s name. One more gentle, honourable, innocent, and brave;
one of more exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet
himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how
to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can
receive; one of simpler and (in the highest sense of the word) of purer
life and manners, I never knew: and I had already been fortunate in
friendships when your name was added to the list.'

1. 7. _Taught, soothed, loved, honoured, the departed one._ It has
sometimes been maintained that Hunt, whatever may have been the personal
friendship which he felt for Keats, did not, during the latter's
lifetime, champion his literary cause with so much zeal as might have
been expected from his professions. This is a point open to a good deal
of discussion from both sides. Mr. Buxton Forman, who, as Editor of
Keats, had occasion to investigate the matter attentively, pronounces
decidedly in favour of Hunt.

+Stanza 36,+ 1. 1. _Our Adonais has drunk poison._ Founded on those
lines of Moschus which appear as a motto to Shelley's Elegy. See also p.
49.

1. 2. _What deaf and viperous murderer._ Deaf, because insensible to the
beauty of Keats's verse; and viperous, because poisonous and malignant.
The juxtaposition of the two epithets may probably be also partly
dependent on that passage in the Psalms (lviii. 4, 5) which has become
proverbial: 'They are as venomous as the poison of a serpent: even like
the deaf adder that stoppeth her ears; which refuseth to hear the voice
of the charmer, charm he never so wisely.'

1. 4. _The nameless worm._ A worm, as being one of the lowest forms of
life, is constantly used as a term implying contempt; but it may be
assumed that Shelley here uses 'worm' in its original sense, that of any
crawling creature, more especially of the snake kind. There would thus
be no departure from the previous epithet 'viperous.' See the remarks as
to 'reptiles,' St. 29.

11. 5, 6. _The magic tone Whose prelude,_ &c. Shelley, it will be
perceived, here figures Keats as a minstrel striking the lyre, and
preparing to sing. He strikes the lyre in a 'magic tone'; the very
'prelude' of this was enough to command silent expectation. This prelude
is the poem of _Endymion_, to which the _Quarterly_ reviewer alone
(according to Shelley) was insensitive, owing to feelings of 'envy,
hate, and wrong.' The prelude was only an induction to the
'song,'--which wa