Volume 1 - Electric Scotland

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THE DEATH OF KEATS. 375
aware. However, if you are decidedly of opinion that my being
there would be any good, write hy return of post to say so.
Why I wish to go to London you know, but do not let that
weigh with you. It would not occasion any alteration in my
arrangements, for I have not made any, and I am as ready to
start for Bengal as for Bandon, and as far as my personal feelings
are concerned, quite indifferent for which ; so give me your
opinion candidly, without delay.
But the new contributor not only broke new ground,
as in the onslaught upon Leslie, but took up all the
previous sins of the brotherhood with the heartiest
relish. Their assault upon Keats, to which undue im-
portance has been given, and their incessant reviling
of the " Cockney School," were seized upon and echoed
with even greater and still less refined vehemence ;
though, on this point at least, a certain compunction
is visible when the news of the victim's death, though
not "by an article," struck the satirist, still pen in
hand :
B. T. S. to W. Blackwood.
April 10, 1821.
I have just this moment heard of poor Keats's death. We
are unlucky in our butts. It would appear very cruel if any
jokes now appeared on the pharmacopolical part of ' Endymion.'
And indeed when I heard that the poor devil was in a consump-
tion, I was something sorry that I annoyed him at all of late.
If I were able I should write a dirge over him, as a kind of
amende honorable ; but my Muse, I am afraid, does not run in
the mournful.
If you print my hymn strike out the hemistich concerning
him, substituting anything you like—such as " Pale is the cheek
of Leigh Hunt, the tea-drinking king of the Cockneys." I hope
I am in time, for it would annoy me if it appeared that we
were attacking any one who had it not in his power to reply
particularly an old enemy after his death.
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