but far more the _injustice_ of the
treatment he had received. They no doubt 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."

I have now given all the evidence at first or second hand which seems to
be producible on that much-vexed question--Was Keats (to adopt Byron's
phrase) "snuffed out by an article"? The upshot appears to me to be as
follows. In his inmost mind Keats was from first to last raised very far
above that level where the petty gales of review-criticism blow, puffing
out the canvas of feeble reputations, and fraying that of strong ones.
Nevertheless he was sensitive to derisive criticism, and more especially
to personal ridicule, and even (as Haydon records) gave way to his
feelings of irritation with reckless and culpable self-abandonment. This
passed off partially, and would have passed off entirely--it has left in
his letters no trace worth mentioning, and in his poetry no trace at
all, other than that