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.
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