The imputed influence of a
savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the
_Quarterly Review_ an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the
efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats,
_Endymion_, and _Quarterly_ are practically connotative terms; and this
is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of
Shelley--misguided because his information was incomplete and the more
guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the _Quarterly_ the brunt of
the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to
_Blackwood's Magazine_.
_Endymion_ was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor
and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to
treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated
Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April
number of the _Quarterly_, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until
September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has
crept into W.M. Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, into Anderson's
bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it
is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker.
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