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
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