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A letter Keats wrote to his publisher about friends’ protesting bad reviews of his poems:

8 October 1818

My dear Hessey,

You are very good in sending me the letter from the Chronicle, and I am very bad in not acknowledging such a kindness sooner. Pray forgive me; it has so chanced that I have had that paper everyday. I have seen today’s. I cannot but feel indebted to those Gentlemen who have taken my part. As for the rest, I begin to get a little acquainted with my own strength and weakness. Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic on his own Works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without comparison beyond what Blackwood or the Quarterly could possibly inflict, and also when I feel I am right no external praise can give me such a glow as my own solitary reperception and ratification of what is fine. J.S. is perfectly right in regard to the slipshod Endymion. That it is so is no fault of mine-No!-though it may sound a little paradoxical. It is as good as I had power to make it-by myself-Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece and with that view asked advice and trembled over every page, it would not have been written; for it is not in my nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently without Judgment. I may write independently and with judgment hereafter. The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative must create itself. In Endymion, I leaped headlong into the Sea, and thereby have become better acquainted with the Soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed up upon the green shore, and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest. But I am night getting into a rant. So, with remembrances to Taylor and Woodhouse, etc., I am

Yours very sincerely

John Keats