Hunt had tried to persuade Keats not to write a long poem. Keats wrote of this: "Hunt's dissuasion was of no avail[122]--I refused to visit Shelley that I might have my own unfettered scope; and after all, I shall have the reputation of Hunt's élève. His corrections and amputations will by the knowing ones be traced in the poem."[123]
During 1818, Leigh Hunt in his critical work remained silent concerning Keats, probably because of his sincere disapproval of _Endymion_ and secondly, because he realized that his praise would be injurious. The attacks on Hunt in _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_ had foreshadowed an attack of the same virulent kind on Keats. The realization came with the publication of _Endymion_. The article on "Johnny Keats," fourth of the series on the Cockney School in _Blackwood's Magazine_, appeared almost simultaneously with his return from Scotland, and the one in the _Quarterly_ in September of the same year. These will be discussed in a later chapter. Suspicions of neglect on the part of Hunt murmured in Keats's mind like a discordant undertone, although the friendship continued as warm as ever on Hunt's part. Keats was passive, without, however, the old sense of dependence and trust. December 28, 1817, he writes to his brothers of the "drivelling egotism" of _The Examiner_ article on the obsoletion of Christmas gambols and pastimes.[124] In a journal letter written to George Keats and his wife in Louisville during December and January, 1819, the old liking has become almost repugnance: "Hunt keeps on in his old way--I am completely tired of it all. He has lately published a Pocket Book called the literary Pocket-Book--full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine";[125] yet Keats suffered himself to become a contributor to this same book with two sonnets, _The Human Seasons_ and _To Ailsa Rock_. Again in the same letter:
"The night we went to Novello's there was a complete set-to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow my own inclinations I should never meet any of that set again, not even Hunt who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him, but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. He understands many a beautiful thing; but then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself possesses,--he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care not for white Busts--and many a glorious thing when associated with him becomes a nothing."[126]