Keats living and dead, one need not be surprised to find that the
verdict of the same review upon the poem of _Adonais_, then newly
published, ran to the following effect:--

'Locke says the most resolute liar cannot lie more than once in every
three sentences. Folly is more engrossing; for we could prove from the
present Elegy that it is possible to write two sentences of pure
nonsense out of three. A more faithful calculation would bring us to
ninety-nine out of every hundred; or--as the present consists of only
fifty-five stanzas--leaving about five readable lines in the entire....
A Mr. Keats, who had left a decent calling for the melancholy trade of
Cockney poetry, has lately died of a consumption, after having written
two or three little books of verses much neglected by the public.... The
New School, however, will have it that he was slaughtered by a criticism
of the _Quarterly Review_: "O flesh, how art thou fishified!" There is
even an aggravation in this cruelty of the Review--for it had taken
three or four years to slay its victim, the deadly blow having been
inflicted at least as long since. [This is not correct: the _Quarterly_
critique, having appeared in September, 1818, preceded the death of
Keats by two years and five months].... The fact is, the _Quarterly_,
finding before it a work at once silly and presumptuous, full of the
servile _slang_ that Cockaigne dictates to its servitors, and the vulgar
indecorums which that Grub Street Empire rejoiceth to applaud, told the
truth of the volume, and recommended a change of manners[14] and of
masters to the scribbler. Keats wrote on; but he wrote _indecently_,
probably in the indulgence of his social propensities.'

The virulence with which Shelley, as author of _Adonais_, was assailed
by _Blackwood's Magazine_, is the more remarkable, and the more
symptomatic of partizanship against Keats and any of his upholders, as
this review had in previous instances been exceptionally civil to
Shelley, though of course with some serious offsets. The notices of
_Alastor, Rosalind and Helen_, and _Prometheus Unbound_--more especially
the first--in the years 1819 and 1820, would be found to bear out this
statement.

From the dates already cited, it may be assumed that the Pisan edition
of _Adonais_ was in London in the hands of Mr. Ollier towards the middle
of August, 1821, purchasable by whoever might be minded to buy it. Very
soon afterwards it was reprinted in the _L