"Whether Mr. John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection. . . . For some time we were in hopes that he might get off with a violent fit or two, but of late the symptoms are terrible. The frenzy of the Poems was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable drivelling idiocy of Endymion … It is a better and easier thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet; go back to the shop, Mr. John, back to `plasters, pills and ointment boxes.”
This is part of the famous bad review of Keats’ work by John Gibson Lockhart in Blackwood’s Magazine.
In short, critics can be VERY WRONG sometimes.
And we shouldn’t forget how many famous writers have despised the work of other famous writers. James Joyce and D.H.Lawrence, for instance, both believed that the other was writing absolute garbage.
I have recently admitted how I sometimes criticize stuff for not the mortal sin of being written in my own style and taste. And perhaps this happens with others also.
I suppose all we can ever do is to try and give as honest a response as we can.
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