Byron—‘though more wild and oriental than he would be if he had seen the scenes where he has placed his tale—that he has much talent, and certainly fire enough.’ ‘The Eden of Imagination,’ on the other hand, shows traces of the influence of Leigh Hunt and Wordsworth, both of whom are lauded in highly superfluous notes. Leigh Hunt, as an old Christ's Hospital boy, was probably already acquainted with Reynolds's father, and it must have been through Hunt that in 1816 Reynolds formed the friendship with Keats which has contributed more to the preservation of his name than his own literary efforts. ‘The Naiad,’ published with other pieces in 1816, is still in the manner of Byron and Scott, but ‘Fairies,’ one of the minor poems printed along with it, is in the style of Hunt, and much better than the more ambitious effort. All Reynolds's serious poetry is henceforward in a higher key, and Keats's numerous letters to him, beginning in March 1817, and contributed by Reynolds himself to Lord Houghton's memoir of Keats, show that he was regarded as on a footing of full intellectual equality. Reynolds addressed a fine sonnet to Keats, and Keats's own lines on Robin Hood were prompted by Reynolds's sonnets to this popular hero, and the last and best of Keats's poetical epistles was addressed to him. There is indeed hardly another correspondent to whom Keats expresses himself so unreservedly, or who has called forth so many of his best and deepest thoughts. Upon the completion of his ‘Endymion,’ Keats projected a series of metrical versions of Boccaccio's tales in conjunction with Reynolds, his own contribution to which was his ‘Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,’ while Reynolds wrote ‘The Garden of Florence’ and ‘The Ladye of Provence,’ which he published later. Hunt, in an article in the ‘Examiner,’ bracketed Reynolds's name with Keats and Shelley, but in 1818 he was in great measure diverted from poetry by receiving an advantageous offer to enter the office of Mr. Fladgate, a solicitor, and expressed his feelings in a sonnet which Mr. Buxton Forman justly calls charming, and which, with two or three other slight compositions of the same nature, stands at the head of his poetry. He produced, nevertheless, a highly successful farce, ‘One, Two, Three, Four, Five,’ in 1819, and in the same year published an anonymous travesty of Wordsworth, under the title of ‘Peter Bell,’ before the actual appearance of Wordsworth's poem of that name, and hence termed by Shelley ‘the ante-natal Peter.’ Some of Wordsworth's more obvious peculiarities are taken off with fair success, but the piece cannot be compared with the parody in the ‘Rejected Addresses,’ or with the Ettrick Shepherd's ‘Flying Tailor.’ It is said, however, to have been the work of a single day, and Coleridge attributed it positively to Charles Lamb. In 1820 Reynolds produced another humorous volume, ‘The Fancy, a Selection from the Poetical Remains of the late Peter Corcoran,’ including a burlesque tragedy and ‘The Fields of Tothill,’ a poem in the manner of ‘Don Juan.’ He also wrote in Thomas Jonathan Wooler's ‘Black Dwarf.’
Early in 1820 Reynolds went to the continent, which probably occasioned the discontinuance of his correspondence with Keats. There was no estrangement, for in a letter dated from Rome in November 1820 Keats expresses his regret at not having been able to write to him. His versions from Boccaccio appeared in 1821, shortly after the death of Keats, under the title of ‘The Garden of Florence, and other Poems,’ and with the pseudonym of ‘John Hamilton.’ The preface contains a brief and affecting tribute to Keats. After the sonnets, the best poem is ‘The Romance of Youth,’ the first canto of an unfinished poem in the Spenserian stanza, intended to depict the disillusionment of genius by contact with the world, and an intimation that such had been the destiny of the author. Reynolds was by this time fully committed to the law, and, according to the elder Dilke, had a prospect of making a fortune through the generosity of James Rice, Keats's friend, who not only defrayed the expenses of his certificate, but took him into partnership, and subsequently gave up a lucrative practice in his favour. ‘Reynolds unhappily threw away this certain fortune,’ how is not explained. He had married about 1821, and, though forsaking poetry, had by no means relinquished literature, writing in the ‘London Magazine’ under the signature ‘Edward Herbert’ until the end of 1824, and afterwards contributing to the ‘Edinburgh,’ ‘Westminster,’ and ‘Retrospective’ reviews. His connection with the ‘London Magazine’ made him acquainted with Thomas Hood, who in 1824 married his sister Jane. Hood and he were for a time intimate friends; they combined in writing ‘Odes and Addresses to Celebrated Persons,’ 1825; and ‘Lycus the Centaur’ was dedicated to Reynolds; but their friendship was succeeded by a bitter estrangement, the cause of which is not told. Reynolds was one of the proprietors of the ‘Athenæum,’ and a curious letter from him protesting against Dilke's reduction of its price is printed in Sir Charles Dilke's preface
