Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 10.djvu/275

 12 S.X.MAK. 25,ii>22.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 221 LONDON, MARCH 25, 1922. CONTENTS. No. 206. NOTES : Keats's Death and The Quarterly Review. 221 Glass-painters of York, 222 Shakespeare Allusions, 224 Knighthood Fees, 225 Charles Kingsley : Vanity Fair Caricature Watts Phillips, Dramatist, Novelist and Artist The Globe Room of Banbury, 226 Inscriptions in Ashwell- thrope Church, 227. QUERIES : Portrait of Lady Harrington, 227 Henry Howarth, Advocate Robert Johnson John and Christo- pher Wright (Gunpowder Plot Conspirators) Mercer Portraits and Seal. 228 John Frederick Smith, Novelist H. Crouch, Artist Scotch Coffee-houses and Inns in the Eighteenth Century ' The Norman People ' Royal Ante- diluvian Order of Buffaloes Bernard de Gordon The Countess Guiccioli's ' Recollections of Lord Byron ' Nicholas Hilliard White Horse Ornament in Fanlights " Berwick," 229 Early Life of George IH. Coget Edward Stephenson 7 Wren Conybeare. Dean of Llandaff George Colman Cossens, Hants Hamlet Marshall Thomas Dickson Menzies of Culter Allers Story by Edgar Allen Poe wanted, 230. REPLIES : Sir Thomas Phillipps, 230 Cap of Maintenance. 231 Lambert Family Eighteenth-century Poets John Charles Williams " Once aboard the lugger "Williams of Islington : Tombstones of St. Mary's. 232 Pseudo-titles for " Dummy Books " ' La Santa Parentela ' " Gregor " of the Mosquito Coast, 233 -Temporary Fords : " Sand " William Meyler Use of " at " or " in " with Place-names, 234 Addison's ' Spectator ' Oxfordshire Masons, 235 Devonshire MSS. Book-plate of D. Andrews de Swayth- ling Unidentified Arms Derivation of Chinkwell Land Measurement Terms, 236 William Spry Oldmixon Cheese Saint and Cheese Sacrifices Verlaine at Stickney. 237 " Mayor " as a Woman's Title Fiddlers' Green East London " Coffee-houses "Moon Folk-lore : Hair-cutting Sir Thomas Dingley Burr-walnut. 238 Highgate Hoi- born. Middle Row Authors wanted, 239. NOTES ON BOOKS : ' Seneca and Elizabethan Tragedy ' ' Isaac Greene : A Lancashire Lawyer of the Eighteenth Century ' ' Early British Trackways.' Notices to Correspondents. Jlote*. KEATS'S DEATH AND 'THE QUARTERLY REVIEW.' IN William Michael Rossetti's brief ' Life of John Keats ' in the " Great Writers " series, it is said (p. 102) : To advert to what Lord Byron wrote about Keats having been killed by The Quarterly Review is hardly worth while. His first reference to the subject is in a letter to Mr. Murray [pub- lish'-r of The Quarterly], dated April 26, 1821. In this he expressly names Shelley as his informant. Owing to the recent publication by the present Mr. John Murray of ' Lord Byron's Correspondence ' it is now possible to see the precise words in which Byron had received the information. Shelley thus ended a letter to Byron from Pisa dated April 16, 1821 : Young Keats, whose ' Hyperion ' showed so great a promise, died lately at Home from the con- sequences of breaking a blood- vessel, in paroxysms of despair at the contemptuous attack on his book in the Quarterly Review (vol. ii., p. 169). This was not Shelley's only definite assertion on the matter. Writing again to Byron on May 4, he said : The account of Keats is, I fear, too true. Hunt tells me that, in the first paroxysms of his dis- appointment he burst a blood-vessel ; and thus laid the foundation of a rapid consumption. There can be no doubt but that the irritability which exposed him to this catastrophe was a pledge of future sufferings, had he lived (ibid., p. 171). And on July 16 he followed this with a further letter saying : I send you as Diomed gave Glaucus his brazen arms for those of gold -some verses I wrote on the death of Keats written, indeed, immediately after the arrival of the news. ... I need not be told that I have been carried too far by the enthusiasm of the moment ; by my piety, and my indignation, in panegyric. But if I have erred, I console myself by reflecting that it is in defence of the weak not in conjunction with the powerful. . . I have been unwillingly, and in spite of myself, induced to notice the attack of the Quarterly upon me ; it would have been affectation to have omitted the few words in which I allude to it. I have sought not to qualify the contempt from which my silence has hitherto sprung (ibid., pp. 177-8). ' Adonais,' which was printed at Pisa, thus was largely affected by The Quarterly attacks on the younger poets and Keats in particular ; and it was written under the immediate influence of the belief that the original cause of Keats's illness was the attack on ' Endymion,' one of the most bitter of them. He put it, indeed, with the greatest plainness in the Preface to ' Adonais.' W. M. Rossetti sought to dismiss this belief by writing : Shelley seems to be the principal authority [for the statement that Keats took greatly to heart the attacks upon him whether in The Quarterly or in Blackwood}, and Shelley, unless founding upon some adequate information, is next to no authority at all. He had left England in March, 1818, five months before the earlier printed in August of these spiteful articles (' Life,' p. 101). " Unless founding upon some adequate information " that is the point. Shelley speaks with precision at Pisa in April, 1821, to a correspondent at Ravenna, of the circumstances attending the death in Rome a little earlier of one whom they both knew, and in whom the writer had so much interest that he had invited the dead man to be his guest at Pisa, but the latter had desired to make his stay in Rome. How far The Quarterly attacks furnished the cause and Keats's death the effect can never now with certainty be said ; but the additional contemporary testimony on the point just made available is certainly worth attention. ALFRED ROBBINS.