he is more unintelligible

Critics of English Romantic Poets twisted and turned both the works and lives of the great Romantic poets. It happens that Keats seems to represent the most extreme example of how critics can effect one’s life because both Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron claim that it was John Crocker’s critical review of Keats in 1818 that ended his life.

In the life of a romantic poet it seems as though there are two distinct factions of critics. There is the critic as a poet himself and there is the essentially the unexposed critic who’s only contribution to the world of literature is the critical analysis of others.

From the perspective of the poet/critic, their seems to be a mixture of both acclaim and discord with other author’s publications. John Clare’s poem, Clare's To Wordsworth is an example of one poet’s critical acclaim of another. Clare is sincerely displaying his appreciation and respect for William Wordsworth. It is also clear that Clare looks down upon the critics who shunned Wordsworth’s work; “What critics throw away I love the more.” Romantic poets were not only known for their acclaim of one another. Poets are also found criticizing other poets work like when Wordsworth discounts the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This criticism where Wordsworth claims that the The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has, “great defects” is known to have hurt Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The unexposed critic seems to be the most hurtful to the romantic poets. Wordsworth shouts out against these critics in his preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads (Preface to Lyrical Ballads, 1802) saying; “there is a numerous class of critics, who, when they stumble upon these prosaisms as they call them, imagine that they have made a notable discovery, and exult over the Poet as over a man ignorant of his own profession.” This seem to be the same type of critic who two romantic poets claim to have ended the life of John Keats.