the son-in-law of Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards
editor of the _Quarterly Review_: more especially the article upon Keats
is attributed to Lockhart. A different account, as to the series in
general, is that the author was John Wilson (Christopher North), revised
by Mr. William Blackwood. But Z. resisted more than one vigorous
challenge to unmask, and some doubt as to his identity may still remain.
Here are some specimens of the amenity with which Keats was treated in
_Blackwood's Magazine_:--

'His friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and
he was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in
town.... The frenzy of the _Poems_ [Keats's first volume, 1817] was bad
enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the
calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of _Endymion_.... We
hope however that, in so young a person and with a constitution
originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly incurable....
Mr. Hunt is a small poet, but a clever man; Mr. Keats is a still smaller
poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities which he has done
everything in his power to spoil.... It is a better and wiser thing to
be a starved apothecary than a starved poet: so back to the shop, Mr.
John, back to "plaster, pills, and ointment-boxes," &c. But for Heaven's
sake, young Sangrado, be a little more sparing of extenuatives and
soporifics in your practice than you have been in your poetry.'

Even the death of Keats, in 1821, did not abate the rancour of
_Blackwood's Magazine_. Witness the following extracts. (1823) 'Keats
had been dished--utterly demolished and dished--by _Blackwood_ long
before Mr. Gifford's scribes mentioned his name.... But let us hear no
more of Johnny Keats. It is really too disgusting to have him and his
poems recalled in this manner after all the world thought they had got
rid of the concern.' (1824) 'Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume
of Mr. Keats's poetry "grasped with one hand in his bosom"--rather an
awkward posture, as you will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash
man Shelley was to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on
board!... Down went the boat with a "swirl"! I lay a wager that it
righted soon after ejecting Jack.'... (1826) 'Keats was a Cockney, and
Cockneys claimed him for their own. Never was there a young man so
encrusted with conceit.'

If this is the tone adopted by _Blackwood's Magazine_ in relation to