Who Killed John Keats?

Who Killed John Keats?

Original Text
"Born for Opposition": Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand, Vol. 8: 1821 (London: John Murray, 1978): 162-63. PR 4381 A3M37 Robarts Library
Are you aware that Shelley has written an elegy on Keats--and accuses the Quarterly of killing him?--
1Who killed John Keats?
2    I, says the Quarterly
3So savage & Tartarly,
4    'Twas one of my feats--
5Who shot the arrow?
6    The poet-priest Milman
7(So ready to kill man)
8    Or Southey, or Barrow.--
You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's poetry or principles of poetry--or of his abuse of Pope--but as he is dead--omit all that is said about him in any M.S.S. of mine--or publication. --His Hyperion is a fine monument & will keep his name--I do not envy the man--who wrote the article--your review people have no more right to kill than any other foot pads.--However--he who would die of an article in a review--would probably have died of something else equally trivial--the same thing nearly happened to Kirke White--who afterwards died of consumption.

Notes

0] Letter to John Murray, July 30, 1821. Back to Line
1] This parodies the nursery rhyme, "Who killed Cock Robin?" Back to Line
2] John Wilson Croker reviewed Keats' Endymion in the Quarterly Review in September 1818. Two other damning reviews joined Croker's, one by J. G. Lockhart in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine and another by an anonymous writer in British Critic. Keats died in Rome of consumption on February 23, 1821. Back to Line
6] Milman: Henry Hart Milman (1791–1868), poet and dramatist. Back to Line
8] Southey: Robert Southey, the poet.Barrow: John Henry Barrow (1796–1858), journalist, editor, and man of letters. Back to Line
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2011
Rhyme
abbacddc
Form
octave