Shelley - 1877 Author:George Barnett Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: In a letter written from Eavenna, some years after their first meeting, Byron addresses Shelley upon literary subjects, and takes occasion to refer to Keats's ul... more »tra-sensitiveness. It is curious to note the difference in poets in this respect. Adverse criticism produced in Byron rage and rebelliousness; in Shelley sadness and pity; in Keats a temporary despair, if not a permanent feeling akin to that. The idea, once so common, that Keats was absolutely "snuffed out by an article," and that he died of a broken heart, has recently been exploded; but it is not impossible that the severity of his critics may have given an impetus to that insidious disease of which he died. Keats had a proud and sensitive soul, and in all probability suffered more from the literary onslaughts upon him than he was willing to confess to his friends. It is in the nature of such poets to cherish their wrongs, and let them gnaw like a canker at the heart. Shelley was the only one of the trio named who could appraise criticism at its true worth. Its venom had little vitality in his presence. One passage in Byron's letter is worth quoting both for its references to himself, and to Shelley's drama, The Cenci. " I recollect," he says, "the effect on me of the Edinburgh on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and redress, butnot despondency nor despair. I grant that those are not amiable feelings; but, in this world of bustle and broil, and especially in the career of writing, a man should calculate upon his powers of resistance before he goes into the arena. (Expect not life from pain nor danger free, Nor deem the doom of man reversed for thee.' " You know my opinion of that second-hand school of poetry. You also know my high opinion of your own poetry, because it is of no school. I read Centi, but...« less