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Haney, John Louis

"Early Reviews of English Poets"

(See the article on
Croker in _Dict. Nat. Biog._ From the article on John Murray (_ibid._)
we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in
the _Quarterly_.)
Meanwhile, _Blackwood's Magazine_, III (519-524) had made _Endymion_ the
text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry.
The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's
identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter
Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that
the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the
entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but
holds Lockhart responsible for the _Endymion_ article. Mr. Andrew Lang,
in his _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, dismissed the matter by saying
that he did not know who wrote the article.
The _Quarterly_ critique was reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_,
in Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats'
_Poetical Works_ (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of
view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production.


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