ABSTRACT
Thomas De Quincey (1785–1859) is best known for his Confessions of an Opium-Eater (1821) and Recollections of the Lake Poets (1834–40). His rather febrile style and catty manner both influenced later prose-writers, and he begins his discussion of Keats's poetry by asserting that Keats was not really interested in ‘the great moving realities of life’. His first reaction to Keats's language in Endymion represents an irritably extreme case of the familiar ‘classical’ objections. Extract (a) runs from after the first three pages of the article, which dismiss the story that Keats was killed by a review, to the end. The footnote, (b), was added when the article was reprinted eleven years later.
