[13] As Byron is introduced into Adonais as mourning for Keats, and as in fact he cared for Keats hardly at all, it seems possible that his silence was dictated by antagonism rather than by modesty.

[14] Blackwood seems to imply that the Quarterly accused Endymion of indecency; this is not correct.

[15] The reader of Keats’s preface will find that this is a misrepresentation.  Keats did not speak of any fierce hell of criticism, nor did he ask to remain uncriticised in order that he might write more.  What he said was that a feeling critic would not fall foul of him for hoping to write good poetry in the long run, and would be aware that Keats’s own sense of failure in Endymion was as fierce a hell as he could be chastised by.

[16] This passage of the letter had remained unpublished up to 1890.  It then appeared in Mr. Buxton Forman’s volume, Poetry and Prose by John Keats.  Some authentic information as to Keats’s change of feeling had, however, been published before.

[17] This phrase is lumbering and not grammatical.  The words ’I confess that I am unable to refuse’ would be all that the meaning requires.

[18] This seems to contradict the phrase in Adonais (stanza 20) ‘Nought we know dies.’  Probably Shelley, in the prose passage, does not intend ‘perishes’ to be accepted in the absolute sense of ‘dies,’ or ‘ceases to have any existence;’ he means that all things undergo a process of deterioration and decay, leading on to some essential change or transmutation.  The French have the word ‘deperir’ as well as ‘perir’:  Shelley’s ‘perishes’ would correspond to ‘deperit.’