Throughout his life, in contemporary newspapers, Keats ‘was given an extraordinarily good reception’. Lord Byron forced himself to mouth the expected pieties to Shelley but, when addressing John Murray was at liberty to speak as he wished. Having caught up with ‘the homicide review of J. Keats’ in August 1821 Byron thought it ‘harsh certainly and contemptuous but not more so than what the author recollects of the Edinburgh Review of "the Hours of Idleness" in 1808. Though very provoking it was hardly so bitter as to kill, unless there was a morbid feeling previously in his system’. Shelley's explanation may have been true to what he thought had taken place and consistent with medical opinion at the time. Byron channelled his thoughts on Shelley's poetic martyrology into one of the most memorable stanzas of Don Juan, combining them with doubts as to Keats's education.