ite any
attention, nor do I feel assured that a critical notice of his writings
would find a single reader. But for these considerations, it had been my
intention to have collected the remnants of his compositions, and to
have published them with a Life and criticism. Has he left any poems or
writings of whatsoever kind, and in whose possession are they? Perhaps
you would oblige me by information on this point.

'Many thanks for the picture you promise me [presumably a portrait of
Keats, but Shelley does not seem ever to have received one from Severn]:
I shall consider it among the most sacred relics of the past. For my
part, I little expected, when I last saw Keats at my friend Leigh
Hunt's, that I should survive him.

'Should you ever pass through Pisa, I hope to have the pleasure of
seeing you, and of cultivating an acquaintance into something pleasant,
begun under such melancholy auspices.

'Accept, my dear Sir, the assurance of my highest esteem, and believe me

'Your most sincere and faithful servant,

'PERCY B. SHELLEY.

'Do you know Leigh Hunt? I expect him and his family here every day.'

It may have been observed that Shelley, whenever he speaks of critical
depreciation of Keats, refers only to one periodical, the _Quarterly
Review_: probably he did not distinctly know of any other: but the fact
is that _Blackwood's Magazine_ was worse than the _Quarterly_. The
latter was sneering and supercilious: _Blackwood_ was vulgarly taunting
and insulting, and seems to have provoked Keats the more of the two,
though perhaps he considered the attack in the _Quarterly_ to be more
detrimental to his literary standing. The _Quarterly_ notice is of so
much import in the life and death of Keats, and in the genesis of
_Adonais_, that I shall give it, practically _in extenso_, before
closing this section of my work: with _Blackwood_ I can deal at once. A
series of articles _On the Cockney School of Poetry_ began in this
magazine in October, 1817, being directed mainly and very venomously
against Leigh Hunt. No. 4 of the series appeared in August, 1818,
falling foul of Keats. It is difficult to say whether the priority in
abusing Keats should of right be assigned to _Blackwood_ or to the
_Quarterly_: the critique in the latter review belongs to the number for
April, 1818, but this number was not actually issued until September.
The writer of the _Blackwood_ papers signed himself Z. Z. is affirmed to
have been Lockhart,