3-047-015 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

John Keats, painted by W. Hilton, R.A. in the National Portrait Gallery, 1872. Engraving of a painting. 'The success of "Endymion," as it would open to him a remunerative literary career, was...a matter of serious importance to this young author...Mr. Gifford, the big Quarterly editor, got hold of poor Keats's little book, and chose the opportunity to wound Leigh Hunt through a savage stab at his friend. The reputation of Keats, at its first rising, was thus cruelly damaged; and insulting personalities, such as no critical journal of the present day would dare to utter, were vented upon a youth of blameless manners and affectionate disposition. It was a silly exaggeration to say, after his death at Rome, in 1821, which was caused by the ordinary disease of pulmonary consumption, that the Quarterly Review had killed him. As Byron remarked, though in a coarse, jeering tone: "'Tis strange the soul, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article". Keats was born with a hectic and unsound bodily constitution, which doomed him, in any case, to a very early death...But his glowing imagination was the rich gift of Nature...and his poems will live while the English language is studied and cultivated'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.