Look at book 2, line 833, &c., and book
3, lines 113 to 120; read down that page, and then again from line
193[8]. I could cite many other passages to convince you that it
deserved milder usage. Why it should have been reviewed at all,
excepting for the purpose of bringing its excellences into notice, I
cannot conceive; for it was very little read, and there was no danger
that it should become a model to the age of that false taste with which
I confess that it is replenished.
'Poor Keats was thrown into a dreadful state of mind by this review,
which, I am persuaded, was not written with any intention of producing
the effect--to which it has at least greatly contributed--of embittering
his existence, and inducing a disease from which there are now but faint
hopes of his recovery. The first effects are described to me to have
resembled insanity, and it was by assiduous watching that he was
restrained from effecting purposes of suicide. The agony of his
sufferings at length produced the rupture of a blood-vessel in the
lungs, and the usual process of consumption appears to have begun. He is
coming to pay me a visit in Italy; but I fear that, unless his mind can
be kept tranquil, little is to be hoped from the mere influence of
climate.
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