nd the more
guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the _Quarterly_ the brunt of
the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to
_Blackwood's Magazine_.

_Endymion_ was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor
and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to
treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated
Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April
number of the _Quarterly_, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until
September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has
crept into W.M. Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, into Anderson's
bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it
is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on
Croker in _Dict. Nat. Biog._ From the article on John Murray (_ibid._)
we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in
the _Quarterly_.)

Meanwhile, _Blackwood's Magazine_, III (519-524) had made _Endymion_ the
text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry.
The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's
identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter
Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that
the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the
entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but
holds Lockhart responsible for the _Endymion_ article. Mr. Andrew Lang,
in his _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, dismissed the matter by saying
that he did not know who wrote the article.

The _Quarterly_ critique was reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_,
in Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats'
_Poetical Works_ (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of
view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production."
The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the
mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews
among the present reprints that put the brief _Quarterly_ article to
shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of
the _Blackwood_ article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse
against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent
allusions to the _Blackguard's Magazine_. T